Month: May 2022

The official trailer for Mission: Impossible–Dead Reckoning Part One (aka Mission: Impossible 7) is here and chock-full of the kind of global intrigue and jaw-dropping stunts fans have come to expect from this hugely successful franchise. The trailer was shown in April exclusively at CinemaCon and the intent was to release it this coming weekend when the highly anticipated Top Gun: Maverick finally (finally!) hits theaters. But an online leak supposedly forced Paramount's hand, so we get to see star Tom Cruise drive his motorcycle off a cliff a week early. We'll have to wait until next summer, however—that's 2023—to see the film.

(Mild spoilers for previous films in the franchise below.)

Launched in 1996 with the first Mission: Impossible, the franchise is one of the highest-grossest film series, with a combined global box office take of more than $3.5 billion so far. The first film was set six years after the 1988-1990 TV series, itself a sequel to the original TV series that ran from 1966 to 1973. Cruise's character, Impossible Missions Force (IMF) agent Ethan Hunt, was framed for the murder of his team during a botched mission and falsely accused of selling government secrets to an arms dealer. Over the course of the film, he unmasked the real culprit and cleared his name.

Enlarge / Jony Ive speaks onstage during the 2017 New Yorker TechFest in New York City. (credit: Brian Ach/Getty Images)

A series of reports in The Information paint a detailed picture of progression, politics, and problems facing Apple's plan to develop a virtual, augmented, or mixed reality headset since the initiative picked up steam back in 2015.

Citing several people familiar with the product, including some who worked on it directly, the reports describe a contest of wills over the direction of the device. The standoff was between Apple's mixed reality product team (called the "Technology Development Group") and famed Apple designer Jony Ive and his industrial design team. The report sheds light on Apple's direction for the device, which Bloomberg recently reported is nearing launch.

They also claim that Apple CEO Tim Cook has been relatively hands-off from the product compared to others like the iPhone, and that the Technology Development Group's location in a separate office from the main Apple headquarters has been a source of problems and frustration.

Enlarge (credit: Corsair )

Apple ditched capacitive touch strips along the top of its MacBook Pro decks last year, giving Corsair the opportunity to offer a similar input bar. Corsair seems to think it has found a fitting use for the design, incorporating it into its first laptop, which it built with a heavy focus on streaming.

Corsair made a name for itself in gaming desktops, but the Corsair Voyager a1600 AMD Advantage Edition announced Monday marks the first foray for the gaming brand, also known for PC peripherals and DIY components, into Corsair-brand laptops. The move comes about two years after it acquired boutique PC-maker Origin.

Corsair's Voyager a1600 laptop will start at $2,700. (credit: Corsair )

In its announcement, Corsair said the 16-inch clamshell is made for the "aspiring content creator, avid gamer, or a full-time streamer." Thus, it's equipped with a 1080p resolution webcam with a physical shutter flanked by four microphones with ambient noise cancellation and a colorful "macro bar with center LCD display" as well as a colorful, programmable soft-touch keyboard.

Enlarge / AMD's Ryzen 7000 chips are due out in the next few months. (credit: AMD)

AMD first teased its upcoming Ryzen 7000-series CPUs and its new Zen 4 CPU architecture at CES in January. The company said that the chips would use the new AM5 CPU socket, that they would be built on a 5 nm manufacturing process from TSMC, and that they would be available this fall.

None of those facts has changed, and AMD still hasn't announced pricing or more specific availability info for the new chips. But at its Computex keynote this week, AMD revealed a few additional details about the Ryzen 7000 processors and the motherboards and chipsets that will support them when they're all released to the public in the next few months.

Zen 4’s foundation: Socket AM5

If you build an AMD-based PC in the next few years, you'll probably be using socket AM5. (credit: AMD)

Before covering any specific features of Zen 4, Ryzen 7000, or AMD's 600-series chipsets, we should cover some basic facts about the upcoming AM5 CPU socket.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto )

The Florida law that makes it illegal for large social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to ban politicians likely violates the First Amendment, according to a unanimous ruling by a panel of three federal appeals court judges.

The ruling, released today by the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, upheld key portions of a preliminary injunction issued by a US District Court judge in June 2021. Florida appealed that injunction. As a result of today's ruling, the state still cannot enforce the law's content-moderation requirements.

"It is substantially likely that [the Florida law's] content-moderation restrictions and its requirement that platforms provide a thorough rationale for every content-moderation action violate the First Amendment," the appeals court judges found in today's ruling. It wasn't a complete loss for Florida, as the judges said it is "unlikely that the law's remaining (and far less burdensome) disclosure provisions violate the First Amendment." Florida can thus enforce those less burdensome disclosure requirements while litigation is pending.

Enlarge / Let's see, you landed on my "Google Ads" space, and with three houses... that will be $1,400. (credit: Ron Amadeo / Hasbro)

Google Play's in-app billing crackdown sure is causing a lot of conflicts with Android's biggest app developers. Google recently decided to enforce a long-standing Play Store rule that says Google Play must be the one-and-only in-app purchase provider for apps downloaded from the Play Store, locking out developers from using their own payment solutions.

The latest huge developer that is unhappy with Google's new policy is Match Group, the owner of Tinder and several other dating apps. Match sued Google on May 9 for "strategic manipulation of markets, broken promises, and abuse of power in requiring Match Group to use Google's billing system to remain in the Google Play Store." On Friday, the two companies reached an agreement to not restrict Match Group's Play Store access until the lawsuit concludes.

The two companies put out dueling press releases, describing the situation very differently. Match's blog post is titled "Google Concedes Key Issues on Google Play Policies," while Google has a more stern title: "The facts about the temporary Match Group agreement."

Enlarge (credit: Rob Engelaar | Getty Images)

This story was originally published by ProPublica.

On February 25, the day after Russia invaded Ukraine, a prolific ransomware gang called Conti made a proclamation on its dark website. It was an unusually political statement for a cybercrime organization: Conti pledged its “full support of Russian government” and said it would use “all possible resources to strike back at the critical infrastructures” of Russia’s opponents.

Perhaps sensing that such a public alliance with the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin could cause problems, Conti tempered its declaration later that day. “We do not ally with any government and we condemn the ongoing war,” it wrote in a follow-up statement that nonetheless vowed retaliation against the United States if it used cyberwarfare to target “any Russian-speaking region of the world.”