Month: March 2021

An inexplicable event confers supernatural powers on a select group of people in Victorian London, who must battle prejudice and those who would exploit their abilities in The Nevers, a new original series coming to HBO next month.

HBO won a fierce bidding war and approved a straight-to-series order in 2018, with Joss Whedon (The Avengers, Cabin in the Woods, etc.) as writer, director, executive producer, and showrunner. Whedon brought Douglas Petrie and Jane Espenson—both of whom worked with Whedon on Buffy the Vampire Slayer—on board as additional writers/executive producers. He said the following about the series title during Comic-Con in 2018:

They, themselves are not called that [The Nevers] in the show. It's a phrase that's meant to evoke a sort of reaction to their oddity, to what is considered unnatural. The idea that you should never be like this, you should never have existed. Something is not the way it should be, and you don't have the right to have whatever weird power or ability that you have. And that idea, that some people are not of the natural order, is fascinating to me. I don't agree with it. But to me, it's one of those things where you take something negative, and you wear it as a badge of honor, basically. Certain things could never happen—they're happening. And the people they're happening to are taking their place in the world.

Last November, Whedon announced he was quitting the project, citing exhaustion and the "physical challenges of making such a huge show during a global pandemic." (Whedon has been embattled in recent months by accusations of workplace harassment—both from Ray Fisher, aka Cyborg, during Justice League reshoots, and from several Buffy cast members—but HBO has said there were no similar reports about Whedon during production of The Nevers.)

(credit: Aurich Lawson / Ars Technica)

Microsoft Exchange servers compromised in a first round of attacks are getting infected for a second time by a ransomware gang that is trying to profit from a rash of exploits that caught organizations around the world flat-footed.

The ransomware—known as Black Kingdom, DEMON, and DemonWare—is demanding $10,000 for the recovery of encrypted data, security researchers said. The malware is getting installed on Exchange servers that were previously infected by attackers exploiting a critical vulnerability in the Microsoft email program. Attacks started while the vulnerability was still a zero-day. Even after Microsoft issued an emergency patch, as many as 100,000 servers that didn’t install it in time were infected.

Opportunity knocks

The hackers behind those attacks installed a web shell that allowed anyone who knew the URL to completely control the compromised servers. Black Kingdom was spotted last week by Security firm SpearTip. Marcus Hutchins, a security researcher at security firm Kryptos Logic, reported on Sunday that the malware didn’t actually encrypt files.

Enlarge (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

On Tuesday, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) hosted a press conference where it detailed the plans for the Ingenuity drone that hitched a ride to Mars attached to the underside of the Perseverance rover. The scientists and engineers behind the drone announced that they've now picked a site for what is expected to be the first powered flight on another planet. With the site settled, they're now targeting April 8 for the flight, which will be the first in a monthlong series of test flights to validate the technology.

What

Ingenuity, pictured above, looks familiar to anyone who's seen any of the profusion of small consumer drones that have developed over the last decade or so. But, as Ingenuity's chief engineer Bob Balaram put it, "It's the first aircraft designed for powered flight on another planet," and that makes for some substantial differences with Earth-bound drones. For starters, the hardware is much bigger than it might seem from the photos, as each of its two counter-rotating blades is 1.2 meters (four feet) long. Ingenuity also weighs in at 1.8 kilograms (four pounds) on Earth, although it's less than half of that weight on the red planet.

Balaram also said that "In effect, this is an aircraft that also happens to be a spacecraft," noting it had to survive the stresses of launch and landing, as well as the temperature extremes of its flight to Mars and time on the surface. That has necessitated a heating element in Ingenuity's fuselage, which keeps things like the batteries and electronics operational overnight. Once released on the planet's surface by Perseverance, Ingenuity will be responsible for providing its own power, which it obtains via a solar panel perched above the blades.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Today's Dealmaster includes a $20 discount on Logitech's MX Master 3, as Staples currently has the wireless mouse down to $80 when you use the code "91742" at checkout. Staples has run similar coupon sales a handful of times over the last few months, but either way, this matches the lowest price we've seen for our top pick among wireless office mice.

If you're more interested in a wireless keyboard, you can also use this code to take $20 off Logitech's MX Keys, which we recommended in our holiday gift guide late last year. This matches the best price we've tracked for that device as well. Just note that the code can only be applied once per order.

Elsewhere, our deals roundup has good prices on other recommended products such as HyperX's Cloud Stinger gaming headset, Eufy's Indoor Cam 2K, LG's 55-inch BX OLED TV, Sony's WH-1000XM4 noise-canceling headphones, and much more. You can check out the full list below.

Enlarge / A screenshot from Steam Link for macOS. (credit: Valve)

Valve has launched a standalone app for Steam Link on Apple's macOS App Store, adding a new option for Mac users who want to play games on machines that are often labeled as poor choices for gaming.

Steam Link allows users to stream games from a gaming PC to a supported device on the same local network and to play those games with a MFI or Steam controller.

Valve already offered a full Steam app for macOS, but it takes up 1GB of space and has a reputation for being clunky. In contrast, the Steam Link app has a minimalist interface that appears designed with game controller peripherals in mind.

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  Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) is going back to where it all started. [credit: YouTube/Marvel ]

After losing its initial May 2020 release date to the emerging COVID-19 pandemic, Disney and Marvel Studios' Black Widow has finally settled on a release strategy: a simultaneous launch in theaters and as a "premier access" purchase on the Disney+ subscription service, both coming Friday, July 9.

Watching Black Widow at home will require a one-time payment of $30 on top of your Disney+ subscription fee, which will unlock the film for repeat viewings ahead of its eventual release for all base subscribers. The same will apply to Cruella, the live-action prequel to the Disney animated classic 101 Dalmatians, which will get its own theater-and-Disney+ simul-launch on Friday, May 28.

The announcement, as distributed in a Disney press release on Tuesday, notes that this follows the "successful release" of CGI-animated feature Raya and the Last Dragon both in theaters and on Disney+ on March 5—apparently confirming that the decision made dollars and sense for everyone at Disney, following a similar release strategy for 2020's live-action version of Mulan.