‘Batman: The Animated Series’ is coming to Blu-ray in 2018

Batman: The Animated Series is finally getting the remaster treatment it deserves. From this weekend’s New York Comic Con Warner Bros. announced that “later in the year” in 2018 it will release the influential animated show to high-def formats. As Polygon notes , the specifics are a bit fuzzy at this point. Will the 85-episode show come out all in one boxed set, or in volumes like the DVDs before? At this point that’s up in the air. However, any package will likely look and sound better than streaming the show on Amazon Prime . Plus, every episode will almost assuredly have the iconic opening credits sequence attached. This summer Warner released Batman: Mask of the Phantasm on Blu-ray, the PG-rated feature-length movie that takes place in the Animated Series universe. If you want a peek at how gussied up episodes of the old series might look on Blu-ray, that’s probably your best bet.

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‘Batman: The Animated Series’ is coming to Blu-ray in 2018

Amazon commissions three new sci-fi shows: Lazarus, Snow Crash, and Ringworld

(credit: Image Comics) Finally, we have some good news for the end of the week. According to Variety , Amazon is going on a bit of a sci-fi binge. The streaming network, which has already given us delights like The Man in the High Castle and an excellent new version of The Tick, has commissioned three new series: the Larry Niven classic Ringworld, Neal Stephenson’s cyberpunk Snow Crash, and (the one that brightened my day most)  Lazarus  by Greg Rucka and Michael Lark. Assuming all three remain true to their source material, each will be a very different vision of the future. Ringworld takes place nearly a thousand years from now in a post-scarcity culture. Written in 1970 and the first of a long-running series of books, the titular Ringworld is a vast habitat in space. In Ringworld, our hero is a bored 200-year old hired by some aliens to investigate this artificial world—a 600 million-mile (950 million km) ribbon orbiting a Sun-like star. It’s been awhile since I’ve read the book but it’s easy to see how previous attempts to adapt it for the screen have ended in failure. But with an Amazonian budget and and ever-more capable CGI, now might be the perfect time to try. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Amazon commissions three new sci-fi shows: Lazarus, Snow Crash, and Ringworld

This Guy Is Digitizing the VHS History of Video Games

An anonymous reader shares a report: UK-based gaming journalist and blogger Chris Scullion is on a mission to preserve his collection — and maybe your collection, too — of these old video game VHS tapes. In the 80s and 90s, video game companies and trade magazines made these tapes to accompany popular titles or new issues with bonus material or promotional footage, giving a glimpse into how marketing for games was done in the industry’s early days. Scullion has 18 tapes to upload so far, and plans to provide accompanying commentary as well as the raw video as they go up on his YouTube channel. Scullion’s first upload is a promotional tape for Super Mario All-Stars, given away by Nintendo UK in 1993. It’s hosted by Craig Charles, who played Lister in the British sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf. Digitizing his collection keeps that sweet nostalgia content safe from degradation of the magnetic tape, which starts to go downhill within 10 to 25 years. He’s capturing them in HD using a 1080p upscaler, at a full 50fps frame rate by converting to HDMI before grabbing — a higher frame rate than many standard commercial digitizing devices that capture at 30fps — so that no frames are missed. Some of the tapes he’s planning to digitize have already been converted and uploaded to YouTube by other people, he says, but most are either poor quality or captured with less-advanced grabbing devices. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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This Guy Is Digitizing the VHS History of Video Games

Chatbot Lets You Sue Equifax For Up To $25,000 Without a Lawyer

Shannon Liao reports via The Verge: If you’re one of the millions affected by the Equifax breach, a chatbot can now help you sue Equifax in small claims court, potentially letting you avoid hiring a lawyer for advice. Even if you want to be part of the class action lawsuit against Equifax, you can still sue Equifax for negligence in small claims court using the DoNotPay bot and demand maximum damages. Maximum damages range between $2, 500 in states like Rhode Island and Kentucky to $25, 000 in Tennessee. The bot, which launched in all 50 states in July, is mainly known for helping with parking tickets. But with this new update, its creator, Joshua Browder, who was one of the 143 million affected by the breach, is tackling a much bigger target, with larger aspirations to match. He says, “I hope that my product will replace lawyers, and, with enough success, bankrupt Equifax.” Not that the bot helps you do anything you can’t already do yourself, which is filling out a bunch of forms — you still have to serve them yourself. Unfortunately, the chatbot can’t show up in court a few weeks later to argue your case for you either. To add to the headache, small claims court rules differ from state to state. For instance, in California, a person needs to demand payment from Equifax or explain why they haven’t demanded payment before filing the form. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Chatbot Lets You Sue Equifax For Up To $25,000 Without a Lawyer

Data leak exposed millions of Time Warner Cable customers

Verizon isn’t the only big US telecom whose corporate ally left customer data out in the open . MacKeeper developer Kromtech has discovered that BroadSoft, a frequent partner to service providers, was storing over 4 million Time Warner Cable customer records on Amazon cloud servers without a password. The records, which stemmed from the MyTWC mobile app, date as far back as November 2010 — years before Charter bought TWC . The information included email addresses, user names, financial transactions (though there’s no indication of credit card data) and billing addresses. There was even closed-circuit camera footage from BroadSoft’s Indian offices, as if to rub salt in the wound. You might not need to panic. BroadSoft tells Gizmodo that it locked down its Amazon data (Charter says it was taken down) and hasn’t seen evidence that intruders accessed the information. Both BroadSoft and Charter say they’re investigating and will take extra steps to address the situation if necessary. To be on the safe side, though, Charter is recommending that MyTWC owners change their user names and passwords. The exposure didn’t include extremely sensitive info like credit card data or social security numbers, so the potential damage is relatively limited. However, it’s not so much the specific threat as that the data was left exposed in the first place. It shows that companies are still making rookie mistakes when handling data, and suggests that they need to implement more stringent (and importantly, continuous) oversight of their partners to keep your data secure. Via: Gizmodo Source: Kromtech

