Tech companies should move ahead with controversial technology that scans for child abuse imagery on users' phones, the technical heads of GCHQ and the UK's National Cybersecurity Centre have said. From a report: So-called "client-side scanning" would involve service providers such as Facebook or Apple building software that monitors communications for suspicious activity without needing to share the contents of messages with a centralised server. Ian Levy, the NCSC's technical director, and Crispin Robinson, the technical director of cryptanalysis -- codebreaking -- at GCHQ, said the technology could protect children and privacy at the same time.
"We've found no reason why client-side scanning techniques cannot be implemented safely in many of the situations one will encounter," they wrote in a discussion paper published on Thursday, which the pair said was "not government policy." They argued that opposition to proposals for client-side scanning -- most famously a plan from Apple, now paused indefinitely, to scan photos before they are uploaded to the company's image-sharing service -- rested on specific flaws, which were fixable in practice. They suggested, for instance, requiring the involvement of multiple child protection NGOs, to guard against any individual government using the scanning apparatus to spy on civilians; and using encryption to ensure that the platform never sees any images that are passed to humans for moderation, instead involving only those same NGOs.
Almost three years after its original release, you can now purchase the Complete Edition of Snapshot Games' XCOM-inspired Phoenix Point on PC. This new edition includes the base game, all its DLC, and the latest Hastur update that adds Steam Workshop support to the game.
Here's the Complete Edition trailer:
And some extra details:
SOFIA, Bulgaria — July 21, 2022 — The war isn’t over yet! Snapshot Games has released Phoenix Point: Complete Edition today on PC via Steam, GOG.com, the Epic Games Store and Microsoft Store, as well as on Google Stadia. This massive bundle features the renowned strategy game from X-COM series creator Julian Gollop plus six DLC packs, perfect for players looking to upgrade or jump into the fight for the very first time.
As Phoenix Point celebrates its achievement of one million players across all platforms, the game’s final official PC update, available today and titled “Hastur,” introduces the community’s most-requested feature: Steam Workshop modding support. Now players can create and share their own imaginative designs with the world. As an added element of the game’s mod integration, each mod can be tweaked by players to finely tune the right balance for their game.
To help kick things off and demonstrate some of the exciting possibilities now available with modding, Snapshot has released its own “Custom Campaign” mod for Phoenix Point on Steam. This 'example' mod gives players a greater degree of customization over their campaigns, including the ability to make the experience easier or more challenging in a variety of ways.
As one last thank you to the community for its support over the years, all cosmetic soldier skins have been unlocked for all players on PC. That includes the previously console-only “Neon” skins, alongside two brand-new skins: the Aztec Priest and Pandoran Technician.
And if you’ve still yet to try this hit turn-based strategy game for yourself, free demos for Phoenix Point are now available on Steam and Stadia.
Phoenix Point: Complete Edition Features:
The Definitive Phoenix Point Package: Play all previously released DLC and updates, including “Legacy of the Ancients,” “Blood and Titanium,” “Festering Skies,” “Corrupted Horizons,” “Chaos Engines,” and the “Living Weapons Pack,” introducing new story campaigns, missions, modes, soldiers, enemies, vehicles and more.
Steam Workshop Mod Support: Customize your game experience in endless ways with mods made by the community, and create and share your own designs with the world (only on Steam).
Defend Earth from a Mutating Alien Menace: Customize your soldiers with unique skills, weapons and equipment to use in intense turn-based battles against an ever-changing alien threat that adapts to your tactics to challenge you.
The Geoscape Reborn: Take command of a strategic view of world situations and conflicts to plan operations and manage resources on a global scale.
Take Aim on the Battlefield: Beyond equipping and commanding units, Phoenix Point lets you take direct control of your soldier's shots in combat with a unique free-aiming system. Target enemy weak spots, weapons, or valuables, or just go for center mass.
Uncover the Global Threat: Experience a complex narrative with multiple endings, and uncover the secret origins of the crisis through exploration and research.
Manage Diplomatic Relations: You’re not the only force trying to reclaim the Earth. Different factions offer unique rewards for cooperation and threats for opposing them. It’s up to you to decide how, or even if, to deal with them.
A Modern Vision for a Strategy Classic: Designed by X-COM series creator Julian Gollop, Phoenix Point combines the best of classic strategy games with updated visuals, technology and systems.
Over 45 years ago, George Lucas debuted a little film known as "Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope" (or just "Star Wars," back then) and completely changed the cinematic landscape forever. Many have equated seeing "Star Wars" for the first time as the closest thing a movie fan could have to a religious experience, but few have been able to capture what that life-changing moment was really like, until now. At just 15 years old, Patrick Read Johnson was one of the first people outside of Industrial Light and Magic to see "Star Wars," having caught an unfinished cut during his spring break of 1977. The moment inspired him to pursue filmmaking, eventually directing the films "Spaced Invaders," "Baby's Day Out," "Angus," and "The Genesis Code."
Back in 2001, Johnson began raising funds for an autobiographical coming-of-age film called "5-25-77," chronicling his time as a teenage filmmaker from Wadsworth, Illinois, and the exciting lead-up toward seeing the premiere of "Star Wars." Initial filming took place from 2004 to 2006 and picked up again from 2015 to 2016 before premiering the film at the historic Genesee Theatre in Wadsworth in 2017, never to receive a proper release.
I grew up two towns over from Johnson, and admittedly knew classmates who skipped school to appear as extras in this movie. This has been Johnson's passion project for over 20 years, and it's incredible to see that the film will finally be available for mass consumption.
5-25-77 Trailer
John Francis Daley (Yes, the co-writer of "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor of Thieves" and "Freaks and Geeks" star) stars as teenage Pat Johnson, living in a small Midwestern town right off the highway with ambitions of making movies. He's joined by Austin Pendleton, Colleen Camp, and Neil Flynn, all to capture the magic of what it was like to see "Star Wars" when it finally hit theaters. In an exclusive statement to Deadline, Johnson said, "On behalf of all of the dedicated, passionate, (and possibly crazy) people who've stayed the course with me, all this time, to bring '5-25-77' to the screen, I'd like to thank MVD, and the particular individuals in this amazing company, who found something special in our film, that compelled them to go above and beyond, in order to make sure audiences everywhere might get the chance to find something special in it, too!"
Despite my own very odd personal connections to the film as someone who grew up in close proximity to the film's setting (a lot of kids from Wadsworth went to my high school depending on which part of the town they lived in), I still have not seen "5-25-77," but I do know first hand what it feels like to have big, Hollywood dreams in an area that's not quite Chicago and not quite Wisconsin. What was true for Johnson in 1977 was true for me in 2005. I'm happy to see that we both made it out and were able to follow our passions.
MVD Entertainment is releasing "5-25-77" in the fall of 2022.
Marvel is more than just the live-action movies that make up the Marvel Cinematic Universe. More than that, it extends beyond even the live-action shows that have increasingly become a larger part of the equation on Disney+. Animation is becoming a bigger part of the whole for the House of Ideas, and to that end, we are getting the animated series "Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur" next year, which is based on the acclaimed Marvel Comics series of the same name.
Ahead of the show's launch next year, the creators and actors descended upon San Diego Comic-Con 2022 to pull back the curtain and tell us all about the forthcoming adventures of Lunella Lafayette and her 10-ton dino pal, Devil Dinosaur. We were on hand at the panel and are here to deliver everything we learned about the show to you, dear reader. Let's dig in.
It All Happened Because Of Laurence Fishburne
Laurence Fishburne is no stranger to the MCU, having appeared as a major character in "Ant-Man and the Wasp." But, according to "Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur" executive producer Steve Loter, he's also an "avid comic book fan," and the notion of turning this comic into a show started with Fishburne in a comic book store. He fell in love with the book and set about trying to turn the book into a show. Luckily, in getting in touch with Disney about it, they were receptive to the idea, as was Marvel.
