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At the end of Steven Spielberg's 1989 film "Indiana Jone and the Last Crusade," Henry "Indiana" Jones, Jr. (Harrison Ford), his father (Sean Connery), Sallah (John Rhys-Davis), and Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott) have escaped the now-collapsed temple where the Holy Grail rests. Breathing a sigh of relief, they mount horses and choose to simply go home, literally riding off into the sunset. It seemed that was going to be the final word on Indiana Jones; it was his last Crusade. But, just like "Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare," "Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter," "Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday," "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier," and "The Final Destination," the promise of "Crusade" being Indy's final adventure was broken. In 2008, Spielberg returned for "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," a film that the director seemed painfully uninterested in. 

Because that film wasn't widely beloved, and because it had a weird premise (aliens), it felt like a whimper rather than a grand finale. It was sad that "Skull" was to be Indy's encore, and it simply underwhelmed. 

Hence James Mangold's 2023 film "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny," out in theaters on June 30. Ford, now 80, has returned to play the titular role, and, because of how time works, will be set in 1969. As seen in the new trailer, "Dial" will be a proper grand finale. The new film will contain a lot of familiar Indy iconography including Nazi bad guys, the return of Sallah, ancient stone tombs, and a plucky younger sidekick, this time played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

The Old Indiana Jones Chronicles

Like "Star Trek: Picard," the preview for "Dial" will catch up with familiar pop culture heroes as they round old age when they are ready to retire, but still have energy left for one final adventure. Indy is seen waking in a cluttered New York apartment, complete with a reclining chair and a small TV set. He takes the subway to work, utterly wearied by the colorful modern world around him. Some viewers may have been left feeling off-balance by seeing Indy in the 1950s in "Crystal Skull," and that cognitive dissonance will only increase with "Dial." Indiana Jones and the Rolling Stones are an odd mix; "Sympathy for the Devil" plays over the whole of the preview. The "hoo hoo" part will eventually be mixed into John Williams' famed Indiana Jones theme. If the makers of the trailer had chosen "Gimme Shelter" instead, one would be forgiven for thinking this was a Martin Scorsese movie. 

Then, of course, the adventure plot is teased. The Waller-Bridge character, Helena, is revealed to be Indy's goddaughter, and she mentions that Indy had once "found something on a train during the war" that made her father go mad years before. That "something" is the titular Dial of Destiny, a device that doesn't look unlike the widget from "The Golden Compass." Using state-of-the-art de-aging effects, audiences can see a younger Indy in flashback, punching a Nazi (Mads Mikkelsen) in the face. The technology has improved, as it certainly looks like a younger Harrison Ford. How it looks in the final film remains to be seen. 

Aren't You Glad You Use Dial?

Also like "Picard," a lot of the more exciting action seems to have been passed off to the newer, younger cast, and it's Helena who will be seen running across rooftops and behaving recklessly. Although Harrison Ford may be 80, it wouldn't be an Indiana Jones film without him doing a lot of fleeing, and "Dial" promises a scene where Ford, on horseback, outruns a subway. I've seen a helicopter chase a train through the Chunnel, and a hovercraft chase Jackie Chan, but a horse in a subway is a new one to me. Naturally, a very stern-looking possible Nazi also pursues Jones on a police motorcycle. 

The old-world pulp texture of the earlier Indiana Jones movies is clearly trying to be recaptured with these action sequences. The shots of Indy in an old, dusty archive certainly capture the worldly mysteries of matinee serials from the '30s and '40s. It's worth remembering that Spielberg and producer George Lucas used Indiana Jones as an updated version of said serials, films they watched as boys. It's also worth remembering that Ford was already a professional actor by 1969, Spielberg was directing his first episode of "Night Gallery," and Lucas was already directing shorts like "Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB" and co-founding American Zoetrope with Francis Ford Coppola. To have the reality of the filmmakers overlap with Indiana Jones is ... well, it feels a little off. The "Dial of Destiny" preview, with its subways and New York streets, simply feels too modern.

If I Could Turn Back Time

The Mikkelsen character, named Jürgen Voller, gravely intones that "Hitler made mistakes" and with the Dial of Destiny, he will be able to "correct them all." Fitting that a film based largely on nostalgia should be explicitly about a device that can turn back time. Indeed, "Dial" is a nostalgia piece of a nostalgia piece. The 1981 film "Raiders of the Lost Ark" was a look back at childhood cinema by men born in the 1940s. "Dial" was directed by a man born in the 1960s. "Raiders" now serves the same function to a new generation as adventure serials did to the makers of "Raiders." It's an intergenerational loop. 

However, Mutt (Shia LeBeouf), Indy's son from "Crystal Skull," is not present, so the legacy character has been transformed into an adult goddaughter. 

The trailer then speeds into quick snippets of various action shots, and — glory of glories — that trademarked Indiana Jones punch sound effect is back. Indiana Jones' punches do not sound like punches, but like a side of beef dropped from a great height, landing on the surface of a swimming pool filled with gelatin. It's a sound effect that exists deep within the brains of several generations of filmgoers. At this moment, nostalgia works. 

There is also a small vehicle chase, a midair plane battle, and several shots of booby-trapped tombs. These elements have appeared in each of the previous Indiana Jones movies, so they fell a little perfunctory here. Helena enthusiastically declares that Indy needs "a final triumph." "Dial" is, more or less, being sold as a feature-length curtain call. 

Tomb Raider

The preview ends with Indiana Jones shouting a litany of "greatest hits," saying that three times in his life he's "seen things." I guess one of the four previous movies doesn't count, perhaps "Raiders," as he deliberately kept his eyes shut for that film's violent finale (the one where a bunch of Nazis are wasted by the power of God). He also mentions that he's been shot multiple times and was once tortured by voodoo (detailed in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom"). 

Indy then declares that he had been looking for something — presumably the Dial of Destiny — his whole life. It's a little presumptuous of the filmmakers to put the importance of their own widget above the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail. 

The actual plot of "Dial" is not described in the preview, although back in December, Empire revealed the premise to involve former Nazis working for NASA, as the U.S. requires their help to beat the Soviets to the moon. There are no shots in the preview of characters walking around on the moon's surface ... but we cannot discount the possibility. 

To briefly speculate: perhaps Indy will indeed find a connection between the Dial of Destiny and the surface of the moon. Which would put Indy back into the realm of sci-fi, as he was in "Crystal Skull." This means the aliens from the previous film will, perhaps, have been Moon Men all along. But then, "Indiana Jones vs. the Moon Men" might sound too silly for some audiences expecting grandeur and mysticism. 

It's not too silly for me, though.

Read this next: The 14 Greatest Action Movies Of The 21st Century

The post Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny Trailer Breakdown: If I Could Turn Back Time appeared first on /Film.

This year’s STAR WARS Celebration got off to a sensational start today in London with the stars and filmmakers of INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY wowing the fans with the first look at the never-before-seen trailer and an extensive exclusive look at the film as well as the new poster.

Appearing in person were cast members Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Mads Mikkelsen, Director/Co-Writer James Mangold and Producer Kathleen Kennedy, with a message from star Harrison Ford, to reveal new details about the highly anticipated installment of the iconic franchise. The film, which will be Harrison Ford’s final Indiana Jones adventure, premieres at the Cannes Film Festival on May 18 and opens in theaters on June 30.

In Lucasfilm’s INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY, Harrison Ford returns as the legendary hero archaeologist, starring along with Phoebe Waller-Bridge (“Fleabag”), Antonio Banderas (Pain and Glory), John Rhys-Davies (Raiders of the Lost Ark), Shaunette Renee Wilson (Black Panther), Thomas Kretschmann (“Das Boot”), Toby Jones (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom), Boyd Holbrook (“The Sandman“), Oliver Richters (Black Widow), Ethann Isidore (“Mortel”) and Mads Mikkelsen (Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore).

Directed by James Mangold, the film is produced by Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall and Simon Emanuel, with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas serving as executive producers. John Williams, who has scored each Indy adventure since the original Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981, has once again composed the score.

The post [News] Trailer for INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY appeared first on Nightmarish Conjurings.

(Welcome to Scariest Scene Ever, a column dedicated to the most pulse-pounding moments in horror with your tour guides, horror experts Chris Evangelista and Matt Donato. In this edition, Chris advises you to not cut your own face off while watching "Evil Dead" 2013.)

The idea of a remake of "The Evil Dead" seemed like a form of blasphemy at one point, but horror hounds appear to love Fede Álvarez's remake/reboot/reimagining/etc, the 2013 film "Evil Dead" (it drops the "the," it's cleaner that way). Me? I'm somewhere in the middle. I love the nasty, gory, overwhelmingly bleak atmosphere Álvarez and company created for the film. However, a lot of the dialogue is so painfully bad that it takes me out of the movie on more than one occasion. I'm not saying I expected Shakespearian prose from "Evil Dead," but I know they could've done a lot better. No matter — the film is still plenty visceral and scary, and that brings us to today's Scariest Scene Ever entry.

The Setup

Just like the original movie, "Evil Dead" drops a bunch of young characters off in a cabin in the woods. But instead of a fun weekend getaway, these folks are here for a serious reason. Mia (Jane Levy) is a drug addict, and her brother and friends have gathered here to hopefully help her kick her habit by secluding her far, far away from temptation. But Mia's addictions will soon be the least of their problems, especially when total bonehead Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci) reads from the infamous Necronomicon, the Book of the Dead, and unleashes evil demonic entities that proceed to possess people. 

