Ronald.phillips

There's something ironic about the fact that Quentin Tarantino — a director famous for his on-screen violence — got into a physical altercation on the set of his first feature-length film, "Reservoir Dogs." The "Kill Bill" director has had a successful career that was almost jeopardized during the production of his first film. 

In the NFL, there are occasions called "welcome to the NFL" moments. While not an official phrase, my understanding is that these are usually the first time something big and negative happens to a player (typically a rookie). Maybe they get tackled hard by a veteran player, maybe they lose the game by dropping a pass, but this concept isn't exclusive to the sports industry. Think about it, we've all had our first major error or dilemma at a new job and Tarantino is no different. His "welcome to directing" moment was the altercation between him and an actor as it happened very early on in the production of "Reservoir Dogs."

What Was Reservoir Dogs?

"Reservoir Dogs" was Tarantino's feature-length directorial debut and is one of the benchmarks of indie filmmaking. The film follows the aftermath of a heist gone wrong and the levels of paranoia rise. Interestingly enough, Tarantino leaves the viewer in the dark as we never see the actual heist — only the preparation and aftermath. The film had a stellar ensemble with a number of actors who would collaborate with Tarantino again in the future including Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi, Michael Madsen and Harvey Keitel.

"Reservoir Dogs" was also significant for its nonlinear storytelling — a technique that he would double down on in his next film, "Pulp Fiction" — and for the fact that it largely takes place in a single location.

Tarantino's Sparring Partner

The actor that went head-to-head with Tarantino on the set of "Reservoir Dogs" was Lawrence Tierney. In the film, Tierney played Joe Cabot — the one who organized the crew. Speaking to The Guardian, Tarantino described Tierney as a "complete lunatic by that time" and that "he just needed to be sedated." Tarantino continued, "We had decided to shoot his scenes first, so my first week of directing was talking with this f***ing lunatic." When describing the atmosphere on set with Tierney, Tarantino said, 

"He was personally challenging to every aspect of film-making. By the end of the week everybody on set hated Tierney — it wasn't just me. And in the last 20 minutes of the first week we had a blow out and got into a fist fight."

Tarantino would then fire Tierney, which, according to him, was met with applause from the whole crew. But despite the support of the crew, Tarantino thought that the end of his run as a director could be over as quickly as it had started. "And I thought: OK, now I'm going to get fired. That's it; that's my shot at being a director, gone, after one week," said Tarantino in reference to the fallout of this altercation. Luckily, Keitel stepped in to take care of any potential tension between Tarantino and the studio and the rest is history.

Tarantino's Career Was Just Fine After The Altercation

While Tarantino is now a well-respected director, having that altercation while still being an unproven commodity was surely a gamble. Luckily, the gamble paid off, and since "Reservoir Dogs," Tarantino has enjoyed a successful career and has consistently evolved as a filmmaker — dipping his toes into every genre.

He's directed nine feature-length films with his most recent film, "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," getting 10 Academy Award nominations including a Best Supporting Actor win for Brad Pitt. 

Read this next: The 14 Best Film Acting Debuts Of All Time

The post Quentin Tarantino Came to Blows with an Actor on the Set of Reservoir Dogs appeared first on /Film.

Security analysts have found a severe security vulnerability in the desktop app for Microsoft Teams that gives threat actors access to authentication tokens and accounts with multi-factor authentication (MFA) turned on. BleepingComputer reports: "This attack does not require special permissions or advanced malware to get away with major internal damage," Connor Peoples at cybersecurity company Vectra explains in a report this week. The researcher adds that by taking "control of critical seats -- like a company's Head of Engineering, CEO, or CFO -- attackers can convince users to perform tasks damaging to the organization." Vectra researchers discovered the problem in August 2022 and reported it to Microsoft. However, Microsoft did not agree on the severity of the issue and said that it doesn't meet the criteria for patching. With a patch unlikely to be released, Vectra's recommendation is for users to switch to the browser version of the Microsoft Teams client. By using Microsoft Edge to load the app, users benefit from additional protections against token leaks. The researchers advise Linux users to move to a different collaboration suite, especially since Microsoft announced plans to stop supporting the app for the platform by December.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Based on the findings of Malwarebytes' Threat Review for 2022, 40 million Windows business computers' threats were detected in 2021. In order to combat and avoid these kinds of attacks, malware analysis is essential. In this article, we will break down the goal of malicious programs' investigation and how to do malware analysis with a sandbox. What is malware analysis?  Malware analysis is a

There's a lot of misinformation about what can and can't be used as fuel for your car. The time has come to get the record straight. Perhaps you've heard that alcohol can be used as fuel for your car, but is this true? Can you really pour a jar of moonshine into your gas tank and watch your car take off?

The first die shot of Intel's Core i9-13900K, the top Raptor Lake CPU, has been revealed in a full wafer shot that was tweeted by Hardwareluxx's editor, Andreas Schilling.

Intel's Top 24-Core "8+16" Raptor Lake CPU Die Pictured In Full Wafer Shot, Coming Soon To 6 GHz Core i9's

Intel has invited tech media from all around the globe to IDC (Intel Design Center) based in Haifa, Israel. Today, the tech and press community was invited over to the FAB28, a leading fabrication plant that is responsible for making Intel's next-gen Raptor Lake CPUs. The bleeding-edge fab is located in Kiryat Gat, Israel, just a few kilometers south of Tel Aviv. There, Intel made press hold wafers of their next-gen Raptor Lake silicon.

International media, analysts and influencers representing 14 countries and 10 languages toured Intel’s Design Center in Haifa, Israel. #IntelTechTour pic.twitter.com/Ec41D9l2VM

— Intel News (@intelnews) September 13, 2022

The wafer that was shown features the full Raptor Lake-S Desktop CPU die that comprises 8 P-cores based on the Raptor Cove cores and 16 E-cores based on the updated Gracemont cores. Combined, you get up to 24 cores and 32 threads. We can see clearly on the wafer that each die has a total of 8 E-Cores which are bright yellow and then we have the bigger P-cores that are in a slight brown hue and appear bigger. Each of the four E-cores makes up to form a cluster and there are four such clusters on the die compared to just two clusters on the Alder Lake CPUs. Each of the four clusters also appears bigger and we can also see a slightly increased size of each P-core.

This wafer full of Raptor Lake 8+16 dies screams: „Please stop touching me!“ #IntelTechTour pic.twitter.com/ozB7NqvBIV

— Andreas Schilling (@aschilling) September 14, 2022

It is estimated that for 13th Gen Raptor Lake CPUs, Intel is going to feature 2 MB L2 / 3 MB L3 cache per Raptor Cove core while each Gracemont Cluster will feature 4 MB L2 and 3 MB L3 cache. That's going to give us 36 MB L3 cache across all cores, 16 MB (2x8) for P-cores & 16 MB (4x4) for E-cores. Intel Raptor Lake & Alder Lake CPU Cache Configurations (Rumored):

• Raptor Lake P-Core L3 - 3 MB (3 x 8 = 24MB)
• Alder Lake P-Core L3 - 3 MB (3 x 8 = 24 MB)
• Raptor Lake P-Core L2 - 2 MB (2 x 8 = 16 MB)
• Alder Lake P-Core L2 - 1.25 MB (1.25 x 8 = 10 MB)
• Raptor Lake E-Core L3 - 3 MB (3 x 4 = 12 MB)
• Alder Lake E-Core L3 -  2 MB (2 x 2 = 4 MB)
• Raptor Lake E-Core L2 - 4 MB (4 x 4 = 16 MB)
• Alder Lake E-Core L2 - 2 MB (2 x 2 = 4 MB)
• Raptor Lake Total Cache (L3+L2) = 68 MB
• Alder Lake Total Cache (L3 + L2) = 42 MB

In delidded die shots, we have seen that the 13th gen Intel Raptor Lake CPUs feature a slightly bigger die measuring 23.8 x 10.8mm or 257.04mm. For comparison, the Alder Lake top-die measures 20.4 x 10.2mm or 208.08mm2. This is an increase of 24% in die area which makes sense since the new CPUs will pack more Gracemont E-Cores and will also get bigger L2/L3 caches than the 12th Gen parts.

• Intel 13th Gen Raptor Lake Core i9-13900 (24/32) H0 Die - 257.04mm²
• Intel 12th Gen Alder Lake Core i9-12900K (16/24) H0 Die - 208.08mm²

The Intel Core i9-13900K is the flagship Raptor Lake CPU, featuring 24 cores and 32 threads in an 8 P-Core and 16 E-Core configuration. The CPU is configured at a base clock of 3.0 GHz, a single-core boost clock of 5.8 GHz (1-2) cores, and an all-core boost clock of 5.5 GHz (all 8 P-Cores). The CPU features 68 MB of combined cache and a 125W PL1 rating that goes up to 250W. The CPU can also consume up to 350W of power when using the "Extreme Performance Mode" which we detailed a few hours ago here.

Intel is expected to unveil its 13th Gen Raptor Lake CPU on the 27th of September during the Innovation event with a retail launch planned for October 2022. The CPUs will be rocking some insane speeds of up to 6 GHz and will be featured on the 700-series platform while offering backward compatibility on 600-series motherboards.

The post Intel’s Top Raptor Lake Core i9-13900K 24 Core “8+16” Die Smiles For The Camera In Full Wafer Shot by Hassan Mujtaba appeared first on Wccftech.

"House of the Dragon" has already proven itself better than "Game of Thrones" in many ways: the show's cutting-edge visuals and understanding of the source material are striking, and so far, it's an intriguing lesson in character study and fantasy warfare. It's also profoundly controversial — an adaptation of George R.R. Martin's 2018 novel "Fire & Blood," the prequel tells the history of Westeros through the lens of the famously incestuous Targaryen dynasty. The book is a single-volume novel, meaning the story is complete — there is a beginning, middle, and end — unlike the "Game of Thrones" novels, which Martin is still laboring to complete.

"House of the Dragon" co-showrunners Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik are far more fortunate when compared to "Game of Thrones" showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff, who were left to devise an ending on their own, and weren't able to deliver the conclusion the story deserved.

Condal and Sapochnik are well-prepared — they know exactly where the show is going and the extent of the story they're trying to tell. In an interview with Collider, the showrunners revealed they had a "fairly good plan" already in motion and know where and when "House of the Dragon" would end.

'There's 170 Years Of History In Front Of Us'

"House of the Dragon" has already been renewed for a second season by HBO — and there's hope for the series to continue until the Dance of the Dragons, the civil war between two Targaryen claimants to the Iron Throne. Co-showrunners Condal and Sapochnik are prepared and have a plan for the show's second season. They know the landmarks and places they want the story to follow and want to depict two sides of Targaryens in power — with and without dragons. Condal shared:

"I think we have a fairly good plan laid out. Plans like that always have to be fairly broad, yet you have an idea of landmarks, and places that you want to go, and a sense of an end point, which I think is really important, particularly with this story. There's 170 years of history in front of us, so you have to figure out, at what point do you do lower the curtain on this particular story? We've always had a good sense of that."

Season 2 Will Dive Deeper Into Targaryen Lore

The showrunner continued, explaining that a storyline for season 2 was already laid out. There are 300 years of Targaryen history to explore, and Condal knows how far they're willing to go.

"I think we have a good plan for season 2, if HBO is willing and eager to continue telling the story with us. There is really 300 years of Targaryen history to explore, and there are many stories within there that are really fascinating. There's the story of the conquest, the story before the conquest, the Targaryens leaving Old Valyria. You have a tale like this, where the Targaryens have dragons and are in power. And then, there are also stories where the Targaryens no longer have dragons, but are still in power. What changes there, and how is that different? It's a very rich tapestry. It's a rich landscape. I think the fan base is willing and eager. There's a lot of storytelling left in this world if people want it."

