Author name: Kris Guyer

saas-management-and-application-discovery

SaaS Management and Application Discovery

Management / /

The old saying, “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” proves itself time and again with computers. In my recent analysis of SaaS management platforms (SMPs), it proved true once again, as I couldn’t help but observe how familiar the problem of getting a handle on software-as a-service (SaaS) sprawl felt.

The challenges inherent in discovery, visibility, and balancing concerns between stakeholders are elements in any kind of effective IT management. This iteration probably provides clues to future challenges that are difficult to anticipate.

How IT Got Started

Taking a retrospective look at the creation of IT departments through history provides insight into an important and ongoing management challenge. Some organizations had computer systems in the 1960s and 1970s, but those systems were necessarily expensive, purpose-built, and very clear on the problems being solved.

For example, a bank may have had a mainframe that served as a transactional database for millions of accounts. Although the system would be composed of many pieces, there wasn’t an application portfolio spanning thousands of systems with questions such as:

  • Who uses this software?
  • Is it redundant with other systems?
  • Where did it come from?
  • Can we get a better deal just by asking, or by easily switching to a competitor?
  • How does the business function tie to business capability (i.e., clearly it does something, and probably something that used to be done with a pencil, but what is its actual value?)
  • Is it integrated with [pick your favorite] new app?

Such systems were necessarily supported by dedicated staff, but that staff was organizationally tied to the business units they supported, and questions like these would have seemed comical at the time.

In the 1980s and especially 1990s, with the advent of personal computers and lower-cost terminal devices such as those seen in point of sale or inventory management, software systems expanded greatly along with the hardware to assist in a multitude of business functions. Email became a necessity, and any paper process became a clear opportunity for technologization. In many cases, the value, purpose, and deliberation were in place for those systems, but the sheer increase in size and shared overhead necessitated creating IT departments or outsourcing the management of computer systems to third parties such as MSPs or technology consulting firms. Often, the technical staff that previously supported a few critical technology systems on behalf of discrete business units inherited these burgeoning responsibilities.

Going Full Circle

That worked all right until around 2010, when another iteration of technological advancement challenged the existing model. Web technology and cloud computing were sufficiently established to make data centers the natural home for most business software, and it made ubiquitous smartphones, tablets, and laptops the terminals. SaaS became the norm, with a cost and deployment model that benefited both providers and consumers. With a market the size of the world, almost any niche business function is an arena for competitive development. A critical component of this latter advancement is that all of this became much easier and culturally commonplace.

Around this time, many IT departments found themselves with egg on their faces. For example, perhaps business units asked for a teleconferencing option and were met with long timelines and seemingly unreasonable budgets. Why does it take six months and millions of dollars when any cell phone has video conferencing capabilities ready to go in five minutes?

IT was on the defensive. What about data security? A sanctioned option will save money in the long run. The network must be ready to support the bandwidth. The list goes on. The partnership became strained. In some cases, words like “rogue” and “shadow IT” were used to describe business units that took matters into their own hands by discretely signing up for SaaS applications. It’s an understandable, if ironic, attitude toward things coming full circle. Business units are deploying and financing technology that they find valuable. What is this, 1980?

Today, there is growing acceptance of the idea that SaaS and BYOD options are good for everyone—they just require a way to manage business considerations that may not be apparent to (or appreciated by) all end users. Data and network security is not negotiable, and neither is auditing or compliance requirements. Integration with other corporate systems is valuable, but may not be necessary on day one. Licensing costs may be temporarily higher, but they can be optimized. Most of the pain points are temporary and solvable.

SMPs Address Most Pain Points

SaaS management platforms help to bridge those gaps. They allow IT departments and finance/procurement groups to achieve their goals without obstructing business units from taking advantage of the wealth of easily accessible software on the market. As custom software is gradually replaced with market alternatives, some IT departments may even get leaner and more focused on things like security and integration.

SaaS management platforms can only do so much though, especially with regard to application discovery. Ultimately, they can only “spider out” from known systems to discover unknown systems. They can integrate with corporate identity providers, monitor company email systems, integrate with browser extensions, and scour company expense records for clues as to which SaaS applications may be in use. Some even provide mobile device management integration to enhance the reach into mobile devices accessing the company network.

What about the case of an employee using their personal smartphone over the cell network and a free-tier teleconferencing account tied to a Gmail address? Or what about accidentally using the account of a different organization, such as a school or contracting agency? Was anything discussed on the call confidential? Did it contain clues to trade secrets, or did the data need to be audited or preserved for potential legal subpoena? The organization must evaluate those questions.

Only policy and good training can effectively mitigate these issues, but even that is not perfect and will face headwinds. Regardless, the race for expanded discovery is on, and at some point, it will probably include aggregation of disparate but available usage data with ML analysis, similar to the kind used for web marketing.

The alternative is to allow the organization additional visibility (surveillance software and managed configuration policies) into personal devices and personal accounts. If that loss of privacy does not concern you, bear in mind that the 21st-century mining-town model faces its own headwinds regardless, as seen by recently proposed legislation in California limiting the use of email off work hours.

In my opinion, that is the most compelling reason for software users to enthusiastically use business resources for business purposes. Respecting the integrity of business data effectively preserves the cultural border for personal privacy. If that distinction goes up for grabs, it is back to pencils and sticky notes.

