A 37-year-old Tennessee man was arrested Thursday, accused of stealing Blu-rays and DVDs from a manufacturing and distribution company used by major movie studios and sharing them online before the movies’ scheduled release dates.
According to a US Department of Justice press release, Steven Hale worked at the DVD company and allegedly stole “numerous ‘pre-release’ DVDs and Blu-rays” between February 2021 and March 2022. He then allegedly “ripped” the movies, “bypassing encryption that prevents unauthorized copying” and shared copies widely online. He also supposedly sold the actual stolen discs on e-commerce sites, the DOJ alleged.
Hale has been charged with “two counts of criminal copyright infringement and one count of interstate transportation of stolen goods,” the DOJ said. He faces a maximum sentence of five years for the former, and 10 years for the latter.
Wine 10.3 was just released as the newest bi-weekly development release for this open-source software to run Windows applications and games under Linux and other platforms…
Microsoft has uncovered a large-scale malvertising campaign that has affected over 1 million devices worldwide. In a blog post detailing its findings, Microsoft revealed that threat actors used platforms such as Dropbox, Discord, and Github to broadcast malware. The attacks, which were aimed at stealing sensitive information, were discovered
You can stream the first episode of Win or Lose, Pixar’s first original TV series, for free on YouTube. It follows a co-ed middle school softball team (the Pickles), with each episode focusing on a different character’s perspective — including animated personifications of their insecurities and defense mechanisms.
The first episode hones in on the “coach’s kid,” Laurie, the Pickles’ right fielder. She’s rubbish at softball, thanks in no small part to her insecurities, illustrated as a sentient perspiration blob (the aptly named Sweaty).
If Win or Lose floats your boat, you’ll need to hop over to Disney+ — subscription in tow — to watch the remaining seven episodes (the last two of which premiere on March 12). Should you go that route, you can currently save some money on the ad-supported tier of a Disney+ and Hulu bundle.
Pre-release controversy
Disney+
Win or Lose stood at the center of a controversy months before its February 19 debut. The show was initially slated to include an openly transgender character, Kai. While the part, played by trans actress Chanel Stewart, is still included in the series, Disney cut several lines of dialog referencing her gender identity.
A pair of overshadowing circumstances compounded the online backlash over the decision: The news came on the heels of Donald Trump’s election victory, and the show has an openly Christian character (Laurie) who prays aloud to “Heavenly Father” before heading to the plate. The combination led many to assume the moves were an appeasement to the president-elect, right as business leaders were routinely seen visiting Mar-a-Lago and currying favor by cutting DEI programs and trans-inclusive features.
However, Disney framed its decision as being about parental freedom regarding LGBTQ+ storylines. “When it comes to animated content for a younger audience, we recognize that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline,” a company spokesperson toldThe Hollywood Reporter in December. An off-record source “close to” the project told the publication that the studio chose to cut the lines several months before, which (if true) would have placed it at a point when political forecasters saw the election’s outcome as either a coin flip or slightly favoring former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Regardless, you can check out the first episode below if it sounds like your cup of tea.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/you-can-stream-the-first-episode-of-pixars-win-or-lose-on-youtube-211938945.html?src=rss
Mobile World Congress is taking place in Barcelona this week, offering manufacturers an opportunity to show off new gear without needing to hold their own splashy event. So far, we’ve learned about some new laptops and phones, as well as upcoming AI updates to Android and an internet connectivity announcement from Meta. There’s also been some interesting ideas in the world of headphones and a whole lot of concepts that might never make it to market, but are fun to look at any way.
Among the bigger-name manufacturers, Lenovo has arguably had the busiest MWC so far. The company has revealed a whole bunch of laptops, including upgraded ThinkPads and several intriguing concept models.
The ThinkPad T14s 2-in-1 has a design that’s more aligned with the convertible format of the Yoga lineup than a typical ThinkPad. The 14-inch machine can be equipped with a 400-nit WUXGA touch display. Other ThinkPads are getting spec upgrades, while Lenovo claims the new ThinkPad X13 Gen 6 has “one of the lightest ThinkPad designs ever.” The company has a fresh slate of laptops with generative AI capabilities as well.
