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This weekend, members of the UK’s Conservative Party kicked off their annual conference in Birmingham, using the event to highlight their plans and priorities for the coming year. This year’s event had a rocky start: its official app allowed users to access personal contact information of other attendees, without a password. According to the BBC , the app had a button that allowed users to press a button and enter an attendee’s e-mail address, which gave them access without prompting them for a password. Several attendees reported that they were not only able to access non-public information in the accounts of various party members such as phone numbers and e-mail addresses , but they could also change said information . Various high-profile cabinet members had their accounts vandalized, while two cabinet members reportedly received prank calls because of the vulnerability. CrowdComms, the company behind the app released a statement this morning , apologizing for the oversight and

Saturday Night Live returned for its 44th season this weekend, with The Last Jedi ’s Adam Driver returning as host. While he didn’t reprise his role of Matt the Radar Technician from his 2016 appearance, he did jump on another cultural bandwagon: Fortnite . The sketch opens with Dad Driver joining a squad, explaining that his ex-wife’s new husband has been playing the game with his son, and that he wants to find a way to keep up. It doesn’t go well. Driver’s naïve character is truly out of his element, which makes for a fun skit in and of itself — running into walls and messing up the entire mission, but what really makes the sketch is the fact that SNL decided to forgo using game footage for the sketch. Instead, they reenacts the gameplay with actors Heidi Gardner, Chris Redd, and Mikey Day, who absolutely nail the look and feel of their virtual counterparts.

The third animated show from Dave Filoni Star Wars: Episode IX will hit theaters a bit over a year from now, and that’ll likely be the last film in the franchise for a while . But while we won’t be getting a film a year, TV will be the new big home for Star Wars . a live action TV show and a revival of The Clone Wars for Disney’s upcoming streaming service, and this fall, we’re getting a new animated show called Star Wars Resistance . The show will be set a couple of years before the new sequel era films, The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi , and is the third animated show from Dave Filoni, who created The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels . Star Wars Resist ance will follow a young New Republic pilot named Kaz, who is recruited to join the Resistance by Poe Dameron. He’s assigned to the Colossus, a base floating on an ocean planet named Castilon. He joins a racing team on the base, but his real job is to look a First Order sympathizer, and report back to the Resistance. Star Wa

October is nearly here, so it’s time to think about Halloween, and streaming services are doing their best to offer up a selection of the spooky, supernatural, and suspenseful. Netflix is leading the way with a number of original movies and TV shows coming to subscribers over the course of the month. Mike Flanagan’s TV series adaptation of the Shirley Jackson novel The Haunting of Hill House will arrive on October 12th, along with Apostle , the new period horror film from director Gareth Evans ( The Raid ). Chilling Adventures of Sabrina , the latest adaptation of the Archie comic, will arrive on October 26th, and it looks to be including a healthy dose of Satanic weirdness to differentiate itself from the 1990s Melissa Joan Hart version. New seasons of Making a Murderer and Daredevil will also be making their debuts — just in case viewers want something a little more traditional. Amazon Prime customers will have plenty of new programming, and while the new season of the antholog

Elon Musk has reached a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission on the charges filed earlier this week over his abandoned attempt to take Tesla private. Musk will have to step down as the chairman of Tesla within 45 days, and will not be able to take that role with the company again for three years. He will be able to remain Tesla’s CEO during that time. Musk has also agreed to pay a $20 million fine, and Tesla is being made to appoint two new independent directors to the company’s board. Developing...

The Minecraft universe is set to expand once again. Today at Minecon, developer Mojang revealed a new dungeon-crawler set in the blocky universe. Called Minecraft: Dungeons , the new experience is described as “an all-new action-adventure game inspired by classic dungeon crawlers, where you’ll constantly discover new weapons and items that will help you defeat a ruthless swarm of new-and-nasty mobs. You’ll fight or flee through canyons, swamps, and — of course — mines!” Dungeons is, naturally, set in the Minecraft universe, but it looks like it will offer a more structured experience than the sandbox building game. You can explore solo or play with up to four friends. It seems like a pretty natural extension of the best-selling Minecraft , which is no stranger to spinoffs, including the narrative-focused Minecraft: Story Mode . Minecraft: Dungeons is expected to launch next year on PC.

