Month: July 2022

Enlarge / Eddie Munson plays guitar in Stranger Things season 4. (credit: Netflix)

Netflix has partnered with Sennheiser to bring spatial audio to the streaming service's original programming, including the recently released Stranger Things season 4.

"Spatial audio will roll out across our catalog beginning today, and you can hear it for yourself by typing 'spatial audio' into the search bar and selecting a show or film that supports it in the search results," a Netflix blog post says. The feature uses Sennheiser's Ambeo technology.

Spatial audio involves arranging all sources of sound in a model 360-degree sound field around the listener's position (in some cases, it involves vertical spatial positioning, too). Spatial audio then uses that data to deliver sound on various devices, including TV speakers or headphones that typically offer only stereo sound instead of a traditional multi-channel surround setup.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

On the last day of May, one of my inboxes began receiving emails, purportedly from one of the owners of the yoga studio I visit. It concerned a message I sent in January through the studio's website that had been resolved the following day in an email sent by the co-owner. Now, here she was, four months later, emailing me again.

"Listed below the documents we chatted regarding last week," the email author wrote. "Contact me if you've got any queries about the attached files." There was a password-protected zip file attached. Below the body of the message was the response the co-owner sent me in January. These emails started coming once or twice daily for the next couple of weeks, each from a different address. The files and passwords were often changed, but the basic format, including the January email thread, remained consistent.

With the help of researchers at security firm Proofpoint, I now know that the emails are the work of a crime group they call TA578. TA578 is what's known in the security industry as an initial access broker. That means it compromises end-user devices en masse in an opportunistic fashion, spamming as many addresses as possible with malicious files. The gang then sells access to the machines it compromises to other threat actors, for use in ransomware, cryptojacking, and other types of campaigns.

Enlarge (credit: Starlink)

The Federal Communications Commission has received more than 90,000 comments from Starlink users urging the agency to side with SpaceX in a spectrum battle against Dish Network. The comments were all submitted since last week when SpaceX asked Starlink customers to weigh in on an FCC proceeding that seeks public input on the "feasibility of allowing mobile services in the 12.2-12.7 GHz band while protecting incumbents from harmful interference."

Dish wants to use the 12 GHz band for mobile service and says that sharing the spectrum wouldn't significantly degrade satellite broadband. SpaceX says the plan would cause "harmful interference [to Starlink users] more than 77 percent of the time and total outage of service 74 percent of the time, rendering Starlink unusable for most Americans." The satellite downlink band used by Starlink extends from 10.7 GHz to 12.7 GHz. SpaceX says it uses most of that but not the 10.7-10.95 GHz portion because it's adjacent to radio astronomy systems.

The Starlink email was sent to users on June 28. There were a little more than 200 comments in the 18-month-old proceeding's docket at that time, mostly from satellite or telecom companies and lobbyist or advocacy groups.

Enlarge (credit: Justin Sullivan / Staff | Getty Images North America)

After nearly five days of jury deliberations, a unanimous verdict has been reached in the trial of former Theranos president and chief operating officer Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani. Balwani was found guilty of all 12 charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

New York Times reporter Erin Griffith tweeted that the courtroom drew the case’s biggest crowd while the verdict was read. Balwani faces a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison and fines of $250,000 per wire fraud and conspiracy count, plus restitution.

In 2018, Balwani was indicted, along with Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, for allegedly defrauding investors, doctors, and patients who bought into $9 billion-startup Theranos’ simplified blood-testing technology that proved too good to be true.

Enlarge / Jane (Natalie Portman) and Thor (Chris Hemsworth) are back at it in Thor: Love and Thunder. (credit: Marvel Studios)

Thirty minutes into the heartfelt silliness of Thor: Love and Thunder, a comparison dawned on me that clarified why I enjoyed this week's new film so much: In 14 years of Marvel Studios films, the company has never as successfully made an homage to Jim Henson as this.

At its most madcap, Love and Thunder giddily honors the likes of Fraggle Rock and The Muppet Show in terms of a rogue's gallery of goofballs and kiddos chewing up the film's gilded, Technicolor scenery. And at its darkest, it feels like a direct descendant of Labyrinth, as its villainy combines no-holding-back ruthlessness with some impressively staged shadow realms.

Most importantly, co-stars Natalie Portman and Chris Hemsworth nail the film's titular L-word in remarkable fashion. This action film knows that it's smothering a slab of rom-com peanut butter with ridiculous superhero-stakes chocolate, and the film's leads dance around this fact mostly in joking fashion while still threading the needle of building a believable, finale-clinching connection. (Comparing the results to Kermit and Miss Piggy would short-shrift their incredible work to some extent, yet the comparison also kind of makes sense, once you see the movie.)