Piracy release group CAKES has shut down, dealing yet another hit for the piracy ecosystem. TorrentFreak reports: For several decades, The Scene has been the main source of all pirated content made available on the Internet. Technically, release groups operate in a closed ecosystem, but the reality is different. The vast majority of the files published on private Scene servers eventually find their way to public pirate sites. The secretive nature of The Scene has been a major challenge for law enforcement but in the summer of 2020, the US Department of Justice made a major breakthrough. Following a thorough investigation, three members of the illustrious SPARKS group were indicted. The raids and the criminal investigation sent shockwaves around The Scene. Some groups stopped releasing entirely and others significantly slowed down their output, which was felt in many parts of the public piracy ecosystem too.

Amid this turmoil, a new TV release group going by the name of CAKES emerged. The group published its first release "The 100 S07E16" on October 1, 2020, and many more would follow. During the next few years, CAKES built its reputation as a steady release group, one that eventually covered 7,000 titles. That's an impressive average of more than 50 new releases per week. Aside from the massive output, CAKES was also known for including four lines from Drake's track "Pound Cake" in its release notes. These same lines are also at the start of its farewell message.

The message explains that when CAKES started out, the team made an internal promise to pull the plug when "the love" is gone. Without going into further details, that time has apparently arrived. While some people may be disappointed with this decision, CAKES has clearly made up its mind. The group prefers to highlight the achievements and experiences instead, referring to the past few years as a "crazy journey." "If you had told us how the last few years would go, we wouldn't have believed you. The skills learnt, the massive lows, the euphoric highs, it couldn't have happened with a better group of people." "I couldn't be prouder of our team, not just for what was achieved but knowing the right moment to call time. As sad as this is, goodbye from team CAKES," the group adds. GLHF, another piracy group, is mentioned in the farewell message. While no official shut down has been announced, TorrentFreak notes that "GLHF stopped releasing new titles over a week ago, which is highly atypical."

The upcoming Apple TV+ show "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters," based on Legendary's Monsterverse franchise, is reportedly being shot in 3D format to support Apple's Vision Pro headset. If true, it would be the first confirmed TV+ show to support the 3D video-viewing capabilities of the headset, which offers a wide virtual screen environment and spatial audio. MacRumors reports: According to ScreenTimes' Sigmund Judge, the live-action Godzilla and Titans TV series that's based on Legendary's Monsterverse franchise has been shooting in a three-dimensional format supported by Apple's newly announced headset, based on conversations with people familiar with its production. [...] Apple announced its order for the Godzilla TV series in January 2022, but has not yet revealed when it will arrive on TV+.

The series takes place after the battle between Godzilla and the Titans leveled San Francisco, and will be produced by Legendary Television with co-creator Chris Black serving as executive producer and showrunner. Black is known for his work on "Star Trek: Enterprise" and "Outcast."

Along with FaceTime support and a redesigned Control Center, Apple is adding support for VPN apps in tvOS 17. MacRumors reports: VPN apps could allow for Apple TV users to watch geo-restricted content from any location, such as the U.S. version of Netflix in another country. In its tvOS 17 press release, however, Apple focused on how the VPN apps can benefit enterprise and education users, so it is possible that Apple could restrict usage of the apps.

Apple: "Third-party VPN support, which enables developers to create VPN apps for Apple TV. This can benefit enterprise and education users wanting to access content on their private networks, allowing Apple TV to be a great office and conference room solution in even more places."

Charlie Brooker, the showrunner of "Black Mirror," revealed in an interview that he used OpenAI's ChatGPT to write an episode for the show's sixth season but deemed the results "shit." Gizmodo reports: "I've toyed around with ChatGPT a bit. The first thing I did was type 'generate Black Mirror episode' and it comes up with something that, at first glance, reads plausibly, but on second glance, is shit," the dystopian sci-fi auteur told Empire. "Because all it's done is look up all the synopses of Black Mirror episodes, and sort of mush them together. Then if you dig a bit more deeply you go, 'Oh, there's not actually any real original thought here.' It's [1970s impressionist] Mike Yarwood -- there's a topical reference."