Fishburne, for his part, is an executive producer on the project and will also be recurring as the voice of The Beyonder.
It Will Reflect A Real, Artsy Version Of New York
Supervising Producer Rodney Clouden touched on how they came up with the look of the show, which is very unique, colorful, and, perhaps for lack of a better term, comic book-y. But Clouden says the idea was to capture a more authentic version of New York City within the series. "New York is gritty, it's not shiny or slick," he said. As far as specifics, they focused a lot on pop art, as well as graffiti and street art to inspire the look of the adaptation.
The Show Is Incredibly Diverse
Producer Pilar Flynn spoke a great deal at the panel about the lengths the team went to in order to try and showcase authentic, well-rounded diversity in the show. That starts with the title character, voiced by Diamond White, who is the youngest member of a Black family living in NYC. As Flynn tells it, they set out to recruit a team that would feel connected to the material and characters. "We are a cast and crew made up of mostly persons of color," Flynn says, as well as women and members of the LGBTQ community. "When you see the show, you will be able to feel that connection and passion," Flynn added.
But the diversity reflected in the show extends well beyond just the producers and cast. "We left it open to everybody and anybody who wanted to weigh in," Flynn noted. To that point, Clouden pointed out that members of the crew were even able to contribute to help make more authentic changes. White, for her part, added that they would even ask her, "How does this make you feel?" To top it all off, they brought in consultants and even had a spreadsheet to keep track of what types of characters they already had on screen and how often.
The main takeaway: they took this element of the show very seriously.
The Cast Will Include Tons Of Big Guest Stars
While the main cast is indeed stacked, the roster of guest stars revealed at the panel is truly impressive. To start, Alison Brie ("GLOW"), Andy Cohen ("Watch What Happens Live"), Daveed Diggs ("Hamilton"), Maya Hawke ("Stranger Things"), Jennifer Hudson ("Respect"), Method Man ("Power Book II: Ghost"), Cobie Smulders ("How I Met Your Mother") and Wesley Snipes ("Blade") serve as some of the major guest stars. They also have Omid Abtahi ("The Mandalorian"), Utkarsh Ambudkar ("Ghosts"), Michael Cimino ("Love, Victor"), Indya Moore ("Pose"), and Craig Robinson ("The Office") set to play recurring characters on the show.
But that's not all! Gideon Adlon ("Pacific Rim: The Black"), Pamela Adlon ("Better Things"), Anna Akana ("Youth & Consequences"), Ian Alexander ("The OA"), May Calamawy ("Moon Knight"), Wilson Cruz ("Star Trek: Discovery"), Asia Kate Dillon ("Billions"), Luis Guzmán ("How to Make It in America"), Josh Keaton ("Marvel's Spider-Man"), June Diane Raphael ("Grace and Frankie"), Paul Scheer ("The League"), Tajinae Turner ("Meet the Voxels"), and even astronaut Mae Jemison will voice characters in the show as well. That's one heck of a cast.
Devil Dinosaur Is More Than Just Roars And Growls
Legendary voice actor Fred Tatasciore is the one tasked with bringing Devil Dinosaur, a 10-ton prehistoric beast who appears through a portal of some kind, to life in the show.
Now, even though Tatasciore is going to use some of his more beastly talents to give the character life, he didn't want it to be just grunts and roars. Loter explained that he actually requested that there be dialogue written for Devil Dinosaur, despite the fact that he is just making noises. "We start with the sentence and then get down to its bare essence," Tatasciore said. So, while this could have probably been an easier gig, Tatasciore brought much more to the table, it seems.
Music Is Very Important To The Show
Music can sometimes just be a bit of background to help set a mood or what have you in a TV show or movie, but not in "Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur." Raphael Saadiq, of Tony! Toni! Tone! fame is working as the music producer for the series.
Loter said that "music plays a very large part in the show" and he went out of his way to try and get Saadiq involved — so much so that he waited in line at one of the artist's signings and quickly pitched him the show while waiting for an autograph. "Meet your heroes, and sometimes they'll do music on your show," he quipped.
Beyond that, Moon Girl will actually make use of music personally in the series, playing specific songs during her battles to help set the mood.
The Show Will Be Complementary To The MCU
Now for the big question: does the show connect to the MCU, and if so, how?
Well, according to Loter, the show will be "complementary to the MCU." He and the other producers added that MCU fans will have plenty of Easter eggs and other goodies to be on the lookout for. They were extremely candid about saying which familiar heroes or villains (if any) will appear in the series.
Flynn did say, though, that Marvel Studios served as excellent partners and were incredibly supportive of the project the whole way. Loter also added that one of the bigger things for them was to be able to explore characters that aren't currently being considered for the MCU. Specifically, he said that "recognizable villain characters" who you won't see in the MCU for the foreseeable future will appear in the series. As for who? Our lips were sealed. Loter also stated that Moon Knight was "on a wishlist."
"Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur" is set to premiere on Disney Channel and Disney+ sometime in 2023.
Before "Mork & Mindy" would become a hit television sitcom for CBS, it took root in a guest spot on "Happy Days," inspired by a question from the showrunner's young son (who, no doubt, had "Star Wars" on the brain in 1977): Why can't we put a spaceman on the show? Julliard student Robin Williams, who had previously performed outdoors to passers-by before auditioning for "Happy Days," wowed audiences so much with his alien antics that a spinoff quickly got rolling.
Williams wasn't the first choice for the manic Orkan. Contenders for the role of Mork included actor and comedian John Byner, whose dead-on impressions graced guest spots on "The Ed Sullivan Show" (mimicking the host), "Get Smart" (aping President LBJ), and "Hawaii Five-O." "Mork & Mindy" creator Garry Marshall's memoir, "My Happy Days in Hollywood," recalled the "wild look in his eyes" that he felt made Byer a suitable goofy alien. A deal was made with the actor to star in the show before disaster struck: Days away from shooting, Byner wanted out. Now the project was back to the beginning — an alien show without its alien. Other names came and went, among them neurotic comedian Richard Lewis and frequent David Letterman guest Jeff Altman. When then-unknown Robin Williams' name came up from William Morris Agency agent Alan Lezman, Marshall reportedly asked, "You want me to build a major network sitcom around a man who passes the hat for tips?" One of Marshall's sisters, casting director Ronny Hallin, replied, "It's a very full hat."
Say 'Nanu Nanu' To Your Favorite Martian
Garry Marshall, whose feature directorial legacy over five decades includes comedies "Overboard," "Beaches," and "Pretty Woman," among others, remembered his shock at having an agent so eager to get eyes on Williams, writing, "It is not often you get an agent begging." Williams' talent became impossible to ignore when Ronny Hallin saw the comedian's act and thought he was something special. Marshall recalled:
The next week I walked into my office and the street performer was sitting on my couch upside-down on his head. When he saw me, he stood straight up, and started pretending to drink a glass of water with his finger. That is how I first met Robin Williams. Ronny was right. Lezman was right. He was special.
Could I tell he was talented from the beginning? Yes. Did I know if he could carry an entire sitcom? No. But I knew I could build a show around him because he had the kind of talent that Danny Kaye and Jerry Lewis had. He would be the hip, modern, and zany centerpiece of the show, and we would surround him with calm, talented actors whom he could riff off of.
