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Sony could end up spending more than 100 billion yen ($957 million) on the U.S. streamer, gaining its 70 million members around the world.

Sony has its own popular anime like "Kimetsu no Yaiba" ("Demon Slayer"), but has been licensing it to streaming services. Sony's Aniplex, the studio behind "Kimetsu no Yaiba," has a variety of content, including movies and music, that is mainly distributed by overseas companies.

If the acquisition is realized, global competition for content among companies like Netflix and Hulu will intensify.

About 90% of the US anime distribution market would be under one roof, and it’s going to be bad for everyone.

This is Sony’s plan all along: to monopolize the US anime market and complete globally with their only rival outside the US in Netflix.

This would be the trigger for people to go back to piracy and investing in physical media because monopolies kill.

The coronavirus is spread through the air, especially in indoor spaces. While it is not as infectious as measles, scientists now openly acknowledge the role played by the transmission of aerosols – tiny contagious particles exhaled by an infected person that remain suspended in the air of an indoor environment. How does the transmission work? And, more importantly, how can we stop it?

This is truly the best explainer I have seen, and it's embarrassing that a Spanish outlet is so much better in this field than most of the mainstream US media aka Big Journalism.

For this to happen, the app itself—or a proxy designated by the app—has to visit the link, open the file there, and survey what’s in it. This can open users to attacks. The most severe are those that can download malware. Other forms of malice might be forcing an app to download files so big they cause the app to crash, drain batteries, or consume limited amounts of bandwidth. And in the event the link leads to private materials—say, a tax return posted to a private OneDrive or DropBox account—the app server has an opportunity to view and store it indefinitely.

The researchers behind Monday’s report, Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk, found that Facebook Messenger and Instagram were the worst offenders. As the chart below shows, both apps download and copy a linked file in its entirety—even if it’s gigabytes in size. Again, this may be a concern if the file is something the users want to keep private.

Just another reminder that private messages aren't truly "private".

NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has confirmed, for the first time, water on the sunlit surface of the Moon. This discovery indicates that water may be distributed across the lunar surface, and not limited to cold, shadowed places.

SOFIA has detected water molecules (H2O) in Clavius Crater, one of the largest craters visible from Earth, located in the Moon’s southern hemisphere. Previous observations of the Moon’s surface detected some form of hydrogen, but were unable to distinguish between water and its close chemical relative, hydroxyl (OH). Data from this location reveal water in concentrations of 100 to 412 parts per million – roughly equivalent to a 12-ounce bottle of water – trapped in a cubic meter of soil spread across the lunar surface. The results are published in the latest issue of Nature Astronomy.

“We had indications that H2O – the familiar water we know – might be present on the sunlit side of the Moon,” said Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Now we know it is there. This discovery challenges our understanding of the lunar surface and raises intriguing questions about resources relevant for deep space exploration.”

So it's not for an existence of a "Kingdom" on the Moon? Moving on then, since that's the only news on the Moon I care about! XD

Of the 45 states that weren’t using mail voting exclusively before the 2020 election, 40 of them have decreased the number of Election Day voting locations from 2016. Of those 40 states who made cuts, 35 are not sending mail ballots to everyone, and 19 require many voters to take it upon themselves to apply for a mail ballot application. The five states that refused to allow mail voting for most people all cut voting sites, including the emerging swing state of Texas.

The net result of all of these changes: A 20% dip in polling places across the country from 2016, and a 22% drop since 2012. And while the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated this trend, it didn’t create it: There were more than 3,000 fewer polling locations in 2016 than in 2012.

Voter suppression at work, and both parties are to blame thus taking full advantage.

They’re back! The Warner brothers, Yakko and Wakko, and the Warner sister Dot, have a great time wreaking havoc and mayhem in the lives of everyone they meet. After returning to their beloved home, the Warner Bros. water tower, the siblings waste no time in causing chaos and comic confusion as they run loose through the studio, turning the world into their personal playground. Joining Yakko, Wakko and Dot, fan-favorite characters Pinky and the Brain also return to continue their quest for world domination.