Some of Lenovo’s concepts have certainly caught our attention. It’s a bummer that the company doesn’t currently plan to turn the Yoga Solar PC Concept into a commercial device. Thanks to the solar cells on the casing, the laptop can soak up enough energy from the sun in 20 minutes to play an hour of videos. As little as 0.3 watts of light is enough to juice up the battery. While solar-powered laptops aren’t exactly new, the Yoga Solar PC feels polished. Here’s hoping Lenovo does more with the notion in the future.
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
In addition, Lenovo showed off some conceptual display accessories for a ThinkBook laptop. There’s an eight-inch screen that attaches to the side magnetically to help you, for instance, keep up with notifications and widgets. The Magic Bay Dual Display Concept adds a 13.3-inch panel to either side of the main display. There’s also a slim second display that’s designed to sit above your laptop screen and provide quick access to things like the time, weather, notifications, a focus mode timer, an AI assistant and notifications.
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
On top of all of that, Lenovo offered a look at a new prototype laptop with a flexible display. Building on the tech the company used in the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable, the ThinkBook codename Flip AI PC Proof of concept (to give its full name) has a fold-out screen. This allows Lenovo to double the panel’s size from 13 inches to 18.1 inches. The ThinkBook Rollable’s display, on the other hand, can extend to 16.7 inches. Again, Lenovo doesn’t currently plan to release a commercial version of this fold-out laptop, but it’s an interesting idea.
Samsung
Photo by Mat Smith for Engadget.
The main MWC news from Samsung this year is the company’s latest midrange and budget phones. The Galaxy A56 has a larger screen than its predecessor at 6.7 inches, but it’s thinner too at 7.44mm vs. 8.2mm. There’s now a small bump where the volume and power buttons are — a tweak that we feel makes the A56 easier to handle.
Samsung has switched up the camera array in the A56. On the front, there’s a lower-res 12MP lens. On the other side, you’ll find an upgraded 12MP ultrawide, 50MP main sensor and a 5MP macro lens. The A56 has a bunch of AI-powered camera and image editing features, such as enhanced subject detection in portrait mode and an object eraser.
Pre-orders are open in the UK for the Galaxy A56, which costs $499/£499. It will hit the UK on March 19, but folks in the US will have to wait until “later this year” for it.
Samsung also revealed the Galaxy A36 5G and Galaxy A26 5G. Both devices have a 120Hz, 6.7-inch display with brightness of up to 1,200 nits. They also share an IP67 rating and 5,000mAh battery with the A56.
However, the base models of each only have 6GB of RAM (compared with the A56’s 12GB). In addition, the A36 has the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 processor instead of the Exynos 1580 that the A56 boasts, while the A26 has a Exynos 1380 chipset.
Samsung’s concept folding phones and gaming handhelds
In addition to properly launching the trio of A-series phones, Samsung also brought a bunch of concept devices to Barcelona, further showing off its flexible display prowess. We’ve seen reporting of these, like Android Police’s coverage of a “Flex Gaming” handheld. That prototype consists of a 7.2-inch OLED screen that bends in half. Flanking the display are what appear to be controllers and holes where they’d fit when the handheld is folded up. Elsewhere on the internet we also saw Samsung showcase a Galaxy Z Flip-esque device that had two hinges that let it fold in on itself from the top and bottom. Allison Johnson at The Verge has nicknamed it “The Claw,” which to our editor Cherlynn Low is just reminiscent of an MSI device.
Xiaomi
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
Unfortunately, Xiaomi doesn’t have plans to bring a handset it showed off at MWC to the US. That’s a real pity, because no other companies are selling phones quite like the Xiaomi 15 Ultra in the country these days.
Xiaomi teamed up with Leica to make a smartphone that leans heavily into photography. The camera array includes a 1-inch 50-megapixel Sony main sensor, an f/2.2 50MP ultrawide cam, a 50MP midrange lens with a 70mm focal length and a 200MP periscope array with a 100mm focal length — that equates to a 4.7x optical zoom. Some preset Leica filters help to tie the two brands’ knowhow together.
That’s not all that might be interesting to mobile snappers. Xiaomi’s separate Photography kit includes an add-on camera grip with a physical shutter button, an adjustable dial and dedicated video button. You’ll have the option to attach a standard 67mm filter adapter to a case as well — in other words, some of the equipment you might use on a dedicated camera is compatible with the Ultra 15 as part of this setup.