Next Steps

To learn more, take a look at GigaOm’s SaaS management platform Key Criteria and Radar reports. These reports provide a comprehensive view of the market, outline the criteria you’ll want to consider in a purchase decision, and evaluate how a number of vendors perform against those decision criteria.

If you’re not yet a GigaOm subscriber, sign up here.

SaaS Management and Application Discovery Read More »

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Chinese social media users hilariously mock AI video fails

AI, AI parody, AI-generated video, BiliBili, Biz & IT, china, Chinese social media, Gen-3 Alpha, machine learning, openai, Runway, Social Media, social media trend, Sora, tiktok, video synthesis, will smith / /

Life imitates AI imitating life —

TikTok and Bilibili users transform nonsensical AI glitches into real-world performance art.

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Still from a Chinese social media video featuring two people imitating imperfect AI-generated video outputs.

Enlarge / Still from a Chinese social media video featuring two people imitating imperfect AI-generated video outputs.

It’s no secret that despite significant investment from companies like OpenAI and Runway, AI-generated videos still struggle to achieve convincing realism at times. Some of the most amusing fails end up on social media, which has led to a new response trend on Chinese social media platforms TikTok and Bilibili where users create videos that mock the imperfections of AI-generated content. The trend has since spread to X (formerly Twitter) in the US, where users have been sharing the humorous parodies.

In particular, the videos seem to parody image synthesis videos where subjects seamlessly morph into other people or objects in unexpected and physically impossible ways. Chinese social media replicate these unusual visual non-sequiturs without special effects by positioning their bodies in unusual ways as new and unexpected objects appear on-camera from out of frame.

This exaggerated mimicry has struck a chord with viewers on X, who find the parodies entertaining. User @theGioM shared one video, seen above. “This is high-level performance arts,” wrote one X user. “art is imitating life imitating ai, almost shedded a tear.” Another commented, “I feel like it still needs a motorcycle the turns into a speedboat and takes off into the sky. Other than that, excellent work.”

An example Chinese social media video featuring two people imitating imperfect AI-generated video outputs.

While these parodies poke fun at current limitations, tech companies are actively attempting to overcome them with more training data (examples analyzed by AI models that teach them how to create videos) and computational training time. OpenAI unveiled Sora in February, capable of creating realistic scenes if they closely match examples found in training data. Runway’s Gen-3 Alpha suffers a similar fate: It can create brief clips of convincing video within a narrow set of constraints. This means that generated videos of situations outside the dataset often end up hilariously weird.

An AI-generated video that features impossibly-morphing people and animals. Social media users are imitating this style.

It’s worth noting that actor Will Smith beat Chinese social media users to this trend in February by poking fun at a horrific 2023 viral AI-generated video that attempted to depict him eating spaghetti. That may also bring back memories of other amusing video synthesis failures, such as May 2023’s AI-generated beer commercial, created using Runway’s earlier Gen-2 model.

An example Chinese social media video featuring two people imitating imperfect AI-generated video outputs.

While imitating imperfect AI videos may seem strange to some, people regularly make money pretending to be NPCs (non-player characters—a term for computer-controlled video game characters) on TikTok.

For anyone alive during the 1980s, witnessing this fast-changing and often bizarre new media world can cause some cognitive whiplash, but the world is a weird place full of wonders beyond the imagination. “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” as Hamlet once famously said. “Including people pretending to be video game characters and flawed video synthesis outputs.”

Chinese social media users hilariously mock AI video fails Read More »

bmw-makes-the-internet-happy,-brings-m5-station-wagon-to-the-us

BMW makes the Internet happy, brings M5 station wagon to the US

Cars / /

trombone delivery car —

After denying us previous M5 station wagons, BMW now thinks the time is right.

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A BMW M5 Touring drives through a volcanic landscape

Enlarge / Everyone loves a wagon, especially when it’s an M5.

Fabian Kirchbauer Photography/BMW

Telling someone they can’t have something is a great way to make them want it. Take the station wagon, for example. This once-popular form factor for family transport has all but disappeared from new car showrooms in North America, consequently making the station wagon all kinds of cool in the process. At the apex are the superwagons, factory-tuned models with prodigious power outputs, with one in particular attaining legendary status in large part because BMW chose never to import the M5 Touring across the Atlantic. Until now.

BMW first made a Touring—or station wagon—version of the M5 in 1992 with the second-generation (better known as the E34) 5 series. When I was growing up in the UK, these were unavailable, as they were in the US, quickly giving the five-door M5 an extra level of cachet that the four-door lacked, despite a starring role in Ronin.

Truth be told, the E34 M5 Touring looked very cool, but it wasn’t the greatest sales success.

The same could be said for the next M5 Touring, which turned up in 2007 with the E61 generation 5 Series and a V10 under the hood. Only about 5 percent of E61 M5s were the five-door wagon, and US customers were again denied the chance to buy one. For the American M5 Touring devotee, the answer seemed to be “wait for the 25-year rule to apply,” something that has meant E34 M5 Tourings have been eligible for import for a few years now.

The M5 Touring skipped a generation, but BMW decided to bring it back for the newest iteration of its midsize continent crusher. And while it looked for a while like the Touring would again be a Euro-only thing, BMW’s North American arm has decided that the market is now ready for its most practical of performance machines.

  • The two-box shape looks so well-proportioned when it’s a wagon.

