Disney announced Thursday that its streaming platform surpassed 94.9 million subscribers, beating its four-year goal in 14 months. CNBC reports: Disney+ exceeded the company's initial subscriber goal of 60 million to 90 million by 2024 back in November, forcing it to reforecast. The company now expects Disney+ will have 230 million to 260 million subscribers by 2024. Christine McCarthy, the company's chief financial officer, said Thursday that Disney will no longer regularly report streaming subscriber numbers in future quarters as it's now more than a year out from the launch of Disney+. But, she said, Disney may disclose subscriber figures when it reaches certain milestones. Disney has seen rapid growth in subscribers since its launch in November 2019. On day one, the company had 10 million sign-ups and, by the end of the first quarter, the service had secured 26.5 million subscribers. As the pandemic raged on, keeping consumers indoors, Disney+ jumped from 33.5 million subscribers in its second quarter to 57.5 million in its third. In the fourth quarter, the company surpassed 73.7 million subscribers. Disney updated that figure during its December investor day, saying that the service had reached 86.6 million subscribers.

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Germany says its citizens will be able to use smartphones to store their government-issued ID cards and prove their identity online. The Associated Press reports: The Interior Ministry said Wednesday that from this fall, citizens will be able to use the electronic ID stored in their smartphones together with a PIN number to prove they are who they claim to be when communicating with authorities or private businesses. Separately, the ministry said the Cabinet has agreed on a bill that will make government-generated data openly available to businesses and private individuals where possible, to spur the development of new applications. Germans are frequently required to present credit card-sized cards featuring their photo and personal details, such as when applying for benefits, opening bank accounts or registering a vehicle. While there are already ways of doing this online, the physical card and a card reader are currently required.

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Tokolosh writes: On February 13, 2018 the FreeBSD Foundation posted its Code of Conduct. This included a system for reporting offenders, plus a Code of Conduct Committee to review charges and issue sanctions. The resulting story on Slashdot on February 17 triggered 859 comments. Needless to say, it was controversial. In 2020, a survey indicated that some 35% of the FreeBSD developer community was dissatisfied with their 2018 Code of Conduct, 34% were neutral, and only 30% satisfied. So they set out to adopt a new CoC. A second survey asked which code of conduct should FreeBSD adopt? 4% favored keeping the 2018 code of conduct, 33% favored the Go-derived code of conduct, 63% favored the LLVM-derived code of conduct. The LLVM Project code was thus adopted. My pragmatic question back in 2018 was, will this CoC lead to a better FreeBSD, more engagement, a larger, more productive community, and more market share for FreeBSD? In other words, does the CoC give FreeBSD an evolutionary advantage? If a different or no CoC had been imposed, would the FreeBSD of today be different? If so, in what way? The answer is not clear, so I am submitting this story to gather input.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Google is adding some of its fancy, Pixel-exclusive editing features to Google Photos today for all Android users to enjoy, but there's a catch -- if you don't have a Pixel, you'll have to be a paying Google One subscriber to use them. The paywalled editing features have been rumored for some time, but today marks the official announcement of the new program. Specifically, Google is offering some of its more recent machine-learning powered editing tools, like its enhanced Portrait Blur, Portrait Light, and Color Pop features that it started offering alongside the Pixel 5 last fall to a broader audience. As Google clarified to The Verge when the paywall was first discovered, the company isn't taking away existing versions of features like Portrait Blur or Color Pop from free Google Photo users. The current iteration of those features -- which work with newer photos that offer depth data, such as a portrait mode shot -- will still work for everyone. But the new Pixel- and subscription-only version promises to take things a step further and allows users to apply those effects (through the power of machine learning) to older photos that don't have that existing depth data. Pixel users will still get access to the features for free, whether or not they subscribe to Google One.

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According to Phoronix, AMD currently has several interesting job openings on the Linux front. From the report: While AMD has been delivering reliable Linux support with their recent launches, there is room for improvement in areas like more timely compiler support for new processors, better alignment of their new hardware enablement for getting the code not only upstreamed but into distributions for launch-day, and similar areas. Based on recent job postings, it looks like AMD is working to make such strides. Here is a look at some of the new and currently active Linux-related job openings at AMD: [Manager Linux Kernel Development, Linux Technical Lead, Linux Engineer, and Linux Systems Architect, among other traditional software/hardware engineering roles]. Several of these new job descriptions do begin with, "step up into a new organization built to engage more strategically and deeply with the technical teams of our commercial customers." Interestingly, I only see that opening line on their current Linux job postings. When asking AMD if there is a "new (Linux) organization" at AMD, the comment was there is no organization to announce but this is part of the overall expansion at AMD. So for now it's back to dreaming about a new unit akin to the defunct AMD Operating System Research Center that previously drove their Linux support or Intel's former Open-Source Technology Center.