Moreover, the Ultra 15 has a 6.7-inch AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate and up to 3,200 nits of brightness to help you get a good look at your captures. Plus, unlike some other Chinese phones (like Huawei’s), Xiaomi supports Google services in HyperOS 2, which is an Android skin. The Ultra 15 starts at about €1,499 (around $1,572).
Android
Speaking of Android, Google announced two new AI-powered features for the operating system at MWC. The Live Video function, which Google first previewed at I/O 2024, allows you to share what your phone’s camera sees with Gemini so you can ask the chatbot questions about the footage.
The new screensharing function works in a similar way. You can ask Gemini questions about whatever’s on your phone or tablet’s display.
If they work as well as advertised, these features could be a boon for accessibility. Google will first offer them to Gemini Advanced subscribers starting later this month. Those with a $20 per month Google One AI Premium membership, which is included with some Verizon plans, have access to Gemini Advanced.
Nothing
Image by Mat Smith for Engadget
Samsung wasn’t the only smartphone maker of note to show off two new mid-range devices at MWC. Nothing debuted its Phone 3a Pro and Phone 3a at the event — even though it has yet to unleash the Phone 3.
The 3a Pro has a beefier camera module (quite literally as the device is about 10 grams heavier than the 3a). It contains a 50MP telephoto sensor with a 3x optical zoom; a 50MP primary sensor with f/1.88 lens and dual-pixel phase detection auto-focus (PDAF); and an ultrawide 8MP sensor with a 120-degree field of view. The handset has a telemacro mode too. As for the 3a, that boasts a main 50MP camera with single-pixel PDAF, but the other two sensors are the same as on the 3a Pro.
The cameras are the main difference between the two phones, which both have a 6.77-inch AMOLED LTPS display with a 120Hz refresh rate and up to 1,300 nits of brightness. The phones have a 5,000mAh battery with support for 50W fast charging, and they run on a Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chipset.
The devices have Nothing’s multipurpose Essential Key, a physical button that can take screenshots and help you record voice notes. The phones also have some generative AI features, such as the ability to transcribe said voice notes and describe what’s in screenshots and photos.
As usual, Nothing is initially offering these devices in the US through a beta program. Phone 3a pre-orders are open now and the $379 handset ships on March 11. That’s the date when pre-orders for the Phone 3a Pro go live. The $459 phone can be in your hands on March 25.
Meta
There was more news out of MWC beyond new gear and OS updates. Meta and the Internet Society announced a partnership to bolster affordable internet connectivity around the globe. They’re jointly putting $30 million into the initiative over the next five years.
A major aim of the project is to help build out infrastructure in areas where commercial providers have yet to do so. The Connectivity Co-Funding Initiative will also back training programs, community-centered solutions for underserved areas and locally owned networks. The Internet Society is hoping to find more partners to help with the project.
HMD
Finnish company HMD, which also makes devices under the Nokia brand, brought a bunch of phones to Barcelona this year, but maybe the most interesting thing was some earbuds. The Amped Earbuds are a pair of fairly standard Bluetooth buds, with a twist in the case: It’s got a 1,600mAh battery built in that supports reverse wireless charging. It’s a pretty solid idea — given you’re likely already carrying a phone and some headphones. Perhaps the one issue is that capacity: 1,600mAh is enough to charge a lot of headphones, but it’s dramatically smaller than the battery in your phone. Still, an extra 20 percent of battery life could be an lifesaver.
Update, March 7 2025, 4:05PM ET: This story has been updated twice since publish. Once to include a section on Samsung’s concept folding devices, and once to add a section on HMD’s Amped Earbuds. The introduction of the article was also changed.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/everything-announced-at-mwc-2025-samsung-nothing-lenovo-xiaomi-and-more-tech-news-200029465.html?src=rss
As Gundam GQuuuuuuX gets ready to envision a new lens on the Universal Century, here’s what you need to know about the devastating conflict that defined the original Gundam.
While there is something special about a physical book, e-books are a great alternative for reading on the go (and building a library that doesn’t take up any space). If you want to read on your phone, tablet, or e-reader, there are a number of options for finding millions of titles to borrow or buy.
