Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the behind-the-scenes department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR : For the first time, internal TikTok communications have been made public that show a company unconcerned with the harms the app poses for American teenagers. This is despite its own research validating many child safety concerns. The confidential material was part of a more than two-year investigation into TikTok by 14 attorneys general that led to state officials suing the company on Tuesday. The lawsuit alleges that TikTok was designed with the express intention of addicting young people to the app. The states argue the multi-billion-dollar company deceived the public about the risks. In each of the separate lawsuits state regulators filed, dozens of internal communications, documents and research data were redacted -- blacked-out from public view -- since authorities entered into confidentiality agreements with TikTok.

But in one of the lawsuits, filed by the Kentucky Attorney General's Office, the redactions were faulty. This was revealed when Kentucky Public Radio copied-and-pasted excerpts of the redacted material, bringing to light some 30 pages of documents that had been kept secret. A group of more than a dozen states sued TikTok on Tuesday, alleging the app was intentionally designed to addict teens, something authorities say is a violation of state consumer protection laws. After Kentucky Public Radio published excerpts of the redacted material, a state judge sealed the entire complaint following a request from the attorney general's office "to ensure that any settlement documents and related information, confidential commercial and trade secret information, and other protected information was not improperly disseminated," according to an emergency motion to seal the complaint filed on Wednesday by Kentucky officials.

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Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the dystopian-future department: Ecovacs robot vacuums have been hacked across the U.S. to shout racial slurs at unsuspecting people. VICE News reports: The issue is specifically with Ecovacs' Deebot X2 model. The hackers gained control of the devices and used the onboard speakers to blast racial slurs at anyone within earshot. One such person was a lawyer from Minnesota named Daniel Swenson. He was watching TV when he heard some odd noises coming from the direction of his vacuum. He changed the password and restarted it. But then the odd sounds started up again. And then it started shouting racial slurs at him like a surly disgruntled maid.

There were multiple reports of similar incidents across the United States and around the same time. One of them happened in Los Angeles, where a vacuum chased a dog while spewing hate. Another happened in El Paso, where the vac spewed slurs until it's owner turned it off. The attacks are apparently quite easy to pull off thanks to several known security vulnerabilities in Ecovacs, like a bad Bluetooth connector and a defective PIN system that is intended to safeguard video feeds and remote access but actually doesn't do any of that at all. A pair of cybersecurity researchers released a report on Ecovacs detailing the brand's multiple security flaws earlier this year.
Posted by Kenneth Shepard, Carolyn Petit, Zack Zwiezen, Ethan Gach, and John Walker from Kotaku
Metaphor: ReFantazio and Dragon Ball Z: Sparking Zero are out this week, so many of you are probably set for video games to play this weekend (and beyond). But if you’re not a fan of social sim RPGs or Dragon Ball, you might be lacking a piping hot new release to play with your precious downtime. Not to worry, we’ve…

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Posted by Ethan Gach from Kotaku
First announced years ago, the ability to begin streaming games you own on Xbox but that aren’t part of Game Pass will go into testing for insiders beginning in November. It’ll add another meaningful perk to the Netflix-like subscription program, letting players stream games like Baldur’s Gate III and Elden Ring that…

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Posted by Zack Zwiezen from Kotaku
Keep Driving is a newly revealed indie game that looks to provide a chill RPG experience about driving across the country in the early 2000s in your beat-up and crappy first car. And I’m here for it.

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Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the PSA department: In response to California's new law targeting "false advertising" of "digital goods," Valve has added the following language to its checkout page: "A purchase of a digital product grants a license for the product on Steam." Ars Technica reports: California's AB2426 law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom Sept. 26, excludes subscription-only services, free games, and digital goods that offer "permanent offline download to an external storage source to be used without a connection to the internet." Otherwise, sellers of digital goods cannot use the terms "buy, purchase," or related terms that would "confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good." And they must explain, conspicuously, in plain language, that "the digital good is a license" and link to terms and conditions.