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The hackers behind this week's ransomware attack on Cyberpunk 2077 studio CD Projekt Red appear to have found a buyer for the stolen data. Engadget reports: They ran an auction on a hacking forum but, as The Verge notes, they shut it down after reportedly accepting an offer from elsewhere. The starting price for the auction was said to be $1 million and there was the option for an interested party with a spare $7 million to buy the data outright. It's not clear who has acquired the data, how much they paid for it or what they're planning to do with the information.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Google is rolling out its virtual private network (VPN) service for subscribers of its Fi network that should help people when they're using online services on public Wi-Fi. "We plan to roll out the VPN to iPhone starting this spring," Google notes. Google is also bringing its privacy and security hub to Android devices, offering users a shortcut to features available to Android users, such as its VPN. Finally, Fi users can expect free spam call warnings and blocking to stop identified robocalls and scams and the company is stepping up its game to protect users from SIM swapping scams. "Your Fi number is tied to your Google Account and comes with security features that protect your phone number from threats like SIM swaps -- that's when bad actors try to take someone's phone number and assign it to another SIM card without their consent," Google said. "On Fi, you receive extra layers of protection by default, including a robust account recovery process and notifications for suspicious activity. You can also enable 2-step verification for more protection."

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As grizzly bears expand their range in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming into places where they haven't been seen in a century or more, they're increasingly encountering humans. From a report: Things intensified last summer as trails and campgrounds across the region flooded with inexperienced tourists seeking refuge in the outdoors during the coronavirus pandemic. Grizzly attacks spiked. Bear managers were inundated with calls about grizzlies getting into garbage, chickens, and other draws. Dispersing grizzlies even came unexpectedly close to neighboring states -- a remote camera in Wyoming captured a grizzly only 20 miles from the Utah border and a radio collared bear in Idaho nearly roamed into Oregon and Washington. Ultimately, 2020 offered a nerve-jangling look at the challenges and complex future of grizzly bears in America. Grizzly bears occupy a conflicted, toothy corner of the American psyche -- we revere them even as they haunt our nightmares. You can buy food at Grizzly Grocery before climbing Grizzly Peak or hiking Grizzly Gulch. You can have your furnace serviced by Grizzly Plumbing and Heating. Here in the Northern Rockies, and everywhere grizzlies are found, people erect statues of them, frame pictures on their walls, and, if they see a grizzly in the wild, tell breathless stories around campfires and dinner tables for the rest of their lives. Ask the tourists from around the world that flood into Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks what they most hope to see, and their answer is often the same: a grizzly bear. The western half of the U.S. teemed with grizzlies at the time of European contact, with an estimated 50,000 or more living alongside Native Americans, from the Pacific to the midwestern prairies and into the mountains of Mexico. By the early 1970s, after centuries of relentless shooting, trapping, and poisoning by settlers, 600 to 800 grizzlies remained on a mere 2 percent of their former range in the alpine fastness of the Northern Rockies. Their slide into oblivion was stemmed in 1975 with their listing under the Endangered Species Act and the legal protections it afforded. Today, in a testament to the power of wildlife populations to rebound when given room to do so, there are an estimated 2,000 or more grizzly bears in the contiguous U.S. (and approximately 25,000 in Canada and 30,000 in Alaska). Their recovery has been so successful that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has twice in the past 13 years attempted to de-list the species, most recently in 2017, which would loosen legal protections and allow them to be hunted. Both efforts were overturned in federal court due to lawsuits from conservation groups. For now, grizzlies remain listed. In the lower 48, grizzlies are anchored by two populations in Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks and surrounding ecosystems. Glacier bears represent the southern edge of the great, uninterrupted mass of grizzlies that inhabit wildlands from Montana to Alaska.

