"Inside a violent gang's ruthless cypto-stealing home invasion spree."

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Inside a violent gang’s ruthless crypto-stealing home invasion spree

Florida man convicted in cryptocurrency theft

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Enlarge (credit: Malte Mueller / Getty ) Cryptocurrency has always made a ripe target for theft —and not just hacking, but the old-fashioned, up-close-and-personal kind, too. Given that it can be irreversibly transferred in seconds with little more than a password, it's perhaps no surprise that thieves have occasionally sought to steal crypto in home-invasion burglaries and even kidnappings. But

30 years later, FreeDOS is still keeping the dream of the command prompt alive

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Enlarge / Preparing to install the floppy disk edition of FreeDOS 1.3 in a virtual machine. (credit: Andrew Cunningham) Two big things happened in the world of text-based disk operating systems in June 1994. The first is that Microsoft released MS-DOS version 6.22, the last version of its long-running operating system that would be sold to consumers as a standalone product. MS-DOS would continue

DNA from mammoth remains reveals the history of the last surviving population

Woolly mammoth extinction and resurrection

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Enlarge / An artist's conception of one of the last mammoths of Wrangel Island. (credit: Beth Zaiken) A small group of woolly mammoths became trapped on Wrangel Island around 10,000 years ago when rising sea levels separated the island from mainland Siberia. Small, isolated populations of animals lead to inbreeding and genetic defects, and it has long been thought that the Wrangel Island mammoths

YESTERDAY

NASA and SpaceX misjudged the risks from reentering space junk

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Enlarge / A European ATV cargo freighter reenters the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean in 2013. Since the beginning of the year, landowners have discovered several pieces of space junk traced to missions supporting the International Space Station. On all of these occasions, engineers expected none of the disposable hardware would survive the scorching heat of reentry and make it to Earth's surfa

NASA orders more tests on Starliner, but says crew isn’t stranded in space

Boeing Starliner delays astronauts' return

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Enlarge / Boeing's Starliner spacecraft is seen docked at the International Space Station on June 13. (credit: NASA ) NASA and Boeing officials pushed back Friday on headlines that the commercial Starliner crew capsule is stranded at the International Space Station but said they need more time to analyze data before formally clearing the spacecraft for undocking and reentry. Two NASA astronauts,

Apple’s Vision Pro goes on sale outside the US for the first time

Apple adds Chinese apps Vision Pro headset

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Enlarge / A Vision Pro on display at an Apple Store in Tokyo. (credit: Apple) Apple's Vision Pro headset went on sale outside the United States for the first time today, in the first of two waves of expanded availability. The $3,499 "spatial computing" device launched back in February in the US, but it hasn't taken the tech world by storm. Part of that has been its regional launch, with some of t

ChatGPT outperforms undergrads in intro-level courses, falls short later

AI-generated exam submissions undetected

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Enlarge (credit: Caiaimage/Chris Ryan ) “Since the rise of large language models like ChatGPT there have been lots of anecdotal reports about students submitting AI-generated work as their exam assignments and getting good grades. So, we stress-tested our university’s examination system against AI cheating in a controlled experiment,” says Peter Scarfe, a researcher at the School of Psychology an

Microdosing candies finally recalled after psychoactive muscimol found

Diamond Shruumz candy recall due to toxin

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Enlarge (credit: Diamond Shruumz ) After weeks of reports of severe illnesses across the country, the maker of Diamond Shruumz microdosing chocolates, gummies, and candy cones has finally issued a recall . It covers all lots and all flavors of all the brand's products. The illnesses have been marked by several severe symptoms, which notably include seizures, loss of consciousness, and the need fo

Appeals court seems lost on how Internet Archive harms publishers

500,000 books removed from Internet Archive

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Enlarge (credit: mitay20 | iStock / Getty Images Plus ) The Internet Archive (IA) went before a three-judge panel Friday to defend its open library's controlled digital lending (CDL) practices after book publishers last year won a lawsuit claiming that the archive's lending violated copyright law. In the weeks ahead of IA's efforts to appeal that ruling, IA was forced to remove 500,000 books from