I’m not a huge fan of superhero movies, but some get so much buzz and seem to do things so differently — like Black Panther or Guardians of the Galaxy — that I’m compelled to check them out. That got me to watch Logan the other week, which is one of the only X-Men movies I’ve seen. And it’s kind of wild how unlike a superhero movie it feels. Mostly, it’s the visuals — replace the superpowers with real-world weapons, and little else would look out of place. It helps to make the film far more of a drama about Wolverine than a superhero story about a planet that needs to be saved. The intimate stakes helped with that, too. One thing I found particularly interesting, though, was how much the film’s plot mirrored Children of Men (minus the whole infertility thing). It’s about getting a special child to a mythical safe house and the dangers and sacrifices along the way. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but that definitely sounds like some common story trope; and it fits perfectly her

Telltale Games as we know it ceases to exist. The studio laid off a devastating majority of its staff — around 250 people — last week in response to financial troubles. Many of its projects are effectively canceled. The future of a few others, like The Walking Dead ’s final season, remain up in the air . Those who loved the studio’s work have been reminiscing over the past week, and in addition to fans sharing their favorite moments, many former developers have used the studio’s closure as an opportunity to share internal jokes. Campo Santo developer Jake Rodkin, who worked on the first season of The Walking Dead , posted several videos to a YouTube channel . Best among them is an, uh, alternative ending to the first season of The Walking Dead created by Sean Ainsworth. Spoilers, I guess? Another story shared by Molly Maloney explained one change that actually did make it into the final product. “When we requested the animation for Rhys turning off Hyperion monitors in Tales f

California Governor Jerry Brown has signed a cybersecurity law covering “smart” devices, making California the first state with such a law. The bill, SB-327 , was introduced last year and passed the state senate in late August. Starting on January 1st, 2020, any manufacturer of a device that connects “directly or indirectly” to the internet must equip it with “reasonable” security features, designed to prevent unauthorized access, modification, or information disclosure. If it can be accessed outside a local area network with a password, it needs to either come with a unique password for each device, or force users to set their own password the first time they connect. That means no more generic default credentials for a hacker to guess. The bill has been praised as a good first step by some and criticized by others for its vagueness. Cybersecurity expert Robert Graham has been one of its harshest critics. He’s argued that it gets security issues backwards by focusing on adding “go

There are more problems for camera maker Red’s first smartphone, the Hydrogen One. Company founder Jim Jannard posted today that the titanium version of the phone is delayed. The aluminum version still appears to be on track for an October release date. Jannard blames supply chain issues for the delay and the fact that the company’s outside manufacturers weren’t able to create enough devices to cover all the preorders. In the meantime, he writes that all titanium customers will receive an aluminum Hydrogen One at launch. Once the titanium is available, they’ll receive it, too, and can keep that first phone. This is nice, granted we have no idea how long it’ll take to receive that titanium phone. The device has been delayed multiple times now. It was initially supposed to ship this summer, which was then pushed to later in the summer , and is now supposed to be October for preorders and November more widely. We’ll see what happens as we get closer to the date.

This week we saw the two founders abruptly leave Instagram, so Casey Newton comes on the show to talk about all that drama and what it might mean for Facebook’s prized possession . Then Dan Seifert joins us to talk about all of the insane cameras that were announced at Photokina this year , plus all the models that were announced before the show even started. Finally, Liz Lopatto comes on for an impromptu This Week In Elon to discuss the fact that the SEC has filed a lawsuit against Mr. Musk , which happened just before we started recording the show. 1:28 - Instagram founders resign from Facebook 5:00 - 5 times Facebook messed with Instagram 20:43 - Whats App co-founder Forbes interview 22:32 - Former boss of Facebook Messenger calls Brian Acton “low class” 32:31 - Photokina 2018 recap 38:39 - Zeiss camera with built-in Adobe Lightroom 51:16 - Paul’s weekly segment “Space Egg” 56:07 - This week in Elon Musk: Live Edition™ with Liz Lopatto 69:52 - Oculus Quest

We’re just a few weeks away from the third season of Netflix’s Daredevil returning on October 19th, and the latest teaser is putting the spotlight back on the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen’s greatest foe (and the greatest part of the show): Vincent D’Onofrio’s William Fisk, aka Kingpin. Fisk was the antagonist in the first season of the show, and he’s a high water mark that the rest of the Marvel Netflix series have tried to meet in the years since, to varying degrees of success. But after being sidelined in prison for most of season 2, it looks like Fisk is getting out of jail, into his iconic white suit, and he’s ready for some good old-fashioned revenge. D’Onofrio’s take on Fisk remains a highlight of the Netflix show, offering a compelling version of the character whose magnetic personality often overshadowed the show’s ostensible protagonist. In other words: it’s a very good thing that he’s back.