The ultimate test would be the now-classic fifth-season "Happy Days" episode titled "My Favorite Orkan," airing in February 1978, when the Bee Gees were dominating the Billboard charts with "Stayin' Alive." Robin's Mork, from planet Ork, tries to bring Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard) back home as a "normal" human specimen, only to be foiled by Fonzie (Henry Winkler). Beeping and booping with a seemingly eternal inner battery, Williams' depiction of Mork mesmerized everyone in his orbit, from costar to studio audience and behind the camera. The consensus was clear: Get this man a spinoff. The rest is TV history.
Kaspersky security researchers have disclosed details of a brand-new ransomware family written in Rust, making it the third strain after BlackCat and Hive to use the programming language.
Luna, as it's called, is "fairly simple" and can run on Windows, Linux, and ESXi systems, with the malware banking on a combination of Curve25519 and AES for encryption.
"Both the Linux and ESXi
50 years ago, a game-changing film made its world premiere in Baltimore. It was the tale of a criminal family struggling to save their legacy from their covetous rivals, and audiences were shocked by execution-style violence and the surprise appearance of a severed animal head. No, not "The Godfather" — but John Waters' "Pink Flamingos."
Like Francis Ford Coppola's gangster epic, "Pink Flamingos" touches upon themes of family, honor, loyalty, and revenge. It also has a scene with a woman eating fresh dog s**t. Both films premiered a few days apart, and each changed cinema in their way. "The Godfather" set a new high standard for mob sagas by which everything else would be measured; "Pink Flamingos" pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable, paving the way for gross-out comedies to this day. As Scott McDonald wrote in Artforum:
Its most important function is to catalyze other, more far-reaching experiences, the most interesting of which may be the undermining of viewers' willingness and ability to accept wimpy Hollywood fabrications at face value.
While the "Jackass" gang have taken pooping and puking for laughs into the mainstream, "Pink Flamingos" still feels dangerous, a home movie from the lunatic fringe, populated by grungy geeks and weirdos gleefully debasing themselves to shake up the squares. Many have tried to out-do it since, but John Waters' film remains the ground zero of gross.
While it retains its outsider edge, "Pink Flamingos" has gained some sort of respectability over the years. It joined "The Godfather" on the National Film Registry and even went one better, becoming part of the Criterion collection while Coppola's masterpiece is still waiting. That said, there are parts of the U.S. where "Pink Flamingos" still isn't welcome, a hangover from its controversial release half a century ago.
So What Happens In Pink Flamingos Again?
Divine, aka Babs Johnson, is a wanted criminal crowned the "filthiest person alive" by the tabloids. She's hiding out in a battered trailer somewhere in the Maryland boondocks with her egg-obsessed mother Edie (Edith Massey), chicken-loving son Crackers (Danny Mills), and her relatively normal girlfriend Cotton (Mary Vivian Pierce).
All is well until a wealthy pair of "jealous perverts," Raymond and Connie Marble (David Lochary and Mink Stole), become enraged by Divine's media attention and decide to challenge for her title. They definitely have the credentials, making their money by kidnapping young women for impregnation by their butler so they can sell the babies on the black market, and running an inner city drug ring targeting elementary schools. Just for kicks, Raymond also likes exposing himself to women in the park with a sausage tied to his junk.
Battle lines are drawn when the Marbles send Divine a turd for her birthday. She retaliates by breaking into their house and licking all their stuff. As the conflict escalates, who will truly prove themselves the filthiest?
It's a great set up and still has the power to shock and disgust, but the thing that struck me (other than one regrettable incident involving a luckless chicken) is how good-natured it all is while skewering some of the worst aspects of American culture. John Waters wrote "Pink Flamingos" after attending the Manson Family trials and joyously left no taboo un-shattered, fully earning his title "The Pope of Trash." He later wrote, with typical drollery:
"To me, bad taste is what entertainment is all about. If someone vomits while watching one of my films, it's like getting a standing ovation."
What Was So Controversial About Pink Flamingos?
The plot of "Pink Flamingos" is basically an excuse for a string of gross-out set pieces. A few of the "highlights" include the previously mentioned chicken getting squashed during a vigorous sex session between Crackers and his date; a man artificially inseminating a woman after masturbating into a cupped palm; a man singing with his anus; and Divine explicitly fellating her on-screen son. The film ends with a vile coup de grâce as Divine scoops up some freshly dropped dog dirt and eats it.
Waters and his Dreamland troupe had some trouble with the law previously, arrested for conspiracy to commit indecent exposure during the filming of "Mondo Trasho." The cavalcade of grossness in "Pink Flamingos" also landed the director in court on obscenity charges (via Entertainment Weekly):
"I never won [obscenity cases] because at midnight, "Pink Flamingos" is joyous, it's exciting, the audience love it. But if you're sworn in on jury duty in a courthouse, sitting there next to a stranger, watching a singing a**hole at 7:30 in the morning, I promise you, it is obscene. It's all about geography. I would just plead guilty, which was a $1,000 fine, and the lawyers usually cost more than that."
Even 50 years later, Waters is careful to avoid a certain town:
"Still, in Hicksville, New York, on Long Island, technically, if they ever show "Pink Flamingos," Bob Shaye, the head of New Line, and I can go to prison, because we signed a thing saying, if it ever played there we would go to prison. And I do believe Pink Flamingos may have played in Hicksville. I don't know if I'm wanted by the police, but I never drive by that town in case."
Did The Controversy Hurt Pink Flamingos?
Not one bit. Waters cannily positioned the excrement chow-down as a publicity stunt to drive people to the theaters (via Artforum):
"I had to get people's attention some way. I figured if I did that, no one would ever be able to forget it, and that it would be a first and last in film history. It was the first idea I had for the whole movie. I had $10,000 and I knew I had to compete with regular movies. You have to go way out on a limb and give 'em something that the studios would never want to give them."
The stunt worked, and "Pink Flamingos" made $7 million at the box office against its tiny budget, a cash loan from Waters parents who, he maintains, never saw the movie. The film was banned at first in some countries and territories, only receiving a later release with the maximum-strength classifications. Restrictive ratings couldn't stop the popular appeal of the film, which became a midnight movie staple.
John Waters' career went from strength to strength, completing his "Trash trilogy" with "Female Trouble" and "Desperate Living" before moving onto slightly more mainstream fare in the '80s and '90s. Nowadays, he's regarded as one of the most important LGBTQ+ directors. Divine, aka Harris Glenn Milstead, played a part in most of the director's films, becoming a true cult icon and named "Drag Queen of the Century" by People Magazine when he passed away in 1988 (via Them). His influence continues well into the 21st century: a whole episode of "RuPaul's Drag Race" was devoted to his unforgettable look, and the eternally elegant Isabelle Huppert wore a "Pink Flamingos" inspired Balenciaga dress to the Met Gala last year (via Vogue).
Does Pink Flamingos Still Hold Up?
That's a tricky one. "Pink Flamingos" is arguably as popular as ever, but it's a tough watch. Viewers who haven't seen it yet, or a John Waters film in general, it is worth approaching with a little caution. Some of his later movies like "Hairspray" or "Serial Mom" would make a safer entry point to his filmography.
As a piece of filmmaking, it is incredibly coarse. It cost only $12,000 and looks like Waters spent a lot less, with squalid locations, shaky home movie-style camerawork, and performances that are amateur at best. The one exception is Divine who completely dominates the film, flinging himself at every outrageous travesty with fiery, unapologetic gusto. On the flip side, low production value gives "Pink Flamingos" a sense of authenticity that far more costly films rarely manage.
Roger Ebert, reviewing the film for its 25th anniversary, declined to rate the film, stating:
"I am not giving a star rating to "Pink Flamingos," because stars simply seem not to apply. It should be considered not as a film but as a fact, or perhaps as an object."
