Get ready for yet another ad-supported video service: Media center app maker Plex is gearing up to add free movies and TV shows to its app, starting with content from Warner Bros. From a report: Plex announced a deal with Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution Thursday, which will allow it to add a still-unspecified amount of the studio's movie catalog to its app when it launches ad-supported video streaming later this year. But Plex isn't just looking to compete with ad-supported video services like Tubi and Pluto. Instead, the company is aiming to turn its app into a kind of one-stop-shop for digital media, capable of serving up anything you might want. To that end, Plex has plans to begin reselling video subscription services via its app, and add transactional VOD, in the first half of 2020.

"You shouldn't have to go to a lot of different apps to get the content you care about," said Plex CEO Keith Valory in a recent conversation with Variety. "This is going to be the one place for the media that matters most to you," added the company's vice president of marketing Scott Hancock. Plex executives know that they will never be able to offer access to everything you might want to watch -- Netflix originals in particular will likely not be available any time soon. However, they are confident that they'll be able to serve up much of the rest, including movies, TV shows, podcasts, news and webisodes. "75-85% of the content you care about, you'll get in one beautiful app," Valory said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: With a statewide marijuana decriminalization ordinance set to take effect at the start of 2020, Cook County, Illinois is slated to automatically clear "tens of thousands of cannabis convictions" with the assistance of an algorithm, the Chicago Tribune reported on Wednesday. Cook County is the nation's second most populous county as well as home to the nation's third largest city, Chicago.

The Illinois Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act goes into effect on Jan. 1 and will decriminalize the possession of less than 30 grams (slightly over an ounce) of marijuana for those aged over 21, as well as create a process by which those convicted of possession of larger amounts up to 500 grams (about 17.6 ounces) can petition to have their records expunged of the charge. Expunged charges should no longer appear in background checks or law enforcement records. County prosecutors and California-based Code for America nonprofit have formed a partnership to use the nonprofit's "Clear My Record technology" to automate the process of clearing the records of those convicted of possessing 30 grams or less, the Tribune wrote, which Code for America says will save staff resources and expedite processing time. "Code for America founder and executive director Jennifer Pahlka told the paper that the process will come at no cost to the state and will be carried out without action needed on the part of the convicted persons," reports Gizmodo. "The biggest hurdle will be getting the records in a form that can be quickly processed by a machine."

"Marijuana cases that were charged along with other offenses" aren't eligible to be run through the automated program and will have to go through a manual process, the Tribune wrote.

Qantas airlines is now restricting MacBook Pro laptops from checked-in luggage on concern that batteries could catch fire. All 15-inch versions of Apple's MacBook Pro must be carried in the cabin and switched off, Qantas said in a statement Wednesday. The rule went into effect Tuesday morning. "Rival Virgin Australia went further on Aug. 26, banning all Apple laptops from checked-in luggage," adds Bloomberg. From the report: Australia's two biggest airlines join a growing list of carriers and jurisdictions across the world cracking down on the portable computers out of concern some could self-combust. The models in question are some 15-inch MacBook Pros sold from September 2015 to February 2017. Apple issued the recall in June, saying "in a limited number of older generation 15-inch MacBook Pro units, the battery may overheat and pose a fire safety risk." Singapore Airlines Ltd. and Thai Airways International PCL have already stopped passengers from taking any of the affected models on their aircraft.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Now, researchers have used carbon nanotubes to make a general purpose, RISC-V-compliant processor that handles 32-bit instructions and does 16-bit memory addressing. Performance is nothing to write home about, but the processor successfully executed a variation of the traditional programming demo, "Hello world!" It's an impressive bit of work, but not all of the researchers' solutions are likely to lead to high-performance processors. The new processor was made by a collaboration between MIT researchers and scientists at Analog Devices, Inc., who figured out a way to work around all the issue with carbon nanotubes.

