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An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.indiewire.com/news/breaking-news/spaceballs-sequel-amazon-mgm-mel-brooks-josh-gad-1235017862/

"Spaceballs" the t-shirt! "Spaceballs" the coloring book! "Spaceballs" the....sequel?

Yup. A source told IndieWire that Amazon MGM Studios is currently in early development on a sequel to "Spaceballs." Mel Brooks is returning to produce the feature, a direct follow-up to his 1987 "Star Wars" spoof. Josh Gad is also on board to star in and also produce what we'll call "Spaceballs 2."

[...] Josh Greenbaum, who directed "Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar" and this year's documentary "Will & Harper," is attached to direct the sequel. He's working from a script by Benji Samit, Dan Hernandez, and Josh Gad. Samit and Hernandez are known for working on "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem," "Pokemon Detective Pikachu," and the upcoming "Lego Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy."

[...] "Spaceballs" from 1987 starred Brooks, Rick Moranis as Dark Helmet, the late John Candy as the Chewbacca parody Barf, and Bill Pullman as the hero Lone Starr. In classic Brooks fashion the film mercilessly ripped off "Star Wars" and featured everything from heroes fighting with pseudo lightsabers extending from rings, characters using the "Schwartz" to save the day, and even Brooks playing a Yoda parody, Yogurt, who shamelessly plugged fourth-wall-breaking "Spaceballs" merchandise.

The film made $38 million worldwide but has become part of the canon of staples for Brooks acolytes. Brooks recently wrote the Hulu series "History of the World: Part II," a sequel to his 1981 sketch film. That series also featured Gad in one episode playing Shakespeare.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/07/dirty-diaper-resold-on-amazon-ruined-a-family-business-report-says/

A feces-encrusted swim diaper tanked a family business after Amazon re-sold it as new, Bloomberg reported, triggering a bad review that quickly turned a million-dollar mom-and-pop shop into a $600,000 pile of debt.

Paul and Rachelle Baron, owners of Beau & Belle Littles, told Bloomberg that Amazon is supposed to inspect returned items before reselling them. But the company failed to detect the poop stains before reselling a damaged item that triggered a one-star review in 2020 that the couple says doomed their business after more than 100 buyers flagged it as "helpful."

"The diaper arrived used and was covered in poop stains," the review said, urging readers to "see pics."
[...]
Amazon says that it prohibits negative reviews that violate community guidelines, including by focusing on seller, order, or shipping feedback rather than on the item's quality. Other one-star reviews for the same product that the Barons seemingly accept as valid comment on quality, leaving feedback like the diaper fitting too tightly or leaking.
[...]
But Amazon ultimately declined to remove the bad review, Paul Baron told Bloomberg. The buyer who left the review, a teacher named Erin Elizabeth Herbert, told Bloomberg that the Barons had reached out directly to explain what happened, but she forgot to update the review and still has not as of this writing.

"I always meant to go back and revise my review to reflect that, and life got busy and I never did," Herbert told Bloomberg.

Her review remains online, serving as a warning for parents to avoid buying from the family business.
[...]
On Amazon's site, other sellers have complained about the company's failure to remove reviews that clearly violate community guidelines. In one case, an Amazon support specialist named Danika acknowledged that the use of profanity in a review, for example, "seems particularly cut and dry as a violation," promising to escalate the complaint. However, Danika appeared to abandon the thread after that, with the user commenting that the review remained up after the escalation.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Opioids, like morphine, are effective painkillers but have led to widespread addiction and serious side effects like respiratory depression, notably seen in the U.S. opioid crisis that claimed nearly 645,000 lives from 1999 to 2021. Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz have identified a potential alternative, aniquinazolin B, from the marine fungus Aspergillus nidulans, which binds to opioid receptors and could replace opioids with fewer undesirable effects, after rigorous testing including over 750,000 calculations per substance using the MOGON supercomputer.

Opioids, recognized for their significant pharmacological effects, have long been used as effective painkillers. Morphine, a notable example first isolated and synthesized in the early 19th century, provides crucial relief for patients in the final stages of severe illness.