"Fire & Blood" is a fantastic addition to "Game of Thrones," with fans yearning to learn more about the world of Westeros created by George R.R. Martin. It includes a riveting account of the events that preceded "A Song of Ice and Fire" — and it's always fascinating to learn about a family so complicated they caused their own extinction.

New episodes of "House of the Dragon" debut Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.

Read this next: 11 Game Of Thrones Parallels In The House Of The Dragon Premiere

The post House Of The Dragon's Writers Have An Idea Of Where (And When) The Series Will End appeared first on /Film.

The sex comedy is a dying art form. Whether that's because of shifting societal tastes or a lack of Hollywood interest, there haven't been much of them in recent years. You could arguably trace the decline of the sex comedy to the slowly-tightening sexual purity that has ravished Hollywood over the decade (remember the so-called groundbreaking "Eternals" sex scene?). If we're being honest, however, the quality of mainstream sex comedies also didn't do it any favors.

However, this subgenre could get a new lease on life thanks to Zachary Wigon's "Sanctuary," a dark comedy that premiered this week at the Toronto International Film Festival that uses the allusiveness of BDSM to tell a grander story of relationship dynamics. The film's main and mostly sole characters, Rebecca (Margaret Qualley) and Hal (Christopher Abbott), are in an unconventional relationship — Hal is a submissive and ultra-rich client of Rebecca, a dominatrix who usually has strict rules regarding her clients' relationship with her. They must not touch her, nor attempt to be intimate in any other way besides what their pre-determined boundaries state. Unfortunately, when Hal attempts to break off their relationship due to him inheriting his father's massive hotel business, these rules are twisted and broken in a powerful and oddly romantic film. At least, you'll feel that if you're a bit of a sicko. Anyone else might just not get it.

You Belong To Me

The conversations and monologues conducted by Hal and Rebecca mostly work. Sure, some of the comments about the major class differences between the two can come off pretty ham-fisted (some lines border on shallow "good for her" territory), but those are outliers that are quickly followed up by fantastic dry humor.

What makes these barbs and jabs work are the electric performances of Qualley and Abbott, who convey a roller coaster of emotions throughout the film. The crumbling of and subsequent attempts at rebuilding their characters' personas are fascinating to witness. Ultimately, though, it is Qualley who commands the screen with her sometimes manic and other times heartfelt performance. There is a magnetism to her as she screams, cries, taunts, and dances throughout Hal's boringly rich-looking apartment, and she carries herself in a way that makes it impossible to know whether she's lying or telling the truth. As the stakes of the film climb higher, you won't be able to resist her charm and cunningness, even after the credits roll.

Hal's apartment, in a way, can also be considered its own character. Outside of the hotel's hallway and elevator, it is the only location seen throughout "Sanctuary," and it evolves and changes just as Hal and Rebecca do throughout the film. Thanks to the stunning cinematography and framing courtesy of Ludovica Isidori, the apartment comes alive. It feels like it is changing in shape, from being extremely claustrophobic to being far too large for either character to handle.

A Nuanced Look At BDSM

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the film is how sensitively it handles the central practices of BDSM. When you think of BDSM, you might only think of whips, chains, and degradation, and while you wouldn't be wrong in that, it's only a small part of the rituals that make up the concept. In the case of Hal and Rebecca's arrangement, the dominatrix orders him around to do mundane tasks while she sits and watches, occasionally berating him in the process.

The film makes sure to signal to viewers that everything about the central relationship has been thoroughly discussed, from boundaries to limits and safe words. While most Don't worry – we won't tell if you feel your breath hitching during the film's first "scene."

However, the dynamic between Hal and Rebecca is a complicated one. While she holds the sexual power in their scenes, it is ultimately he that sets the boundaries and pays her for her services. He is the son of a deceased billionaire, while she barely gets by with her bills. This is explored greatly throughout the film, especially during one harrowing scene towards the end of the film that shows Hal having enough of Rebecca's mind games. However, "Sanctuary" frames these dynamics not as a direct result of their BDSM relationship; rather, it derives from themselves as people outside of their scenes, both of their selfish tendencies that often do not appear when they're actually "playing a game," as Rebecca calls it.

Let's Play A Game

"Sanctuary" is exactly what you would expect from its logline; there aren't that many surprises and the film itself is relatively straightforward. That being said, its simplicity actually elevates the film. By focusing on the shifting dynamics between our two characters and nothing else, viewers are treated to a cat-and-mouse game where its players refuse to let up. With the infectious energy of Qualley and Abbott, along with set-altering cinematography and a tight script, there is a lot to love about this new, sick take on the sex comedy.

If we do recommend anything, though, we wouldn't want you to put this on for a night-in with your partner. That could result in some very awkward conversations, and the less we're implicated in those, the better.

/Film rating: 8 out of 10

Read this next: /Film's Top 10 Movies Of 2021

The post Sanctuary Review: Margaret Qualley Dominates in Twisted Sex Comedy [TIFF] appeared first on /Film.

When you think of post-credits scenes, the first thing that probably comes to mind is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Since the House of Ideas started putting them at the end of their movies in 2008 to tease whatever they had in store next, many other movies (mostly ones with superheroes in them) have followed suit and they've become trademarks of the genre at this point.

However, post-credits scenes aren't that new. "The Silencers" featured one in 1966. John Hughes utilized them in "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." And who can forget Animal's lovely send-off at the end of "The Muppets Movie"? So when it comes to Kevin Smith's "Clerks III," does the New Jersey native follow in the footsteps of some classic comedies that came before him?

Well, the answer to that is a little complicated. To address the question in this article's title directly, no, there is no post-credits scene in "Clerks III." However, something does happen in the credits that might be worth sticking around for if you're a fan of the Quick Stop's star employees.

(There are SPOILERS for "Clerks III" from this point forward. Please proceed with caution.)

As Long As You're Alive, You Can Write Another Chapter

After Elias hits it big with his Buddy Christ kite NFT and pays off the debt that Dante owed Emma, Randal looks around the store and says, "I wish you were here, man." The hauntingly beautiful "I'm From New Jersey" by John Gorka starts playing as Dante's ghost appears in his usual spot behind the counter next to Randal and gives his best friend a proud look. The movie ends with a pull-out shot of the store to reveal Jay's daughter, Milly (played by Harley Quinn Smith), "going through every gallon of milk, looking for that later date, as if somewhere beyond all the other gallons is a container of milk that won't go bad for at least a decade." (Her grandmother, Grace Smith, played the original milk maid in "Clerks.")

Gorka's song continues over the credits and goes until 1:36:20. Thirty seconds later, Kevin Smith chimes in like it was one of his podcasts to personally thank the audience and generally everyone involved in the "Clerks" journey throughout all three films. He also shared a deleted voiceover that was meant to go over the last shot in the Quick Stop. Similar to "Stand By Me" or "The Sandlot," it reveals what happened to Randal in the future.

From The Cradle To The Graves

Smith started by sharing the oft-quoted line from his breakout film: "Man, this job would be great if it wasn't for the f**king customers." Then, if he had kept the voiceover in the movie, he revealed that a character he called The Voice of Smod would say the following over the last shot of the movie:

Randal Graves spent the rest of his life running Quick Stop Groceries whenever he wasn't making movies, with each film financed solely by Crimson Crypto Studios. At a screening of his final film, the Asbury Park Press asked him to sum up a life spent satisfying both the public's demand for cigarettes and soda as well as their appetite for the many movies he made after his celebrated debut "Clerk." 90-year-old Randal Graves replied, "I always thought the jobs would have been great if it weren't for the f**king customers. But as it turns out, these jobs were f**king great because of the customers."

Rather than a post-credits scene, we get a pre-home release director's commentary track in "Clerks III." And while the theatrical ending works as it is, this is still a sweet sentiment from both the fictional and the real-life filmmaker, so it was nice that Smith included that at the end of his "Clerks" trilogy.

"Clerks III" is playing in theaters from Tuesday, September 13, 2022 to Sunday, September 18, 2022 thanks to Fathom Events, but you can catch it on tour this fall with a Q&A featuring Smith himself in a city near you.

Read this next: The Horror Movies We Can't Wait To See In 2022

The post Does Clerks 3 Have A Post-Credits Scene? appeared first on /Film.

"The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" is caught between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, the new fantasy series comes with the built-in expectations and standards of everything that the brand name implies; after all, it is following in the footsteps of one of the most highly acclaimed and widely praised film trilogies of all time. On the other, its never-before-seen time period in Middle-earth and unique storytelling ambitions -- essentially, an origin story for the powerful rings depicted in the prologue of "The Fellowship of the Ring" and for the Dark Lord who secretly manipulated their creation --  has given the show an opportunity to set itself apart and forge its own identity altogether.

So how could the creative team possibly unite these two seemingly contradictory aims? It's easy, really.

By the end of the premiere episode, "The Rings of Power" introduced a sense of mystery into the proceedings with the enigmatic "Meteor Man," known merely as the Stranger (played by Daniel Weyman). By keeping viewers in the dark about just who this individual might be and what his motivations really are, the writers had fans immediately firing up their speculation engines. Could this be the initial arrival of the wizard Gandalf? Or is he one of the two little-known "Blue Wizards" that Tolkien only ever vaguely alluded to in his writings? Hell, could he somehow have connections to Sauron himself?

Luckily, I'm here to officially set the record straight once and for all with some reckless and irresponsible speculation of my own. Because now that we're three episodes in, everything I've seen from the Stranger points me in one single direction: a certain merry little fellow whose boots are yellow.

That's right, folks, this one's for the Tom Bombadil truthers out there.

From Book To (Small) Screen?

A man with strange and mystical powers appears out of nowhere, promptly cozies up to some awestruck halflings, exerts tremendous influence on nature and his surroundings, and seems glaringly out of place compared to the previously established characters in the story? Yeah, I hate to break it to anyone still in denial, but those are all hallmarks of the one and only Tom Bombadil.

By now, even non-book readers have a vague notion of the legend and mystique surrounding the weird (and largely unexplained) fellow with a penchant for singing in nonsense rhymes. Merry ol' Tom Bombadil all but invades the narrative relatively early on in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Fellowship of the Ring" before exiting just as suddenly. When Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin first leave the comforts of their homes in the Shire at Gandalf's urging, they must travel through an ancient and ominous region known as the Old Forest, where hidden threats and dangers lurk. The hobbits predictably get lost and find themselves in trouble with some malevolent trees looking for a tasty snack. (This scene was repurposed for one sequence in the extended edition of "The Two Towers.") That is, until an unexpected rescuer emerges and more or less saves the world indirectly by saving the Ring-bearer Frodo's life.

Fans have long wondered about the bizarre character's true purpose in Middle-earth and the nature of his backstory. Tolkien himself was maddeningly unhelpful in this regard, only describing him as the "Eldest" and having Bombadil's wife Goldberry answer Frodo's question about who he is with a simple, "He is." In any case, the intentional mystery surrounding both Tom Bombadil in the novel and the Stranger in "The Rings of Power" provides another link that could further tie the two together. Wake up, sheeple!

Lay Off The Pipeweed, Nerd!

Alright, I admit it: All of us Tom Bombadil truthers are hanging on by a thread here. Unfortunately, such theories are tenuous, at best. But you've made it this far, so why not continue down this rabbit hole?

There's one last bit of evidence that could sway this debate in either direction. In "The Fellowship of the Ring," one of the most revealing descriptions we get (beyond the fact that he's a jolly fellow who likes to wear yellow boots) is that he existed long before hobbits, humans, and elves ever came to Middle-earth. Most intriguingly, he himself mentions that he was there "before the Dark Lord came from Outside." This could be seen as further proof that the timeline in "The Rings of Power," set thousands of years before "The Lord of the Rings," could actually line up with the potential inclusion of Tom Bombadil. However, that becomes complicated if you take it at face value that the Stranger only arrived through that flaming meteor. Obviously, all those different people groups have already been thriving on Middle-earth by the time the Stranger appears on the scene, contradicting Tolkien's own words if this is, indeed, meant to be merry ol' Tom.