    Fabian Kirchbauer Photography/BMW

  • The 2025 M5 launch will take place toward the end of this year.

    Fabian Kirchbauer Photography/BMW

  • Colors other than bright red are available.

    Fabian Kirchbauer Photography/BMW

  • The Touring is still hugely practical.

    BMW

  • E34 M5 Touring are eligible for import under the 25-year rule.

    BMW

  • The E61-generation Touring body was most handsome.

    BMW

People say it’s too heavy

The G60-generation (or G61, for the Touring) M5 is a bit of a controversial car, however. It uses the same plug-in hybrid powertrain as the XM SUV, generating 717 hp (535 kW) and 738 lb-ft (1,000 Nm)—more than double the power and torque of the E34 M5.

While there are obvious advantages to a PHEV performance car in both performance (electric motors deliver their torque immediately) and efficiency (since it can run on just electric motors in low-speed situations), there is a bit of a drawback when it comes to weight. Adding a 14.8 kWh (useable) lithium-ion battery pack and the 194 hp (145 kW) electric motor have pushed the M5 Touring’s curb weight to 5,530 lbs (2,508 kg).

That’s 1,683 lbs (763 kg) heavier than the first M5 Touring, and all that mass has made enthusiasts mad (though almost every road test and first drive has come back aglow about the car’s capabilities). And I’m pretty sure that the 1992 M5 Touring didn’t have heated and cooled seats or an infotainment system capable of playing video or games. And it definitely didn’t have a torque-vectoring rear differential.

BMW debuted the US version of the M5 Touring on Thursday as part of Monterey Car Week and also announced the pricing. If you want a car that can carry loads of up to 57.6 cubic feet (1,632 L) and accelerate to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds, be prepared to pay BMW at least $122,675.

BMW makes the Internet happy, brings M5 station wagon to the US Read More »

google’s-threat-team-confirms-iran-targeting-trump,-biden,-and-harris-campaigns

Google’s threat team confirms Iran targeting Trump, Biden, and Harris campaigns

APT42, Biz & IT, Donald Trump, Gmail, Google, google tag, Iran, Kamala Harris, phishing, President Biden, Roger Stone, Security, spearphishing, threat analysis group / /

It is only August —

Another Big Tech firm seems to confirm Trump adviser Roger Stone was hacked.

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Roger Stone, former adviser to Donald Trump's presidential campaign, center, during the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee on July 17, 2024.

Enlarge / Roger Stone, former adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, center, during the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee on July 17, 2024.

Getty Images

Google’s Threat Analysis Group confirmed Wednesday that they observed a threat actor backed by the Iranian government targeting Google accounts associated with US presidential campaigns, in addition to stepped-up attacks on Israeli targets.

APT42, associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, “consistently targets high-profile users in Israel and the US,” the Threat Analysis Group (TAG) writes. The Iranian group uses hosted malware, phishing pages, malicious redirects, and other tactics to gain access to Google, Dropbox, OneDrive, and other cloud-based accounts. Google’s TAG writes that it reset accounts, sent warnings to users, and blacklisted domains associated with APT42’s phishing attempts.

Among APT42’s tools were Google Sites pages that appeared to be a petition from legitimate Jewish activists, calling on Israel to mediate its ongoing conflict with Hamas. The page was fashioned from image files, not HTML, and an ngrok redirect sent users to phishing pages when they moved to sign the petition.

A petition purporting to be from The Jewish Agency for Israel, seeking support for mediation measures—but signatures quietly redirect to phishing sites, according to Google.

A petition purporting to be from The Jewish Agency for Israel, seeking support for mediation measures—but signatures quietly redirect to phishing sites, according to Google.

Google

In the US, Google’s TAG notes that, as with the 2020 elections, APT42 is actively targeting the personal emails of “roughly a dozen individuals affiliated with President Biden and former President Trump.” TAG confirms that APT42 “successfully gained access to the personal Gmail account of a high-profile political consultant,” which may be longtime Republican operative Roger Stone, as reported by The Guardian, CNN, and The Washington Post, among others. Microsoft separately noted last week that a “former senior advisor” to the Trump campaign had his Microsoft account compromised, which Stone also confirmed.

“Today, TAG continues to observe unsuccessful attempts from APT42 to compromise the personal accounts of individuals affiliated with President Biden, Vice President Harris and former President Trump, including current and former government officials and individuals associated with the campaigns,” Google’s TAG writes.

PDFs and phishing kits target both sides

Google’s post details the ways in which APT42 targets operatives in both parties. The broad strategy is to get the target off their email and into channels like Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp, or possibly a personal email address that may not have two-factor authentication and threat monitoring set up. By establishing trust through sending legitimate PDFs, or luring them to video meetings, APT42 can then push links that use phishing kits with “a seamless flow” to harvest credentials from Google, Hotmail, and Yahoo.

After gaining a foothold, APT42 will often work to preserve its access by generating application-specific passwords inside the account, which typically bypass multifactor tools. Google notes that its Advanced Protection Program, intended for individuals at high risk of attack, disables such measures.

Publications, including Politico, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, have reported being offered documents from the Trump campaign, potentially stemming from Iran’s phishing efforts, in an echo of Russia’s 2016 targeting of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. None of them have moved to publish stories related to the documents.