However, when opioids are used inappropriately they can cause addiction and even the development of extremely serious undesirable effects, such as respiratory depression. In the USA, opioids were once widely promoted through the media and, as a consequence, were often prescribed to treat what were in fact mild disorders. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were nearly 645,000 cases of mortality due to opioid overdose in the United States between 1999 and 2021.

And the opioid crisis has arrived in Germany, too. The main problem is street drugs and the fact that the synthetic opioid heroin, in particular, is cut with other, cheaper opioids, such as fentanyl. While a dose of 200 milligrams of heroin is fatal, just two milligrams of fentanyl can kill. In 2022, more than 1,000 people in Germany died as a result of the consumption of opioids.

Governments have introduced measures to contain this epidemic. However, opioid addiction rates are high. Others suffer from extreme pain that needs to be alleviated. There is thus an urgent need for safe analgesics. Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) – with the financial support of the Research Training Group “Life Sciences – Life Writing”, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) – have now made progress towards this goal.

“A natural product called aniquinazolin B that is isolated from the marine fungus Aspergillus nidulans stimulates the opioid receptors and could possibly thus be used instead of opioids in the future,” explained Roxana Damiescu, a member of the research team headed by Professor Thomas Efferth.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

North Korean nukes look like disco balls, olives, and peanuts, according to a group of scientists and researchers who study nuclear weapons. Newly released research puts the DPRK’s devastating stockpile of quirkily named nightmare machines at around 50. And it could get that number up to 130 by the end of the decade.

The world’s nuclear powers are cagey about the exact nature of their nukes. It’s a weapon you want everyone to know you have, but you don’t necessarily want them to know how many.

Enter the Federation of American Scientists [FAS], a U.S. nonprofit that attempts to use science to make the world a better place. One of its big projects is the Nuclear Notebook, a constantly updating list of the world’s nuclear weapons. Cataloging world-ending weapons is a challenge in countries like France and the U.S. which have certain amounts of transparency around their arsenals. In North Korea, it’s almost impossible. Almost.

North Korea was not always as closed as it is now. International officials did once visit the country and knowledge from those visits gave the FAS critical information that it used to suss out what, exactly, the DPRK is capable of. North Korea also does a lot of media events that create pictures and videos that help experts figure out the size of its arsenal. Kim Jong-un loves to pose with nukes and launchers in parades.

“Using these resources and other open sources, including commercial satellite imagery and publicly available reports from the [International Atomic Energy Agency] and the UN Panel of Experts on North Korea, analysts at independent organizations have been able to examine industry networks, locate key facilities, and map North Korea’s nuclear fuel cycle to generate estimates of fissile material stockpiles and production—all of which are key factors in assessing the size, sophistication, and status of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal today,” the FAS said in its latest nuclear notebook.

In its research, the FAS identified three kinds of North Korean warheads which it gave nicknames. There’s the disco ball, which the DPRK first showed off in 2016. Supposedly, this is a single-stage implosion nuke. Basically, it’s a big silver ball with a bit of nuclear material surrounded by high explosives. The implosion of the high explosives would trigger the nuclear explosion. This is similar to the nuclear device detonated at the Trinity site in Oppenheimer.

In 2017, Kim Jong Un posed with what the FAS dubbed the peanut. This is supposedly a two-stage thermonuclear device. A thermonuclear device consists of a series of nuclear explosions that feed off each other and generate a massive blast. FAS said in its report that the peanut might not be a thermonuclear weapon at all, however. This could be a device filled with tritium, which would improve the efficiency of a single-stage device.

In 2023, the DPRK unveiled photos of what the FAS called the olive. The small warhead appeared to be a single-stage nuke similar to the disco ball but designed to fit inside a variety of delivery systems. “North Korea’s display of different devices demonstrates an aspirational progression toward more sophisticated and efficient warhead design,” the FAS said in its research.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

NASA and Boeing engineers are evaluating results from last week’s engine tests at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico as the team works through plans to return the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test from the International Space Station in the coming weeks.

