HBO debuts first His Dark Materials S2 trailer at San Diego Comic-Con@Home

HBO’s His Dark Materials season 2 trailer.

The trailers and sneak peeks just keep coming from the virtual San Diego Comic Con @Home, running all this weekend. HBO dropped the first trailer for the second season of His Dark Materials, an adaptation of the best-selling fantasy trilogy by Philip Pullman. While there were supposed to be eight episodes in this second season, just like S1, production was shut down due to the pandemic, so there will only be seven episodes.

(Some spoilers for S1 below.)

First published in 1995, the three books in the series are The Golden Compass (published as Northern Lights in the U.K.), The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. They follow the adventures of a 12-year-old girl named Lyra, who lives in a fictional version of Oxford, England, circa the Victorian era. Everyone has a companion daemon in the form of an animal—part of their spirit that resides outside the body; Lyra's is named Pantalaimon. Lyra uncovers a sinister plot that sends her on a journey to find her father in hopes of foiling said plot. That journey takes her to different dimensions (the fictional world is a multiverse) and ultimately to her own coming-of-age.

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Filing: NY charges First American Financial over massive 2019 data breach caused by a software update flaw, in the first enforcement of 2017 cybersecurity rules (Brian Krebs/Krebs on Security)

Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
Filing: NY charges First American Financial over massive 2019 data breach caused by a software update flaw, in the first enforcement of 2017 cybersecurity rules  —  In May 2019, KrebsOnSecurity broke the news that the website of mortgage title insurance giant First American Financial Corp …

Simon Pegg, Nick Frost return to horror-comedy roots with Truth Seekers teaser

Amazon's new supernatural comedy series Truth Seekers reunites Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.

A group of part-time paranormal investigators team up to uncover a deadly conspiracy in the first teaser for Truth Seekers, a forthcoming sci-fi/horror comedy series from Amazon starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. The first teaser was unveiled today at San Diego Comic-Con @Home, which has had to switch to an online-only, virtual format this year due to the continuing pandemic.

Created by Pegg, Frost, James Serafinowicz, and Nat Saunders, the eight-episode series is envisioned as a cross between The X-Files and the British TV series Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World. Each episode will focus on a specific paranormal incident, a throwback to a classic monster-of-the-week format. Rather than going with pure spoof, Truth Seekers will apparently take its horror aspects seriously.

“You have to not make fun of the horror,” Pegg said during the Comic-Con panel. “It’s tempting with genre fare to parody that... but I think the key for horror-comedy is to take the horror seriously.”

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Sources: House's antitrust hearing on Monday with big tech CEOs is likely to be postponed in order to allow lawmakers to attend Rep. John Lewis's funeral (Emily Birnbaum/Protocol)

Emily Birnbaum / Protocol:
Sources: House's antitrust hearing on Monday with big tech CEOs is likely to be postponed in order to allow lawmakers to attend Rep. John Lewis's funeral  —  The hearing, which was set to be held by the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, could be postponed to allow lawmakers to attend Rep. John Lewis' funeral.

Two former Twitter employees say more than 1,000 staff and contractors had access to internal tools to change account settings and ownership as of early 2020 (Reuters)

Reuters:
Two former Twitter employees say more than 1,000 staff and contractors had access to internal tools to change account settings and ownership as of early 2020  —  SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - More than a thousand Twitter employees and contractors as of earlier this year had access to internal tools …

Amazon Prime Video Renews The Boys for Season 3

The Boys season 3 is a go. At San Diego Comic-Con 2020, The Boys executive producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg announced that Amazon Prime Video had renewed the superhero series for a third season.... https://ift.tt/30I1X9O

Redmi Note 9 Scarlet Red Colour Variant to Launch in India on August 6

Redmi Note 9 will be getting an additional colour variant called Scarlet Red which will go on sale from August 6 in India, as per Amazon's promotional page. At launch, the phone came with three... https://ift.tt/2WMSI7b

US Senate Panel Approves Ban on Using TikTok App on Government Devices

US federal employees would be barred from using Chinese-owned mobile video app TikTok on government-issued devices under a bill that passed a US Senate Committee on Wednesday, as lawmakers feared the... https://ift.tt/2WJ8j7y

WhatsApp to Partner With More Indian Banks in Financial Inclusion Push

WhatsApp plans to team up with more Indian lenders to expand banking services in rural areas and for lower income individuals, the messaging platform's country head said on Wednesday. https://ift.tt/2D35B5G

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5G Foldable Phone With Snapdragon 865+ SoC Launched

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5G has been launched in the US as the latest foldable smartphone offering from the South Korean giant. The 5G model of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip that was unveiled in February... https://ift.tt/3hq6XGK

Apple laptop users, government has a virus warning for you: All details and how to stay safe

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Ohio-based Branch Insurance, whose tech helps customers bundle home and auto insurance online by just providing name and address, raises $24M Series A (Katy Smith/Columbus CEO)

Katy Smith / Columbus CEO:
Ohio-based Branch Insurance, whose tech helps customers bundle home and auto insurance online by just providing name and address, raises $24M Series A  —  Katy Smith Editor, Columbus CEO @ceo_editor  —  Columbus-based Branch Insurance is ready to expand nationally.

Personal info of 200K+ Instacart users is being sold on the dark web, including names and last 4 digits of credit card numbers; Instacart denies a data breach (Jane Lytvynenko/BuzzFeed News)

Jane Lytvynenko / BuzzFeed News:
Personal info of 200K+ Instacart users is being sold on the dark web, including names and last 4 digits of credit card numbers; Instacart denies a data breach  —  The personal information of what could be hundreds of thousands of Instacart customers is being sold on the dark web.

WhatsApp to work with partners in India to improve access to financial products

WhatsApp will also support multiple pilots to test potential solutions to solve problems related to distribution of financial products https://ift.tt/32PeElJ https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Hackers obtained Twitter DMs for 36 high-profile account holders

Enlarge (credit: Kevin Krejci)

Hackers accessed direct messages for 36 high-profile account holders in last week’s epic compromise of Twitter, with one of the affected users being an elected official from the Netherlands, the social media company said late Wednesday. The company also said the intruders were able to view email addresses, phone numbers, and other personal information for all 130 hijacked accounts.

The mass-account takeover came to light last Wednesday when some of the world’s best-known celebrities, politicians, and executives began tweeting links to Bitcoin scams. A few hours later, Twitter officials said the incident was the result of it losing control of its internal administrative systems to hackers who either paid, tricked, or coerced one or more company employees. The officials said they would disclose any other malicious activities those responsible may have undertaken as an investigation continued.

A breathtaking impact

On Wednesday, Twitter provided its most troubling update so far. It said:

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