Though the remainder of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur’s final season is set to hit the Disney Channel and Disney Plus some time next year, the studio is reportedly keeping one episode from airing because of its focus on a transgender character.

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur has often touched on ideas about race, class, and issues like gentrification as it followed the adventures of genius 13-year-old Lunella Lafatette (Diamond White) and her pet dinosaur, Devil (Fred Tatasciore). But according to now-deleted social media posts from animators who worked on “The Gatekeeper” — an episode about Lunella and other members of her school’s volleyball team being terrorized by a transphobic adult — Disney has chosen to keep the episode from officially debuting because of its subject matter.

“The Gatekeeper” spends much of its runtime unpacking how no one has an issue with team captain Brooklyn (Indya Moore) being trans except for Greer (Amy Sedaris), a coach/parent from a rival school. It isn’t until Greer overhears that Brooklyn used to play on a boys’ soccer team that she tries to disqualify Lunella’s team on a technicality. Lunella, the other girls, and their own adult coach Hrbek (Tatasciore) can see (and explicitly say) that Greer is motivated by bigotry and an unfounded fear that her team will lose. But rather than taking that feedback to heart, Greer traps Brooklyn and most of the team in an escape room-like pocket dimension that looks like their locker room.

The episode (which The Verge has seen a leaked version of) features a couple of queer and trans pride flags, as well as a choice needle drop of Charli XCX’s “Unlock it (Lock It)” that’s fitting as the kids find themselves having to locate magical keys to free themselves. The episode’s messaging about embracing and celebrating people’s identities isn’t subtle, but it is fundamentally uplifting and clearly meant to emphasize the importance of respecting other people.

Reports of Disney pulling the episode comes a little over week after Donald Trump’s heavily transphobic presidential re-election campaign led him to victory and a year after Disney CEO Bob Iger insisted that he felt the studio’s project had become too message-focused. We’ve reached out to Disney for comment about whether it actually plans to keep “The Gatekeeper” from airing, and will update if and when we hear back.

British telecom Virgin Media O2 has deployed an AI tool to combat phone scammers by wasting their time with fake conversations, the company said. The AI system, named Daisy, uses voice synthesis to mimic an elderly woman and engages fraudsters in lengthy discussions about fictitious family members or provides false bank details, keeping them occupied for up to 40 minutes per call. Virgin Media O2 embedded phone numbers connected to Daisy within scammer call lists targeting vulnerable individuals. The system, developed with help from anti-scam YouTuber Jim Browning, automatically transcribes incoming calls and generates responses without human intervention. Further reading: Google Rolls Out Call Screening AI To Thwart Phone Fraudsters.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Finally, some good news

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zoobab writes: The US Senate to set to revive Software Patents with the PERA Bill, with a vote on Thursday, November 14, 2024. A crucial Senate Committee is on the cusp of voting on two bills that would resurrect some of the most egregious software patents and embolden patent trolls. The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA), S. 2140, would dismantle vital safeguards that prohibit software patents on overly broad concepts. If passed, courts would be compelled to approve software patents on mundane activities like mobile food ordering or basic online financial transactions. This would unleash a torrent of vague and overbroad software patents, which would be wielded by patent trolls to extort small businesses and individuals. The EFF is inviting members of the public to contact their Senators.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you’ve been looking to replace your Android phone’s camera app with one that doesn’t overprocess photos to alter lighting and detail in sometimes extreme ways, now there’s an option. Zerocam is a barebones app that promises to “shoot in RAW and process your photos to remove all artificial effects, delivering soft, pleasant-to-eye images.”

We’ve been talking about the definition of a photo for years, and we’re not the only ones complaining about HDR processing that sometimes makes images seem flat because they lack contrast between light and dark.

This app’s approach is similar to the Process Zero feature Halide offers within its iPhone camera app, but Zerocam goes a few steps further. This app doesn’t even have much of an interface:...

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'I have been working in the entertainment/film industry for around a decade and a half, and this has NEVER happened to me'

The post It’s Not Hard For A Billion-Dollar Company To Credit An Artist From Time To Time appeared first on Aftermath.