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The U.S. Postal Service on Thursday unveiled a new postage stamp honoring Chien-Shiung Wu, a trailblazing Chinese American nuclear physicist whose myriad accomplishments earned her the nickname "the First Lady of Physics." From a report: The stamp's release was timed to coincide with the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, an annual event that was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015 to celebrate female scientists and promote equal access for women and girls in science and technology. Kristin Seaver, executive vice president of the Postal Service, called Wu "one of the most influential nuclear physicists of the 20th century." Wu "made enormous contributions to our understanding of radioactivity and the structure of the universe," Seaver said Thursday in a taped virtual ceremony to mark the stamp's first day of issue. Wu was born in China in 1912 and moved to the United States at the age of 24. She received a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley. Wu is best known for her experiments in the 1950s on a quirky but fundamental property in physics known as parity symmetry. Physicists at the time thought that processes in the real world -- basic interactions such as electromagnetism, for instance -- should be indistinguishable when those same processes are viewed in a mirror. In other words, while a mirror may interchange left and right, it was thought that nature did not distinguish between the two.

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Twitter's finance chief said the social-media company has thought about how it might pay employees or vendors using the popular cryptocurrency bitcoin. From a report: Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, in speaking Wednesday with Andrew Ross Sorkin on CNBC's "Squawk Box," said the company continues to review potential uses of the digital currency. "We've done a lot of the upfront thinking to consider how we might pay employees should they ask to be paid in bitcoin, how we might pay a vendor if they ask to be [paid] in bitcoin and whether we need to have bitcoin on our balance sheet should that happen," Mr. Segal said. "It's something we continue to study and look at, we want to be thoughtful about over time, but we haven't made any changes yet." Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey is a bitcoin advocate. Payment company Square, which Mr. Dorsey also leads, recently acquired about $50 million worth of bitcoin for its corporate treasury. Mr. Segal's comments came days after electric-vehicle maker Tesla said it had purchased $1.5 billion in bitcoin. Tesla also said Monday that it expects to start accepting the cryptocurrency as payment from customers soon. The Twitter CFO said the company is weighing a number of factors in considering what role, if any, the cryptocurrency might play in its business.

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The Biden administration is working to address the global semiconductor shortage that has caused production halts in U.S. industries including autos, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said. From a report: The administration is identifying choke points in supply chains and discussing an immediate path forward with businesses and trading partners, Psaki told reporters at the White House on Thursday. In the longer term, policy makers are looking for a comprehensive strategy to avoid bottlenecks and other issues the semiconductor industry has been facing for years. President Joe Biden is expected to sign an executive order directing a government-wide supply chain review for critical goods in the coming weeks, with the chip shortage a central concern behind the probe. The order will compel a 100-day review led by the National Economic Council and National Security Council focused on semiconductor manufacturing and advanced packaging, critical minerals, medical supplies and high-capacity batteries, such as those used in electric vehicles, two people familiar with the draft said. Additional supply-chain assessments are expected within a year, focused on critical products -- materials, technology and infrastructure -- and other materials tied to defense, public health, telecommunications, energy and transportation.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Eui Jeong Lee and three of her friends sit in an otherwise empty 200-seat cinema auditorium and play a video game on the giant screen. As Ms Lee blasts her gaming opponents with her wireless controller, the sound whips loudly around the dark room from the numerous cinema speakers. "The sound quality is particularly amazing," says the 25-year-old student. "The sound of the gunshots is just so vivid, and when something flew directly at me from the screen I even screamed." Ms Lee and her mates had hired the screen for two hours at a branch of South Korea's largest cinema chain, CGV. With many cinemas across the country closed due to coronavirus restrictions meaning that they can only open with 50% capacity, and far fewer movies being released to tempt cinemagoers, CGV came up with the idea of renting out its auditoriums to gamers to bring in a new revenue stream. Before 6pm up to four people can hire a screen for two hours for around $90. This then rises to $135 in the evening. Users have to bring their consoles, games and controllers with them. The auditoriums being hired out have between 100 and 200 seats, and by comparison CGV movie tickets cost around $12 each. So a 100-seat screen half filled for a film would bring in revenues of $600, rising to $1,200 for a 200-seat one at 50% capacity. And that is before the filmgoers buy their drinks and popcorn. Yet while CGV isn't making anywhere as much money from the gamers, it is bringing in some additional income. The scheme is called Azit-X after "azit", the Korean word for hideout. CGV employee Seung Woo Han came up with the idea after he realised that films and video games share many similarities.

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The European Union is considering building an advanced semiconductor factory in Europe in an attempt to avoid relying on the U.S. and Asia for technology at the heart of some of its major industries. From a report: The EU is exploring how to produce semiconductors with features smaller than 10 nanometers, and eventually down to 2 nanometer chips, according to people familiar with the project. The aim is to curtail dependence on countries such as Taiwan for chips to power 5G wireless systems, connected cars, high-performance computing, and more. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea, the two leaders making the most innovative processors in the sector, could be involved in the EU project, but nothing has been decided, a French Finance Ministry official said in a press briefing on Thursday, following the report from Bloomberg.