The key insight by the researchers behind the new chip was that certain logical functions are less sensitive to metallic nanotubes than others. So they modified an open source RISC design tool to take this information into account. The result was a chip design that had none of the gates that were most sensitive to metallic carbon nanotubes. The resulting chip, which the team is calling the RV16X-NANO, was designed to handle the 32-bit-long instructions of the RISC-V architecture. Memory addressing was limited to 16-bits, and the functional units include instruction fetching, decoding, registers, execution units, and write back to memory. Overall, over 14,000 individual transistors were used for the RV16X-NANO, and the manipulations of the carbon nanotubes to make them resulted in a 100% yield. In other words, every single one of those 14,000 gates worked. It was also what's considered a 3D chip, in that the metal contacts below the nanotube layer were used for routing signals among the different transistors, while a separate layer of metal contacts layered above the nanotubes was used to supply power within the chip. The report has been published in the journal Nature.

French police, with help from an antivirus firm, took control of a server that was used by cybercriminals to spread a worm programmed to mine cryptocurrency from more than 850,000 computers. Once in control of the server, the police remotely removed the malware from those computers. Motherboard reports: Antivirus firm Avast, which helped France's National Gendarmerie cybercrime center, announced the operation on Wednesday. Avast said that they found that the command and control server, which was located in France, had a design flaw in its protocol that made it possible to remove the malware without "making the victims execute any extra code," as the company explained in its lengthy report.

Cybersecurity firms such as Avast, as well as Trend Micro, had been tracking the worm, called Retadup, since last spring. Most of the infected computers were used by the malware authors to mine the cryptocurrency Monero, but in some cases it was also used to push ransomware and password-stealing malware, according to Avast. As the antivirus firm reported, most Retadup victims were in South America, with Peru, Venezuela, Bolivia and Mexico at the top of the list.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The UHD Alliance, a collection of companies who work together to define display standards, has announced Filmmaker Mode, a new TV setting that's designed to show films as they were originally mastered, with as little post-processing as possible. Although the mode will affect multiple settings like frame rate, aspect ratio, overscanning, and noise reduction, its most important element is that it turns off motion smoothing, which creates that horrible "soap opera effect" that makes even the most expensive films look cheap. LG, Vizio, and Panasonic have all expressed an interest in including the new mode in their TVs.

Of course, it's always been possible to turn off this setting (we've got a guide on how to do so right here) but TV manufacturers have an annoying habit of referring to the same setting by different names, confusing the process. LG calls it "TruMotion," Vizio calls it "Smooth Motion Effect," and Panasonic calls it "Intelligent Frame Creation," for example. The difference with Filmmaker Mode is that it will have the same name across every TV manufacturer, and the UHD Alliance also says that it wants the setting to be enabled automatically when cinematic content is detected, or otherwise easily accessible via a button on the TV remote. Over a dozen high profile directors have expressed support for the new mode, including Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, and JJ Abrams.

According to Nikkei Asian Review, Google is shifting production of its Pixel smartphone from China to Vietnam "as it seeks to build a low-cost supply chain in Southeast Asia that will serve as a springboard for its growing hardware ambitions." From the report: Working with a partner, Google started work this summer to convert an old Nokia factory in the northern Vietnamese province of Bac Ninh to handle production of Pixel phones, two people familiar with the company's plans said. This is the same province where Samsung developed its smartphone supply chain a decade ago, so Google will have access to an experienced workforce.

The push to develop a Vietnamese production base reflects the twin pressures of higher Chinese labor costs and the spiraling tariffs resulting from the trade war between Washington and Beijing. The U.S. internet giant intends to eventually move production of most of its American-bound hardware outside of China, including Pixel phones and its popular smart speaker, Google Home, according to the sources. Under current plans, Google will shift some production of the Pixel 3A phone from China to Vietnam before the end of this year, the people said. For its smart speakers, some production is likely to be moved to Thailand, sources said. But the company's new product development and initial production for its hardware lineup will still be in China, they said. "Google are likely to keep some activities inside China. The U.S. company knows that if it is going to be serious about making hardware, it could never give up the massive Chinese market," one of the sources said. "However, they also understand that, due to rising costs and the macro-environment, they need to have production outside China for the long term in order to support their hardware manufacturing."