Your e-reader choice doesn’t necessarily limit where you can get e-books, as some of the best e-readers (Kindle and non-Kindle) support a wide range of document formats, which you can convert back and forth using a service like Calibre and Adobe Acrobat, with some limitations. (If you’re in need of an e-reader, we’ve broken down the pros and cons of some of the most popular options on the market, though you can also access content via various apps for your iOS or Android device.)
On the flip side, where you buy e-books may limit where can you read them. For example, Amazon has eliminated the option to download your Kindle e-books to a computer to convert them from the company’s proprietary .AZW3 format. That means you can read content only on your Kindle or through the Kindle mobile or web app.
In addition to compatibility with your reading device, you should also consider factors like book selection and catalog size, whether you want to pay per book or have a subscription, and whether you want to borrow books or own them long-term.
Here are some of the best e-book services to consider.
Kindle Books
While you might be trying to get away from Amazon’s services, especially if you’re not already a Kindle user, Kindle Books is still one of the top e-book shops out there, with more than 6 million titles to choose from.
You can buy individual books a la carte or subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, which allows you to borrow up to 20 eligible e-book or audiobook titles at a time (plus magazine subscriptions) with no due date, for $12 per month after a 30-day trial. Your books and reading progress sync across devices, so you don’t lose your place.
The downside, as outlined above, is that you can only read books on a Kindle device or in the Kindle app, so you won’t be able to transfer content to another e-reader. And while Kindle Unlimited has a huge selection, including popular titles, you may not find everything you want to read is eligible, so you’ll have to purchase some books separately.
OverDrive
OverDrive is the library service that loans titles to anyone with a library card at a participating library system. More than 90% of libraries in North American support OverDrive, and you can check out and read e-books through the Libby app on iOS, Android, and Amazon devices as well as via web. OverDrive is free to use as long as you have a library card, and the Libby app is easy to navigate for browsing, requesting, reading, and returning e-books with features like device syncing and offline access.
However, the selection is dependent on your local library’s catalog, and you may have to wait for popular titles. Plus, like physical books from the library, you have a limited checkout period before your e-book is returned to circulation—and if other users have requested the title, you may not be able to renew it.
If you want to expand your options for library borrowing, you can also use Hoopla, which is similar to OverDrive and allows you to check out e-books to read on your mobile device.
Rakuten Kobo
Kobo is a great alternative to Kindle for both e-readers and e-books. The catalog has more than 5 million titles to choose from, which you can read on any Kobo device or with the Kobo app on iOS, Android, or desktop. You can also download Kobo books in EPUB or PDF format to export to other reading devices, and Kobo integrates with OverDrive/Libby for library borrowing.
Kobo offers a la carte purchases as well as a subscription borrowing service called Kobo Plus, which costs $8 per month for e-books only or $10 a month for both e-books and audiobooks after a 30-day trial. Kobo Plus doesn’t come with access to the full Kobo catalog, though there are 1.5 million e-books and 150,000 audiobooks available to choose from.
Google Play Books
Google has a catalog of more than 4 million books available to buy or rent through Google Play. You can read books on almost any device (except Kindle) using either the Google Play app or by downloading as an EPUB or PDF file and transferring to an e-reader. The Google interface offers helpful recommendations, and the app syncs across devices with the option to read offline. Google doesn’t have its own e-reader, but that makes reading more flexible than content purchased for Kindle.
Bookshop.org
If you want to support your local bookseller with your e-book buys, Bookshop.org is a great alternative to Kindle and Kobo. A portion of all purchases (whether e-book or hard copy) goes to an indie bookstore of your choosing, and you can read e-books through the Bookshop.org app on your iOS or Android device or in a web browser.
The selection from Bookshop.org isn’t as large as some other catalogs, and you’ll pay full price for most titles, as there’s also no subscription option for borrowing. Again, though, you are supporting local businesses with each purchase.