That was a bit rich coming from the guy who co-wrote "Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-vixens," but then Ebert sometimes had a blindspot for films with cult appeal (see also: "Blue Velvet"). "Pink Flamingos" might be crude, but it has a serviceable narrative no worse than the Farrelly Brothers use as a clothes horse for their gross gags, and it's an effective satire of trash culture that anticipated Jerry Springer, "Natural Born Killers," and today's obsession with real lives and true crime. Waters may have become the "Pope of Trash," but perhaps the "Prophet of Trash" might have been more appropriate.
Jordan Peele's creepy, funny, wildly enjoyable sci-fi mystery pic "Nope" opens with a quote from the Bible: "I will cast abominable filth upon you, make you vile, and make you a spectacle." That final word, spectacle, is the key to the puzzle Peele is assembling here. For all its sci-fi trappings and Spielbergian crowd-pleasing beats, "Nope" is all about spectacle — and trying to capture that spectacle in some form. In many ways, this is a movie about making movies — but we're not talking about making big, studio-backed blockbusters. "Nope" focuses on getting a rag-tag crew of would-bes and has-beens together to try to capture the impossible; to create, in some ways, movie magic.
This is Peele's third film, and while not as groundbreaking as "Get Out" or as dense and layered as "Us," "Nope" is Peele's most assured, confident film yet. It is proof — if we even needed it at this point — that Peele is the real deal; a young filmmaker with a remarkable grasp of his craft, operating on a whole other level. Here, Peele has (mostly) done away with the constant twists and turns of his previous two films to craft a more straightforward narrative — but there are still plenty of surprises in store. I've seen more than a few people complain that the "Nope" trailers give too much away. Trust me on this — they don't. There's a world of unpredictability here, and wherever you think this might be going, you're bound to be slightly off the mark.
Peele also breaks out some of his best filmmaking to date. Working with cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, Peele plays around with style and form here, making magnificent use of IMAX cameras to show off wide open plains and even wider open skies. It feels cliche to say "You gotta see this on the big screen!" these days, but "Nope" should be experienced on the biggest screen possible to appreciate the dizzying, vertigo-inducing vastness of the skies overhead. Peele also gets creative when it comes to staging horrific moments — there are two particularly grisly, ghastly scenes here that the filmmaker renders in such a way that we don't exactly see what's happening, but — with more than a little help from impeccable sound design — we feel it, on a visceral, uneasy level.
What's A Bad Miracle
OJ Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya) runs his family's horse ranch out in California. Haywood's Hollywood Horses rents out horses to the movies, and is the only Black-owned horse ranch in the world of showbiz. OJ's father Otis (Keith David) used to run the place, but six months ago, Otis died in a freak accident when several bits of debris fell from the sky over the ranch. The authorities chalk the strange event up to a private plane leaking detritus overhead, but OJ is not so sure.
OJ is quiet, reserved, tight-lipped. His sister Emerald (a phenomenal, hilarious Keke Palmer) is the complete opposite — outspoken, confrontational, a little immature, and searching for something that will catapult her into fame and fortune. And she just might have found it, as a whole bunch of mysterious, inexplicable things begin happening around the ranch, which is secluded deep in the hills and free of prying eyes. The siblings become convinced a UFO is lurking nearby, and they realize that if they can capture it on film — clearly, in HD, unlike so many other fuzzy, blurry UFO videos — they'll strike it rich. But they have to get a good shot, the perfect shot — the "Oprah shot," as Emerald calls it. They enlist the help of lonely tech guy Angel (Brandon Perea, genuinely charming in a bit of a star-making turn) to help set up their fancy cameras, but capturing the "Oprah shot" will be harder than they thought. Perhaps they can get more help, in the form of a craggy, growly cinematographer with the perfect name of Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott).
Meanwhile, nearby, Ricky "Jupe" Park (Steven Yeun), the owner of a Western-themed amusement park, is ready to unveil something big. He promises his crowd an "absolute spectacle," and there's that word again. Ricky is a former child actor and appeared on a sitcom called "Gordy's House." Gordy was a real live chimp who co-starred on the series, and during the filming of season 2, something terrible happened. Something unspeakable. Something that was, indeed, a spectacle — for all the wrong reasons. How all these characters fit together, in the end, will be up to you to discover, but Peele has done a wonderful job assembling his ensemble. Kaluuya, with his sturdy, monotone, dryly funny performance, makes a hell of a lead, while everyone around him is delivering the goods. Palmer will likely get the most attention, as her role is big and scene-stealing. But Wincott is wonderful as the crusty cinematographer, and Yeun perfects an unsettling, dead-eyed stare as the theme-park owner who is still dreaming of recapturing his childhood stardom.
Absolute Spectacle
Those hoping for something as layered as Peele's previous two movies might be surprised at how straightforward the filmmaker plays things with "Nope," but that's part of the fun. This is Peele in summer blockbuster mode, trafficking in the same sort of spectacle-based filmmaking that Steven Spielberg perfected so early in his career. Peele is able to create one thrilling, scary scene after another, and he balances it all out with moment after moment of laugh-out-loud comedy. This is the filmmaker's funniest film yet, and Kaluuya garners huge laughs with his understated performance — a moment where he says "Nope," after seeing something terrifying overhead, and then locks the door of the car he's sitting in, is immensely amusing. As is a later scene when Wincott's miserable cinematographer realizes he can get a better — and potentially deadly shot — if he waits until that time of day DOP's like to call "magic hour."
The spirit of getting the shot prevails throughout "Nope," creating a kind of meta-commentary while also giving the audience something to root for. Because we like these characters, we both want them to survive their ordeal, and succeed in their scheme. It's hard not to root for a team of underdogs hoping to make it big, to break into a world that they're usually excluded from. They have many chances to pack up and leave to save themselves, but OJ is insistent they stay. He wants to keep his family ranch, and perhaps more than that, he wants that Oprah shot, because he knows sooner or later, someone else will come and get it and try to claim it as their own.
"Nope" may not be Jordan Peele's best movie to date, but it is his most enjoyable. A true summer movie spectacle meant to be writ large across the screen, giving us thrills, chills, laughs, and that most precious of things: movie magic.
Although you may not be able to turn your home into a burglar-proof fortress, or even want to, you can make it difficult for anyone with ill intentions to access your space. And you don’t need a massive budget for a high-end security system. Here are ten basic DIY projects to significantly improve your home’s security.
Actors fall into two camps. One stratum of actors gets to occupy high-profile roles for a brief season of their careers. At the same time, other actors can retain their star power and relevance for decades. How they manage to keep their careers afloat depends on the actor in question. — Read the rest
Google on Tuesday officially announced support for DNS-over-HTTP/3 (DoH3) for Android devices as part of a Google Play system update designed to keep DNS queries private.
To that end, Android smartphones running Android 11 and higher are expected to use DoH3 instead of DNS-over-TLS (DoT), which was incorporated into the mobile operating system with Android 9.0.
DoH3 is also an alternative to
Hundreds of years before the fate of the Seven Kingdoms rested on the shoulders of Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, Tyrion Lannister, and the rest of the major players on "Game of Thrones," the realm found itself ruled by the unchallenged might and iron fist of the Targaryen dynasty ... and their plentiful abundance of fire-breathing dragons. Of all the significant families in the original series who justified a spin-off of their own, Daenerys' legendary ancestors poised to maintain their status as conquerors proved to be the most natural fit to guide our return to Westeros in "House of the Dragon."
The spin-off/prequel series is ideally positioned to launch the next era of fantasy storytelling for HBO, though tasked with the gargantuan challenge of washing away the bitter taste left by the divisive, shocking, and (many would argue) terribly rushed ending of the original series. So what better way to accomplish that than by going back in time long before any of those events would ever come to pass?