The Story So Far

As our characters become possessed they both turn on each other — and themselves. For whatever reason, these evil dead demons are really into self-mutilation. Which means we not only get scenes of characters attack each other, but also grisly, ghastly moments where people cut their own arms off and carve up their own faces. The blood and gore are truly off the charts in the movie, and the fact that it was all created practically is a testament to how committed the movie was to freaking its audience out. 

The Scene

After becoming possessed in the woods, Mia returns to the cabin and eventually vomits a metric ton of blood onto the face of her friend Olivia (Jessica Lucas). As you might imagine, this causes the possession to spread to Olivia, who retreats to the bathroom. When King of the Idiots Eric comes in to check on her he's horrified to find her carving her own face off — because she saw her demonic self in the bathroom mirror. That's not enough, though! Soon, Olivia is attacking Eric and stabbing him in the face, repeatedly, with a needle. Ouch. 

It's horrifying to watch because it's presented in a relentless, brutal, unflinching way. We even see, in the aftermath, Eric pulling a bit of needle out of his face. But before that happens he has to stop Olivia, and he does so by bashing her head into a bloody, pulpy mess. Gore on its own isn't inherently scary, but the cacophony of unabridged insanity unfolding in this scene creates a genuinely unnerving moment that will have you on edge. 

The Impact (Matt's Take)

I've been here once before talking about 2013's "Evil Dead," and I'm overjoyed Chris chose to honor its 10th anniversary this week for a revisit. My choice was the basement jump scare, but Chris highlights the other aggressively effective element of Fede Álvarez's vision — unshakable gore. Jessica Lucas' smile-carved face is a Deadite masterclass, and the brutality that follows leaves viewers gasping for breath. The needle pulled from flesh just below Lou Taylor Pucci's eye socket, the broken bones of Lucas' demonic attacker, the juices dripping out of gaping wounds — "Evil Dead" goes so f#cking hard, with a stress on capital "E" evil. Pucci's character is forced to bash his friend into pulp to survive, then deal with the emotional baggage afterward. Pure, unadulterated horror. 

Read this next: The Highest Rated Horror Movies Of All Time

The post One Of The Scariest Scenes in Evil Dead Sees A Killer In The Mirror appeared first on /Film.

This post contains spoilers for "The Mandalorian" season 3

"The Mandalorian" season 3 has been a pretty big departure from previous seasons in a variety of ways. One of the biggest changes has been shifting the focus heavily to Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff), who has been a part of the larger story for a long time, with the character first appearing in "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," as well as "Star Wars Rebels." Once the heir apparent to the throne of Mandalore, Bo-Katan starts out this season as a bit of a broken woman. When we first see her, she's sitting on a throne in a way not typically befitting royalty. Turns out, that was by design.

As fans may recall, in the season 3 premiere, Mando goes to visit Bo-Katan on her home planet of Kalevala. When we first see her, she's sitting on the throne in a relaxed, no f***s given manner. Speaking with StarWars.com, the actress explained that she actually worked with writer/executive producer Jon Favreau for some time to get that right.

"That was a really big thing for Jon and I. He kept having me sit, and then walk back, and sit, and walk back. He wanted it to seem...slightly disrespectful [laughs]. It's not the way that you would normally see royalty sit on a throne. I think that may be a sort of metaphor for part of her issues."

"The Mandalorian" season 2 finale saw Din Djarin take control of the Darksaber, which cut Bo-Katan to her core as she had aimed to get the weapon back from Moff Gideon. It was an important step on her quest to take back Mandalore. With that not working out, it clearly hit her hard, and that pose on the throne tells us a lot about where her head was at the time.

Bo-Katan, The Rightful Leader Of Mandalore

For a long time, Bo-Katan has been positioned as the rightful heir to the throne of Mandalore. While "The Mandalorian" season 2 upended that, what we've seen unfold in the third season has been a shift within the Mandalorians and their culture. With the Mandalorians looking to band their various clans together, Bo-Katan has once again been put in a position to unite her people and take back their planet. In that same interview, Sackhoff discussed a bit of her character's arc thus far leading up to this season.

"She's always done what she thought was right for the Mandalorian people...And she's made a lot of mistakes in the process. I think that she wears all of that and there's so much guilt and so much turmoil. That plays itself out a little bit this season. For her to not take the Darksaber [in Season 2 is] such a huge moment. Something's different, you know? There's a reason why she didn't, and I think it lends itself to who she has become and where she's going."

If all goes well for Bo-Katan, she'll have more to sit on than her throne on Kalevala, and she'll probably have reason to sit a little more proudly.

"The Mandalorian" is streaming on Disney+.

Read this next: 12 Star Wars Moments That Haven't Aged Well

The post Bo-Katan's Awkward Throne Pose In The Mandalorian Season 3 Has A Deeper Meaning appeared first on /Film.

The "your browser is managed by your organization" message in Chrome and Edge means two things. First, you are using a work computer; hence the browser and associated policies are managed by the IT admin. Second, a legitimate computer program has set enterprise policies for the browser, or you have installed a potentially unwanted application (PUA) that has hijacked the browser.

The man with the hat is back ... for one last ride. Harrison Ford is returning to the role of Indiana Jones for a final time with "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny." This marks the first "Indy" movie not helmed by Steven Spielberg — instead, the filmmaker handed over duties to James Mangold, a good choice all things considered. This latest adventure drops Indy into the 1960s and sets him on a whole new journey that may or may not involve time travel. At the very least, its going to involve a de-aged Ford, who plays his younger Indy self in flashbacks.

The new "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" trailer dropped during Star Wars Celebration, and you can watch it below.

Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny Trailer

I was never a "Star Wars" kid growing up. No, instead, the Lucasfilm movies I most gravitated towards were the "Indiana Jones" movies. I just had more fun with them than the flicks set in a galaxy far, far away. So I'm pretty much in the tank for "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny," which, based on this trailer, looks like a hell of a lot of fun. I'll admit I'm sad that Steven Spielberg didn't return to helm what will likely be the final film (or at the very least, the final film with Harrison Ford as Indy). But I'm happy we're at least getting one more adventure with Dr. Jones.

Here are the official details of the film: 

Harrison Ford returns as the legendary hero archaeologist in the highly anticipated fifth installment of the iconic "Indiana Jones" franchise, which is directed by James Mangold ("Ford v Ferrari," "Logan"). Starring along with Ford are Phoebe Waller-Bridge ("Fleabag"), Antonio Banderas ("Pain and Glory"), John Rhys-Davies ("Raiders of the Lost Ark"), Shaunette Renee Wilson ("Black Panther"), Thomas Kretschmann ("Das Boot"), Toby Jones ("Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom"), Boyd Holbrook ("Logan"), Oliver Richters ("Black Widow"), Ethann Isidore ("Mortel") and Mads Mikkelsen ("Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore"). Directed by James Mangold, the film is produced by Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall and Simon Emanuel, with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas serving as executive producers. John Williams, who has scored each Indy adventure since the original "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in 1981, is once again composing the score.

As you can see, there's not much of a synopsis. They're keeping that tucked away somewhere, perhaps in that big ass warehouse where they put the Ark of the Covenant. 

"Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival before hitting theaters on June 30, 2023. 

Read this next: The 30 Most Anticipated Movies Of 2023

The post Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny Trailer: The Adventure Continues appeared first on /Film.

Secret documents that reportedly provide details of US and NATO plans to help prepare Ukraine for a spring offensive against Russia have spilled onto social media platforms.

The post Secret US Documents on Ukraine War Plan Spill Onto Internet: Report appeared first on SecurityWeek.

The post The Problem With Jon Stewart S02E12 Trump Indicted 1080p ATVP WEB-DL DD5 1 H264-NTb appeared first on SceneSource.

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Cyberpunk 2077 devs have posted a new "Behind The Settings" video that discusses the upcoming Path Tracing update and NVIDIA Overdrive RT mode that is coming to the game next week, talking about how taxing the new visual mode will be on modern-day GPUs and how DLSS 3 can definitely assist with adding more performance.

Cyberpunk 2077 Path Tracing Update To Be 30-40% More Taxing On The GPU But NVIDIA's DLSS 3 Can Deliver A Huge Boost, Over 100 FPS On RTX 4090

A few days ago, NVIDIA published a video of the Cyberpunk 2077 RT overdrive mode and the first unveiling of the Path Tracing Technical Preview which will be available to everyone to try out on the 11th of April as a free update. The video showcased that with the game running natively & with Path Tracing enabled, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 could only manage 16 FPS whereas enabling DLSS 3 boosted the performance to over 100+ FPS.

Now, Cyberpunk 2077 devs themselves, including Cezary Bella (Graphics Programmer), Jakub Knapik (Global Art Director), and Giovanni de Francesco (Senior Technical Lighting Artist), have revealed even more details, highlighting the various performance aspects of the new modes & revealing how taxing Path Tracing is.

Well, it's going to be pretty expensive. I mean, pretty heavy on the GPU & we don't have a precise number but probably something around 30 percent, 40 percent heavier but this is where DLSS 3 comes in to help us because it gives back all the performance, all the frame that we are losing with the high demanding rendering technique.

Cyberpunk 2077 Dev

For the demonstration, the Cyberpunk 2077 devs used a high-end PC running an AMD Ryzen 7000 Desktop CPU with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4090 GPU. Following is the test configuration:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 12-Core Processor 4.70 GHz
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090
• RAM: Kingston Fury DDR 5 128 GB (4X32GB)
• All in-game graphics settings are maxed out and the resolution is set to 4K.

