By Black Convoy from TFW2005:
<img width="600" height="581" src="https://news.tfw2005.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/08/HasLab-War-for-Cybertron-Unicron-Production-Update-3-01.png" alt="" />

Attention to all lucky fans who were able to support Haslab Unicron crowdfunding. Hasbro Pulse have revealed a new update of the highly expected HasLab War for Cybertron Unicron. Some interesting updates regarding the final packaging, instructions and pictures of the chaos-bringer itself of course. This new update brings us: Unboxing video with Hasbro’s package engineer and engineering managing. We can see how this massive figure will be packaged and what you will find inside. Tons of foam. Instructions development process with Hasbro’s senior graphic designer. The booklet will have 32 pages. Transformation should take 50 minutes to 1 hour. Colored prototype shown » Continue Reading.

The post HasLab War for Cybertron Unicron: Production Update #3 – Packaging & Instructions appeared first on Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.

By Black Convoy from TFW2005:
<img width="600" height="417" src="https://news.tfw2005.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/08/Transformers-Netflix-WFC-Earthrise-Deluxe-Bumblebee-48-e1596729017182.jpg" alt="" />

And we have another set of Earthrise in-hand images, this time thanks to TonTon Review on Youtube. We can share pics of Transformers War For Cybertron Deluxe Class Bumblebee. Bumblebee shares a lot of Earthrise Cliffjumper engineering but with tons of different parts to bring us the return of the original G1 VW Beetle alt mode to a retail line. The figure shares all the things you may like or not from Cliffjumper’s toy like the removable rear part that becomes the shield. In any case, this proves to be a great looking fgure and that will add a great nostalgia value in any » Continue Reading.

The post Transformers War For Cybertron Deluxe Class Bumblebee In-Hand Images appeared first on Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.

By msmash from Slashdot's slap-on-the-wrist department:
Capital One Financial Corp will pay an $80 million penalty to a U.S. bank regulator after the bank suffered a massive data breach one year ago. From a report: The fine, announced Thursday by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, punishes the bank for failing to adequately identify and manage risk as it moved significant portions of its technological operations to the cloud. "Safeguarding our customersâ(TM) information is essential to our role as a financial institution," said a bank representative in a statement. "In the year since the incident, we have invested significant additional resources into further strengthening our cyber defenses, and have made substantial progress in addressing the requirements of these orders." In July 2019, the bank disclosed that personal information including names and addresses of about 100 million individuals in the United States and 6 million people in Canada were obtained by a hacker. The suspected hacker was a former employee of Amazon Web Services, a cloud provider where the bank had moved some of its data.

By msmash from Slashdot's moving-forward department:
The US Department of State announced today rewards of up to $10 million for any information leading to the identification of any person who works with or for a foreign government for the purpose of interfering with US elections through "illegal cyber activities." From a report: This includes attacks against US election officials, US election infrastructure, voting machines, but also candidates and their staff. The announcement was made today, less than 100 days until the 2020 US Presidential Election that will have incumbent Donald Trump face off against Democrat candidate Joe Biden. Nevertheless, the Department of State said the reward is valid for any form of election hacking, at any level, such as elections held at the federal, state, or local level as well.

By msmash from Slashdot's what's-happening department:
Google has already discontinued the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL, its flagship phones that were released in October of last year. Both devices are out of stock in Google's store in the US, though some variants are still available in other regions for the time being. A Google spokesperson told The Verge that the company will honor its three-year commitment on timely OS and security updates.

By msmash from Slashdot's tussle-continues department:
The Trump administration said late Wednesday it was stepping up efforts to purge "untrusted" Chinese apps from US digital networks and called the Chinese-owned short-video app TikTok and messenger app WeChat "significant threats." From a report: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said expanded US efforts on a program it calls "Clean Network" would focus on five areas and include steps to prevent various Chinese apps, as well as Chinese telecoms companies, from accessing sensitive information on American citizens and businesses. Mr Pompeo's announcement comes after US President Donald Trump threatened to ban TikTok. The hugely popular video-sharing app has come under fire from US lawmakers and the administration over national security concerns, amid intensified tensions between Washington and Beijing.