Steven Fabrizio, a top executive at the Motion Picture Association of America, has been fired following charges of second degree sexual abuse and blackmail. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a Techdirt report, written by Mike Masnick: Beyond being the MPAA's top legal attack dog for nearly a decade, the Sony Pictures email leak showed that Fabrizio was the mastermind behind Hollywood's Project Goliath to use MPAA/Hollywood Studio funds to pay for having state Attorney's General and news media owned by those studios, to attack Google to try to pressure it into some sort of "deal" with the studios. Fabrizio was also formerly the top litigator at the RIAA, and led its charge against Napster. Fabrizio was deeply involved in key copyright lawsuits, including the fights against Grokster, Hotfile, and Aereo. Basically, much of the history of "anti-piracy" litigation and "anti-piracy" efforts regarding the internet, was somehow touched by Steve Fabrizio. And, of course, the usual line that people would give in supporting these positions is that it was necessary is because "piracy is illegal" and so on.

Anyway, that's why it's a bit shocking to discover that Fabrizio has now been arrested in DC (and fired by the MPAA) for alleged sexual assault and blackmail. Variety's story on the charges is really quite incredible: "According to a police affidavit, Fabrizio is accused of threatening a woman he met on a 'sugar daddy' dating site. The police allege that Fabrizio and the woman had consensual sex once on Aug. 19, after which he paid her $400. After that, she did not want to see him again. According to the affidavit, Fabrizio sent numerous texts insisting on a second meeting, and threatening to expose her if she did not comply. 'I know where you live,' he allegedly wrote. 'I know where you work. Don't think -- Hospital would be happy to know that it's young nurses are having sexual for money / Same for your landlord.' Fabrizio allegedly used those threats to coerce her into having sex again, according to the affidavit. The police allege that he then sent additional texts threatening to tell her parents if she did not continue to have sex with him a couple times a month. The woman called the police. After arranging for another meeting, Fabrizio was arrested outside the woman's apartment on Friday morning, according to the document."

It's a design classic, but in these days of ubiquitous mobile phones, only 10,000 of the red kiosks remain on the streets. Can they survive the next decade? The Guardian: John Farmer, who describes himself as an activist shareholder, is a man with a mission -- to save Britain's red phone boxes. These were once a feature of every high street in the country, but now number only 10,000 or so (and half of those are decorative rather than operational). At the recent annual general meeting of British Telecom, which even in the age of the mobile phone has a statutory obligation to maintain a payphone network, Farmer demanded that more be done to maintain the traditional red boxes. It was a point he has made at past AGMs -- always, he says, to audience applause.

In 2015 the traditional red phone box was voted the greatest British design of all time, ahead of the Routemaster bus, the Spitfire, the union jack and Concorde. It was designed in 1924 by the architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. [...] There are still numerous Scott kiosks in central London, many of which have been listed as historically or architecturally significant -- a response to the destruction of many boxes by the newly formed British Telecom in the 1980s. Remarkably Scott's original wooden prototype still stands outside the Royal Academy in Piccadilly. Across the UK, more than 3,000 kiosks have been listed, including all the K2s, so there is no danger of them disappearing from Britain's streets. Neil Scoresby, BT's general manager for payphones, tells me a revolution in payphones is under way, reflecting the fact that only about 30,000 calls a day are now made from them. Over the next decade, most of the current 31,000 street kiosks (they are mostly ugly, post-Scott designs) will be swept away and replaced by three metre-tall InLink pillars and other devices that combine free calls with wi-fi services and are funded by advertising, but about 2,500 red boxes will be retained and converted for digital use.

The fact there were once more than 70,000 red kiosks and now only 10,000 remain on the streets suggests that a lot of boxes have disappeared. In the 1970s and 80s, many were melted down, but gradually aficionados such as Stamp fought back and the boxes' aesthetic (and indeed monetary) value started to be recognised. Since 2008, rather than remove decommissioned ones that have not been listed, BT has allowed local councils and charities to repurpose them under its adopt-a-kiosk scheme. More than 5,000 have been adopted.

McGruber shares a report from Popular Mechanics: Jessi Combs -- vehicle builder, racer, fabricator, TV personality, and all-around automotive legend -- was killed on Tuesday in a crash while attempting to break her own land-speed record in southeast Oregon. She was 36. The crash occurred as Combs was piloting her jet-powered land-speed car on the Alvord Desert, a dry lake bed where several land-speed records have been set. According to local reports, the crash happened shortly after 4pm local time.