While his experiments with generating an episode of Black Mirror with AI might have been deemed a failure, Brooker told the outlet that it did point out some of his writing cliches. "I was aware that I had written lots of episodes where someone goes 'Oh, I was inside a computer the whole time!'," he said. "So I thought, 'I'm just going to chuck out any sense of what I think a Black Mirror episode is.' There's no point in having an anthology show if you can't break your own rules. Just a sort of nice, cold glass of water in the face."

According to research company Antenna, Netflix's password crackdown in the U.S. has resulted in the "four single largest days of U.S. user sign-ups since January 2019, when Antenna first began tracking the metric," reports Variety. "On May 23, Netflix began notifying U.S. customers that users on their accounts who live outside their households would need to be added as an 'extra member' (or get their own subscriptions)." From the report: Based on the most current Antenna data available, Netflix average daily sign-ups reached 73,000 from May 25-28, a 102% increase from the prior 60-day average. That was more than the spikes in subscriber sign-ups Antenna recorded during the initial U.S. COVID-19 lockdowns in March and April 2020. Netflix U.S. cancelations also increased over May 25-28 -- a phenomenon the company told investors it expected -- but those were less than the number of sign-ups, according to Antenna. The ratio of sign-ups to cancelations since May 23 increased 25.6% compared with the previous 60-day period.

In the U.S., Netflix has told customers they must buy an "extra member" at an additional $7.99/month for anyone who doesn't live with them that currently uses their account. The streamer has said it will start blocking devices that attempt to access a Netflix account without having legitimate account access. According to New York-based Antenna, its estimates are based on millions of permission-based, consumer opt-in, raw transaction records, which are sourced "from a variety of data collection partners." The data includes online purchase receipts, credit, debit and banking data, and "bill-scrape data."

TV's streaming model is broken. It's also not going away. For Hollywood, figuring that out will be a horror show. From a report: Across the town, there's despair and creative destruction and all sorts of countervailing indicators. Certain shows that were enthusiastically green-lit two years ago probably wouldn't be made now. Yet there are still streamers burning mountains of cash to entertain audiences that already have too much to watch. Netflix has tightened the screws and recovered somewhat, but the inarguable consensus is that there is still a great deal of pain to come as the industry cuts back, consolidates, and fumbles toward a more functional economic framework. The high-stakes Writers Guild of America strike has focused attention on Hollywood's labor unrest, but the really systemic issue is streaming's busted math. There may be no problem more foundational than the way the system monetizes its biggest hits: It doesn't.

Just ask Shawn Ryan. In April, the veteran TV producer's latest show, the spy thriller The Night Agent, became the fifth-most-watched English-language original series in Netflix's history, generating 627 million viewing hours in its first four weeks. As it climbed to the heights of such platform-defining smashes as Stranger Things and Bridgerton, Ryan wondered how The Night Agent's success might be reflected in his compensation. "I had done the calculations. Half a billion hours is the equivalent of over 61 million people watching all ten episodes in 18 days. Those shows that air after the Super Bowl -- it's like having five or ten of them. So I asked my lawyer, 'What does that mean?'" recalls Ryan. As it turns out, not much. "In my case, it means that I got paid what I got paid. I'll get a little bonus when season two gets picked up and a nominal royalty fee for each additional episode that gets made. But if you think I'm going out and buying a private jet, you're way, way off."