The prevailing thought seem to lean towards Gandalf, another wizard in his order, some sort of double agent of Sauron (though it seems unlikely, given the recent introduction of Adar), or a very different original character altogether.

Whatever the case may be, let's enjoy these remaining few weeks before the identity of this mysterious Stranger is finally revealed. Up until that moment, our hopes that we might see our first live-action adaptation of Tom Bombadil remain alive! Or maybe it's time to lay off the pipeweed and let this Tom Bombadil conspiracy theory die.

New episodes of "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" stream on Prime Video every Friday.

Read this next: 20 Underrated Rom Coms You Need To Watch

The post Forget Your Theories About the Stranger — Maybe He's Tom Bombadil appeared first on /Film.

We have some more details regarding the clock speeds of AMD's fastest Zen 4 CPU, the Ryzen 9 7950X with 16 cores.

AMD Ryzen 9 7950X All-Core & Max Boost Clocks Detailed, Cooling Is The Single Most Important Thing For Zen 4 Overclock & Stock Operation

Last month, we were the first to give you information regarding the clock speeds of the AMD Ryzen 7000 CPUs and also their launch dates. Today, we have some more information regarding the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X CPU. We have definitely seen the official specifications of this monster of a chip that will be coming to consumers later this month but there's more than meets the eye.

You see, what we have been told so far by AMD themselves is only the official information but our sources managed to dig out some new information and also reaffirmed some leaks. So first up, the 5.85 GHz fMax or peak frequency. The peak frequency for AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X will be rated a little higher than the 5.70 GHz boost clock. Both frequencies are only applicable to a single-core at stock but temperatures play a very important role here. You see, in the majority of cases, the CPU will be running at its 5.70 GHz boost clock and only if you have the best of the best cooling solution, you'll be able to hit the peak frequency.

AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 16 Core "Zen 4" Desktop CPU

The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X retains its healthy 16-core and 32-thread count from the previous two generations. The CPU will feature an impressive base frequency of 4.5 GHz and a boost clock of up to 5.7 GHz (5.85 GHz F-Max) which should make it 200 MHz faster than Intel's Alder Lake Core i9-12900KS which has a boost frequency of 5.5 GHz on a single-core.

It looks like AMD is extracting every ounce of Hertz that it could within that 170W TDP (230W PPT) for the Ryzen 9 chips. As for the cache, the CPU comes with 80 MB of that which includes 64 MB from L3 (32 MB per CCD) and 16 MB from L2 (1 MB per core). The flagship is going to cost $699 US which means that it will be priced slightly higher than the Core i9-12900K while offering a significant performance leap in multi-threading apps such as Chaos V-Ray of up to +57% and doing so with up to 47% higher energy efficiency.

Internally, AMD discloses that the Ryzen 9 7950X can only hit the 5.85 GHz peak frequency if the temperatures are below 50C and over 50C, you will be getting 5.70 GHz boost clocks. Knowing just how hot the AMD Ryzen 7000 CPUs run, the 5.70 GHz frequency is where 90% of the chips will use and only a few custom-loop configurations or those running dual-sided 420mm AIO kits will be able to hit that golden 5.85 GHz fMax peak clock at stock.

• 7950X Base Clock - 4.50 GHz (Stock)
• 7950X Boost Clock - 5.70 GHz (Stock)
• 7950X Peak Clock - 5.85 GHz (Stock)
• 7950X All-Core Boost - 5.10 GHz (Stock)

But that's just the 1-core peak, we also know the maximum all-core boost of the CPU & that's rated at 5.1 GHz. The 5.1 GHz CPU frequency is the maximum default all-core frequency but once again, temperatures are crucial here. In heavier loads that can push temperatures up, the CPU will run a bit under the 5.1 GHz all-core limit. A more realistic all-core boost should be around 4.9-5.05 GHz (varies between the two CCDs. CCD0 runs at slightly higher clocks while CCD1 runs at a slightly lower clock rate).

To keep the thermals in check, especially within the limited 95C TjMax threshold, you will require an absolute beast of a cooling configuration. With overclocking, these temps are expected to rise and while users have the option to tune the performance using undervolt or with CBP disabled (which is non-stock operations and reduces performance as seen here), there's no going around the higher temperatures on the AM5 platform.

AMD Ryzen 7000 'Raphael' Desktop CPU Specs (Official):

CPU Name	Architecture	Process Node	Cores / Threads	Base Clock	Boost Clock (SC Max)	Cache	TDP	Prices (TBD)
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X	Zen 4	5nm	16/32	4.5 GHz	5.7 GHz	80 MB (64+16)	170W	$699 US
AMD Ryzen 9 7900X	Zen 4	5nm	12/24	4.7 GHz	5.6 GHz	76 MB (64+12)	170W	$549 US
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X	Zen 4	5nm	8/16	4.5 GHz	5.4 GHz	40 MB (32+8)	105W	$399 US
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X	Zen 4	5nm	6/12	4.7 GHz	5.3 GHz	38 MB (32+6)	105W	$299 US

The post AMD Ryzen 9 7950X Can Hit Up To 5.85 GHz at Stock Only If Temps Are Below 50C, 5.1 GHz All-Core Frequency by Hassan Mujtaba appeared first on Wccftech.

The first independent and thorough review of Intel's XeSS technology has been published by Digital Foundry and it's more comparable to NVIDIA's DLSS than AMD's FSR.

Intel XeSS Comparable To NVIDIA's DLSS 2.3 At Launch, Better Than Native Resolution

The first results of Intel's premiere technology for its Arc Alchemist GPUs are out and it looks like XeSS, as expected, shines against its rival. In a detailed review published by Digital Foundry, we get to see the tech in action in various modes but the overall conclusion is that XeSS in its first outing is comparable to NVIDIA's DLSS 2.3 technology rather than AMD's FSR 2.0.

The performance and image quality evaluation was done by Digital's Foundry's, Alexander Battaglia who tested the technology through Shadow of The Tomb Raider. It's been 4 years since the game launched and has become one of the go-to benchmarks for evaluating upscaling technologies such as XeSS. It was one of the first games to feature DLSS and later got support for AMD"s FSR. So this is the third upscaling technology that will be added to the game.

Intel has already that XeSS will have various presets available at launch which offer different quality levels and vary the input resolution. The modes include:

• XeSS "Ultra Quality" = Best Image Quality
• XeSS "Quality" = Good Quality With Better Performance
• XeSS "Balanced" = Decent Visuals and Performance Levels
• XeSS "Performance" = Best Performance

During testing, the tech outlet saw that Intel's XeSS was on par with NVIDIA's DLSS and didn't have some of the major quality differences visualized by AMD's FSR in similar tests. There were cases of flickering which become more prominent at lower resolutions and using the more performance-tuned modes (performance/balanced). There were also some parts of the game that displayed a moire pattern on certain surfaces and textures but overall, the visual quality wasn't disrupted a lot, and given that the results were better than Native TAA rendering, I would say that's a win for Intel and it's XeSS technology.

A few performance breakdowns were showcased using Shadow of The Tomb Raider at 4K/1440P & 3DMark's Port Royal benchmark which can be seen below but we highly recommend checking out the video for a more detailed presentation. At 4K, XeSS can offer up to 177% faster performance in the "Performance" mode and up to 57% faster performance in the Ultra Quality mode versus the native resolution. The performance ratio increases in games that utilize more intensive effects such as Raytracing, etc. In Shadow of The Tomb Raider, XeSS can offer up to 88% faster performance vs Native using the "Performance" mode & 23% faster performance vs Native using the "Ultra Quality" mode.

2 of 9

The issues that were noticed by Digital Foundry might end up being fixed prior to the launch of the XeSS in these titles so the technology has the potential to become even better. This is already much better than the state in which NVIDIA DLSS 1.0 launched a few years back.

Intel's XeSS technology will debut in over 20 AAA titles after the launch of the Arc A700 series GPUs with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II bringing XeSS support at launch.

Following is the full list of games that will either be patched or will have XeSS support added at launch or later on in the coming months:

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II
• Arcadegeddon
• Ghostwire Tokyo
• Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodhunt
• Ghostbusters Spirits Unleashed
• Naraka: Bladepoint
• Super People
• Gotham Knights
• DioField Chronicle
• Dolmen
• Chivalry II
• Redout 2
• The Settlers
• Death Stranding: Director's Cut
• The Riftbreaker
• Hitman III
• CHORUS
• Shadow of The Tomb Raider
• Anvil Vault Breakers

Intel's high-end and mainstream Arc graphics cards are expected to make their debut later this month and will be bringing a range of technology support such as XeSS (XMX), Ray Tracing (RTU) and superior encoding/decoding capabilities such as AV1 support.

The post Intel XeSS Shines In First Independent Tests, Better Than Native & More Comparable To NVIDIA’s DLSS 2.3 Than AMD’s FSR 2.0 by Hassan Mujtaba appeared first on Wccftech.

When you think of Michael Madsen, what's the first image that comes to mind? Is it Reservoir Dogs' Mr. Blonde dancing to "Stuck in the Middle with You" while holding a severed ear? Maybe it's the washed-up assassin Budd burying Uma Thurman's The Bride alive? Whatever Madsen character you're seeing, there's a good chance he's not a hero. Madsen has made a career out of playing black hats and evil men.

According to Madsen, that has more to do with Hollywood typecasting than any preference to play sleazy roles (via The After Movie Diner). Before he made a name for himself by embodying quietly lethal but outwardly slick antagonists, he dreamed of portraying the good guy. But after his role in "Reservoir Dogs," every script that followed wanted to bring out the worst in Madsen. His notoriety hinges on the unsavory characters he's played -- he's even been introduced as Mr. Blonde during a Chicago Cubs game. Although he excels as a niche villain, that's not the only part he wants to play.

The Origin Of His Villainous Typecast

Madsen started his acting career by playing an unlikable character onstage. After seeing "Of Mice and Men" in 1980, he ran into the 27-year-old John Malkovich, who asked for his address and promised to send him a brochure for acting classes. Although he thought Malkovich was just trying to get rid of him, the actor did send him the materials (via The Independent).

Months later, Madsen was playing Carlson on the very same stage. Anyone who has either read or seen the 1992 film (also starring Malkovich) of John Steinbeck's novel should recognize the significance of Madsen portraying that character. It's Carlson who callously suggests and then carries out the killing of Candy's beloved dog — prescribed because of the animal's smell and old age — and it's something not easy to forget or forgive. From his first role, Madsen has played characters designed to upset audiences.

Ridley Scott Wanted Him As A Bad Guy For Thelma And Louise

Fast forward 11 years, Madsen scored an opportunity to star in Ridley Scott's cult-hit "Thelma and Louise." Again, the director had him in mind to play the least sympathetic character in the film, Harlan. Madsen told After Movie Diner:

"They wanted me to play the guy in the parking lot who gets shot by Susan Sarandon. I didn't want to play that guy. They were laughing at me. 'You don't want to do this Ridley Scott movie?!' I said 'No man! I don't want that f***ing part! What am I gonna get out of that playing the rapist?' He said, 'Who do you want to play?' I said, 'I'd like to play Jimmy. I want to be Susan's boyfriend.' He goes 'Oh man I don't know if that's gonna work out.'"

But then Scott had Madsen take Sarandon out to lunch. Ultimately, there was enough chemistry between them that Scott changed his mind. "It was one of the only times I got to play a sympathetic character because everyone wants me to be the bad guy," Madsen told the outlet. 

A year after "Thelma and Louise," he starred in his first (of many) Quentin Tarantino films, "Reservoir Dogs," as the infamous Mr. Blonde. Following the critical success of the film, Madsen played a variety of villains, including (but not limited to) a thief/kidnapper in "A House in the Hills," a deviant backstabber in "The Getaway," an alien-hunting mercenary in "Species," and a cowardly cop in "Sin City."

