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NASA's Voyager 2 probe may be close to joining its sibling and entering interstellar space. The vessel has been detecting a five percent increase in cosmic rays since late August, suggesting that it's close to crossing the heliopause (the edge of the...

This September, IGN is featuring the best TV coming your way in the 2018-2019 season. Today we're spotlighting The Little Drummer Girl, an upcoming AMC limited series based on the 1983 spy thriller from novelist John le Carré - the second AMC adaptation of the author's work, following 2016's The Night Manager. The Little Drummer Girl stars Florence Pugh as Charlie, a British actress who falls in love with a man named Becker (Alexander Skarsgård), only to discover she's actually being recruited into a complex plot to hunt down a Palestinian terrorist. Little Drummer Girl is also notable for serving as the TV directorial debut for acclaimed Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook. We were able to talk with showrunners Simon and Stephen Cornwell about the new series, why it's as much a love story as a thriller, and why Park was so eager to participate in the show. Scroll down to find out what they had to say and to see exclusive photos from the upcoming series.

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Ready for a first look at Mark Hamill in Knightfall?

The Star Wars actor is nearly unrecognizable in season 2 of the History drama series, donning a full gray beard and long gray hair. Here’s Hamill (right) along with series star Tom Cullen:

Hamill plays “Talus,” a “battle-hardened Knight Templar veteran of the Crusades, who survived captivity for ten years in the Holy Land and is tasked with training the new initiates to the Order.”

The show stars Cullen (Downton Abbey) as “the courageous and headstrong Templar Knight, Landry, who last season we left grief-stricken but hopeful, season two will explore this dark time in history from the Templar perspective, embracing an authentically grittier, darker, and more brutal Medieval period than has ever been seen before.”

Knightfall goes inside the medieval politics and warfare of the Knights Templar, the most powerful, wealthy and mysterious military order of the Middle Ages.

Season 2 is currently in production in Prague and will air next year.

UPDATE: The CW has revealed some more casting news.

LaMonica Garrett (Designated Survivor) is joining this year’s Arrowverse crossover “Elseworlds” as the DC Comics character The Monitor, a.k.a. Mar Novu, “an extraterrestrial being of infinite power known as the Monitor.”

Created by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez for their iconic continuity-altering crossover Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Monitor was an alien being charged with watching over the multiverse (which was then under threat from his dark counterpart, the Anti-Monitor). Later DC crossovers introduced an entire organization of multiversal Monitors.

While we still don’t know what this year’s crossover will be about, the fact that it’s called “Elseworlds” and features the Monitor suggests that the multiverse is some kind of danger. Furthermore, the CW also announced that Pérez will also illustrate a sketch of the Monitor that plays a prominent role in the crossover’s story.

Garrett’s other credits include The Last Ship, Black-ish, and Sons of Anarchy.

EARLIER: This year’s Arrowverse crossover is getting another weighty title!

On Wednesday, The CW revealed that the forthcoming three-night event, which will introduce Ruby Rose’s Batwoman and Gotham City, is titled “Elseworlds.”

Check out the new promotional banner below:

In DC comics, Elseworlds is usually used to classify “what if” stories that took place outside of the regular DC continuity. Some examples include Mark Waid and Alex Ross’ Kingdom Come, and Mark Millar’s Superman: Red Son, which also serves as the inspiration for part of Supergirl season 4. As of right now, it’s not clear what this title means for the Arrowverse crossover.

This year’s crossover will include Arrow, Supergirl, and The Flash, but not Legends of Tomorrow. As of right now, all we know about its story is that Dr. John Deegan’s (Jeremy Davies) machinations at Arkham Asylum draw the Flash (Grant Gustin), Green Arrow (Stephen Amell), and Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) to Gotham City. Furthermore, the epic event will feature Tyler Hoechlin’s Superman, Lois Lane (Elizabeth Tulloch), and Nora Fries (Cassandra Jean Amell).

“Elseworlds” begins Sunday, Dec. 9, with The Flash at 8 p.m.; continues Monday, Dec. 10, at 8 p.m. with Arrow; and concludes the following night at 8 p.m. with Supergirl.

Finally, some news on the ultra-secret Black Mirror season 5.

According to a new report in Bloomberg, there are some intriguing details about one of the new episodes, plus a premiere date.

Season 5 will be released in December, the report says. That makes sense as the Emmy winner’s previous season was released Dec. 29 last year, so perhaps a holiday rollout is again in the works. The show went into production earlier this year and is still currently shooting.

Moreover, the new season will feature a “Choose Your Own Adventure” style episode where fans will get to interact with the story, making key decisions for a protagonist that determines their dystopian fate.

The thrust of the Bloomberg story, citing sources close to the company, is about how Netflix is actually developing a slate of interactive projects where viewers get to choose the narrative in story. The streaming service has tried basic interactivity with a handful of children’s shows, and HBO had Steven Soderbergh’s interactive series Mosaic. But the Black Mirror episode is expected to take such interactivity to another level.

