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Cox Communications has been hit with an over $1 billion lawsuit after multiple record labels sued the ISP for allegedly ignoring copyright infringement by customers. Under US law an ISP must take certain steps when sent a DMCA take down notice. Cox is accused of limiting the amount of notices that it would process and turning a blind eye to pirates. Cox says that it has a "13-strike policy" and but record labels say it would only temporarily disconnect an infringing account. Then accounts were reinstated without repercussions even though some had been warned over 100 times. According to the record labels, it is clear that Cox intentionally ignored these repeated copyright infringements. As such, they believe that the ISP is liable for both contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. As compensation for the claimed losses, the companies demand statutory or actual damages, as well as coverage for their attorney fees and other costs. Discussion

Intel has unsheathed its first "ruler" SSD, a bizarre device with a 12-inch long housing and colossal amount of storage. Intel created the new form factor last year to cram as much storage as possible into a "1U" server form factor, with optimal ther...

In a world where self-driving cars are taking to the roads and computers are having casual conversations with salon receptionists, it's easy to forget that many companies are still working hard on solutions for low-tech, everyday problems. Smelly fee...

After almost two years of teases and a few delays, we finally have our first look at how Red Dead Redemption 2 will actually play come October 26th. The gameplay trailer is directly in the vein of the videos Rockstar released in the lead-up to Grand...

If you’re looking for a quiet place, the best place on Earth is the anechoic chamber at Microsoft’s headquarters in Richmond, Washington. It’s a room padded to the extreme to insulate from outside noise, and to absorb echoes inside. 

Volume is measured in decibels. The sound of a jet engine taking off from 25 metres away is said to be about 150dB. The average library has background noise at about 40dB. The threshold of human hearing is 0dB. According to the Guinness World Records, Microsoft’s anechoic chamber reaches -20.35dB.

I didn’t get to go to Washington, but for the release of A Quiet Place on home turf, I was invited to the anechoic chamber in the engineering building at University College London. The room was initially built as a studio for recording speech for language research. It’s also used for hearing experiments and equipment testing.

Today, however, it was used to unnerve a curious AV journalist. Acoustic isolation is an important factor when it comes to the enjoyment of a film. An anechoic chamber appeared to be the best home cinema environment, but as I was soon to discover, there is such a thing as too much silence.

 The plan: stay in there for 10 minutes of total silence, and then watch the opening scene of A Quiet Place.

The chamber is essentially a box within a box. The outer box is lined with acoustic absorbers. The inner box sits on shock absorbers and is also made of sound-absorbing materials. I had to climb up some steps to get in.

The walls of the inner box are lined with wedges made of glass fibre. The wedges are shaped so that any sound produced inside the chamber will reflect into other wedges until it’s absorbed entirely. An engineer warned me against walking into them – apparently glass fibre can get into your skin and irritate.

The floor was a mesh grille suspended over more glass fibre wedges. Walking around made noise, so I sat down on the chair provided. The door was closed behind me.

The effect was immediate. This chamber ‘only’ goes down to about -3dB, but that was enough to display what is meant by the term ‘deafening silence’. The first thing I noticed was a weird sensation in my ears, as though all the air had been sucked out of the room. In reality, this was just the disappearance of background noise.

Our ears are used to a degree of noise every day, and that puts pressure in them. With that gone, my ears felt depressurised. I imagine it’s a little like being in a vacuum. Indeed, NASA has used anechoic chambers to help astronauts prepare for the vacuum of space (I’m going to take this to mean I’ve had a mild form of astronaut training).

It’s remarkable how much noise we take for granted, or subconsciously tune out: the air conditioning in the office; the low rumble of the bus just down the road; the hum of fluorescent lighting. With all of that gone, I was acutely aware of how much noise the human body alone can make.

My breathing, barely audible, was suddenly the loudest thing in the room. Every time I moved, I could hear my shirt pulling across my shoulders. It was chosen for the softness of its cotton, but here it sounded like I was sanding a table. I consider myself fairly healthy, but the sound of my bones grinding and clicking made me suspect otherwise.

Eventually I noticed a very faint hum. Later on I was told that it was probably very mild tinnitus. It’s likely that it’s always been there, and I’d never heard it before because it’s been masked by other noises.

And then there was my heartbeat. Even in such a quiet place I could barely hear it. I felt it, though – a low drum pounding with more force than I’d ever noticed day to day.

It’s a strange, unnatural sensation but I grew to like it. After the initial disorientation, I found myself oddly calm. That probably says more about me than anything else  – I find loud, crowded spaces tiring and stressful, and I rarely leave the home without a set of noise-cancelling headphones.

Not everyone will feel the same way, however. On exiting the chamber I spoke to John Drever, Professor of Acoustic Ecology and Sound Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. He tells me reactions are very subjective.

“Some people are very chilled out; others get hyper-vigilant and anxious. We evolved in the world of noises. That’s how the human auditory system developed. You plonk someone in a space like that and the auditory system searches for background noise. It’s not used to it, and it can be quite unnerving.”

There’s a myth that spending half an hour in an anechoic chamber can drive a person mad. While that isn’t true, I can understand the sentiment. Especially for claustrophobes.

After my 10 minutes of silence, it was time for me to watch the opening chapter of A Quiet Place. The experience was… intense.

For those who haven’t seen it, A Quiet Place is a horror film set in a world where making noise can get you killed by monsters. There are plenty of totally silent scenes, which made the choice of venue very fitting.

As we’ve already established, the overwhelming silence of the chamber meant my breathing suddenly felt a lot more conspicuous. In certain scenes, as the characters held their breaths, I found myself doing the same. In a way, this is the very best place I could have come to watch this film.

It’s an intense movie to begin with, but I felt it was made all the more effective by the fact that I had no distractions to pull me out of suspended disbelief. The loudest thing in the room was me. I’d heard about the problems in the theatrical run of the movie, where the rustling of popcorn proved too distracting for customers. If you want to really get into a film, if you want to really benefit from the sound design, silence is key.

Not too much silence, mind. The extreme nature of the room’s sound absorption properties meant I heard a little too much from the little computer speakers that had been set up for me.

This level of clarity is usually reserved for product testers. I found myself hearing the flaws in the speakers, which an ordinary consumer in an ordinary environment isn’t supposed to hear.

Related: Best soundbars

I went into that chamber wondering whether it would be the ideal home cinema environment. It isn’t. It’s overkill. But there are things to be learned, which could benefit your home movie viewing experience.

Firstly, soft furnishings soak up noise. Pillows, rugs, thick curtains, canvas paintings – all help to make the room more inert. They stop sounds from bouncing around too much, and also reduce the amount of noise coming in.

You might even consider proper acoustic treatment. I’m not saying you need a room full of glass fibre wedges, but acoustic foam panels are easy enough to buy and install. If you have blank, parallel walls either side of your viewing position, those panels are ideal. Soundproofing is a good thing in moderation.

