The Road author Cormac McCarthy isn’t tweeting jokes about Pete Buttigieg, the secretary of transportation, or Tron using the handle @CormacMcCrthy. But a member of Twitter’s verification team mistakenly believed the account was the real deal and slapped a vaunted blue tick onto it.

The account, which was created in 2018 and has almost 50,000 followers, was briefly marked as a verified user, even though it doesn’t belong to McCarthy. According to the 88-year-old author’s agent and publisher, McCarthy has never joined Twitter.

“The account referenced was verified by mistake and that has since been reversed,” Twitter told The Guardian. “The account will also be required to adhere to Twitter’s parody, news feed, commentary, and fan account policy.” Accounts that have to abide by the rules of that policy aren’t eligible to become verified.

The company didn’t explain how the blunder occurred. Those who apply for a verification badge are supposed to provide evidence that they're the genuine article, such as by providing a copy of government ID or an official website that links to the handle. The holder of the phony McCarthy account evidently did neither of those. The Guardian suggests Twitter may have proactively verified the account following a viral tweet about engagement.

Twitter has been flooded with verification requests in recent months. It reopened public applications for the blue tick in May, three and a half years after it put the program on hold to reassess how it handles verifications, though it's evident there are still some hiccups. It briefly paused applications after eight days due to the large volume of requests. Twitter is still in the process of rolling out the application link to all accounts.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many film festivals have shifted to online-only or hybrid formats. Later this month, another movie will premiere as a paid online event. This time around, you'll be able to watch it on Facebook.

Users in any country where Facebook's paid online events are available (which now number more than 100) can watch the premiere of The Outsider, a behind-the-scenes documentary about the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York City. A virtual ticket costs $4, and the film will debut on August 19th at 8PM ET. It'll be available for 12 hours.

As Axios reports, a Facebook Live panel discussion will follow the premiere of The Outsider. The doc will hit select theaters and other streaming platforms in September.

Facebook will run some promos for the event, which is being run by distributor Abramorama, but it won't take a cut of ticket sales. The company is waiving commissions on creators' revenue through 2022.

The film has already caused controversy. Officials at the museum asked the filmmakers to cut 18 "defamatory" scenes from The Outsider, but directors Pamela Yoder and Steven Rosenbaum said they wouldn't back down. Michael Shulan, the museum's former creative director and a central figure in the film, reportedly claims in the movie that the museum represents the “Disneyfication” of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Film distribution is a tough nut to crack for indie studios and filmmakers, especially when they try to release movies in a number of markets. Much like others have had success in hosting online classes or livestreaming gameplay on Facebook, they could harness the platform's enormous reach to find an audience.

It remains to be seen whether other filmmakers and distributors premiere their movies on Facebook. Still, with the company having its fingers in an ever-increasing number of pies, it's not hard to imagine Facebook being interested in hosting similar events in the future.

Facebook is reportedly looking into analyzing the content of encrypted data without having to decrypt it. The company is recruiting artificial intelligence researchers to study the matter, according to The Information. Their research could pave the way for Facebook to target ads based on encrypted WhatsApp messages. Facebook could also use the findings to encrypt user data without affecting its ad targeting approaches.

This area of research is called "homomorphic encryption," which relies heavily on mathematics. Microsoft, Amazon and Google are also working on the approach. The aim of homomorphic encryption is to allow companies to read and analyze data while keeping it encrypted to protect information from cybersecurity dangers and to maintain privacy.

Facebook told The Information it's "too early for us to consider homomorphic encryption for WhatsApp at this time." Facebook could benefit from the tech in a number of ways. Protecting data without impacting the effectiveness of ad targeting could allow Facebook to both meet its business goals and satisfy regulators who have expressed concern about how the company handles user information. Facebook could be years away from harnessing homomorphic encryption, however.

In 2019, Facebook revealed plans to roll out end-to-end encryption across all of its messaging services: Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. Later that year, the US, UK and Australia sent a joint letter to Facebook, urging it not to push forward with the project "without ensuring there will be no reduction in the safety of Facebook users and others, and without providing law enforcement court-authorized access to the content of communications to protect the public, particularly child users." However you slice it, encryption is a thorny issue for Facebook, whether or not it's able to analyze the data.

Controversial crime alert app Citizen has opened up its $20/month subscription service to everyone in the US. The Protect plan, which almost 100,000 users have beta tested, offers around-the-clock access to "Citizen’s team of highly trained Protect Agents," CEO Andrew Frame wrote in a blog post.

