Month: March 2023

Warner Fights Unreleased ‘Scooby-Doo And Krypto Too!’ Leaks

After Warner Bros. canceled several upcoming Scooby-Doo films, fans of the iconic show wondered when they’d ever catch a break. On the back of reports that Warner may have also canceled the upcoming film Scooby-Doo And Krypto Too!, this weekend the entire movie suddenly leaked online. Warner’s anti-piracy team is currently attempting to contain the leaks.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

scooby-doo-sMost people born in the 1960s or later will be familiar with Scooby-Doo, the most recognized Great Dane in the world.

For those more advanced in years, think Enid Blyton’s Famous Five; four young people continuously run into mysteries and then solve them with help from a talking dog.

Scooby-Doo fans have been gripped by the format for more than half a century but the twilight years may already be here.

Scooby on the Chopping Block

Last August, David Zaslav, President and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, said the company had done a “reset” and would no longer release expensive films direct to streaming platforms. One of the first casualties was the almost complete Batgirl movie that reportedly went into company accounts as a tax write-off.

“We’re not going to launch your movie until it’s ready. We’re not going to launch a movie to make a quota. And we’re not going to put a movie out unless we believe in it,” Zaslav said.

Batgirl was joined on the shelf by Scoob! Holiday Haunt, which cost $40 million and was almost finished. Scooby-Doo and the Haunted High Rise was also canned along with Scooby-Doo! and the Mystery Pups.

With reports suggesting that Scooby-Doo And Krypto Too! might meet the same fate, this weekend fans were thrown an unexpected but tasty Scooby snack.

Scooby-Doo And Krypto Too! Leaks Online

South Korean animation studio Digital eMation began work on Scooby-Doo And Krypto Too! in 2021 and stills from the film appeared online last year.

Then this weekend, amidst considerable uncertainty, the question of whether the film would ever see the light of day was answered when the entire show leaked online.

Screenshot of leaked copyscooby-ss

Nobody seems to know who leaked it, much less why, but Warner clearly doesn’t want the film to be seen in public.

Warner Tries to Plug The Leaks

Whether the company intends to release the film or not, Warner’s anti-piracy department is now working hard to take infringing copies down, including on YouTube where fans uploaded copies obtained elsewhere.

scooby youtube warner takedown

Twitter users who shared the excitement (and links to the leaked film) have also been targeted by Warner’s takedown team. For reasons that aren’t immediately clear, Brazilian Scooby-Doo fans appear to be among those most excited.

One slightly over-enthusiastic Twitter user found their account hit with five successive copyright complaints, presumably after posting links to pirate copies.

twitter-scooby

The question of who leaked the movie remains unanswered but two discussion platforms have been repeatedly mentioned as candidates for the first upload – Twitter and 4chan.

Initial Uploader Anonymous

While anything is possible, a post that appeared on 4chan Saturday afternoon has been attracting quite a lot of attention.

In 4chan tradition, a user under the name ‘Anonymous’ posted a link to the film and a screenshot, then disappeared.

scooby-4chan

At the time of writing the linked .mp4 file has been downloaded close to 6,000 times but that’s from just one platform. Copies of the movie are now widely available elsewhere, including on various torrent sites.

Interestingly, the copies being shared via BitTorrent have a much larger file size than the 1.19GB variant linked by the poster on 4chan.

scooby seeds

The Lumen Database currently lists other DMCA takedown notices targeting a full upload to Archive.org and a copy of the movie hosted on a Google Drive account.

Whether Warner will be able to identify the leaker is unknown. Right now, it looks like they’ve got another mystery on their hands.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

New “Canary” channel will showcase more-experimental, less-stable Windows builds

More frequently released updates means more channels for public beta testing.

A PC running Windows 11.

Enlarge / A PC running Windows 11. (credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft started its Windows Insider program in 2014 to get public feedback on Windows 10 as it was being developed. Ever since then, the company has continued to provide regularly updated prerelease builds of Windows 10 and Windows 11 to preview and test new features.

Like many public beta programs, Microsoft has maintained different channels for different users, with periodic tweaks to each channel's name and stated purpose. Today, Microsoft is renaming one channel and introducing another one. The one formerly known as the "Dev" channel will now be called the "Canary" channel, and it will be where Microsoft tests its least-stable and most-experimental features (including "major changes to the Windows kernel, new APIs, etc.").

"The builds that will be flighted to the Canary Channel will be “hot off the presses,” flighting very soon after they are built, which means very little validation and documentation will be done before they are offered to Insiders," writes Windows Insider Program Lead Amanda Langowski.

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Daily Deals (3-06-2023)

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3 is an 11 inch tablet with a 2000 x 1200 pixel display, a detachable keyboard, and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 processor. With a list price of $379, it’s solidly in mid-range Chromebook territory. But right now Bes…

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3 is an 11 inch tablet with a 2000 x 1200 pixel display, a detachable keyboard, and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 processor. With a list price of $379, it’s solidly in mid-range Chromebook territory. But right now Best Buy is selling the tablet for $110 off, which makes it […]

The post Daily Deals (3-06-2023) appeared first on Liliputing.

Twitter API error broke the site today as Musk blames “brittle” platform

Error message: “Your current API plan does not include access to this endpoint.”

Twitter logo displayed on a cracked phone screen is seen through broken glass

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto )

Twitter suffered an embarrassing technology failure today that temporarily broke links to outside websites and even to Twitter's own webpages. The problem lasted for about 45 minutes or so.

In our tests, clicking any link brought up this error message:

{"errors":[{"message":"Your current API plan does not include access to this endpoint, please see https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api for more information","code":467}]}

Clicking that developer link didn't clear anything up while the problem was still happening because it brought up the same API error message. In addition to news articles and other outbound links, the error message appeared when we tried to click Twitter's terms of service, privacy policy, cookie policy, and other similar pages. Some images embedded in tweets were broken, and there were reports of TweetDeck being broken too.

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Thousands scammed by AI voices mimicking loved ones in emergencies

In 2022, $11 million was stolen through thousands of impostor phone scams.

Thousands scammed by AI voices mimicking loved ones in emergencies

Enlarge (credit: ArtemisDiana | iStock / Getty Images Plus)

AI models designed to closely simulate a person’s voice are making it easier for bad actors to mimic loved ones and scam vulnerable people out of thousands of dollars, The Washington Post reported.

Quickly evolving in sophistication, some AI voice-generating software requires just a few sentences of audio to convincingly produce speech that conveys the sound and emotional tone of a speaker’s voice, while other options need as little as three seconds. For those targeted—which is often the elderly, the Post reported—it can be increasingly difficult to detect when a voice is inauthentic, even when the emergency circumstances described by scammers seem implausible.

Tech advancements seemingly make it easier to prey on people’s worst fears and spook victims who told the Post they felt “visceral horror” hearing what sounded like direct pleas from friends or family members in dire need of help. One couple sent $15,000 through a bitcoin terminal to a scammer after believing they had spoken to their son. The AI-generated voice told them that he needed legal fees after being involved in a car accident that killed a US diplomat.

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E-Fuels: Wissing akzeptierte noch im November das Verbrenner-Aus

Der Sinneswandel im Verkehrsministerium zum Verbrennerverbot ist offenbar plötzlich gekommen. Nun beruft man sich auf nicht eingehaltene Zusagen. (Synthetische Kraftstoffe, Elektroauto)

Der Sinneswandel im Verkehrsministerium zum Verbrennerverbot ist offenbar plötzlich gekommen. Nun beruft man sich auf nicht eingehaltene Zusagen. (Synthetische Kraftstoffe, Elektroauto)