Taking place during the Second Age of Middle-Earth, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is inspired by some of the miscellaneous writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. There are aspects of the Silmarillion involved, but a lot of the characters and plot are fully original.
“The sob that burst out of me folded me over my knees.”
Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, Twitter’s former head of security, says the company has misled regulators about its security measures in his whistleblower complaint that was obtained by The Washington Post. In his complaint filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, he accuses the company of violating the terms it had agreed to when it settled a privacy dispute with the FTC back in 2011. Twitter, he says, has “extreme, egregious deficiencies” when it comes to defending the website against attackers.
As part of that FTC settlement, Twitter had agreed to implement and monitor security safeguards to protect its users. However, Zatko says half of Twitter’s servers are running out-of-date and vulnerable software and that thousands of employees still have wide-ranging internal access to core company software, which had previously led to huge breaches. If you’ll recall, bad actors were able to commandeer the accounts of some of the most high-profile users on the website in 2020, including Barack Obama’s and Elon Musk’s, by targeting employees for their internal systems and tools using a social engineering attack.
It was after that incident that the company hired Zatko, who used to lead a program on detecting cyber espionage for DARPA, as head of security. He argues that security should be a bigger concern for the company, seeing as it has access to the email addresses and phone numbers of numerous public figures, including dissidents and activists whose lives may be in danger if they are doxxed.
The former security head wrote:
“Twitter is grossly negligent in several areas of information security. If these problems are not corrected, regulators, media and users of the platform will be shocked when they inevitably learn about Twitter’s severe lack of security basics.
In addition, Zatko has accused Twitter of prioritizing user growth over reducing spam by distributing bonuses tied to increasing the number of daily users. The company isn’t giving out any bonuses directly tied to reducing spam on the website, the complaint said. Zatko also claims that he could not get a direct answer from Twitter regarding the true number of bots on the platform. Twitter has only been counting the bots that can view and click on ads since 2019, and in its SEC reports since then, its bot estimates has always been less than 5 percent.
Zatko wanted to know the actual number of bots across the platform, not just the monetizable ones. He cites a source who allegedly said that Twitter was wary of determining the real number of bots on the website, because it “would harm the image and valuation of the company.” Indeed his revelation could factor into Twitter’s legal battle against Elon Musk after the executive started taking steps to back out of his $44 billion takeover. Musk accused Twitter of fraud for hiding the real number of fake accounts on the website and revealed that his analysts found a much higher bot count than Twitter claimed. As The Post notes, though, Zatko provided limited hard documentary evidence regarding spam and bots, so it remains unclear if it would help Musk’s case.
When asked why he filed a whistleblower complaint — he’s being represented by the nonprofit law firm Whistleblower Aid — Zatko replied that he “felt ethically bound” to do so as someone who works in cybersecurity. Twitter spokesperson Rebecca Hahn, however, denied that the company doesn’t make security a priority. “Security and privacy have long been top companywide priorities at Twitter,” she said, adding that Zatko’s allegations are “riddled with inaccuracies.” She also said that Twitter fired Zatko after 15 months “for poor performance and leadership” and that he now “appears to be opportunistically seeking to inflict harm on Twitter, its customers, and its shareholders.”
With the latest discovery, the virus has been found in every state.
So HBO’s The Last of Us is almost here, but Sony forges forward with even more shows and/or movies based on PlayStation game franchises. With mixed levels of anticipation, I’d say.
Sony is reportedly working on a Gravity Rush movie with Ridley Scott’s production team. The movie will be based on the original 2012 PlayStation Vita game, featuring Kat, an amnesiac who can manipulate gravity to traverse an open world in a novel way. Emily Jerome, the writer of upcoming thriller Panopticon, is working on the script. Anna Mastro, who helmed Disney+ film Secret Society of Second Born Royals, has been tapped to direct.
