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Wheel of Time TV pilot producers sue Robert Jordan’s widow for defamation

The tale of the late-night Wheel of Time pilot that aired in a paid infomercial slot on FXX has taken another odd turn. Producers Red Eagle Entertainment LLC and Manetheren LLC have filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for central California against Harriet McDougal (widow of James Rigney, who wrote the Wheel of Time novels under the pen name Robert Jordan), her company, Bandersnatch Group Inc., and twenty unnamed other persons (“Does 1-20”). The suit alleges that McDougal’s statements about her lack of involvement in the pilot’s production constitute breach of contract, slander, and interference with contractual relations and prospective economic relations; the suit demands declaratory relief and a jury trial. With the pilot coming essentially out of nowhere and airing with no fanfare, very few fans of the series were even aware of its existence until after the fact; it was clear that the production was accomplished in very little time and on a minimal budget. The resulting effort (titled “Winter Dragon”) did not resemble the series prologue very closely, and it quickly drew strong rebuke from McDougal, who claimed the pilot was made “without my knowledge or cooperation,” and that no one from Robert Jordan’s estate has been involved in any way with it. McDougal claims that Universal currently holds the rights to the Wheel of Time TV series, not Red Eagle Entertainment, and that the pilot made no mention of Universal or her own company, the Bandersnatch Group. That statement was apparently interpreted by Red Eagle Entertainment LLC—the corporate entity that produced the pilot and also claims to hold the television rights to The Wheel of Time —as fighting words. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Wheel of Time TV pilot producers sue Robert Jordan’s widow for defamation

Assassin’s Creed movie officially in production

The long-awaited Assassin’s Creed movie is finally moving ahead, with Ubisoft revealing the film has officially entered production. The video game adaptation will be released on December 21, 2016. Word of the production came from the most mundane of places though—Ubisoft’s quarterly financial call. The publisher is co-producing the film with studio New Regency, which has had a golden period in recent years with films such as 12 Years a Slave , Birdman , and Gone Girl under its umbrella. “We have the pleasure to announce today that the green light has been given by New Regency, and the production has already started,” said Ubisoft’s CEO Yves Guillemot. “This is a very important milestone for the project and for our team on Assassin’s Creed .” Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Assassin’s Creed movie officially in production

Apple increases the maximum size of iOS app binaries for the first time ever

For the first time since the introduction of the App Store in 2008 , Apple is increasing the maximum size of the app binaries that developers can upload to iTunes Connect. The company announced today that the cap would increase from 2GB to 4GB , though this doesn’t affect the 100MB limit imposed on apps downloaded on cellular networks. iOS app binaries contain both the executable file and all of the images, sounds, and other assets that the app needs—everything from icons to splash screens to UI is all included in one big file. Because of how they’re packaged, these binaries can get rather large. Binaries include all the assets for all the devices they support. If you’re shipping a universal app that supports all iOS 8 devices, for example, you’ve got Retina iPhone assets, Retina and non-Retina iPad assets, and special “3x” assets specifically for the iPhone 6 Plus (Apple’s got a table here ). Universal apps include all of those assets, and the binary you download from the App Store is the same whether you’ve got an old iPhone 4S or a brand-new iPad Air 2. If you’re running on an iPhone, for example, a universal binary will still contain assets for other iPhones and iPads, increasing the amount of space the app needs even though some of those extra assets aren’t needed for your device. Xcode 6 partially supports vector graphics to ease the developer burden of maintaining and generating all these assets, but they’re still stored as PNG files when the binary is built and uploaded. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

15-year-old bug allows malicious code execution in all versions of Windows

Microsoft just patched a 15-year-old bug that in some cases allows attackers to take complete control of PCs running all supported versions of Windows. The critical vulnerability will remain unpatched in Windows 2003, leaving that version wide open for the remaining five months Microsoft pledged to continue supporting it. The flaw, which took Microsoft more than 12 months to fix, affects all users who connect to business, corporate, or government networks using the Active Directory service. The database is built into Windows and acts as a combination traffic cop and security guard, granting specific privileges to authorized users and mapping where on a local network various resources are available. The bug—which Microsoft classifies as MS15-011 and the researcher who first reported it calls Jasbug—allows attackers who are in a position to monitor traffic passing between the user and the Active Directory network to launch a man-in-the-middle exploit that executes malicious code on vulnerable machines. “All computers and devices that are members of a corporate Active Directory may be at risk,” warned a blog post published Tuesday by JAS Global Advisors, the firm that reported the bug to Microsoft in January 2014. “The vulnerability is remotely exploitable and may grant the attacker administrator-level privileges on the target machine/device. Roaming machines—Active Directory member devices that connect to corporate networks via the public Internet (possibly over a Virtual Private Network (VPN))—are at heightened risk.” Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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15-year-old bug allows malicious code execution in all versions of Windows

Google announces SPDY’s coming demise as HTTP/2 approaches

A little over five years ago, Google unveiled SPDY, a new protocol that it positioned as a more secure, better-performing replacement for hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), the communication protocol on which the Web is built. Today the company announced that it would soon be removing SPDY support from Chrome. That’s because the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has been working to update HTTP to produce HTTP/2, an updated revision of a protocol that has not seen any major changes since its introduction in the early 1990s. SPDY’s major goals were to reduce latency and improve security. To reduce latency, it included support for multiplexing—making multiple requests and responses over a single connection, with prioritization for different requests—and for security, it makes the use of TLS compulsory. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Google announces SPDY’s coming demise as HTTP/2 approaches

