Australia news live: Tony Abbott to give keynote speech at Cpac; Labor national conference to conclude

Indigenous voice to parliament expected to be central to Conservative Political Action Network Conference and final day of Labor national conference

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Good morning and welcome to our rolling news coverage. I’m Stuart MacFarlane and I’ve got some breaking stories for you before my colleague Christopher Knaus takes over.

Our top story this morning is that Anthony Albanese’s government will promise $200m to improve women’s sporting facilities and equipment after the Matildas’ historic Women’s World Cup run sparked an unprecedented outpouring of support for women’s football.

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Apparently you CAN'T bring your emotional support rattlesnake to a pickleball game [Amusing]

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Pornhub’s parent company is changing its name to total nonsense

MindGeek was acquired by a private equity company earlier this year. | Photo by Gabe Ginsberg/FilmMagic

MindGeek, the owner of Pornhub and other adult entertainment websites, has a new name: Aylo. The company says the rebrand represents “the need for a fresh start,” as reported earlier by the New York Post.

After MindGeek CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo stepped down from the company last year, the private equity company Ethical Capital Partners took over MindGeek this past March.

“The decision to rebrand the company as Aylo, comes in response to the need for a fresh start and a renewed commitment to innovation, diverse and inclusive adult content, and trust and safety,” the post reads. “The new brand identity will be implemented across all company communications, marketing materials and digital platforms.”

Even with a total...

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Halloween News From Disney Parks, Universal Studios, and More Fan-tastical Destinations

It’s time to start planning those Halloween haunt and theme park event trips before they sell out. Seriously, if you think it’s early talk to anyone who was unable to secure tickets to Disneyland’s Oogie Boogie Bash, all the dates of which are no longer available—unless you score tickets from folks who can’t make it.…

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AI This Week: Fifty Ways to Hack Your Chatbot

• If there’s one thing you do this week it should be listening to Werner Herzog read poetry written by a chatbot.

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California is letting a lot more people get a digital ID

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

California has significantly expanded a pilot program allowing citizens to get a digital driver’s license / identification card that’s accessible on their mobile phones (via 9to5Mac). The digital ID, which the California DMV is calling an “mDL” (mobile driver’s license), can be used for things like getting through airport security or proving your age when buying alcohol.

The free pilot is now open to 1.5 million participants, according to the DMV’s website for the program. You can sign up for it by downloading the “CA DMV Wallet” app on iOS and Android.

If you choose to sign up for the state’s digital IDs, there’s a few caveats to be aware of. The DMV stresses that you’ll still need to carry your physical ID or driver’s license given...

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You Do Not Need Samsung's Slim S Pen Case to Enjoy the Galaxy Z Fold 5

You would think that, with as much as the Galaxy Z Fold 5 costs, Samsung would throw in a stylus for good measure. Unfortunately, the $1,800 book-like foldable that opens into a tablet has no accompanying S Pen like the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. If any device could benefit from the S Pen, it’s the Fold 5's inner…

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Georgia school board fires teacher who read book on gender fluidity to class

Vote on party lines punished Katie Rinderle for reading book to her fifth-grade class in violation of vaguely worded policy

A Georgia school board voted along party lines on Thursday to fire a teacher after officials said she improperly read a book on gender fluidity to her fifth-grade class.

The Cobb county school board in suburban Atlanta voted 4-3 to fire Katie Rinderle, overriding the recommendation of a panel of three retired educators. The panel found after a two-day hearing that Rinderle had violated district policies but said she should not be fired.

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FYI: There's another BlackCat ransomware variant on the prowl

Bad kitty, no catnip for you

Here's a heads up. Microsoft says a new version of BlackCat ransomware has been spotted extorting victims. This variant embeds two tools, we're told: the network toolkit Impacket for lateral movement within compromised environments, and Remcom for remote code execution.…

Much like his ego, Elmo's follower count is severely overinflated [Obvious]

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Senators want YouTube investigated over showing targeted ads to kids, again

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A report from ad quality transparency platform Adalytics suggests that YouTube served adult-focused ads on almost 100 videos considered “made for kids.” Some of these ads reportedly involved content inappropriate for children, such as car wrecks, medical injuries, and clips from TV-MA shows. Adalytics found that the websites linked in the ads transmitted cookies to their devices that could serve targeted ads to kids, too.