Love the designs! Can't wait to see it.

Windows 10 updates now appear to run on a tick-tock model: The Windows 10 update in the first half of the year contains major changes; the update in the second half of the year holds only minor changes. As this year’s “tock” release, 20H2 doesn’t contain much in the way of new features. The number one change is the move to the new Chromium-based Edge browser, but you can download that at any time without needing to install 20H2. All the other tweaks are minor. In other words, there’s no reason to upgrade immediately.

Each major Windows 10 update has been tested to some extent by members of Microsoft’s Windows Insider program before it is broadly released to the public. Like Woody, I consider that to be the point when the real beta testing is done by you and me and countless other users around the world — including making sure it works with the applications we depend on. While it makes sense to test 20H2 on a spare machine, I do not recommend installing it on a machine you care about until we get a clearer view of any potential bugs and issues that may arise.

Fortunately, Microsoft doesn’t cram each new version of Windows down your throat like it used to. Here’s how to make sure you aren’t accidentally swept up in an unwanted upgrade.

PSA: the WIndows 10 20H2 major update has arrived and you shouldn't install it right now unless you want to become a glorified beta tester. Here's Susan Bradley and Woody Leonhard on how to block the update from installing.

Her online last words:

Hey everyone. It’s me again… So what now? Well… I’ve been given a little less than 7 weeks to live. My stomach cancer has spread to my lower intestine, and a new wrinkle, I’ve sprung a leak around my surgery scar. Sepsis sounds fun. Doesn’t it? So anyways, this isn’t a request for me, so much so that it’s a request for Heather so she can pay for my cremation and other things. If anyone could contribute, it would be super helpful.

From Heather:

For those who haven’t heard Maddie passed away on October 14th at 7:44pm. She is loved and will be missed by so many.

Maddie's one of the most courageous people that I have known online especially on the ADN years and she tried to stay positive despite her challenges and she'll be sorely missed around the onling and offline spheres. I'm just glad she was able to see her children one last time as she was devoted to them. RIP Maddie, you won't be forgotten. :(

Her GoFundMe page is attached fi you want to help pay for her EOL costs and funds for her children.

Author of the uBlock Origin extension, Raymond Hill, told The Register that Microsoft (and Google's) claim that the changes improve privacy is false. "They are not deprecating the Web Request API, they are deprecating the blocking ability of the Web Request API – specifically, the 'webRequestBlocking' permission. The Web Request API will still be available and still be able to provide information about all network requests fired by the browser … as opposed to what those announcements state, the deprecation of the blocking ability of the webRequest API accomplishes nothing privacy-wise for content blockers since they will still require broad hosts permissions."

Hill said that other features such as run-time host permissions (RTHP) and forbidding remote code execution (RCE) are more effective for protecting privacy, but that these are not done with Manifest v3, since RTHP is a browser feature and forbidding RCE "is a store policy issue, not an API one … those Manifest v3 announcements improperly attribute virtues (RTHP and no-RCE) to Manifest v3 which are technically unrelated to Manifest v3."

Hill also quoted the EFF report, which said that "the next time Google [or Microsoft] claims that Manifest V3 will be better for user privacy and security, don’t believe their hype … Manifest V3 will curtail innovation and hurt the privacy and security of Chrome users."

Not surprising, makes investing on NextDNS and/or Pi Hole even more significant giving the devastating changes to ad blockers.

Oddly, Apple is playing pricing games with the iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 12, which were marketed as priced at $699 and $799, respectively. But small print on the company’s website reveals that those numbers are based on “special offers” from Verizon and AT&T, while T-Mobile, Sprint, and unlocked carrier models are $30 more expensive. That means the actual prices are $729 and $829, respectively.

Even Apple can't get their ethics right on this. Plus, no charger on the box and you wonder why I switch primarily to Android phones in the last several years.