"With parent companies based in China, apps like TikTok, WeChat and others are significant threats to personal data of American citizens, not to mention tools for CCP [Chinese Communist Party] content censorship," Mr Pompeo said. In an interview with state news agency Xinhua on Wednesday, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi said the United States "has no right" to set up the "Clean Network" and calls the actions by Washington as "a textbook case of bullying." "Anyone can see through clearly that the intention of the US is to protect it's monopoly position in technology and to rob other countries of their proper right to development," said Mr Wang.

By moviebob from MovieBob:

By Black Convoy from TFW2005:
<img width="600" height="581" src="https://news.tfw2005.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/08/X-Transbots-MX-18E-Dr-Egg-11.jpg" alt="" />

Third party company X-Transbots have updated, via their Facebook and Weibo accounts, images of the colored test shot of their MX-18E Dr. Egg (Quintesson Judge) for your viewing pleasure. X-Transbot take on the evil Quintesson judge is sure an impressive one. A great and detailed cartoon-accurate design, die-cast, bendy tentacles, light-up energy base and, to top it all, automatic rotating faces with light-up eyes which activate via a Quintesson ship-shaped remote control. It seems sound effects will be added in the final product. A great playability value for sure! For those fans wondering about the scale, there are some pics » Continue Reading.

The post X-Transbots MX-18E Dr. Egg (Quintesson Judge) Colored Test Shot appeared first on Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.

By msmash from Slashdot's poisoning-the-well department:
An anonymous reader shares a report: Remember back in the early days of the smartphone when carriers would install all kinds of bloatware on devices sold through their channels? For the most part, this practice has kind of stopped, or at least it isn't as bad as it once was, but unfortunately it looks like OnePlus users have to grapple with another kind of bloatware -- Facebook. This is according to a tweet by XDA's Max Weinbach who discovered that the Instagram app on his OnePlus phone was updating through a Facebook App Manager instead of the Play Store, where one would normally expect to see app updates. Android Police dug further and discovered that this Facebook App Manager tool is present on the company's more recent handsets that are shipped with OxygenOS. According to OnePlus, they claim that by using the Facebook App Manager, it will apparently offer "better battery efficiency," although we can't really see why that would be the case. They also allege that this would allow for enhanced HDR playback on Netflix. The bad news is that you canâ(TM)t even uninstall them.

By msmash from Slashdot's closer-look department:
There are tens of thousands of genes in the human genome: minuscule twists of DNA and RNA that combine to express all of the traits and characteristics that make each of us unique. Each gene is given a name and alphanumeric code, known as a symbol, which scientists use to coordinate research. But over the past year or so, some 27 human genes have been renamed, all because Microsoft Excel kept misreading their symbols as dates. From a report: The problem isn't as unexpected as it first sounds. Excel is a behemoth in the spreadsheet world and is regularly used by scientists to track their work and even conduct clinical trials. But its default settings were designed with more mundane applications in mind, so when a user inputs a gene's alphanumeric symbol into a spreadsheet, like MARCH1 -- short for "Membrane Associated Ring-CH-Type Finger 1" -- Excel converts that into a date: 1-Mar. This is extremely frustrating, even dangerous, corrupting data that scientists have to sort through by hand to restore. It's also surprisingly widespread and affects even peer-reviewed scientific work. One study from 2016 examined genetic data shared alongside 3,597 published papers and found that roughly one-fifth had been affected by Excel errors.

By BeauHD from Slashdot's scrubbed-from-the-net department:
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: YouTube has banned a large number of Chinese accounts it said were engaging in "coordinated influence operations" on political issues, the company announced today; 2,596 accounts from China alone were taken down from April to June, compared with 277 in the first three months of 2020. "These channels mostly uploaded spammy, non-political content, but a small subset posted political content primarily in Chinese similar to the findings in a recent Graphika report (PDF), including content related to the U.S. response to COVID-19," Google posted in its Threat Analysis Group bulletin for Q2.