Also, get some proper speakers. The more clearly you can hear your speakers, the more apparent their flaws. If you’re going down the route of acoustic foam panelling in your home, you might not want to use tiny PC speakers.

That might not be enough, though. Professor Drever reminded me of domestic realities.

“You always have domestic noises to deal with. Maybe you don’t want to wake up the rest of the family, but you want to enjoy the stereo soundscape. If you really want to focus on the sound and find that isolated space, put on some noise-cancelling headphones.”

Related: Best noise-cancelling headphones

The professor has a point. I use large speakers and I have acoustic foam, yet I’m endlessly aware of unwanted noise. I live near two construction sites, and even if no-one is working, I can hear the traffic. And I have a house rabbit, who likes to wait until a movie’s crucial moments to start rattling her water bottle.

Noise-cancelling headphones do address a huge chunk of everyday noise pollution, both inside and outside of the home.

They excel at handling low, constant sounds such as the rumble of traffic and that fan you put on to deal with the heatwave. They can turn a roaring plane engine into a whisper. They’re less effective against transient, high-pitched sounds such as sirens, but it’s better than nothing.

They’re also affordable, and portable – and there’s none of the pressure-related weirdness you experience in a deadly silent chamber.

To paraphrase French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre: hell is other people’s racket. Anything that can save you from that can only be a good thing. Just don’t overdo it.

A Quiet Place is available for digital download now, and on on disc from August 13.

The post I went to a quiet place to see A Quiet Place and it was intense appeared first on Trusted Reviews.

Doctors have noticed a new trend: People want to change their body to look like their edited selfies. Specifically, they're referring to photos of themselves taken with apps like Snapchat and Facetune that apply filters to instantly touch-up their ap...

Tonight, SpaceX has launched a satellite to geostationary orbit, but that payload isn't what makes this mission special: it's the rocket itself. The private space corporation has reused a Block 5 booster for the first time, the same one it used to la...

Guardians of the Galaxy's Dave Bautista has once again voiced his support for fired Guardians director James Gunn, saying that working for Disney is "pretty nauseating" after the incident.

Bautista, who plays Guardians of the Galaxy's Drax, said that he is legally obligated to return to Guardians, but the series without James Gunn is not what he signed up for.

"I will do what Im legally obligated to do but @Guardians without @JamesGunn is not what I signed up for," Bautista tweeted on Sunday when asked if he had a response for Disney. "GOTG w/o @JamesGunn just isn’t GOTG. Its also pretty nauseating to work for someone who’d empower a smear campaign by fascists #cybernazis . That’s just how I feel."

Continue reading…

Software mistakes are normally little more than inconveniences, but they had particularly serious consequences for some Wells Fargo customers. An SEC filing from the bank has revealed that a "calculation error" in its mortgage loan modification under...

 

Did you know that if Tom Cruise stops running, he dies? Well not exactly, but if he runs less, his movies do worse at the box office. Really. It’s science.

A study from the folks at Rotten Tomatoes have figured out that the amount that Cruise runs in his movies correlate with how good the movies are — and how well they do at the box office.

It began as an internet meme pointing out, Tom Cruise sure does run in movies a lot, doesn’t he? But then the actor went on to put it in his Twitter bio (“running in movies since 1981,” it proclaims) and videos compiling all of the scenes of Tom Cruise running hit the web.

Now, following the release of Cruise’s latest and most running-est movie yet, Mission Impossible: Fallout, Rotten Tomatoes has released a totally legitimate study proving that the more Cruise runs, the better his movies do. And by their painstaking methodology, you’d have to believe it was true.

In the report, which you can find here, Rotten Tomatoes compiled “every instance of Cruise’s running on screen, in seconds, and then calculated the distances ran by assuming he is clocking a six-minute mile (14.6 feet per second).” And what did they find? Well, movies featuring Cruise running more than 1,000 feet tended to have a higher Tomatometer average (71%) than the movies in which he runs less than that. And these statistics translate to box office revenue too — on average, these same movies had an average inflated international gross of $538 million.

This is compared to movies in which he doesn’t run at all (which only consist of the four films Magnolia, Lions for Lambs, Tropic Thunder, and Valkyrie) at an average of 63.5%, movies in which he runs 1 to 500 feet at 61.05%, and movies in which he runs 501 and 1,000 feet, which average out to 61.625%.

Hilariously, the 56-year-old star seems to be running more the older he gets — though Fallout hasn’t yet been factored into these results. Here are the 10 movies in which Cruise runs the most, according to Rotten Tomatoes:

1. “Mission: Impossible III” — 3,212 feet
2. “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol” — 3,066 feet
3. “War of the Worlds” — 1,752 feet
4. “Minority Report” — 1,562 feet
5. “The Firm” — 1,241 feet
6. “Edge of Tomorrow” — 1,065 feet
7. “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back” — 1,051 feet
8. “The Mummy” — 1,022 feet
9. “Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation” — 1,007 feet
10. “Vanilla Sky” — 832 feet

While there are a few outliers, this study seems to be pretty on the nose about what the audiences want: to see Tom Cruise run. His top three grossing movies with the most running and box office success include Mission: Impossible III (3,212 feet, $134 million), Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (3,066 feet, $209 million) and War of the Worlds (1,752 feet, $234 million).

Now, without further ado, let’s re-watch Tom Cruise run in all his movies.

The post The More Tom Cruise Runs, The Better His Movies Do, According to Science appeared first on /Film.

The season finale of Cloak & Dagger has come and gone, and I can honestly say that this show has been a blast to watch. Each week, the series seamlessly weaved New Orleans culture with Marvel’s comic book flair, creating something wholly unique to the Marvel TV universe. The trend continued this week with “Colony Collapse.” The big climax of the season was Roxxon’s valves erupting and putting New Orleans in danger. But, in true Cloak & Dagger fashion, it happened during Mardi Gras, one of New Orleans’ biggest holidays, and brings the African spiritual implications of the Divine Pairing to its head.

Even more interesting is that in order for Tandy and Tyrone to save society, everything must be flipped and turned around, which could create more chaos later on. But for right now, it’s what our superheroes need to do to save the world.  

The history of the Divine Pairing, turned on its head

Throughout the episode, we’re treated to Auntie Chantelle’s recount of New Orleans’ past and its relationship with the Divine Pairing. As she tells us (and as the episode visually tells us via flashback), every Divine Pairing has had to sacrifice one of its own. It’s expected that the new Divine Pairing, Tyrone and Tandy, will have to do the same – one will have to die in order to bring peace to New Orleans. Cleverly, we’re led to believe that in the midst of the Mardi Gras Terrors breakout, Tyrone will have to be the one to sacrifice himself. Each half of the Pairing designated for death usually have a mark of some kind on their arm, whether that’s a birthmark, needle marks, a black armband, or in Tyrone’s case, a huge gash.