Thankfully, you can get an idea of that in the new trailer, which you can check out below!
House Of The Dragon Trailer
"Fire and Blood." Those are the ominous words of House Targaryen and they've certainly been given an added "oomph" with this latest footage. "House of the Dragon" follows the civil war that inevitably breaks out in the aftermath of decades of peace and prosperity under the rule of King Jaehaerys I Targaryen. Upon the end of his immensely successful reign, however, the potentially catastrophic debate over who will serve as his successor to the Iron Throne threatens to split the entire kingdom apart and plunge the Targaryen family into the bloody war of succession forever known to historians as the Dance of the Dragons.
"House of the Dragon" is co-created by Ryan Condal and author George R.R. Martin himself, with Condal and Miguel Sapochnik (the director behind some of the biggest and most famous episodes of "Game of Thrones") serving as co-showrunners. The new series stars Paddy Considine as the current and newly-christened King Viserys I Targaryen, Emma D'Arcy as Viserys' firstborn daughter Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, Matt Smith as the presumptive heir apparent Prince Daemon Targaryen, Eve Best as the passed-over claimant to the throne Princess Rhaenys Velaryon, Steve Toussaint as her husband Lord Corlys Velaryon, Olivia Cooke as Lady Alicent Hightower, Rhys Ifans as her father and Hand of the King Ser Otto Hightower, Sonoya Mizuno as the mysterious Mysaria, and many, many more.
Based on Martin's book "Fire & Blood," "House of the Dragon" will premiere on HBO and HBO Max on August 21, 2022.
It’s the time of year in many places in North America where squash and tomato plants are beginning to flower and fruit. It’s exciting for gardeners to see the results of their labors, but sometimes the flowers begin to shrivel and the end of the squash or tomato is brown, looking like they’re only partially formed. It…
Newegg Commerce, Inc., reveals the launch of JustGPU.com, a new research and e-commerce site devoted to graphics cards to assist consumers in determining the best graphics card options for gaming PC builds or those users looking to upgrade to a newer GPU.
The new e-commerce and resource website includes personalization features to help users select the best graphics card for their gaming PC
JustGPU.com is intended as a vertical platform focused on graphics cards, where consumers can educate themselves about the latest graphics cards and filter the GPUs on the website by various elements, such as price, manufacturer, type, and memory size. Customers can also see the graphics card frame rates for each model available, CPU information, monitor resolution, and physical size to assist in finding the best graphics card for their gaming PC rig. Newegg also included a comparison tool that lets customers assess two graphics cards side-by-side to comprehend dimensions, frame rate, and price differences. Newegg also states that a list of top-selling GPUs and the ability to filter by price or top rating are also available.
Upon its first appearance, the website focused on Newegg's partnered brands, such as ASRock, ASUS, EVGA, Gigabyte, and MSI. You will also note from the screenshot below that you can click to see the top selling cards as well as what is currently on sale at Newegg.
Image source: Newegg
The website offers a complete product assortment for the newest GPUs, including the NVIDIA RTX 30 series and AMD Ryzen 6000 series, while showing additional graphics cards at Newegg.
JustGPU.com simplifies the shopping experience for a large number of our customers who are specifically shopping only for GPUs and need resources to make informed decisions to upgrade their gaming PC builds. Customers are spending a lot of time researching throughout the Internet for GPUs, including performance details and pricing. We’re reducing the hassle and frustration for customers by providing a streamlined resource with this new personalized shopping site.
— Jim Tseng, Director of Product Management for Newegg.
While customers can still find the same GPU inventory on Newegg.com, the new e-commerce site complements Newegg's leading store site and streamlines purchases by focusing on a market that is in heavy need now. Users on JustGPU.com can review GPU details and complete the purchase through Newegg.com.
Someone—possibly in Russia—apparently strapped a submachine gun on a ~$3,000 robot dog available from AliExpress. Vice points out that the gun is a Russian PP-19 Vityaz submachine gun made in Russia and that along with a Russian flag and other insignia seen in the video, the vehicle in the background is a Russian BDRM-2 armored car. — Read the rest
For the last several years, we have written about drive failure, or more specifically, the annualized failure rates for the hard drives and SSDs we use for our cloud storage platform. In this post, we’ll look at drive failure from a different angle: life expectancy.
By looking at life expectancy, we can answer the question, “How long is the drive I am buying today expected to last?” This line of thinking matches the way we buy many things. For example, knowing that a washing machine has an annualized failure rate of 4% is academically interesting, but what we really want to know is, “How long can I expect the washing machine to last before I need to replace it?”
Using the Drive Stats data we’ve collected since 2013, we have selected 10 drive models that have a sufficient number of both drives and drive days to produce Kaplan-Meier life expectancy curves we can use to easily visualize their life expectancy. Using these life expectancy curves we’ll compare drive models in cohorts of 4TB, 8TB, 12TB, and 14TB to see what we can find.
What Is a Kaplan-Meier Curve?
Kaplan-Meier curves are most often used in biological sciences to forecast life expectancy by measuring the fraction of subjects living for a certain amount of time after receiving treatment. That said, the application of the technique to other fields is not unusual.
Comparing 4TB Drives
The two 4TB drive models we selected for comparison had the most 4TB drives in operation as of March 31, 2022. The Drive Stats for each drive model as of March 31, 2022 is shown below, followed by the Kaplan-Meier curve for each drive.
MFG
Model
Drives in Operation
Lifetime Drive Failures
Lifetime Drive Days
Lifetime AFR
HGST
HMS5C4040BLE640
12,728
343
30,025,871
0.40%
Seagate
ST4000DM000
18,495
4,581
68,104,520
2.45%
What Is the Graph Telling Us?
If you purchased an HGST drive at time zero, there is a 97% chance that drive would still be operational after six years (72 months).
If you purchased a Seagate drive at time zero, there is an 81% chance that drive would still be operational after six years.
Case closed—we were stupid to buy any Seagate 4TB drives, right? Not so fast, there are other factors at work here: cost, availability, time, and maintenance, to name a few. For example, suppose I told you that the HGST drive you wanted was 1.2 to 1.5 times as expensive as the Seagate drive. In addition, the Seagate drive was readily available while the HGST drive was harder to get, and finally, at the time of purchase there was over an 80% chance that the Seagate drive would still be alive after six years. How does that change your perception?
In the case of buying one or two drives, you may find a single factor like, “how much do you have to spend” is the only thing that matters. In our case, these factors are intertwined. We explain some of the thinking behind our decision-making in our “How Backblaze Buys Hard Drives” post.
Was It Worth the Savings?
In the simple case, if the time and effort we spent replacing the failed Seagate drives was more than the savings, we failed. So, let’s do a little back-of-the-envelope math to see how we landed.
We replaced a little over 4,200 more Seagate drives over a six year period than HGST drives. That is 700 drives a year or about two Seagate drives per day we had to replace. That’s 30-40 minutes a day someone spent doing that task spread across multiple data centers. Yes, it’s work, but hardly something you would need to hire a person specifically to do.
Why Buy HGST Drives at All?
Fair question. At the time we were purchasing these Seagate and HGST drive models back in 2013 through 2015, there were no life expectancy curves and Drive Stats was just starting. We had anecdotal information that the HGST drives were better, but little else. In short, sometimes, the pricing and availability of the HGST was good enough so we bought them.
Comparing 8TB Drives
The two 8TB drives we’ve chosen to compare using life expectancy curves have done battle before. The 8TB Seagate model: ST8000DM002 is classified as a consumer drive, while the 8TB Seagate model: ST8000NM0055 is classified as an enterprise drive. Their lifetime annualized failure rates tell an interesting story. All data is as of March 31, 2022.