Netflix had no immediate comment on the report.

Jennifer Garner is a woman in pain. As Camping’s Kathryn McSorley-Jodell — a high-strung wife, mother, and extremely minor Instagram celebrity — she suffers from a “dysfunctional pelvic floor,” inflamed “pipes,” regular bouts of candida, and “tissue issues.” Kathryn counters the chaos in her body by managing her family’s life with a rigid efficiency that would make the Navy jealous. The comedy (and pathos) of Camping, then, comes from the myriad ways life — and the hell known as other people — interferes with the meticulously engineered birthday trip Kathryn plans for her husband, Walt (David Tennant).

After securing the Groupon rate at the campground and mapping every minute of the excursion in her binder, Kathryn is poised to unleash four days of mandatory fun on Walt, son Orvis (Duncan Joiner), and the assembled couples — including her timid sister, Carlene (Ione Skye), and Joe (This is Us’ Chris Sullivan), Carlene’s recovering addict boyfriend, as well as Kathryn’s estranged friend Nina-Joy (Janicza Bravo) and her husband, George (Bravo’s real-life husband, Brett Gelman). Everyone is resigned to following their leader’s strict birthday-weekend itinerary — until Walt’s buddy Miguel (Arturo Del Puerto) shows up with his new girlfriend, Jandice (Juliette Lewis, bringing her usual dose of effortless lunacy), a free-spirited reiki healer/notary who instantly derails the micro-managed proceedings.

Just as Kathryn is such a tyrannically attentive hostess that no one wants to be around her, Camping — adapted from the British series by Girls duo Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner — is initially off-putting with its onslaught of broad humor. Kathryn’s obsessiveness, which seems to be fueled by a deep-seated misery, is played for maximum laughs early on, while Jandice and her manic-hippie-sex-goddess antics — jelly donut shots for everyone! — is just this side of exhausting. But when Camping allows itself to dial back the quirk, it delivers some laugh-out-loud moments and emotional observations about marriage and femininity. Sullivan is clearly having a ball playing the foul-mouthed, ill-tempered Joe, while Tennant is adorable and poignant as Walt, a man as determinedly easygoing as his wife is anxious.

Even when Kathryn is at her most extreme, Garner’s innate humanity helps infuse her character with a woeful relatability. Kathryn is so at war with the pressures of being a modern woman — a hyper-organized, successful, people-pleasing caretaker of everyone but herself — that she literally had her entire female reproductive system removed in a hysterectomy five years ago. But still, the pain lingers. Four episodes in, Camping has yet to offer any hints as to the cause of Kathryn’s sadness, but we do know it will not be contained. “You can feel fine,” she tells Orvis, “but also know that you are a ticking time bomb.” Camping is not perfect, but if it allows Jennifer Garner to explode with the white-hot rage of aggrieved womanhood, it will all be worth it. B

Camping premieres Sunday, Oct. 14, at 10 p.m. on HBO.

Related content:

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It’s a match made in heaven — or is that hell?

Almost three decades after Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett published their novel Good Omens, the story is coming to the small screen with Michael Sheen and David Tennant. Sheen plays Aziraphale, a fussy angel who runs a bookshop. Tennant’s Crowley is a suave devil who likes to terrorize houseplants. Together, they form the cosmos’ oddest couple, an angel and a demon who’ve been stationed on Earth since the Garden of Eden.

“They really annoy each other,” Sheen says with a laugh. “But they do really enjoy each other.”

“And they enjoy being appalled by each other,” Tennant adds. “Yet throughout the eons, they’ve been saving each other’s bacon, repeatedly.”

Good Omens doesn’t launch until 2019 on Amazon, but with the show coming to New York Comic Con this weekend for a panel, EW has the first exclusive stills introducing Aziraphale and Crowley in all their 21st-century glory. The renegade angel and demon have so enjoyed their centuries on Earth that when their bosses upstairs and below decide to kick-start the apocalypse, they team up to save their adopted home.

“Nobody else knows what it’s like to be a supernatural being on Earth amongst humans, so that bonds them in a special way,” Sheen says.

It’s a tale that’s alternatingly silly and solemn, and it’s taken years to get here: There have been attempts to adapt Good Omens as a film, but after Pratchett’s death in 2015, Gaiman took matters into his own hands, writing the miniseries himself.

“It’s such a unique world that he and Terry have created,” Tennant says. “If anyone else had taken it on, I don’t think we could have captured the real quirky essence of it.”

Add in guest stars like Jon Hamm as the archangel Gabriel and Frances McDormand as the voice of God, and you’ve got an apocalyptic comedy that’s positively, well, divine.