Mere days before its debut, the Ariane 6 rocket loses a key customer to SpaceX

Europe weather satellite switches SpaceX

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Enlarge / The flight hardware core stage for Europe’s new rocket, Ariane 6, is moved onto the launch pad for the first time. A launch is due to occur on July 9, 2024. (credit: ESA-M. Pédoussaut) In a shocking announcement this week, the European intergovernmental organization responsible for launching and operating the continent's weather satellites has pulled its next mission off a future launch

Bipartisan consensus in favor of renewable power is ending

American support for renewable energy wanes

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Ars Technica - All content / 20h

Enlarge (credit: tigerstrawberry ) One of the most striking things about the explosion of renewable power that's happening in the US is that much of it is going on in states governed by politicians who don't believe in the problem wind and solar are meant to address. Acceptance of the evidence for climate change tends to be lowest among Republicans, yet many of the states where renewable power ha

SCOTUS kills Chevron deference, giving courts more power to block federal rules

Supreme Court faces major decisions

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Enlarge / Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor arrive for President Joe Biden's State of the Union address on March 7, 2024, in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Win McNamee ) The US Supreme Court today overturned the 40-year-old Chevron precedent in a ruling that limits the regulatory authority of federal agencies. The 6-3 decision in Loper Bright

Tesla says Model 3 that burst into flames in fatal tree crash wasn’t defective

Tesla denies Model 3 defects

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Enlarge (credit: CFOTO / Contributor | Future Publishing ) Tesla has denied that "any defect in the Autopilot system caused or contributed" to the 2022 death of a Tesla employee, Hans von Ohain, whose Tesla Model 3 burst into flames after the car suddenly veered off a road and crashed into a tree. "Von Ohain fought to regain control of the vehicle, but, to his surprise and horror, his efforts wer

Brussels explores antitrust probe into Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI

EU scrutinizes Microsoft-OpenAI deal

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Enlarge / EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager said the bloc was looking into practices that could in effect lead to a company controlling a greater share of the AI market. (credit: Thierry Monasse/Getty Images ) Brussels is preparing for an antitrust investigation into Microsoft’s $13 billion investment into OpenAI, after the European Union decided not to proceed with a merger review into the

Man suffers rare bee sting directly to the eyeball—it didn’t go well

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Enlarge / Bees fly to their hive. (credit: Getty | Federico Gambarini ) In what may be the biological equivalent to getting struck by lightning, a very unlucky man in the Philadelphia area took a very rare bee sting directly to the eyeball—and things went badly from there. As one might expect, the 55-year-old went to the emergency department, where doctors tried to extract the injurious insect's

It’s a showdown with Sabretooth in latest Deadpool and Wolverine trailer

X-Men villain Sabretooth returns

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Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman star in Deadpool and Wolverine . It's safe to say that Marvel Studios' Deadpool and Wolverine is one of the most hotly anticipated releases of the summer. We've had a teaser and full trailer, and now the studio has released a second one-minute trailer with a surprise appearance bound to delight X-Men fans everywhere. It's none other than Sabretooth , played by the s

Researchers craft smiling robot face from living human skin cells

Humanoid robots with living skin

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Enlarge / A movable robotic face covered with living human skin cells. (credit: Takeuchi et al. ) In a new study , researchers from the University of Tokyo, Harvard University, and the International Research Center for Neurointelligence have unveiled a technique for creating lifelike robotic skin using living human cells. As a proof of concept, the team engineered a small robotic face capable of

The world’s toughest race starts Saturday, and it’s delightfully hard to call this year

Primož Roglič aims Tour victory

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Enlarge / The peloton passing through a sunflowers field during the stage eight of the 110th Tour de France in 2023. (credit: David Ramos/Getty Images) Most readers probably did not anticipate seeing a Tour de France preview on Ars Technica, but here we are. Cycling is a huge passion of mine and several other staffers, and this year, a ton of intrigue surrounds the race, which has a fantastic rou