John Hultquist, with Google-owned cybersecurity firm Mandiant, told Wired’s Andy Greenberg that what looks initially like spying or political interference by Iran can easily escalate to sabotage and that both parties are equal targets. He also said that current thinking about threat vectors may need to expand.

“It’s not just a Russia problem anymore. It’s broader than that,” Hultquist said. “There are multiple teams in play. And we have to keep an eye out for all of them.”

Google’s threat team confirms Iran targeting Trump, Biden, and Harris campaigns Read More »

new-geekbench-ai-benchmark-can-test-the-performance-of-cpus,-gpus,-and-npus

New Geekbench AI benchmark can test the performance of CPUs, GPUs, and NPUs

AI, Geekbench, Tech / /

hit the bench —

Performance test comes out of beta as NPUs become standard equipment in PCs.

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New Geekbench AI benchmark can test the performance of CPUs, GPUs, and NPUs

Primate Labs

Neural processing units (NPUs) are becoming commonplace in chips from Intel and AMD after several years of being something you’d find mostly in smartphones and tablets (and Macs). But as more companies push to do more generative AI processing, image editing, and chatbot-ing locally on-device instead of in the cloud, being able to measure NPU performance will become more important to people making purchasing decisions.

Enter Primate Labs, developers of Geekbench. The main Geekbench app is designed to test CPU performance as well as GPU compute performance, but for the last few years, the company has been experimenting with a side project called Geekbench ML (for “Machine Learning”) to test the inference performance of NPUs. Now, as Microsoft’s Copilot+ initiative gets off the ground and Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and Apple all push to boost NPU performance, Primate Labs is bumping Geekbench ML to version 1.0 and renaming it “Geekbench AI,” a change that will presumably help it ride the wave of AI-related buzz.

“Just as CPU-bound workloads vary in how they can take advantage of multiple cores or threads for performance scaling (necessitating both single-core and multi-core metrics in most related benchmarks), AI workloads cover a range of precision levels, depending on the task needed and the hardware available,” wrote Primate Labs’ John Poole in a blog post about the update. “Geekbench AI presents its summary for a range of workload tests accomplished with single-precision data, half-precision data, and quantized data, covering a variety used by developers in terms of both precision and purpose in AI systems.”

In addition to measuring speed, Geekbench AI also attempts to measure accuracy, which is important for machine-learning workloads that rely on producing consistent outcomes (identifying and cataloging people and objects in a photo library, for example).

Geekbench AI can run AI workloads on your CPU, GPU, or NPU (when you have a system with an NPU that's compatible).

Enlarge / Geekbench AI can run AI workloads on your CPU, GPU, or NPU (when you have a system with an NPU that’s compatible).

Andrew Cunningham

Geekbench AI supports several AI frameworks: OpenVINO for Windows and Linux, ONNX for Windows, Qualcomm’s QNN on Snapdragon-powered Arm PCs, Apple’s CoreML on macOS and iOS, and a number of vendor-specific frameworks on various Android devices. The app can run these workloads on the CPU, GPU, or NPU, at least when your device has a compatible NPU installed.

On Windows PCs, where NPU support and APIs like Microsoft’s DirectML are still works in progress, Geekbench AI supports Intel and Qualcomm’s NPUs but not AMD’s (yet).

“We’re hoping to add AMD NPU support in a future version once we have more clarity on how best to enable them from AMD,” Poole told Ars.

Geekbench AI is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS/iPadOS, and Android. It’s free to use, though a Pro license gets you command-line tools, the ability to run the benchmark without uploading results to the Geekbench Browser, and a few other benefits. Though the app is hitting 1.0 today, the Primate Labs team expects to update the app frequently for new hardware, frameworks, and workloads as necessary.

“AI is nothing if not fast-changing,” Poole continued in the announcement post, “so anticipate new releases and updates as needs and AI features in the market change.”

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mpox-outbreak-is-an-international-health-emergency,-who-declares

Mpox outbreak is an international health emergency, WHO declares

africa, CDC, health, Infectious disease, mpox, outbreak, Science, WHO / /

PHEIC —

The declaration is “the highest level of alarm under international health law.”

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A negative stain electron micrograph of a mpox virus virion in human vesicular fluid.

Enlarge / A negative stain electron micrograph of a mpox virus virion in human vesicular fluid.

The World Health Organization on Wednesday declared an international health emergency over a large and rapidly expanding outbreak of mpox that is spilling out of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

It is the second time in about two years that mpox’s spread has spurred the WHO to declare a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), the highest level of alarm for the United Nations health agency. In July 2022, the WHO declared a PHEIC after mpox cases had spread across the globe, with the epicenter of the outbreak in Europe, primarily in men who have sex with men. The outbreak was caused by clade II mpox viruses, which, between the two mpox clades that exist, is the relatively mild one, causing far fewer deaths. As awareness, precautions, and vaccination increased, the outbreak subsided and was declared over in May 2023.

Unlike the 2022–2023 outbreak, the current mpox outbreak is driven by the clade II virus, the more dangerous version that causes more severe disease and more deaths. Also, while the clade I virus in the previous outbreak unexpectedly spread via sexual contact in adults, this clade II outbreak is spreading in more classic contact patterns, mostly through skin contact of household members and health care workers. A large proportion of those infected have been children.

To date, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where the virus is endemic, has reported more than 22,000 suspect mpox cases and more than 1,200 deaths since the start of January 2023. In recent months, the outbreak has spilled out into multiple neighboring countries, including Burundi, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Kenya, and Uganda.