“There’s something wonderful about playing a supernatural character,” Tennant says. “You’re freed from some of the restraints of some of the psychological straight lines that you might have to apply to a human being. Although at the same time, Aziraphale and Crowley are very human.”

“They both started off as angels, but one of them went a slightly different way,” Sheen adds. “So I think it’s interesting that the longer they’ve spent together and the longer they’ve spent on Earth, they’ve sort of knocked the edges off and become a little more like each other than they might have been.”

Related content:

Neil Gaiman explains how he’s bringing Good Omens from page to screen Neil Gaiman teases David Tennant and Michael Sheen’s ‘magic’ chemistry in Good Omens

Fans of The Boys got their wish on Friday during New York Comic Con. Simon Pegg, who served as a physical model for a lead character in the comics, surprised those gathered at the Hammerstein Ballroom in Manhattan to confirm he does have a part to play in the R-rated Amazon series adaptation.

As Pegg stormed the stage, the actor — who now joins a cast that includes his Star Trek costar Karl Urban — revealed he’ll portray the father of Hughie (played by Jack Quaid), one of the members of the titular Boys.

“I’m here for two reasons,” Pegg told the crowd. “Firstly to endorse this beautiful young boy here, Jack Quaid, as the one true Hughie, and to let you know that I will also be appearing in The Boys in the only role I could possibly play: Hughie’s father. And I’m damned please about it!”

“I got a British dad now,” Quaid laughed.

Hughie Sr. is named Dougie, a Scottish name in honor of Hughie’s Scottish background in the comics. “He’s just one in a line of men who haven’t really fronted up to life and has spent most of his time eating pizza rolls and watching Remington Steele…,” Pegg explains. “Hughie really is the one that breaks that cycle of inactivity and torpor, so in a way Hugh’s father is a specter of his own kind of inaction and he has to take a stand.”

Meet Hughie and his dad, played by @JackQuaid92 and @simonpegg in #TheBoysTV. You’re welcome. pic.twitter.com/DXfPlyamI2

— The Boys (@theboystv) October 5, 2018

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Darick Robertson, who drew the original comics with writer Garth Ennis, famously modeled the character of “Wee” Hughie off of Pegg. “I heard from Darick and I found out that my face is being used in this comic book,” the Star Trek actor recalled, and DC Comics, which released the title at the time, “wrote me a frightened letter just saying, ‘Please don’t sue us.'”

Instead, he was “flattered beyond belief.”

As showrunner Eric Kripke, the creator of Supernatural and Timeless, developed the comic as a series with Preacher‘s Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, conversations with Pegg were inevitable. Pegg recalled having discussions with the production about “maybe being in the show and we discussed how, and it just seemed so perfect to be Jack’s father.”

The hardest part of the role, according to Pegg, was “eating pizza rolls. I’d never had one before and this scene required me to ingest upwards of about three and I felt very unwell by the end of the day.”

The Boys — also starring Laz Alonso, Karen Fukuhara, Antony Starr, Erin Moriarty, Chace Crawford, Elisabeth Shue, and Tomer Capone — embraces the graphic nature of the comics. It’s a world where superheroes exist, but instead of accepting that with great power comes great responsibility, they are completely corrupted by power. The Boys, a blue-collar team of ruffians, are the ones who keep them in check — even if that means disemboweling or dismembering them.

“We have a competition between us about who can be in the most franchises,” Urban joked.

“We’re a couple of franchise whores and we’re really proud of it,” Pegg quipped.

Halloween may be in October, but January is about to get witchy…

A Discovery of Witches, the highly anticipated series based on Deborah Harkness’ best-selling All Souls Trilogy, will premiere in the U.S. on Jan. 17, 2019, EW can exclusively reveal. Beginning Jan. 17, the full 8-episode season will be available for streaming on both Sundance Now and Shudder.

The series follows Diana Bishop (Teresa Palmer), a witch and historian of science, who is thrust into an ancient mystery when she discovers a long-lost book in Oxford’s Bodleian Library. While in Oxford, Diana meets vampire and scientist Matthew de Clermont (Matthew Goode), and the two embark on a love affair and adventure that threatens to upend the careful order enforced by all magical beings and creatures.

In the exclusive sneak peek video, we see some of the series’ special effects bringing Diana’s magic to life, as well as the jaw-dropping European locations that play home to the series. The clip showcases the imminent danger for Matthew and Diana as they are drawn further into the mystery surrounding the coveted manuscript Ashmole 782.

The series, produced by Sky One and Bad Wolf productions, shot in the U.K. last year and is currently airing in Britain on Sky One, after premiering in September. American audiences have been craving the announcement of a release date ever since it was announced at San Diego Comic Con in July that the series would air in the U.S. on streaming platforms Sundance Now and Shudder.