2 of 9

NVIDIA & Cyberpunk 2077 devs already stated back at GDC 2023 that you will need a very powerful PC equipped with RTX 40 GPUs to fully enjoy what Path Tracing and RT Overdrive Mode offer in the game. The team is aiming for a good and playable experience on the RTX 40 series across the board so it looks like users running an RTX 4070-class GPU would also be able to run the game with Path Tracing enabled and get decent FPS.

Although the native Path Tracing performance is not shown, we do get to see the difference in the standard ray tracing + DLSS 3 setting with the new Path Tracing + DLSS 3 setting. The developers state that the NVIDIA RT Overdrive Mode with Path Tracing will be around 30-40% more taxing on the GPU and with an RTX 4090 struggling to hit that 100 FPS+ mark even with DLSS 3 enabled, it is likely that native performance (DLSS Disabled) with the same settings will yield sub-30 FPS graphics performance.

Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive (Path Tracing) Mode Enabled:

Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive (Path Tracing) Mode Disabled:

Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive (Path Tracing) Mode Enabled:

Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive (Path Tracing) Mode Disabled:

Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive (Path Tracing) Mode Enabled:

Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive (Path Tracing) Mode Disabled:

But more importantly, one should remember that the whole reason for adding RT Overdrive mode and Path Tracing to Cyberpunk 2077 is to offer a sort of technical preview which is what it is. Its main purpose is to showcase what Path Tracing brings to the tables in terms of visual fidelity and what are some ways in which game developers and GPU vendors can work to try and optimize the next-gen of AAA titles so that we can get even better. Surely, DLSS 3 is one of those techniques but we can't wait to see further optimizations coming in the future.

Written by Hassan Mujtaba

There's a good bit of open reporting available online these days, including (but not limited to) the annual reports that tend to be published around this time of year. All of this open reporting amounts to a veritable treasure trove of information, either directly or indirectly, that can be leveraged by SOC and DFIR analysts, as well as detection engineers, to extend protections, as well as detection and response capabilities. 

Sometimes, open reporting will reference incident response activities, and then focus solely on malware reverse engineering. In these cases, information about what would be observed on the endpoint needs to be discerned through indirect means. However, other open reporting, particularly what's available from TheDFIRReport, is much more comprehensive and provides much clearer information regarding the impact of the incident and the threat actor's activities on the endpoint, making it much easier on SOC and DFIR analysts to pursue investigations.

Let's take a look at some of what's shared in a recent write-up of a ransomware incident that started with a "malicious" ISO file. Right away, we get the initial access vector from the title of the write-up! 

Before we jump in, though, we're not going to run through the entire article; the folks at TheDFIRReport have done a fantastic job of documenting what they saw six ways to Sunday, and there's really no need to run through everything in the article! Also, this is not a criticism, nor a critique, and should not be taken as such. Instead, what I'm going to do here is simply expand a bit on a couple of points of the article, nothing more. What I hope you take away from this is that there's a good bit of value within write-ups such as this one, value beyond just the words on paper.

The incident described in the article started with a phishing email, delivering a ZIP archive that contained an ISO file, which in turn contained an LNK file. There's a lot to unravel, just at this point. First off, the email attachment (by default) will have the MOTW attached to it, and MOTW propagation to the ISO file within the archive will depend up on the archival tool used to open it. 

Once the archive is opened, the user is presented with the ISO file, and by default, Windows systems allow the user to automatically mount the disk image file by double-clicking it. However, this behavior can be easily modified, for free, while still allowing users to access disk image files programmatically, particularly as part of legitimate business processes. In the referenced Huntress blog post, Dray/@Purp1eW0lf provided Powershell code that you can just copy out of the blog post and execute on your system(s), and users will be prevented from automatically mounting disk image files by double-clicking on them, while still allowing users to access the files programmatically, such as mounting VHD files via the Disk Manager.

Next, Microsoft issued a patch in Nov 2022 that enables MOTW propagation inside mounted disk images files; had the system in this incident been patched, the user would have been presented with a warning regarding launching the LNK file. The section of the article that addresses defense evasion states, "These packages are designed to evade controls such as Mark-of-the-Web restrictions." This is exactly right, and it works...if the archival tool used to open the zip file does not propagate MOTW to the ISO file, then there's nothing to be propagated to from the ISO file to the embedded LNK file, even if the patch is installed.

Let's take a breather here for a second...take a knee. We're still at the initial access point of an incident that resulted in the domain-wide deployment of ransomware; we're at the desk of that one user who received the phishing email, and the malicious actions haven't been launched yet...and we've identified three points at which we could have inhibited (archiver tool, patched system) or obviated (enable programmatic disk image file access only) the rest of the attack chain. I bring this up because many times we hear how much security "costs", and yet, there's a free bit of Powershell that can be copied out of a blog post, that could have been applied to all systems and literally stopped this attack cycle that, according to the timeline spanned 5 days, in its tracks. The "cost" of running Dray's free Powershell code versus the "cost" of an infrastructure being encrypted and ransomed...what do those scales look like to you?

Referencing the malicious ISO file, the article demonstrates how the user mounting the disk image file can be detected via the Windows Event Log, stating that the "activity can be tracked with Event 12 from Microsoft-Windows-VHDMP/Operational" Event Log. Later, in the "Execution" section of the article, they state that "Application crashes are recorded in the Windows Application event log under Event ID 1000 and 1001", as a result of...well...the application crashing. Not only can both of these events be extracted as analysis pivot points using Events Ripper, but the application crashes observed in this incident serve to make my point regarding validation, specifically with respect to analysts validating findings.

The article continues illustrating the impact of the attack chain on the endpoint, referencing several other Windows Event Log records, several of which (i.e., "Service Control Manager/7045" events) are also covered/addressed by Events Ripper.

Conclusion
Articles like this one, and others from TheDFIRReport, are extremely valuable to the community. Where a good bit of open reporting articles will include things like, "...hey, we had 41 Sobinokibi ransomware response engagements in the first half of the year..." but then do an in-depth RE of one sample, with NO host-based impact or artifacts mentioned, articles such as this one do a great job of laying the foundation for artifact constellations, so that analysts can validate findings, and then use that information to help develop protections, detections, and response procedures for future engagements. Sharing this kind of information means that it's much easier for detect incidents like these much earlier in the attack cycle, with the goal of obviating file encryption.

This piece contains spoilers for season two of "Yellowjackets."

Remember last year when we all began to realize that, yeah, "Yellowjackets" is legitimate prestige television with the awards recognition to back it up? I certainly do — I remember being shocked during last year's Emmys and finding the show secured several nominations, including Best Drama. One of the people most recognized for their impact on the show was Melanie Lynskey, who rightfully received tons of praise for her performance as Shauna.

If the latest episode of the show's second season has anything to prove, it's that these accolades were more than well deserved. In fact, her performance in "Digestif" proves that Lynskey should be getting even more praise as the adult Shauna (Sophie Nélisse portrays the character in flashbacks). After getting carjacked by a petty criminal, Shauna tracks her trusty minivan down to a repair shop, where she gives arguably the best monologue this show has provided us so far. And yes, it is all about how she has killed before and will kill again.

It's Not As Easy As You Might Think

If you recall, Shauna monologues to some poor guy about how difficult it is to pull a piece of flesh off of someone. Considering what we saw at the end of its second episode, you know she's telling the truth. The way she delivers the monologue as well as the empty stare she gives her hostage has him believing her 100%. The dude is scared, and he absolutely should be. As we recently saw in her guest stint on "The Last of Us," Lynskey is arguably at her best when combining her naturally kind demeanor and a sinister darkness.

This monologue, where she describes the effort one needs to exert in order to actually pull the skin off of a dead body, needed a specific type of person to deliver it, and it's clear that very person had to be Lynskey. Nélisse could have probably delivered it well, but her version of Shauna is currently stuck in perpetual childhood, still unaware of just how bad things are going to get for her and the team. Speaking of the team, these lines wouldn't fit the other survivors either, as Shauna specifically embodies a simmering rage underneath her mask of normalcy. That's what makes her such a compelling character, even if in both the flashbacks and the present day, we're in pain over the decisions that she makes. These moments of her true self emerging really are some of the best this show has to offer, and Lynskey deserves even more credit than she already gets. That's saying a lot.

Hell Is More Than A Teenage Girl

Even if no other character could deliver Lynskey's monologue, it's hard to argue that its sentiment isn't an important part of "Yellowjackets" as a whole. What Shauna describes in this scene is something the core cast actually did, an act that nobody would associate with promising young women. Cannibalism is barbaric, yes, but the sort of primal desperation that comes with it inherently feels gendered. You would expect that out of men in the same situation, but it feels strange to think of women and girls having to resort to it.

That, however, is the beauty of "Yellowjackets." The concept of female rage might seem like just a social media buzzword associated with a very basic and broad meaning, but it's more complex than just women being mad at society. It's about the complicated emotions and actions women have to take in extreme circumstances. Sometimes, this manifests in holding a car thief hostage with a gun or eating the corpse of your best friend. If anyone ends up saying that they don't understand the point of "Yellowjackets," just show them the monologue from Lynskey in all its glory. There's nothing that sums it up better than that.