The Graphika report, entitled "Return of the (Spamouflage) Dragon: Pro Chinese Spam Network Tries Again," [...] details a large set of accounts on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social media that began to be activated early this year that appeared to be part of a global propaganda push: "The network made heavy use of video footage taken from pro-Chinese government channels, together with memes and lengthy texts in both Chinese and English. It interspersed its political content with spam posts, typically of scenery, basketball, models, and TikTok videos. These appeared designed to camouflage the operation's political content, hence the name." It's the "return" of this particular spam dragon because it showed up last fall in a similar form, and whoever is pulling the strings appears undeterred by detection. New, sleeper and stolen accounts were amassed again and deployed for similar purposes, though now -- as Google notes -- with a COVID-19 twist. When June rolled around, content was also being pushed related to the ongoing protests regarding the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and other racial justice matters.

By AzT from TFW2005:
<img width="396" height="600" src="https://news.tfw2005.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/08/TFG-9-001.jpg" alt="" />

PREVIEWSworld dropped another September solicitations update, debuting cover B of Transformers: Galaxies issue #9 by Sara Pitre-Durocher. “Gauging the Truth,” Part Three! The Reversionists have a plan, a way to bring their world closer to purity and Primus. Arcee and Greenlight have a plan, to save the world from the Reversionist plan since it seems pretty drastic. Gauge has a decision to make: which side does she help? Creator credits: Sam Maggs (Author), Bethany McGuire-Smith (Artist), Umi Miyao (Cover Artist), Sara Pitre-Durocher (Cover Artist), Kei Zama (Cover Artist), Josh Burcham (Colorist) Check out the attached artwork, then » Continue Reading.

The post IDW’s Transformers: Galaxies, Issue #9 Pitre-Durocher Cover B appeared first on Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.

By BeauHD from Slashdot's not-to-be-confused-with-cold-fusion department:
Researchers at NASA's Glenn Research Center have now demonstrated a method of inducing nuclear fusion without building a massive stellarator or tokamak. In fact, all they needed was a bit of metal, some hydrogen, and an electron accelerator. IEEE Spectrum reports: The team believes that their method, called lattice confinement fusion, could be a potential new power source for deep space missions. They have published their results in two papers in Physical Review C. "Lattice confinement" refers to the lattice structure formed by the atoms making up a piece of solid metal. The NASA group used samples of erbium and titanium for their experiments. Under high pressure, a sample was "loaded" with deuterium gas, an isotope of hydrogen with one proton and one neutron. The metal confines the deuterium nuclei, called deuterons, until it's time for fusion.

< article continued at Slashdot's not-to-be-confused-with-cold-fusion department >

By AzT from TFW2005:
<img width="396" height="600" src="https://news.tfw2005.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/08/TF84-3-001.jpg" alt="" />

PREVIEWSworld updates our September solicitations coverage, rolling out a duo of covers for Transformers ’84: Secrets & Lies issue #3 by Casey Coller (B) and Nick Roche (Retailer Incentive) with artwork attached to this post. With Megatron, Shockwave, and the Decepticon brass gone, the power vacuum on Cybertron leads many Decepticon commanders to stake their claims on the world. And with the Decepticons divided, which Autobots will step up to take command? Meanwhile, on Earth, Grimlock wanders into the strangest battle yet! Creator credits: Simon Furman (Author), Guido Guidi (Artist, Cover Artist), Casey Coller (Cover Artist), Nick Roche » Continue Reading.

The post IDW’s Transformers ’84: Secrets and Lies, Issue #3 Coller and Roche Cover Artwork appeared first on Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.

By BeauHD from Slashdot's hold-my-beer department:
Zitchas writes: On Tuesday evening, SpaceX launched a testbed system which flew 150m into the air, hovered, and made a controlled landing. This testbed is noteworthy for being made out of stainless steel, as well as for being powered by a single off-center raptor engine. It demonstrates that the propulsion system can successfully compensate for the off-balanced propulsion via vectored thrust, as well as handle the stresses involved with landing and take-off. You can watch the testbed system launch here.

Important note: The vehicle that was launched was not the entirety of Starship, the large spacecraft that will be launched into orbit atop a Super Heavy rocket. "This prototype lacked key structural elements, including a large nose cone, flaps, an interstage, and more. But critically, this vehicle contained Starship's propulsion system," reports Ars Technica. "Among the key aspects of Tuesday's test was demonstrating that Starship's stainless-steel structure could withstand the harsh environment of a launch and landing."