Madsen Has Played Some Heroic Figures

But to say Madsen has never played the hero isn't correct — he hardly gets offered those kinds of roles. Throughout his prolific career, there are several times he played a good guy. He effuses tenderness as Glen Greenwood in "Free Willy," is a badass vampire hunter in "BloodRayne," and voiced Kilowog in "Green Lantern: First Flight." Whenever Madsen gets a chance to play someone the audience roots for, he doesn't squander it. He even played Virgil Earp in the Kevin Costner-led "Wyatt Earp," a role he took after turning down a part as Vincent Vega in "Pulp Fiction." (That's how badly Madsen wanted to play the hero!)) Sadly, the Lawrence Kasdan-directed film flopped  — had it not, maybe the perception of Madsen would have changed.

In 2015, he returned to the Tarantino verse with "The Hateful Eight." Sure, Joe Gage, an outlaw, seems like the textbook definition of a bad guy. However, Madsen doesn't play him like one. If anything, he's stoic -- a far cry from his menacingly-gleeful Mr. Blonde. You might think that's the closest Madsen will get to playing someone halfway decent in a Tarantino film — but you'd be wrong! During "Once Upon A Time in Hollywood," Madsen has a cameo as Sheriff Hackett. While he's only on-screen briefly, he doesn't kill a single person! Honestly, that's as close as you get to a hero in the violent world of Tarantino films.

Read this next: 20 Underrated Rom Coms You Need To Watch

The post Michael Madsen Is Sick Of Being Made To Play The Villain appeared first on /Film.

Don't break out your Party Boy panties and your camcorders just yet, "Jackass" fans — the beloved series is not getting a revival as previously reported. There is still some great new content headed our way from the crew behind the franchise, but it's not going to be more "Jackass." In a soon-to-be published interview with /Film's Ethan Anderton to promote his upcoming Hulu series, "Reboot," "Jackass" star Johnny Knoxville explained that there have been some misunderstandings with regards to the future of all things "Jackass." Indeed, "Jackass Forever" was likely the nail in the coffin for that particular brand of humorous hijinks. 

With the guys getting older and recovery from injuries taking longer (and far more dangerous), it's really not a huge shock that "Jackass" isn't coming back. For those of us who love the guys and don't want to see them disappear completely, however, the good news is that they're still making something for Paramount+.

No More Bulls*** For These Boys

When asked about the potential revival, Knoxville immediately gave it the kibosh:

"A 'Jackass' series not coming back. It's something from the people who make 'Jackass,' but it's not the 'Jackass' series. That was misprinted in the -- I don't mean to blame the press [laughs]. [...] Me and Tremaine and the guys are doing something, but it's not the series."

While it's certainly a bummer that there isn't any more "Jackass" headed our way, the silver lining is that at least the guys are working together on something. Knoxville was cagey with details, but there are several possible avenues for the guys to take on streaming, including a series that crosses over "Loiter Squad" with the "Jackass" crew and lets the younger guys get hurt instead, a wrestling show with Danger Ehren, and a neo-"Wildboyz" with Knoxville and Chris Pontius exploring nature (and probably being attacked by it). There are a lot of potential ways for the Dickhouse boys to make us all laugh without ending up in the hospital, and I'm just glad they're going to be taking better care of themselves without leaving their devoted fans completely in the dust. 

Unfortunately, the new series is still a mystery project and we don't have much more information on it just yet. While we're waiting for more from these maniacs, fans who want to relive the madness of the movies can check out all four of the theatrical releases on Paramount+.

Read this next: The Best Movies Of 2022 So Far

The post Johnny Knoxville Says There is No Jackass Revival in the Works [Exclusive] appeared first on /Film.

Backup and cloud storage company Backblaze has published data comparing the long-term reliability of solid-state storage drives and traditional spinning hard drives in its data center. Based on data collected since the company began using SSDs as boot drives in late 2018, Backblaze cloud storage evangelist Andy Klein published a report yesterday showing that the company's SSDs are failing at a much lower rate than its HDDs as the drives age. ArsTechnica: Backblaze has published drive failure statistics (and related commentary) for years now; the hard drive-focused reports observe the behavior of tens of thousands of data storage and boot drives across most major manufacturers. The reports are comprehensive enough that we can draw at least some conclusions about which companies make the most (and least) reliable drives. The sample size for this SSD data is much smaller, both in the number and variety of drives tested -- they're mostly 2.5-inch drives from Crucial, Seagate, and Dell, with little representation of Western Digital/SanDisk and no data from Samsung drives at all. This makes the data less useful for comparing relative reliability between companies, but it can still be useful for comparing the overall reliability of hard drives to the reliability of SSDs doing the same work. Backblaze uses SSDs as boot drives for its servers rather than data storage, and its data compares these drives to HDDs that were also being used as boot drives. The company says these drives handle the storage of logs, temporary files, SMART stats, and other data in addition to booting -- they're not writing terabytes of data every day, but they're not just sitting there doing nothing once the server has booted, either. Over their first four years of service, SSDs fail at a lower rate than HDDs overall, but the curve looks basically the same -- few failures in year one, a jump in year two, a small decline in year three, and another increase in year four. But once you hit year five, HDD failure rates begin going upward quickly -- jumping from a 1.83 percent failure rate in year four to 3.55 percent in year five. Backblaze's SSDs, on the other hand, continued to fail at roughly the same 1 percent rate as they did the year before.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What changes after compromise recovery?

After a successful compromise recovery effort, you are back in control. Likely, you gave your team a round of applause and took a sigh of relief.

Now what? Is everything going back to as it was in the past? Absolutely not! A compromise recovery engagement is an accelerated way of doing numerous amounts of cybersecurity configuration and upgrades in a short amount of time. Just because the Domain Admins have basic protection it doesn’t mean that the full environment is secure yet.

After a compromise recovery engagement, Microsoft’s compromise recovery team follows up with what we call security strategic recovery. This is the plan for moving forward to get the environment up to date with security posture. The plan consists of different components like Securing Privileged Access and extended detection and response (XDR), depending on the organizational needs, but it all points in the same direction: moving ahead with Zero Trust strategy over traditional network-based security.

Privileged administration

After we have secured the most critical privileged servers (including Domain Controllers, called also “Tier 0” server for on-premises environment) and privileged accounts (Domain Admins), the next step is to mitigate unauthorized privilege escalation for the Data/Workload and Management plane (called also “Tier 1” for on-premises environment).

An encryption attack that gets local admin permissions on all member servers will still be devastating, so a proper delegation model must be implemented. Ransomware can utilize this account to encrypt application and database servers in the same way as using a Domain Admin account. Different tools like PIM/PAM and strategies can be used to strengthen the security of the Data/Workload administrators and services. Please refer to the enterprise access model for additional details.

Privileged Access Workstation

During a compromise recovery, we are implementing what we call a “Tactical” Privileged Access Workstation. While functional for the purpose of providing a secure workstation with a “clean keyboard” to operate in a compromised environment, it is not meant to be long-lasting and engineered for broader enterprise deployment.

Implementing a proper Privileged Access Workstation together with a broader Privileged Access environment for all administrative tasks is necessary to reduce attack vectors and risk of re-compromise.

The Privileged Access Workstation configuration must include security controls and policies that restrict local administrative access and productivity tools to minimize the attack surface to only what is absolutely required for performing sensitive job tasks. Please refer to Why are privileged access devices important for additional details.

From tactical monitoring to XDR

While performing compromise recovery, we implement “tactical monitoring” to supplement the customer’s investigation, leveraging a targeted implementation of Microsoft Defender suite and Microsoft Sentinel on all critical systems.

This is key to obtain visibility on the environment and respond quickly and efficiently to abnormal or suspicious activities before it turns into another security incident.

As part of a strategic security roadmap, we strongly recommend completing the implementation of XDR with Microsoft Defender Threat Protection and leveraging automated investigation and remediation capabilities to save security operations teams’ time and effort.

Additional help to our customers to defend and manage their environment is now available from Microsoft through Microsoft Security Experts.

Zero Trust journey

The Strategic Recovery recommendation listed previously on using least privileged access for privileged administration and XDR for improving defenses are just initial steps into a broader Zero Trust journey (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 outlines the Microsoft Zero Trust Principles. The first principle is to verify explicitly, which means to always validate all available data points including user identity and location, device health, service or workload context, data classification, and anomalies. The second principle is to use least privileged access, meaning to help secure both data and productivity and limit user access using iust-in-time access (JIT), just-enough-access (JEA), risk-based adaptive policies, and data protection against out of band vectors. Finally, the third principle is assume breach, which is when you minimalize blast radius for breaches and prevent lateral movement by segmenting access by network, user, devices, and app awareness; encrypting all sessions end-to-end; and use analytics for threat detection and posture.

As observed during most of our compromise recovery engagements, the attackers usually came in through the abuse of user identity and then perform lateral movement and escalation to privileged access.

Most organizations have built security controls over the years based on network and perimeter protection and are still underestimating the “identity risk” in the current threat landscape.

With Strategic Recovery also comes the need for a mind shift from network and perimeter protection to identity-based protection, leveraging Zero Trust principles. Implementing a Zero Trust security strategy is a journey that needs both technology and training, but it is necessary moving forward.

Organizations may leverage the Microsoft Zero Trust Maturity Assessment Quiz to assess their current state of Zero Trust maturity and recommendations on the next steps. More details of how Microsoft can empower organizations in their Zero Trust journeys can be found in the Zero Trust Essentials eBook.

Who is CRSP?

The Microsoft Compromise Recovery Security Practice (CRSP) is a worldwide team of cybersecurity experts operating in most countries, across both public and private organizations, with deep expertise to secure an environment post-security breach and to help you prevent a breach in the first place. The CRSP is a specialist team within the wider Microsoft Security Experts. Microsoft Security Experts help customers through the entire cyberattack from investigation to successful containment and recovery related activities. The response and recovery services are offered via two highly integrated teams, the Detection and Response Team (DART) with a focus on the investigation and groundwork for recovery, and the Compromise Recovery Security Practice (CRSP), which focuses on the containment and recovery aspects.

Learn more

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us at @MSFTSecurity for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

The post Implementing a Zero Trust strategy after compromise recovery appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Ahead of Intel Raptor Lake and AMD Zen 4, it's a lot of fresh CPU re-testing at Phoronix under Linux with the bleeding-edge software stack of the latest Linux kernel as well as many new/updated benchmarks, the latest motherboard BIOSes, and more. As over the past year there has been a lot of work by Intel open-source engineers around better tuning the Linux kernel for their hybrid architecture, here are some fresh side-by-side benchmarks of the Intel Core i9 12900K against the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X.

This article contains spoilers for "Clerks III."

In Kevin Smith's newest film, "Clerks III," he catches up with Dante (Brian O'Halloran) and Randall (Jeff Anderson) about a decade after the events of "Clerks II." At the end of the previous chapter, Dante and Randall, after struggling through a painful span as low-paying fast-food employees, came to the conclusion that they were happiest back when they were hanging out together in the convenience store where they worked in their 20s. With a loan from Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith), Dante and Randall bought the Quick Stop outright, and hunkered down in a familiar setting. Sometimes, stagnating can be a positive thing. 

Additionally, Dante had split up with his mean-spirited fiancée, and was all set to settle down with his new fiancée Becky (Roasrio Dawson), his manager at the burger joint in "Clerks II." Becky and Dante are a good pair, as he is something of a romantic sad sack and she is a spirited and frank cynic who announces that she doesn't believe in romantic love. The two bolster and strengthen one another. In a tragic twist, the pregnant Becky is killed by a drunk driver between "Clerks II" and "Clerks III." Becky still appears in "Clerks III," however, appearing to Dante to have conversations -- fun, dirty ones -- from the afterlife. 