Type
Model
Drives in Operation
Lifetime Drive Failures
Lifetime Drive Days
Lifetime AFR
Consumer
ST8000DM002
9,678
628
19,815,919
1.13%
Enterprise
ST8000NM0055
14,323
915
24,999,738
1.35%
Let’s take a look at the life expectancy curves and see what else we can learn.
Observations
If you purchased either drive, the life expectancy is nearly the same for early on, but starts to separate at about two years and the difference increases over the next three years.
For the consumer model (ST8000DM002) you would expect nearly 95% of the drives to survive five years.
For the enterprise model (ST8000NM0055) you would expect 93.6% of the drives to survive five years.
These results seem at odds with the warranties for each model. Consumer drives typically have two-year warranties, while enterprise drives typically have five-year warranties. Yet at five years, the consumer drives, in this case, are more likely to survive, and the trend starts at two years—the end of the typical consumer drive warranty period. It’s almost like we got the data backwards. We didn’t.
Even with this odd difference, both drives performed well. If you wanted to buy an 8TB drive and the salesperson said there would be a 93.6% chance the drive would last five years, well, that’s pretty good. Regardless of the failure rate or life expectancy, there are other reasons to purchase an enterprise class drive, including the ability to tune the drive, tweak the firmware, or get a replacement via the warranty for three more years versus the consumer drive. All are good reasons and may be worth the premium you will pay for an enterprise class drive, but in this case at least, long live the consumer drive.
A Word About Drive Warranties
One of the advantages we get for buying drives in bulk from a manufacturer or one of their top tier resellers is that they will honor the warranty period ascribed to the drive. When you are buying from a retailer (typically an online retailer, but not always), you may find the warranty terms and conditions to be less straightforward. Here are three common situations:
The retailer purchases the drive or takes the drive on consignment from the manufacturer/distributor/reseller/etc., and that event triggers the start of the manufacturer warranty. When you buy the drive six months later, the warranty is no longer “X” years, but “X” years minus six months.
The retailer replaces the warranty with their own time period. While this is usually done for refurbished drives, we have seen this done by online retailers for new drives as well. In one case we saw, the original five-year warranty period was reduced to one year.
The retailer is only a storefront while the actual seller is different. At that point, determining the warranty period and who services the drive can be, shall we say, challenging. Of course, you can always buy the add-on warranty that’s offered—it’s always nice to pay for something that was supposed to be included.
As a drive model gets older, these types of shenanigans are more likely to happen. For example, a given drive model gathers dust awaiting shipment while new models are coming to market at competitive prices. The multiple players on the path from a drive’s manufacture to its eventual sale are looking for ways to “move” these aging drives along that path. One option is to lower or eliminate the warranty period to help reduce the cost of the drive. The warranty becomes a casualty of the supply chain and you, as the last buyer, are left with the results.
Comparing 12TB Drives
If you are serious about storing copious amounts of data, you’re probably looking at 12TB drives and higher. Your Plex media server or eight-bay NAS system demands nothing less. To that end, we selected three 12TB models for which we have at least two years worth of data to base our life expectancy curves upon. The Drive Stats data for these three drives is as of March 31, 2022.
MFR
Model
Drives in Operation
Lifetime Drive Failures
Lifetime Drive Days
Lifetime AFR
HGST
HUH721212ALN604
10,813
148
11,813,149
0.48%
Seagate
ST12000NM001G
12,269
104
6,166,144
0.63%
Seagate
ST12000NM0008
20,139
449
14,802,577
1.12%
Observations and Thoughts
For any of the three models, at least 98% of the drives are expected to survive two years. I suspect that most of us would take that bet. While none of us wants to own the one or two drives out of 100 that will fail in that two years period, we know there are no 100% guarantees when it comes to hard drives.
That brings us to asking: What is the cost of each drive, and would that affect the buying decision? As we’ve noted previously, we buy in bulk and the price we pay is probably not reflective of the price you may pay in the consumer market. To that end, below are the current prices, via the Amazon website, for the three drive models. We’ve assumed that these are new drives and they have the same warranty coverage of five years.
HUH721212ALN604 – $413
ST12000NM001G – $249
ST12000NM0008 – $319
The Seagate model: ST12000NM001G and the HGST model: HUH721212ALN604 have about the same life expectancy after two years, but their price is significantly different. Which one do you buy today? If you are expecting the drive to last (i.e., survive) two years, you would select the Seagate drive and save yourself $164, plus tax. Some of you will disagree, and given we know nothing beyond the two-year point for the Seagate drive, you may be right. Time will tell.
One thing that may be perplexing here is why the Seagate model: ST12000NM0008 is more expensive than the Seagate model: ST12000NM001G even though the ST12000NM008 fails more often and has a lower life expectancy after two years? The reason is simple: Drive pricing is basically driven by supply and demand. We suspect that annualized failure rates and life expectancy curves are not part of the pricing math done by the various companies (manufacturers/distributors/resellers/etc.) along the supply chain.
By the way, if you purchase the 12TB HGST drive, it may say Western Digital (WDC) on the label. For the first couple of years when these drives were produced, they had HGST on the label, but that changed somewhere in the last couple of years. In either case, both “versions” report as HGST drives and have the same model number, HUH721212ALN604. The new Western Digital label is part of the continuing rebranding effort being done by WDC to update the HGST assets they purchased a few years back.
Comparing 14TB Drives
We will finish up our look at hard drive life expectancy curves with three models from our collection of 14TB drives. While the data ranges from 14 to 41 months depending on the drive model, this is the one cohort where we have comparable data on drives from all three of the major manufacturers: Seagate, Toshiba, and WDC. The Drive Stats data is below, followed by the life expectancy curves for the same models.
MFR
Model
Drives in Operation
Lifetime Drive Failures
Lifetime Drive Days
Lifetime AFR
Toshiba
MG07ACA14TA
38,210
454
19,834,886
0.83%
Seagate
ST14000NM001G
10,734
123
4,474,417
1.00%
WDC
WUH721414ALE6L4
8,268
35
3,941,427
0.33%
Observations and Thoughts
All three drives have a life expectancy of 99% or more after one year. Previously, we examined the bathtub curve for drive failure and made the observation that the early mortality rate for hard drives, those that failed during their first year in operation, was now nearly the same as the random failure rate. That seems to be the case for this collection of drives as the observed early mortality effect is nominal.
When considering the bathtub curve, the Toshiba model seems to be an outlier beginning at 22 months. At that point, the downward curvature in the line suggests an accelerating failure rate when the failure rate should be steady, as seen below.
The projected life expectancy curve line is derived by extending the random failure rate from the first 22 months. That said, 97% of the Toshiba drives survived for three years while the projected number was 98%, or simply put, the failure rate was one drive per hundred more over a three-year period.
Interested in More Drive Stats Insights?
Physical disk drives remain essential elements of business and personal tech. That’s why Backblaze publishes performance data and analysis on 200,000+ HDDs: to offer useful insights into how different drive models stack up in our data center. As SSDs increasingly become the norm in many computers and servers, Backblaze is now also sharing data for the thousands of SSDs we use as boot drives.
The raw data comes from the Backblaze Drive Stats data and is based on the raw value of SMART attribute 9 (power on hours) for a defined cohort of drives. After removing outliers, we basically compared the number of drives which failed after a specific number of months versus the number of drives which managed to survive that many months. The math is absolutely more complex than that and I want to thank Dr. Charles Zaiontz, Ph.D. for providing an excellent tutorial on Kaplan-Meier curves and, more specifically, how to use Microsoft Excel to do the math.
Refresher: What Are SMART Stats?
