Two Washington Men Charged In Four Substation Attacks on Christmas That Cut Power

CNN reports:

Two men were arrested on New Year’s Eve for allegedly shutting down four Washington state power substations in late December that led to power outages for thousands across Pierce County. Matthew Greenwood and Jeremy Crahan have been charged with conspiracy to damage energy facilities and Greenwood faces a separate charge of possessing illegal short-barreled rifles…. The two cut off power to thousands of locals and caused at least $3 million worth of damage, according to charging documents.

Investigators identified Greenwood and Crahan almost immediately after the attacks took place by using cell phone data that allegedly showed both men in the vicinity of all four substations, according to court documents. Surveillance images cited in the court documents also showed images of one of the men and of the getaway car….

The two face up to 20 years behind bars if convicted of conspiring to attack energy facilities.

In addition, possession of an unregistered firearm is punishable by up to ten years in prison, according to a statement from the Department of Justice. But identifying the suspects was apparently pretty simple.
“When law enforcement served a search warrant on the home of the suspects, they recovered distinctive clothing pictured in the surveillance photos.”
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the story.

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Unpaid Taxes Could Destroy Porn Studio Accused of Copyright Trolling

Slashdot has covered the legal hijinx of Malibu Media over the years. Now Ars Technica reports that the studio could be destroyed by unpaid taxes:

Over the past decade, Malibu Media has emerged as a prominent so-called “copyright troll,” suing thousands of “John Does” for allegedly torrenting adult content hosted on the porn studio’s website, “X-Art.” Whether defendants were guilty or not didn’t seem to matter to Malibu, critics claimed, as much as winning as many settlements as possible. As courts became more familiar with Malibu, however, some judges grew suspicious of the studio’s litigiousness. As early as 2012, a California judge described these lawsuits as “essentially an extortion scheme,” and by 2013, a Wisconsin judge ordered sanctions, agreeing with critics who said that Malibu’s tactics were designed to “harass and intimidate” defendants into paying Malibu thousands in settlements.

By 2016, Malibu started losing footing in this arena — and even began fighting with its own lawyer. At that point, file-sharing lawsuits became less commonplace, with critics noting a significant reduction in Malibu’s lawsuits over the next few years. Now, TorrentFreak reports that Malibu’s litigation machine appears to finally be running out of steam — with its corporate status suspended in California sometime between mid-2020 and early 2021 after failing to pay taxes. Last month, a Texas court said that Malibu has until January 20 to pay what’s owed in back taxes and get its corporate status reinstated. If that doesn’t happen over the next few weeks, one of Malibu’s last lawsuits on the books will be dismissed, potentially marking the end of Malibu’s long run of alleged copyright trolling.

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Bad News for 500K Crypto Investors: They Don’t Own Their Accounts

“More than half a million people who deposited money with collapsed crypto lender Celsius Network have been dealt a major blow to their hopes of recovering their funds,” reports the Washington Post, “with the judge in the company’s bankruptcy case ruling that the money belongs to Celsius and not to the depositors.”

The judge, Martin Glenn, found that Celsius’s terms of use — the lengthy contracts that many websites publish but few consumers read — meant “the cryptocurrency assets became Celsius’s property.”

The ruling underscores the Wild West nature of the unregulated crypto industry. On Thursday, New York Attorney General Letitia James moved to impose a kind of order, or at least legal repercussions, on Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky, whom she accused in a lawsuit of defrauding hundreds of thousands of consumers…. And while Glenn’s ruling won’t affect FTX, whose terms of use were different, some analysts saw the ruling as spreading beyond Celsius.

“There are many other platforms that feature terms of use that are similar to Celsius’s,” said Aaron Kaplan, a lawyer with the financial-focused firm of Gusrae Kaplan Nusbaum and co-founder of his own crypto company. Customers need to “understand the risks that they are taking when depositing their assets onto insufficiently regulated platforms,” he said.

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Sony Says the PlayStation 5 Shortage Is Over

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The PlayStation 5 shortage is finally over — at least according to Sony. “Everyone who wants a PS5 should have a much easier time finding one at retailers globally, starting from this point forward,” said Jim Ryan, the company’s gaming boss, during its CES presentation. The company also announced that it’s sold around 30 million consoles at this point. That’s around 5 million more than the last time it released sales numbers in November.