Harkness recently expanded the All Souls story with her Sept. 18 release Time’s Convert, which delves into the backstory of Matthew’s son Marcus. It has hit the

Watch the clip above for more.

Related Links:

A Discovery of Witches TV series trailer breathes life into the Deborah Harkness trilogy
See new behind-the-scenes images from A Discovery of Witches
A Discovery of Witches: Get your first look at the Bishop family

It’s the end of the world as we know it.

Amazon has released the first official teaser trailer for Good Omens, the miniseries based on Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman‘s beloved novel. Michael Sheen and David Tennant star as Aziraphale and Crowley, an angel and a demon who’ve grown rather attached to life on Earth and would rather not see it destroyed in the apocalypse. Their bosses, however, have other plans.

Although Amazon dropped a behind-the-scenes teaser for the show over the summer, this is our first official look at the series. Gaiman wrote the series himself after Pratchett’s death in 2015, and he also serves as showrunner.

“It’s such a unique world that he and Terry have created,” Tennant previously told EW. “If anyone else had taken it on, I don’t think we could have captured the real quirky essence of it.”

In addition to the first trailer, Gaiman, director Douglas Mackinnon, Sheen, Tennant, Miranda Richardon, and Jon Hamm screened two clips inside Madison Square Garden for fans gathered at New York Comic Con.

The first gave a brief look at Tennant and Sheen’s chemistry as Crowley and Aziraphale.

“This is the very first thing we’re showing anybody and it’s just a very sweet little clip,” Gaiman prefaced. “It’s towards the end of episode 2. Crowley and Aziraphale have gone off to try to find a missing Antichrist and figure out what’s going on. theyve failed, they’re on their way home, and Aziraphale is about to make an interesting discovery and Crowley has some opinions about Aziraphale’s musical taste.”

That discovery, after riding up to Aziraphale’s bookshop, happens to be The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch. Crowley is too busy commenting on the angel’s characterization of the Velvet Underground to notice what is in his possession.

The second clip gives us our first look at Hamm as archangel Gabriel, who’s trying ever so hard to pass himself off as a human.

“I would like to purchase one of your… material objects,” Gabriel awkwardly tells Aziraphale in an attempt to keep his angelic identity a secret from the other patrons in the shop. “I’m buying…”

“Pornography?” his “angelic thug” chimes in.

“Pornography!”

As Gabriel’s escort then announces to the room, “We humans are extremely embarrassed, we must buy our pronography privately.”

“He is that boss that you don’t like for various reasons, but mostly because he is so certain of his correctness and his rectitude and everything else but he’s wrong,” Hamm describes.

Making a clear reference to Trump and politicians, “People who are so certain of their correctness are really f—ing annoying. But in this context, hopefully, funny.”

Good Omens will air on Amazon in early 2019.

—Additional reporting by Nick Romano

Related content:

Get a good look at David Tennant and Michael Sheen in Good Omens Neil Gaiman explains how he’s bringing Good Omens from page to screen Neil Gaiman teases David Tennant and Michael Sheen’s ‘magic’ chemistry in Good Omens

The cast and producers of Star Trek: Discovery beamed in (ahem) to New York Comic-Con today to tease the upcoming Season 2, the arrival of Captain Pike and Mr. Spock, and much more.

Stars Sonequa Martin-Green, Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, Mary Chieffo, Doug Jones, Shazad Latif, Anthony Rapp, Wilson Cruz, Michelle Yeoh and Mary Wiseman and producers Alex Kurtzman and Heather Kadin were all on hand. And the panel was moderated by Rebecca Romijn, who is playing Number One this season on Captain Pike’s Enterprise!

First the news out of the panel! We got our first look at the new Spock – with a beard! – as well as at Number One, plus we learned about the mysterious black ops part of Starfleet known as Section 31’s newest recruit -- Philippa Georgiou! -- a release date was revealed (January 17, 2019), and a new trailer dropped.

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After years of offering 4K playback on its higher-end Fire TV devices, Amazon is ready to bring that extra resolution to its most affordable hardware. With a base of active users that's 25 million strong, it's launching the Fire TV Stick 4K, deliveri...

Back in the good old days, farming was easy. Throw some seeds in the ground, keep it watered, pray to your preferred deity to spare your crops from pestilence and wait for harvest season. But with the global population closing in on 7 billion mouths...

Gaming laptops aren't the lumbering bricks they used to be, as we've seen from the slew of offerings this year from ASUS, Gigabyte and Razer, all of which weigh under five pounds. But Alienware, Dell's flagship laptop line for gamers, has lagged behi...

Mike Morhaime has been a part of Blizzard since it was founded in 1991 as Silicon & Synapse, Inc., and now he's stepping down from his role as president and CEO. Former executive producer and senior VP for World of Warcraft J. Allen Brack will ta...