SMART stands for Self-monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology and is a monitoring system included in hard drives that reports on various attributes of the state of a given drive. Each day, Backblaze records the SMART stats that are reported by the hard drives we have in our data centers. Check out this post to learn more about SMART stats and how we use them.
Standing on the Shoulders
Using our Drive Stats data in combination with Kaplan-Meier curves has been done previously in various forms by others including Ross Lazarus, Simon Erni, and Tom Baldwin. We thank them for their collective efforts and for providing us with the inspiration to produce the current curves that enabled the comparisons we did in this post.
Intel's flagship Arc A770 graphics card has been previewed in a brand new video published by Linus Tech Tips. The tech pub showed gaming performance in various titles at 1440p and an early look at the overclocking capabilities of Arc GPUs.
Intel's Flagship Arc A770 Graphics Card Gets Previewed In Gaming at 1440p, Early Overclocking Demo Shows Up To 2.5 GHz Clocks
It's been only a few days since Intel officially lifted the curtains off its flagship Alchemist graphics card, the Arc A770. The card was also teased at the WAN show hosted by Linus Sebastian and Luke Lafreniere with guests from Intel including Tom Petersen and Ryan Shrout. Intel's graphics division has now given an early look at the performance and overclocking capabilities of its Arc A770 card through Linus's channel and things look decent however we should also point out that the reviews of the Arc A380 graphics card went live today and not a single reviewer out there is impressed by the driver side of things which makes the lineup pretty much useless for launch at the moment.
The Intel Arc 7 lineup is going to utilize the flagship ACM-G10 GPU and we already know about the mobility variants which include the Arc A770M and the Arc A730M. Similarly, the Arc A770 is one of the top-end variants for desktop PCs that is equipped with the full ACM-G10 configuration, utilizing 32 Xe-Cores for 4096 ALUs, and 32 ray tracing units.
In terms of clocks, the GPU should operate at a peak boost of 2.4 GHz which is always going to be higher than its advertised engine clock speed. At 2400 MHz, the GPU should be able to deliver close to 20 TFLOPs of FP32 horsepower.
The card also features 16 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 256-bit bus interface. The GPU is supplied power through an 8+6 pin connector configuration which maxes out at 300W though the actual TGP/TBP should be lower than that around the 250W range. The demo showed the card running at around 190W.
As for performance, we should expect the Arc A770 to land in between the NVIDIA RTX 3060 Ti & the RTX 3070 considering the Arc A750 is up to 17% faster than the RTX 3060.
In terms of performance, as we discussed before, Intel is primarily focusing on DirectX 12 & Vulkan API titles before moving to more legacy DX11 and older titles. A performance demo of two identical systems running an Intel Core i9-12900KS and the Arc A770 GPU shows that in DX11 the graphics card delivers around 40 FPS while in DX12, the graphics card delivers 80 FPS so that's a 2x jump in the latest API. This is by no mean an impressive result and shows the driver overhead that Intel's Arc GPUs have within the older DX11 API. So if you were to get yourself an Arc graphics card, playing games in DX12 will be your safest bet to achieve performance close to its competitors.
Intel Arc A770 Graphics Card DX11 vs DX12 Performance In Shadow of The Tomb Raider (Image Credits: LTT):
2 of 9
Intel states that there will be three Tiers of optimizations for Arc GPUs. In the 1st Tier, Arc GPUs will deliver the "best-in-class performance. The 2nd Tier is less optimized games but is based on the modern APIs which we just mentioned above so performance here may end up being comparable to or slightly lower than the competition. Lastly, we have the 3rd Tier which is unoptimized titles and running on older APIs. So performance in these games is going to be far worse than the competition.
The majority of the performance was tested within Cyberpunk 2077 and F1 2021 which delivered an OK-ish experience at 1440p however overclocking did result in a smoother experience but we didn't get to see any FPS figures. The graphics card was tuned to a GPU Performance Boost profile of +20% which adjusts the voltage curve, the power limit was raised to 285W while the temperature limit was increased to 125C. The Intel Arc A770 graphics card delivered 100% utilization at a peak clock rate of 2.5 GHz and a maximum temperature of 76C while gaming in Cyberpunk 2077. When the Performance Boost profile was pushed to +30%, the game crashed so that must be the limit of the silicon used in the tests here.
Linus speculates that based on the performance and current market situation, the Intel Arc A770 graphics card should end up under the $400 US price which is also where we are expecting the card to land since we already discussed the pricing and performance tiering of the entire Arc discrete desktop graphics card lineup just a few days ago in our exclusive here. The Arc A770 and the rest of the lineup are planned for launch later this summer so stay tuned for more information and demos.
What are your thoughts of Intel's Arc graphics cards so far?
It's finally happened. Someone realized the huge meme and viewership potential of watching Kurt Russell and Wyatt Russell bring their incredible beards to TV at the same time. According to a press release, the father-son duo will unite on screen in the upcoming untitled Monsterverse show for AppleTV+.
This marks the first time Kurt Russell has appeared in a TV show since "Hawaii Five-O" in 1977, which is already enough cause for celebration, given how much this man has given both the TV and film worlds with iconic roles like Elvis and Snake Plissken. Even better is the idea of him acting with his son Wyatt, who has quickly built an exciting career for himself, acting in films like "22 Jump Street," the fantastic "Overlord," and the criminally underseen TV show "Lodge 49" before joining the MCU as one of the most hateful villains in quite a while in "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier."
Of course, the big question now is: Will they fight? Will Apple TV+ and Legendary give us another fight between titans, this time between father and son? Will any network think of making a show based on this brilliant idea of having acting parent/children duos compete in extreme games? It's unlikely, but one can dream!
The two Russells join an ensemble cast that includes Anna Sawai, Ren Watabe, Kiersey Clemons, Joe Tippett, and Elisa Lasowski.
Let Them Fight
So far, we know rather little about the "Godzilla and Titans" series, but based on the official logline, we think the show is set between the events of 2014's "Godzilla" and "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" at a time after San Francisco was completely destroyed by the Titans. The series will be directed by none other than Matt Shakman, who gave us all of "WandaVision," some of the best episodes of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," and several major episodes of "Game of Thrones."
Given that we are unlikely to see either Kong or Godzilla in the series (they seem ... expensive), this is an opportunity for the Monsterverse to expand on its lore and exactly how much history there is for the various Titans that showed up in the films. Given that we've only seen glimpses at that history through credit and title sequences, there is plenty to mine from.
There's no release date, or even a title for the new Monsterverse show, but here's the official description:
Following the thunderous battle between Godzilla and the Titans that leveled San Francisco and the shocking new reality that monsters are real, the "Monsterverse" series will explore one family's journey to uncover its buried secrets and a legacy linking them to the secret organization known as Monarch.
(Welcome to The Daily Stream, an ongoing series in which the /Film team shares what they've been watching, why it's worth checking out, and where you can stream it.)
The series: "Deadly Women"
Where you can stream it: Seasons 7-13 are available on Hulu; all 13 seasons are available on Discovery+
The Pitch: There are many kinds of true crime documentary series, ranging in tone and respect for the material, but few are as compellingly entertaining as Investigation Discovery's "Deadly Women." The series uses re-enactments to tell murderous true tales about a variety of women who kill. This isn't the kind of show that's going to give real insight into the minds of killers or the anguish of survivors, as the vast majority of the talking heads are crime experts or investigators. It's tawdry, trashy stuff: the modern equivalent of Victorian penny dreadfuls, luxuriating in the nastiest bits of salacious detail.
"Deadly Women" kicked off with its first season in 2005 and more than a dozen seasons later it still has the deliciously campy tone of the late '90s and early aughts. The re-enactments are low-budget and filled to the brim with over-the-top acting, unnecessary Dutch angles, and an eternally dramatic voice-over by actor Lynnanne Zager.