By BeauHD from Slashdot's malicious-extensions department:
An anonymous reader writes: More than 80 million Chrome users have installed one of 295 Chrome extensions that have been identified to hijack and insert ads inside Google and Bing search results. The malicious extensions were discovered by AdGuard, a company that provides ad-blocking solutions, while the company's staff was looking into a series of fake ad-blocking extensions that were available on the official Chrome Web Store. AdGuard says that most of the extensions (245 out of the 295 extensions) were simplistic utilities that had no other function than to apply a custom background for Chrome's "new tab" page. In addition to the 295 cluster, AdGuard also found a large number of copycat extensions that cloned popular add-ons to capitalize on their brands, and then load malicious code that performed ad fraud or cookie stuffing. ZDNet has the full list of 295 Chrome extensions embedded in their article.

By BeauHD from Slashdot's contrary-to-the-rumors department:
Last month, Microsoft removed the option to purchase 12 months of Xbox Live Gold from the Microsoft Store, leading many to believe the company could be planning to phase out the service altogether with the launch of the Xbox Series X. When asked about the plans by The Verge, Microsoft said: "We have no plans to discontinue Xbox Live Gold at this time. It is an important part of gaming on Xbox today, and will continue to be in the future." The Verge's report also notes the company isn't planning to rename Xbox Live: Rumors of an Xbox Live rename appeared this week, after Microsoft announced changes to its services agreement. The software giant started referring to Xbox Live as the "Xbox online service," prompting some to assume Xbox Live was going away. "The update to 'Xbox online service' in the Microsoft Services Agreement refers to the underlying Xbox service that includes features like cross-saves and friend requests," says a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. "This language update is intended to distinguish that underlying service, and the paid Xbox Live Gold subscription. There are no changes being made to the experience of the service or Xbox Live Gold."

While it's clear Xbox Live Gold isn't going away, Microsoft's statement doesn't mean the service won't be made free at some point in the future. Microsoft still requires Xbox One owners, and potentially Xbox Series X owners, to purchase an Xbox Live Gold subscription to play multiplayer games online. Windows 10 players of Xbox Live-enabled games do not require the same subscription, however. This split gets especially tricky for games like Halo Infinite, which Microsoft has promised will have a free-to-play multiplayer mode. If Microsoft does continue Xbox Live Gold as a paid service on Xbox consoles, then PC players will get totally free access to Halo Infinite and Xbox players will not.

By BeauHD from Slashdot's supply-and-demand department:
New submitter spth writes: Demand for notebooks with AMD Ryzen processors is far higher than supply. Following a reddit post by a Schenker (German computer manufacturer) employee about Ryzen 4800H shortages, Heinz Heise (Heinz Heise is the publisher of some leading German computer magazines, such as c't and iX) journalists investigated and found that the shortage apparently affects all Ryzen 4000 mobile APUs, and according to AMD is an industry-wide phenomena. Apparently, a large part of TSMC production capacity is needed for production of the APUs of future PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles, and cannot be used to compensate for increased Ryzen 4000 demand.

By BeauHD from Slashdot's straight-out-of-a-sci-fi-movie department:
New submitter nightflameauto writes: Japan has a working prototype of a real Gundam that is currently undergoing testing at the Gundam Factory. No, that's not the plot of some silly sci-fi movie, it's actually happening. There's a somewhat sensationally-titled video available of the 18-meter (60-foot) robot assembly running some small movement tests where it twists its torso and lifts a leg, then places it back down. Small steps, but the initial plan is to have this beast debut this October in free-standing/walking form. Welcome to 2020. We may have calamity upon calamity, but at least we've got a Gundam.

By AzT from TFW2005:
TFW2005 friend and sponsor Big Bad Toy Store brings you their newsletter for this week. See the highlights below and then read on for the complete listing! New Pre-Orders  

The post BBTS News! Disney Ultimates, Bardock, Bandai/Banpresto, X-Men, Pennywise, Gundam, Witcher and More! appeared first on Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.