Teams completed ground hot fire testing at White Sands and are working to evaluate the test data and inspect the test engine. The ongoing ground analysis is expected to continue throughout the week. Working with a reaction control system thruster built for a future Starliner spacecraft, ground teams fired the engine through similar inflight conditions the spacecraft experienced on the way to the space station. The ground tests also included stress-case firings, and replicated conditions Starliner’s thrusters will experience from undocking to deorbit burn, where the thrusters will fire to slow Starliner’s speed to bring it out of orbit for landing in the southwestern United States.

For a detailed overview of the test plans, listen to a replay of a recent media teleconference with NASA and Boeing leadership:

“I am extremely proud of the NASA, Boeing team for their hard work in executing a very complex test series,” said Steve Stich, manager, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. “We collected an incredible amount of data on the thruster that could help us better understand what is going on in flight. Next, our team has moved into engine tear downs and inspections which will provide additional insight as we analyze the results and evaluate next steps.”

Integrated ground teams also are preparing for an in-depth Agency Flight Test Readiness Review, which will evaluate data related to the spacecraft’s propulsion system performance before its return to Earth. The date of the agency review has not yet been solidified.

NASA and Boeing leadership plan to discuss the testing and analysis work in detail during a media briefing next week. More information on the briefing will be made available soon.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Google will soon make its own contribution to the problem of link rot by shutting down the Google URL Shortener service in 2025.

The Google URL Shortener was launched in 2009 as an attempt to make lengthy links manageable by feeding them into Google's shortener, which spat out shorter ones in the form of https://goog.gl/*. Nine years later, Google decided to pull the service and direct users to Firebase Dynamic Links (FDL) instead.

At the time, Google said, "All existing links will continue to redirect to the intended destination."

However, as of August 25, 2025, any links built with the Google URL shortener in the form of https://goog.gl/* won't return a response.

It'll be a slow death for the service. From August 23, 2024, goo.gl links will show an interstitial page for a percentage of users warning that the link's days are numbered. As the shutdown date nears, that percentage will increase.

Once shutdown happens, the links will simply return a 404 response.

The interstitial links could be a headache in their own right since there is every chance they could interfere with a redirect flow. And this is why Google's advising engineers to transition those goog.gl links as quickly as possible.

But transition them to where? Google's earlier advice to move to FDL might have sounded good in 2018, but the company has since deprecated the functionality, and on August 25, 2025, the service will stop working, alongside the Google URL Shortener.

The challenge facing engineers is tracking down all the places where an affected link might be used; Link Rot – where links that might have once worked but now return a 404 – has become an increasing problem as the World Wide Web has matured. Decisions such as Google's will only serve to make the problem worse.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/07/crowdstrike-fixes-start-at-reboot-up-to-15-times-and-get-more-complex-from-there/

We're updating our story about the outage with new details as we have them. Microsoft and CrowdStrike both say that "the affected update has been pulled,"
[...]
If rebooting multiple times isn't fixing your problem, Microsoft recommends restoring your systems using a backup from before 4:09 UTC on July 18 (just after midnight on Friday, Eastern time), when CrowdStrike began pushing out the buggy update. Crowdstrike says a reverted version of the file was deployed at 5:27 UTC.

If these simpler fixes don't work, you may need to boot your machines into Safe Mode so you can manually delete the file that's causing the BSOD errors. For virtual machines, Microsoft recommends attaching the virtual disk to a known-working repair VM so the file can be deleted, then reattaching the virtual disk to its original VM.
[...]
Before you can delete the file on those systems, you'll need the recovery key that unlocks those encrypted disks and makes them readable (normally, this process is invisible, because the system can just read the key stored in a physical or virtual TPM module).

This can cause problems for admins who aren't using key management to store their recovery keys, since (by design!) you can't access a drive without its recovery key. If you don't have that key, Cryptography and infrastructure engineer Tony Arcieri on Mastodon compared this to a "self-inflicted ransomware attack," where an attacker encrypts the disks on your systems and withholds the key until they get paid.

And even if you do have a recovery key, your key management server might also be affected by the CrowdStrike bug.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

106 rare crocodile eggs are found in Cambodia, the biggest such discovery in 20 years:

PNOMH PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Conservationists in Cambodia found 106 eggs of rare Siamese crocodile species in a western Cambodian wildlife sanctuary, officials said Thursday, calling it the biggest discovery in the last 20 years, giving new hope for the world's rarest crocodile species' survival in the wild.

