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A federal investigator uses a pen tool to pan and scan over photo evidence in Adobe Photoshop. (credit: CNN)

On Thursday, a CNN report showed exactly how a major 2013 online child-pornography bust went down. The case's breakthrough came from the kind of photo manipulation that happens on TV crime dramas, in which a horribly blurry photo is somehow magically "enhanced."

Homeland Security Investigations special agent Jim Cole showed CNN how a blurry photo of a bottle of prescription pills led to the 110-year conviction of Georgia sexual predator Stephen Keating. Though CNN described the analysis as "game-changing," the tools used to confirm the suspect appear to be relatively common.

In 2012, photos recovered from a computer by Danish investigators was handed off to the HSI's Cyber Crimes Center. Cole demonstrated that filters built into Adobe Photoshop were used to sharpen the text on a bottle—which was visible because a victim was photographed in front of a bathroom cabinet—to confirm a first name, the first two letters of a surname, and the beginning of a code for a prescription type.

Emperator Furiosa, tell us how being in this movie made you feel! (credit: Universal)

I saw Snow White and the Huntsman, so I should have known the sequel would be terrible. But honestly, I'm not sure anything other than 24 hours of tickle torture with demon-possessed muppets could have girded me for The Huntsman: Winter's War. It was like watching somebody make a cinematic suicide soda out of Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Frozen, Planet of the Apes, and (just for that extra wrong flavor) Ted Danson in Cheers. And the worst part? It wasn't made for the love of so-bad-it's-good things, the way a real suicide soda is. Nothing in this incoherent, bumbling movie feels genuine—except for that one part where a saucy lady dwarf hits on Eric the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth).

For those who missed the first film, the Huntsman series is a retelling of the Snow White story done in the "hard fantasy" style popularized by Game of Thrones. What that means is the characters are more emo. The evil queen Ravenna eats virgins procured by her creepy incest brother, and there's a class of characters called "Huntsmen" who are like fairy tale ninjas with axes. In the first film, Snow White defeated Ravenna (or DID she?). The new film is a kind of origin story about the Huntsmen, minus Snow White, plus a bunch of other things that don't add up.

So what makes The Huntsman so much more awful than other awful sequels made in a crass bid for cash? Somehow, this film manages to exhibit every single cliche of fantasy and science fiction sequels—then goes one step further into raw narrative incoherence. The movie begins with Liam Neeson doing a voiceover about how "you know the story of Snow White, but there's another story that happened long before." OK, fine, we're doing a prequel. We see the rise of the evil witch Ravenna (Charlize Theron, chewing the scenery so hard she's channeling William Shatner). There's also the en-evilling of her gentle sister Freya (Emily Blunt, looking puzzled that she's in this movie) when her boyfriend betrays her and murders their baby.

That's not just a sale for Amazon Prime members—it's a full-on restriction of Amazon's version of a product. Amazon's been applying this restriction to random products for a while, but thanks to major PlayStation 4 games being slapped with it in the UK, more people are noticing. (credit: Amazon UK)

When investigating an Amazon Prime member, the online retailer isn't shy about highlighting the many benefits that come with a $99/£79-per-year subscription. However, the Prime site does fail to mention one major "feature" to shoppers: on occasion, certain flash sales are Prime-only. If you don't subscribe to Prime, you can't purchase the item in question at all.

Amazon UK shoppers found this out the hard way on Friday when major PlayStation 4 video games Grand Theft Auto V, Far Cry Primal, Assassin's Creed Syndicate, Battlefield Hardline, and Rainbow Six Siege were put behind Prime-exclusive barriers. As of press time, you cannot purchase any of those games' PS4 "standard" editions directly from Amazon UK without a Prime subscription.

As videogamer.com reported, the games don't just receive a Prime-specific discount; they're wholly unavailable as direct-from-Amazon purchases without the subscription. (However, the videogamer.com report incorrectly states that those games' Prime-only status has been lifted for UK shoppers; it's still in place as of press time.) Thanks to Amazon's hearty third-party reseller options, UK game buyers can still grab the games in question at least.

(credit: Craig Sunter)

Most of us are by now aware of the harmful effect greenhouse gas emissions exert through rising global temperatures. As temperatures go up, glaciers melt and ocean levels rise. Climate change also exacerbates water scarcity worldwide.

Water scarcity significantly impacts agricultural productivity and food scarcity. These impacts will be felt the most in arid regions, where agriculture depends on irrigation, which represents humanity's largest diversion of freshwater.

For the most part, we think of rising levels of carbon dioxide as an environmental problem. But atmospheric CO₂ can also boost agricultural productivity by helping plants grow. How do these potential issues balance out? In an investigation recently published in Nature Climate Change, scientists have looked into the global implications of carbon dioxide's ability to enhance agricultural productivity.

Plastic bag flying through the air, American Beauty-esque. (credit: Getty Images)

Recent reports of an unidentified flying object striking a British Airways flight at London's Heathrow Airport spurred a wave of fear over drones interfering with commercial aircraft. But now it appears the object may have only been a floating plastic bag, according to British transport minister Robert Goodwill.

The Telegraph reports that Goodwill could not confirm the identity of the object that struck the British Airways Airbus A320 as it prepared to land last Sunday. The incident happened at an altitude of about 1,700 feet over southwest London, well above the regulatory ceiling for drone operations of 400 feet.

"The reported drone strike on Sunday has not been confirmed it was actually a drone," Goodwill said. "It was the local police force that tweeted that they had a report of a drone striking an aircraft." That social media message may have been prompted by fear of drones in response to recent British government reports of near-misses with drones by aircraft around London.

The federally run online court document access system known as PACER now finds itself listed on a federal docket. Its overseer, the US government, is a defendant in a proposed class-action lawsuit accusing the service of overcharging the public.

The suit, brought by three nonprofits on Thursday, claims millions of dollars generated from a recent 25-percent increase in page fees are being illegally spent by the Administrative Office of the Courts (AO). The cost for access is 10 cents per page and up to $3 a document. Judicial opinions are free. This isn't likely to break the bank for some, but to others it adds up and can preclude access to public records. The National Consumer Law Center, the Alliance for Justice, and the National Veterans Legal Services Program also claim in the lawsuit that these fees are illegal because the government is charging more than necessary to keep the PACER system afloat (as is required by Congress).

The groups cite the E-Government Act of 2002, which authorizes PACER fees necessary "to reimburse expenses in providing these services." The suit says that millions of dollars in PACER online access fees have been diverted to other courthouse projects instead. The system was once a dial-in phone service and became an Internet portal in 1998. Fees began at 7 cents per page, rose to 8 cents, and now sit at 10 cents.

On Friday, Volkswagen released a financial statement that it delayed for months while the company’s diesel emissions scandal unfolded. The company has now reported a record loss of $6.2 billion for 2015. Moving forward, VW Group also said it would set aside €16.2 billion (about $18.22 billion) to begin covering "technical modifications,” legal claims, and other fallout from the company’s cheating.

"The current crisis—as the figures presented today also reveal—is having a huge impact on Volkswagen’s financial position," VW Group CEO Matthias Müller said. "Yet we have the firm intention and the means to handle the difficult situation we are in using our own resources.”

After illegal “defeat device” software was found on 500,000 diesel vehicles from VW Group, the company wrote off approximately $7 billion in early 2015 to cover fines and other costs. Today’s $18 billion write-off includes that $7 billion.