Banksy just delivered a masterclass in using technology to both create and comment on art. The mysterious artist hid a shredder in the frame for his 2006 painting Girl With Red Balloon, and when it was sold at auction for £1,042,000 (about $1.4...

Adulting is hard. But over the past 12 years, iRobot's Roomba made it just a bit easier for me by keeping my floors clean, no matter how lazy I felt. But while the company has steadily improved its robot vacuums over the years -- by making them more...

Get ready to have the opposite of a Floorgasm: Chelsea Peretti is leaving Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

Peretti — who plays scene-stealing Gina Linetti, the cold-blooded civilian administrator, acerbic tormentor of Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero), reluctant relative of Charles (Joe Lo Truglio), and human form of the 100 emoji  — will appear in the beloved cop comedy’s upcoming sixth season, and will depart sometime during the season. She is expected to return down the road in a guest capacity.

The actress/comedian revealed the news Wednesday morning on Twitter. “B99 fans. Hiiiiiiiiiiii. Chelsea Peretti, here,” she wrote. “I won’t be doing a full season of Brooklyn Nine Nine in Season 6. But that doesn’t mean I won’t ever be back, winky face emoji, heart emoji. I want to thank you for the hours you spent watching Gina be Gina: confident, idiotic-but-smart, pithy, and infused with rhythm and cell-phone radiation. It is hard for me to know exactly what to say.”

Peretti then hilariously played off of the recent departure announcement of another TV star: “Perhaps Emmy Rossum said it best when she wrote about Shameless (I bolded the extra relevant parts in her quote below).”

B99 fans. Hiiiiiiiiiiii. Chelsea Peretti, here. I won't be doing a full season of Brooklyn Nine Nine in Season 6. But that doesn’t mean I won’t ever be back, winky face emoji, heart emoji. I want to thank you for the hours you spent watching Gina be Gina:

— Chelsea Peretti (@chelseaperetti) October 3, 2018

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pic.twitter.com/yGQ2opK3IH

— Chelsea Peretti (@chelseaperetti) October 3, 2018

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“From the moment Mike Schur and I decided to create this show, we wanted Chelsea Peretti be a part of it, and she always will be,” co-creator Dan Goor said in a statement on Twitter. “While it’s sad to see a member of the family leave, we are so proud of Chelsea and excited for what she does next. Also, I know for a fact this isn’t the last we’ll see of Gina Linetti.”

Here's my statement about the incredibly amazing @chelseaperetti. pic.twitter.com/OZAuEU7DSc

— Dan Goor (@djgoor) October 3, 2018

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Brooklyn Nine-Nine has boasted a tremendous amount of cast stability, retaining its ensemble cast (which includes Andy Samberg and Andre Braugher) over its first five seasons. Fans did wonder if they might be losing Gina back in season 4 when she was hit by a bus (but she prevailed and lived to dance another day). In season 5, part of which she was absent from while on maternity leave, Gina announced that she was quitting her job in the precinct to run “a sports league for other people’s pets,” but returned quickly. This time, however, her departure appears to be real.

Peretti, whose recent credits include Game Night, Big Mouth, and Another Period, will star in the upcoming indie film Friendsgiving.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine aired for five seasons of Fox, passing the 100th-episode mark last season, before being canceled in May. A day later, though, it was revived by NBC, who ordered a 13-episode sixth season that will hit the air later this season. Last month, the network upped its commitment to the rescued show, ordering an additional five episodes that brings the total number to 18.

For more on what to expect in season 6 of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, head over here.

Watch the full episode of Couch Surfing streaming now on PeopleTV.com, or download the PeopleTV app on your favorite device.

When it comes to Michael Rapaport’s career, his latest role might be one of his favorites. Rapaport stars on Netflix’s Atypical, which follows Sam, a teen with autism, and Rapaport plays his father. “I love the sentiment of this show,” the actor told Lola Ogunnaike while sitting down for a session of PeopleTV’s Couch Surfing. “It’s not heavy-handed.”

RELATED: How Michael Rapaport knew Leonardo DiCaprio had star potential on The Basketball Diaries 

One of the things Rapaport is most proud of with Atypical, which released its second season on Netflix in September, is that autism is not the show’s central focus. “It’s not the whole of your parenting,” he says. Rather, it’s simply one element of one character in the larger scheme of the show. And as a whole, the show touches on a variety of themes. As Rapaport says, “It really resonates with people in a genuine way.”

Watch the clip above for more.

There have been experiments in direct brain-to-brain communication before, but that's now extending to full-fledged networks. Researchers have developed a three-person brain network that lets participants send thoughts to each other -- in this case,...

Project Stream promises to deliver the holy grail to video game fans around the globe -- the ability to play the latest AAA games on any laptop or PC via a stable, no-lag streaming service. Google is preparing to publicly test Project Stream with a "...