It’s been a long time getting to this point; the PlayStation 5 launched in November 2020, and it wasn’t until August 2022 that we declared it “almost easy to buy.” For most of the console’s life, getting one required you to be either very lucky, relatively on-the-spot with drops, or willing to pay scalpers or Best Buy significantly more than the console’s MSRP. Even recently, the main way to get it was via a $550 bundle, which included the PS5 with disk drive, and a game — that’s fine if you were already going to buy Horizon Forbidden West or God of War Ragnarok, but a pretty steep markup if you were hoping for the $399.99 digital console. During the presentation, Ryan thanked PlayStation fans for their patience as the company “managed unprecedented demand amid global challenges over the past two years.”

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Using Your PS5 Vertically May Result in Hardware Failure

Razer Made a Soundbar That Tracks Your Head To Optimize Sound

The popular gaming tech company just announced the Leviathan V2 Pro at CES 2023, the latest addition to its existing range of soundbars designed to provide compact, low-profile audio for PC gamers. The Verge reports: Created in partnership with THX and Audioscenic, Razer claims that the Leviathan V2 Pro can envelop a user with “3D audio” by combining beamforming surround sound with head-tracking AI technology. A built-in IR camera can detect the user’s position, allowing the soundbar to optimize sound by adapting the audio beams to the listener’s position in real time. There are two modes available for the 3D audio feature: THX Spatial Audio Virtual Headset for stereo content that allegedly mimics positional audio typically found in headsets and THX Spatial Audio Virtual Speakers for multi-channel audio that fills a room like a home theatre system. Given this is a Razer product, it also comes with customizable Chroma RGB lighting effects across 30 different lighting zones — dwarfing the 18 zones you get on the standard Leviathan V2 soundbar.

The Razer Leviathan V2 Pro also comes with a subwoofer to enhance bass. A dedicated 3.5mm input for the subwoofer is included on the rear of the soundbar, alongside a second 3.5mm port for headphones, a power adapter port, and a single USB-C port to connect to your PC. The Leviathan V2 Pro also supports Bluetooth 5.0 if you want to wirelessly connect it to your computer or mobile device. Interesting features and funky lighting aside, pricing is going to be the hardest sell for the Leviathan V2 Pro. Starting at $399.99, it’s considerably more expensive than both the standard Leviathan V2 ($249.99) and Leviathan V2 X ($99.99), but you do at least get more ports with this latest model. The Leviathan V2 Pro will be available to buy from February 2023 (if you have deep enough pockets for the purchase).

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Saudi Arabia Jails Two Wikipedia Staff In ‘Bid To Control Content’

Saudi Arabia has infiltrated Wikipedia and jailed two administrators in a bid to control content on the website, weeks after a former Twitter worker was jailed in the US for spying for the Saudis. The Guardian reports: One administrator was jailed for 32 years, and another was sentenced to eight years, the activists said. An investigation by parent body Wikimedia found the Saudi government had penetrated Wikipedia’s senior ranks in the region, with Saudi citizens acting or forced to act as agents, two rights groups said. “Wikimedia’s investigation revealed that the Saudi government had infiltrated the highest ranks in Wikipedia’s team in the region,” Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn) and Beirut-based Smex said in a joint statement.

Dawn, which is based in Washington DC and was founded by slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and Smex, which promotes digital rights in the Arab world, cited “whistleblowers and trusted sources” for the information. There was no immediate comment from the Saudi government or from Wikimedia, which puts free educational content online through initiatives like Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, and Wiktionary. Dawn and Smex’s statement comes after Wikimedia last month announced global bans for 16 users “who were engaging in conflict of interest editing on Wikipedia projects in the Mena [Middle East and North Africa] region.”

Two high-ranking “admins” — volunteer administrators with privileged access to Wikipedia, including the ability to edit fully protected pages — have been imprisoned since they were arrested on the same day in September 2020, the two bodies added. The arrests appeared to be part of a “crackdown on Wikipedia admins in the country,” Dawn and Smex said, naming the two people imprisoned as Osama Khalid and Ziyad al-Sofiani. Abdullah Alaoudh, Dawn’s director of research for the Gulf, said Khalid was jailed for 32 years and Sofiani received an eight-year sentence. “The arrests of Osama Khalid and Ziyad al-Sofiani on one hand, and the infiltration of Wikipedia on the other hand, show a horrifying aspect of how the Saudi government wants to control the narrative and Wikipedia,” Alaoudh told AFP.