For a millisecond, I was led to believe that Cloak and Dagger would follow in the path of so many other shows that have had black characters sacrifice themselves for the good of the world. In recent years, Sleepy Hollow and Into the Badlands have done this exact thing before, but they’re not alone. Countless other shows and films have done this – how else would the “black guy dies first” trope become a joke among movie fans? Or what about The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead, which has killed off countless black people as sacrifices or for a cheap emotional pull? For a split second, I was concerned we’d have to see Tyrone die on screen, even if he’d somehow be brought back (we do have a second season to account for, after all).

However, I quickly remembered this show is run by Joe Pokaski from Underground. If anyone wouldn’t pull such a stunt, it’d be him. This show is in safe hands. And sure enough, Tyrone didn’t die and come back as a zombie (but someone else does!). Instead, we get a play on that aged trope.

Thanks to Evita, Tyrone and Tandy get a clue about what could be their fate. And after Tyrone gobbles up Connors and sends him into the Darkforce Dimension (which I will touch on later), Tyrone believes his ability to be where he needs to be means he’s the only one who can stop the Roxxon leak. He’s got the gash on his arm and everything, of course it should be him! But after he evaporates into the building and is attempting to shut down the core by himself, Tandy uses her daggers to break in, declaring that if he’s going to die, she’s going to die with him since this is both of their responsibilities. It would seem that Fate agreed, since she was knocked back into a steaming pipe, receiving her own mark, a burn on her arm. After realizing the Roxxon chemical looks just like their powers, they combine their forces and send the chemical into the atmosphere.

The reason they were able to save New Orleans without one of them dying has to do with that exact same chemical. The night the rig exploded, not only did countless people including Tandy’s dad die and Ivan Hess was forced into a catatonic state, but the chemical infused itself with Tandy and Tyrone. They were probably already meant to be the chosen ones, but the chemical altered their fates, making them not cows for slaughter, but a super duo who must stay together in order for their powers to work.

This is a clever rejiggering of the comic book canon, in which Tandy and Tyrone are experimented upon, gaining their powers through a scientist’s trial and error to make a new type of synthetic heroin. Even better, the entire episode is also a clever reworking of an old trope that does need to die a swift death.

Tyrone, hero on the run

Another topsy-turvy moment is that we began the series with Tandy living in the abandoned church and end with Tandy moving back in with her mother and Tyrone living in the church as a fugitive, framed for Fuch’s murder by Connors. Of course, by the end of the episode, Connors has been absorbed into Tyrone and is now floating somewhere in the Darkforce Dimension, so who knows if Tyrone has now been framed for Connors’ death as well. But it’s definitely a change from what we expected.

In a way, one could argue that perhaps having Tyrone on the run does buy into a little of the black guy needing to sacrifice something. That’s a fair statement and, if we’re going by the Cloak & Dagger mythos in which one person has to be sacrificed, Tyrone does end up sacrificing something – his freedom. But still, we are talking about Joe Pokaski, who knows all about how to handle a show with heavy social and racial themes. Tyrone will be vindicated at some point, but for now, he must lie low until true justice can be served. Hopefully, his parents figure out his powers and, more importantly, figure out a way to communicate with him.

In any case, Tandy moving into her mom’s home will be an interesting turn. If anything, I’d love to know if Tandy will reckon with her mom about her dad’s true abusive nature. It’s going to be a hard conversation, but it’s one we desperately need, and it’s one I wished we had gotten in the series. I guess we’ll just have to wait.

Mina, Connors, and O’Reilly

The stinger for the series is that O’Reilly, who we thought was killed by Connors, is actually alive! When Connors thought he’d gotten O’Reilly, Connors’ bullets also hit the Roxxon valve, hurting O’Reilly in the process. Instead of O’Reilly being merely dead, she has returned as Mayhem, and she is back for blood and vengeance!

According to the comic book lore, Mayhem is a superhero who can force her victims to tell the truth. But the only person I can see Mayhem going after is Connors. But Connors is now, effectively, dead. So who will she go after next season? Will she go after the entire New Orleans police force? Will she figure out who Connors was working for and how Tyrone’s name can be cleared? Questions that currently have no answers.

Also currently unanswered is Mina’s condition. Last we saw her, Mina and Tandy escaped into a bunker during the Mardi Gras Terrors fiasco. But Mina got touched by one of the Terrors, turning her into one of their kind. Terror Mina was just about to get Tandy before Tyrone evaporated into the bunker just in time to tase Mina into submission. But we don’t see how she recovered from her Terror state, if she recovered at all. Hopefully, she’s not one of the casualties of the day, since she just got back in touch with her father. But who knows; she could wind up like Mayhem and resurface as another superhero to join the Cloak and Dagger squad.

My biggest question from the episode is what will happen to Connors. My hope is that next season will finally give us a look at what the Darkforce Dimension is like for someone who isn’t welcome. We’ve seen what it’s like for those who can traverse it, like Tandy and Tyrone. But for someone like Connors, what happens? Is their reality like what Ivan experienced, reliving the same moment over and over again, or is it something even more hellish?

My guess is that it must be something even worse, since Tandy was able to put Scarborough into the Darkforce Dimension in her own way. Instead of absorbing him, she showed him how his biggest hope is actually is biggest fear. However, she didn’t take him out of the Dimension; she left him in, transforming him into a catatonic state similar to Ivan’s.

Whatever is going with Connors, though, we can be sure that it’s not pretty, and for what he’s done to Tyrone’s family, it’s much deserved.

The post ‘Cloak and Dagger’ Closes Out Its First Season By Cleverly Upending Expectations appeared first on /Film.

CBS’ longest-running comedy may run even longer.

CBS Entertainment President Kelly Kahl told reporters Sunday that he has begun “preliminary discussions” to renew the sitcom for a 13th season.

That appeared to come as a surprise to executive producer Bill Prady, who tweeted “huh” to a headline about the news.

Huh. https://t.co/hmrEICinNC

— Bill Prady (@billprady) August 5, 2018

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

In 2017, the sitcom earned a two-season renewal that would take it through 2019. The show’s five originals stars — Jim Parsons, Johnny Galecki, Kaley Cuoco, Simon Helberg, and Kunal Nayyar — also renewed their contracts for at least two more seasons, his did Melissa Rauch and Mayim Bialik.

Earlier this year, executive producer Steve Holland was asked by EW if they were already planning for the possibility that season 12 — the one that launches Sept. 24 — would be the end. “We’ve talked about if next season is the end where we would like to leave these characters, so we have some general plans,” he said. “But we really haven’t sat down and done the nitty-gritty of talking about the specifics of what exactly needs to happen.”