The group discovered the species eggs in Cardamom National Park in May. Between June 27 and 30, a total of 60 eggs were successfully hatched, according to a joint statement issued by the ministries of agriculture and environment along with the conservation group Fauna & Flora.

"This discovery indicates that the area is a key habitat for wild crocodiles, providing hope for the species recovery," the statement said.

The area and the young reptiles have been under the protection of Cardamom National Park Wildlife Sanctuary rangers, it added.

The crocodile species was once widespread across Southeast Asia but is now listed as critically endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. It had all but disappeared by the 1990s due to a combination of poaching, habitat destruction and crossbreeding with other crocodile species.

Cambodian environment minister, Eang Sophalleth, said his ministry is working on the conservation and habitat restoration of these critically endangered Siamese crocodiles.

"The Siamese crocodiles play an important role in the ecosystem and the discovery of the five nets successfully hatching 60 eggs reflects that the Cardamom National Park is a safe and suitable habitat for this species," Sophalleth said in Thursday's statement.

It's believed only about 1,000 Siamese crocodiles remain in the wild, with more than 300 of them in Cambodia.

In 2017, wildlife researchers found six eggs in Sre Ambel district in the southern province of Koh Kong as they were exploring for tracks and signs of the reptile. Later in September 2021, eight hatchlings were found by conservationists in a river in the Srepok wildlife sanctuary in eastern Cambodia which raised hopes for its survival in the wild.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Researchers at the University of Tokyo and RIKEN have discovered that ferromagnetism can be induced by increasing particle motility in quantum systems, where repulsive forces between atoms maintain the order.

Researchers Kazuaki Takasan and Kyogo Kawaguchi from the University of Tokyo, along with Kyosuke Adachi from RIKEN, Japan’s largest comprehensive research institution, have shown that ferromagnetism, an ordered state of atoms, can be induced by increasing particle motility and that repulsive forces between atoms are sufficient to maintain it.

The discovery not only extends the concept of active matter to quantum systems but also contributes to the development of novel technologies that rely on the magnetic properties of particles, such as magnetic memory and quantum computing. The findings were published in the journal Physical Review Research.

Flocking birds, swarming bacteria, cellular flows. These are all examples of active matter, a state in which individual agents, such as birds, bacteria, or cells, self-organize. The agents change from a disordered to an ordered state in what is called a “phase transition.” As a result, they move together in an organized fashion without an external controller.

“Previous studies have shown that the concept of active matter can apply to a wide range of scales, from nanometers (biomolecules) to meters (animals),” says Takasan, the first author. “However, it has not been known whether the physics of active matter can be applied usefully in the quantum regime. We wanted to fill in that gap.”

[...] “It was surprising at first to find that the ordering can appear without elaborate interactions between the agents in the quantum model,” Takasan reflects on the finding. “It was different from what was expected based on biophysical models.”

The researcher took a multi-faceted approach to ensure their finding was not a fluke. Thankfully, the results of computer simulations, mean-field theory, a statistical theory of particles, and mathematical proofs based on linear algebra were all consistent. This strengthened the reliability of their finding, the first step in a new line of research.

“The extension of active matter to the quantum world has only recently begun, and many aspects are still open,” says Takasan. “We would like to further develop the theory of quantum active matter and reveal its universal properties.”

Reference: “Activity-induced ferromagnetism in one-dimensional quantum many-body systems” by Kazuaki Takasan, Kyosuke Adachi and Kyogo Kawaguchi, 26 April 2024, Physical Review Research. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevResearch.6.023096

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The European Space Agency has begun work on a planetary defence mission that will intercept an asteroid predicted to come within 32,000km of Earth in 2029.

The Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety (RAMSES) mission targets asteroid 99942, aka Apophis, which is about 375 meters wide – the length of 30 giant squid – and expected to pass closer to Earth than some geosynchronous satellites.

"Astronomers have ruled out any chance that the asteroid will collide with our planet for at least the next 100 years," explained the ESA, which added that another rock of this size typically would not approach so closely for another 5,000 to 10,000 years.