Combs held the title of "fastest woman on four wheels" after setting a record of 398 mph in her jet-powered North American Eagle Supersonic Speed Challenger in 2013. More recently, she had piloted that same car to 483.227 mph in a single shakedown run in October 2018, though that run ended prematurely with mechanical troubles. (Governing bodies require two back-to-back runs in opposite directions to set an official speed record.) Combs was also a host, builder, and technical expert on shows like Xtreme 4x4, Overhaulin', Truck U, and Two Guys Garage. She brought about Velocity channel's All Girls Garage, and was a host and builder on a season of Discovery Channel's Mythbusters.

Unless your Xbox is set as your "Home Console," you won't be able to play any apps or games until Microsoft's Xbox Live service gets fixed. According to The Verge, the service is experience issues today, preventing a large number of users from signing into their Xbox consoles. From the report: The issues appear to have started around 3PM ET today, and many Xbox users report that they're unable to sign in to Xbox One consoles and access some apps and games. Apps like Spotify, Plex, or Amazon Video require you to be signed into an Xbox One console, and The Verge has been unable to access these apps during this Xbox Live outage. Netflix continues to work, but games like Fortnite and Destiny 2 won't work correctly without being signed into Xbox Live. "We've seen reports that users are having trouble signing in," says Microsoft's Xbox support team on Twitter. "We have teams working on it now! We'll update you with additional details as soon as we can."

YouTube must leave up some videos that are "controversial or even offensive" in order to remain an open platform, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said this week. From a report: In her quarterly letter to creators, Wojcicki addressed YouTube's perpetual struggle with troubling content and how to moderate it, saying that it's worthwhile for the platform to allow videos the company disagrees with. "A commitment to openness is not easy," Wojcicki wrote. She says that "hearing a broad range of perspectives ultimately makes us a stronger and more informed society." YouTube has long struggled with how to police and limit the spread of troubling videos, from containing conspiracy theories to stopping radicalization to limiting harassment and bullying. Most recently, YouTube was widely criticized for its handling of a situation in which a conservative YouTube commenter repeatedly made homophobic comments about a Vox host. YouTube ultimately decided that the homophobic language was acceptable because it was framed as commentary, and it took considerable backlash from the LGBTQ community both on the platform and within the company in response.

Travelers are increasingly being denied entry to the United States as border officials hold them accountable for messages, images and video on their devices sent by other people. From a report: It's a bizarre set of circumstances that has seen countless number of foreign nationals rejected from the U.S. after friends, family or even strangers send messages, images or videos over social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp, which are then downloaded to the traveler's phone. The latest case saw a Palestinian national living in Lebanon and would-be Harvard freshman denied entry to the U.S. just before the start of the school year. Immigration officers at Boston Logan International Airport are said to have questioned Ismail Ajjawi, 17, for his religion and religious practices, he told the school newspaper The Harvard Crimson. The officers who searched his phone and computer reportedly took issue with his friends' social media activity.

Ajjawi's visa was canceled and he was summarily deported -- for someone else's views. The United States border is a bizarre space where U.S. law exists largely to benefit the immigration officials who decide whether or not to admit or deny entry to travelers, and few protect the travelers themselves. Both U.S. citizens and foreign nationals alike are subject to unwarranted searches and few rights to free speech, and many have limited access to legal counsel. That has given U.S. border officials a far wider surface area to deny entry to travelers -- sometimes for arbitrary reasons.

An anonymous reader writes: For years, Microsoft used its patents as a way to profit from open-source products. The poster-child for Microsoft's intellectual property aggression were the File Allocation Table (FAT) patents. But the Microsoft of then is not the Microsoft of now. First, Microsoft open-sourced its entire patent portfolio and now Microsoft is explicitly making its last remaining FAT intellectual property, the exFAT patents, available to Linux and open source via the Open Invention Network (OIN). Microsoft announced that it now loves Linux and "we say that a lot, and we mean it! Today we're pleased to announce that Microsoft is supporting the addition of Microsoft's exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table) technology to the Linux kernel." ExFAT is based on FAT, one of the first floppy disk file systems. Over time, FAT became Microsoft's files ystem of choice for MS-DOS and Windows. It would become the default file system for many applications. Microsoft extended FAT to flash memory storage devices such as USB drives and SD cards in 2006 with exFAT. While FAT isn't commonly used today, exFAT is used in hundreds of millions of storage device. Indeed, exFAT is the official file system for SD Card Association's standard large capacity SD cards.