Rocket Report: China flies reusable rocket hopper; Falcon Heavy dazzles

SpaceX Falcon Heavy launches GOES-U

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Enlarge / SpaceX's 10th Falcon Heavy rocket climbs into orbit with a new US government weather satellite. (credit: SpaceX ) Welcome to Edition 6.50 of the Rocket Report! SpaceX launched its 10th Falcon Heavy rocket this week with the GOES-U weather satellite for NOAA, and this one was a beauty. The late afternoon timing of the launch and atmospheric conditions made for great photography. Falcon H

JUN 27, 2024

Big Pharma’s fight against drug price reforms takes weird, desperate turn

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Enlarge / Stephen Ubl, president and chief executive officer of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), speaks during a Bloomberg Live discussion in Washington, DC, in 2017. (credit: Getty | Andrew Harrer ) After a series of decisive court losses , the pharmaceutical industry appears to be taking its fight against Medicare drug price negotiations directly to the people—and t

Supreme Court issues stay on EPA’s ozone plan, despite blistering dissent

Supreme Court blocks EPA regulations

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Enlarge / Ozone-producing chemicals come from a variety of sources and don't respect state borders. (credit: John Edward Linden ) On Tuesday, a slim majority of the US Supreme Court issued an emergency ruling that places a stay on rules developed by the Environmental Protection Agency, meant to limit the spread of ozone-generating pollutants across state lines. Because it was handled on an emerge

Google Translate just nearly doubled its number of supported languages

Google Translate expands with 110 languages

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Enlarge / The logo for PaLM 2, a Google large language model. (credit: Google) Google announced today that it has added support for 110 new languages to Google Translate, nearly doubling the number of languages that can be translated. The company used the PaLM 2 large language model to facilitate these additions. In a blog post , Google Senior Software Engineer Isaac Caswell claimed that the newl

OpenAI’s new “CriticGPT” model is trained to criticize GPT-4 outputs

OpenAI develops AI critics

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Enlarge / An illustration created by OpenAI. (credit: OpenAI ) On Thursday, OpenAI researchers unveiled CriticGPT , a new AI model designed to identify mistakes in code generated by ChatGPT. It aims to enhance the process of making AI systems behave in ways humans want (called "alignment") through Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), which helps human reviewers make large language m

Mac users served info-stealer malware through Google ads

IoC > 1 IP and 1 domain

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6 TTPs

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Poseidon' Mac stealer via Google ads

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Mac malware that steals passwords, cryptocurrency wallets, and other sensitive data has been spotted circulating through Google ads, making it at least the second time in as many months the widely used ad platform has been abused to infect web surfers. The latest ads, found by security firm Malwarebytes on Monday, promote Mac versions of Arc, an unconventional brows

Shopping app Temu is “dangerous malware,” spying on your texts, lawsuit claims

Arkansas sues Chinese retailer Temu

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Enlarge / A person is holding a package from Temu. (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto ) Temu—the Chinese shopping app that has rapidly grown so popular in the US that even Amazon is reportedly trying to copy it—is "dangerous malware" that's secretly monetizing a broad swath of unauthorized user data, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin alleged in a lawsuit filed Tuesday. Griffin cited r

T-Mobile users enraged as “Un-carrier” breaks promise to never raise prices

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Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson) In 2017, Kathleen Odean thought she had found the last cell phone plan she would ever need. T-Mobile was offering a mobile service for people age 55 and over, with an "Un-contract" guarantee that it would never raise prices. "I thought, wow, I can live out my days with this fixed plan," Odean, a Rhode Island resident who is now 70 years old, told Ars last week. Ode

NASA will pay SpaceX nearly $1 billion to deorbit the International Space Station

SpaceX awarded $843M NASA contract

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Enlarge / Illustration of the SpaceX Dragon XL as it is deployed from the Falcon Heavy's second stage in high Earth orbit on its way to the Gateway in lunar orbit. (credit: SpaceX) NASA has awarded an $843 million contract to SpaceX to develop a "US Deorbit Vehicle." This spacecraft will dock to the International Space Station in 2029 and then ensure the large facility makes a controlled reentry

