The second season finale of Picard was a truly bizarre hour of television, full of incredibly rushed plot wrap-ups and massive new developments that were also wrapped up at top speed. But the episode shone in its quieter moments between Picard’s cast of characters, including one you didn’t see—until now.
As of today, a data-sharing pact between the US and the UK is in effect, five years after it was first floated. The two sides claim that the Data Access Agreement, which was authorized by the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data (CLOUD) Act in the US, will help law enforcement to combat serious crimes in both countries. The Department of Justice called the initiative the first of its kind, adding that it would enable investigators “to gain better access to vital data” to fight serious crimes in a manner that’s “consistent with privacy and civil liberties standards.”
Under the agreement, authorities in one country can request data from ISPs in the other country, as long as it’s related to preventing, detecting, investigating and prosecuting serious crimes including terrorism, transnational organized crime and child exploitation. US officials can’t submit data requests targeting people in the UK and vice-versa — presumably the requests can either be used to assist domestic investigations or investigations into foreign nationals. Authorities also need to adhere to certain requirements, limitations and conditions when they access and use data.
The UK Home Office’s Investigatory Powers Unit will oversee the Data Access Agreement in the UK, while the DOJ’s Office of International Affairs (OIA) will handle matters in the US. The OIA has put together a CLOUD team that will review and certify orders on behalf of federal, state, local and territorial authorities. It will directly submit orders to ISPs in the UK and ensure data is transferred to authorities who requested it.
Privacy advocates have blasted the initiative and the CLOUD Act. In 2018, just after the bill was introduced, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said it “creates a dangerous precedent for other countries who may want to access information stored outside their own borders, including data stored in the United States.” Fight for the Future argued that it would threaten user privacy.
The US is looking to forge pacts with other countries under the CLOUD Act. It signed a deal with Australia last December and entered negotiations with Canada earlier this year.
Prosecutors alleged in federal court that the five defendants tried to change the course of U.S. history.
Inspired by the deep sea angler fish, these slides from HelloSlippers feature a cartoon version of the goofy-looking fish, complete with a glow-in-the-dark lure dangling above your feet. Granted, I’m not sure what you’re going to catch wearing these at night, but I’d count my toes afterward.
The slides are available in eleven different colors and six different sizes that fit feet from a women’s 4.5 to a men’s 12.5. They also include a shark fin to replace the angler fish’s lure (seen below), effectively making them two pairs of slides for the price of one! Personally, I’m going to wear one shark and one angler fish slide. And, if I’m being perfectly honest, probably on the wrong feet.
Are they bright enough to light my way to the fridge for a midnight snack without having to turn all the lights on between the bedroom and kitchen to prevent ghost attacks? You can rest assured I plan on finding out! And if they do, maybe my wife will stop making me sleep in the guest bedroom.
What would you do if you fell in love—with a person who’s your husband in an alternate reality? Things only get stranger and more confusing, not to mention more dangerous, from there for the protagonist of A Fractured Infinity, a new queer sci-fi book from author Nathan Tavares. io9 has a sneak peek to share today!
Hurricane Ian has killed dozens of people. Though the full toll of the storm remains unclear, most deaths have been reported in Lee County, Florida, where Ian made landfall last Wednesday as a powerful Category 4 storm. Reuters reported Monday morning that at least 85 are dead, with 81 of the fatalities in Florida…
Almost two years after the PlayStation 5 went on sale, it seems that modders have found a way to jailbreak the console, albeit with some significant limitations. As IGN notes, a modder known as SpecterDev revealed the apparent jailbreak, which is described as an experimental IPV6 kernel exploit that takes advantage of a WebKit vulnerability.
It appears the jailbreak will only work on PS5 systems that run firmware version 4.03 or earlier. If you have updated your PS5 since last October, you’re probably not going to be able to try the exploit. Even then, it seems that trying to install the jailbreak only works around a third of the time.
As for what you can actually do with a jailbroken PS5 right now, you’ll gain access to the system’s debug menu. You might be able to install games from outside of the PlayStation Store as well, but it’s not possible to run sideloaded software.
It’s… beautiful.
The PlayStation 5 has been jailbroken. pic.twitter.com/54fvBGoQGw
— Lance McDonald (@manfightdragon) October 3, 2022
Modder Lance McDonald tried the jailbreak and was able to install the PS4 demo P.T., Hideo Kojima’s famed, delisted teaser for the canceled Silent Hills. (PS4 units with P.T. installed often pop up on eBay.) However, McDonald wasn’t able to start playing the game. While the exploit offers read/write access to the PS5, there’s currently no way to execute sideloaded files. P.T. isn’t backward compatible on PS5 in any case.
As it stands, it doesn’t seem likely that this jailbreak will be in widespread use anytime soon, due to its limitations and the fact that Sony could ban modders’ accounts. On top of that, there’s the risk of bricking the console at a time when it still isn’t super easy to buy one. Still, this could give other hackers and modders a foundation on which to build more robust jailbreaking tools.
The former president said he “won the lottery” and shared a photo of the couple on their wedding day.
Folks on the Chinese mainland looking to find occasionally garbled translations of foreign languages will be out of luck, as Google announced over the weekend it was pulling back on one of the few digital services it offered in the country.
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