A new report has challenged Uber's claims that its service has a positive impact on congestion levels in US cities, arguing that the service encourages people to take a private car when they would have otherwise used public transport.

The report (via the Washington Post) states that ‘Transportation Network Companies’ have doubled the use of for-hire ride services over the last half a decade and are still growing at a stunning rate.

However, while Uber would argue that this growth means that people are more likely to not own a car, this doesn’t actually appear to be the case. Car ownership is still on the rise in all large US cities, exceeding the rate of population growth, and the majority (60%) of journeys made through services like Uber actually replace public transport journeys rather than replacing journeys in a personal car.

This is true even of services like UberPool, which the report claims people use to replace public transport rather than private car usage.

Ultimately, the report concludes that offering decent public transportation is still a better way of reducing congestion in cities, despite the claims of ride-hailing services like Uber.

Congestion vs convenience

This is a US report, so there’s no way of knowing whether its findings apply in the UK. But it’s interesting to see Uber’s claims about its services, particularly UberPool, challenged.

After all, the service is very cheap, almost cheap enough in some instances to compete with public transportation options. Anecdotally, I haven’t bothered to take a night bus in years, opting instead to summon an Uber and deal with the slightly higher cost.

Sure, I don’t own a car, but living in central London makes car ownership an unreasonable prospect at the best of times.

But it’s difficult to know what the solution to this problem could be. Outright banning services like Uber seems extreme, but from looking at the numbers it’s hard to deny the impact services like it are having on traffic levels in the US.

Do you think services like Uber increase or lower the amount of traffic on the roads? Let us know @TrustedReviews. 

The post Research suggests Uber makes cities more congested, despite UberPool appeared first on Trusted Reviews.

It appears fun ‘Elon Musk Twitter’ is back, folks. After a few weeks of questionable social media posts, old Elon’s back to announcing cool new features for his fleet of Tesla electric vehicles.

After revealing a new ‘camper and party mode‘ is coming to the Model S, Model 3 and Model X cars, earlier this week, he’s now promising bloody Atari games will arrive in a forthcoming update. Version 9.0 of the Tesla software, which is rolling out in around four weeks, will include the classic games as an Easter egg. Musk didn’t announce a full list of games, but did drop a few hints.

Some of best classic @Atari games coming as Easter eggs in Tesla V9.0 release in about 4 weeks. Thanks @Atari!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 1, 2018

In reply to a fellow Twitter user, Musk said he’s hoping Pole Position, Tempest and Missile Command will be available with the update. The driving game Pole Position (pictured) will even be playable using the Tesla’s steering wheel, Musk said.

He added: “Hoping to include last three in this release, with Pole Position linked to actual car steering wheel (while stationary tbc haha)”

The giant, tablet-like centre console touchscreen display will most likely play host to the beloved titles from gaming’s early days, although drivers will need to have the car in park in order to play them.

Related: Best cars from the Detroit Motor Show

Elsewhere Tesla V9.0 will introduce new Autopilot features, including a brand new interface. It is rumoured this overhaul will push Autopilot from a level 2 autonomous driver system to a level 3. Back in June Musk said these will be the first fully self-driving features.

That issue is better in latest Autopilot software rolling out now & fully fixed in August update as part of our long-awaited Tesla Version 9. To date, Autopilot resources have rightly focused entirely on safety. With V9, we will begin to enable full self-driving features.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 10, 2018

As for that aforementioned party and camper mode, Musk said the feature will enable drivers to maintain air flow, temperature and some lights when the car is stationary. They’ll also be able to play music and power devices like smartphones (or even kettles) for more than 48 hours while the car is parked.

Do you ‘prefer fun new features’ Elon or ‘irate with Thai kid rescuers’ Elon? Let us know @TrustedReviews on Twitter.

The post Next Tesla update includes Atari classics played with the actual steering wheel appeared first on Trusted Reviews.

Ofcom’s annual Communications Market report has just dropped, and it confirms something that anecdotally has felt true for a long time: people aren’t buying smartphones to make phone calls.

In fact, 2017 marked the first time that the number of mobile phone calls dropped, dipping by 1.7%, from a cumulative 151.2 billion minutes of outgoing calls in 2016, to 148.6 billion last year.

That’s still an awful lot of minutes, of course, and the report only refers to network voice calls, rather than those made via the likes of WhatsApp, Skype and Messenger.

Related: Best smartphone

The decline could also be temporary, but that doesn’t seem to be the case for SMS and MMS messages, which definitely seem to be a dying breed. In 2012, we cumulatively sent 150.8 billion of them – last year, that figure dropped to just 77.3 billion.

It doesn’t take a genius to see why people are still buying phones despite the declining interest in their traditional features: internet access. The latest report states that the average person now uses 1.9GB of data per month, up 600MB from 2016 and 1.7GB from 2012.

On average, British people use smartphones for two hours and 28 minutes per day – although this figure rises to three hours and 14 minutes for people aged 18 to 24. Time spent on the internet across devices averages out at 24 hours per week, although a fifth of the population spends more than 40 hours per week online.

Growing concern?

For those that argue that smartphone addiction is a real worry, there are some troubling admissions in the research – especially in the reported attitudes section.

Two-fifths of adults confess to looking at their phone as their last act before falling asleep and then within five minutes of waking up, for example. On average, people check their phone once every 12 minutes throughout the day.

Adults generally have a negative reaction to being unable to connect to the internet: 34% feel “cut off“, 29% feel “lost”, 24% feel like they’re “missing out”, 18% worry about not being reachable by contacts, and 17% find it generically “stressful”.

By contrast, only a small percentage of people find no internet access to be a positive, with 10% pleased by productivity gains and a further 10% describing the experience as “liberating”.

Read more: Best cheap mobile phones

43% believe they spend too much time online, while 54% think mobiles interrupt face-to-face conversations. Perhaps that’s why giants like Facebook and Apple are now counter-intuitively introducing features that let users place time limits on their products.

Despite this negativity, it’s hard to argue that people are generally at peace with their usage: 48% of adults called the smartphone their most treasured device, well ahead of TVs (28%) and laptops (10%).

Do you still use your phone for calls, or is that function long gone for you? Let us know on Twitter @TrustedReviews.

The post The number of UK mobile phone calls has dropped for the first time ever appeared first on Trusted Reviews.

Music streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music have almost halved illegal downloads in the last five years, according to a new survey.

In a YouGov poll of more than 4,000 UK adults, only 10% of Brits copped to downloading music from illegitimate sources. That’s compared to 18% when the same survey was carried out in 2013. Of those pirates, many of whom are using stream ripping services to acquire the tracks, 22% said they planned to go straight within the next five years.

The fall is naturally down to streaming services ‘filling the void’, as one respondent put it. A total of 44% of those surveyed said they’d only download the music illegally if it wasn’t available from legit sources.