Now, Microsoft states: "It's important to us that the Linux community can make use of exFAT included in the Linux kernel with confidence. To this end, we will be making Microsoft's technical specification for exFAT publicly available to facilitate the development of conformant, interoperable implementations. We also support the eventual inclusion of a Linux kernel with exFAT support in a future revision of the Open Invention Network's Linux System Definition, where, once accepted, the code will benefit from the defensive patent commitments of OIN's 3040+ members and licensees." Specifically, according to a Microsoft representative, "Microsoft is supporting the addition of the exFAT file system to the Linux kernel and the eventual inclusion of a Linux kernel with exFAT support in a future revision of the Open Invention Network's Linux System Definition."

Apple is making changes to the way that Siri audio review, or 'grading' works across all of its devices. From a report: First, it is making audio review an explicitly opt-in process in an upcoming software update. This will be applicable for every current and future user of Siri. Second, only Apple employees, not contractors, will review any of this opt-in audio in an effort to bring any process that uses private data closer to the company's core processes. Apple has released a blog post outlining some Siri privacy details that may not have been common knowledge as they were previously described in security white papers. Apple apologizes for the issue. In a statement, the company said, "as a result of our review, we realize we haven't been fully living up to our high ideals, and for that we apologize. As we previously announced, we halted the Siri grading program. We plan to resume later this fall when software updates are released to our users -- but only after making the following changes..."

U.S. officials are seeking to block an undersea cable backed by Google, Facebook, and a Chinese partner, in a national-security review that could rewrite the rules of internet connectivity between the U.S. and China, WSJ reported Wednesday [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], citing people involved in the discussions. From the report: The Justice Department, which leads a multiagency panel that reviews telecommunications matters, has signaled staunch opposition to the project because of concerns over its Chinese investor, Beijing-based Dr. Peng Telecom & Media Group, and the direct link to Hong Kong the cable would provide, the people said. Ships have already draped most of the 8,000-mile Pacific Light Cable Network across the seafloor between the Chinese territory and Los Angeles, promising faster connections for its investors on both sides of the Pacific. The work so far has been conducted under a temporary permit expiring in September. But people familiar with the review say it is in danger of failing to win the necessary license to conduct business because of the objections coming from the panel, known as Team Telecom. Team Telecom has consistently approved past cable projects, including ones directly linking the U.S. to mainland China or involving state-owned Chinese telecom operators, once they were satisfied the company responsible for its U.S. beachhead had taken steps to prevent foreign governments from blocking or tapping traffic.

The doorbell-camera company Ring has quietly forged video-sharing partnerships with more than 400 police forces across the United States, granting them access to homeowners' camera footage and a powerful role in what the company calls America's "new neighborhood watch." The Washington Post: The partnerships let police automatically request the video recorded by homeowners' cameras within a specific time and area, helping officers see footage from the company's millions of Internet-connected cameras installed nationwide, the company said. Officers don't receive ongoing or live-video access, and homeowners can decline the requests, which Ring sends via email thanking them for "making your neighborhood a safer place." The number of police deals, which has not previously been reported, will likely fuel broader questions about privacy, surveillance and the expanding reach of tech giants and local police. The rapid growth of the program, which launched last spring, surprised some civil-liberties advocates, who believed fewer than 300 agencies had signed on.