Earlier on Wednesday, the WHO convened an emergency committee to review the situation, in which experts from affected countries presented data to independent international experts. The committee concluded that the outbreak constituted a PHEIC, and WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus followed their recommendation.

“The emergence of a new clade of mpox, its rapid spread in eastern DRC, and the reporting of cases in several neighboring countries are very worrying,” Tedros said in a statement announcing the PHEIC. “On top of outbreaks of other mpox clades in DRC and other countries in Africa, it’s clear that a coordinated international response is needed to stop these outbreaks and save lives.”

On Tuesday, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared a similar emergency. Africa CDC Director General Dr. Jean Kaseya said the declaration will “mobilize our institutions, our collective will, and our resources to act—swiftly and decisively. This empowers us to forge new partnerships, strengthen our health systems, educate our communities, and deliver life-saving interventions where they are needed most.”

For now, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention assess the risk to the US public to be “very low,” given that there is limited and no direct travel between the US and the epicenter of the outbreak. So far, no clade I cases have been detected outside of central and eastern Africa.

Mpox outbreak is an international health emergency, WHO declares Read More »

kraven-the-hunter’s-new-trailer-gives-us-a-dark,-gore-filled-revenge-story

Kraven the Hunter’s new trailer gives us a dark, gore-filled revenge story

culture, Entertainment, film trailers, Kraven the Hunter, Sony Pictures, Sony's Spider-Man University, Trailers / /

“When the man comes around” —

It’s the latest installment in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, which has floundered recently.

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Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Bullet Train) plays the title character in the forthcoming film Kraven the Hunter.

Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (SSU) got off to a strong start with Venom (2018) and Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021), both of which racked up high box office earnings despite mixed-to-negative reviews from critics. But then the studio foundered badly with a couple of box office flops: 2022’s Morbius and 2024’s Madame Web.

Sony hopes to right the ship with a third Venom film in October (The Last Dance) and the much-delayed Kraven the Hunter this December. We’ve got a new trailer for the latter, leaning heavily into R-rated gore and set to Johnny Cash’s moodily atmospheric “The Man Comes Around.” It’s an entirely different, darker vibe from prior offerings: a revenge narrative rife with violence and daddy issues. Color us intrigued.

Comic book fans are well acquainted with Kraven as one of Spider-Man’s most formidable foes, a founding member of the Sinister Six. He’s a Russian immigrant with an aristocratic background who fled his home country when Tsar Nicholas II’s reign collapsed in 1917. He’s a big game hunter with enhanced abilities thanks to ingesting a mysterious potion made from jungle herbs. He’s very hard to injure, has super-human strength, and enhanced sight, hearing, and smell, as well as being a good tactician with excellent hand-to-hand combat skills.

Screenwriter Richard Wenk has said that Sony intended to adapt the critically acclaimed 1987 storyline in Kraven’s Last Hunt by J.M. DeMatteis, Mike Zeck, and Bob McLeod, which leaned heavily into the character’s Russian origins to create a very Dostoyevsky-like arc of a tortured soul. That storyline features an older Kraven whose health is failing who decides to hunt Spider-Man one last time, whereas the film is clearly an origin story. And Kraven actually dies by suicide in that comic arc, but we’re guessing Sony has plans to use him in other SSU films, with or without his arch-nemesis Spider-Man.

Per the official premise:

Kraven the Hunter is the visceral, action-packed origin story of how and why one of Marvel’s most iconic villains came to be. Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays Kraven, a man whose complex relationship with his ruthless father, Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe), starts him down a path of vengeance with brutal consequences, motivating him to become not only the greatest hunter in the world, but also one of its most feared.

In addition to Taylor-Johnson and Crowe, the cast includes Ariana DeBose as the voodoo priestess Calypso, Kraven’s love interest; Fred Hechinger as Dmitri Smerdyakov, aka Chameleon, Kraven’s half-brother; Alessandro Nivola as Aleksei Sytsevich, aka Rhino, a Russian mercenary who can transform into a human/rhino hybrid; Christopher Abbott as a mercenary and assassin called the Foreigner; and Levi Miller as young Sergei.

Kraven the Hunter hits theaters on December 13, 2024.

Listing image by YouTube/Sony Pictures

Kraven the Hunter’s new trailer gives us a dark, gore-filled revenge story Read More »

disney-fighting-restaurant-death-suit-with-disney+-terms-“absurd,”-lawyer-says

Disney fighting restaurant death suit with Disney+ terms “absurd,” lawyer says

Disney, disney springs, Florida, Policy, raglan road Irish pub, streaming service, Walt Disney World resorts, wrongful death / /
Raglan Road Irish Pub at Disney Springs in Orlando, Florida, USA.

Enlarge / Raglan Road Irish Pub at Disney Springs in Orlando, Florida, USA.

After a woman, Kanokporn Tangsuan, with severe nut allergies died from anaphylaxis due to a Disney Springs restaurant neglecting to honor requests for allergen-free food, her husband, Jeffrey Piccolo, sued on behalf of her estate.

In May, Disney tried to argue that the wrongful death suit should be dismissed because Piccolo subscribed to a one-month free trial of Disney+ four years before Tangsuan’s shocking death. Fighting back this month, a lawyer representing Tangsuan’s estate, Brian Denney, warned that Disney was “explicitly seeking to bar its 150 million Disney+ subscribers from ever prosecuting a wrongful death case against it in front of a jury even if the case facts have nothing to with Disney+.”