Director of the upcoming Joker film Todd Phillips has posted another shot of Joaquin Phoenix in makeup on Instagram, though this time he is decidedly in a full clown costume.

The Instagram post is simply paired with the caption “Work” suggesting that this is Phoenix playing Arthur Fleck, the Joker prior to making his full transition into the Clown Prince of Crime. It appears that this version of the Joker worked as a literal clown, perhaps providing entertainment to audiences before being completely "disregarded by society."

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Life is Strange 2 features none of the characters or settings of its predecessor. Its new hero, a 17-year-old Mexican-American boy named Sean Diaz, does not have a decision-reversing time-travel ability like Max Caulfield. But the moment an acoustic guitar begins delicately strumming over the sun-kissed title screen, it is unmistakable what you are playing. This may be an unfamiliar story among fresh faces and unknown locales, but in every other way this is Life is Strange.

This four-hour episode — the first of five — introduces us to a bigger, more complex story than was told by either the original Life is Strange or its prequel Before the Storm. That coming-of-age story concerns the fraught relationship of a pair of high school girls against a backdrop of an impending natural disaster — but its action is confined to the classrooms and bedrooms of small-town Arcadia Bay, Oregon. Life is Strange 2 is in every way a more elaborate affair: its action sprawls out from Seattle to the woods of Oregon and still farther afield, giving it the feel of a road movie in game form. It aspires to realize nothing less than an unsparingly critical portrait of the United States in the era of Donald Trump.

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Sitting at a coffee shop one day while writing the pilot of NBC’s new medical drama New Amsterdam, EP David Schulner (Reverie) felt a tap on his shoulder: A brain surgeon who works at Bellevue, America’s oldest public hospital and the inspiration for Schulner’s show, had seen his draft and the words “inspired by Bellevue,” and wanted to offer his two cents.

“He said, ‘I want you to know that if anything happens to me, my wife knows to bring me to Bellevue,'” Schulner recalls. “‘Not to any of the fancy private hospitals that I could go to easily, but to Bellevue.'”

To Schulner, that sentiment encapsulates New Amsterdam, a drama about the doctors who eschew potential higher pay and fewer hours, because they know their work provides the best aid. But it’s not just a drama about the goings-on at an extraordinary hospital — one that operates like a small city, with a psych ward, a courtroom, prison cells, and even a classroom — and the people behind it; it’s about inspiring change by furthering an ongoing, important conversation.

“Two years ago, during the presidential election, the whole country was talking about health care, and it was passionate and messy and smart and emotional,” Schulner explains. “I thought, ‘Why would I want to write about anything else, when this is what is gripping the nation?'” He came across Twelve Patients, a memoir by Dr. Eric Manheimer, the former medical director of Bellevue, whose story had “a hopefulness that was missing from all those passionate, smart, messy, argumentative conversations,” Schulner says. “It had someone at the center who was trying to fix the system.”

Enter Dr. Max Goodwin, New Amsterdam‘s version of Manheimer, played by Ryan Eggold. The 34-year-old actor, after four years of high-octane, at-times-preposterous spy games on The Blacklist, had been ready for projects a little more grounded in reality. “I was looking for relevance and honesty,” he says. “I was looking to do something different.”

He couldn’t have accomplished his goal better: Over the summer, he appeared in Spike Lee’s timely, based-on-a-true-story manifesto BlacKkKlansman as a white supremacist who unknowingly invites a black cop into his local chapter of the KKK. Now, on New Amsterdam, Eggold gets to explore the ins-and-outs of the health care system, delve into the mindset of an idealistic but embattled doctor striving for perfection, and have Manheimer as an accessible primary source. (Manheimer serves as an EP on the show.) “I had a lot of conversations with Eric about what his struggles were, and he reminded me that doctors are not always infallible,” Eggold explains. “That was a good reminder not to play a knight in shining armor but to play a human being, warts and all.”

“I feel like I’m in a moment of being a part of these amazing true stories,” he adds. “It’s been really, really fulfilling.”

Still, Peter Horton (Grey’s Anatomy), Schulner’s fellow executive producer, wasn’t easily convinced by Schulner’s idea to use the memoir and Manheimer’s experience as a basis for a new medical drama.

“I said no ,” he remembers, laughing. “I said, ‘I’ve already directed the pilot of Grey’s Anatomy, I’d produced it for three years, I’m over medical dramas, so, thank you, but let’s keep looking.'”

Schulner, though, didn’t keep looking. Instead, he convinced Horton the show had a story that needed to be told. “Do you remember watching The West Wing and how you felt like you were a part of the process?” Schulner asks. “It got people engaged in politics and created a whole generation of speechwriters and politicians… We hope we can get people to get into medicine for the right reasons.”

After hearing Schulner’s passion for the project and its potential influence, “I went, ‘I’m in,'” Horton says. “Finally, we can do a medical show that’s not about who’s sleeping with who and what’s the latest weird case of the week. This was a chance to talk about the bigger issues in the country through the guise of a medical show.”