Those agents can call 911 for you if you're in a situation in which contacting emergency services directly might not be safe. "If you share your location with Citizen Protect, Agents can live monitor your location, provide first responders, and help them arrive more quickly by guiding them to your exact location," Frame wrote. "Protect Agents will always continue to monitor you while you wait for help to arrive."

The agents can notify your emergency contacts and keep them updated if you're in trouble. Frame said they can also guide you to a safe place or help nearby when needed, or chat with you for peace of mind. The service can also alert other Citizen users in the area if your scenario warrants doing so. "Harnessing the power of Citizen’s safety network through Protect-generated alerts has helped dozens of families reunite with their missing loved ones and pets," Frame wrote.

Users can connect to a Protect agent and chat via video, audio or text after tapping a button on the Citizen app's home screen. The iOS version of the app includes an optional Protect Mode, which offers other ways to link up with an agent (Citizen plans to bring "additional functionality" to Android soon). You can switch on a feature that displays a prompt to connect to an agent when you shake your device a couple of times.

If you opt to use the Distress Detection feature, Citizen will monitor your device's audio with "AI-powered technology which identifies sounds that indicate trouble, like a scream for example." If the app picks up an audible distress signal, it'll ask if you'd like to be connected to an agent. If 10 seconds pass without you responding to the prompt, Citizen will connect you to an agent automatically.

Citizen started out in 2016 as an app called Vigilante that aimed to alert users about crimes and emergencies. Apple swiftly kicked it from the App Store over vigilantism concerns. Vigilante was rebranded a few months later with a deeper focus on safety.

The app hit headlines again in May, when Citizen offered a $30,000 reward for information that led to the arrest of a person who it claimed started a wildfire. Citizen identified the wrong person, and police arrested someone else in connection with the alleged crime.

The same month, a Citizen-branded security vehicle was spotted in Los Angeles amid reports that the company was testing an on-demand private security force. The company later said it wouldn't start its own such service, but it didn't rule out partnerships with private security companies.

Having swift access to support agents isn't inherently a bad idea, but Citizen's history might dissuade some from taking out a Protect subscription. It's worth noting there are other ways to discreetly call 911 and send a message with location updates to your emergency contacts, such as the iPhone's Emergency SOS function. 

A few months after it introduced new Touch ID-enabled Magic Keyboards along with M1 Macs, Apple is now selling the peripheral separately. The Magic Keyboard with Touch ID costs $149, while a version with a number pad can be all yours for $179. It's worth noting the Touch ID functions only work on M1-powered Macs.

Along with helping you log in to your Mac without having to punch in a password, you can use Touch ID to verify Apple Pay transactions. For now, the standalone version of the Magic Keyboard is only available in the standard silver and white color scheme. You won’t be able to snag it in one of those funky M1 iMac-inspired designs without shelling out for a new computer. 

Apple

Apple has also refreshed several other Magic accessories. The standard $99 Magic Keyboard now has keys for Spotlight, dictation, do not disturb and emoji, as do the Touch ID-equipped models. The $129 Magic Trackpad, meanwhile, has a tweaked shape to match the Magic Keyboard. 

All of these accessories, as well as the $79 Magic Mouse, now come with a braided USB-C to Lightning cable rather than the old Lightning to USB-A one. Apple says the accessories can run for around a month, if not longer, on a single charge.

Amazon's long-awaited The Lord of the Rings series has a release date, but don't go rushing to stake out the best spot in your living room just yet. The show will premiere on September 2nd, 2022, with new episodes dropping on Prime Video each week. 

Filming on the as-yet-untitled series wrapped up today. Production began in February 2020, but it was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The series takes place thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. A cast of old and new characters will have to resist a newly resurgent evil during the Second Age of Middle-earth.

Along with the release date, Amazon revealed the first proper image from the show. It depicts a figure looking at a vista with a white city and, much further away, the outline of two curious trees. With no sign of a trailer yet, expect the internet to analyze every pixel of the image for hints.

Even before filming started, Amazon renewed the series for a second season. So, whatever happens in this first batch of episodes, you can be rest assured that there will be much more of the story to come.

Ubisoft has revealed the next limited-time event for Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, and it could whet your appetite for Rainbow Six Extraction. The Containment event features a new game mode called Nest Destruction, in which you'll attempt to destroy or defend an alien nest on a revamped version of the Consulate map.