SCOTUS tears down Sacklers’ immunity, blowing up opioid settlement

Supreme Court blocks Purdue Pharma settlement

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Enlarge / Grace Bisch holds a picture of stepson Eddie Bisch who died as a result of an overdose on outside of the U.S. Supreme Court on December 4, 2023 in Washington, DC. The Supreme Court heard arguments regarding a nationwide settlement with Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin. (credit: Getty | Michael A. McCoy ) In a 5-4 ruling, the US Supreme Court on Thursday rejected an opioid se

Apple’s “Longevity, by Design” argues its huge scale affects its repair polices

Apple expands self-service repair program

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Enlarge / Apple has a lot to say about the third-party battery market in "Longevity, by Design," specifically about how many batteries fail to meet testing standards. (credit: Apple) Earlier this week, Apple published a whitepaper titled " Longevity by Design ." The purpose, Apple says , is to explain "the company's principles for designing for longevity—a careful balance between product durabili

Study: Scribes in ancient Egypt had really poor posture as they worked

Ancient Egyptian scribes faced injuries

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Enlarge / Statues depicting the high dignitary Nefer and his wife (Abusir, Egypt). (credit: Martin Frouz/Czech Institute of Egyptology/Charles University.) Repetitive stress injuries are a common feature of modern life, especially for office workers who spend a good chunk of their working days at a desk typing on a computer. Apparently, scribes in ancient Egypt suffered from their own distinctive

AI-generated Al Michaels to provide daily recaps during 2024 Summer Olympics

AI recreates Al Michaels voice

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Enlarge / Al Michaels looks on prior to the game between the Minnesota Vikings and Philadelphia Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field on September 14, 2023, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (credit: Getty Images ) On Wednesday, NBC announced plans to use an AI-generated clone of famous sports commentator Al Michaels ' voice to narrate daily streaming video recaps of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, w

Scales helped reptiles conquer the land—when did they first evolve?

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Enlarge / Upper left: a reconstruction of Diadcetes. Below: false color images of its foot and tail prints. Right: the section of the tail that left the print. (credit: Voigt et. al./Urweltmuseum GEOSKOP.) Their feet left copious traces in muddy Permian floodplains, leaving tracks scattered across ancient sediments. But in one slab of such trackways, scientists uncovered something more: the trace

The job of pollsters has become much harder. Here’s how they’re responding

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Enlarge (credit: setthaphat dodchai via Getty ) Last December, a joint survey by The Economist and the polling organization YouGov claimed to reveal a striking antisemitic streak among America’s youth. One in five young Americans thinks the Holocaust is a myth, according to the poll. And 28 percent think Jews in America have too much power. “Our new poll makes alarming reading,” declared The Econ

JUN 26, 2024

ULA will launch its second Vulcan rocket without a real payload

ULA's Vulcan rocket certification progress

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Enlarge / United Launch Alliance's first Vulcan rocket on the launch pad before liftoff in January. (credit: United Launch Alliance ) The second flight of United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket will take off in September with a dummy payload in place of Sierra Space's Dream Chaser spaceplane, preserving a chance for ULA to begin launching US military satellites on the new rocket by the end of the

Critical MOVEit vulnerability puts huge swaths of the Internet at severe risk

3 TTPs

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CVE-2024-5806

Enlarge A critical vulnerability recently discovered in a widely used piece of software is putting huge swaths of the Internet at risk of devastating hacks, and attackers have already begun actively trying to exploit it in real-world attacks, researchers warn. The software, known as MOVEit and sold by Progress Software, allows enterprises to transfer and manage files using various specifications,

Patent document showcases the cloud-only streaming Xbox console that never was

Xbox Cloud Gaming on Fire TV

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The streaming-only Xbox would have looked like a smaller, squarer relative of the Series S. [credit: Microsoft ] Microsoft's mid-generation plans for the Xbox Series S and X consoles looked a whole lot different a couple of years ago than it does now. A leaked slide deck from the FTC v. Microsoft case last year outlined detailed plans for a spruced up Series S, an overhauled Series X, and even a