However, the increased difficultly of finding illegal download sources is also contributing to the fall, with 35% of Brits surveyed claiming access was proving difficult these days.

Related: Spotify vs Apple Music

YouGov Associate Director Justin Marshall said in a statement: “While illegal downloads still present a significant challenge to the music industry, there appears to be some light at the end of the tunnel. Our research reveals a change in behaviour, with those that previously attained music by unlawful means now being enticed by the low costs and ease of use associated with streaming.

“Simply put, many don’t feel they need to go to the same lengths to acquire the music they want, now they have it at their fingertips. Whether or not streaming is what finally banishes illegal downloads remains to be seen, but there are encouraging signs.”

As to be expected, exclusive releases are a bone of contention for Brits using streaming services. More than half of the people surveyed expressed frustration with releases like Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s Everything is Love launching exclusively on Tidal.

Did the arrival of streaming services end your quest to access music from illegal sources? Share your story with us @TrusteReviews on Twitter.

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DEMONS & WIZARDS, the side project of ICED EARTH mainman Jon Schaffer and BLIND GUARDIAN singer Hansi Kürsch, is one of the confirmed acts for the 30th-anniversary edition of the Wacken Open Air festival, set to take place August 1-3, 2019 in Wacken, Germany. Also scheduled to appear are PARKWAY DRIVE, POWERWOLF, AIRBOURNE, ROSE TATTOO, WITHIN TEMPTATION, MESHUGGAH, KROKUS, DARK FUNERAL and AVATAR, with many more bands to be announced soon. Jon told Wacken TV about DEMONS & WIZARDS' return: "It has been a while. It's been about… well, since our last record came out, that was 2005. And since the last time we performed, that was 2000." Schaffer added that he and Kürsch are "very honored" to be performing at the 30th-anniversary installment of the festival. "It's a good pressure for Hansi and I, it's a good kind — it's the kind we like," he said. "We're very excited about it. "The thing is we wanted to continue the DEMONS & WIZARDS thing, but with ICED EARTH and BLIND GUARDIAN, we're very busy people," Jon continued. "And our schedules, it's just one of those times right now where the holes are lining up in the right way for us to be able to commit to shows next summer. So it's cool." This past spring, Schaffer told Metal Wani that he would be "really focused" on the songwriting process for DEMONS & WIZARDS' long-awaited third album "from August on through the rest of the year." He added: "I really need to be off and in that meditative state where I'm left alone and focused completely on music. If I've got all this stuff going on with the new [ICED EARTH] album cycle, which we are in, then it makes it hard for me to be productive in the best way for the product. I've talked to Hansi. He's, like, 'No pressure, dude.' The perfect timing for me is going to be at the end of this year. I expect that we will because once I get focused on something, it goes pretty quick. Hansi has his schedule opened up pretty much, so I think 2019 is realistic [for a new DEMONS & WIZARDS album]." Asked how he separates the writing process between ICED EARTH and DEMONS & WIZARDS, Jon said: "It's different because in ICED EARTH, when I'm writing a song by myself, I'm writing it with Stu [Block] or with Matt [Barlow] in the past, or whatever, it's worked in different ways. For me, when I'm working on a song with my lyrics, then I know at least what the theme or the title of the song is going to be, so that leads me in a direction in how I craft the music. I always want to make it so, that even without the vocals, somebody can close their eyes and really feel like they're on a journey of whatever that song might be about.,, With Hansi, it's a little different because a lot of that stuff gets decided later. It's really just about trying and coming up with cool musical arrangements that are what they are, then he adds his thing in." He continued: "It's just different because I don't write as much in DEMONS & WIZARDS as I do in ICED EARTH; it's a different thing. If we end up talking early in the process and he says, 'Hey, I've got this theme of a song.' That always helps me for sure. I can go 'Okay, I know where my target is.' I have to be passionate about whatever subject it is that we're going to write about in order to create the soundscape that is convincing for people, whether there's vocals or not. That's the icing on the cake, but the music still has to speak. It's a big deal. It's like the soundtrack of a movie. If you turn that off, you're not going to cry and you're not going to get scared. It's a giant thing when watching any kind of movies. It's the movements that happen at a subconscious level that people sometimes don't really understand. To me, if we're going for a specific subject matter, we got to try to put the listener on a journey that's as emotive and powerful as possible from an instrumental standpoint, then the lyrics and melodies are the icing on the cake." DEMONS & WIZARDS was launched in 1997 and has released two full-length albums so far: 2000's self-titled effort and 2005's "Touched By The Crimson King". The latter was partially based on the "The Dark Tower" series of books (written by Stephen King) in which the Crimson King is the main antagonist. "Touched By The Crimson King" was released in Japan in September 2005 with the following bonus tracks: "Lunar Lament", "Wicked Witch" (slow version) and "Spatial Architects". The CD also included the "Terror Train" video. The disc featured an appearance by HALFORD and SEBASTIAN BACH drummer Bobby Jarzombek. Schaffer said in a 2009 interview that he felt "Touched By The Crimson King" was a bit rushed and he was determined to do things differently next time around. "We had this window of opportunity where we had to get it done and we kind of let time dictate the schedule instead of our feelings, and that was probably a mistake," he explained. "I mean, I'm proud of that record and it sold killer and it's a good album, but I think Hansi and I are capable of a lot more, especially when we get back to the root reasons of why we did this thing together."