Everand
Everand is the audiobook and e-book arm of Scribd, and a monthly subscription includes access to both content types and a catalog of more than 1.5 million titles. The $12-per-month standard plan unlocks one title per month, or you can pay $17 per month for three unlocks (after a 30-day trial). Both plans include access to community-uploaded documents on Scribd. Everand e-books can be read through the service’s iOS or Android app or on Everand.com.
eBooks.com
eBooks.com is a platform-agnostic shop with more than 2.6 million titles to choose from, making it a good option if you’re not locked into a single device. You can download your books in one of several formats depending on your reading device (note that eBooks.com is not compatible with Kindle except for Kindle Fire). You do have to purchase e-books outright—there’s no subscription option.
Project Gutenberg
If you’re looking for literary classics, Project Gutenberg is one place to find them for free. First launched in 1971, the (now) online library has digitized over 75,000 books in dozens of languages, with a focus on content with expired U.S. copyrights. File formats are compatible with most e-readers and mobile devices, so you can download and transfer books anywhere you want to read them. You won’t find popular titles or current bestsellers here, but it is a great option for books from your English class reading list.
Other e-book services
Of course, there are plenty of other places to get e-books. Those in the Apple ecosystem can purchase individual titles from Apple Books, which you can read on any device with the Apple Books app and share with up to five family members. Barnes & Noble is good choice for Nook users, with more than 4 million titles that can also be accessed in iOS or Android. Or look at platforms that offer discounted or free e-books.
Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-Ho returns to the big screen this weekend with the sci-fi film Mickey 17. If you’re expecting the subtly devastating social commentary of his 2019 drama/horror/thriller-hybrid Parasite, I suspect you’ll be disappointed. Mickey 17 is a very different beast in both aesthetic and tone. When the first trailer dropped, I wrote that the film felt like a darkly comedic version of Duncan Jones’ 2009 film Moon, with a dash of the surreal absurdity of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985) thrown in for good measure. I stand by that assessment, and it proves to be a winning combination.
(Some spoilers below but no major reveals.)
The film is based on the 2022 novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton. Ashton’s inspiration for the novel was the teletransportation paradox—a thought experiment pondering the philosophy of identity that challenges certain notions of the self and consciousness. It started as a short story about what Ashton called “a crappy immortality” and expanded from there into a full-length novel. (Ashton also penned a sequel, Antimatter Blues, which was published in 2023.)
The spectacular collapse of fintech middleman Synapse has left $200 million in customer money frozen and up to $95 million missing, with no clear answers about where the funds went. After Synapse, a financial technology company connecting other fintechs to banks, filed for bankruptcy in April 2024, customers of apps like Yotta, Juno, and Copper found themselves locked out of their savings.
Founded in 2014 by Sankaet Pathak, Synapse connected consumer-facing fintech platforms with banks holding customer deposits. The disaster unfolded after relationships with regional bank Evolve and unicorn client Mercury deteriorated, triggering a chain reaction through the financial infrastructure. Nearly a year later, Fortune reports that a Department of Justice criminal investigation is underway, while the bankruptcy’s court-appointed trustee called the situation an “awful, awful” mess. The debacle, the outlet writes, exposes the risks lurking beneath popular financial apps operating in a regulatory frontier where customer funds travel across an invisible bridge of intermediaries.
Nearly 1 million Windows devices were targeted in recent months by a sophisticated “malvertising” campaign that surreptitiously stole login credentials, cryptocurrency, and other sensitive information from infected machines, Microsoft said.
The campaign began in December, when the attackers, who remain unknown, seeded websites with links that downloaded ads from malicious servers. The links led targeted machines through several intermediary sites until finally arriving at repositories on Microsoft-owned Github, which hosted a raft of malicious files.
Chain of events
The malware was loaded in four stages, each of which acted as a building block for the next. Early stages collected device information, presumably to tailor configurations for the later ones. Later ones disabled malware detection apps and connected to command-and-control servers; affected devices remained infected even after being rebooted.
On Thursday, music labels sought to add nearly 500 more sound recordings to a lawsuit accusing the Internet Archive (IA) of mass copyright infringement through its Great 78 Project, which seeks to digitize all 3 million three-minute recordings published on 78 revolutions-per-minute (RPM) records from about 1898 to the 1950s.
