Author: Sam Machkovech

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.

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.

AMD CEO Lisa Su confirmed that this announcement slide speaks to three semi-custom wins in all. We know Sony is getting at least one of those thanks to PlayStation Neo news leaks. Who nabbed the other two? (credit: AMD)

During AMD's Q1 2016 earnings call on Thursday, executives from AMD estimated a 15 percent revenue increase in Q2 2016, plus or minus 3 points, and they cited three semi-custom system-on-chip (SOC) "wins" as the "larger driver" for that revenue. AMD estimates that these SOCs will bring in $1.5 billion in revenue "over the next three or four years." At least one of those three SOC deliveries will begin "ramping" in the second half of this year, with all of those SOCs launching by 2017.

The reason that news is interesting is because AMD's SOC products have mostly been the core components in small-form-factor games consoles in recent years, and major news leaks have connected one of those upcoming AMD SOCs to the "Neo" refresh of the PlayStation 4, which could launch as soon as October of this year.

AMD's CEO Lisa Su made it clear during the earnings call that these semi-custom wins were related to the gaming sector, describing "semi-custom business and gaming" as the "larger driver" of Q2's revenue growth. "If you think about the semi-custom business in the past few years, the third quarter is always the peak," Su told reporters. "It will be the peak this year, as well, but we're starting some of the ramping in the second quarter as we build to the stronger third quarter."

Convenient timing, HBO and Microsoft. Convenient. (credit: Xbox)

Last night while asking HBO's press relations team to look the other way and slip us Obama's copy of the Game of Thrones season six premiere, we also asked whether HBO Now would ever launch on a game console.

The video-streaming app, which lets users pay to watch all of HBO's programming without a cable subscription, has appeared on a number of streaming devices, but game consoles from Sony and Microsoft have been stuck in the old HBO GO days. For now, those users must instead steal passwords from cable-subscribing aunts and uncles rather than paying for their own a la carte HBO access.

We wondered if that situation might change in light of a new Game of Thrones season starting this weekend, as HBO has a precedent there. The company launched the Xbox 360's HBO GO app the same day as GoT's second season premiere in 2012. As it turns out, our hunch was right. With no advance notice, HBO Now rolled out its first console apps on Thursday, and they're landing exclusively on Xbox systems—both the Xbox One and the Xbox 360. An Xbox Live subscription is not required for either console.

We imagine this is the way the Xbox 360 would say goodbye to us if it could talk. (credit: Tomasland)

Xbox chief Phil Spencer took to the company's primary blog to make a hardware announcement on Wednesday, but it had nothing to do with recent rumblings about the future of the gaming console. Instead, Spencer came to bury its past.

"While we’ve had an amazing run, the realities of manufacturing a product over a decade old are starting to creep up on us," Spencer wrote in his announcement that Xbox 360 system production has officially ceased. Remaining 360 consoles will continue to be sold in stores, and Xbox Live-related services and connectivity for current 360 users will continue to function, but if you're looking to buy a brand-spanking-new 360 system, your time is limited.

Spencer's announcement didn't go so far as to announce how many 360 systems have sold in its nearly 11 years of life—which is probably because recent Xbox-related announcements from Microsoft have lumped in sales figures for both the 360 and the One to make the latter sound better. Still, we know the platform has at least surpassed the 84 million sales mark announced in 2014.

(credit: Intel)

Intel's Q1 2016 financial earnings report was paired with a major announcement of worldwide layoffs that will thin its global employment numbers by "up to 12,000" staffers.

The Tuesday announcement clarified that the staffing cuts will affect approximately 11 percent of Intel's global workforce and that the layoffs were meant to "accelerate [Intel's] evolution from a PC company to one that powers the cloud and billions of smart, connected computing devices." A "majority" of affected employees will learn about their status within 60 days, while other staffers will have to wait until 2017.

The news comes as Intel announced reduced revenue projections for the next full year, along with a search for a new chief financial officer. Current CFO Stacy Smith will take on a new executive role "leading sales, manufacturing, and operations" once his current position has been filled, but Intel didn't clarify the new position's name, nor whether it was a jump up or down the corporate ladder.