This morning, Facebook disclosed a widespread security flaw that could have allowed hackers or other malicious third parties to access an affected user’s account by gleaning their security token. The flaw affected as many as 50 million people, and Facebook says it’s forcibly making around 90 million users log back into their accounts in full today to be safe. The company says around 40 million additional people simply used the exploitable feature since the exploit was active. It also says it’s fixed the issue and alerted law enforcement, indicating that this is not an accidental engineering mistake, but a purposeful exploit discovered and used by some third-party organization or hacker. The company says its engineering team was made aware of the issue on September 25th, but Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of product management, says it’s not clear whether accounts were compromised, when the issue was exploited, or who might have been behind the attack. “On Tuesday, we discover

The Nokia 7 Plus is joining the small lineup of non-Google phones to get an update to Android 9 Pie. HMD Global chief product officer Juho Sarvikas made the announcement in a tweet today. Outside of Nokia, the update has only rolled out to Essential Phones, eight Motorola phones , and the OnePlus 6 , which runs a modified version of Android 9 Pie, as well as Google’s Pixel phones. Android 9 Pie brings a range of useful new features, like adaptive battery, tweaked navigation, and improved notifications that cut out the clutter. What’s notable is that the Nokia 7 Plus will be the first non-Pixel phone to get the Digital Wellbeing features, which shows a dashboard of your phone habits and tracks app time usage. The update is happening in a phased rollout, and it will soon expand beyond the first 10 percent install base. The Nokia 7 Plus is a budget $400 Android phone that’s not officially available in the US but mainly targeted toward Asia and India. However, the Nokia 6.1, which actu

California has filed charges against a group of individuals who are said to have stolen more than $1 million from Apple Stores throughout the state. Seventeen people were allegedly involved in the burglary ring: seven were arrested earlier this week, one is detained, and the remaining are still at large. The group’s strategy was simply to run into the stores wearing hoodies, grab as many display products as possible, and run out. Each robbery took only seconds to execute, and in some instances, the group was able to grab more than $20,000 in merchandise. ‪Were looking for these five suspects involved in a commercial burglary last night before 9pm at the Apple Store in South Coast Plaza. Suspects fled with merchandise with an estimated value of $29k. Suspects’ description: males, African American, early to mid 20s. Any info, call our Detective Bureau at 714-754-5637‬. *The brave man at the end of the video that is trying to detain a suspect is an off-duty officer from another d

Every week we break down what’s good online Welcome to Fav’d For Later, a Friday roundup of our favorite memes, trends, and all-around good internet content.

A federal appeals court has ruled in Apple’s favor in a patent dispute with the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The court ruling, initially spotted by Reuters , said that that Apple didn’t infringe on one of the university’s patents, overturning a prior ruling in the university’s favor that had fined Apple $234 million . Another $272 million was later added to that fine to account for Apple’s continued use of the patent, but that will presumably be thrown out now that the underlying judgment has been reversed. The patent suit started back in 2014 when the university’s licensing arm — the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) — filed a lawsuit saying that several iPhone and iPad processors used technology it had developed. The university initially won in 2015 when a jury ruled that the iPhone 5S, iPad Air, and iPad mini 2 had infringed the patent. But today, a court said that “no reasonable juror” could have found infringement, which met the standard needed to overturn a jury

Spotify is emailing some users on family plans asking for their GPS locations in order to confirm that they live in the same location, reports Spiegel Online and Quartz . Subscribers that don’t confirm their home address could lose access to their plan, according to the email. The move is an apparent attempt by Spotify to crack down on groups of friends who save money on individual subscriptions by sharing discounted plans intended for families. The emails, which have been sent to a limited number of “Premium for Family” subscribers in at least the US and Germany, have been received with scorn by some who rightly point out that not all families live together . However, Spotify’s small print does say that the family plan is available for “you and up to five people who reside at your same address.” @Spotify Why do you need my GPS location to continue offering me a "Premium discount"? I pay for the family plan and it should not matter where my family lives. Will you canc

Yesterday I wrote about how differently Brian Acton and David Marcus saw the WhatsApp acquisition , and what it meant for Facebook’s future. Several others picked up on a different part of Marcus’ memo , though, and It’s worth noting as well. The section that caught so much attention is the very end: As a former lifelong entrepreneur and founder, there’s no other large company I’d work at, and no other leader I’d work for. I want to work on hard problems that positively impact the lives of billions of people around the world. And Facebook is truly the only company that’s singularly about people. Not about selling devices. Not about delivering goods with less friction. Not about entertaining you. Not about helping you find information. Just about people. It makes it hard sometimes because people don’t always behave in predictable ways (algorithms do), but it’s so worth it. Because connecting people is a noble mission, and the bad is far outweighed by the good. Ben Thompson says th