Category: Technology

It’s that time of year again. Gamescom is nearly upon us. For the uninitiated, Gamescom is a huge gaming trade show held annually in Germany. This year, Microsoft has announced a major Xbox presence throughout the event. All told, four streams will highlight upcoming Xbox games.

The first is the opening night livestream. This stream isn’t Xbox-centric, but we’re expecting some relevant news during the keynote. The event kicks off on August 20 at 2PM ET and it will be available via the Gamescom YouTube page and the official Twitch page. The event’s website will also host a stream or, you know, just click play directly below this sentence.

After that, there will be three streams from Xbox, each focusing on a unique slate of upcoming games. You can watch all of them via the Xbox YouTube page or the official Twitch page. The company hasn’t said how long each stream will last, but it’ll be popping up individual trailers after the fact.

The first one goes down on August 21 at 9AM ET. Xbox has announced an array of games that’ll get covered here. These include Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl, the upcoming expansion Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred, Atomfall and the long-awaited Starfield DLC.

The next stream starts on August 22 at 9AM ET. This one will spotlight Star Wars Outlaws, which actually hits store shelves at the end of the month. The stream will also feature trailers or information for Towerborne, Little Nightmares 3 and Fallout 76: Milepost Zero, among others.

August 23 at 9AM ET brings the final stream. This is likely to be the most exciting one for many Xbox fans. There will be news about Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Avowed, Metaphor: ReFantazio, Tails of Iron 2 and a whole lot more.

That’s it! Four streams. If the idea of remembering when and where to watch all of these events gives you the anxious sweats, just keep this page open. Beyond that, we’ll have separate posts for all of the big news from Gamescom.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/how-to-watch-all-of-xboxs-gamescom-streams-130034008.html?src=rss 

A data dump that contains 2.7 billion records of personal information for people living in the US, including their Social Security Numbers, have recently been leaked online. The data dump’s contents were linked to National Public Data, a company that scrapes information from non-public sources and sells it for background checks. Now, the company has confirmed that it did have “a data security incident” wherein people’s names, emails, addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers and mailing addresses had been stolen. 

National Public Data’s wording in its Security Incident report is a bit a vague and convoluted, but it did blame the security breach on a third-party bad actor. It said that the bad actor “was trying to hack into data in late December 2023” and that “potential leaks of certain data” took place in April 2024 and summer 2024, indicating that the hacker had successfully infiltrated its system. In April, a threat actor known as USDoD tried to sell 2.9 billion records of people living in the US, UK and Canada for $3.5 million. It claimed that it stole the information from National Public Data. Since then, the records have been leaked in chunks online with the more recent one being more comprehensive and containing more sensitive information. 

The company said it worked with law enforcement to review potentially affected records and will “try to notify” individuals “if there are further significant developments applicable” to them. It also said that it published the notice so that those who were potentially affected can take action. The company is advising people to monitor their financial accounts for fraudulent transactions, and it’s also encouraging them to get free credit reports and to put a fraud alert on their file. 

The National Public Data is already facing a proposed class action lawsuit that was filed in early August by a plaintiff who received a notification from their identity theft protection service that their personal information was posted on the dark web. They argued that the company failed “to properly secure and safeguard the personally identifiable information that it collected and maintained as part of its regular business practices.” 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/national-public-data-confirms-breach-that-exposed-americans-social-security-numbers-100046695.html?src=rss 

The sports streaming service Fubo has temporarily fended off a huge financial threat from Disney-Fox-Warner’s potential competitor Venu Sports and its collection of sports broadcasting licenses thanks to a recent court ruling. A federal judge in the Southern District of New York granted Fubo’s request for an injunction in its antitrust case against the joint sports streaming venture and its parent companies.

US District Judge Margaret Garnett wrote in an opinion issued earlier today such a concentrated collection of media power would eliminate consumers’ choices. The launch of Venu would also “hike prices on both consumers and other distributors” and create a “multi-year monopolistic runway” in the sports streaming sector for Disney, Fox and Warner.

“Even if the [joint venture] defendants swear that such price-hiking and competition excluding will not actually occur (though…there is good reason to believe that it will),” the opinion reads, “one purpose of antitrust injunctions is to prevent anticompetitive incentives from forming in the first place so that American consumers do not have to simply take their word for it and hope for the best.”

Garnett also wrote the injunction is needed because of “quintessential harms that money cannot adequately repair” if Fox-Disney-Warner’s Venu Sports moves forward.