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British television channel BBC World News has been barred from airing in China, the National Radio and Television Administration said, a week after Britain's media regulator revoked Chinese state television's broadcast licence. From a report: In a statement issued on the stroke of the Lunar New Year, the administration said an investigation found BBC World News' China-related reports had "seriously violated" regulations, including that news should be "truthful and fair," had harmed China's national interests and undermined national unity.

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Cyber-security powerhouse Proofpoint has filed a lawsuit this week against Facebook in relation to the social network's attempt to confiscate domain names the security firm was using for phishing awareness training. From a report: The case is a countersuit to a Facebook filing from November 30, 2020, when the social network used a UDRP (Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution) request to force domain name registrar Namecheap to hand over several domain names that were mimicking Facebook and Instagram brands. Among the listed domain names were the likes of facbook-login.com, facbook-login.net, instagrarn.ai, instagrarn.net, and instagrarn.org. In court documents filed on Tuesday, Proofpoint said the UDRP should not apply to these domains, which it should be allowed to keep and continue using. Proofpoint argues that UDRP requests should only be used for domains registered in bad faith. The security firm instead says its use of the Facebook and Instagram lookalike domains "has been in good faith and for a legitimate purpose." Proofpoint claims its phishing awareness tests are crucial for the security of its customers, but also for the security of Facebook itself, as the phishing awareness tests teach users to recognize Facebook and Instagram lookalike domains and phishing attacks -- something that Facebook also benefits from, although indirectly.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Three decades ago, the U.S. passed an infinitesimal milestone: solar and wind power generated one-tenth of one percent of the country's electricity. It took 18 years, until 2008, for solar and wind to reach 1% of U.S. electricity. It took 12 years for solar and wind to increase by another factor of 10. In 2020, wind and solar generated 10.5% of U.S. electricity. If this sounds a bit like a math exercise, that's because it is. Anything growing at a compounded rate of nearly 18%, as U.S. wind and solar have done for the past three decades, will double in four years, then double again four years after that, then again four years after that, and so on. It gets confusing to think in so many successive doublings, especially when they occur more than twice a decade. Better, then, to think in orders of magnitude -- 10^10. There are a number of reasons why exponential consideration matters. The first is that U.S. power demand isn't growing, and hasn't since wind and solar reached that 1% milestone in the late 2000s. That means that the growth of wind and solar -- and that of natural gas-fired power -- have come entirely at the expense of coal-fired power. That replacement of coal with either natural gas (half the emissions of coal) or with wind and solar (zero emissions) is certainly an environmental achievement. Coupled with last year's massive drop in emissions, that power shift also makes it much easier for the U.S. to meet its Paris Agreement obligations.

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Bitcoin jumped to a record high after Mastercard and Bank of New York Mellon moved to make it easier for customers to use cryptocurrencies. From a report: The largest digital asset rose as much as 7.4% to $48,364, surpassing the all-time high reached Monday after Tesla announced it would hold $1.5 billion of the cryptocurrency on its balance sheet. The wider Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index also touched a record. "The crypto-asset world is bursting into the realms of traditional finance at a staggering pace," said Simon Peters, an analyst at investment platform eToro. Mastercard singled out so-called "stablecoins," which often peg their value to that of another asset, such as the U.S. dollar. Mastercard has already partnered with crypto card providers such as Wirex and BitPay, but has required digital currencies to be converted into fiat before processing payments for transactions on its network.

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Federal authorities are investigating a massive counterfeit N95 mask operation in which fake 3M masks were sold in at least five states to hospitals, medical facilities and government agencies. From a report: The foreign-made knockoffs are becoming increasingly difficult to spot and could put health care workers at grave risk for the coronavirus. These masks are giving first responders "a false sense of security," said Steve Francis, assistant director for global trade investigations with the Homeland Security Department's principal investigative arm. He added, "We've seen a lot of fraud and other illegal activity." Nearly a year into the pandemic, fraud remains a major problem as scammers seek to exploit hospitals and desperate and weary Americans. Federal investigators say they have seen an increase in phony websites purporting to sell vaccines as well as fake medicine produced overseas and scams involving personal protective equipment. The schemes deliver phony products, unlike fraud earlier in the pandemic that focused more on fleecing customers.

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