On top of that, Days Gone’s post-apocalyptic tale is going to be a film, with Outlander actor Sam Heughan reportedly to star in a script penned by Up in the Air and X-Men: First Class writer Sheldon Turner. It may seem like an odd choice: The game has sold nine million copies to date, making it one of the company’s least well-received first-party titles. But Days Gone has picked up a new audience since its release on Steam — a movie could repeat that magic.
— Mat Smith
Apple employees launch petition to protest return-to-office plans
Google TV is getting improved performance and app management
Google’s Pixel Buds Pro are cheaper than ever right now on Amazon
The JWT has snapped a pair of near-infrared photos showing Jupiter’s polar auroras. You can also see, above, the planet’s extremely faint rings and two of its smaller moons, Amalthea (the bright spot to the far left) and Adrastea (the dot at the left edge of the central ring). Astronomers created composites with filters mapped to multiple colors. In several images, the Great Red Spot and other cloud formations are white because they reflect large amounts of sunlight.
MoviePass’ return is almost here. A beta of the revived service will launch on or around September 5th (Labor Day). Pricing depends on the market, but it will be a tiered system costing around $10, $20 or $30 per month. Insider, which reported the relaunch details, noted users will get a number of credits each month. There won’t be an unlimited plan — maybe lessons have been learned.
The Video Electronics Standards Associated (VESA) wants to make buying your next monitor or TV easier, and it’s doing so by introducing a new standard. I know what you’re thinking: Between DisplayPort, DisplayHDR and AdaptiveSync, aren’t there already enough VESA standards? Well, yes.
But here comes another. VESA’s new Clear Motion Ratio Compliance Test Specification, or ClearMR for short, has tiered ranking designed to communicate the ratio of clear to blurry pixels a screen will produce when displaying a fast-moving image.
Lawyers representing Elon Musk in his battle with Twitter have subpoenaed former CEO Jack Dorsey. It’s not yet clear how Dorsey factors in Musk’s legal strategy. As noted by the Chancery Daily Twitter account, the subpoena refers to “documents and communications reflecting, referring to, or relating to the impact or effect of false or spam accounts on Twitter’s business operations.” Interestingly, it also requests “documents relating to incorporating mDAU (monetizable daily active users) into executive or director compensation.”
The Associated Press revisited 12-year-old Danyk Rak, as well as a police officer and an Orthodox priest whose lives have been upended by war.
It’s exactly what you’d expect a black hole to sound like.
The Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake is reportedly back in development… at a different studio. According to Bloomberg, one of Saber Interactive’s studios in Eastern Europe has taken over the project after it was put on indefinite hold by Aspyr Media in July. Aspyr had been working on the project for years and had industry veterans, as well as people who worked on the original game released back in 2003, on board. It even finished a demo of the game to show Lucasfilm and Sony on June 30th. But a week later, the company reportedly fired design director Brad Prince and art director Jason Minor.
The situation surrounding Prince and Minor wasn’t quite clear, but a source that talked to Bloomberg at the time suggested that the demo cost a disproportionate amount of time and money. Rumors reportedly circulated among Aspyr personnel that Saber Interactive, which has been doing outsourced work for the project, would take the helm. Those speculations may turn out to be true.
While neither developer has issued an official statement yet, mega game publisher Embracer may have alluded to the studio switch in its most recent financial report. Embracer, which owns both Aspyr and Saber Interactive, said one of its “AAA projects has transitioned to another studio” within the company. “This was done to ensure the quality bar is where we need it to be for the title,” it added.
Embracer also said that it’s not expecting any major delays as a result of the transition, but it’s not like the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake was scheduled for release in the near future anyway. It doesn’t have a launch date yet, and it will reportedly take at least two more years before it’s ready.
Leonard Leo said the donation would help the new group go “toe-to-toe in the fight to defend our constitution and its ideals.”
Jacob Blair Scott tried to fool Mississippi authorities into believing he had died in the Gulf of Mexico in 2018 but was found two years later living in an RV park.
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