Fox-Disney-Warner first announced its plans to launch a live sports streaming channel in February and later revealed the name and price for its Venu Sports streaming service. The joint sports streaming venture will cost viewers $42.99 a month with a seven-day free trial and promises 14 channels of live sporting events with access to ESPN+ and four of its spinoff channels, the Fox network and both of its Fox Sports channels and a handful of Warner Bros. owned cable networks such as TNT and TruTV, according to a press release.

Fubo filed its lawsuit a couple of weeks after Fox-Disney-Warner’s initial announcement. Fubo’s antitrust lawsuit accused the trio of media giants of staging “a years-long campaign” to weaken its sports streaming service. The suit also claimed the joint venture would concentrate too many entities in one service and would hinder competitiveness and jack up prices for viewers and distributors.

The injunction puts a temporary hold on Fox-Disney-Warner’s plans for Venu Sports. Its fate will ultimately be determined by the antitrust case in federal court.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/fubo-wins-injunction-to-delay-disney-fox-warners-live-sports-streamer-venu-215943713.html?src=rss 

If you thought Google might be taking a break after unveiling new Pixel 9 devices at its Made By Google event this week, you would be mistaken. A recent post on Threads appears to show part of the sign-up form to receive Pixel devices, and the language in question mandates that signees feature Google’s hardware “in place of any competitor mobile devices” or else “we will need to cease the relationship between the brand and the creator.”

After some online conversation, it’s become clear that this form was sent to members of the Team Pixel program, which is different from the review program for members of the press or media. Engadget falls into the latter category, and I did not see that language in our form, nor have I ever seen language like this in my experience as a reviewer of Google devices. I also want to assure our audience that we would never agree to any stipulation that requires we give positive reviews in exchange for access.

In the meantime, Google has just released a statement saying the wording was a mistake. Kayla Geier, communications manager at Google, said “#TeamPixel is a distinct program, separate from our press and creator reviews programs. The goal of #TeamPixel is to get Pixel devices into the hands of content creators, not press and tech reviewers. We missed the mark with this new language that appeared in the #TeamPixel form yesterday, and it has been removed.”

It’s not yet clear if #TeamPixel members have received a new agreement and if those who declined on the basis of that stipulation have been given a chance to re-apply. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/google-acknowledges-it-missed-the-mark-with-onerous-demands-for-pixel-9-influencers-210531821.html?src=rss 

OpenAI said on Friday that it thwarted an Iranian influence campaign that used ChatGPT to generate fake news stories and social posts aimed at Americans. The company said it identified and banned accounts generating content for five websites (in English and Spanish) pretending to be news outlets, spreading “polarizing messages” on issues like the US presidential campaign, LGBTQ+ rights and the war in Gaza.

The operation was identified as “Storm-2035,” part of a series of influence campaigns Microsoft identified last week as “connected with the Iranian government.” In addition to the news posts, it included “a dozen accounts on X and one on Instagram” connected to the operation. OpenAI said the op didn’t appear to have gained any meaningful traction. “The majority of social media posts that we identified received few or no likes, shares, or comments,” the company wrote.

In addition, OpenAI said that on the Brookings Institution’s Breakout Scale, which rates threats, the operation only charted a Category 2 rating (on a scale of one to six). That means it showed “activity on multiple platforms, but no evidence that real people picked up or widely shared their content.”

OpenAI described the operation as creating content for faux conservative and progressive news outlets, targeting opposing viewpoints. Bloomberg said the content suggested Donald Trump was “being censored on social media and was prepared to declare himself king of the US.” Another framed Kamala Harris’ choice of Tim Walz as her running mate as a “calculated choice for unity.”

OpenAI added that the operation also created content about Israel’s presence at the Olympics and (to a lesser degree) Venezuelan politics, the rights of Latin American communities and Scottish Independence. In addition, the campaign peppered the heavy stuff with comments about fashion and beauty, “possibly to appear more authentic or in an attempt to build a following.”

“The operation tried to play both sides but it didn’t look like it got engagement from either,” OpenAI Intelligence and Investigations investigator Ben Nimmo told Bloomberg.

The busted dud of an influence op follows the disclosure earlier this week that Iranian hackers have targeted both Harris’ and Trump’s campaigns. The FBI said informal Trump adviser Roger Stone fell victim to phishing emails. The Iranian hackers then took control of his account and sent messages with phishing links to others. The FBI found no evidence that anyone in the Harris campaign fell for the scheme.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/openai-shut-down-an-iranian-influence-op-that-used-chatgpt-to-generate-bogus-news-articles-202526662.html?src=rss 

San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu announced he intended to shut down 16 of the most popular AI “undressing” sites at a press conference on Thursday.