Read this next: Horror Movies That Make Us Root For The Villain

The post Yellowjackets Season 2 is About Girl Issues, But Also Melanie Lynskey Talking About Ripping Skin Off appeared first on /Film.

Microsoft said it teamed up with Fortra and Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Health-ISAC) to tackle the abuse of Cobalt Strike by cybercriminals to distribute malware, including ransomware. To that end, the tech giant's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) revealed that it secured a court order in the U.S. to "remove illegal, legacy copies of Cobalt Strike so they can no longer be used by

This article contains spoilers for "Yellowjackets" season 2 episode 3.

If Misty is as intelligent and clever as Sherlock Holmes, she needs her own Moriarity. This is how the new character Walter presents himself in "Digestif," the third episode of "Yellowjackets" season 2 — although we still have much to learn about him. Elijah Wood made a stealthy appearance as Walter in the first episode, narrating a post as PuttingTheSickInForensics on the online citizen detective community that Misty frequents. PuttingTheSickInForensics shatters Misty's confidence that the murder cover-up of Adam Martin went smoothly when he asks citizen detective users to consider Adam's "mystery lady friend."

During Misty's pursuit of Natalie, Walter promises to help her with the motel's old security camera if she stops downvoting his comments about Adam's disappearance. "Yellowjackets" makes it clear in the second episode that Walter has just as great investigative skills as Misty. He tracks Misty down at the nursing home and passes on a secret note that can only be read by blacklight. Misty has truly met her match. The first two episodes of season 2 tease their impending relationship, but the latest episode expands on what may be one of the most fun parts of the second season. 

The mysterious Walter reveals more of himself during "Digestif," and his character is an absolute delight. He clearly respects Misty's detective skills, telling her that he is honored to meet the fabled citizen detective user AfricanGrey — a fellow agent. It's inevitable that Misty and Walter will team up to dig further into Natalie's disappearance. Walter helps Misty discover an important clue about Natalie's whereabouts through someone who lived at the motel where she disappeared, who turns out to be Randy. What follows is one of the wackiest interrogation scenes that take place on Walter's boat. 

Good Cop, Bad Cop

Walter is just as weird as Misty — distrusting of authority, theatrical, and excited by the thrill of sneaky detective work. The scene where Misty has to feed Walter questions in an earpiece is one of the most humorous moments of the season thus far. It showcases Christina Ricci and Elijah Wood's impeccable comic timing as they talk over one another in seething whispers and frantically prepare for Randy's arrival. 

The juxtaposition of their interrogation methods is hilarious: Misty hisses at Walter to slap Randy and "go for the kill," but he is more steady and gentle-voiced, and would rather use kindness and patience to draw information out of Randy. The difference between their investigative styles will inevitably add tension to any future mystery-solving journeys they go on. 

Another reason their relationship is so compelling is that it confronts Misty's feelings as an outsider. Misty longs for acceptance from others, but when she finally meets someone who genuinely likes her, she feels awkward and uncertain. Christina Ricci makes her insecurity around Walter feel authentic in her stilted gestures and expressions. The only thing that Misty is confident about is her sleuthing and survival skills, and it's fascinating to see that self-assurance being challenged by someone else. 

Misty's fussy demeanor opposes Walter's relaxed, seemingly warm qualities, and this difference makes their partnership engaging. Elijah Wood has such an amiable presence that works well against the hard shell that Christina Ricci builds around Misty. It will be fascinating to see if Walter can break it. By giving Misty someone new to bounce off of during her investigation, "Yellowjackets" creates a storyline with greater suspense and excitement — especially if Walter discovers the truth about Adam. Their buddy-detective dynamic deepens Misty's search for acceptance and accentuates her weirdness.

Chemistry Decades In The Making

Will Walter be a friend, foe, or love interest? The answers are still unclear. But a possible romance was not something Christina Ricci predicted for her character. "I don't think she cares about her sexuality. I don't think she genuinely cares about men," she told AwardsDaily in 2022.

Misty is an intense person devoted to her (one-sided) friendships, pet bird Caligula, and citizen detective research. She never seems concerned about a lack of intimacy because she has better things to do. The addition of Walter is a narrative curveball, which Ricci addresses Rolling Stone:

"I did all this press talking about how I thought she was not interested in men and would never have had a relationship, and then they're like, 'Bam! Season Two, love interest!' I was thrown off by the idea, and whether the characters do become romantically involved or not is something to be discovered as people watch this. But if I had to have any love interest as this character, I'm so happy it's Elijah, because he's just so wonderful to work with."

Yellowjackets season 2 is actually a reunion for Elijah Wood and Christina Ricci. They starred together in Ang Lee's 1997 film "The Ice Storm" as teenagers exploring their sexuality for the first time. It was intense work that required a mature connection and comfortability with one another. This past experience helped develop the electric chemistry they share today as Walter and Misty. 

Elijah Wood and Christina Ricci have both built careers by playing offbeat characters with a dangerous twist. Their familiarity with one another and inherent quirkiness make them a brilliant duo. They are such a perfect pair that any hesitations about giving Misty a potential love interest completely fall away.

Read this next: The 30 Best Horror TV Shows Of All Time

The post Christina Ricci and Elijah Wood on Yellowjackets Are Your New Favorite Detective Duo appeared first on /Film.

We are proud to announce that network-enabled Humongous Entertainment titles are now playable online! Anyone who has a copy of Backyard Football, Backyard Baseball 2001, and even Backyard Football 2002 (which was originally a LAN-only title) can download the latest daily build* of ScummVM and play online games against real people!

This all became possible because the three developers from the Backyard Sports Online fork had joined the team and brought their services with them to the ScummVM. These are LittleToonCat, Jim “jibbodahibbo” Westerkamp and Sam “QuestionMonkey” Kupfer.

Please note that Backyard Football and Backyard Baseball 2001 require online accounts for the complete online experience, so you need to register to Backyard Sports Online, which is our fantastic online-play service and a thriving community of fellow Backyard Sports players, they even have a couple of competitive online Baseball and Football leagues, if that's your style, you can find more information in their Discord server! People who already have a Backyard Sports Online account can log in using the latest daily build and play, but if you do not, you can register right here! This is not required to play Backyard Football 2002 online.

If you encounter any issues playing online, please let us know via the issue tracker.

This fantastic art is done by a fellow BSO community member Peppyrus.

* only the Windows, macOS, Debian, Raspberry Pi, and Android builds are compatible with network play at the moment. And only the 2.8.x branch of ScummVM has this functionality.

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In 1972, Woody Allen scored a surprise success with his audacious sketch comedy film "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)." This rambunctious collection of ribald bits was both uproarious and deceptively off-handed. Suddenly, there was a market for loosely stitched-together, adult-skewing yuk-fests. These movies could be made fast and on the cheap because you didn't need production value to get a belly laugh out of dirty jokes or gratuitous nudity. This was smash-and-grab comedy, and it thrived throughout most of the decade.

One such practitioner of this scandalous style was Ken Shapiro. The counterculture satirist had created an underground comedy hit in New York City with his Channel One Theater, an innovative live show that barraged audiences with tawdry skits via three television sets (this was 1970, so those sets were not particularly big). With Allen's movie, Monty Python's "And Now for Something Completely Different" and Brian De Palma's "Hi, Mom!" making untoward hay in movie theaters, Shapiro brought his company of performers together and made a play for midnight-movie infamy. The result was "The Groove Tube," a ludicrously broad parody of television that initially received an X rating for sexual content and nudity.

The film was a hit, but its enduring cultural significance is the introduction of a young Chevy Chase. And Chase paid this career boost forward by lifting a line from a sketch in which he did not appear.

I'm Chevy Chase, And I'm Stealing Your Catchphrase

Chase appears in two sketches in "The Groove Tube." His best bit is a spoof of the mind-blowingly sexist Geritol commercials that hinged on the catchphrase "My wife, I think I'll keep her." He also turns up in a throwaway barbershop quartet bit with Shapiro, who beats out percussion over the future "Saturday Night Live" star's scalp.

"The Groove Tube" has aged horribly, but the sketch that Chase owes his catchphrase to is "Channel One Evening News," which peaks with the late Richard Belzer portraying an unabashedly racist President of the United States. If you look up the film, don't say we didn't warn you. The segment ends with Shapiro's anchorman signing off with "Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow." When Chase became the first Weekend Update anchor on "SNL," he stole the line wholesale.

To Chase's credit (which is not something that is often said), he circled back to Shapiro at the height of his post-"SNL" stardom for the bizarre 1981 sci-fi comedy "Modern Problems." Ironically, the Shapiro-directed film was defanged by 20th Century Fox, which wanted a PG-rated comedy. The film was a modest hit, but Shapiro's career never recovered. When he died in 2017, every obit credited him as the man who gave Chase his second-most-famous catchphrase on "SNL."

Read this next: The 20 Most Influential Comedy Stars In Movie History

The post A Young Chevy Chase Stole This Classic SNL Line From An X-Rated Film He Starred In appeared first on /Film.

Critical infrastructure attacks are a preferred target for cyber criminals. Here's why and what's being done to protect them. What is Critical Infrastructure and Why is It Attacked? Critical infrastructure is the physical and digital assets, systems and networks that are vital to national security, the economy, public health, or safety. It can be government- or privately-owned. According to Etay

The 90s were essential for discovering horror gems on home video. Video stores carried unheard-of international movies and sometimes we just had to rely on the artwork to sell us the movie. CUBE was one of those movies for me and, according to the internet, it was for a lot of horror fans. The concept of a group of strangers waking up in a room full of traps ended up being popularized by the Saw franchise and real-life escape rooms, but CUBE gave us a lot to think about without relying on shock value. I had not seen anything like it at that age so it holds a special place for me. The latest Japanese remake, also titled CUBE, however, gives us nothing to hold onto.