And so far, they’ve found a fan in that very same brain surgeon who talked to Schulner in the coffee shop. While filming a scene on location at Bellevue, the doctor stopped by, dressed in scrubs on his day off. He asked about the lighting, the setup, and the scene — and then admitted he had to do surgery soon, only to return hours later. “We’re still shooting in the same area, and he comes back down, and he says, ‘So what scene are you guys shooting now?'” Schulner recalls with a laugh. “I’m like, ‘Dude, what happened to the patient?’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, she’s fine. So, who’s in this scene?'”

In other words, Horton explains, “They’re fascinated with our world, and we’re much more fascinated with theirs.”

New Amsterdam premieres Tuesday, Sept. 25, at 10 p.m. ET on NBC.

Zhaoxin, a joint venture between Via Technologies and the Chinese government, this week for the first time displayed its upcoming x86-compatible CPU, the KaiXian KX-6000. The SoC features eight cores running at 3 GHz and increases performance over its predecessor by at least 50%.

The KaiXian KX-6000 is a successor to the KX-5000 CPU launched earlier this year. Both chips integrate eight-core x86-64 cores with 8 MB of L2 cache, a DirectX 11.1-capable iGPU with an up-to-date display controller, a dual-channel DDR4-3200 memory controller, contemporary I/O interfaces (PCIe, SATA, USB, etc), and so on. The key differences between the KaiXian KX-5000 and the KaiXian KX-6000 are frequencies and manufacturing technology: the former is produced using TSMC’s 28 nm fabrication process and runs at up to 2 GHz, whereas the latter is made using TSMC’s 16 nm technology and operates at up to 3 GHz. Zhaoxin claims that the Kaixian KX-6000 offers compute performance comparable to that of Intel’s 7^th Generation Core i5 processor, which is a quad-core non-Hyper-Threaded CPU. Obviously, performance claims like that have to be verified, yet a 50% performance bump over the direct predecessor already seems beefy enough.

As the picture below shows, the thinner manufacturing process enabled Zhaoxin to make the KaiXian KX-6000 die smaller when compared to the predecessor, which will eventually shrink its manufacturing cost. Meanwhile, the two processors use different HFCBGA packaging and therefore cannot use the same motherboards. Meanwhile it is unknown whether the new KaiXian KX-6000 is compatible with Zhaoxin’s USB 3.1 Gen 2-capable ZX-200 chipset.

The Zhaoxin KaiXian KX-6000 relies on the LuJiaZui microarchitecture, which is an evolution of the WuDaoKou microarchitecture that powers the KX-5000 processor introduced in early 2018. Based on what we know today, the LuJiaZui is an x86-64-compatible superscalar, multi-issue, out-of-order microarchitecture that supports contemporary instruction sets extensions like SSE 4.2 and AVX along with virtualization and encryption technologies. Zhaoxin has yet to disclose differences between its LuJiaZui and WuDaoKou designs. Therefore, all we can do is speculate that since the microarchitectures are launched within one year from each other they are very similar, but the newer one has minor optimizations that, perhaps, enable higher clocks, improved caching, better memory support, etc.

Zhaoxin has not announced when it plans to start commercial shipments of its KaiXian KX-6000 processors, as right now it only displays its picture (which proves that it exists). Based on the previously published roadmap, we'd expect the CPU to hit the market in 2019, though when exactly is anyone's guess.

Zhaoxin's Kaixian KX-5000 and KX-6000 CPUs
		Kaixian KX-5000 WuDaoKou	Kaixian KX-6000 LuJiaZui
Core Count		4 - 8	Up to 8
L2 Cache		8 MB	8 MB
Frequency		Up to 2 GHz	Up to 3 GHz
ISA		x86-64
ISA Extensions		SSE 4.2, AVX	?
APIC		Yes
Virtualization		VMX technology, compatible with Intel's VT-X
Temperature monitoring, overheat protection		Yes
Power States		C1, C2, C3, C4, P-State	?
Hardware Encryption Engines		Advanced encryption engine (ACE), SHA-1, SHA-256, SM3/SM4, Randomizer	?
Security		TXT, EDB	?
iGPU		DirectX 11.1 feature set. Hardware-accelerated video encoding/decoding. Outputs: DP, eDP, HDMI, D-Sub Max Resolution: 4K Number of Displays: 3	?
Packaging		x-ball HFCBGA 37.5 x 37.5 mm	y-ball HFCBGA 37.5 x 37.5 mm
Process Technology		TSMC 28 nm	TSMC 16 nm FinFET

Related Reading:

• Cypress and Zhaoxin Have USB 3.1 Gen 2 USB Controllers
• China Calling: AMD Forms Joint Venture for x86 Server SoCs in China
• AMD Creates Quad Core Zen SoC with 24 Vega CUs for Chinese Consoles

Source: PC Watch

Want to visit Winterfell?