Which is what Valve has now added to its cart page before enforcement of these terms was due to start next year. The company has long made it clear, deeper inside its End User License Agreement (EULA), that a purchase is a license, and those licenses cannot be resold, which avoids issues of one's right to resell a game. Now it is something that every user sees on every purchase, however quickly they click-through to get to their download.
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the closer-look department: The oldest human on record, Jeanne Calment of France, lived to the age of 122. What are the odds that the rest of us get there, too? Not high, barring a transformative medical breakthrough, according to research published this week in the journal Nature Aging. From a report: The study looked at data on life expectancy at birth collected between 1990 and 2019 from some of the places where people typically live the longest: Australia, France, Italy, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Data from the United States was also included, though the country's life expectancy is lower.

The researchers found that while average life expectancies increased during that time in all of the locations, the rates at which they rose slowed down. The one exception was Hong Kong, where life expectancy did not decelerate. The data suggests that after decades of life expectancy marching upward thanks to medical and technological advancements, humans could be closing in on the limits of what's possible for average life span. "We're basically suggesting that as long as we live now is about as long as we're going to live," said S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Illinois Chicago, who led the study. He predicted maximum life expectancy will end up around 87 years -- approximately 84 for men, and 90 for women -- an average age that several countries are already close to achieving.
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the pros-and-cons department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: In late September, Shield AI cofounder Brandon Tseng swore that weapons in the U.S. would never be fully autonomous -- meaning an AI algorithm would make the final decision to kill someone. "Congress doesn't want that," the defense tech founder told TechCrunch. "No one wants that." But Tseng spoke too soon. Five days later, Anduril cofounder Palmer Luckey expressed an openness to autonomous weapons -- or at least a heavy skepticism of arguments against them. The U.S.'s adversaries "use phrases that sound really good in a sound bite: Well, can't you agree that a robot should never be able to decide who lives and dies?" Luckey said during a talk earlier this month at Pepperdine University. "And my point to them is, where's the moral high ground in a landmine that can't tell the difference between a school bus full of kids and a Russian tank?"

When asked for further comment, Shannon Prior, a spokesperson for Anduril said that Luckey didn't mean that robots should be programmed to kill people on their own, just that he was concerned about "bad people using bad AI." In the past, Silicon Valley has erred on the side of caution. Take it from Luckey's cofounder, Trae Stephens. "I think the technologies that we're building are making it possible for humans to make the right decisions about these things," he told Kara Swisher last year. "So that there is an accountable, responsible party in the loop for all decisions that could involve lethality, obviously." The Anduril spokesperson denied any dissonance between Luckey (pictured above) and Stephens' perspectives, and said that Stephens didn't mean that a human should always make the call, but just that someone is accountable.

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Posted by Willa Rowe from Kotaku
Netflix just dropped its Tomb Raider animated series, The Legend of Lara Croft, for everyone to enjoy. If you’ve already marathoned all eight episodes of the show and are craving more treasure hunting goodness, then good news, there are a lot of Tomb Raider games to play. Even better news, the entire franchise is on…

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Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the security-woes department: An APT hacking group known as GoldenJackal has successfully breached air-gapped government systems in Europe using two custom toolsets to steal sensitive data, like emails, encryption keys, images, archives, and documents. From a report: According to an ESET report, this happened at least two times, one against the embassy of a South Asian country in Belarus in September 2019 and again in July 2021, and another against a European government organization between May 2022 and March 2024. In May 2023, Kaspersky warned about GoldenJackal's activities, noting that the threat actors focus on government and diplomatic entities for purposes of espionage. Although their use of custom tools spread over USB pen drives, like the 'JackalWorm,' was known, cases of a successful compromise of air-gapped systems were not previously confirmed.
Posted by Ethan Gach from Kotaku
When Disco Elysium came onto the scene in 2019 it completely shook up RPG storytelling, spearheading new ways to immerse players and build worlds. Surely it was just the start of something new, bold, and exciting. Instead, things got very messy, very quickly. Now, multiple teams made up of former staff are racing to…