According to Disney, by agreeing to the Disney+ terms, Piccolo also agreed to other Disney terms vaguely hyperlinked in the Disney+ agreement that required private arbitration for “all disputes” against “The Walt Disney Company or its affiliates” arising “in contract, tort, warranty, statute, regulation, or other legal or equitable basis.”

However, Denney argued that “there is simply no reading of the Disney+ Subscriber Agreement, the only Agreement Mr. Piccolo allegedly assented to in creating his Disney+ account, which would support the notion that he was agreeing on behalf of his wife or her estate, to arbitrate injuries sustained by his wife at a restaurant located on premises owned by a Disney theme park or resort from which she died.”

“Frankly, any such suggestion borders on the absurd,” Denney said.

Denney argued that Disney’s motion to compel arbitration was “so outrageously unreasonable and unfair as to shock the judicial conscience.”

It’s particularly shocking, Denney argued, because of a “glaring ambiguity” that Disney “ignores”—that Piccolo more recently agreed to other Disney terms that “directly conflict” with the terms that Disney prefers to reference in its motion.

Denney argued that Disney is “desperately” clinging to “Piccolo’s purported consent to the Disney Terms of Use in November of 2019, because the My Disney Experience Terms and Conditions he allegedly consented to in 2023″—when purchasing tickets on Disney’s website to Epcot that went unused—”do not contain an arbitration provision.”

Those terms instead “rather expressly contemplate that the parties may file lawsuits and requires those suits to be filed in Orange County Florida and to be governed by Florida law,” Denney said. They also specify that the My Disney Experience terms prevail amid any conflict with other terms.

This renders “the arbitration provision in the Disney Terms of Use unenforceable,” Denney argued, requesting Disney’s motion be denied and suggesting that Disney is attempting “to deprive the Estate of Kanokporn Tangsuan of its right to a jury trial.”

He also reminded the court that in nursing home cases, Florida courts have “repeatedly held that a resident’s estate will not be bound by an arbitration agreement signed by a spouse or other family member in their individual capacity.”

Disney is hoping that its Disney+ terms argument will push the litigation out of the court and behind closed doors of arbitration, arguing that “Piccolo’s remaining claims against Great Irish Pubs”—which does business as Raglan Road Irish Pub—”should be stayed as well.” That would be proper, Disney argued, because Piccolo’s claims against Disney “are based entirely on Great Irish Pubs’ alleged misconduct” and “it would be problematic for this litigation to continue since each tribunal may decide the issues differently.”

Disney also noted that the litigation should also be stayed if Great Irish Pubs joined the arbitration, which Disney “would not oppose.”

Denney argued that Disney’s motion to compel arbitration was “fatally flawed for numerous independent reasons.”

“There is not a single authority in Florida that would support such an inane argument,” Denney argued. It’s “preposterous,” he said, that Disney is arguing that “when Jeffrey Piccolo, individually, allegedly signed himself up for a free trial of Disney+ back in 2019 or bought Epcot tickets in 2023, he somehow bound the non-existent Estate of Kanokporn Tangsuan (his wife, who was alive at both times) to an arbitration agreement buried within certain terms and conditions.”

Disney fighting restaurant death suit with Disney+ terms “absurd,” lawyer says Read More »

classic-pc-game-emulation-is-back-on-the-iphone-with-idos-3-release

Classic PC game emulation is back on the iPhone with iDOS 3 release

App Store, Apple, DOS games, emulator, gaming, iDOS, iDOS 3, MS-DOS, Tech / /

Emulation —

Apple amended its App Store rules to allow PC emulators, not just console ones.

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An MS-DOS command line prompt showing the C drive

Enlarge / The start of any journey in MS-DOS.

Samuel Axon

After a 14-year journey of various states of availability and usefulness amid the shifting policies of Apple’s App Store approval process, MS-DOS game emulator iDOS is back on the iPhone and iPad. It’s hopefully here to stay this time.

iDOS allows you to run applications made for MS-DOS via DOSBox, with a nice retro-styled interface. Its main use case is definitely playing DOS games, but it has seen a rocky road to get to this point. Initially released over a decade ago, it existed quietly for its niche audience, though it saw some changes that made it more or less useful in the developer’s quest to avoid removal from the App Store after it violated Apple’s rules. That culminated in it being removed altogether in 2021 after some tweets and articles brought attention to it.

But earlier this year, Apple made big changes to its App Store rules, officially allowing “retro game emulators” for the first time. That cleared the way for a wave of working console game emulators like Delta and RetroArch, which mostly work as you might expect them to on any other platform now. But when iDOS developer Chaoji Li and other purveyors of classic PC emulator software attempted to do the same for old PC games for MS-DOS and other non-console computing platforms, they were stymied. Apple told them that it didn’t consider their apps to be retro game console emulators and that they violated rules intended to prevent people from circumventing the App Store by running applications from other sources.

PC emulator UTM released a version of its software that worked around Apple’s rules, but it was a subpar experience. But on August 2, Apple amended its App Store rules to explicitly allow emulators of classic PC games. That opened the door for iDOS, which has made its triumphant return and works quite well.