What about Castle Black?

Soon, you can.

Several major Game of Thrones sets in Northern Ireland are going to be converted into tourist attractions.

So for the first time ever, fans of the Emmy-winning fantasy drama can visit locations and structures that have been strictly off limits for years.

“The Game of Thrones Legacy attractions will be on a scale and scope bigger than anything the public has ever seen,” says a release by HBO. “Each site will feature not only the breathtaking sets, but will also exhibit displays of costumes, props, weapons, set decorations, art files, models, and other production materials. The visitor experience will be enhanced by state-of-the-art digital content and interactive materials which will showcase some of the digital wizardry the series is known for.”

One thing that’s unique about many of the major GoT sets is they’re not just facades like that are typically built for most movies and TV shows. The Winterfell castle set, for example, is a sprawling area with interconnected rooms, courtyards and platforms along ramparts that allow you to walk around and feel fully immersed by the environment (which also allows a director to point a camera any direction without having to use green screen, or to follow actors from room to room).

Typically sets are torn down and scrapped after they’re used. But GoT has been an enormous boon for Northern Ireland tourism and given the global popularity of the show and lavishness of the sets, it makes sense that HBO would convert them into a destination that’s open to the public.

HBO is currently “considering” including the standing sets for iconic locations such as Winterfell, Castle Black, and Kings Landing along with a studio tour of Linen Mill Studios which will showcase a wide array of subject matter from the series.

“While fans have seen the stunning landscapes, coastlines and mountains in the series, we are thrilled they will now have the opportunity to fully experience the charm of Northern Ireland and immerse themselves in to the world of Westeros,” said John McGrillen, Chief Executive of Tourism NI. “The Game of ThronesLegacy project will be a game changer for Northern Ireland on the global tourism level.”

GoT recently won the Emmy for best drama series for the third time. The show returns for its final season in 2019.

Alphabet backed GitLab in a new round of investment for the company, as Alphabet begins showing signs that it's worried Microsoft will not keep GitHub a neutral platform for developers.

Emilia Clarke is, quite literally, the girl with the dragon tattoos.

Yes, that’s tattoos, plural.

The Game of Thrones star showed off her new wrist tats on Instagram on Wednesday.

Check out the Mother of Dragons’ new ink she got to commemorate her eight seasons on the HBO hit:

View this post on Instagram

MOD 4 LYFE!!!!@_dr_woo_ made sure this mamma ain’t NEVER forgetting her babies…. #dontworryionlybrieflypassedout #withfyreandinkbaby #modgothookedupp #couldntbehappierifitried # # #

A post shared by @ emilia_clarke on Sep 19, 2018 at 6:36pm PDT

//www.instagram.com/embed.js

Wrote Clarke: “MOD 4 LYFE!!!!” (that’s Mother of Dragons, of course). She credited celebrity inker @_dr_woo_ and noted: “this mamma ain’t NEVER forgetting her babies.”

Clarke previously told a reporter she was planning on getting the tattoo back in May. “‘I’m going to get a dragon right here kind of flying away. So I think that’s cool. A little kind of peace out.”

The move follows up on a couple of Clarke’s GoT co-stars also getting final season tattoos, with Sophie Turner getting a direwolf tattoo and Maisie Williams getting a tattoo of a certain line of dialogue.

GoT returns for its final season in 2019.

The Veronica Mars revival is officially a Go.

Hulu confirmed for the first time Thursday the streaming network has picked up the former UPN/CW series for a new season — plus released some details about the project:

— The direct-to-series order is for eight, one-hour episodes.

— Veronica Mars will premiere in 2019.

— All past episodes of the original Veronica Mars are also coming to Hulu. Fans can stream seasons 1-3 (as well as the 2014 fan-funded feature film) starting in summer 2019.

Most excitingly of all, there’s some story description of the new show: “Spring breakers are getting murdered in Neptune, thereby decimating the seaside town’s lifeblood tourist industry. After Mars Investigations is hired by the parents of one of the victims to find their son’s killer, Veronica is drawn into an epic eight-episode mystery that pits the enclave’s wealthy elites, who would rather put an end to the month-long bacchanalia, against a working class that relies on the cash influx that comes with being the West Coast’s answer to Daytona Beach.”

So it sounds like this will be a serialized season rather a case-of-the-week format, which is interesting.

Kristen Bell is back on board to star, but no other cast is confirmed yet. Creator Rob Thomas will write the first episode.

After months of hovering around its target, Japan's Hayabusa 2 mission has made contact. Two of the host spacecraft's landers (ROVER-1A and 1B) have touched down on the surface of the asteroid 162173 Ryugu and have already been hopping around as the...