This fly-by is therefore an opportunity to observe Apophis in the hope doing so helps humanity to learn how future visitors of this sort might be deflected.

The ESA's Space Safety program – its team dedicated to gathering and publishing info about threats from space – green-lit initial work on the mission on Tuesday, meaning the agency can "kickstart mission prep using current resources," according to ESA director general Josef Aschbacher.

[...] Should the mission receive full support, Ramses will launch in April 2028, rendezvous with Apophis beginning in February 2029, and accompany it through its flyby set to occur two months later. Researchers will use the opportunity to study the effect of Earth's gravity on the asteroid.

"All we need to do is watch as Apophis is stretched and squeezed by strong tidal forces that may trigger landslides and other disturbances and reveal new material from beneath the surface," explained France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) director Patrick Michel.

A suite of scientific instruments will do the "watching" by measuring asteroid shape, surface, orbit, rotation and orientation before and after the flyby, as well as asteroid composition, interior structure, cohesion, mass, density, and porosity.

ESA expects measuring those properties will reveal some secrets on how best to knock a future object off course, and perhaps also offer insights into the formation of the Solar System.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Memory, or the ability to store information in a readily accessible way, is an essential operation in both computers and human brains. However, there are key differences in how they process information. While the human brain performs computations directly on stored data, computers must transfer data between a memory unit and a central processing unit (CPU). This inefficient separation, known as the von Neumann bottleneck, contributes to the rising energy costs of computers.

The von Neumann bottleneck is a fundamental limitation in computer architecture, named after the mathematician and physicist John von Neumann. It arises from the design of the von Neumann architecture, which uses a single bus for both data and instructions to be fetched from memory. This creates a communication bottleneck because the CPU can either retrieve data or instructions at any given time, but not both simultaneously. Consequently, the speed of data processing is constrained by the memory bandwidth, leading to inefficiencies and slower overall system performance. This bottleneck has driven the development of alternative architectures and optimization techniques to improve data throughput and computational speed.

For over 50 years, researchers have been working on the concept of a memristor (memory resistor), an electronic component that can both compute and store data, much like a synapse. Aleksandra Radenovic of the Laboratory of Nanoscale Biology (LBEN) at EPFL’s School of Engineering set her sight on something even more ambitious: a functional nanofluidic memristive device that relies on ions, rather than electrons and their oppositely charged counterparts (holes). This approach would mimic the human brain’s way of processing information more closely and is therefore more energy-efficient.

Radenovic says, “Memristors have already been used to build electronic neural networks, but our goal is to build a nanofluidic neural network that takes advantage of changes in ion concentrations, similar to living organisms.”

“We have fabricated a new nanofluidic device for memory applications that is significantly more scalable and much more performant than previous attempts,” says LBEN postdoctoral researcher Théo Emmerich. “This has enabled us, for the very first time, to connect two such ‘artificial synapses’, paving the way for the design of brain-inspired liquid hardware.” The research has recently been published in Nature Electronics.

[Ed. comment: This story has been updated with a recent decision from MLB]

"dalek" writes:

What do Don Denkinger and Jim Joyce have in common? If you're a baseball fan, you might recognize them as umpires who are known for famously missing a critical call late in a game on national TV. Before Major League Baseball (MLB) embraced video-assisted replay (VAR), which it resisted long after other sports like football had demonstrated that replaces could be used successfully, there was no way to reverse the missed calls. Even after MLB finally allowed VAR to be used, by far the most frequent call in a game still cannot be reviewed: whether a pitch is a ball or strike.

The technology to track the fight of a baseball and reliably determine balls and strikes has been in use for a couple of decades. Systems like QuesTec, PITCHf/x, and Statcast can accurately track the flight of a baseball and determine whether its trajectory crossed the strike zone when it reached home plate. Statcast not only determines each pitch's horizontal and vertical location when it crossed the plate, but a plethora of other data like the pitcher's release point in three dimensions, the velocity when the pitch left the pitcher's hand, it's spin axis and rate, the pitch's acceleration in three dimensions, and a classification of the pitch type. Despite the capability to accurately call balls and strikes automatically, MLB still relies solely on human umpires this call.