/Film's own Ethan Anderton recently sat down to talk with Dawson, and she revealed that Smith, true to his position as a "Star Wars" aficionado, had originally envisioned Becky's afterlife visitations as visually resembling the Force Ghosts seen in those movies. It was only the film's low budget that prevented it.

Force Ghost

At the heart of "Clerks III" is a good deal of sadness. Not only is Dante wrestling with the loss of Becky, but Randall has had a heart attack (very similar to the one Smith experienced in 2019) and is finally, at the age of 50, feeling the squeeze of his own mortality. Randall outruns his mortality by immortalizing his life on film. Dante hasn't the same outlet, and can only mourn privately. To leaven the pain, Becky appears to him in a cemetery to talk about their relationship, but also how the afterlife is a nonstop orgy of sex with celebrities (Frederick Douglass and Cleopatra are among the celebrities Becky claims to have supernaturally bedded). 

When Dawson received the script for "Clerks III," she -- knowing Smith's "Star Wars" obsessions -- asked if she was going to appear as a glowing apparition like Obi-Wan Kenobi. She was even concerned that her scenes would need to be filmed in private, à la the greenscreen filmmaking from the "Star Wars" prequels. Dawson says that conversations were had, and some clarification was needed. She said:

"Well, it was actually, I think, even in the script. It was implied or something. We definitely spoke about it to the point where when I showed up there and we were filming, and I was asking how he was going to do the special effect to make me look like a Force ghost. Are we going to do takes where I'm there and I'm not there? He was like, 'Oh, we don't have the budget for that. No, you're just going to be there. It'll be fine.'

Becky's Fate

Dawson had agreed to reprise Becky in "Clerks III" prior to knowing the character's fate. Indeed, Dawson was taken aback when she finally saw the extent of her role in the movie. Early in "Clerks III," a memorial photograph for Becky is seen at the Quick Stop, establishing right away that she was gone. Dawson said she was surprised, especially as she, in her words, "really fell in love with Becky." Like many Smith characters, Becky is frank and forthright. One can't help but admire her dazzling confidence. 

Smith and Dawson's conversations were more about "Star Wars" and the nature of Becky's ghost. Smith liked that he could bring Becky back. Dawson, however, was seemingly saddened, having to look over the final draft to learn what happened to Becky. She said:

"Obviously, he's got the Force ghost sort of thing ... He's always had 'Star Wars' be such a big part of all of this. He really loved being able to bring Becky back in that way. But no, he didn't tell me. I had to read the script to find out what happened. I was really surprised because I saw it at the premiere, it was the first time I'd seen it and I hadn't seen the cut or anything, so I didn't know that they had brought in the photo so early on and kind of break the news really quickly in the film."

"Clerks III" is currently making the rounds as a Fathom Event. Check the Fathom website to find where it's paying near you. 

Read this next: Adam Sandler's 14 Best Roles Ranked

The post Clerks 3's Budget Meant Rosario Dawson Couldn't Have a Full-On Star Wars Moment [Exclusive] appeared first on /Film.

The US government's cyber defense agency is recommending for the first time that companies embrace automated continuous testing to protect against longstanding online threats. From a report: The guidance, from a cluster of US and international agencies published on Wednesday, urges businesses to shore up their defenses by continually validating their security program against known threat behaviors, rather than a more piecemeal approach. "The authoring agencies recommend continually testing your security program, at scale," according to an alert from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and several other US and international agencies. The alert warned malicious cyber actors allegedly affiliated with the Iranian Government's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are exploiting known vulnerabilities for ransom operations. An official at CISA told Bloomberg ahead of the announcement that emulating adversaries and testing against them is key to defending against cyberattacks. Central to the effort is a freely available list of cyberattackers' most common tactics and procedures that was first made public in 2015 by MITRE, a federally funded research and development center, and is now regularly updated. While many organizations and their security contractors already consult that list, too few check if their systems can actually detect and overcome them, the CISA official said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Do you want The Sims 4 for free? Well, you're in luck! The Sims 4 is switching to a free-to-play model and releasing on Origin, Steam, Playstation and Xbox on October 18th 2022. 

The post The Sims 4 for FREE! Going Free To Play from October 18th appeared first on Indie Game Bundles.

(This post contains major spoilers for "Clerks III." Please proceed with caution.)

After establishing the View Askewniverse with "Clerks" back in 1994, Kevin Smith has explored a number of relatively deep topics with his filmography. In his own foul-mouthed, pop culture reference-filled way, he touched on sexuality, religion, race, and parenthood over the years. But he has never tackled anything more heart-wrenching (both literally and figuratively) than "Clerks III."

As the trailers reveal, tragedy strikes the Quick Stop when Randal Graves suffers a heart attack. However, that negative is turned into a positive when he decides to start making a movie instead of just watching them. However, what we learn when the film finally debuts in theaters is that this isn't the first hardship that the iconic New Jersey convenience store suffered since we last saw it in "Clerks II."

Shortly after the events of the last film, Dante Hicks' partner Becky Scott (played by Rosario Dawson) and their unborn child were killed by a drunk driver. Brian O'Halloran's Dante struggles throughout the threequel as Randal's film forces his friend to relive the trauma that robbed him of a happily ever after. It's definitely the heaviest, most tragic storyline Smith has ever come up with. Dawson fully embraced it as she returned to play a Becky that lives on in Dante's mind. And she got to discuss that while speaking to our very own Ethan Anderton recently.

I'm Disgusted, I'm Repulsed... And I Can't Look Away.

In an interview with /Film, Rosario Dawson talked about her return to the world of Jay and Silent Bob. While her brief appearance in the film still manages to produce some laughs thanks to another ass-to-mouth reference, Becky is mostly seen as a specter haunting Dante from the past. Her presence stirs up some powerful emotions, especially during Dante's incredible speech during the movie's climax. But Dawson was more than happy to reprise her role and approach the character in this way.

"It's traumatizing, it's triggering. Some of those flashback moments, it's gruesome. It's pretty devastating and also just super real. We lose people that we love, when we think of them, we love them. That's how I feel about Becky, I love her. It's sad, but also it gave such a richness to these characters and the things that they've lived through. And you get it. You're really understanding those breakdowns that they have, and some of these conversations, like Brian's monologue of what he's going through, is just so powerful. He had to bear the brunt of the emotional weight of expressing the loss of Becky, you know what I mean?"

You're Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today

Initially, the actor had some concerns since her quick two days on set consisted of showing up, teasing Dante, and jumping out. "I was so excited to do it, but I remember when I was watching the film, just wondering like, 'Oh my God, is it going to feel like her?' But I think it does."

After seeing the film, as much at Becky's fate (and ultimately Dante's fate) tear me up inside, Dawson's performance is definitely in line with the Becky that we've come to know and love. Her death hurts so much because of how much she meant to Dante and the audience. So while it's a bummer that we likely won't see her again like we do with so many other Kevin Smith characters, it feels like, in a way, Dante and Becky finally got that happy ending they were looking for.

"Clerks III" is playing in theaters until September 18, 2022 thanks to Fathom Events, but you can catch it on tour this fall with a Q&A featuring Smith himself in a city near you.

Read this next: 20 Underrated Comedy Movies You Need To Watch

The post Rosario Dawson Knows Her Clerks 3 Role is 'Traumatizing' [Exclusive] appeared first on /Film.

Editor’s Note: There are some light spoilers in this review. Proceed with caution.

PEARL is a vicious fairyland strewn with the wreckage of one very tender and broken soul. It is filled with the sweeping shots and vibrant colors of a Douglas Sirk melodrama. In our self-conscious time where irony is king, the earnest tone of PEARL confronted the audience at the screening I attended. PEARL is unquestionably made in the style of the great Hollywood films of the past. The film is so lovingly crafted that the color and style almost drip off the screen. It’s like watching a Judy Garland musical like Meet Me In Saint Louis, but with many more ax murders and less singing.

 

I believe that what West has said is that each one of the films of the newly announced trilogy takes the style of each film’s setting to examine how cinema affected people in the real world. X examined how low-budget independent film, explicitly pornography, had an effect on the people in the 70s. MaXXXine will examine the consequences of the 80s video era. But PEARL, even though it is set during the influenza pandemic stricken last year of World War One, is a reflection of the Golden Age of Cinema, which actually started around the same time as the First Great War. For PEARL, West has chosen the glorious Technicolor phase of Hollywood and the grand style of melodrama for his slasher origin story. It’s both bananas and very much on target.

PEARL is a gentle young woman in a bad situation. The film echoes the grandiose emotions and dreams inside Pearl so much that I have entertained the thought that the entire look of the film might all be a wanton daydream of Pearl’s. The setting and Pearl’s emotions are that of a Golden Age Technicolor melodrama. So captivated by the beauty on the screen, Pearl lives her life like she’s walking through one of those classic films. PEARL’s beauty is at first a soothing counterpoint to the harsh reality of Pearl’s life and slowly becomes an increasingly disturbing counterpoint around the film’s action. Even the blood is pretty, just like Pearl. It’s a devastating scarlet shade similar to the final girl dress that she wears.

Pearl is a desperate woman with one wish: to be loved. Pearl is also incredibly childlike and unable to deal with the demands put upon her by her mother and the lack of affection from her family. Mia Goth does an incredible job of making Pearl the most sympathetic character in the film. She is like a doe trembling in the woods who can become a tiger at any moment and both modes are absolutely believable. She is also, to her own detriment, very honest. That’s why I believe that she is more of a child than anything else, as portrayed by Goth, Pearl’s development is stuck somewhere in the early teens when sexual urges begin and rages can be intense. She doesn’t have the adult ability to lie and to know when to lie. Goth’s brilliant and incredibly sympathetic portrayal of Pearl avoids one of the biggest traps for the actor. Goth makes no value judgment of what Pearl is and what she does, therefore she makes the character of Pearl completely charming and worthy of empathy even as her behavior grows more bizarre. Goth shows all of the fierce emotional turmoil of Pearl through her inner self and the emotions that seep out of her skin and her eyes. Those eyes.

The work of all the actors in the film is great. The ensemble works together flawlessly. David Corenswet (“Hollywood”) as The Projectionist, Tandi Wright (The Returned) as Ruth, Emma Jenkins Purro as Misty, Matthew Sunderland (The Lost City of Z, The Nightingale) as Pearl’s Father, and Alistair Sewell (The Power Of The Dog) as Howard. Sunderland has one of the tricker roles as a man who was paralyzed by his bout with influenza but makes a meal out of the role anyway. The man “acts” with one of his eyes. Ruth is terribly stern, but with an undercurrent of sadness, as if this is a behavior that was passed down to her and that she knows no other way.

One of the things that I said about X was that Ti West was flexing and with PEARL, that flexing of his cinematic muscle continues. West is the director, co-writer with Mia Goth, and editor of PEARL. He has taken the story and morphed it into an entirely different style in this prequel effortlessly. West and Goth are using the standard storytelling practices of the Golden Age of Cinema to tell a story that is fresh and relevant in our own time. The time period even has a pandemic and has people walking around in masks, which is no accident, I’m sure. The setting and time period are a thematic bridge to our own modern-day situation. It allows us to relate to Pearl through our own experience in our own modern pandemic. It makes the century-old setting modern.

It’s really quite an innovative way to discuss the film’s ideas in a retro format that doesn’t seem dated at all. Think of how X felt when you watched it. It had all the 70s trappings but it felt like the now. West is obviously well versed in film history and the craft of these eras of filmmaking, so much so, that he makes taking up the style of each era seem effortless. There’s even a bit of the darkest humor in the film, but never at the expense of Pearl. It’s in the juxtaposition of the situation and emotional states of the characters, a situation that is common in melodrama.

To all you nascent filmmakers out there, you really should watch all those films on the Criterion Channel and Tubi from previous decades, other than the 80s and 90s. Your film education and your mental film library will be so much better for the time you spend learning more about different styles of filmmaking.