Developer Chaoji Li’s announcement of iDOS 3’s availability didn’t have a tone of triumph to it, though—more like exhaustion, given the app’s struggles over the years:

It has been a long wait for common sense to prevail within Apple. As much as I want to celebrate, I still can’t help being a little bit cautious about the future. Are we good from now on?

Get iDOS3 on AppStore

I hope iDOS can now enjoy its turn to stay and grow.

P.S. Even though words feel inadequate at times, I would like to say thank you to the supporters of iDOS. In many ways, you keep iDOS alive.

Given that Apple’s policy changes were driven by regulatory concerns, it seems likely it’ll stick this time, but after everything that’s happened, you can’t blame Li for putting a question mark on this.

In any case, if you’re among the dozens (or maybe several hundred) of people looking to play Commander Keen, Might and Magic: The World of Xeen, Wolfenstein 3D, or Jill of the Jungle on your iPhone, today is your day.

Classic PC game emulation is back on the iPhone with iDOS 3 release Read More »

researchers-figure-out-how-to-keep-clocks-on-the-earth,-moon-in-sync

Researchers figure out how to keep clocks on the Earth, Moon in sync

Science / /

Does anyone really know what time it is? —

A single standardized Earth/Moon time would aid communications, enable lunar GPS.

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Image of a full Moon behind a dark forest of fir trees.

Enlarge / Without adjustments for relativity, clocks here and on the Moon would rapidly diverge.

Timing is everything these days. Our communications and GPS networks all depend on keeping careful track of the precise timing of signals—including accounting for the effects of relativity. The deeper into a gravitational well you go, the slower time moves, and we’ve reached the point where we can detect differences in altitude of a single millimeter. Time literally flows faster at the altitude where GPS satellites are than it does for clocks situated on Earth’s surface. Complicating matters further, those satellites are moving at high velocities, an effect that slows things down.

It’s relatively easy to account for that on the Earth, where we’re dealing with a single set of adjustments that can be programmed into electronics that need to keep track of these things. But plans are in place to send a large array of hardware to the Moon, which has a considerably lower gravitational field (faster clocks!), which means that objects can stay in orbit despite moving more slowly (also faster clocks!).

It would be easy to set up an equivalent system to track time on the Moon, but that would inevitably see the clocks run out of sync with those on Earth—a serious problem for things like scientific observations. So, the International Astronomical Union has a resolution that calls for a “Lunar Celestial Reference System” and “Lunar Coordinate Time” to handle things there. On Monday, two researchers at the National institute of Standards and Technology, Neil Ashby and Bijunath Patla, did the math to show how this might work.

Keeping time

We’re getting ready to explore the Moon. If everything goes to plan, China and a US-led consortium will be sending multiple uncrewed missions, potentially leading to a permanent human presence. We’ll have an increasing set of hardware, and eventually facilities on the lunar surface. Tracking just a handful of items at once was sufficient for the Apollo missions, but future missions may need to land at precise locations, and possibly move among them. That makes the equivalent of a lunar GPS valuable, as NIST notes in its press release announcing the work.

All that could potentially be handled by an independent lunar positioning system, if we’re willing to accept it marching to its own temporal beat. But that will become a problem if we’re ultimately going to do things like perform astronomy from the Moon, as the precise timing of events will be critical. Allowing for two separate systems would also mean switching all the timekeeping systems on board craft as they travel between the two.

The theory behind how to handle creating a single system has all been worked out. But the practicality of doing so has been left as an exercise for future researchers. But, apparently, the future is now.

Ashby and Patla worked on developing a system where anything can be calculated in reference to the center of mass of the Earth/Moon system. Or, as they put it in the paper, their mathematical system “enables us to compare clock rates on the Moon and cislunar Lagrange points with respect to clocks on Earth by using a metric appropriate for a locally freely falling frame such as the center of mass of the Earth–Moon system in the Sun’s gravitational field.”

What does this look like? Well, a lot of deriving equations. The paper’s body has 55 of them, and there are another 67 in the appendices. So, a lot of the paper ends up looking like this.

A typical section of the paper describing how the new system was put together.

Enlarge / A typical section of the paper describing how the new system was put together.

Ashby and Patla, 2024

Things get complicated because there are so many factors to consider. There are tidal effects from the Sun and other planets. Anything on the surface of the Earth or Moon is moving due to rotation; other objects are moving while in orbit. The gravitational influence on time will depend on where an object is located. So, there’s a lot to keep track of.

Future proof

Ashby and Patla don’t have to take everything into account in all circumstances. Some of these factors are so small they’ll only be detectable with an extremely high-precision clock. Others tend to cancel each other out. Still, using their system, they’re able to calculate that an object near the surface of the Moon will pick up an extra 56 microseconds every day, which is a problem in situations where we may be relying on measuring time with nanosecond precision.

And the researchers say that their approach, while focused on the Earth/Moon system, is still generalizable. Which means that it should be possible to modify it and create a frame of reference that would work on both Earth and anywhere else in the Solar System. Which, given the pace at which we’ve sent things beyond low-Earth orbit, is probably a healthy amount of future-proofing.

The Astronomical Journal, 2024. DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/ad643a  (About DOIs).