A group of people of different backgrounds and age groups wakes up in a cube-sized room. They don’t know each other or how they got there. They quickly learn that there are connecting rooms of the same size and shape, but some have built-in traps that will kill them. Each of them carries a talent or knowledge that helps determine their survival. There are patterns of serial numbers in each room that could hold the key to safety and possibly a way out.

The ambiguity of the original is what kept us revisiting the film, developing theories of who these people were, the significance of their names, and that open ending that drove us crazy. A more juiced-up sequel followed with not much praise, trying to impress fans with elaborate cubes and dated special effects, but it lost all the wonder. A prequel came out shortly after that decided to explain it all but in a much less interesting fashion.

Director Yasuhiko Shimizu gives us a CUBE remake that doesn’t add much to the original. The traps are similar, lacking a creative arc that could drive fans to revisit. The characters are very frustrating to watch as they spend most of the film arguing with each other. It doesn’t help that CUBE flows at a glacial pace and is about 15 minutes too long. There are attempts of handling themes of generational trauma, but it feels so out of place and doesn’t connect at all with their predicament.

There’s a lot that could have been done with a CUBE remake. There could be more provocative traps, unique interior designs of the cubes, and a different class of characters, but this iteration is by the numbers. It’s been several years since I’ve seen the original, but this followed so closely to it, I almost turned it off and just put on the first film. The CUBE remake definitely lacks the spirit of the original with hopes to capitalize on a familiar property. On the bright side, maybe we’ll finally get high-definition releases of the original trilogy (mainly the first movie) due to possible renewed interest.

A Japanese remake of CUBE sounded like a promising concept but fails to deliver anything new and traps us in the same old room.

SCREAMBOX will stream CUBE, a Japanese remake of the 1997 Canadian cult classic, on April 11 as a SCREAMBOX Original.

The post [Movie Review] CUBE appeared first on Nightmarish Conjurings.

Secure your organization's digital estate through a comprehensive Zero Trust approach.

The post Secure hybrid and remote workplaces with a Zero Trust approach appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

In this blog, we discuss threats we face in our DevOps environment, introducing our new threat matrix for DevOps. Using this matrix, we show the different techniques an adversary might use to attack an organization from the initial access phase and forward.

The post DevOps threat matrix appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

For much of its history, publisher Square Enix has had a cozy relationship with fellow Japanese companies Sony and Nintendo, but not so much with Xbox. In the 2010s that changed, with major Square Enix titles, including Final Fantasy, coming to Xbox. Well, it seems like things may have changed again – Final Fantasy XVI is a PS5 exclusive, but beyond that, a number of other games like Octopath Traveler II and the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters are somewhat arbitrarily skipping Xbox. Does Square Enix have some sort of beef with Microsoft? Well, maybe.

According to Microsoft insider Jez Corden, he’s heard that there’s “something functionally wrong” with the relationship between Xbox and Square Enix. When pressed on Twitter about who should be blamed for this breakdown, Corden seemed to imply Microsoft was the culprit.

Not what I've heard.

— Jez (@JezCorden) April 6, 2023

For their part, Square Enix has been careful not to hint at any falling out with Microsoft. According to them, Final Fantasy XVI is PS5 exclusive because Sony co-developed the game, allowing them to complete the project more quickly, and games like Octopath Traveler II are skipping Xbox after “observing the sales of other titles” on the system. Here’s Square Enix on how closely they’re working with Sony to make Final Fantasy XVI…

“From our point of view, the technical support we receive from the hardware manufacturer is a big factor to signing [exclusivity] contracts. […] There was a [time period] where we were developing together with SIE engineers, who know the hardware thoroughly down to the core and we received generous support in optimization that we could not manage on our own and so on.”

Of course, an unspoken factor in all of this are the mounting rumors that Sony may be eyeing Square Enix for purchase (they’ve committed to spending at least $5 billion on acquisitions this year… around the current market value of the Final Fantasy maker). Of course, Sony possibly buying Square Enix (and everything else in this article) should be taken with a grain of salt, but it would make sense for the Microsoft-Squeenix relationship to get a bit chilly if the former thought the latter was soon going to be a Sony first party.

What do you think? Does it feel like something has gone wrong between Microsoft and Square Enix? Can the relationship be mended, or is Xbox destined to remain out in the cold?

Written by Nathan Birch

This post contains spoilers for "Star Trek: Picard" season 3 episode 8.

Jack Crusher (Ed Speleers) is straight-up not having a good time. The long-lost son of Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) has gone full post-Upside-Down Will Byers in the latest episodes of "Star Trek: Picard." He's haunted by visions of branch-like tendrils and a red door, plagued by nightmares, and in possession of some strange energy that turns his eyes red. He also seems to be developing superpowers; Jack took down a whole crew worth of Changelings as if on autopilot, and he can talk to Sidney La Forge (Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut) with his mind.

With Deanna (Marina Sirtis) finally on the case, it looks like we'll find out about Jack's mysterious past next week, and if "Star Trek: Picard" keeps up the trend its established in its first two seasons, a major Trek-verse reveal is sure to follow by the finale. At the end of episode eight, Deanna proclaims: "there's a darkness with that boy." She clarifies that he's not to blame, saying that the voice is "not in him but around him, passing through him, and a voice inside him, ancient and weak, but a voice that isn't his own." Then she sits with Jack in hopes of figuring out once and for all what's behind the red door.

Theories about Jack's true nature abound among "Star Trek" fans, ranging from the likely to the outlandish. While we'll have to wait at least a week to get to the bottom of Jack's backstory once and for all, that just gives us even more time to parse through every possible option. Here's every theory we can think of about what the heck is up with Jack Crusher.

Jack Has Borg Genetic Material

Back in 2366, Picard was forcibly assimilated into the Borg Collective, the powerful, dangerous cyborg hive mind that is constantly in world domination mode. There, Picard's body was taken over and renamed Locutus, and while he has long-since shed his Borg status, the Starfleet officer has been haunted by his experiences with the Borg ever since. While the Borg got a positive PR makeover at the end of last season after Alison Pill's Jurati took over as Borg Queen, season 2 co-showrunner Terry Matalas has since confirmed on Twitter at the time that hers was an alternate timeline offshoot, meaning the real Borg is still a real threat.

One of the most popular and evidence-backed theories about Jack Crusher is that Picard's biological material was altered by his Borg experience, leading to his conceiving a baby with latent Borg-like abilities. We've seen before that Borg are capable of assimilation on a microscopic level via nanoprobes, and it's possible that a bit of Borg remained in Picard even after he left the collective behind.

This would explain a lot of things about Jack, including his ability to have a hive mind-like experience with Sidney, his ability to take over a crew member's motor functions, and Vadic's (Amanda Plummer) comment in response: "Look at you, finally living up to all your potential." There's also the quickly-glossed-over fact that Data (Brent Spiner) tells the crew that Altan Soong (also Spiner) found an "anomalous form" in Picard's body that makes his initial Irumodic Syndrome diagnosis questionable. Could the form be residual Borg material?

Jack Is Related To Project Khan

There's also the possibility that Jack's origin could herald back to another great "Star Trek" character; Khan. While Khan Noonien-Singh has been dead for a long time when "Star Trek: Picard" picks up, the villain's name appeared on a paper file that Soong appeared interested in during the show's season 2 finale. It was labeled "Project Kahn," and we haven't heard anything about it since. Is it possible that Soong or someone who worked under him purposely created a genetically modified human with special abilities?

While season 3 hasn't mentioned Khan at all, "Star Trek: Picard" co-creator Alex Kurtzman did compare this season's villain to Khan at Comic Con last year. While he appears to have been referencing the mind games unfolding between Vadic and Picard, it's possible the reference was more literal than Kurtzman was willing to let on. If Jack did have these shadowy origins, it would make sense for him to lead a planet-hopping life, for Vadic to have a vested interest in finding him, and for him to end up with a unique, still-mysterious medical diagnosis like Irumodic Syndrome.

In this theory, as with several others, the red door in Jack's head is simply a mental block keeping his repressed memories in check. This type of mental visualization is commonly used in regression therapy and other methods used to dive deep into past traumas.

Jack Is A Changeling (In Either Sense Of The Word)

With all the talk of Changelings this season, it would be weird to not explore the possibility that they may have something to do with Jack Crusher. After all, they went to great lengths to hunt the man down, and Vadic said she wants to bring Jack to "where he most belongs." If he somehow has Changeling-related genetic material, that would be in the Great Link, the place where all Changelings live in their liquid form.

If Jack were somehow part-Changeling, his ability to control others' bodies would make sense, as would the voices that seem to urge him to come to them. In this case, the red door that haunts his subconscious mind could be the entryway to the Great Link, a place that some part of him knows he needs to return to even as he remains in human form. This isn't the tidiest theory (how would Jack have become part-Changeling in the first place?) and it's also not the most interesting, but it's nonetheless a slight possibility.

Pretty much every theory on this list could also be supplemented by the idea that Jack is the traditional type of Changeling -- a baby who was swapped at birth for an imposter. If the real Jack Crusher was switched out for a genetically modified baby (whether he's part-Changling or part something else entirely), it would make sense that the people who put him there long ago would come looking for him years later.