Eliot Rockett’s (The Innkeepers, The House Of The Devil) cinematography is brilliant and very much in keeping with the stylish cinematography of the Technicolor era and the work of Douglas Sirk. I just wish I could have seen the film again to be able to give more specific examples of this. The work done in production design by Tom Hammock (The Guest, X), the art direction of Ben Milsom (Thunderbirds Are Go), set decoration by Thomas Salpietro (X), costume design by Malgosia Turzanska (Hell Or High Water, X), and casting by Stu Turner (Evil Dead (2013), “Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power“) is fantastic and is totally in harmony with the film’s aesthetic. The sweep of the film’s score by Tyler Bates (John Wick, Guardians Of The Galaxy) is lovely and perfectly in tune with the film’s style.

The film is filled with such loving detail in so many aspects. I find it droll that West specifically names Douglas Sirk as one of the major cinematic influences in PEARL. Why? Not only because both directors have now made opulent and emotional melodramas, but because both Pearl’s family and Douglas Sirk are German. I find it very interesting that all the men in the film, with the exception of Howard, have descriptions rather than names for their characters. I am intrigued by the fact that The Projectionist plays his pivotal role in the story and, well, he’s a projectionist.

Another flourish is that character of Pearl and her story is also an inversion of the final girl trope. I don’t think this is really a spoiler at this point, but Pearl is both the Final Girl and the killer. Symbolized by her scarlet dress, Pearl is the implacable killer striding through the fields and the woman killing for her own survival. I don’t think it’s something that we think about when we cheer Final Girls, but they are killers. Unless you’re talking about an unkillable fiend like Michael Myers, every Final Girl has killed someone to end her nightmare. In You’re Next, Erin killed several people, including one cop, albeit inadvertently. Pearl really isn’t that different except that her idea of who the villains are is somewhat different from what most of us would consider evil.

The film does a really great job of putting you in Pearl’s shoes and giving you real empathy for the character. In particular, it is disturbing for this reviewer that I would absolutely give Pearl a hug and try to make her feel better, but my next thought would be “Oh no, what have I done?’ One of the film’s triumphs is that it can make you feel unashamedly sympathetic with Pearl despite what she’s done. It performs the real purpose of a backstory as it adds to the character in X and thus the film X itself since Pearl is a linchpin of the trilogy. It’s not just backstory for the sake of backstory.

PEARL’s greatest success is making you feel empathy for someone who really never had a chance and showing you that even killers are human too. It gives you a deep understanding of the psychology of Pearl and what drives her to make her tragic choices. Ultimately, I feel that the filmmakers, including Goth, have a deep understanding and sympathy for the character. It also shows you the very real effect that film can have on people. Pearl believes in that cinematic dream so much that she kills to even have a chance to get somewhere close to it.

As a highly imaginative person, I can relate. Part of it is her pathology, but part of it is the film fantasyland that makes everything in it seem so wonderful that Pearl must obtain it. Hollywood’s dream factory is so convincing that someone like Pearl can’t tell the difference. She also doesn’t realize the incredibly hard work that goes into the making of an image on the screen. Pearl is drawn by a mirage that isn’t really there, driven by her internal needs to do things that burn her soul, and in the final terrifying and heartrending moments of PEARL, is betrayed by that lovely and flickering illusion.

PEARL will be released in theaters on September 16, 2022.

The post [Movie Review] PEARL appeared first on Nightmarish Conjurings.

When you see a real actor performing with The Muppets, it is easy to think that would be a straightforward process. You show up and goof around with some puppets for a bit and don't have to take things too seriously. While this can work for a sketch on "The Muppet Show," it's not really the case when it comes to a real-life actor with a sizable role in a feature film. Sure, Steve Martin or Mel Brooks can come in for one scene in "The Muppet Movie" and do a schtick, but the weight of the story does not rest on them. Charles Durning as Doc Hopper and Austin Pendleton as Doc's sidekick, Max, cannot afford to be knowingly silly. They are ostensibly the antagonists of the movie, and if they do not play the film straight, there are no stakes to the picture. Therefore, there's no drama and no reason to care. The same goes for Charles Grodin in "The Great Muppet Caper."

Without question, though, no one understood this better than Michael Caine as Ebenezer Scrooge in "The Muppet Christmas Carol." This was the first time that a human being was not only important to the film but they played the true lead of the picture, carrying the entirety of the emotional weight on their shoulders. This is an adaption of the classic Charles Dickens novel, and Scrooge is the character with arguably one of the most powerful and famous arcs in literary history. Michael Caine had to take "The Muppet Christmas Carol" as seriously as a heart attack to convey all that, and he knew from the beginning that was the only way the film would work.

'Completely Straight And Completely Committed'

During this year's D23 Expo, there was a panel to celebrate the 30th anniversary of "The Muppet Christmas Carol," which also announced that the full, uncut film will finally be released this December on Disney+. Dalin Rowell of /Film attended the panel where director Brian Henson talked about the earliest conversation he had with Michael Caine about Scrooge, and even then, Caine knew exactly how to play the part:

"[H]e said, 'I think the only way I can play this is if I — I never will react to anything as if they're Muppets or if they're anything out of the usual.' He said, 'I'm going to play it like I'm playing opposite the Royal Shakespeare Company ... I'm going to play it completely straight and completely committed, and that, I think, will make the right Scrooge.'"

Henson was pleased as punch to hear that Caine had the same vision he had for the character, especially because Henson knew, "There's also the Michael Caine who would love to look down the camera and give it a little wink, just like The Muppets do." Caine understood that if he did that there'd be no reason to tell this story or a way to connect to the audience.

Michael Caine gives what I believe to be the best human performance in a Muppets movie and the greatest performance of Ebenezer Scrooge in any film adaptation of the novel. His bitterness towards humankind is palpable and upsetting. His heartbreak and regret come from someplace deep inside him that makes you reflect on your own mistakes. Those things make his newfound elation more earned than ever before. I believe he should've received an Oscar nomination for the performance, but we can settle for mesmerizing millions every Christmas for 30 years.

Read this next: The 20 Most Underrated Disney Movies You Need To See

The post Michael Caine Approached The Muppet Christmas Carol Like A Royal Shakespeare Company Production appeared first on /Film.

2022 has been a pretty good year for cloud gaming, even the oft-ignored Google Stadia. That, in part, has been down to support from big publishers like Ubisoft. Generally speaking, Ubisoft has been a big supporter of the cloud, with titles available across Stadia, GeForce Now, Xbox Cloud Streaming, and Amazon Luna.

However, one thing trumps all and that’s cold hard cash. And it appears that Ubisoft couldn’t help but accept a big wad of green from Amazon to keep the next installment of Assassin’s Creed off the other clouds. The story comes by way of a Stephen Totilo at Axios.

NEWS: Assassin’s Creed Mirage will not be on Google Stadia, just Amazon Luna in terms of streaming services, Ubisoft confirms.

An eye-catching omission given that Stadia launched with an AC Odyssey beta test and has had tons of ACshttps://t.co/jylN7mzk2K

— Stephen Totilo (@stephentotilo) September 12, 2022

Google’s relationship, in particular, with Ubisoft, has been pretty outstanding. Back when Stadia launched as a technical test known as Project Stream, it was Assassin’s Creed that powered the experience. Ubisoft+ is also available on Stadia, as it is Luna, and over on GeForce Now you can simply play Ubisoft games you already own. The issue here isn’t that one cloud is better than the other, they all have benefits. It’s not necessarily even that one of the platforms has snagged an exclusive through, you assume, a sack of cash.

The problem for anyone wanting to play this hotly anticipated title through the cloud on their phones, tablets, Chromebooks, or anything else, is that Luna is severely limited. It’s only available at this moment in the United States. And the way this statement reads, it’s Luna or nothing. So it’s U.S. or nothing. You can joke about how many people do or don’t use Stadia, but at least it’s a little more global.

So that’s apparently that. There have been many snafus with the early marketing of Mirage, including a suggestion it would launch on Stadia. But it isn’t so I guess most of us are out of luck.

Source: Axios

The post Ubisoft decides to restrict Assassin’s Creed Mirage to the one cloud service most people can’t use appeared first on XDA.

Streaming services like HBO Max are under fire for mistreating animation studios and creators, but Disney's been a quiet canary in that coal mine. "The Owl House" is a spectacular series about a world of wild magic, and it's never afraid to deal with tough topics like betrayal and emotional abuse. Its story treats its diverse and LGTBQ+ cast with refreshing acceptance. Unfortunately, it's also slated to end with a third season consisting of only three 40-minute episodes. This doesn't stop Disney from trotting out the series for promotion during Pride Month. Creator Dana Terrace is quick to point out the cancellation is likely due to the show's darkness and plot complexity, not any bigotry on the Mouse's part.

That rings hollow for fans desperate for more Eda and Luz, and if you're not a fan yet, you should be. It's a terrific show for anyone, and dark enough to delight older kids. To "celebrate" Disney's treatment of the show, here's a rundown of the most disturbing scenes in "The Owl House" so far.

Eda's Creepy Body Control

Luz's arrival on the Boiling Isles is anything but comforting. At least she finds safety in the first episode, crossing paths with the eccentric wild witch Eda Clawthorne, a happy renegade with a demon puppy named King. It's for him that Eda recruits Luz to steal a crown from a place only a human can enter. The heist goes pretty well until the Warden creeps up onto the intruders and decapitates Eda with a swipe of his axe.

Luz is horrified to end up holding a severed head, but she's really not prepared for Eda to crack a joke. Luz's face contorts into new levels of terror, and that's where the scene smashes to commercial black during the original broadcast. That's a hell of a thing to drop on a brand new audience, but it certainly sets the tone for the series to come. It's smart, fast, and blackly funny stuff. Turns out Eda can pop her limbs off at will, with no ill effects. It's never made clear why she has this ability — it's likely the Owl Beast curse — but it's proven useful since. It's also a great icebreaker at boring parties.

Who's Luz?

An episode early in the second season ends on a pants-wetting cliffhanger. "Keeping Up A-fear-ances" is all about family ties, with a look at Eda's childhood as well as an introduction to her exuberant but credulous mother, Gwendolyn. Most of the episode follows a mom's well-meaning attempt to cure her daughter's now-shared Owl Beast curse. Still, Luz has a lot of reasons to think about her mother Camila, who (Luz reasonably assumes) has long since realized Luz is missing and not at summer camp.

Shockingly, Camila is just fine. Oh, she's crying, but it's over a TV show. A supportive hand reaches out to give her a box of tissues and Luz's voice comes from off-screen. Someone is pretending to be Luz, and fans have plenty of recent Belos-induced ideas about who this body snatcher could be. Thankfully, a follow-up episode reveals that the shape-shifting basilisk has a good heart and a need for safe refuge. Until then, it's a nail-biting horror built from the real possibilities of stolen identities and fear for the safety of those we love.

The Nature Of The Boiling Isles

It's not exactly Tahiti. The Boiling Isles is a sprawling magical kingdom with landmarks named in a fleshy but standardized fashion. There's a good reason for this: the kingdom thrives in the bones and viscera of a Titan corpse. Locations include the Knee, which is a mountainous knee jutting into the sky, as well as Lake Lacuna, which is inside the wet ribcage of the enormous cadaver. A lacuna is another word for a bone cavity, which this definitely is.

Inspired by the art of Hieronymus Bosch (and wow, does it show), the Isles is disturbing to think about on any level, but it got worse as Season 2 wrapped up. Our heroes learn more about what the Titans were with every episode, and it humanized these almost-extinct beings. Hunted for their magical blood, as King finds out, there are no happy endings for the species. Then creator commentary for "O Titan, Where Art Thou" makes clear a final, wrenching bomb implied in the episode: the corpse that now houses a nation was King's long-lost father.

