Month: February 2021

Enlarge / This artist's approximation imagines Velma from the Scooby-Doo series getting chummy with the Clone High cast. We doubt that such a crossover will happen, but animation nerds can dream, right? (credit: WarnerMedia / Aurich Lawson)

One of HBO Max's biggest differentiators in the video-streaming scramble has been its animation family, which includes a glut of established "mature" cartoons from families like Adult Swim and DC Universe. A Wednesday announcement sees WarnerMedia moving aggressively on that front with a whopping seven new series orders on top of existing series in development.

Today, the company's Hanna-Barbera family announced one of its biggest nudge-nudge, wink-wink series ideas since off-kilter fare like Space Ghost: a series, simply named Velma, about the "origins" of Scooby-Doo mainstay Velma Dinkley.

Suggestive Scooby stuff, from Gunn to Max

WarnerMedia's press release says the series' first ordered season will offer "an original and humorous spin that unmasks the complex and colorful past of one of America’s most beloved mystery solvers," then confirms Mindy Kaling (The Office) as both Velma's voice and an executive producer of the show. The announcement doesn't include information on other cast members or writers/directors, simply doubling down on a suggestive description: "an adult animated comedy series."

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images / Aurich Lawson)

Suing technology firms when they mess up is already hard, especially over privacy violations. Now, Facebook, Google, and the trade groups representing all the big tech firms are asking the Supreme Court to make it even harder for class actions to pursue cases against them.

Facebook, Google, and all the others submitted a filing (PDF) to the Supreme Court this week basically arguing that if you cannot prove the specific extent to which their screwup injured you, you should not have any grounds to be part of a lawsuit against them.

Class-action suits start with a lead plaintiff—basically a representative of the group who stands in for hundreds or thousands of other individuals in a similar or theoretically similar, but not necessarily identical, situation. This is particularly key in cases relating to privacy and data, where a small handful of plaintiffs for whom something goes badly wrong may be the reason that hundreds, thousands, or even millions of users then discover that their data is being similarly mishandled.

Enlarge / Close-up photograph of a SIM card, a SIM-card replacement, and a smartphone. (credit: Getty Images)

Ten people have been arrested in connection with a series of SIM-swapping attacks that reaped more than $100 million by taking over the mobile phone accounts of high-profile individuals, authorities said on Wednesday.

SIM-swapping is a crime that involves replacing a target’s legitimate SIM card with one belonging to the attacker. The attacker then initiates password resets for accounts for email, cryptocurrency holdings, and other important resources. With control over the target’s mobile phone, the attacker responds to text messages the account providers send to complete the password reset.

The account hijacking typically occurs with either the help of a malicious employee who works for the mobile carrier, or with the help of an attacker posing as the rightful account owner and asking for a new card.

Enlarge / The book cover for the first book in the series, Redwall. (credit: Penguin Random House)

Netflix has acquired the rights to all 22 books in Brian Jacques' fantasy series Redwall, marking the first time that rights to the entire series have been purchased by one film or television company. Netflix made a deal for the rights with book publisher Penguin Random House Children, according to Deadline.

This is a major franchise move even for Netflix, as the books are considered classics by many and have sold more than 30 million copies. The series follows the fantasy adventures of noble and heroic talking animals. Every book in the series was written by author Brian Jacques, who passed away in 2011 shortly before the publication of the 22nd book.

The streaming network plans to create both a feature film and an event TV series. The film will be based on the series' first book, which is simply titled Redwall. The screenplay will be written by Patrick McHale, who is best known as the creator of Cartoon Network's critically acclaimed animated miniseries Over the Garden Wall.

Enlarge / ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)

The weird deal Oracle arranged at the behest of the Trump administration to buy TikTok without actually acquiring it has been permanently back-burnered, according to a new report.

The transaction, which has gone effectively nowhere since it was first announced, is now "shelved," the ever-popular "people familiar with the situation" told The Wall Street Journal. This move effectively puts an end to a saga that played out over many months and many tweets.

Back in August 2020 (roughly a hundred years ago, it now feels like), former President Donald Trump issued an executive order declaring TikTok and another China-based app, WeChat, to be a "national emergency." A week later, a second order (PDF) gave TikTok's parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, 90 days to divest the app to a US owner or cease operations in the States.