Understanding M.2, the interface that will speed up your next SSD

Most solid-state drives released within the last year or so have been too fast for the bus they’re connected to. The 6Gbps SATA III spec was finalized in the days when rotational hard drives still ruled and SSDs were rare, ludicrously expensive, and relatively unreliable. There are a couple of different standards that have been created to solve this problem, and they both solve it in the same basic way. One, SATA Express , uses the same physical connector as older SATA drives but uses PCI Express lanes rather than the SATA bus to boost storage speeds. The other, which will be more common in space-constrained mini-desktops, all-in-ones, and Ultrabooks, is called M.2 (previously NGFF, for “Next-Generation Form Factor”). M.2 is interesting not just because it can speed up storage with PCI Express lanes, but because it can use a whole bunch of different buses too; it stands to replace both mSATA and mini PCI Express, two older standards that have been used for SSDs and Wi-Fi cards in laptops for a while now. Intel’s new Broadwell CPUs and their chipsets include native support for M.2 and PCI Express boot drivers—neither PCIe-connected storage ( hi Apple ) nor the M.2 connector itself are new, but beginning with Broadwell systems each of those two things will become much more common. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Understanding M.2, the interface that will speed up your next SSD

Malicious Google Play apps (may have) hosed millions of Android handsets

Security researchers have once again found Google Play offering malicious apps that have been downloaded by millions of Android users. According to a blog post published Tuesday by antivirus provider Avast, the apps include the Durak card game app and at least two other titles. Combined, those apps have been installed as many as 15 million times. Researcher Filip Chytry wrote: When you install Durak, it seems to be a completely normal and well working gaming app. This was the same for the other apps, which included an IQ test and a history app . This impression remains until you reboot your device and wait for a couple of days. After a week, you might start to feel there is something wrong with your device. Some of the apps wait up to 30 days until they show their true colors. After 30 days, I guess not many people would know which app is causing abnormal behavior on their phone, right? Each time you unlock your device an ad is presented to you, warning you about a problem, e.g. that your device is infected, out of date or full of porn. This, of course, is a complete lie. You are then asked to take action, however, if you approve you get re-directed to harmful threats on fake pages, like dubious app stores and apps that attempt to send premium SMS behind your back or to apps that simply collect too much of your data for comfort while offering you no additional value. It’s not the first time Google’s official Android app bazaar has been found to host malicious apps. In the past, it has offered titles laced with surreptitious remote access trojans , Bitcoin miners , and rogue advertising networks . Three years ago, Google introduced a cloud-based scanner that scours Play for malicious apps , but attackers have been known to bypass it . Google officials regularly remove apps from Play when they are found to be malicious. At the time this post was being prepared, all three flagged by Avast remained available for download. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Malicious Google Play apps (may have) hosed millions of Android handsets

Pilot’s selfies “likely” caused fatal crash, flight investigators say

A pilot’s selfies “likely” caused a single-engine plane crash outside Denver that killed the pilot and sole passenger last year, the National Transportation Safety Board has concluded. The NTSB probe said investigators discovered a GoPro camera near the wreckage that captured footage aboard the two-seater Cessna 150 taken on May 30 and on the day of the May 31 crash. “Based on the evidence of cell phone use during low-altitude maneuvering, including the flight immediately before the accident flight, it is likely that cell phone use during the accident flight distracted the pilot and contributed to the development of spatial disorientation and subsequent loss of control,” the NTSB said . Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Private investment firm buys out Sony Online Entertainment

In a surprise move announced this afternoon, investment management firm Columbus Nova announced it has purchased Sony Online Entertainment from its long-standing parent company, Sony Computer Entertainment. The studio behind MMOs like Everquest , DC Universe Online , Planetside 2 , and H1Z1 will now operate as an independent firm called Daybreak Game Company, according to a press release. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed. The announcement hints that the former SOE might be looking to take some of its properties to systems aside from the PC and PlayStation consoles they currently live on. “We will continue to focus on delivering exceptional games to players around the world, as well as bringing our portfolio to new platforms, fully embracing the multi-platform world in which we all live [emphasis added],” Daybreak president John Smedley said in a statement. Smedley was even more explicit about the company’s multi-platform future in a tweet following the announcement : “Can’t wait to make Xbox One games!” And in a post on the company’s official forums , the Daybreak team states outright that they will be developing for “PlayStation and Xbox, mobile and more!” Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Verizon reportedly selling off old wires to focus more on wireless

Verizon is reportedly close to selling off parts of its wireline network and some cell towers in a series of deals totaling more than $10 billion, helping the company fund spectrum license purchases that will boost its wireless business. The Wall Street Journal reported the deals today , saying they “will involve different buyers and could be announced as soon as later this week.” The report said Verizon will sell “a package of assets including cellphone towers and parts of its wireline business” but did not get any more specific. Presumably, Verizon would be selling off parts of its old copper telephone and DSL networks rather than its FiOS fiber-to-the-home assets. Given Verizon’s focus on its wireless business, the cell towers are probably surplus to requirements. Verizon’s wireless subsidiary just committed to purchasing $10.4 billion worth of wireless spectrum licenses. Verizon lost $2.23 billion in its most recent quarter. Besides funding that spectrum purchase, Verizon is trying to pay off debt, according to the Journal report. The company “took on a massive debt load” last year when it spent $130 billion to buy out Vodafone’s 45 percent stake in Verizon Wireless, the report said. Verizon now owns 100 percent of Verizon Wireless. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Verizon reportedly selling off old wires to focus more on wireless