The attackers play as a team of REACT agents who are tasked with destroying nests. They'll square off against "a team of Proteans, a deadly Archæan variant that can adopt the form of REACT operators," Ubisoft said. These creatures can mimic the behavior of operators and they'll move fast, but they can only use melee attacks, such as Aruni’s punch and Oryx’s special abilities. The attacking team can only use a standard loadout with no modifiers, and there's a limited roster of operators. Along with successfully destroying or defending the nest, teams can win by wiping out their opponents.

The event sounds intriguing, but the timing of it is slightly odd. The mode was inspired by R6 Extraction, which was supposed to arrive in September. Last month, Ubisoft pushed back the release date to January. Still, Nest Destruction might give you a taste of the next game in the Rainbow Six series.

The Containment event will be available from August 3rd to August 24th. Between August 13th and 15th, R6 Siege will be free to play, so anyone can hop in and check out the event. Ubisoft will grant double bonus Battle Pass points during that weekend.

Since March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic really took hold in most of the world, Bandcamp has waived its commissions on the first Friday of each month. The Bandcamp Friday initiative is now set to continue through the end of the year. The next edition takes place on August 6th.

Almost 800,000 music fans have participated in Bandcamp Fridays, paying artists and labels $56 million in the process. On Bandcamp Fridays, artists and labels receive approximately 93 percent of sales revenue after payment processor fees. On every other day of the month, artists and labels still receive approximately 82 percent of revenue from purchases, Bandcamp says.

Although the world is slowly returning to a semblance of normality and musicians can once again play shows in some regions, the long-term financial impact of the pandemic is something artists and labels (particularly smaller ones) are still dealing with. Initiatives like Bandcamp Fridays could put some extra cash in their pockets to alleviate some of the strain, so it’s good to see Bandcamp continuing the effort for another few months.

R2-D2 might be the most beloved character in the entire Star Wars universe. But some might change their tune about the adorable droid if he becomes too annoying in his latest form: a Tamagotchi.

Disney and Bandai have teamed up to bring Artoo to the pockets of fans who don't mind training, cleaning and looking after a needy, digital version of the droid wherever they are. The egg-shaped R2-D2 Tamagotchi will be available in two color schemes. There's a mostly white model that looks like the droid, and a transparent blue model. As you might expect from a Tamagotchi, you'll interact with the toy using three physical buttons.

There are 19 skills for Artoo to learn. You'll need to keep him charged and clean. It's unclear as yet whether this version of R2-D2 poops like other Tamagotchis. Engadget has asked Lucasfilm whether the Tamagotchi version of R2-D2 does, in fact, poop.

There are nine mini-games you can play with him, including firefighting and Star Wars staple Dejarik (or holochess). If you don't keep the droid happy, some Jawas might arrive to take him away.

Bandai/Disney

We're long removed from Tamagotchi's heyday. The digital pet was everywhere in the late '90s and early 2000s until it plummeted out of the cultural zeitgeist. There have been other Tamagotchi crossovers. A model based on Neon Genesis Evangelion hit the US earlier this year. A Star Wars collaboration might help revive the brand, but surely a model based on Grogu (aka Baby Yoda) from The Mandalorian would have been a better fit. 

Pre-orders open for the R2-D2 Tamagotchi at midnight ET on August 3rd. The toy will arrive on November 11th.

Some folks who buy or rent movies on Apple TV are running into a major issue when they watch films through the app. Occasionally, flicks are playing without audio, according to 9to5 Mac. The bug is reportedly affecting various systems that support the TV app, including smart TVs, the Apple TV device and other streaming devices, such as Roku sticks and Chromecast with Google TV. The issue seems to have been occurring for at least the last month.

The cause of the issue is unclear. 9to5 Mac speculates the TV app may not be decoding the audio track correctly due to a problem with digital rights management (DRM). According to the report, users have been having mixed success when requesting refunds due to the issue — Apple seemingly hasn't fulfilled all such requests from customers, though it's not clear why. Engadget has contacted Apple for comment.

Whatever the cause of the problem, it's undoubtedly frustrating to spend money to rent or buy a film only to find you're missing out on a significant proportion of the experience. If you do encounter this problem, it might be worth connecting your Apple account to Movies Anywhere and see if the movies you bought on the iTunes Store play correctly with sound through that service.