Jack Is The Key To Picard's Future Evolution

It would also make sense for "Star Trek: Picard" to bow out with something huge, giving the beloved captain a send-off that rocks the world of "Star Trek" forever. So why not ascension? Often portrayed as a sort of evolutionary leveling-up into pure energy, ascension is a beautiful transformation that also looks like a death of sorts. It's appeared a few times throughout "Star Trek," though it's sometimes called transcendence, too.

In one of many Reddit posts in which fans have theorized about Jack's true nature, user Lokan posited that Picard might be experiencing Irumodic Syndrome because his synthetic body is unable to ascend. If any main character in "Star Trek" history seems wise enough to unlock the secrets to the next step of evolution, it might be Picard.

As another Reddit user points out, Q (John de Lancie) may have hinted at some grand purpose for Picard in the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" series finale, when he told Picard that his future entails "charting the unknowable possibilities of existence." Could Picard be on track to join the Q continuum? And while Picard 2.0 might not be able to evolve, perhaps Jack can -- or his genetics can help his father figure out what's stopping the process.

Does this explain Jack's powers? Not in the slightest. Is it still a cool idea that gets to the heart of the compassion, curiosity, and limitless horizons that "Star Trek" is often all about? Definitely!

Jack Is A Human With A Powerful Genetic Mutation

There's also a decent chance that Jack is actually fully human, but simply possesses a unique mutation that the Changelings have deemed important. We haven't heard about examples of Irumodic Syndrome outside of the Picard family, so there's a chance the disorder could actually be something genetic and unique that allows Jack to experience the world on a higher level than those around him. When Picard and Beverly point out Vadic's "advanced physiology," she shoots back, "What about your son? Do you know all about his physiology?"

Picard's own working theory around the time of Vadic's death was that the Changelings had a plan for him and Jack that involved his body (as in, the stolen one) and Jack's blood. This combination would be used to do something dastardly and potentially world-changing on Frontier Day. Is it possible that Picard has recessive traits that appeared in Jack, allowing him to either save or destroy humanity depending on who unlocks them first? It's a huge guess, but the fallout of another attack on Frontier Day could also be huge.

Jack Is Being Controlled By The Pah-Wraiths

One of the most fun answers to Jack's mysterious visions would be one that doubles as a deep-cut reference to a totally different "Star Trek" show, and one that "Star Trek: Picard" has been paying homage to all season: "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine." In that series, a rather metaphysical presence called the Pah-Wraiths often took to possessing people, giving them dark visions and dreams not unlike the ones Jack has been experiencing all season.

The Pah-Wraiths first appeared in "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" as a sinister offshoot of the Bajoran Prophets. Those mystical beings live outside of time and have the god-like ability to see the future. Their enemies, the Pah-Wraiths, have similar powers but seem to have become corrupted along the way.

The only problem with the potential inclusion of the Pah-Wraiths in "Star Trek: Picard" is that the show hasn't dropped hints about them at all, unless Commander Ro Laren's Bajoran earring -- in which she hid a chip including secret research on the Changelings -- counts. Eight episodes into the season, a Pah-Wraith appearance in a show that's never acknowledged their existence might feel a bit like a deus ex machina.

Jack Is Related To Species 8472

Physical mimickry has been a hot topic in "Star Trek: Picard" this year thanks to the Changelings, so it only makes sense that other species capable of impersonating their enemies have come up frequently in chatter around the show. Since the season's mysteries began to unfold, several Reddit users have name-dropped Species 8472, a powerful, Borg-killing alien race that appeared in "Star Trek: Voyager." Though members of Species 8472 look a lot more like a classic sci-fi movie alien than a humanoid being, they're also capable of communicating telepathically and disguising themselves as other life forms through advanced technologies.

The going theory among fans doesn't seem to be that Jack is actually part of Species 8472, but that he's perhaps been modified or infected by the ruthless and highly evolved species as a pawn in some larger conflict. This would align with Deanna's assertion that there's darkness "with" him but "not in him." However, this theory doesn't seem likely for the same reason that the Pah-Wraith theory seems doomed to fail; "Star Trek: Picard" hasn't re-introduced us to Species 8472, and it would be weird to drop them in at the last minute.

Jack Is The Dawn Summers Of It All

This whole season of "Star Trek: Picard" has hinged on our instant acceptance of Jack Crusher as Picard's long-lost son, but his appearance felt sudden. In fact, it was so sudden that it got me wondering: what if the series is taking a page not out of the "Star Trek" rulebook, but the "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" one?

In the fifth season of "Buffy," our hero suddenly gained a little sister, Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg), whose inexplicable appearance remained unexplained for several episodes. While most "Trek" fans agree that it's likely that Jack's physiology was altered at some point, the common consensus seems to be that it was when he was a baby or before his birth. But what if Jack still is technically a baby? Is it possible that he blipped into existence a few years before we met him, just long enough ago to earn his reputation as a Federation criminal?

I'll be honest; there's really very little to support this theory besides my own distrust of main characters who appear way late in the game claiming to have a long history. If Jack were created as a teen or young adult, be it by a mad scientist or enemy of Picard, he and Beverly's actions would only make sense if they were lying or had their memories wiped (the latter of which might explain Beverly's voice in Jack's dreams).

Still, with so much timeline fiddling in the show's second season, not to mention both the vision whispers and Vadic referencing Jack's return to a place he's seemingly meant to be, it's possible Picard's offspring could have an inorganic origin story that doesn't line up with what we've heard so far. 

It's probably the Borg thing, though.

Read this next: 14 Underrated Star Trek: The Next Generation Episodes

The post Every Theory About What's Going on With Jack Crusher in Star Trek: Picard Season 3 appeared first on /Film.

India amended its IT law on Thursday to prohibit Facebook, Twitter and other social media firms from publishing, hosting or sharing false or misleading information about "any business" of the government and said the firms will be required to rely on New Delhi's own fact-check unit to determine the authenticity of any claim in a blow to many American giants that identify the South Asian market as their largest by users. From a report: Failure to comply with the rule, which also impacts internet service providers such as Jio and Airtel, risks the firms losing their safe harbour protections. The rule, first proposed in January this year, gives a unit of the government arbitrary and overbroad powers to determine the authenticity of online content and bypasses the principles of natural justice, said New Delhi-headquartered digital rights group Internet Freedom Foundation.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The major players in the AR and VR headset space are struggling to get any traction going, with one analyst believing that Apple’s imminent release of the rumored ‘Reality Pro’ is perhaps the last hope to get this product category running with any momentum. The same analyst recently reported that Apple’s AR headset had been delayed and is expected to see a release in the third quarter of this year.

Competing VR headset shipments were 40 percent lower than expected last year

Apple’s AR headset seemingly possesses the right amount of positive light, with TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo stating that the company’s head-mounted wearable is the ‘last hope’ for convincing investors that something like this can grow in the market. Unfortunately, Kuo also says that a string of grim numbers is a reminder that AR headsets may not thrive in popularity.

“There is currently insufficient evidence to suggest that AR/VR headsets can become the next star product in consumer electronics in the foreseeable future. Apple’s announcement event is likely the last hope for convincing investors that the AR/MR headset device could have a chance to be the next star product in consumer electronics.”

One of the reasons why Kuo may think highly of Apple’s AR headset is because of the technology giant’s propensity to hit a home run with any product launch. During CEO Tim Cook’s tenure, we saw a brand new smartwatch category materialize, which is now the most popular device in the wearable space.

We also witnessed Apple getting rid of the 3.5mm audio jack but introducing wireless earbuds called AirPods, which Apple is the current market leader of at this time. The transition from Intel to ARM-based M-series of chips left critics doubtful as previously, companies had tried to penetrate this market but failed miserably. In short, it is easy to believe that whatever market Apple enters, it dominates, but this might be a different story.

Kuo says that Sony’s PS VR2 production plans for 2023 have been cut by 20 percent, while shipments of the Meta Quest Pro may only reach 300,000 units throughout its entire life cycle. Additionally, the analyst mentions Pico, China’s biggest AR headset brand, stating that its shipments in 2022 were more than 40 percent lower than expected. The analyst earlier estimated that the headset would ship up to just 300,000 units in the year, but somehow, he places importance on Apple’s AR headset launch.

Even with Kuo predicting that it will be priced between $3,000 and $4,000, Apple will only rake in $1.2 billion, and that is an overly-optimistic figure on our part. Despite forecasting a weak launch, Apple was earlier said to be under immense pressure to ship the AR headset. It is possible that the company’s investors wanted this device in the market so that competitors would not have the edge over Apple.

This may be the reason why CEO Tim Cook and CTO Jeff Williams refused to listen to the design team when they mentioned that the product was not ready to launch in the market. Fortunately, Apple has said on multiple occasions that it is fully invested in this product space, and according to a previous report, the second AR headset model is said to be much cheaper than its predecessor. Now, it is only a matter of getting the first version to launch.

Written by Omar Sohail

This article contains spoilers for "The Mandalorian." Count Dooku doesn't get nearly enough credit as a "Star Wars" villain. He got sadly sandwiched between Darth Maul — with his striking visuals, his cool AF double-bladed lightsaber, and his menacing name — Grievous's cool robotic aesthetic that we sadly saw way too little of, and Anakin as a bad guy. Even though he is played by arguably the best-known of all the "Star Wars" villain actors (Christopher Lee), Count Dooku is often forgotten when talking about the best villains in the franchise.