I’ve recently rented a car in two different states. Both times I was asked if I wanted to pay an extra fee per day to avoid worrying about paying tolls—a crucial issue in some states, like Florida, that no longer accept cash on the road and sometimes won’t even allow you to pay online. Both times I declined, and set my Google Maps to “avoid tolls.”
I was reasonably confident Google would keep me safe from an unpaid toll ticket, but my heart still skipped a beat when, a few weeks ago, I got a text message letting me know I had unpaid I-Pass tolls from Illinois. But then I took a closer look at the text.
Missed toll texts are the latest scam
It turns out that texts purporting to be from a tolling administration telling you you have unpaid tolls and you have to pay up, or else face fines or even lose your driver’s license, are the latest in an unending stream of text-based phishing scams trying to get you to give up your personal info (and your money).
Transportation authorities in multiple states have issued warnings about these texts, which seem fairly legit at a glance. Typically they will purport to come from one of the major tolling programs—the E-ZPass in the northeast, FasTrak in California, I-Pass in Illinois. The text will inform you that you have an unpaid toll, provide a looming due date, and outline dire consequences for failing to pay up. Also included will be a handy, official-looking URL where you can make your payment.
Accessing that link will take you to a site that invites you to enter your credit card or banking information to settle your fine. And I’m sure you can imagine what happens from there, because you’ve just given your credit card number to a scammer.
How to spot a scam missed toll text
As scams go, this one isn’t very sophisticated. The scammers aren’t doing anything special to target you—they just have your phone number somehow and are including you in a mass spamming attempt in the hopes you’ll be too distracted to notice the obvious signs the message isn’t legit. So here are a few things to watch out for:
Do you even use this particular tolling service? In the last week, I’ve received half a dozen of these texts. Some of them are for services I’ve used and could conceivably owe money (like I-Pass, which operates in Illinois, one of the states I recently visited). Others, not so much: I didn’t even know California used something called “FasTrak” until I googled it. So take a beat to think: Is there a legitimate reason this tolling agency is asking me for money? I might have a missed E-ZPass toll, but I definitely don’t have a missed FasTrak toll.
Check the sender. One of the most obvious tells is the source of the text. Official automated texts will usually come from a 5-digit number. The texts I get telling me my E-ZPass has topped up, for example, come from “39769.” Scam texts will more likely come from a full phone number, likely an international one, with an unfamiliar country code at the start (I recently got one from a number that began with “+44,” indicating a number based in the U.K.). Another tell: If the sender is an email—especially if it’s from a free email service like Gmail or Outlook (I’ve even gotten a few from Hotmail, which hasn’t existed for years).
Non-hyperlinked URLs. When a message comes from a legitimate sender, any URLs included will likely be clickable. Scam texts will almost always have non-clickable URLs, with weird instructions either telling you to copy and paste the address into your browser, or to respond to the text with a Y, and then close and reopen it. This is an attempt to get around an iPhone security feature. Conveniently (for the scammer), once you’ve responded to a text and then reopened it, the link they sent you before will become clickable, taking you right to the site that will steal your payment info.
Look for other signs of an online scam. Chances are good the payment sites these URLs lead you to will also carry telltale signs of a phishing scam, like poor grammar, misspellings, or weird formatting. Luckily, all the ones I’ve been directed to visit via my most recent scam texts don’t actually work, suggesting that the sites are being taken down as fast as the scammers can put them up. But I keep getting more of them, so they probably aren’t going to stop trying.
We can talk until we’re blue in the face about the actual effects of software piracy, but it’s not hard to understand why companies like Electronic Arts and Nintendo get up in arms about it. Nintendo in particular has been highly aggressive in its efforts to scourge the web of unofficial ways to acquire and play its games, and it has just
Global telecom operators are struggling to shut down aging 2G networks despite pressure to free up spectrum for 4G and 5G services, as the transition threatens to exclude millions of vulnerable users.
While Vietnam successfully decommissioned 2G in November 2024 by providing free 4G phones to low-income users, countries like South Africa and India have delayed shutdowns over concerns about cutting off phone access for millions. According to GSMA Intelligence, 61 countries have planned or initiated 2G network shutdowns to enhance bandwidth and reduce maintenance costs. For 2.5 billion people worldwide, smartphones cost about 30% of monthly income, keeping basic phones essential despite declining global feature phone sales.