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Posted by from MMO Champion
Chilling Sounds of World of Warcraft

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Carve ghoulish gourds and sinister-looking squash when you take an auditory adventure through the eeriest soundscapes of Azeroth:

00:00:00 – Crypt by Russell Brower

00:01:38 – Haunted by Russell Brower, Jason Hayes

00:07:03 – Cursed by Derek Duke

00:19:02 – Scarlet Monastery by Jeremy Soule

00:23:00 – Azj-Kahet by Jake Lefkowitz, Leo Kaliski

00:33:17 – Nathria by Grant Kirkhope, Jake Lefkowitz

00:45:00 – Karazhan by Russell Brower

01:30:30 – “Scholomance” by Jeremy Soule
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the tussle-continues department: penciling_in writes: Ukrainian authorities have arrested a 28-year-old man in Khmelnytskyi for running an illegal VPN service that allowed users to bypass Ukrainian sanctions and access the Russian internet (Runet). The VPN, active since Russia's invasion, enabled Russian sympathizers and people in occupied territories to reach blocked Russian government sites, social media, and news.

Handling over 100GB of data daily and linking to 48 million Russian IP addresses, the VPN may have been exploited by Russian intelligence. Ukrainian cyber police, in collaboration with the National Security Service, seized servers and equipment in multiple locations. The suspect faces charges under Part 5 of Article 361 of Ukraine's Criminal Code, which could lead to a 15-year prison sentence. Investigations are ongoing into further connections and funding sources. The case highlights the growing role of VPNs in the ongoing cyberwar between Ukraine and Russia.
Posted by Tony_Bacala from The Toyark


Mattel have shared the Spring 2025 Masters of the Universe Product Catalogs today.  Inside we get a look at MOTU Masterverse, MOTU Origins, and Turtles of Grayskull planned figures for the first half of 2025.  Origins gets 16 figures – ...

The post Masters of the Universe Spring 2025 Product Listings – Masterverse, Origins and Turtles of Grayskull appeared first on The Toyark - News.
Posted by Willa Rowe from Kotaku
Throughout the 2010s one of the most interesting developers around was Telltale Games, the developer behind a number of exceptional narrative-driven adventures set in the worlds of popular franchises. The team was most known for its Walking Dead series, generally considered an emotional masterpiece. Telltale still…

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Posted by Samuel Moreno from Kotaku
Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero features a massive roster, with over 180 playable characters. But just like some other entries in this series, you don’t have access to them all at the start. There’s a bunch of ways to unlock them in the game, and we’ve broken them all down.

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Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the how-about-that department: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt urged prioritizing AI infrastructure over climate goals at a Washington AI summit this week. Schmidt, who led Google until 2011, argued that AI's rapid growth will outpace environmental mitigation efforts. "We're not going to hit the climate goals anyway because we're not organized to do it," Schmidt told attendees, addressing concerns about AI's surging energy demands.

Data centers powering AI are projected to consume 35 gigawatts annually by 2030, up from 17 gigawatts in 2023, according to McKinsey. Schmidt, now heading AI drone company White Stork, suggested AI could ultimately solve climate issues, stating, "I'd rather bet on AI solving the problem than constraining it."
Solar Protons 2024-10-11 09:50:01
Posted by Randall Munroe from XKCD
If any of you want to meet some cool local oxygen atoms, I can introduce you!
Posted by Zack Zwiezen from Kotaku
On October 12, following a last-minute 24-hour delay, Fortnite’s massive Halloween update will go live on all platforms, bringing Edward Scissorhands, Leatherface, Cruella DeVille, Billy the Puppet from Saw, useable chainsaws, and more to the battle royale.

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Posted by Kenneth Shepard from Kotaku
Metaphor: ReFantazio, the new fantasy RPG from Atlus’ Persona team, is out today. It’s an excellent game that builds upon its predecessor’s foundations and manages to correct some old mistakes, as well. But there is one thing Atlus said was going to be different in this game compared to Persona, and the team was…

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