404Media: Tinkerers Are Taking Old Redbox Kiosks Home and Reverse Engineering Them
The code that runs Redbox DVD rental machines has been dumped online, and, in the wake of the company’s bankruptcy, a community of tinkerers and reverse engineers are probing the operating system to learn how it works. Naturally, one of the first things people did was make one of the machines run Doom.
As has been detailed in several great articles elsewhere, the end of Redbox has been a clusterfuck, with pharmacies, grocery stores, and other retailers stuck with very large, heavy, abandoned DVD rental kiosks. To many people’s surprise, many of the kiosks remain operational even with the bankruptcy of Redbox’s parent company, which has led some people to “liberate” DVDs from the abandoned kiosks. Reddit is full of posts by people who say they have taken dozens of DVDs from kiosks all over the country.
Free DVDs is one thing. But in recent days, people have realized that they can, in some cases, get free Redbox kiosks. In an August filing, Walgreens told the bankruptcy court that it has 5,400 abandoned kiosks at its stores, and that it is spending $184,000 a month keeping them powered. “Walgreens should not be required to continue to ‘store’ and power Redbox kiosks across the country without any form of payment,” the company wrote. And so tinkerers and reverse engineers have begun asking stores whether they can take the devices off their hands.
Wikipedia: empanada
An empanada is a type of baked or fried turnover consisting of pastry and filling, common in Spain, other Southern European countries, North African countries, Latin American countries, and the Philippines. The name comes from the Spanish empanar (to bread, i.e., to coat with bread), and translates as ‘breaded’, that is, wrapped or coated in bread. They are made by folding dough over a filling, which may consist of meat, cheese, tomato, corn, or other ingredients, and then cooking the resulting turnover, either by baking or frying.
For the TIL file.
NYT: Texas Supreme Court Halts Execution in Shaken Baby Case
Mr. Robersonâs case has drawn intense national scrutiny because of the role that the shaken baby diagnosis played in his conviction. His lawyers maintain that no crime was committed at all and have presented evidence and expert testimony that his daughter, Nikki, most likely died in 2002 from pneumonia exacerbated by medication that she had been prescribed.
NYT: Trump Tries to Rewrite History of Jan. 6 in Campaignâs Final Stretch
Donald J. Trump amplified a conspiracy theory that the federal government had staged the Capitol attack and compared jailed rioters to Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II.
BBC: How will weight-loss drugs change our relationship with food?
Now, letâs look at Semaglutide, which is sold under the brand name Wegovy for weight loss. It mimics a hormone that is released when we eat and tricks the brain into thinking we are full, dialling down our appetite so that we eat less.
What this means is that by changing only one hormone, âsuddenly you change your entire relationship with foodâ, says Prof Giles Yeo, an obesity scientist at the University of Cambridge.
And that has all sorts of implications for the way we think about obesity.
Last Updated: 18.Oct.2024 23:55 EDT