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Data leak exposed millions of Time Warner Cable customers

Apple going all-in on original programming, to the tune of $1 billion a year

Apple Music on iOS 10, with Senior VP Eddy Cue. (credit: Andrew Cunningham) As the battle to create original content for online video services continues, we get a glimpse into Apple’s plans for the coming year. According to a  report  from The Wall Street Journal , Apple has a budget of $1 billion to spend in 2018 to “procure and produce” original content. The iPhone maker could acquire and produce up to 10 shows next year with this money, which will be largely left in the hands of  new Apple hires  Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg. Erlicht and Van Amburg are former presidents from Sony Pictures Television that moved to Apple in June to oversee video content strategy and production. The $1 billion budget signals how serious Apple is about boosting its original programming, the newest of which lives on its Apple Music subscription service. This is Apple’s first major push into original content, but $1 billion less than the money spend on content by rival companies. HBO spent about double last year on content (it reportedly costs $10 million to produce one episode of Game of Thrones ), and Netflix may spend upwards of $6 billion this year. Apple’s starting budget is similar to Amazon’s when it first got into original programming in 2013 with Prime Video; Amazon could spend $4.5 billion on original content in 2017. Original programming is the way to go, as it has proven to be a big driver in the growth of streaming services. Netflix’s business benefited immensely from original hits like House of Cards , Orange is the New Black , and Stranger Things . Those kinds of shows—scripted comedies and dramas—are expensive to produce, and we’ve seen Netflix’s annual budget for original programming increase over the past few years to accommodate that. Apple’s first original series, Planet of the Apps and Carpool Karaoke , both just became available to Apple Music subscribers, and critics’ reviews have been mixed. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Apple going all-in on original programming, to the tune of $1 billion a year

Studio Ghibli reopens for Hayao Miyazaki’s new film

Just a few years ago, Studio Ghibli’s future was in the air after co-founder and legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki (supposedly) retired. The place is about to be jumping again, however, as the studio announced that it has re-opened to start production on a recently-announced new film by the not-so-retired Miyazaki. He was on hand for a small ceremony on July 3rd, where he “brought together his main collaborators already engaged on his new feature film to talk to them about the project, ” the company said in a news release (translated). A re-opening normally wouldn’t be newsworthy, but at one point, it seemed like Studio Ghibli — behind masterpieces like Spirited Away , Princess Mononoke and Howl’s Moving Castle — would not produce any more films. Recently, however, Amazon announced that it would stream Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter , a children’s TV series directed by Miyazaki’s son Goro. Shortly after that came the news that the studio would produce a new film directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Studio Ghibli hasn’t released any details about the film itself, but many fans think it will be an adaptation of Miyazaki’s first CGI short film Boro the Caterpillar . That short was delayed, but producer Toshio Suzuki has said it will likely be released in 2019 ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic games. Miyazaki has threatened retirement before, and when he stepped down in 2013, the company announced it would restructure for the next generation of animators. The films, while beloved by animation aficionados and cineastes, have never made tons of money — Studio Ghibli’s best-grossing film was Spirited Away, which made $275 million back in 2001. Over the years, however, the films have gained a much larger following thanks to streaming and DVD, so the new one will likely be met with unprecedented anticipation. Adding to that, Miyazaki will be 80 when it’s completed, so this could definitely be his last film. Via: Indie Wire Source: Buta Connection (Facebook)

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Studio Ghibli reopens for Hayao Miyazaki’s new film

Cisco Meraki Loses Customer Data in Engineering Gaffe

Cisco has admitted to losing customer data during a configuration change its enginners applied to its Meraki cloud managed IT service. From a report: Specific data uploaded to Cisco Meraki before 11:20 am PT last Thursday was deleted after engineers created an erroneous policy in a configuration change to its US object storage service, Cisco admitted on Friday. The company did say that the issue has been fixed, and while the error will not affect network operations in most cases, it admitted the faulty policy “but will be an inconvenience as some of your data may have been lost.” Cisco hasn’t said how many of its 140, 000+ Meraki customers have been affected. The deleted data includes custom floor plans, logos, enterprise apps and voicemail greetings found on users’ dashboard, systems manager and phones. The engineering team was working over the weekend to find out whether the data can be recovered and potentially build tools so that customers can find out what data has been lost. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Cisco Meraki Loses Customer Data in Engineering Gaffe

Amazon Suspends Sales of Blu Android Phones Due To Privacy Concerns

CNET reports: Amazon just put budget phone maker Blu in the penalty box. The online retailing giant told CNET that it was suspending sales of phones from Blu, known for making ultra-cheap Android handsets, due to a “potential security issue.” The move comes after security firm Kryptowire demonstrated last week how software in Blu’s phones collected data and sent it to servers in China without alerting people. Blu defended the software, created by a Chinese company called Shanghai Adups Technology, and denied any wrongdoing. A company spokeswoman said at the time it “has several policies in place which take customer privacy and security seriously.” She added there had been no breaches. Blu said it was in a process of review to reinstate the phones at Amazon. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Amazon Suspends Sales of Blu Android Phones Due To Privacy Concerns

Amazon is buying Whole Foods for $13.7 billion

In a surprising turn of events, Amazon and Whole Foods Market announced this morning that they are merging; Amazon will acquire the high-end organic food company for approximately $13.7 billion cash. Whole Foods is retaining its CEO, cofounder John Mackey, and they will continue to operate their stores independently. The company’s headquarters will remain in Austin, Texas. Developing… Source: Business Wire

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Amazon is buying Whole Foods for $13.7 billion