Ryan says he'll probably make less money from The Night Agent than he did from The Shield, the cop drama he created in 2002, even though the latter ran on the then-nascent cable channel FX and never delivered Super Bowl numbers. "The promise was that if you made the company billions, you were going to get a lot of millions," he says. "That promise has gone away." Nobody is crying for Ryan, of course, and he wouldn't want them to. ("I'm not complaining!" he says. "I'm not unaware of my position relative to most people financially.") But he has a point. Once, in a more rational time, there was a direct relationship between the number of people who watched a show and the number of jets its creator could buy. More viewers meant higher ad rates, and the biggest hits could be sold to syndication and international markets. The people behind those hits got a cut, which is why the duo who invented Friends probably haven't flown commercial since the 1990s. Streaming shows, in contrast, have fewer ads (or none at all) and are typically confined to their original platforms forever. For the people who make TV, the connection between ratings and reward has been severed.

The chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday strongly rebutted criticism that the agency is trying to crush the crypto industry, and said many companies in the space had made a "calculated economic decision" to flout its rules. From a report: Speaking at a Piper Sandler conference in New York, Gary Gensler also reiterated his view that the "vast majority" of crypto tokens meet the test for being a security and should be registered with the SEC. That means most crypto exchanges have to comply with the securities laws too, he added. "When crypto asset market participants go on Twitter or TV and say they lacked 'fair notice' that their conduct could be illegal, don't believe it," he said. "They may have made a calculated economic decision to take the risk of enforcement as the cost of doing business." The crypto industry has attacked Gensler in recent days after the SEC sued two of the world's largest crypto exchanges, Coinbase and Binance, for allegedly breaking securities laws by failing to register their operations with the agency.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: During the pandemic, the demand for smart TVs dwindled as the supply chain for critical TV components became unreliable and consumers began tightening up on frivolous spending. Amid this smart TV demand slump, one of the world's top TV chipmakers, Taiwan-based Realtek, was hit with multiple meritless lawsuits by an alleged patent troll, Future Link Systems. These actions, Realtek said, drained its resources, made Realtek appear unreliable as a TV-chip supplier, and created "the harmful illusion of supply chain uncertainties in an already constrained industry." Determined to defend its reputation and maintain its dominant place in the market, Realtek filed a lawsuit (PDF) this week in a US district court in California. In it, the TV chipmaker alleged that Future Link launched "an unprecedented and unseemly conspiracy" with the world's leading TV-chip supplier, Taiwan-based MediaTek, and was allegedly paid a "bounty" to file frivolous patent infringement claims intended to drive Realtek out of the TV-chip market.

The scheme allegedly worked like this: Future Link "intentionally and knowingly" asked a US district court in Texas and the US International Trade Commission "for injunctions prohibiting importation of Realtek TV Chips and devices containing the same into the United States," Realtek alleged. This allowed MediaTek to reap the benefits of diminished competition in that market, Realtek claimed. Today, Reuters reported that MediaTek has officially responded to Realtek's allegations, vowing to defend itself against the lawsuit and claiming that MediaTek will supply evidence to dispute Realtek's claims.

Realtek's lawsuit seeks a jury trial to fight back against MediaTek and Future Link, as well as IPValue Management, which the complaint said owns and operates Future Link. The TV chipmaker alleged that defendants violated unfair competition laws in California, as well as federal laws. Any damages won from the lawsuit will be donated to charity, Realtek said. Realtek's complaint likens MediaTek to "robber barons of the Industrial Age," allegedly seeking to destroy competition and secure a monopoly in the TV-chip market. "With this action, Realtek seeks to stop a modern robber baron and its hired henchmen, protect itself from ongoing injury, and guard against the destruction of competition in the critical semiconductor industry by holding defendants accountable for their conspiracy," the complaint said.

Google has reversed the suspension of an Android TV app that was hit with a copyright complaint simply because it is able to load a pirate website that can also be loaded in any standard web browser. From a report: The Downloader app, which combines a web browser with a file manager, is back in the Google Play Store after an absence of nearly three weeks. As we previously reported, Google suspended the app based on a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint from several Israeli TV companies that said the app "allows users to view the infamous copyright infringing website known as SDAROT." But that same website could be viewed on any standard browser, including Google's own Chrome app.