HALESTORM vocalist Lzzy Hale and guitarist Joe Hottinger were recently interviewed by Backstage Axxess. The full conversation can be streamed below. A few excerpts follow (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). On making their new album, "Vicious": Joe: "The process was organic, for sure. Nick Raskulinecz, our producer, kind of just sat us in a room and said, 'All right, the four of you plug in your stuff. Who's got a riff?' That's where it began, and we just started writing music. He kind of became our fifth band member. We were just jamming, and he'd pop in every once in a while — 'That was cool! Do that again!' 'All right, Captain. You got it!' We were just chasing what excited us. That was the goal." Lzzy: "I don't think we realized how heavy of a record we made until we started playing the new songs live. I remember the first show we added 'Black Vultures', and I turned to the guys and I'm like, 'I think we wrote a heavy record, guys.' Like Joe said, we were just chasing whatever got us excited. It's really interesting to now look at the record in its entirety after it's all done and be like, 'All right, I guess we had to get that out.'" On whether the album's title track was inspired by Hale's experiences in the male-dominated music industry: Lzzy: "It certainly could be. I write everything from a personal point of view. It's only until after it's been in the hands of everybody else that it becomes this kind of broader message. For me personally, I wrote this particular song at the eleventh hour of this record being done. We kind of had everything finished, and then Joe and I went out to L.A. to settle in and write for fun. I remember the two of us being up at like, 4 in the morning just writing gibberish with this idea, because we loved the word 'vicious.' In my mind, that's when the album came together for me. With this record, it's just a journey message-wise that I had been touching on. What I realized is that it's so much more. Whether you're talking about being a woman in the industry, whether you're talking about being a woman in general, whether you're talking about being a human being struggling with their place in the world and all the different phases that go along with that, it's just so much more in life right now than being strong and weathering the storm. You kind of have to come at life with a little bit of teeth and be fierce about it — be bold and forceful and force yourself into these situations that maybe make you uncomfortable, maybe make other people uncomfortable. Ultimately, you have to kind of be vicious about it. That was, for me, taking that word 'vicious' and spinning it with that positivity. It's about survival, and not just being strong. I remember Joe and I texting the other guys, 'I think we have to call the album 'Vicious',' because up until that point, we had a bunch of other ideas that weren't really clicking." On the album's "most difficult" song: Joe: "The most difficult was 'Conflicted', because it was just a tough song. It was a bear." Lzzy: "'Conflicted' is the only song on the album that came from an outside source. We were showing some songs to our A&R guy, and went up to visit him in New York. He's like, 'I have this idea from these three kids, and it's called 'Conflicted', and they kind of have a half-chorus and kind of a half-verse, but they haven't really finished the song yet. Would you like to finish it?' We'll try anything, so we ended up writing this song and re-writing it about nine times. Our first version of it ended up being this hard rock, balls-to-the-wall... it didn't really work with lyrically how I was kind of wrapping up the song. Didn't we end up doing the final version right before we mastered the record?" Joe: "It was, like, last-minute. It was kind of like, 'Oh my god, are we done with this yet?'" Lzzy: "We got to the point at the end — 'Should we even put it on the record? This is silly.' But we ended up doing it anyway, and what it is what it is, but that was the most difficult nut to crack, because it didn't start out with the nucleus of us, so it was kind of hard to figure out how to make it work on the record." On the "most enjoyable" new song they wrote: Lzzy: "'Do Not Disturb' was a fun one. I love that slow groove. I feel bad — I made our producer slightly uncomfortable with the lyrics, poor guy. He's like, 'All right, I think we've got it. We don't have to do it ever again now.' That was a lot of fun to do." Joe: "I had fun with 'Killing Ourselves To Live'. Lzzy and I had that chorus for a few years. We kind of thought it was always a ballad, and I remember you were always trying to write on piano our acoustic. I was bored fast — like, 'Man, I know it's a good chorus, but what do you do with it?' I remember getting all annoyed one night about the song and I was like, 'Fuck it — let's just make it a rock song,' and kind of sang out a few riffs into my phone. I think we were on tour last October, and I had my little demo rig out with me, and I took the riffs I sang into my phone and made them guitar parts. That was a lot of fun. It was nice to hear that chorus turn into something totally unexpected from my perspective." "Vicious" was released on July 27 via Atlantic. HALESTORM and IN THIS MOMENT will embark on the third leg of their all-female fronted tour in the fall. The new dates, which will feature support from NEW YEARS DAY, will begin on November 16 in Norfolk, Virginia and run through December 16, wrapping in St. Petersburg, Florida.

According to Deutsche Welle, two elderly elderly German men escaped from their nursing home on Friday (August 3) to attend the Wacken Open Air festival. The nursing home contacted the police after it discovered that the men were missing from the facility. The men were later found at 3 a.m. at the heavy metal festival, which is celebrating its 29th anniversary this year in Wacken, Germany. Police escorted the men home with the help of a taxi and a patrol car. This year's Wacken Open Air is sold out, with more than 75,000 metal fans in attendance. Headliners include JUDAS PRIEST, DANZIG, HATEBREED, IN FLAMES, RUNNING WILD and ARCH ENEMY. Although Wacken has the reputation of being the muddiest festival in the world, this year's event has reportedly seen no rain so far. Last year, it was reported that the fans who attend Wacken Open Air each year consume an average of about 5.1 liters of beer over the festival, according to the statistics portal Statista. This compares to 3.1 liters per person for the less heavy metal-centric Rock Am Ring festival. For the 2018 installment of Wacken Open Air, organizers have joined forces with the Electronic Sports League (ESL) to create an esports arena. The 1,800 square-meter esports village invites festivalgoers to compete in the daily amateur tournaments of popular games, including League Of Legends and Playerunknown's Battlegrounds.

GUNS N' ROSES guitarist Slash has not ruled out the possibility of recording new music with the current incarnation of the band, which features three-fifths of the classic lineup. During a surprise appearance on yesterday's (Friday, August 3) edition of "Trunk Nation LA Invasion: Live From The Rainbow Bar & Grill" on SiriusXM, Slash was asked if the group has considered going into the studio. He responded: "It's been talked about. I think everybody wants to do it, and we'll just see what happens. We've been busy doing this running around the planet," referring to GUNS N' ROSES' ongoing "Not In This Lifetime" tour, which kicked off more than two years ago. According to Slash, the original plan for the GUNS N' ROSES reunion was to only play five shows. "That's initially what it was gonna be," he said. "We didn't have a big, long-term thing [planned]. Axl [Rose, GUNS N' ROSES singer] and I got together, and we talked for a while and so on, and we thought it would be cool to these Coachella dates, because we [got] offered to get back together and do Coachella every year for years, and we obviously didn't do it [before]. So now that we were on good terms, it seemed like a good idea. So that was the basic focus — just to do those two shows and a couple of warm-up shows, so we did the Troubadour, one show in Vegas, in Mexico and the Coachella gigs. And that went so well, and everything just fell back into place. So we said, 'Okay, we'll do this U.S. run that they're offering us,' and then everything just snowballed from there." Asked if he was surprised by how much of a commercial success the "Not In This Lifetime" tour has turned out to be, Slash said: "The last shows that we did was '94 in South America, so we were at that place where we were playing stadiums. So when this came back around, the first offers were to do stadium-type gigs. So I was, like, 'Okay. That's great.' I think, more than anything, I was just excited about the enthusiasm. Considering, for me personally, being out of it for so long, coming back into it and seeing these insane crowds… It was, in my opinion, better received this time around than it was in the last years of the '90s that I was in it. It was really, really cool. And it's one of those times you can appreciate playing in a stadium, because you're playing for anywhere from 30 to 80 thousand people that are so dialed into your shit that it's like playing in a club — it's got that kind of personal toe-to-toe feel to it. So it was really, really a blast." Slash went on to say that reconnecting with Rose after nearly two decades was "huge." He added: "The most surreal moment was soundcheck at the Troubadour [in April 2016] — that was a very surreal moment. Way before we played the show and everything, just being together with everybody, being in that particular environment, of course stuffing 10 times more gear in there than we had back in the day. And then looking over and seeing Axl and seeing Duff [McKagan, GUNS N' ROSES bassist], that was a very surreal moment. The rest of it seemed very, very new. I'm with a guy who was a partner in crime with me for many years before we had this, sort of, falling-out thing. And then, obviously, Duff. And we were up there playing these gigs. And I know these guys, I know these songs, but something about it was not really reminiscent of, say, the 'Use Your Illusion' tour. So it felt really fresh and new. It's an interesting thing. It didn't hit those tiny moments of, like, 'Oh my God! I remember hitting this chord, and he was there back in 1991,' or anything like that." Slash also spoke highly of his new GN'R bandmates Richard Fortus (guitar) and Frank Ferrer (drums), saying: "All in all, it was just a great bunch of people who were really excited about doing what we're doing, and going out there and playing in front of a bunch of people who are glad we're doing it." The guitarist praised Rose for his "amazing" vocal performance at "every single show" during the "Not In This Lifetime" tour, noting that GUNS N' ROSES was playing "three-and-a-half-hour sets" on many nights. "So it was really cool to watch him do," he said. Slash also talked about what it has been like for him to perform songs from GUNS N' ROSES' 2008 album "Chinese Democracy", which he did not play on. "It was cool," he said. 'There's some great songs on that record, so I just sort of adapted my own way of playing them and just made them more my own so I felt more comfortable. And they just kick ass." GUNS N' ROSES launched its long-rumored and long-awaited reunion tour in April 2016 with a club show in Hollywood and been on the road around the world ever since. The "Not In This Lifetime" trek, which ranks as the fourth-highest-grossing tour of all time, based on Billboard's Boxscore archives, features Slash, McKagan and Rose, backed by Fortus and Ferrer, plus keyboardists Dizzy Reed and Melissa Reese. "Chinese Democracy" came out in 2008 and featured only Axl from the classic lineup. The last album on which Rose, McKagan and Slash appeared together was 1993's covers set "The Spaghetti Incident?" Slash will release his fourth solo album and third with his band THE CONSPIRATORS, "Living The Dream", in September.