Ring is owned by Amazon, which bought the firm last year for more than $800 million, financial filings show. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also owns The Washington Post. Ring officials and law-enforcement partners portray the vast camera network as an irrepressible shield for American neighborhoods, saying it can assist police investigators and protect homes from criminals, intruders and thieves. "The mission has always been making the neighborhood safer," said Eric Kuhn, the general manager of Neighbors, Ring's crime-focused companion app. "We've had a lot of success in terms of deterring crime and solving crimes that would otherwise not be solved as quickly."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: North Carolina is aggressively going after the vaping industry for what the state sees as its role in getting kids hooked on nicotine. On Tuesday, State Attorney General Josh Stein announced that his office would be filing lawsuits against eight e-cigarette companies, arguing that each purposefully targeted underage customers. The lawsuits follow a similar one filed by Stein's office against the vaping giant Juul in May. According to Stein, the eight named companies -- Beard Vape, Direct eLiquid, Electric Lotus, Electric Tobacconist, Eonsmoke, Juice Man, Tinted Brew, and VapeCo -- all ran afoul of the state's Unfair or Deceptive Trade Practices Act. They're alleged to have used colorful labeling and sweet flavors in their products to knowingly entice kids into buying them. They're also accused of failing to take even meager steps to prevent children from getting their hands on these products, such as instituting age verification checks on their websites. "One look at their marketing materials demonstrates just how egregious their sales tactics are -- with flavors like cotton candy, gummy bear, unicorn, and graham cracker, they're clearly targeting young people," Stein said. "To teenagers, the health and addiction risks of vaping are simply too high. That is why my office is asking the court to protect our kids by shutting down these operations in our state."

A lawsuit filed last week in Chicago accuses e-cigarette maker Juul Labs and Philip Morris USA of similar misconduct, such as illegally marketing nicotine-delivery devices to minors and deceiving consumers about the risks of vaping.

Google Hire is the latest Google service on the chopping block. The job application tracking system was launched two years ago "in an effort to simplify the hiring process, with a workflow that integrated things like searching for applicants, scheduling interviews, and providing feedback about potential hires into Google's G Suite," reports TechCrunch. "It was built mostly for small to medium sized businesses, with a price that ranged from $200 to $400 a month depending on how many G Suite licenses you needed." From the report: In an email to customers, Google says: "While Hire has been successful, we're focusing our resources on other products in the Google Cloud portfolio. We are deeply grateful to our customers, as well as the champions and advocates who have joined and supported us along the way."

On the upside: it's not getting the axe immediately. In fact, you can keep using it for over a full year; Google says it won't actually be shutdown until September 1st of 2020. Just don't expect any new features to be added. Google also notes that it intends to stop taking payment for the product in the meantime, saying in a support FAQ that customers will see no additional charges for Google Hire after their next billing cycle.

SpaceX launched its sub-scale Starship 'hopper' spacecraft on a brief unpiloted up-and-down test flight at the company's Boca Chica, Texas, test facility Tuesday, a dramatic demonstration of rocket technology intended to pave the way to a new, more powerful heavy lift booster and, eventually, crew-carrying interplanetary spacecraft. Spaceflight Now reports: Running a day late because of a last-second technical glitch, the squat Starhopper's powerful methane-fueled Raptor engine thundered to life at 6:02 p.m. EDT, pushing the stubby test vehicle straight up into a clear blue sky atop a jet of flame and a churning cloud of exhaust. The spacecraft, shaped a bit like R2-D2 from the "Star Wars" movies, appeared to reach its FAA-approved 492-foot (150 meter) altitude limit, moved sideways and slowly descended to touchdown on a nearby landing pad. The approximately one-minute flight was the rocket's second "untethered" test following a July jump to an altitude of about 65 feet.

The hardware SpaceX is testing is intended for a fully reusable two-stage vehicle featuring a powerful first stage, dubbed the Super Heavy Rocket, and the winged Starship. The hopper is a sub-scale version of the Starship's propulsion system, the first to utilize a SpaceX-designed Raptor engine burning cryogenic methane with liquid oxygen. SpaceX says the new booster-Starship system eventually will replace the company's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets as well as the Cargo and Crew Dragon capsules used to deliver supplies and, eventually, astronauts to the International Space Station. In other SpaceX news, the company's Dragon supply ship successfully departed the ISS and returned to Earth Tuesday to conclude its third round-trip flight to the orbiting research outpost, bringing home a spacesuit, mice and numerous experiments.