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Qualcomm’s Going Toe-To-Toe With Apple’s Satellite Messaging Feature

Qualcomm has announced that its new processors and modems will allow phones to communicate with the Iridium satellite network, letting users send and receive messages even in areas without cell coverage. The Verge reports: The feature, called Snapdragon Satellite, will be available in phones that have both Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor and its X70 Modem system, along with some additional radios. Phones that support it should be “launched in select regions starting in the second half of 2023,” according to the company’s press release, and there are several manufacturers working on designs, according to Francesco Grilli, a Qualcomm spokesperson who helped conduct a briefing for journalists. For now, the feature will likely only be available in flagship Android phones, as Qualcomm’s only including the tech in its premium chips. Companies that want to add it to their phones will work directly with Qualcomm to figure out the software and hardware, but they shouldn’t have to build new relationships with Iridium, according to Grilli. To the satellites, phones with the tech will look like any other Iridium-enabled devices. As for who will pay for the messages, “the cost of the satellite-based messaging service and dependent services will depend on OEMs and service providers and how they choose to offer the service,” according to Grilli.

At first, Snapdragon Satellite will be limited to use in emergency situations, letting you contact someone for help even if you’re in a remote area without cell service. According to Grilli, “Snapdragon Satellite leverages Garmin Response.” When you send an SOS, “response coordinators immediately see the customer’s Latitude/Longitude in their proprietary mapping and response coordination software to determine the appropriate agency to coordinate the rescue.” Qualcomm says that, eventually, it’ll support “premium messaging,” which will likely cost extra and will have to be implemented by OEMs, cell carriers, or other over-the-top service providers. So far, this isn’t something Apple offers; you can only send texts via satellite using its SOS feature.

While Qualcomm says the emergency service will be free or very cheap, it hasn’t provided details yet on how much it’ll cost you if you just want to be able to text your friends from remote areas, like a hiking trail, ski lift, or even a boat in the middle of the ocean. Once that service becomes available, however, Qualcomm says you’ll be able to use it with your regular phone number. (That likely won’t be the case for emergency use, but it matters less there.) […] While details are sparse on what it’ll be like to actually send and receive satellite messages, it sounds like the experience will be similar to Apple’s in that you’ll have to follow instructions on your phone to point it toward a satellite. According to Grilli, your phone will be able to predict where Iridium’s satellites are months in advance thanks to the way its constellation orbits the Earth. When you go to connect to one, it’ll use GPS and other measurements to determine where you need to be facing…

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Salesforce Guts Tableau After Spending $15.7 Billion in 2019 Deal

Salesforce division Tableau was hit harder than other units in the company’s largest-ever round of jobs cuts this week, adding to a major reorganization that signals the $15.7 billion acquisition hasn’t lived up to expectations. Bloomberg reports: Chief Executive Officer Mark Nelson was ousted from the data analytics division in late December and more senior staff were axed Wednesday as part of Salesforce’s announcement that it would eliminate 10% of its workforce. Job reductions at Tableau were greater, proportionally, than the company at large thus far. After a half-decade of fast hiring and large acquisitions, Salesforce is trying to cut costs and better integrate the companies it has purchased. The software maker, which lost almost half of its value in 2022, has been pressured by investors to improve profit. The job cuts made public Wednesday — about 8,000 workers — are less than half of the number of employees hired in the pandemic and followed the announced exit in December of co-CEO Bret Taylor and the elimination of hundreds of sales positions in November.

Acquisitions fueled the company’s headcount growth. Tableau, then Salesforce’s most expensive deal when it was bought in 2019, came with 4,200 employees while Slack, purchased in 2021, and Mulesoft, acquired in 2018, together brought another 3,700, according to company filings. The three deals combined cost almost $50 billion with the estimated $27.7 billion for Slack leading the way. Workers across these acquired divisions were pummeled by the job reductions, particularly in recruiting and customer success roles, according to company employees. Tableau is increasingly being treated as a visualization tool for data contained in Salesforce’s other services rather than a standalone program — co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff highlighted the new integrations in a December keynote speech. The division has trailed the rest of the company in sales growth since the acquisition.

Salesforce also plans to pare back its office footprint. The company currently has four offices in the Seattle area, more than any other city, according to the company website. Three were inherited in the Tableau deal. Salesforce declined to comment on whether it would be reducing space in the Seattle area. Asked about the effect of Wednesday’s job cuts on Tableau, a Salesforce spokesperson said the unit “is a vital part of our product strategy.” Tableau contributes to a product that “processes over 100 billion customer records, and helps our customers understand and act on their data,” the spokesperson said.

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