This is what Three-Eyed Raven thinks of your FOIA requests. (credit: HBO)

After multiple seasons in which Game of Thrones premiered on file-sharing networks before it officially showed on HBO, the network finally decided to lock down advance access to the series this year. Even if you're a credentialed member of the media or a very, very good friend of Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, you can't ask HBO for a copy of the season six premiere ahead of its April 24 premiere... unless you're President Obama.

Refinery29 author Vanessa Golembewski noticed a report about a Game of Thrones press event in which a showrunner admitted that Obama was given a DVD screener copy. That set off a light bulb in her head: "If the president—and by extension, our government—is in possession of a file, surely that file is subject to my request to see it as a US citizen," she wrote.

As a result, last Friday Golembewski filed what may very well be the first FOIA request specifically for a film or TV series delivered to the Oval Office. The author admitted she'd never filed an FOIA request before, which might explain her tongue-in-cheek responses to various prompts, including a diatribe about college loans and an "expedited" request chosen because "Jon Snow's life is very much in question."

Orphan Black's fourth season premiere aired last Thursday, so we're taking this opportunity to dissect the popular show's game-changing episode and how it may affect the series from here on out. As such, we've included some, but not all, of the episode's plot spoilers, which begin after the first big-bold text heading below.

You’d be forgiven for turning your nose up at the idea of getting involved with a long-running sci-fi series. It's usually somewhere around a show's fourth season that a producer or showrunner decides it’s time for things to shake things up. It’s the fans’ fault! They’ve already made it clear that they’ll stomach a show’s decision to bend the rules of science and logic. Surely they’ll accept just about any cockamamie twist, right? Let’s kinda-sorta kill Starbuck or add some Kromaggs!

Yet of all modern, long-running sci-fi out there, Orphan Black might be in the best position to endure such a shake-up right now. The clone-obsessed series stumbled through the earlier episodes of its third season last year, especially as it focused on boring villain Dr. Coady, and Delphine’s turn as a Dyad executive, and a bunch of other Dyad plot gobbledygook. Eventually, the BBC America and Space co-production returned to the source of its initial charm: its star. Orphan Black has always shined by mining world-collision moments for both drama and humorous effect, as various clone-carnations of lead actress Tatiana Maslany contend with the other clones’ idiosyncrasies (not to mention their odd friends and family members). Orphan Black got back to this, and it tied a surprisingly neat bow on some of its hokey clone-brother plots.

"Sam, how many times do we have to tell you: Stop putting expensive VR equipment down your pants!" (credit: Sam Machkovech)

As much as we love the latest virtual reality rigs for Windows PCs, playing a game doesn't always feel realistic. The Oculus Rift and HTC Vive track head motion incredibly well, and the Vive adds solid hand tracking, but the rigs are bad at other things you'll want to do once you feel transported—particularly any movement beyond the size of your office or living room.

So far, the solutions to long-distance VR movement have left us a bit wanting. Pressing a control stick to virtually move while sitting still in real life usually results in instant nausea, so that's out. "Teleportation" systems let users point at a spot in the distance and automatically appear there, which works fine but feels a little limited, while giant walk-simulation treadmills are too expensive, hot, and bulky for realistic home use. The latest solution, introduced by a game maker out of Boston, is the most realistic-feeling yet—so long as you're fine with sticking a plastic controller down your pants.

Video edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)

Walt Disney Pictures

Mowgli and his wolf-mother bid each other farewell in a touching moment.

6 more images in gallery

Does the film universe need two live-action, CGI-boosted versions of The Jungle Book? Apparently so, as both Disney and Warner Bros. want to dig their computer-animated claws into Rudyard Kipling's famed colonial-India screed.

WB's version, which will count as motion-capture expert Andy Serkis' directorial debut, won't see the light of day until October 2018, which leaves Disney's stab at the story as the only live-action option for some time. Lucky for us, this Disney-fied version doesn't just win by default.

Give equal credit to Jon Favreau as director and Moving Picture Company as visual effects overseers. They had to contend with some serious baggage—namely, Disney's own hokey, Kipling-crippling cartoon version from 1967—and still came away with a warm, touching, and jaw-droppingly gorgeous film that has somehow split the difference between family-friendliness and the book's original vision.