The horizontal location of the strike zone is identical for every pitch, requiring that some portion of the baseball pass above home plate. However, the vertical location is defined as being from the bottom of the hitter's kneecap to the midpoint between the top of the hitter's pants and the hitter's shoulders. This is affected by the hitter's height, body shape, and their batting stance. A hitter won't have exactly the same batting stance on any two pitches, so the actual strike zone varies slightly from pitch to pitch, even for the same hitter. This data is determined by Statcast while the pitch is in flight, and is recorded in the sz_bot (bottom of the strike zone in feet above ground) and sz_top (the top, with the same units) fields in Statcast data. The flight of the baseball is currently tracked by 12 Hawk-Eye cameras stationed throughout each stadium, five of which operate at 300 frames per second. The images from the different cameras can be used to pinpoint the location of the baseball within a few millimeters. The same type of camera is used for VAR in tennis matches to determine if a ball was out of bounds.

Breaking: CrowdStrike code update bricking Windows machines around the world

c0lo writes:

Announcement

UPDATED An update to a product from infosec vendor CrowdStrike is bricking computers running Windows.

The Register has found numerous accounts of Windows 10 PCs crashing, displaying the Blue Screen of Death, then being unable to reboot.

"We're seeing BSOD Org wide that are being caused by csagent.sys, and it's taking down critical services. I'll open a ticket, but this is a big deal," wrote one user.

Forums report that Crowdstrike has issued an advisory with a URL that includes the text "Tech-Alert-Windows-crashes-related-to-Falcon-Sensor-2024-07-19" – but it's behind a regwall that only customers can access.

An apparent screenshot of that article reads "CrowdStrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows hosts related to the Falcon Sensor. Symptoms include hosts experiencing a bugcheck\blue screen error related to the Falcon Sensor."

CrowdStrike's engineers are working on the issue.

Falcon Sensor is an agent that CrowdStrike claims "blocks attacks on your systems while capturing and recording activity as it happens to detect threats fast."

Right now, however, the sensor appears to be the threat.

This is a developing story and The Register will update it as new info comes to hand. ®

Updated at 0730 UTC to add Brody Nisbet, CrowdStrike's chief threat hunter, has confirmed the issue and on X posted the following:

There is a faulty channel file, so not quite an update. There is a workaround... 1. Boot Windows into Safe Mode or WRE. 2. Go to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike 3. Locate and delete file matching "C-00000291*.sys" 4. Boot normally.

In a later post he wrote "That workaround won't help everyone though and I've no further actionable help to provide at the minute".
More to come as the situation evolves ...

In Australia, CrowdStrike IT outage hits airports, banks, supermarkets as emergency committee meets

A major network outage has affected several Australian institutions and businesses, including multiple airports, the Commonwealth Bank, Optus, Australia Post and Woolworths.

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

Major Global IT Outage Grounds Planes and Blocks Media Worldwide

upstart writes:

Airports and other key infrastructure sites around the world have reported disruptions amid problems with communications:

Disruption to air traffic control systems is being reported around the world. Preliminary reports say a computer glitch may be causing the problem. Issues have arisen in the US, Spain, Germany, Australia, and elsewhere, with authorities forced to cancel takeoffs and landings due to safety concerns.

The outage was first reported about midnight CET on Thursday night/Friday.

The failure may have been caused by a software update that locks Microsoft operating systems and is reportedly not restricted to airlines. Some banks, emergency services, broadcasters, and financial institutions are also said to have been affected.

Computers using Windows 10 OS are reportedly crashing and showing "the blue screen of death" (BSOD) after an update for a security product provided by the firm CrowdStrike. The company is reportedly working on resolving the issue.

Brody Nisbet, CrowdStrike's chief threat hunter, has offered a workaround to deal with what he called a "faulty channel file" related to the Falcon Sensor cybersecurity app.

See also:

• Crowdstrike and Microsoft: What we know about global IT outage
• RT

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Entri, which offers a tool for automatically connecting SaaS applications to custom domains via DNS configurations, said [PDF] in a lawsuit, filed in federal court in Virginia, USA, that GoDaddy initially embraced the success of Entri Connect before abruptly reversing course in favor of forcing folks to use GoDaddy's own DNS record update tool Domain Connect.