CBS is banking on more Star Trek shows as a way to draw in more viewers, and it's clearly ready to pull out all the stops in the process. The network has confirmed that it's launching an All Access series that will continue the story of Star Trek: Th...

With Cloak and Dagger wrapping up its first season on August 2, IGN spoke to executive producer Joe Pokaski about the show's connections to the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe and its crossover potential, given that the show has already been renewed for Season 2.

According to a Freeform release, In the Season 1 finale, "Colony Collapse," everything comes to a head for Tyrone (Aubrey Joseph) and Tandy (Olivia Holt) as the city of New Orleans is thrown into chaos. The two realize that it is time they face their destiny and test their powers as “The Divine Pairing” to save the city.

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Warning: Full spoilers for Marvel's Cloak and Dagger Season 1 finale below.

All throughout its first season, Cloak & Dagger attempted to do something Marvel hadn't really tried before. And for the most part, that made Freeform's first Marvel series a success.

While it is a younger-skewing comic book drama, the superhero/superpowers/vigilante aspects of the series were actually pushed to the background while the story focused instead on mature character stories told through the lens of real-world issues. That's no small task, especially when the show is set in New Orleans, a city filled with fraught racial politics. But despite its younger audience, Cloak & Dagger never pulled any punches in telling authentic stories of a young, white blonde woman using her appearance to easily con people out of money while escaping any kind of consequences, vs. a young, black man who, despite coming from a very wealthy, high class family and always following the rules, constantly finds himself on the wrong side of law enforcement because of his race.

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Spoiler alert: This post contains plot from the season 1 finale of Marvel’s Cloak and Dagger.

Well, they did it. After a season of figuring out life with new powers, Tandy and Tyrone worked together to save their city. And in doing so, the teens completely changed their lives — whether they realize it now or not. With their superhero journeys really just beginning, the two of them will have to face, well, whatever comes their way in the show’s second season. (Cough, Brigid, cough.)

EW talked to Cloak and Dagger showrunner Joe Pokaski about the finale, those MCU references, and where the show goes from here.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Tandy and Tyrone answered the call to action! Where do they go from here?
JOE POKASKI: My favorite part of the superhero genre is, “How do I balance the baggage of my own life with my responsibility?” I think when they get hit with this responsibility, these two rise to the occasion, and it does change them. When you go into season 2, now we get to enter into a study: How do you become a vigilante? And obviously the post-credits sequence kind of tees up the first challenge they’re going to face as they now have a responsibility to help people.

So is Brigid the villain?
We can say that Brigid will be one of the first big scary things they come up against.

I loved the role reversal at the end of the season. What new opportunities does that present for you all in terms of story?
Olivia and Aubrey play these characters so well, and so it makes our job a little easier to talk about, “Well, let’s explore them in different environments.” In a weird way, probably the most uncomfortable place for Tandy to be is back with her mom. But I think putting her back in a family environment will allow her to explore a side of her she’s neglected. Then Tyrone, it’s the exact opposite. He was always surrounded by these supportive parents and given these opportunities to study and to play basketball, and what does his life become when all of that’s taken away? Who is Tyrone without the facade that he’s put up, without the brave face he’s been wearing?

Is the mystery of Connors’ disappearance seemingly into Tyrone’s cloak part of season 2?
Yes, we’re leaving a few questions unanswered on purpose. We want to make sure we’re laying an emotional foundation before things happen. In the comics, Tyrone eventually does suck people up into his cloak, and in the comic book it kind of makes them live this existence and pops them out half a man. So we want to explore the fact that Tyrone is a doorway to something and that Connors has been sucked up into that doorway. we’re going to step into that doorway a little more. That’s part of why I love Cloak and Dagger, they have this power set that we can unfold slowly so our characters can understand each piece of it in an emotional way.

What’s the story behind the Stark and Rand name drops?
It’s a fun little nod because it’s an amazing reminder that we live in the same world as Tony Stark and Danny Rand, and it was also kind of us saying that if these superheroes exist, if Iron Man and the Arc Reactor exist, they would actually probably affect different stockholders in different companies where all of the sudden, like a space race of old, there are probably some corporations saying, “We need to take advantage of whatever this superhero science is that’s happening.”

What are you looking forward to exploring in season 2?
In season 2, you can take those training wheels off. The most exciting thing is now we have these two characters, played by these two ridiculously talented actors, and we get to explore how you become a vigilante hopefully in a way that other superhero fiction hasn’t done yet. If you do have this power to make a knife of light or teleport, how do you make the world a better place? How do you go about doing it? Where do you find trouble? How does it affect your life? I think we got to kick into high gear with the last couple episodes , and we’ll be able to shift into a higher speed a little quicker in season 2.

Google is finished thinking two-dimensionally with Maps and now shows the Earth as a globe rather than a flat "Mercator" projection as before. You won't notice the change when you first open the app, but if you zoom out far enough, you'll eventually...

