Month: February 2020

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  The Locke family arrives at Keyhouse. [credit: Netflix ]

It's been a long time coming, but it's finally here. I'm talking about Locke and Key, the highly anticipated adaptation of the award-winning comic book series of the same name, written by Joe Hill and illustrated by Gabe Rodriguez. And yes, fellow uber-fans, it was worth the wait. The series boasts strong writing, pacing, performances, and above all, it looks amazing, bringing the fabled Keyhouse and the darkly fantastical world of the comics to vivid life.

(Mild spoilers below.)

We've had to swallow our disappointment again and again over the years, since it proved notoriously difficult to get any adaptation off the ground. The project (in various iterations) bounced from Dreamworks and 20th Century Fox, to Universal and then Hulu, before finally landing at Netflix. That proved to be the perfect match. "I think this is the story in the best possible version," Hill said at a pre-release press event that also included Rodriguez and show runners Carlton Cuse (Lost) and Meredith Averill (Haunting of Hill House). He compared the various adaptation attempts to turning a combination lock and waiting to hear it click. "This time it clicked."

Enlarge / The Credit Union National Association held a ransomware exercise for member institutions and then got hit itself. While CUNA quickly recovered, the assumption that ransomware attacks don't equal data breaches is changing what "recovery" actually means. (credit: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

Not every ransomware attack is an unmitigated disaster. But even the most prepared organizations, it seems, can have small-scale disasters in the era of mass scans, spear phishes, and targeted ransomware.

Just a few months after staging a ransomware exercise for its member credit unions, the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) experienced what a spokesperson described as a "business disruption issue"—caused by ransomware, according to a source that spoke with TechCrunch's Zack Whittaker. By late on February 4, the site had been fully restored. Jim Nussle, CUNA's president and CEO, sent a message to members on February 5:

We are pleased to share that as of last night, we have restored access to our site and other online resources. We want to thank you for your patience as we worked around the clock to restore these systems. We apologize for the inconvenience and frustration this may have caused as you had trouble accessing our services.

CUNA spokesperson Vicky Christner told Whittaker that “CUNA does not store Social Security numbers or credit card numbers of our members" and that "there no evidence to suggest that any data in our system—such as names, businesses addresses and email addresses—have been accessed."

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  An in-store Razr unit with a broken display. That vertical line is not supposed to be there. [credit: Jeremy DeBose ]

So, just how durable is the new Moto Razr? Motorola's nostalgic, folding-display flip phone has a number of unproven features that, after the public failure of the Galaxy Fold, every potential customer should be concerned about. Evidence is starting to pile up that the Razr might be another delicate foldable that isn't up to the task of day-to-day smartphone usage.

In addition to the same display durability issues that the Galaxy Fold had—an OLED display that has to deal with both the stress of bending and an easily-damageable plastic display coating—the Razr has a trick hinge system that is a lot more complicated than that of the Galaxy Fold. In an effort to keep the display from creasing deeply, Motorola says the Razr hinge "includes moveable support plates that rigidly support the display when the phone is open but collapse out of the way when the phone is closed." There have been a few sources now that suggest this hinge design isn't going to last.

The first piece of evidence comes from CNET, which just wrapped up a torture test of the Moto Razr with disappointing results. CNET got a hold of SquareTrade's Foldbot, a robot designed to open and close folding smartphones repeatedly until they die. The Galaxy Fold survived the Foldbot for 120,000 folds before the fatigue from bending destroyed the display. CNET was hoping the Razr would last for a similar 100,000 fold torture test, but Moto's phone only lasted for about a quarter of that time. After 27,000 folds, the hinge mechanism jammed up, and the phone wouldn't close anymore.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Zerbor)

The Federal Communications Commission has defeated another challenge to its repeal of net neutrality rules, as a federal court yesterday decided that it won't rehear the case.

In October 2019, a three-judge panel at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the FCC's repeal of net neutrality rules. Mozilla, consumer-advocacy groups, and state attorneys general asked for a rehearing in front of all the DC Circuit court judges, but the request was denied yesterday in a very short ruling.

The petitioners could still appeal to the US Supreme Court but haven't said if they will do so. "While today's result is unfortunate, it's not that surprising," Free Press VP of Policy and General Counsel Matt Wood said. "Courts routinely deny rehearing requests like this. But we'll keep weighing our legal options."

Enlarge (credit: flickr user: Lars Plougmann)

Confronted with a baby—or puppy—most adults can’t stop themselves from dissolving into baby talk: “WHO’S the cutest? It’s YOU! YES it IS!” We slow down, increase our pitch by nearly an octave, and milk each vowel for all it’s worth. And even if the baby can’t speak yet, we mimic the turn-taking of a conversation.

This “parentese” is found across cultures, and babies exposed to more of it at home seem to do better at acquiring their home language. But it’s not all about instinct: a paper published in PNAS this week suggests that parents can be trained to improve their parentese and that this training gives their babies’ language a boost.

Learning to baby talk

Why does more parentese go hand in hand with language acquisition? It’s an open question. Recordings from parents and children in their homes show a correlation—the more parentese there is, the more likely the babies are to be a little more advanced with their language abilities. But is the parentese itself actually helping? And if so, how? Or is there another factor at play that boosts them both?