Sep 17
Trump Is Still Begging Georgia Officials To Overturn The 2020 Election Results
Posted in: Today's ChiliOfficials in Georgia have repeatedly informed the president that there was no widespread voter fraud in the state.
Sep 17
Apple, Google Cave To Kremlin, Remove Opposition App As Russian Voting Begins
Posted in: Today's ChiliThe app tells voters which candidates are likely to defeat those backed by Russian authorities.
Sep 17
The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention is advising the public to get their annual flu shot as summer reaches its end and the influenza season nears. Unlike past years, this winter is expected to bring a large number of COVID-19 cases and, if people don’t get vaccinated, flu cases at the same time, increasing concerns about whether hospitals … Continue reading
Sep 17
FDA panel votes no on general public COVID-19 booster dose: What that means
Posted in: Today's ChiliThe FDA’s vaccine advisory committee has voted against a generally available third Pfizer COVID-19 booster, though left alternative routes open for other high-risk individuals. The panel, comprised of independent public health and scientific experts, pushed back at suggestions that sufficient data of vaccine safety had been gathered. The Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee is a non-binding committee, and … Continue reading
Sep 17
When we first see Princess Leia in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, she’s disguised as a bounty hunter. It’s not particularly important to the plot of the movie that we know the origin of the outfit, but Star Wars is deep! Star Wars fans (like myself) want to know everything about every character onscreen, assuming someone’s taken the time … Continue reading
Sep 17
SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake revealed as a time-hopping adventure
Posted in: Today's ChiliWhen THQ said it would be revealing six new games including new entries in beloved franchises during its 10th Anniversary Showcase today, there were a lot of people out there who speculated that a new SpongeBob SquarePants game was one of them. As it turns out, those people were right on the money, as THQ closed its show with the … Continue reading
Sep 17
A US district court has sentenced a man who unlocked 1.9 million AT&T phones to 12 years in prison. Muhammad Fahd continued the seven-year scheme to defraud the company even after learning of an investigation against him, according to the Department of Justice. At Fahd’s sentencing hearing, Judge Robert S. Lasnik said he committed a “terrible cybercrime over an extended period,” with AT&T said to have lost $201.5 million as a result.
Fahd contacted an AT&T employee through Facebook in 2012 and bribed them to help him unlock customers’ phones with “significant sums of money,” the DOJ said. Fahd, a citizen of Pakistan and Grenada, urged the employee to recruit co-workers at a Bothell, Washington call center for the scheme too.
The DOJ says the employees unlocked phones for “ineligible customers,” who paid Fahd a fee. In spring 2013, AT&T rolled out a system that made it more difficult for the employees to unlock IMEIs. Fahd then recruited an engineer to build malware that would be installed on AT&T’s systems to help him unlock phones more efficiently and remotely. The DOJ says the employees gave Fahd details about the company’s systems and unlocking methods to aid that process. The malware is said to have obtained information about the system and other AT&T employees’ access credentials. The developer used those details to modify the malware.
AT&T claims Fahd and his associates unlocked just over 1.9 million phones through the scheme. The company says because of the unlocks, customers didn’t complete payments on their devices, leading to the nine-figure loss.
Fahd was arrested in Hong Kong in 2018 following a 2017 indictment. He was extradited to the US and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in September 2020.
Sep 17
Niantic is discontinuing development on Catan: World Explorers. Announced in the fall of 2019, the studio had yet to release the game officially, and it was only available in early access in select markets outside of the US. Later today, Niantic plans to remove World Explorers from the App Store before shutting down the servers that power the game on November 18th, making it unplayable thereafter. With today’s announcement, the augmented reality title will not roll out to additional countries, and Niantic has removed all in-app purchases from the experience.
It’s not clear what exactly went wrong with development but it appears scope creep may have played a part in Niantic’s decision to cancel the project. “We had a vision for trading, harvesting and building up the world in seasonal play and resetting the board each month, just like you do for each new game you play at home,” the company said in a blog post spotted by Protocol. “But trying to adapt such a well-designed board game to a global, location-based Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game was a tough challenge.”
Niantic notes that lessons it learned while working on World Explorers will go on to inform future projects. However, it’s hard to say what the cancellation will mean for the company’s other games. Following the runaway success of Pokémon Go, a variety of companies have partnered with Niantic to create similar AR experiences using their own properties. More notable examples include Hasbro and Warner Bros. Those same companies may now realize replicating the success of Pokémon Go may not be as easy as they initially thought it was.
Sep 17
If there’s a better afternoon treat than a four-minute gag real from director James Gunn’s wonderfully wicked The Suicide Squad, chances are we’re not getting one today. One punny warning, though—this gag reel might actually make you gag, depending on how you feel after watching James’ brother Sean feverishly lick a…
Sep 17
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources said Thursday that it was ordering Enbridge Energy to pay $3.3 million for damaging a sensitive aquifer during the construction of the controversial Line 3 pipeline. It turns out the water protectors’ opposing the pipeline may have been onto something.
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