Month: January 2021

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Peter Dazeley)

Republican state lawmakers in North Dakota want Facebook and Twitter to face lawsuits from users who have been "censored."

A bill submitted by the six legislators last week is titled, "an Act to permit civil actions against social media sites for censoring speech." It says that social media websites with over 1 million users would be "liable in a civil action for damages to the person whose speech is restricted, censored, or suppressed, and to any person who reasonably otherwise would have received the writing, speech, or publication." Payouts for "censored" users would include "treble damages for compensatory, consequential, and incidental damages."

Even if passed by the North Dakota legislature, the bill would likely have no effect due to a conflict with federal law. The proposed law "would immediately be deemed void as preempted by Section 230 [of the Communications Decency Act]," because "federal law is supreme over state law where they conflict, and this would create an express conflict," attorney Akiva Cohen wrote in a Twitter thread about the bill.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Email management provider Mimecast said that hackers have compromised a digital certificate it issued and used it to target select customers who use it to encrypt data they sent and received through the company’s cloud-based service.

In a post published on Tuesday, the company said that the certificate was used by about 10 percent of its customer base, which—according to the company—numbers about 36,100. The “sophisticated threat actor” then likely used the certificate to target “a low single digit number” of customers using the certificate to encrypt Microsoft 365 data. Mimecast said it learned of the compromise from Microsoft.

Certificate compromises allow hackers to read and modify encrypted data as it travels over the Internet. For that to happen, a hacker must first gain the ability to monitor the connection going into and out of a target’s network. Typically, certificate compromises require access to highly fortified storage devices that store private encryption keys. That access usually requires deep-level hacking or insider access.

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  The LG Rollable can go from this... [credit: LG ]

CES is very often the home of vaporware product demos, and that certainly seemed to be the case when LG briefly teased a rollable-smartphone prototype, called simply "LG Rollable," during its press conference. Pie-in-the-sky flexible display prototypes have been a regular fixture at CES since 2008, after all. After the main press conference, LG Electronics President and CTO I.P. Park said of the device, "We're hoping to see it out in the market early this year." Not just this year, but early this year? OK LG, we're listening!

Like concepts that have already been shown off from Oppo and TCL, a rollable phone works kind of like a paper scroll, where two halves would be pulled apart to reveal more of the flexible screen, which can be hidden in the body of the phone. LG only showed a combined 10 seconds of the LG Rollable to start and end its press conference, but the footage shows a phone with two sliding halves and a "growing" display. It looks exactly like the Oppo and TCL designs, except—allegedly—it will be a real product.

From what we understand about rollable phone design, the display is connected to the bottom of the phone, then it rolls around the top half and into the back of the phone. As the motorized top section rises out of the phone, it pulls out more of the display from the back. Most people are accustomed to perfectly flat, hard-glass displays, but the plastic, flexible displays we saw in early, flexible smartphones had almost no rigidity on their own. In a rollable phone, most of the rigidity looks to be from the tension the rolling mechanism puts into the display. The Moto Razr flip phone works on the same principle: opening the phone pulls a sliding, floating display tight over a back panel, sort of like a drumhead.

Enlarge / The second season of His Dark Materials, starring Dafne Keen as Lyra Belacqua, concluded just before the new year. (credit: BBC/HBO)

The first season of His Dark Materials, the BBC/HBO adaptation of Philip Pullman's classic fantasy trilogy, had its share of critics, particularly with regard to its sluggish pacing. Fortunately, those shortcomings have been successfully addressed in the riveting second season. Freed from the creative burden of establishing an elaborate fictional world for viewers unfamiliar with the books, S2 was a briskly paced, yet still emotionally resonant experience, despite being one episode short because of pandemic-related production difficulties. Ruth Wilson's fiercely feral portrayal of the complicated Mrs. Coulter remains a highlight, and the heartbreaking season finale perfectly set the stage for the final showdown of S3, which has already been greenlighted by the studios.

(S1 spoilers below; also some S2 spoilers below the gallery, especially for audiences who haven't read the books.)

As we've written previously, the three books in Pullman's series are The Golden Compass (published as Northern Lights in the UK), The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. They follow the adventures of a 12-year-old girl named Lyra, who lives in a fictional version of Oxford, England, circa the Victorian era. Everyone has a companion daemon in the form of an animal—part of their spirit that resides outside the body—and Lyra's is named Pantalaimon. Lyra uncovers a sinister plot that sends her on a journey to find her father in hopes of foiling said plot. That journey takes her to different dimensions (the fictional world is a multiverse) and ultimately to her own coming of age.

Enlarge / Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg speaks during a Facebook Community Boost event at the Knight Center on December 18, 2018, in Miami, Florida. (credit: Joe Raedle | Getty Images)

Update, 1/14: A trio of new reports make clear that contrary to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's position, individuals were using Facebook to plan violence before last week's insurrection at the US Capitol—and that users are still doing so today.

The New York Times today published a report looking at individuals, including at least one who attended the January 6 rally at the Capitol, were radicalized specifically on Facebook and Instagram. Simply put, many users whose earlier content tended toward the bland and anodyne saw massive spikes in engagement—way more likes and comments—from other users when they began sharing conspiracy theories alleging the 2020 election was "stolen" or other Qanon-style content.

Many users "transformed seemingly overnight," according to the NYT review. "A decade ago, their online personas looked nothing like their presences today. A journey through their feeds offers a glimpse of how Facebook rewards exaggerations and lies."