"The app was removed on May 19th due to the DMCA takedown request," developer Elias Saba wrote in a blog post today. "Instead of recognizing the absurdity of the claim that a web browser is somehow liable for all the unauthorized use of copyrighted content on the Internet, Google took a backseat and denied my appeal to have the app reinstated." The free app has been downloaded over 5 million times on Google Play and is available on the Amazon app store for devices such as Fire TVs. In addition to the rejected appeal, Saba filed a DMCA counter notification with Google. That "started a 10-business-day countdown for the [TV companies'] law firm to file legal actions against me," Saba wrote today. "Due to the app being removed on a Friday and the Memorial Day holiday, 10 business days had elapsed with no word from the law firm on June 6th and I contacted Google to have the app reinstated."

Twitch has reversed its recently announced rules regarding ad display on the platform after facing swift backlash from streamers and content creators. The Verge reports: On Tuesday, Twitch released new rules concerning the way streamers could display ads on the platform. The rules prohibited "burned in" video, display, and audio ads -- the first two of which were popular and common formats used throughout Twitch. Twitch apparently did not discuss the new rules with ambassadors or streamers beforehand, and many were furious about the new policies. [...] Twitch apologized for the rollout, explaining that it would rewrite the rules for greater clarity. Now it seems that rewrite has turned into a full rescinding of the rules totally.

From the company's Twitter thread: "Yesterday, we released new Branded Content Guidelines that impacted your ability to work with sponsors to increase your income from streaming. These guidelines are bad for you and bad for Twitch, and we are removing them immediately. Sponsorships are critical to streamers' growth and ability to earn income. We will not prevent your ability to enter into direct relationships with sponsors -- you will continue to own and control your sponsorship business. We want to work with our community to create the best experience on Twitch, and to do that we need to be clear about what we're doing and why we're doing it. We appreciate your feedback and help in making this change."

Twitch has updated the page outlining its ads policy with the section related to what kinds of ads are prohibited or allowed completely removed. Here's an archived version with the old rules and the new, updated page. The new rules would have been potentially devastating for creators, charities, esports broadcasts, and brands. Now, what seemed like another attempt to take a portion of streamer earnings has backfired.

United Airlines is set to introduce the next-generation Astrove in-flight entertainment system, featuring Panasonic's 4K OLED TVs, with larger screens and thinner bezels than current models. The system also offers Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity, allowing passengers to use their own wireless headphones, and includes two 67W USB-C chargers for charging mobile devices. However, these new entertainment systems will only be available on United's new Airbus A321XLRs and Boeing 787s starting in 2025. Android Headlines reports: The new Astrova System does also have two 67W USB-C chargers available on the bottom-left edge. This means you can use it to charge your phone as well as your laptop or tablet at the same time. So that when you land, you have fully juiced devices. This is all being done to create a "premium home theater environment."

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Amazon is preparing to launch an ad-supported tier of Prime Video. The Verge reports: Amazon currently offers Prime Video as part of its $14.99 per month Prime membership or for $8.99 per month as a standalone subscription. Subscribers can tack on other ad-free subscriptions to services like Max, Paramount Plus, and Showtime through Prime Video Channels. As noted by the WSJ, Amazon is currently weighing several ways it could implement ads in Prime Video, such as showing more ads to existing Prime subscribers and then offering an "option to pay more for an ad-free alternative and other features." The ad breaks will reportedly be "short," but there's still no word on whether it will beat Max's promised three to four minutes of ads per hour or how much the tier will cost.

Additionally, the WSJ reports that Amazon is in talks with Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount to start offering the ad-supported versions of Max and Paramount Plus within its Prime Video Channels. The company could also place a bid for the streaming rights to the National Basketball Association games when they expire in 2025, potentially bolstering its sports streaming lineup, which currently includes Thursday Night Football.