And yet, he is arguably the most fascinating and tragic. Unlike the pure evilness of Maul or the blank expressions of Vader, Dooku is more of a gentleman and a scholar. He is also the first fallen Jedi we ever meet. Before Anakin turns to the dark side, we hear of Dooku's fall from grace. He was someone held in high esteem (unlike Anakin) by everyone in the council, who left the order disillusioned with the Jedi and the Republic, and who surfaced as a leader of a political insurrection, before unveiling himself as a Sith.

This is something the movies barely even hint at, but the shows have slowly but surely explored over the years — that Count Dooku had a good reason to leave the Jedi beyond "I want to be evil," and that he was a rather savvy politician.

We saw this in "The Clone Wars," we saw this in "Tales of the Jedi," and this week, we saw it with "The Mandalorian," where Dooku was directly name-dropped and his politics brought back to the conversation. And you know what? After the Empire, and knowing that the First Order is just around the corner, Dooku's ideas are sounding more and more enticing and correct.

He Has A Point

In the new episode, Bo-Katan and Din Djarin visit Plazir-15, a pompous utopia where Lizzo and Jack Black are in charge, nobles have lavish tea parties and play some sort of cricket-like game, and the general populace doesn't have to work or worry about anything anymore since all labor is left to droids.

The problem is that the droids are malfunctioning, and if they start attacking people (which seems likely given that they are repurposed battle droids from the war) they will have to be shut down, sending the planet into chaos.

It turns out, it was the planet's security officer, Commissioner Helgait (Christopher Lloyd) who caused the droids to malfunction, using nanobots made by the Techno Union hidden in droid lubricant they drank at a droid dive bar (it's a whole thing). His reasoning is ... well, it is not really explained very well. Helgait says he believes in democracy, but supposedly Plazir-15 just underwent their first democratic elections, so they already have that.

Regardless, he does name-drop Count Dooku during his little villain speech, calling him a visionary. Despite Helgait being misguided in this particular instance (sure, the rich seem over the top, but the people aren't working and have time for other stuff now, which is good!) he does raise one interesting point — Dooku was right, and the Republic did become evil. Worse yet, things are about to get worse in the galaxy far, far away.

Justice For Dooku

In "Attack of the Clones," Dooku briefly tries to get Obi-Wan on his side and ends up spilling the whole plot to him; Sidious being in charge, the end of the Jedi (kind of), everything. But of course, he doesn't listen.

Now, sure, Dooku's Separatist movement was all a farce by Palpatine, but that doesn't take away from the fact that the Republic was corrupt and decaying, and what replaced it was even worse. Even at the time of "The Mandalorian," we see how bureaucracy and a core worlds-centric government mess up things, and we see how it can eventually give rise to the First Order. All of this could have maybe been avoided if only more people listened to Dooku.

It seems the Mando-verse is leading up to a big Shadow of the Empire or Thrawn crossover event, but an episode like this — plus the deepening of Count Dooku's reasons for leaving the Jedi in "Tales of the Jedi" — makes me hope they bring back the idea of the Separatists at some point in the future. After the Empire and the First Order, who the hell wants yet another centralized government in that galaxy?

Read this next: The Biggest Questions The Mandalorian Season 3 Needs To Answer

The post Count Dooku Was Right About The Republic, And The Mandalorian Is Proving It appeared first on /Film.

The Last of Us on PC is one of those ports

Before I begin, let me discuss the article I planned to write about The Last of Us on PC.

I agreed to cover the PC port of this game because, somehow, in 2023, I do not know a single thing about The Last of Us. I've dodged all story spoilers, and I deliberately avoided the HBO series so I could play this game completely blind. My logic was this would be a refreshing take, especially with the impending decade anniversary of the original game’s release. I even workshopped some jokes about how I was too busy grinding Pokemon effort values at the time to play one of the most critically acclaimed video games ever made.

I mean, what else was I going to talk about? The performance?

[caption id="attachment_372453" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Chapter 1: The Performance

In case you haven’t heard, The Last of Us on PC is a mess. It’s a classic case where a critically acclaimed game debuts on Steam with a negative review consensus. We all know what this means; this article now must unfortunately become a technical analysis of The Last of Us. I am about 5% as qualified to talk about these things as some hardware masters; but I do have a pretty new computer to play with, so I have that going for me.

For context, here’s what I’m working with in terms of specs:

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16-Core Processor
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
1TB WD Blue SN550 M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD
32 GB RAM* (I’ll come back to this)

News of The Last of Us’ nonsense port reached my ears quickly, but I wasn’t too worried at first. Elden Ring was similarly review bombed on launch, but I had still a great time with that port. I’ve also enjoyed the Resident Evil 4 remake on nearly maxed settings, even though the RE Engine has faced criticism for its PC performance.

Maybe The Last of Us will have issues, but I mean, look at my specs! I decided to treat my mid-pandemic depression with one of those fancy graphics cards people couldn’t shut up about, and I’ve only mildly regretted that decision since then. I’ve gotta be able to overpower any issues The Last of Us could have, right?

[caption id="attachment_372454" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Chapter 2: Building Shaders (and other things I waited for)

Protip to any of y’all interested in playing The Last of Us on PC, and this is very important: the first thing you want to do is not play it.

Upon loading the game, you are advised to refrain from playing until the shaders have been built. If I had any foresight, I would have immediately run a timer on this step. The Last of Us takes a hilariously long time building shaders, to the point of becoming a meme among people who have played this port. It’s not quite “it takes long enough to disqualify you from a Steam refund” that people have joked, but I do want to say it took a good 40 minutes. I later timed this process on my Steam Deck, and I was surprised to see the Building Shaders Phase™ only took 30 minutes. This is likely due to hotfixes that have since gone live.

Thankfully, you’ll only have to endure this waiting period a single time. I say this waiting period because The Last of Us still subjected me to some of the longest loading times I’ve experienced since I got a Solid State Drive. It takes about 25 seconds to reach the title screen once the game opens. About 50 seconds will elapse between hitting “Continue” and actually entering the game. There aren’t any notable load times once I’m in game, so there’s that.

However, I gotta tell you, I compared these load times to footage of The Last of Us on PS5. Do you know how long the game takes to load on a console? Not 50 seconds, that’s for sure.

[caption id="attachment_372455" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Chapter 3: So far so good?

Surprisingly, after jumping through these hoops and finally getting into the game, things seemed… generally okay? The opening cinematic of Joel being a dad with his daughter looked pretty good, and the character models had that crisp polish I would expect from a current-gen game. Even the open sequence where the world immediately goes to hell (spoilers) ran at a pretty stable framerate. Maybe this port isn’t so bad after all!

A few cutscenes later, and I take control of Joel in a deformed world filled witAHHHHHHHHHHH

[caption id="attachment_372456" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Chapter 4: AHHHHHHHHHHH

No. No way. I did not pay the money I spent on the hardware I have to look at walls like that. What is this, Super Smash Bros. for the 3DS!? Any immersion I had built up was immediately blown away by this janky PS2-quality wall merely existing in the world of one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time. You might be saying to yourself “Tim, it’s just a wall, it’s no big deal.” To that, I say, look at it.

[caption id="attachment_372457" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Now, my first thought was that the game may have incorrectly defaulted to “low” settings for some graphics options. The good news is that, indeed, this wall looks so bad because the applicable settings were on low. The bad news is that this was no accident. This wall, in all its horrifying, low-poly horror, was the best the game could do. Nearly 8 GB of VRAM were being consumed so the game could spit out that. I am not a tech guy, but I can confidently say that this wall is the graphical equivalent of the Fyre Festival. This is the only quote that Sony is allowed to use from this article for marketing purposes.

[caption id="attachment_372464" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Chapter 5: RAM intermission

At this point, my life was a blur. I decided to upgrade my RAM from 16 GB to 32 GB because… you know what, I don’t even know at this point. I wanted to clean my system anyway to spare it from what The Last of Us was putting it through, so why not make an inexpensive upgrade that will help me with other PC ports? Or maybe my brain just couldn't process the VRAM consumption and I thought of something RAM-related to cope.

After upgrading my computer, I realized that my machine no longer displayed an image on my monitor. My mind immediately jumped to “I must have jostled a component,” so I made sure my RAM was clicked in firmly and nothing was unplugged by mistake. This happened about 15 minutes before my regularly scheduled Pokemon raid coverage, which triggered a frenzy of frantically finding a backup computer so I could literally do my job.

Afterward, I got my go-to tech guy on the phone and we determined that my issue was that apparently one of the display ports in my 3070 didn’t work. I used the second port and all my problems were resolved. None of this would have happened if I just downloaded my RAM like someone said I should on a forum 20 years ago.

At this point, you might ask yourself “Tim, what does any of this have to do with The Last of Us?”

...

[caption id="attachment_372458" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Chapter 6: Configuring The Last of Us

Fortunately, this widely pointless interlude bought the people responsible for this mess enough time to release a few patches. Armed with my extra vanity RAM, I popped back into The Last of Us and messed with the settings.

I kindly asked The Last of Us to allow my feeble NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 to run environmental settings at “Medium,” and thankfully it abided. This writer, unfortunately, pushed his luck and triggered a crash with settings on “High,” so I switched back to Medium and apologized to The Last of Us for being impetuous.