Synthetic psychedelic found in candies linked to seizures, intubation

FDA and CDC investigate Diamond Shruumz illnesses

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Enlarge / A Diamond Shruumz chocolate bar, which comes in a variety of flavors. (credit: diamondshruumz.com ) The US Food and Drug Administration has identified a synthetic psychedelic compound as well as compounds from a potentially toxic plant in the Diamond Shruumz-brand microdosing candies linked to a growing number of severe illnesses nationwide that have included seizures, intubation, and a

DNA-based bacterial parasite uses completely new DNA-editing method

Gene editing breakthrough enables precise DNA

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Enlarge / Top row: individual steps in the reaction process. Bottom row: cartoon diagram of the top, showing the position of each DNA and RNA strand. (credit: Hiraizumi, et. al.) While CRISPR is probably the most prominent gene-editing technology, there are others, some developed before and since. And people have been developing CRISPR variants to perform more specialized functions, like altering

SCOTUS nixes injunction that limited Biden admin contacts with social networks

Supreme Court upholds government censorship

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Enlarge (credit: Christopher Furlong / Staff | Getty Images News ) On Wednesday, the Supreme Court tossed out claims that the Biden administration coerced social media platforms into censoring users by removing COVID-19 and election-related content. Complaints alleging that high-ranking government officials were censoring conservatives had previously convinced a lower court to order an injunction

Some European launch officials still have their heads stuck in the sand

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Enlarge / The first stage of Ariane 6 rocket Europe's Spaceport in Kourou in the French overseas department of Guiana, on March 26, 2024. (credit: LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP via Getty Images) There was a panel discussion at a space conference in Singapore 11 years ago that has since become legendary in certain corners of the space industry for what it reveals about European attitudes toward upstart SpaceX

Tesla announces third and fourth Cybertruck recalls

Tesla recalls 12

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Enlarge / A Tesla Cybertruck at the Viva Technology show at Parc des Expositions Porte de Versailles on May 24, 2024 in Paris, France. (credit: Getty Images | Chesnot ) Tesla has announced two more recalls of the Cybertruck, both of which affect over 11,000 vehicles produced since the car first became available late last year. Cybertruck owners will need to bring their cars in for service because

Toys “R” Us riles critics with “first-ever” AI-generated commercial using Sora

Toys 'R' Us uses AI for brand film premiere

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Enlarge / A screen capture from the partially AI-generated Toys "R" Us brand film created using Sora. (credit: Toys R Us) On Monday, Toys "R" Us announced that it had partnered with an ad agency called Native Foreign to create what it calls "the first-ever brand film using OpenAI's new text-to-video tool, Sora." OpenAI debuted Sora in February, but the video synthesis tool has not yet become avai

Apple rejects PC emulators on the iOS App Store

Apple rejects PC emulators on iOS

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Doom Enlarge / Don't get your hopes up—this iOS version of Doom was ported from open source code , not run via a classic PC emulator. (credit: Tom Kidd ) Earlier this year, Apple started officially allowing "retro game emulators" on the iOS App Store without the need for cumbersome jailbreaking or sideloading. But if you want to emulate retro PC games on your iOS device, you are apparently still

VW puts $5B into cash-hungry Rivian, and Rivian will help fix up VW’s software

VW invests $5B in Rivian

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Enlarge (credit: Rivian) Volkswagen is committing $5 billion to upstart EV company Rivian, with $1 billion in cash upfront and $4 billion over time. The companies aim to use this joint venture to deliver new vehicles "in the second half of the decade," according to the announcement, and the cash will likely help push along Rivian's next generation of vehicles, including more affordable models. Ol

YouTube tries convincing record labels to license music for AI song generator

Record labels sue AI music services for copyright

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Enlarge (credit: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty) YouTube is in talks with record labels to license their songs for artificial intelligence tools that clone popular artists’ music, hoping to win over a skeptical industry with upfront payments. The Google-owned video site needs labels’ content to legally train AI song generators, as it prepares to launch new tools this year, according to three

Star Wars behind the scenes: Creating the unique aesthetic of The Acolyte

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Enlarge / A mysterious assassin is targeting Jedi masters in The Acolyte . (credit: Disney+) The Star Wars franchise is creeping up on the 50-year mark for the original 1977 film that started it all, and Disney+ has successfully kept