As pointed out by Adalytics, Google’s own policies say ads on content made for kids must not use third-party trackers or collect personal information without getting permission from a parent. Dan Taylor, Google’s vice president of global ads, reiterates this policy in a response on Google’s website, where he calls...

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Old and busted: Leave no trace. New hotness: Leave more trash [Asinine]

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Six Arkansas schools to offer African American AP course despite restrictions

Officials have said class will not count toward graduation credit but some schools offer course as ‘local elective’

The six Arkansas schools that planned to offer an Advanced Placement (AP) course on African American studies say they will continue to do so despite state officials saying the class will not count toward a student’s graduation credit.

The North Little Rock and Jacksonville North Pulaski school districts and eStem charter schools said on Thursday they would offer the course as a “local elective” despite the Arkansas education department saying it is not considered a state-approved course. They join two other school districts that have said they will continue offering the class.

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Help! I Want to Spend $300 On This Amazing Lost Boys Figure

If there are two things I love in this world it’s The Lost Boys and wasting money. So it should be of little surprise to my friends, family, and you readers that I am salivating over Sideshow Collectables’ latest announcement: a 1/6 scale collectible of Kiefer Sutherland’s iconic character David from The Lost Boys.

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There's something not quite kosher about this ice cream [Sick]

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Axe-wielding United pilot has had enough of these motherfarking parking gates at this motherfarking airport [Scary]

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Google 'wiretapped' tax websites with visitor traffic trackers, lawsuit claims

And this wiretap, is it in the room with us right now?

Google was sued on Thursday for allegedly "wiretapping" several tax preparation websites and gathering people's sensitive personal data.…

In His Latest Threat to Public Safety, Elon Musk Says Twitter Will Remove Option to Block Users

Twitter, (recently rebranded as X) appears to be taking another turn for the worse as Elon Musk claimed on Friday that he is removing the Block feature from the app. If Musk goes through with it, users will reportedly still have the option to mute other profiles from appearing on their feeds, but the option to block…

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WD refused to answer our questions about its self-wiping SanDisk SSDs

Don’t buy the SanDisk Extreme. | Image: Western Digital

Eleven days ago, we sent these questions to Western Digital’s head of PR and published them publicly on The Verge:

• Why are these drives still on sale?
• Will you offer free data recovery services to affected customers? When?
• Are you proactively warning customers and retailers who have already purchased these drives that significant data loss is possible?
• If not, why not?
• What, exactly, is going wrong with these drives?
• How did this happen?

What’s the fuss? For months, the company has been laughably silent about how its pricey portable SanDisk Extreme SSDs might lose all your data. It happened to my colleague Vjeran Pavic twice. It happened to Ars Technica. It happened to PetaPixel.

Months after our inquiries, Western Digital...

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DC youths stab Bison [Scary]

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Encounter Party Is Ready To Take On Television

It’s the first real day of Gen Con and I’m meeting up with Ned Donovan and Brian David Judkins in the labyrinthine upper suites of Lukas Oil Stadium. We can’t go into the Wizards of the Coast press suite, as apparently someone else louder than us called dibs, but we sneak into a suite reserved for someone named…

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ебать путина [Interesting]

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44 Best Back-to-School Deals (2023): Laptops, Backpacks, Household Essentials

Everyone can benefit from these back-to-school deals even if you're not a teacher or student.

Elon Musk says (yet again) that X will stop letting you block users

Image: The Verge

Elon Musk says X’s — formerly Twitter’s — block feature is on the chopping block, repeating his long-standing gripe against the basic social networking feature. “Block is going to be deleted as a ‘feature’, except for DMs,” Musk said in an X reply on Friday. He followed up with another post: “It makes no sense.”

Musk has made his feelings about blocking known in the past months. In June, he said that Twitter should remove blocking in favor of “a stronger form of mute,” and he’s complained about large block lists and mass blocking campaigns against users who subscribe to Twitter Blue. But he also has a long history of promises that are delayed or never implemented — and removing the “block” feature might be a particularly unpopular...

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Electron Holes