Shadow has decided to cut the price of its cloud storage service Shadow Drive. Users can now get 2TB of storage for $5.3 per month instead of $9.6 per month. From a report: As for the free tier, things aren't changing. Users who sign up get 20GB of online storage for free. Shadow is also the company behind Shadow PC, a cloud computing service that lets you rent a virtual instance of a Windows PC in a data center near you. It works particularly well to play demanding PC games on any device, such as a cheap laptop, a connected TV or a smartphone. Coming back to Shadow Drive, as the name suggests, Shadow Drive works a lot like Google Drive, OneDrive, iCloud Drive or Dropbox. Users can upload and download files from a web browser. They are stored in a data center based in France so that you can access them later.

Rest now, little Chromecast. Google has announced the decade-old Chromecast 1 is finally hitting end of life. From a report: A message on Google's Chromecast firmware support page announced the wind-down of support, saying, "Support for Chromecast (1st gen) has ended, which means these devices no longer receive software or security updates, and Google does not provide technical support for them. Users may notice a degradation in performance." The 1st-gen Chromecast launched in 2013 for $35.

The original Chromecast was wildly successful and sold 10 million units in 2014 alone. For years, the device was mentioned in Google earnings calls as the highlight of the company's hardware efforts, and it was essentially the company's first successful piece of hardware. The Chromecast made it easy to beam Internet videos to your TV at a time when that was otherwise pretty complicated.

RARBG, one of the world's largest torrent sites, has said "farewell" to millions of users. From a report: The site, which was a prominent and stable source of new movie and TV show releases, cited a variety of reasons behind its decision to cease operations. The surprise shutdown marks the end of an era.

"Multiple lines of Android devices came with preinstalled malware," reports Ars Technica, "that couldn't be removed without users taking heroic measures."

Their article cites two reports released Thursday — one from Trend Micro and one from TechCrunch: Trend Micro researchers following up on a presentation delivered at the Black Hat security conference in Singapore reported that as many as 8.9 million phones comprising as many as 50 different brands were infected with malware... ["It's highly likely that more devices have been preinfected," the report clarified, "but have not exchanged communication with the Command & Control server, have not been used or activated by the threat actor, or have yet to be distributed to the targeted country or market... The threat actor has spread this malware over the last five years. "]

"Guerrilla" opens a backdoor that causes infected devices to regularly communicate with a remote command-and-control server to check if there are any new malicious updates for them to install. These malicious updates collect data about the users that the threat actor, which Trend Micro calls the Lemon Group, can sell to advertisers. Guerrilla then surreptitiously installs aggressive ad platforms that can deplete battery reserves and degrade the user experience... Guerrilla is a massive platform with nearly a dozen plugins that can hijack users' WhatsApp sessions to send unwanted messages, establish a reverse proxy from an infected phone to use the network resources of the affected mobile device, and inject ads into legitimate apps...

TechCrunch detailed several lines of Android-based TV boxes sold through Amazon that are laced with malware. The TV boxes, reported to be T95 models with an h616, report to a command-and-control server that, just like the Guerrilla servers, can install any application the malware creators want. The default malware preinstalled on the boxes is known as a clickbot. It generates advertising revenue by surreptitiously tapping on ads in the background...

Android devices that come with malware straight out of the factory box are, unfortunately, nothing new. Ars has reported on such incidents at least five times in recent years (here, here, here, here, and here). All the affected models were in the budget tier.

People in the market for an Android phone should steer toward known brands like Samsung, Asus, or OnePlus, which generally have much more reliable quality assurance controls on their inventory. To date, there have never been reports of higher-end Android devices coming with malware preinstalled. There are similarly no such reports for iPhones.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission sided with Starlink in a battle against Dish Network today, rejecting a Dish proposal that could have degraded Internet service for Starlink satellite users. In a 4-0 vote, the FCC decided not to authorize high-powered terrestrial mobile service in the 12.2-12.7 GHz band that is already used by Starlink customer terminals for downloads. The vote "ensure[s] the present and future of satellite services in the 12.2-12.7 GHz band. We recognize that millions of people rely on services in this band -- and we want to see that continue," FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said at today's meeting. The band is also used for satellite TV.

