Israel appears to be recovering from a large-scale cyberattack. According to Haaretz and Kan‘s Amichai Stein, attackers took down several Israeli government websites on Monday evening, including those for the ministries of health, interior, justice and welfare. The Prime Minister’s Office website was also affected. All of the websites are back online, the country’s National Cyber Directorate said in a statement.
The government hasn’t officially identified a likely perpetrator, but it did say the sites were victims of a denial of service attack that flooded them with traffic. Haaretz sources claimed the cyberattack targeted sites with a gov.il domain, and suspected that either a state actor or a “large organization” was responsible. DWnotes an Iran-linked hacker group supposedly took credit, and that this may have been retaliation for an alleged Israeli operation against an Iranian nuclear facility. Neither has been confirmed, however.
It’s unclear whether or not this is the largest cyberattack against Israel to date, as a defense source told Haaretz. However, the NCF and defense officials were reportedly concerned enough to declare a state of emergency and review the possible damage, including anything that might compromise other key websites and critical infrastructure.
In contrast to the assaults that hobbled Ukrainian government websites ahead of Russia’s invasion, the denial of service attacks here are unlikely to have done much damage. They made it difficult to reach the websites, but there’s no evidence the culprits defaced sites or compromised data. Still, the cyberattack may exacerbate an already tense situation — it comes just a day after Iran fired missiles at the Iraqi city of Erbil in an apparent warning to the US and its allies. Israel was already on guard, and the country is known to respond to cyberattacks with physical force.
Move over, Spot, there’s a new quadruped robot in town. Meet Kawasaki’s Bex. Unveiled at last week’s International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo, Bex is a four-legged robot that’s inexplicably modeled after an Ibex, a species of wild goat that’s native to parts of Eurasia and Africa.
Bex came out of the company’s Kaleido program, which has seen it work on bipedal robots since 2015. Partway through that project, Kawasaki’s engineers decided to build a robot that could both move quickly across level ground and navigate tricky terrain. As you can see from the video spotted by Gizmodo, Bex features a set of wheels on its knees, allowing it to move faster on smooth surfaces than the glacial pace it plods along when walking.
Bex can carry approximately 220 pounds of cargo. In addition to transporting construction materials and the like, Kawasaki envisions it carrying out remote industrial site inspections, much like Spot is already doing at Hyundai factories in Korea. To that end, the top half of Bex is fully modular, so it doesn’t have to look like a goat. But if you ask us, what kind of monster wouldn’t want a goat protecting their factories?
Lyft will soon add a temporary fuel surcharge to rides. The company will give the fees to drivers to offset the cost of gas, which has increased sharply following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The company hasn’t revealed how much the surcharge will cost users per ride, how long the measure will likely be in place or whether rides in electric vehicles will be affected.
“We’ve been closely monitoring rising gas prices and their impact on our driver community,” Lyft senior communications manager CJ Macklin told Engadget in a statement. “Driver earnings overall remain elevated compared to last year, but given the rapid rise in gas prices we’ll be asking riders to pay a temporary fuel surcharge, all of which will go to drivers. We’ll share more details shortly.”
The addition of a surcharge follows a similar move by Uber. Starting this Wednesday, customers who take an Uber ride will pay a fuel surcharge of between 45 cents and 55 cents. Uber Eats deliveries will cost between 35 cents and 45 cents more too. Uber says it will reevaluate the fee after 60 days and, as with Lyft, all of the surcharge fees will go to drivers and couriers.
Conference tournaments are over and the brackets are set. Sixty-eight teams on both the men’s and women’s sides are about to begin a nearly month-long journey that could culminate with them hoisting a National Championship trophy and cutting down the nets in either New Orleans or Minneapolis. It’s the most wonderful time of the year for basketball fans, and all of the March Madness games are available to stream if you know where to look and have a TV provider log-in to unlock full access. Even if you don’t, there are some options so that you can catch a few games for free. Here’s what you need to know about streaming March Madness.
When does March Madness begin?
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Depending on who you ask, the 2022 NCAA Tournament either begins Tuesday or Thursday. On March 15 and 16, the First Four or four “play-in” games take place. These allow four more teams to “make the tournament” than if the selection committee just filled the slot with one in each spot. Some people argue the entire event doesn’t really start until Thursday and Friday, March 17 and 18, when the First Round officially tips off.
No matter which side you land on, the First Four games will start at 6:40PM ET each night on truTV while Thursday and Friday games begin at 12:15PM ET with the first game on CBS. The latter two days are the busiest and some of the most popular of the tournament as 16 games take place on each. Yes, these are two of the least productive days of the entire year in the US. Action continues with the Second Round on Saturday and Sunday, March 19 and 20, before a break until next Thursday. This is when the Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight rounds are played over the course of the second four-day weekend of the tournament. The Final Four is set for Saturday, April 2 while the National Championship Game will go down on Monday, April 4.