[caption id="attachment_372466" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

I kept tinkering with other settings and eventually arrived at the best midpoint between graphics and performance. Even in this state, results were not consistent. The framerate jumps between 45 and 85 FPS at will, which feels actively terrible in action. I can’t explain this other than saying that the controls feel like they chug, subtly enough to not ruin the game but obvious enough to be noticeable.

While the walls, thankfully, don’t look like total messes anymore, the game still oscillates between impressive scenery and terrible assets at will. I’ve never been bothered by stuff like trees in Pokemon, but at least the art is generally consistent there. Here, the genuinely beautiful scenery juxtaposed with terrible assets actively prevents any immersion in The Last of Us. To be fair, I haven’t seen more crashes or major bugs that have made the rounds on social media. However, I think it’s reasonable to hold a port of “the winner of over 200 Game of the Year awards” to a higher standard than “it works.”

[caption id="attachment_372459" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Chapter 7: Does The Last of Us PC run on Steam Deck?

Lmao.

[caption id="attachment_372460" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Chapter 8: Final thoughts on… okay fine I’ll talk about the Steam Deck

In the event that you wanted to try The Last of Us on Steam Deck… I mean, your console won’t explode, so there’s that. It does run, and I was able to progress the story, but I wouldn’t recommend playing the game this way.

With every single setting set as low as possible, The Last of Us maybe hits 33 FPS max on Steam Deck. To compare, I recently played Resident Evil 4 Remake on the Steam Deck and have had a surprisingly good time with it. That game never dips below 40 FPS for me, and the controls are smooth to the touch. Meanwhile, The Last of Us on Steam Deck has the same feeling that a poor Nintendo Switch port of a PS4 game does. If you really want to play The Last of Us and you only own a Steam Deck, I guess you could manage to play the game like this. It’d pale in comparison to other experiences you could have on your system, but it’s an option I suppose.

In case this meager endorsement is enough to pique your interest, I should warn that I only tested The Last of Us on the Deck for maybe 20-30 minutes in low impact areas of the game. This thing could dip into the 20s range had I played some of the sections that dropped my desktop to 45 FPS. Whereas I generally recommend something like the Resident Evil 4 remake, I really wouldn’t recommend this.

[caption id="attachment_372461" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Chapter 9: Final thoughts on The Last of Us

After all this, probably the most messed up part about The Last of Us on PC is that I’m still basically enjoying it.

Yes, the issues surrounding this port are ridiculous. But damn if the underlying game isn’t good. Maybe it’s because I am playing this game blind, but I'm enjoying Joel and Ellie's journey in this terrible world. I’m even used to the quirks, so the occasional terrible asset has bothered me less and less.

There has been a lot of discourse surrounding The Last of Us on PC. Many on the Steam forums complain that people shouldn’t expect this game to run well on a "potato" computer. Others still blame NVIDIA for skimping on VRAM for its latest hardware. Still, I can’t help but go back to the Resident Evil 4 remake. It looks better, runs better, and plays better than The Last of Us by every objective measure. I can respect the opinion that I made a bad choice by buying a 3070. But no matter how you slice it, no other game has taxed my system so hard to produce this.

[caption id="attachment_372457" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Optimistically, The Last of Us will receive patches that address its performance. And maybe in the future, better hardware will make The Last of Us look spectacular despite its poor optimization. For now, this PC port feels like a commercial for the PS5 version of the game that costs $60. The Last of Us could have been a gift for an audience who never had the chance to play it. Unfortunately, even if the underlying game is classic, I'm still wondering why I stopped grinding effort values in Pokemon to deal with this.

[caption id="attachment_372462" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Chapter 10: An optimistic epilogue

Originally, Chapter 9 was the end of this piece. However, in the time it has taken to write and edit this, The Last of Us has seen further updates. I suppose I am proud to say that the game runs noticeably better for me now.

Sure, loading times are still ridiculously long, and I did have a crash at the title screen. Plus the game looked like this at first.

[caption id="attachment_372463" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

However! Once I reloaded, I instantly noticed that the game looked a lot better and maintained a relatively stable framerate. I poked into my settings and noticed the game defaulted almost everything to "high" or "ultra," but even though it claimed to tax my VRAM, I had stable performance for a good three hours. I had the occasional dip to 45 FPS, but compared to my previous experiences, the difference was enormous.

[caption id="attachment_372468" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

I'm not ready to redact what I wrote. As mentioned, I still had issues that I haven't seen in other games. It's also possible that I was playing sections that just ran better, and I can't bring myself to keep testing this game. As it is, I already gave the developers a week to roll out patches that I could account for. Additionally, I don't think anyone deserves accolades for fixing something that shouldn't have been broken to begin with.

That said, it would be unfair of me to ignore that the game is a little bit better now. I'd still hold out for more updates if you want to grab this port, but at least The Last of Us could, eventually, be a good experience on the right hardware. I changed my mind, Sony can use that sentence for marketing purposes too.

The post Coping with The Last of Us on PC has been an adventure appeared first on Destructoid.

Nvidia have previewed the upcoming Overdrive Mode for Cyberpunk 2077, showcasing how it replaces the game’s already extensive ray tracing effects with full path tracing. Why Nvidia and not the developers, CD Projekt Red? Well, that might have something to do with Overdrive Mode being such a graphics card shatterer that it will supposedly take a GeForce RTX 40 series GPU – with DLSS 3 in effect – to run.

Read more

Digital World (NASDAQ:DWAC) shares almost recouped all of their year-to-date losses last week, buoyed by expectations that Trump's imminent indictment by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, would unleash a popular backlash, allowing the former US President the opportunity to revive his political fortunes and those of the Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), which is slated to merge with the SPAC Digital World. However, out of the indictment's "34 counts of Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree," at least one charge is surprisingly straightforward to prove, thereby jeopardizing the SPAC's bullish thesis, which continues to trade as a proxy for all things Trump-related.

Let's back up and go over the pertinent context behind these fast-paced developments. Alvin Bragg formed a grand jury in January 2023 following his investigation of Trump for allegedly paying $130,000 in hush money to the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels from his campaign funds, thus violating campaign finance laws. This payment was reportedly routed via Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen and was intended to purchase Daniels' silence vis-à-vis a sexual altercation with Trump back in 2006 during a celebrity golf tournament. Bear in mind that Cohen publicly admitted his role in this saga back in 2018. For his part, Trump continues to deny any knowledge of the transaction, asserting that Cohen was never reimbursed for this payment that he made of his own volition. Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani, another longtime Trump associate, has already accepted that Trump reimbursed Cohen for the hush money sent to Daniels. However, the former US President continues to maintain that the payment in question was not, in fact, a reimbursement but a monthly retainer. Cohen was jailed in 2018 on two counts, including violations of campaign finance law.

We just announced a 34-count felony indictment of former President Donald J. Trump. Learn more: https://t.co/PTTh2zlsvv pic.twitter.com/IUE6JjdrS2

— Alvin Bragg (@ManhattanDA) April 4, 2023

Yesterday, after the go-ahead from the grand jury in this case, Bragg unveiled 34 counts of falsifying records. While most of these charges relate to bookkeeping fraud, which is considered a mere misdemeanor, any elevation to the level of felony required prosecutors to show that Trump intended to commit, aid, or conceal a second crime. And this is where the charge of falsifying business records to deceive state tax authorities comes into play. In essence, this charge relates to how the payment made by Trump to Cohen was greater than what Cohen paid Daniels. Bragg alleges that Trump and Cohen mischaracterized this payment for tax purposes as consideration for "legal services performed in 2017" even though the payment was, in reality, a simple reimbursement. According to some tax specialists interviewed by the New York Times, this charge could prove tricky for Trump.

On Truth Social this morning, after his day in court, Donald Trump has instructions for congressional Republicans: defund the FBI & DOJ pic.twitter.com/QJRrDI0Ufn

— Garrett Haake (@GarrettHaake) April 5, 2023

Meanwhile, as Trump appears to be cornered by his growing legal troubles, he is lashing out front, right, and center. Yesterday, the former US President went so far as to call for defunding the Department of Justice and the FBI. Interestingly, Trump has been skeptical of the movement that calls for defunding the police.

So, I have read the Trump indictment and the accompanying Statement of Facts.

I tried to give it an objective look as a lawyer.

Here are a few of my predictions of what is likely to happen in this case...

— MetaLawMan (@MetaLawMan) April 5, 2023

As Trump's political horizon remains murky for now, Digital World shares continue to suffer. Do note that Truth Social, a Twitter-like social media app that serves as Trump's echo chamber of sorts, stands to benefit handsomely from the proposed merger between Digital World and Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG). Should Trump get re-elected, Truth Social – the only social media platform on the former President's radar at the moment – will likely clock in a handsome boost to its profile. It is for this reason that Trump's political fortunes have become so critical for Digital World shareholders, who see his candidacy as the raison d’être and a life force of sorts for the struggling stock. At the time of writing, Digital World shares are down around 5 percent today.

Written by Rohail Saleem

When you think about the best CPU coolers on the market, one name consistently crops up: Noctua. The company makes some of the best CPU fan coolers, adhering to quality and cooling performance that can match liquid AIO solutions and has a distinctive signature brown and light brown color scheme,

There are close to 600 million people today who classify as an entrepreneur. This is a type of business where you’re responsible for keeping your own records and handling your business finances. If you use a vehicle to get around at any point in your line of work, you are eligible for being partially reimbursed.  […]

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