Researchers figure out how to keep clocks on the Earth, Moon in sync Read More »

microsoft’s-paint-3d-was-once-the-future-of-ms-paint,-but-now-it’s-going-away

Microsoft’s Paint 3D was once the future of MS Paint, but now it’s going away

ms paint, paint 3d, Tech, Windows 10, Windows 11 / /

one dimension too many —

User outcry ushered in a renaissance for classic MS Paint, and Paint 3D faded.

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Paint 3D, once the future of the Paint app, is getting the axe in November.

Enlarge / Paint 3D, once the future of the Paint app, is getting the axe in November.

Andrew Cunningham

In October of 2017, Microsoft released a version of Windows 10 called the “Fall Creators Update,” back when the company tried to give brand names to these things rather than just sticking to version numbering. One of the new apps included in that update was called Paint 3D, and while it shared a name with the old two-dimensional MS Paint app, it was entirely new software that supported creating 3D shapes and a whole bunch of other editing and transform options that the old Paint app didn’t have.

For the briefest of moments, Microsoft planned to deprecate the classic 2D version of the Paint app and focus its development resources on Paint 3D. But user outcry prompted Microsoft to cancel Paint’s cancelation and move it into the Microsoft Store for easier updating. The company soon began adding new features to the app for the first time in years, starting with keyboard controls and extending to a redesigned UI, support for layers and PNG transparency, and integrated AI-powered image generation.

But the old Paint app’s renaissance is coming at the expense of Paint 3D, which Microsoft says is formally being deprecated and removed from the Microsoft Store on November 4. Windows Central reports that users of the app will be notified via a banner message, just in case they aren’t regularly checking Microsoft’s documentation page for the list of deprecated and removed Windows features.

Microsoft recommends the Paint and Photos apps for viewing and editing 2D images and the 3D Viewer app for viewing 3D models. Creating and editing 3D images will be left to third-party software.

When it was introduced, Paint 3D was also pitched as a way to create and manipulate three-dimensional objects that could then be dropped into real environments using the Windows Mixed Reality platform. It’s probably not a coincidence that Windows Mixed Reality is being removed in this fall’s Windows 11 24H2 release, right around the same time Paint 3D will be removed from Windows and from the Microsoft Store.

Many Windows 8- and 10-era apps have either been axed or renamed in the Windows 11 era as Microsoft has refocused on built-in Windows apps with decadeslong histories. The Mail and Calendar apps are being replaced with a version of Outlook, and though it isn’t called Outlook Express there are certainly parallels. The Groove app was renamed “Windows Media Player” and picked up a few legacy Media Player capabilities, like the ability to play and rip audio CDs. Voice Recorder became Sound Recorder. Snip & Sketch had its capabilities rolled back into the Snipping Tool.

Microsoft’s Paint 3D was once the future of MS Paint, but now it’s going away Read More »

the-cheapest-tesla-cybertruck-is-$99,990;-promised-$60k-model-canceled

The cheapest Tesla Cybertruck is $99,990; promised $60K model canceled

Cars, Tesla Cybertruck / /

sells better than the hummer or lighting though —

When the Cybertruck debuted in 2019 it was supposed to start at $39,900.

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A Tesla Cybertruck in a Tesla store

Enlarge / The Cybertruck remains a divisive vehicle.

Jonathan Gitlin

When Tesla CEO Elon Musk first unveiled the Cybertruck in 2019, the angular pickup was pitched right at the heart of the highly competitive truck market. With a promised starting price of $39,900, the single-motor version ever so slightly undercut the cheapest version of Ford’s electric F-150 Lightning. Tesla increased the entry-level price by more than $20,000 by the time the Cybertruck was actually getting close to production, with promises of deliveries in 2025. But now, all mention of the cheaper rear-wheel drive Cybertruck is gone from Tesla’s ordering page.

Although pickup trucks have dominated new vehicle sales in the US for decades, their buyers are not exactly clamoring to swap their V8s or diesels for a slab of batteries and some electric motors. Ford has been finding that out the hard way—a constant string of price changes have helped keep demand depressed enough that the Blue Oval is shifting its entire electric vehicle strategy as a result.

And the F-150 Lightning has the advantage of looking just like all the other F-150s that roll off the production line. Not so the Cybertruck, a vehicle that manages to look even less elegant when you see one in the wild rather than on a screen.

As is typical with new Tesla models, the stainless steel pickup’s gestation was anything but easy. Last October Musk told fans “we dug our own grave with the Cybertruck,” having previously berated his workforce about quality control, insisting “sub 10 micron accuracy.”

Things appeared to get worse as customer deliveries began. A problem with the Cybertruck’s pedal led to crashes and a stop to new deliveries, and there had been four official recalls by late June.

Still outselling the competition

And yet, the Tesla has been outselling the Ford despite the cheapest Cybertruck costing a minimum of $99,900, with Lightnings available on dealer lots with price tags that are $20,000-$30,000 less.

A better cross-shop might well be the GMC Hummer EV. Like the Cybertruck, the Hummer is so heavy it counts as a class 3 truck here in the US, a fact that precludes international sales in most markets, which require special licenses to operate heavier vehicles. Both also effectively have six-figure starting prices now, once you take into account delivery charges. So far, the Tesla is winning this sales battle, too, with nearly three times as many being sold in Q2.

That makes it the best-selling vehicle costing more than $100,000, according to industry analysts Cox Automotive, telling Automotive News that “sustained high volume at that price point will be a challenge.”

The cheapest Tesla Cybertruck is $99,990; promised $60K model canceled Read More »