The Verge reported that the City Attorney is accusing these sites of violating federal laws regarding revenge pornography, deepfake pornography and child pornography. Chiu’s office also accused the sites of violating the state of California’s unfair competition law because “the harm they cause to consumers greatly outweighs any benefits associated with those practices,” according to the complaint for injunctive relief filed in a California superior court.

The complaint focuses on a total of 50 defendants Chiu intends to prosecute for operating undressing websites. Some of the defendants’ and websites’ names were redacted but it also publicly identifies a few companies that operate “some of the world’s most popular websites that offer to nudify images of women and girls” such as Sol Ecom located in Florida, Briver in New Mexico and the UK-based Itai Tech Ltd. The only identified defendant in the complaint is Augustin Gribinets of Estonia, who is accused of owning an AI undressing site featuring unconsented images of women and children.

These websites have generated over 200 million visits in a six-month period. The nonconsensual images of women and children on these sites “are used to bully, threaten and humiliate women and girls” as they gain more visitors “and this distressing trend shows no sign of abating,” according to the complaint.

The city’s attorney cites one case in its legal complaint from February in which an AI undressing site generated images of 16 eighth grade students at a California middle school. The incident possibly refers to one that occurred at a Beverly Hills high school in which 16 students were circulating fake nude images of other students. The school district expelled five students for their involvement in disseminating the illicit images, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Deepfake technology has become a major legal concern especially on the federal level. Last month, the US Copyright Office published a report on digital replicas and concluded that “a new law is needed.” Just a few days later, a bipartisan group of senators introduced the NO FAKES Act that would institute a new law protecting individuals from having their voice, face or body recreated with AI without their consent.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/san-francisco-aims-to-take-down-ai-undressing-websites-in-new-lawsuit-185202792.html?src=rss 

Microsoft righted an age-old “wrong” (at least for those who geek out on disk formatting) earlier this week. With its latest Windows 11 Insider Canary Preview Build (via The Verge), the company increased the maximum FAT32 partition size limit from 32GB to 2TB when using the command line. The boost from the previous limit, which its creator thought would be limited to the lifespan of Windows NT 4.0, comes after 28 years.

FAT32 isn’t widely used today. Even SD cards, the last holdout, have mostly moved to exFAT. (FAT32 has other limitations for the modern world, like a 4GB file size limit.) So, the move appears to be more about making amends — a Windows geek’s equivalent of pardoning a historical figure who’s been dead for a century — than a practical change that will affect people today. The fact that the Windows GUI partitioning tool still includes the 32GB partition cap further decreases the odds that many will find much tangible benefit from the move.

In a 2021 video on his “Dave’s Garage” YouTube channel, retired Microsoft system engineer Dave Plummer explained why he chose the 32GB partition cap. When he picked the limit “on a rainy Tuesday morning” in the mid-90s, he thought it would have an extremely short lifespan and would see an increase in the next revision. “I picked the number 32GB as the limit and went on with my day,” he said. “I didn’t start to regret that choice until SD cards got to the magic 32GB size many years later.”

Plummer went on to dispute the myth that Microsoft imposed the 32GB cap to push the adoption of the company’s NTFS format. He explained that NTFS was already widely adopted and that, to his knowledge, Microsoft never promoted it or made a dime from licensing it. Instead, he says FAT32’s artificial cap was more about preventing wasted space (especially with small files) than deploying any sinister corporate strategies.

If you really want to nerd out on ‘90s disk formats, Plummer’s three-year-old video goes into more detail about his arbitrary decision that — unbeknownst to him at the time — would last nearly 30 years.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/microsoft-boosts-windows-fat32s-partition-size-limit-after-nearly-three-decades-192022618.html?src=rss 

Meta’s decision to shut down CrowdTangle, an analytics tool that was an “invaluable” resource to the research community, is drawing fresh scrutiny from European Union regulators. The EU Commission, which had already raised concerns about the social network’s plan to discontinue the tool ahead of global elections in 2024, is now pressing Meta for more details about its work with researchers.

The EU Commission previously cited the impending shutdown of CrowdTangle as part of a broader investigation into the company’s handling of disinformation campaigns and election-related policies. Now, just days after CrowdTangle was shut off despite pleas from researchers and civil society organizations to keep it online through the end of the year, regulators are pointedly reminding Meta of its “obligation” under the Digital Services Act (DSA) to allow outside researchers access to its data.

