Category: Technica Aquarius

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YouTube TV customers have lost access to all Disney-owned channels including ESPN and ABC, as the companies failed to agree on a new contract before the previous one expired last night. YouTube TV customers will automatically get a $15-per-month discount for as long as the Disney channels remain blacked out, reducing the base plan cost from $65 to $50.

“Members, we worked hard to avoid this but were unable to reach a fair deal with Disney,” YouTube TV said. “We regret to share that as of December 17, all Disney-owned channels are unavailable on YouTube TV. While Disney content remains off our platform, we’ll decrease our price by $15/month. We know how frustrating it is to lose channels like ESPN and your local ABC station, and will continue conversations with Disney in hopes of restoring their content for you.”

The list of channels no longer on YouTube TV includes all local ABC channels, ABC News Live, Disney Channel, Disney Junior, Disney XD, Freeform, FX, FXX, FXM, National Geographic, National Geographic Wild, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNEWS, SEC Network, and ACC Network. YouTube TV posted details on how credits will be issued on this webpage.

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It’s time for another Dealmaster. Leading our latest roundup of the best tech deals we can find is the Epic Games Store’s annual holiday sale, which kicked off earlier this week and runs until January 6.

Though sales at PC gaming storefronts are fairly common, this one is notable for bringing back a recurring coupon promo that takes $10 off any eligible game priced at $14.99 or more on Epic’s store. You have to claim it first, but the $10 coupon applies on top of any existing discounts—e.g., a game already on sale for $15 will only cost $5—and automatically renews after each transaction you complete.

Also of note: Epic finally added a shopping cart to its three-year-old storefront earlier this month, so you can now check out with multiple games at once. If you do, the $10 coupon will apply to each eligible game in your cart individually, not as a one-time discount. If you pick up five games priced at $15 or more, for instance, you’ll get $50 shaved off the total cost.

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With a new surge in COVID-19 cases looming and many people gearing up to travel for the holiday season, we’ve refreshed our face mask buying guide with updated recommendations and guidance.

This past March, we updated this face mask buying guide with the latest guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including new science on the increased effectiveness of double-masking. Vaccinations had just started rolling out, and we were on the precipice of what many hoped would be a “return to normal,” only for the public to be swiftly reminded that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, continues to circulate, mutate, and claim lives.

The omicron variant is the latest variant of concern, following late-summer and early-winter surges in US COVID cases spurred by the highly contagious delta variant. Early studies of omicron indicate that it’s even more transmissible—and potentially more likely to cause breakthrough infections in vaccinated people. The Biden administration has released new plans to combat rising infections and the emergent omicron variant. Naturally, proper masking is key.

Enlarge / A man walks by the building entrance of Israeli cyber company NSO Group at one of its branches in the Arava Desert on November 11, 2021, in Sapir, Israel. (credit: Amir Levy | Getty Images)

The Israeli spyware developer NSO Group has shocked the global security community for years with aggressive and effective hacking toolsthat can target both Android and iOS devices. The company’s products have been so abused by its customers around the world that NSO Group now faces sanctions, high-profile lawsuits, and an uncertain future. But a new analysis of the spyware maker’s ForcedEntry iOS exploit—deployed in a number of targeted attacks against activists, dissidents, and journalists this year—comes with an even more fundamental warning: Private businesses can produce hacking tools that have the technical ingenuity and sophistication of the most elite government-backed development groups.

Google’s Project Zero bug-hunting group analyzed ForcedEntry using a sample provided by researchers at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which published extensively this year about targeted attacks utilizing the exploit. Researchers from Amnesty International also conducted important research about the hacking tool this year. The exploit mounts a zero-click, or interactionless, attack, meaning that victims don’t need to click a link or grant a permission for the hack to move forward. Project Zero found that ForcedEntry used a series of shrewd tactics to target Apple’s iMessage platform, bypass protections the company added in recent years to make such attacks more difficult, and adroitly take over devices to install NSO’s flagship spyware implant Pegasus.

Apple released a series of patches in September and October that mitigate the ForcedEntry attack and harden iMessage against future, similar attacks. But the Project Zero researchers write in their analysis that ForcedEntry is still “one of the most technically sophisticated exploits we’ve ever seen.” NSO Group has achieved a level of innovation and refinement, they say, that is generally assumed to be reserved for a small cadre of nation-state hackers.