How to stream the 2022 Men’s NCAA Tournament
WarnerMedia
Unlike during the regular season when you need to know which network your team’s conference has a broadcast deal with to find most of the games, Turner Sports holds the rights to the entire Men’s NCAA Tournament. This means you’ll be able to watch all 67 games, including the First Four, on CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV. If you have cable, you’re all set. If you pay for a live TV streaming service like YouTube TV or Hulu, you’re also in good shape. If you don’t have either, don’t worry, you can still watch a good chunk of the tournament.
Turner Sports will allow anyone to watch the games that are broadcast on CBS on the web and mobile devices without a TV provider log-in. Paramount+ users will be able to do the same through that streaming app. If you do have credentials from your TV plan, you can stream everything through the March Madness Live app that’s available on a host of devices. You can find it on Amazon, Android and iOS for mobile and macOS on the desktop. For streaming gadgets, it’s on Apple TV, Fire TV, Google TV, Roku and Xbox and the app also supports some LG smart TVs.
NCAA March Madness Live app multi-game stream.
WarnerMedia
With some of those home entertainment devices, Turner will give you a very handy feature. On Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Google TV and Xbox One, the March Madness Live app will allow you to stream two games at once. Sure, in an ideal world we would get the ability to stream up to four like ESPN’s app goes on an everyday basis, but two is certainly better than one. If you opt for the desktop, mobile or tablet versions, you’ll get picture-in-picture viewing while you browse away from the main game view.
You can certainly use your cable interface or streaming TV service of choice, but Turner has made March Madness Live a centralized hub for the tournament. If you have log-in credentials that get you access to everything, using those will allow you to jump from game to game much faster than scrolling through a guide. And Turner also gives you all of the alerts and stats you could ask for, including the ability to easily follow picks from your bracket if you filled it out on NCAA.com.
Streaming the 2022 Women’s NCAA Tournament
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As if one National Championship tournament in March wasn’t enough, the Women’s edition takes place at the same time. It’s March Madness, after all. The First Four is scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, March 16 and 17, with the First and Second rounds playing out between Friday, March 18 and Monday, March 21. Sweet Sixteen and Elite 8 runs Friday to Monday again, starting March 25, and the Final Four and National Championship Game are set for April 1 and 3.
If you notice there are some scheduling differences so that there are only women’s games on Mondays and both the Final Four and championship are slotted between the same events for the men. So when it comes down to crunch time, you can watch the conclusion of both tournaments live without having to sacrifice viewing the other.
ESPN has the rights to the Women’s NCAA Tournament, so you can expect games to show up on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU and ESPNEWS. The first two of the First Four games will be broadcast on ESPNU at 7PM ET and 9PM ET each night. First Round matchups begin at 11:30AM ET on Friday and Saturday on ESPN2, with subsequent games on those days expanding to the other networks.
Once again, if you have a cable plan or streaming TV service with Disney’s sports channels you’re all set. However, the best place to watch all of the action will be the ESPN app. Here, you’ll get access to the aforementioned Multicast feature that will give you up to four games at once. It will be especially handy during those first four days of the tournament when there’s lots of action happening at the same time. However, it’s only available on Apple TV and Xbox One.
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While streaming is the music industry’s cash cow these days, CDs aren’t dead yet. According to the Recording Industry Association of America’s annual sales report, revenue from CDs grew by 21 percent to $584 million in 2021. That marked the first annual increase in CD revenue in the US since 2004. The RIAA notes that many record stores opened back up and artists sold music at shows again after COVID-19 put everything on hold in 2020.
As has been the case for the last 15 years, vinyl sales are continuing to grow too. Revenue rose by a whopping 61 percent in 2021 to $1 billion. It’s the first time vinyl sales have reached that milestone since 1986. Including other formats, physical music sales totaled $1.66 billion in the US last year.
The RIAA notes that the only major recorded music format to see a revenue decline last year was digital downloads. Sales dropped by 12 percent to $587 million — only $3 million more than CD revenue for 2021.
Streaming revenue, unsurprisingly, is still soaring. Including platforms like digital radio, total revenue rose by 23.8 percent to $12.4 billion last year. Paid subscriptions accounted for $9.5 billion of that (an increase of 23 percent from 2020). The RIAA said the number of paid subscriptions jumped up by 11 percent to 84 million on average. Figures can vary throughout the year as people cancel and sign up for memberships.
Even though artists have long been demanding higher per-play payouts from platforms, streaming is easily the most important moneymaker for the music industry, accounting for 83 percent of overall revenue. Despite that, the rise in physical media sales is encouraging for fans of that format, and should give artists some assurances they can still make money by selling CDs. Record stores are going to stick around for a while yet.
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