“The Commission is requesting Meta to provide more information on the measures it has taken to comply with its obligations to give researchers access to data that is publicly accessible on the online interface of Facebook and Instagram, as required by the DSA, and on its plans to update its election and civic discourse monitoring functionalities,” the EU Commission wrote in a statement. “Specifically, the Commission is requesting information about Meta’s content library and application programming interface (API), including their eligibility criteria, the application process, the data that can be accessed and functionalities.”

Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The company has previously pointed to the Meta Content Library as a replacement for CrowdTangle. But access to the Meta Content Library is much more tightly controlled, and researchers have said it doesn’t replicate all of CrowdTangle’s functionality.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/eu-regulators-question-meta-about-the-shutdown-of-crowdtangle-175641308.html?src=rss 

Texas Instruments is the latest recipient of CHIPS Act funds. The 2022 law, signed by President Biden to boost domestic silicon production in the face of increasing Chinese chip imports, will award TI $1.6 billion in grants. The company will also receive $3 billion in loans and tax credits that could amount to $6 to $8 billion.

The effort is expected to create over 2,000 US manufacturing jobs at Texas Instruments’ new plants and “thousands of indirect jobs” for construction, suppliers and supporting industries. TI says it expects to receive another $10 million to fund workforce development.

TI’s grant money will go towards three chip fabs already under construction in Texas and Utah. The plants will produce 300mm silicon wafer chips under the bill’s $2 billion minimum set aside for legacy chips. The CHIPS Act primarily focuses on cutting-edge silicon, like those increasingly used for AI. TI’s production will go towards less advanced processors for things like smartphones, appliances and national defense. GlobalFoundries was awarded $1.5 billion for legacy silicon production in February. With Friday’s awarding of funds for TI, the government has now met its minimum quota for legacy chips.

Bloomberg notes that China has recently boosted its investments in legacy chips. Along with creating US jobs, the CHIPS Act was designed to curtail China’s influence as silicon becomes more of an essential global resource. Other recipients include Intel ($8.5 billion), TSMC ($6.6 billion) and Samsung ($6.4 billion).

Texas Instruments said it will spend around $40 billion in Utah and Texas, including two more factories in Sherman, TX. However, those aren’t expected to be operational until after 2030. For the CHIPS Act, the Commerce Department prioritizes projects that can be completed by the decade’s end, leaving those delayed plants without federal funding.

The $280 billion CHIPS Act passed in 2022 with 64 votes in the Senate and 243 in the House. The bill included $39 billion in subsidies for domestic chip manufacturing, 25 percent tax credits for manufacturing costs and $13 billion for workforce training.

After the bill passed in 2022, Biden said it would “strengthen our national security by making us less dependent on foreign sources of semiconductors.” He noted that it included “guardrails to ensure that companies receiving tax payer dollars invest in America and that union workers are building new manufacturing plants across the country.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/texas-instruments-awarded-16-billion-in-chips-act-funding-for-domestic-silicon-production-180039388.html?src=rss 

The castle construction game Tiny Glade that’s got the Internet uttering a collective “Awwwww, ain’t that cuuuute?” has a release date. Wholesome Games announced today in a new trailer that Tiny Glade will be released on September 23 on Steam. If you can’t wait that long or just wanna get a head start on your virtual village, a demo is available right now on the game’s Steam page.

Tiny Glade is a sandbox building game that seems to go against the competitive grain of most construction games. City building and construction games are fun, but maintaining a huge, virtual metropolis can get harrowing sometimes. You’re just trying to relax at the end of a hard day by playing a game and before you know it, you’re stressing over things like sewer taxes, industrial zones and giant monster attacks.

Tiny Glade is carving out its own space in the building game genre by eliminating all those annoying municipal obstacles and just letting you build something simply for the joy of building it. You can construct huge towering castles or just an adorable little British hamlet that would look like the perfect setting for an Elizabethan-era love story.

The level of detail that you can control is stunning as well. As you move your cursor to build a brick wall or tiled roof, you can see every individual piece pop out of thin air and gradually pile up into your imaginative creations. Everything you can click in your model village can be altered, added or decorated. There are tools to alter the terrain so you can create hills or smooth out the land and add a pristine pond with lily pads, trees and even wildlife like ducks.

Best of all, you don’t have to worry if your hours of creation are in danger of being sacked and torn down by invading hordes or warring factions. Based on this trailer, it looks like Tiny Glade is the relaxing gaming equivalent of taking a long, warm bath.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/the-adorable-building-game-tiny-glade-is-coming-to-steam-on-september-23-165958935.html?src=rss