Amity's Mommy Issues

Amity Blight doesn't know much about the human world beyond the fantasy series she and Luz share a love for. The classic camp movie "Mommie Dearest" might hit a little too close to home for this overburdened young woman. Her mother, Odalia, is a master of psychological destruction and has the whole family under her thumb.

"Escaping Expulsion," which puts Odalia on stage for the first time, is real-life horror turned magical. She's so untrusting of her own daughter that she's forced a magical pendant onto Amity. It's like a phone tracker app on crack, with a one-way telepathic radio installed so that Odalia can berate Amity whenever she likes and the girl can't defend herself. Due to how wealthy and influential the Blight family is, there are very few people with the nerve to interfere. Fortunately for Amity, Luz's love and fearlessness-to-a-fault antics gradually pry Amity away from Odalia's shadow. That doesn't make Odalia's blind loyalty to Belos over her own family hurt any less in the final episodes of Season 2.

Blight Industries

Odalia Blight sucks so much that we're not done discussing her. Like most families in the Boiling Isles, both Blight parents are part of a Coven. While Odalia is part of the manipulative Oracle Coven — this is key to how she spies on her family — she married a master of the Abomination arts. She's the one running the business, complete with glad-handing her way through posh society, while her shy husband Alador is doing R&D in the abomination labs. Together, they're the Lockheed Martin of the Boiling Isles, and that's not much of an exaggeration.

"Escaping Expulsion" is also the episode that shows off what the Blight family abominations can do in a live fire trade show display that wouldn't be out of place in "Lord of War." You can draw a straight line from Odalia's pride back to Tony Stark showing off the Jericho missiles in "Iron Man." Worse, they're using Luz for their targeting exercise, and Odalia is low-key trying to get her murdered on stage in order to earn a few more bulk sales. Even magic suffers under the weight of the military-industrial complex.

The Owl Beast Curse

Sure, Eda is quirky and she can pop her limbs off like a Barbie. What else can go wrong with this delightful witch? Well, the fourth episode reveals she's burdened by a monstrous curse. If she doesn't take a special elixir regularly, her body contorts into a huge, owl-like beast with empty black eyes that can't distinguish friend from foe.

The curse itself — dropped on her by her own sister, Lilith — haunts Eda's nightmares, too. There it has its own form, and it's almost cute. It's fluffy and four-legged, with a bone-white barn owl face. Unfortunately, that face can stretch into a nightmarish, yawning maw that looms over a dreaming Eda currently trapped in the body of a child. It begins to stalk Lilith's mind, too, when the sisters share the curse. Again, there's a sweet upside: eventually, Eda makes her peace with the curse and can control her transformation. The result is an elf-styled warrior harpy that turns Eda into an upgraded threat against Belos' loyalists.

Principal Bump's Minions

Principal Bump is a jarring figure. In charge of the Hexside School of Magic and Demonics, it's up to him to keep his young students practicing safe hex. At first, it may be easy to assume Bump is actually a small, purple demon that's chomped himself onto a human head. Yet flashbacks show that the demon is Bump's palisman (little animal familiar) and he's just a nice old guy that, y'know, uses what looks like a squadron of reanimated corpses to patrol the school's hallways.

The Hexside Guards are entrusted by Bump to keep Luz's shenanigans in check while he's deciding whether or not to admit her as a student. Maybe the guards are volunteers, but they're incredibly creepy to look at. They wear upside-down masks with strange ratlike fangs and their eyes are stitched closed with thick black thread. They don't speak and carry what's called a shepherd's crook so they can yank around unruly students. It's surely a coincidence that those old-style crooks resemble the ones pharaohs are buried with. They're not actually undead, right? They're totally zombies.

Nightmarish Protectors

Turns out the Blight family didn't corner the market on creepy automatons. King, desperate to learn more about where he came from, drags Lilith and Luz along on his search for the island where Eda found him in "Echoes of the Past." Lilith doubts King's memory, but the island does exist and King's memories are fairly dead-on. The island is a sanctuary for King, left there as an egg by an unseen father figure who thought ahead far enough to leave guards behind to protect the little guy.

The guardians are terrifying. Fleshy, fungal-like tendrils chain together smooth stone, making these guys look like something out of the "Dead Space" franchise. There's something particularly unnerving about their heads, curved triangular with unblinking, robotic eyes. It doesn't help that baby King was making little plinth versions of them for something to do. They can also skitter along walls, which is one of those things guaranteed to scare the crap out of nearly anybody and adapt their fleshy bits into multiple weapons. Fortunately, they answer to the pint-sized titan, and one King named Jean-Luc comes back to the Owl House where he's currently deactivated.

Understanding Willow

"Understanding Willow" is chock full of understated nightmare fuel, giving the entire episode a place in this discussion. Willow Park is a sweet kid who used to be friends with Amity Blight, and Amity is ashamed about why they're not buds anymore. During a photography class which — in nightmarish Hexside fashion — uses snapshots of people's real memories, Willow starts getting really weird about people seeing her photos. Turns out she's hiding resentments about the way other kids treat her at Hexside, and there's another, much angrier Willow protecting her deepest memories.

This comes out as Amity, in one of those "what the hell?" moments, tries to burn one of Willow's sensitive memories, rapidly changing the girl they know. To repair the damage, Luz drags Amity inside Willow's mind to try to fix what she ruined. That's where they get cornered by this other terrifying version of Willow. The pair has to face exactly why Willow hates Amity so much. The truth is even harsher, of course: Amity's mom forced her to stop hanging with "lesser" students, and Amity is still angry with herself for letting Willow down.

The Life Of Emperor Belos

It'd take a whole essay to unpack why Belos is such a horrorshow, but let's start with smaller nightmares. At first, details about the Emperor of the Boiling Isles are doled out slowly, but it becomes clear there's something deeply wrong with him. He's carrying some sort of curse or warped spell of his own around, and there's a troubling wound to his face that we only get glimpses of until a full reveal much later down the line.

Ugliest of all are the things he's doing to maintain his power and facade of magical normalcy. There's a running plotline about the way palismen are dwindling from the Isles, with their tree source becoming rare. Belos could be helping this scarcity along twofold by using that wood to create magical golems (which we'll get to) and by capturing/eating the living souls of as many palisman as he needs to keep his unstable spells working. Unfortunately, this magical cannibalism also wracks his body in agonized spasms every time he does it. It's not pretty to watch.

The Rise Of Emperor Belos

But wait, there's more! Long before Belos took power, he was a bigoted, murderous charlatan from the human world. He's actually a 17th-century guy named Philip Wittebane secretly living the life of a witch hunter. Originally just a greedy bastard, a mutilating whack in the face from a time-traveling Lilith helped set Philip the rest of the way off on a racially-tinged genocide. Mixing types of magic was a crime against the Titan, Belos would claim, and the purity of the new coven system he proposed was the cure. That surely isn't a metaphor for anything in recent real-world history.

To consolidate his rise to power, Philip set off false flag attacks as he toured the Isles, blaming the mayhem on the wild witches that didn't submit to his lying prophecies. The fear he stoked helped him take full control, and a bargain with an unknowable being called The Collector gave him the raw force he needed to maintain the system until Wittebane was ready to enact a literal genocide on the Boiling Isles. Sauron should take notes.

The Disposable Hunter

Emperor Belos has plenty of loyalists on the Boiling Isles, but chief among them was the Golden Guard. There's one at his side for most of his reign, always masked and fanatically devoted. The current Golden Guard is a kid named Hunter, who believes he's Belos' nephew and, like Luz, doesn't have any innate magic. He clings to Belos' promise that his servitude matters. Hunter's at odds with the residents of the Owl House for a while, but he's got enough mind of his own to begin asking himself tough questions.

The answers are awful. Hunter is a Grimwalker, a magical construct, and he's the latest in a long line of these magical experiments. Eventually, all the Golden Guards turn on Belos, who destroys them. The reasons aren't explained, but they're implied: the Guards are based on Belos' memories of his brother, Caleb. Was Caleb also killed by his own brother? Probably, but Hunter finds out what he is in the worst way possible, during an intrusion into the Emperor's mind. Realizing that he's disposable nearly breaks Hunter's mind. Fortunately, he has a secret palisman and the Owl House family for support.

The Collector Kills Belos

"King's Tide" is the final episode of Season 2, and one has to wonder how few craps the creators had left to give about Disney's insistence on family-safe content. There's not much left to lose for our beloved heroes, either, and it shows. The whole finale is a roller coaster ride of horror, but a lot of it centers on a new villain taking center stage. The Collector is loose, and this malicious child-god has no empathy for the beings he considers his toys.

The Collector has been teased as a behind-the-man entity for a little while, but the way he turns on his former ally Belos is a lot. Warped into his true form, Belos is on the cusp of making the human realm his, but he also betrayed the Collector on his way. Now bound to poor King, The Collector decides to play a game of Tag with Belos, declaring himself the chaser. It takes one second and ends with the monstrous Belos splattered above the door to the human realm. It's all on screen, with gory, blood-brown drips to the floor. Belos is gone. There is only the Collector and our crapped pants as we wait for the last season.

Read this next: The 14 Best Animated Movies (That Aren't Made By Disney Or Pixar)

The post The Most Disturbing Moments From Disney's The Owl House appeared first on /Film.

The FBI is warning healthcare facilities of the risks associated with unpatched and outdated medical devices.

Security flaws in medical devices could adversely impact the operations of healthcare facilities, while also affecting the safety of patients and data confidentiality and integrity, the FBI says.

read more

This article contains spoilers for "Malignant" and "Barbarian."

I went into "Barbarian" knowing nothing about the film beyond its logline and main cast. Dear reader, believe me when I tell you it was the best way possible to enjoy writer and director Zach Cregger's horror movie, a subversive take on the genre where the red herrings and misdirection are virtually indistinguishable from the actual foreshadowing. I would say I can't remember the last time a film took me on such a wild and unpredictable ride, but that isn't true. It was almost exactly a year to the day ago when the gonzo, go-for-broke swing that is James Wan's "Malignant" came out.

Both "Malignant" and "Barbarian" center on people who, when the films begin, are stuck in toxic situations. In "Malignant," Annabelle Wallis plays Madison, a pregnant woman who has had multiple miscarriages and is married to an abusive husband. In "Barbarian," Georgina Campbell plays Tess, a woman who is trying to move on from a bad relationship while interviewing for a new job. Each of these women invite our sympathies and make us root for them right off the bat, well before we come to know them as people. It's a good thing, too, because this is where things get weird (like, really weird), and it would be easier to check out if you didn't already care about what happens to them.

Setting The Stage

Directed by Wan, drawing from a story he co-wrote with Ingrid Bisu and Akela Cooper, "Malignant" opens with a flashback to a research hospital in the 1990s where a mysterious patient named Gabriel is being treated. It's only after this that we meet Madison in the film's present-day. But more than a clever way of spurring viewers to try and figure out how she and Gabriel are linked, this prologue is the perfect tone-setter for the rest of the movie. With its Gothic setting, theatrical camera angles, and campy line-readings ("It's time we cut out the cancer!"), it's clear this is Wan's unironic love letter to Giallo cinema and its unique blend of slasher, exploitation, and mystery elements.

"Barbarian," on the other hand, starts off firmly rooted in the real-world. When Tess arrives at a rental home in the middle of the night, the film is shot and edited in a very matter-of-fact way. Even when she learns the place she rented has been double-booked by a man named Keith, Tess and Keith respond as you might expect any two regular people to react to such a situation. If we're on edge, it's because Tess has a lifetime of experiences as a woman who's learned to pick up on any and every possible red flag she spots. Then there's also Anna Drubich's sinister score and the fact Keith is played by none other than Pennywise the Dancing Clown, Bill Skarsgård, both giving us reason to pause.