Standalone navigation devices are a dying breed. These days vehicles tend to have navigators plumbed into their dashboards, and as long as there's a smartphone to hand... well, there's an app for that. Demand for the devices nosedived years ago, but...

A day after posting strong results for the third quarter of fiscal 2018, Apple has become the world’s first publicly traded company with a market capitalization of over $1 trillion.

At press time Apple’s stock cost $206.90 and its market capitalization was $1.017 trillion. Meanwhile earlier this morning Apple’s stock hit $207.50, so it is likely that the company will stay around a $1 trillion market cap mark in the coming hours or days before either heading north or south.

Apple’s best Q3 results ever were driven by strong sales of iPhones as well as a massive increase in revenue it gets for its services. In fact, while the company’s iPhone earnings for the quarter grew 20% year-over-year because of higher smartphone ASPs, Apple’s services revenue grew 31% year-over-year as the company has been expanding its offerings for some time now. At the same time, sales of iPad tablets and Mac PCs dropped 5% year-over-year.

Originally founded as a maker of computers in 1976, Apple expanded to dozens of product categories in the 1990s, many of which were unsuccessful. After Steve Jobs returned to Apple as the CEO in 1997, he axed most of the product lines to focus on PCs. Starting from 2001, the company started to expand its family of products once again with the iPod music player that was followed by the Apple TV in 2006 (called iTV originally), the iPhone in 2007, the iPad in 2010, the Apple Watch in 2015, and the HomePod in 2017. In addition, the company acquired Beats Electronics in 2014. It is evident that the company branched into three new categories of products in the last eight years and while sales of Apple Watch and Beats products are increasing, Apple’s corporate revenues are growing mainly because of higher iPhone selling prices, such as the iPhone X at $999.

While Apple is without any doubts ahead of other US-based high-tech companies in terms of market cap, it is not the world’s most expensive firm per se. Depending on who is doing calculations, the valuation of Saudi Aramco state-controlled oil and gas company is between $1.2 trillion and $1.5 trillion. Therefore, Apple still needs to grow further in a bid to become the world’s most valuable company in history.

Related Reading

• Apple Announces Q3 FY 2018 Results
• Apple Updates MacBook Pro Family for 2018: More CPU Cores, DDR4, & Same Form Factors
• Apple Announces iOS 12: Siri Suggestions, Faster Performance, 6 Years of Support, & More
• The Apple WWDC 2018 Keynote Live Blog (Starts at 1pm ET)

A thief was caught using social engineering on employees of cellular providers to trick them into SIM swapping a victim's cellular account to a new SIM card. This is known as a "port out scam." After that the brazen thief could take control of the person's life as his Gmail and other accounts were all tied to that phone. Joel Ortiz and other from the OGUSERS hacking group then manipulated the victim's cryptocurrency accounts and stole millions in Bitcoin and other currencies. After being caught because of taking selfies holding his real ID card, Ortiz is confessing all to the police. Multiple sources said Ortiz's account on OGUSERS was "J." That user was recently banned from the forum. In another forum thread titled "everyone is gone," users complained that after Motherboard published an investigation into SIM swapping that included information about OGUSERS, many members left. According to sources who frequent the forum, the site administrators have banned several accounts of known SIM swappers after Motherboard's investigation into the forum. Discussion

For the past two months, we have been keeping a watchful eye on many of your God of War Photo Mode images. These pics showed us amazing glimpses into Kratos and Atreus’ adventures from your point of view.

Whether it was a strong use of a vignette, a unique vertical shot or a pouty Atreus selfie, there were lots of breathtaking images shared all across the web that everyone at our studio loved checking out. Now, through our Photo Mode contest, we received some of your best work yet.

We combed over 100’s of images all over the world and were immensely impressed by your creativity and originality of work we saw, whether it was a quiet, self-reflective moment with Kratos in Midgard to a fierce battle with Atreus in Muspelheim.

We’re proud to announce our legendary Photo Mode contest winners below. Check out their gorgeous photos and our team’s commentary on each image. Our winners will receive a Cook & Becker museum quality print of their winning shot signed by the team + a Dark Horse Art of God of War book.

Thank you to all our fans worldwide for your submissions. This certainly will not be the last Photo Mode contest. Please continue to send your pictures to @SonySantaMonica or sms@sony.com. BOY!

1. Photo by John L.

“From the great use of colours to the evocation of emotion, this is a beautifully simple shot that tells a story. We love the diagonal composition, using the clouds as framing to draw your eye to Atreus’ face. The mood of his face also matches the colour of the shot and its compositional elements, delivering a unified sense of emotion.”

2. Photo by @ninjerello

“The first thing that impressed us is the unique use of perspective with the Blades of Chaos being at the center of the image. It gave us a sense of both brutality and movement, reflecting the personality of Kratos in battle. We also loved also the color contrast between light blue and red.”

3. Photo by @the_macebook

“There’s a great sense of motion and tension in this image. We really enjoyed the composition and use of thirds as well as the unique use of colors to convey the tension. Altogether, it tells a very evocative narrative.”

4. Photo by Ian L.

“We love the great use of compositional lines and angles here. There’s a strong use of negative space and depth of field. The overexposed background pops from the foreground and complements the choice of colors overall.”

5. Photo by @gatirosho

“Apart from the obviously great quality of the image, we think it really captures the spirit of Atreus overall in a more quieter and peaceful setting along with a great usage of colour and mood.”

6. Photo by @TheHunterVictor

“We chose this image as it makes good use of its depth of field, great lighting and composition. There is a great sense of intention permeating from the imagery.”

7. Photo by @libraa_sandra1

“There is a powerful narrative showcased from this image here. We love the strong lines come from the framing with a great composition. We also appreciate the original use of the background here with a strong silhouette.”

8. Photo by @_Rosapexa

“This picture describes the huge power and anger of Kratos. His Blades of Chaos are shown in a very dramatic and strong way, and we like that the fire around the Blades with the Greek writing shining. This detail stands in contrast to Kratos’ harsh facial expression — reflecting Kratos’ character and origin.”

9. Photo by @linalyx_

“We appreciated the way the photo was edited; the strong use of the scenery and verticality of the image. The silhouette of Kratos stands out here as both solitary and powerful.”

The post 9 stunning God of War images that showcase the amazing versatility of the PS4 epic’s photo mode appeared first on PlayStation.Blog.Europe.

Paramount has revealed a first look at its upcoming new Terminator movie,.

The image features Linda Hamilton, who's reprising her role as Sarah Connor, alongside newcomers to the franchise Natalia Reyes (Dani Ramos), and Mackenzie Davis (Grace). However, there's no sign of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Check out the image below.

Terminator sequel first look, from left to right: Natalia Reyes (Dani Ramos), Mackenzie Davis (Grace), and Linda Hamilton (Sarah Connor).

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