In its announcement of the vote, the FCC said it "declin[ed] to authorize two-way, high-powered terrestrial mobile use due to a significant risk of harmful interference to existing and emergent services, particularly in the growing satellite broadband market." Dish already uses spectrum from the 12.2-12.7 GHz band for satellite TV and wants to use the band for cellular service as well. While the FCC rejected the mobile proposal, it said it would investigate the potential to expand terrestrial fixed use or permit unlicensed use in that spectrum. Specifically, the FCC will seek comment on allowing point-to-point fixed links in 12.2-12.7 GHz at higher power levels than the current rules allow and on "adding indoor-only underlay and unlicensed use." The agency also teed up a plan that could eventually allow mobile broadband in the adjacent 12.7-13.25 GHz band. "Thank you to the 100K+ Starlink customers who spoke up, the FCC voted to protect high-speed satellite Internet users from harmful interference," Starlink wrote on Twitter today.

An anonymous reader shares a report: If you watch YouTube videos primarily on your TV, you may soon come across 30-second ads you won't be able to skip, just like commercials on traditional TV channels. The video platform has announced during its Brandcast event for advertisers that it's bringing 30-second unskippable ads to connected TVs. It will make the option available through YouTube Select, which is a targeting option open to eligible clients who want to reach the audiences of the website's most popular channels. YouTube says 70 percent of Select impressions land on TVs, so the new format will give advertisers the chance to show more of their services or products in a way that allows "for richer storytelling." If you already regularly see two 15-second ads consecutively, then the new format wouldn't make that much of a difference for you -- unless they show up more frequently, of course. The format is now generally available in the US and Canada and will expand worldwide later this year.

Netflix has held talks with UK telecoms groups that carry the streaming group's service ahead of a crackdown on account sharing expected later this month. From a report: The US group, which has said the free use of its platform has hit its ability to invest in new TV and films, plans to start warning customers over account-sharing violations in the coming weeks, according to people familiar with the situation. Telecoms groups that use Netflix as part of bundled TV content have held meetings in the past week over the planned warnings, people familiar with the talks said. Companies such as Sky, BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk offer Netflix as part of bundled deals on broadband and TV content. But those close to the talks said there was a risk of complaints from some subscribers, many of whom have grown accustomed to sharing their account details with family and friends, activity to which the company had previously turned a blind eye. One person described it as being a "good partner" to groups that offer the service as part of their subscriptions. Telecoms companies' call centres are likely to field questions and complaints once the plans are enacted, according to a person familiar with the issue, which has meant that they have needed close co-operation with Netflix.

An anonymous reader shares a report: This week, we looked at a new hardware startup called Telly that's giving away half a million of its new smart televisions for free. The catch is that the 55-inch smart television is fitted with a second display that sits underneath and displays ads while you watch your favorite shows. The trade-off for a free television is agreeing to let this brand-new startup collect vast amounts of data about you because the money ads make from you cover the costs of the television itself. According to its privacy policy, the startup collects data about what you view, where you're located, what you watch, as well as what could be inferred about you from that information.

But annotations left in its privacy policy that were published in error raise concerns about its data practices. We've pasted below the portion of Telly's privacy policy verbatim, typos included, as it was published at the time -- and have highlighted the questionable passage in bold for emphasis: "As noted in the Terms of Use, we do not knowingly collect or solicitPersonal Data about children under 13 years of age; ifyou are a child under the age of 13, please do not attempt to register for orotherwise use the Services or send us any Personal Data. Use of the Servicesmay capture the physical presence of a child under the age of 13, but noPersonal Data about the child is collected. If we learn we have collectedPersonal Data from a child under 13 years of age, we will delete thatinformation as quickly as possible. (I don't know that this is accurate. Do wehave to say we will delete the information or is there another way aroundthis)? If you believe that a child under 13 years of age may have providedPersonal Data to us, please contact us at..." A short time after contacting Telly for comment, the company removed the section from its privacy policy.