Unique Structures

After Madison's husband is killed, and she is attacked in what seems to be a home invasion, "Malignant" settles into the groove of a murder-mystery. As the killer moves on to other victims, Madison begins to have visions of their horrific crimes. Just as strange, she starts to uncover dark and bizarre secrets about her past, like the fact she has no memories of her life prior to being adopted when she was 8. Madison also had an imaginary friend named Gabriel, whom she would speak to in ways that unsettled her parents. Yet, even as it reveals more and more, the film does an excellent job of making it unclear how all these puzzle pieces fit together.

Similarly, "Barbarian" heavily hints something awful will happen after Tess decides to spend the night at the rental home with Keith. She briefly wakes up to find the door to her bedroom inexplicably open and Keith having a nightmare as he sleeps in the living room. And then... it's the next morning. Everything's fine, and Tess races off to her job interview after over-sleeping, along the way noting the neighborhood around her rental home is entirely rundown (a detail she missed the night before in the dark of night and pouring rain). It's a terrific subversion, having Tess cross paths with a stranger on a dark and stormy night in a creepy area, only for nothing bad to actually happen.

It's only after her interview that things go south for Tess. A local homeless man chases her into the rental house, insisting she get out. Then, a search for toilet paper sends Tess into the house's basement, where she uncovers a disturbing hidden room with a camera and a flight of stairs leading into a subterranean tunnel inhabited by a mutated figure dubbed "The Mother," played by Matthew Patrick Davis.

The Big Twists

What's great about the big twist in "Barbarian" (besides its shocking nature) is the film cuts away from Tess and Keith right after it occurs. Suddenly, we seem to have entered a completely different movie starring Justin Long as AJ Gilbride, a scummy actor in Los Angeles who, in an all-too-timely sub-plot, is accused of sexually assaulting his co-star. Realizing he's going to need all the money he can get to cover the legal costs for his impending lawsuit(s), AJ looks into selling some of the real estate he owns. Sure enough, that includes the place where Tess and Keith were staying in Michigan.

Speaking of entering different movies, "Maleficent" shifts from a murder-mystery to a splatter film when it's revealed Gabriel is not an imaginary friend at all, but he's a parasitic twin in the form of a teratoma living in the back of Madison's head. After her husband hit her head against the wall, it re-awakened Gabriel, who can control Madison's body by making her move backwards, and he's been killing all the doctors who operated on Madison when she was younger. What follows is a hilariously gory, high-octane action scene in which Gabriel lays waste to a police station, starting with a prison cell full of what might best be described as 1970s prison film stereotypes.

Likewise, "Barbarian" has fun drawing out the suspense when AJ discovers the hidden room and tunnels in his rental house, only to ignore all the tell-tale signs of danger and react with delight upon learning he can include all this space as part of the building's square footage. This (very funny) move into dark comedy comes as natural to "Barbarian" as it does to "Malignant," as does the transition back into pure horror when The Mother finds AJ mucking about in her home.

Sticking The Landing

As fun as the third act of "Malignant" is, it's "Barbarian" that does a better of bringing its story to a satisfying, cohesive conclusion. Far from a straight chase to the end, the third act of "Barbarian" kicks off a flashback to AJ rental's house in the 1980s. In what is by far the most visually-stylized sequence in the movie, we learn the place once belonged to Frank (Richard Brake), a man who would kidnap women and film himself raping them before raising their ensuing kids and repeating the horrifying cycle until it gave rise to The Mother.

This utterly disturbing back-story is the perfect capstone to "Barbarian" and its themes, which include toxic cycles, gender-based privilege, and the fact that rape culture has always lurked beneath a facade of politeness and decency. Just as fitting is the way the film ends on an almost sentimental note, with The Mother saving Tess (believing Tess to be her "baby") after Tess flees her prison and comes back for AJ, only for him to literally throw her off a nearby water tower in a bid to save his own skin. Tess still ends up shooting The Mother in the head to get away, but it's framed as a necessary evil and not a moment of triumph. The Mother, after all, is a victim in her own way, as the movie recognizes.

"Malignant" struggles to stick the landing quite as well. It only skims the surface of the ideas it raises about trauma and women's rights to their bodies, and its last-minute transformation into a touching story about sisters is flimsily set-up in advance. But it's also a lot like "Barbarian" in that the experience of watching it is as exhilarating, surprising, and otherwise thrilling as movies get.

"Barbarian" is now playing in theaters.

Read this next: The Highest Rated Horror Movies Of All Time

The post Barbarian is the Closet Thing 2022 Has to Its Own Malignant appeared first on /Film.

Back-to-school season means backpacks are on the brain. I believe having a stocked backpack is an adult thing to do, too, though. Rarely do I leave the house with nothing but my phone, wallet, and keys. I’d rather be prepared with more than the bare minimum when I’m out and about.

Read more...

Welcome to the midyear SSD edition of the Backblaze Drive Stats report. This report builds on the 2021 SSD report published previously and is based on data from the SSDs we use as storage server boot drives in our Backblaze Cloud Storage platform. We will review the quarterly and lifetime failure rates for these drives and, later in this report, we will also compare the performance of these SSDs to hard drives we also use as boot drives. Along the way, we’ll offer observations and insights to the data presented and, as always, we look forward to your questions and comments.

Overview

Boot drives in our environment do much more than boot the storage servers: they also store log files and temporary files produced by the storage server. Each day a boot drive will read, write, and delete files depending on the activity of the storage server itself. In our early storage servers, we used HDDs exclusively for boot drives. We began using SSDs in this capacity in Q4 2018. Since that time, all new storage servers, and any with failed HDD boot drives, have had SSDs installed.

Midyear SSD Results by Quarter

As of June 30, 2022, there were 2,558 SSDs in our storage servers. This compares to 2,200 SSDs we reported in our 2021 SSD report. We’ll start by presenting and discussing the quarterly data from each of the last two quarters (Q1 2022 and Q2 2022).

Notes and Observations

Form factors: All of the drives listed above are the standard 2.5” form factor, except the Dell (DELLVOSS VD) and Micron (MTFDDAV240TCB) models each of which are the M.2 form factor.

Most drives added: Since our last SSD report, ending in Q4 2021, the Crucial (model: CT250MX500SSD1) lead the way with 192 new drives added, followed by 101 new DELL drives (model: DELLBOSS VD) and 42 WDC drives (model: WDS250G2B0A).

New drive models: In Q2 2022 we added two new SSD models, both from Seagate, the 500GB model: ZA500CM10003 (3 drives), and the 250 GB model: ZA250NM1000 (18 drives). Neither has enough drives or drive days to reach any conclusions, although they each had zero failures, so nice start.

Crucial is not critical: In our previous SSD report, a few readers took exception to the high failure rate we reported for the Crucial SSD (model: CT250MX500SSD1) although we observed that it was with a very limited amount of data. Now that our Crucial drives have settled in, we’ve had no failures in either Q1 or Q2. Please call off the dogs.

One strike and you’re out: Three drives had only one failure in a given quarter, but the AFR they posted was noticeable: WDC model WDS250G2B0A – 10.93%, Micron – Model MTFDDAV240TCB – 4.52%, and the Seagate model: SSD – 3.81%. Of course if any of these models had 1 less failure their AFR would be zero, zip, bupkus, nada – you get it.

It’s all good man: For any given drive model in this cohort of SSDs, we like to see at least 100 drives and 10,000 drive-days in a given quarter as a minimum before we begin to consider the calculated AFR to be “reasonable”. That said, quarterly data can be volatile, so let’s next take a look at the data for each of these drives over their lifetime.

SSD Lifetime Annualized Failure Rates

As of the end of Q2 2022 there were 2,558 SSDs in our storage servers. The table below is based on the lifetime data for the drive models which were active as of the end of Q2 2022.

Notes and Observations

Lifetime annualized failure rate (AFR): The lifetime data is cumulative over the period noted, in this case from Q4 2018 through Q2 2022. As SSDs age, lifetime failure rates can be used to see trends over time. We’ll see how this works in the next section when we compare SSD and HDD lifetime annualized failure rates over time.

Falling failure rate?: The lifetime AFR for all of the SSDs for Q2 2022 was 0.92%. That was down from 1.04% at the end of 2021, but exactly the same as the Q2 2021 AFR of 0.92%.

Confidence Intervals: In general, the more data you have, and the more consistent that data is, the more confident you are in your predictions based on that data. For SSDs we like to see a confidence interval of 1.0% or less between the low and the high values before we are comfortable with the calculated AFR. This doesn’t mean that drive models with a confidence interval greater than 1.0% are wrong, it just means we’d like to get more data to be sure.

Speaking of Confidence Intervals: You’ll notice from the table above that the three drives with the highest lifetime annualized failure rates also have sizable confidence intervals.

Conversely, there are three drives with a confidence interval of 1% or less, as shown below:

Of these three, the Dell drive seems the best. It is a server-class drive in an M.2 form factor, but it might be out of the price range for many of us as it currently sells from Dell for $468.65. The two remaining drives are decidedly consumer focused and have the traditional SSD form factor. The Seagate model ZA250CM10003 is no longer available new, only refurbished, and the Seagate model ZA250CM10002 is currently available on Amazon for $45.00.

SSD Versus HDD Annualized Failure Rates

Last year we compared SSD and HDD failure rates when we asked: Are SSDs really more reliable than Hard Drives? At that time the answer was maybe. We now have a year’s worth of data available to help answer that question, but first, a little background to catch everyone up.

The SSDs and HDDs we are reporting on are all boot drives. They perform the same functions: booting the storage servers, recording log files, acting as temporary storage for SMART stats, and so on. In other words they perform the same tasks. As noted earlier, we used HDDs until late 2018, then switched to SSDs. This creates a situation where the two cohorts are at different places in their respective life expectancy curves.

To fairly compare the SSDs and HDDs, we controlled for average age of the two cohorts, so that SSDs that were on average one year old, were compared to HDDs that were on average one year old, and so on. The chart below shows the results through Q2 2021 as we controlled for the average age of the two cohorts.

Through Q2 2021 (Year 4 in the chart for SSDs) the SSDs followed the failure rate of the HDDs over time, albeit with a slightly lower AFR. But, it was not clear whether the failure rate of the SSD cohort would continue to follow that of the HDDs, flatten out, or fall somewhere in between.

Now that we have another year of data, the answer appears to be obvious as seen in the chart below, which is based on data through Q2 2022 data and gives us the SSD data for Year 5.

And the Winner Is…

At this point we can reasonably claim that SSDs are more reliable than HDDs, at least when used as boot drives in our environment. This supports the anecdotal stories and educated guesses made by our readers over the past year or so. Well done.

We’ll continue to collect and present the SSD data on a regular basis to confirm these findings and see what’s next. It is highly certain that the failure rate of SSDs will eventually start to rise. It is also possible that at some point the SSDs could hit the wall, perhaps when they start to reach their media wearout limits. To that point, over the coming months we’ll take a look at the SMART stats for our SSDs and see how they relate to drive failure. We also have some anecdotal information of our own that we’ll try to confirm on how far past the media wearout limits you can push an SSD. Stay tuned.

The SSD Stats Data

The data collected and analyzed for this review is available on our Hard Drive Test Data page. You’ll find SSD and HDD data in the same files and you’ll have to use the model number to locate the drives you want, as there is no field to designate a drive as SSD or HDD. You can download and use this data for free for your own purpose. All we ask are three things: 1) you cite Backblaze as the source if you use the data, 2) you accept that you are solely responsible for how you use the data, and 3) you do not sell this data to anyone—it is free.

You can also download the Backblaze Drive Stats data via SNIA IOTTA Trace Repository if desired. Same data; you’ll just need to comply with the license terms listed. Thanks to Geoff Kuenning and Manjari Senthilkumar for volunteering their time and brainpower to make this happen. Awesome work.

Good luck and let us know if you find anything interesting.

The post The SSD Edition: 2022 Drive Stats Mid-year Review appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

[link] [120 comments]