"Shortly after Entri Connect's launch, GoDaddy saw the value of Entri Connect and the two companies entered a partnership together," Entri's lawyers said in the complaint, submitted this month. "But as Entri grew in popularity, GoDaddy saw an opportunity to use its tremendous size to its advantage."

Entri alleges that GoDaddy changed its stance on the partnership late last year, first telling customers that Entri Connect could no longer be used to update GoDaddy-registered domains, and then updating its terms of use to block Entri from updating DNS settings. 

GoDaddy also "implemented a series of technological measures designed to cause Entri Connect to malfunction when used by GoDaddy customers," the suit alleges. 

In place of Entri Connect, GoDaddy pushed its own Domain Connect, which Entri alleges is far less sophisticated and easy to use than its own tool. 

"While the Domain Connect protocol may currently be used to update DNS records with only four DNS providers actively using the protocol, Entri Connect may be used with more than forty," Entri said in the suit. The company also alleged that a GoDaddy representative admitted that "third-party software applications preferred to offer their end users Entri Connect over Domain Connect 80 percent of the time." 

Entri began life in 2021 - well after Domain Connect was initiated by GoDaddy. 

All of those allegations, says Entri, add up to GoDaddy abusing its market power to disadvantage a competitor, which it says is a violation of America's Sherman Antitrust Act. 

"Customers of GoDaddy's domain registration services are being improperly denied access to the full suite of choices when it comes to automated domain configuration," Entri argued, adding that it has lost sales, configuration volume, and revenue as a result of GoDaddy's move. 

Entri further alleges that GoDaddy has accused it of breaking the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by accessing the registrar's systems, violated GoDaddy's API terms of use, and committed a violation of US trademark law. Along with standard requests for injunctive and monetary relief, Entri is asking a jury to declare it hasn't committed any of that wrongdoing. 

GoDaddy told us it doesn't comment on pending litigation, [...] .

Original Submission

upstart writes:

FTC Warns Gaming Companies Over Warranty Stickers:

The Federal Trade Commission has sent letters to eight companies, including leading makers of PC gaming rigs, warning them that their warranty language is a violation of the federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (MMWA).

In a statement July 3rd, the Federal Trade Commission staff said statements that customers were required use authorized service providers or manufacturer supplied parts or risk voiding their warranty "may be standing in the way of consumers' right to repair products they have purchased." These "warning letters put companies on notice that restricting consumers' right to repair violates the law," said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection in a published statement on the FTC website. "The Commission will continue our efforts to protect consumers' right to repair and independent dealers' right to compete."

Requiring consumers to use specified parts or service providers to keep their warranties intact is prohibited under the MMWA, unless warrantors provide the parts or services for free or receive a waiver from the FTC. The agency also warned that such statements may be considered deceptive business practices under the FTC Act. Letters issued to gaming hardware makers ASRock, Zotac, and Gigabyte,which market and sell gaming PCs, graphics chips, motherboards, and other accessories, specifically warned about the use of stickers stating that warranties are "void if removed."

In recent years the FTC has increased its scrutiny of companies warranty-related practices and re-exerted its authority to enforce laws like MMWA and other federal laws. It issued similar warnings to six companies in 2018 regarding MMWA violations. A study by PIRG of 50 home appliance makers that same year found that "the overwhelming majority (45) would void warranties due to independent or self-repair." Then, in 2022, the Commission issued orders requiring motorcycle maker Harley Davidson and grill maker Weber to take multiple steps to correct violations of the MMWA including to cease telling consumers that their warranties will be void if they use third-party services or parts, or that they should only use branded parts or authorized service providers. The FTC said it would seek civil penalties of up to $46,517 per violation in federal court.

The agency has also appealed to the public and businesses for stories of manufacturers forcing consumers to use authorized repair providers and threatening to void warranties for those that don't. The Commission has set up a special link for warranty or repair stories and said it wants to hear about consumer experiences across a wide range of products  – from cars, kitchen appliances, and cell phones to grills and generators.

Original Submission