Throughout the course of the series they interview a handful of different crime experts, but the real heart of the show is former FBI criminal profiler Candice DeLong, who was the lead profiler in San Francisco working on the Unabomber case. DeLong's storytelling delivery is a beautiful thing — she knows exactly which words to let hang and when to drop a sentence like an anvil. There's no subtlety in "Deadly Women," but that's the fun of it. There are endless documentaries and documentary series trying to engage viewers in a mystery or enlighten them on a subject, but "Deadly Women" exists purely to entertain.
Why It's Essential Viewing
For those of us who grew up watching shows like "Unsolved Mysteries" or "Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction?," there's a weird comfort in the campy goofiness of reenactments. The musical stings, narrator's words left hanging right before an act of violence, and other hallmarks of trashy reenactments become as familiar as the laugh track on a sitcom or the musical intro on a late night show. There's a rhythm to the ridiculousness that the series managed to keep steady for 13 seasons, which is honestly pretty impressive.
"Deadly Women" is consistent, offering the same levels of lowest-common denominator commentary and levels of dedication to accuracy. The casting is often bizarre, with teenage characters sometimes played by adults clearly in their late 30s or 40s, which can get really weird when they do childish things. There's an episode about a killer cheerleader that makes the cast of the original 90210 look positively glowing with youth, but that's par for the course with "Deadly Women."
The most brilliant of the reenactments, however, are the ones that take place before 1990. Historical reenactments of crimes from centuries past are guaranteed to be a good, goofy time, with every stereotypical element imaginable to let the audience know when things are set. If it's the roaring '20s, you'd better bet your bottom dollar there's going to be flappers, jazz, and unnecessary Brooklyn accents. If it's the 1950s, expect poodle skirts and root beer floats.
The one major thing they never quite get right, however, are the settings themselves. Eagle-eyed viewers will quickly spot modern cars, appliances, and things like telephone poles in the background when they weren't supposed to exist. This weird anachronistic mix of overdoing certain elements while completely flubbing others is charming in a profoundly silly way. There's not really any feminist twist or misogyny at play, either; this is just a murder series about killer broads.
So Goofy It's Good
No one watches Investigation Discovery, the channel that created "Deadly Women," to learn anything. It's a channel dedicated to our base instincts as humans to watch as something awful happens; we can't help but stare at a train wreck. It's exploitative at its worst, but the delivery of the stories feels so fantastical that it's almost hard to feel uncomfortable about it. For example, the single most emotionally devastating cinematic experience of my life was watching the 2008 documentary "Dear Zachary," about a murder case in Canada where the killer ended up taking her own life and that of her young son. It's harrowing, heartbreaking stuff, and yet when "Deadly Women" did an episode on the case, it took me halfway into the story to even realize it was the same case.
Right about now you might be asking yourself why I'm recommending a series with so many egregious flaws. Why, exactly, should you watch something that I would describe as terrible and occasionally tasteless? There's a whole host of movies out there that people watch because they enjoy the campy bits, or the terrible bits. "Mystery Science Theater 3000" built an entire franchise off of watching garbage and enjoying the heck out of it. DeLong and her crew of crime experts make "Deadly Women" a blast, not because it's accurate or well-made, but because it's as campy as can be.
WinZip, WinRAR, and other archiving software are designed to compress files and save space. This software was first introduced when floppy drives had a maximum size of 1.44 MB, thus requiring the need for compression.
If you are looking to develop a website or a piece of software, you'll need an app to write and preview your code. That's where code editors and Integrated Development Environments, or IDE for short, come into play.
The No Man’s Sky Endurance update is the latest ambitious patch from Hello Games to launch across all platforms in 2022.
NMS has gone on a journey as long as the one to the middle of its own in-game universe, hitting shelves as a huge disappointment before releasing a wave of new updates that have helped transform the game.
The recent reviews section now lists No Man’s Sky as a very positively reviewed game, highlighting just how far the development team has gone to transform the game. And today’s endurance update is just the latest in a long line of patches to add new features to the game.
Today’s No Man’s Sky update is billed as the largest of 2022 so far and the 20th released by developers Hello Games.
The focus of the new patch is on freighters, frigates and fleets, overhauling the existing system that has been in place since the Foundation update launch.
Players can now live and work aboard their giant crafts alongside their crew, with a new bridge system providing a central hub for scanning and analysing planets from space.
A message from Hello Games explains more on some of the biggest changes made to the game through the No Man’s Sky Endurance update today, telling fans: “One of the most striking changes is to asteroids, which are now more varied and appear in vast fields, with thousands on screen at once.
“There are new Interstellar-style black holes, nebulae, and space atmospherics to explore. Travellers can enjoy these new incredible space vistas from windows and portholes, which they can now build on their freighters. Players can also build exterior sections to their freighters, for increased flexibility, or just to admire the universe from.”
Further details can be found in the No Man’s Sky Patch Notes Listed Below:
FREIGHTER OVERHAUL Freighter bases have been completely reinvented, with a huge array of new parts and themed rooms allowing players to quickly assemble a visually varied and distinctive home in the stars. These pre-decorated rooms can be further customised, or players can use empty room variants and take total control over decoration.
DYNAMIC CREW Freighters now bustle with specialist crew members walking around your base. Engineers, biologists and technicians display their thoughts as they patrol the base, and your hired frigate captains and squadron pilots visit your capital ship between their deep-space excursions.
AGRICULTURAL MODULES Construct expansive freighter farms with specialised cultivation chambers. Plant and grow rows of crops, then harvest all nearby crops with a single interaction.
BLACK HOLES Traversing space via black hole is more cinematic than ever, with stunning new visual effects.
EXTERIOR FREIGHTER BUILDING Freighter bases can now be extended beyond the hull, with observation decks and catwalks providing a direct view of the vastness of space.
BASE BUILDING QUALITY OF LIFE Visual variants of base parts can now be placed manually, overriding their automatic contextual placement.
FREIGHTER VARIETY Freighter exteriors have been visually upgraded, with enhanced textures, improved colours, and high-detail surface decoration.
ORGANIC FRIGATES Players may now encounter organic frigates as they explore deep space. Build your own fleet of these majestic beings, but be prepared for anomalous results when deploying them on fleet missions…
These living vessels are procedurally generated and come in a diverse variety of colour, shape and tentacle configurations.
Evolve the traits and stats of your organic vessels by feeding them from the Fleet Management screen.
DOORS AND WINDOWS Players may now construct external doors and windows in their capital ship, allowing spectacular views to the stars.
Alternatively, place internal doors, windows and walls to create aesthetically pleasing interior sections.
POLESTAR EXPEDITION Embark on an interstellar cruise in the Polestar expedition. Repair the freighter’s unique technology, uncover its mysterious past, and journey across the galaxy at its helm.
Players who have entirely completed the voyage may now end the expedition early and convert the save to normal mode ahead of the expedition deadline.
ENHANCED NEBULAE Encounter stunning interstellar gas clouds up close, for an even more dramatic experience of the beauty of space.
INHABITED HANGAR Freighter hangars have been redecorated, introducing windows, new machinery and alien crew into this vast space.
LIVING SHIP UPGRADES Send organic frigates out on expeditions to retrieve upgrades for their starship cousins. Hatch psychonic eggs into sentient technology, or graft parasites onto your living vessel to create additional storage capacity.
As well as inventory space and general procedural upgrades, the living ship can now evolve a number of specific improvements. Its grafted eyes can leech energy from enemy starships; neural shielding grants the ability to resist hostile cargo probes; a chloroplast membrane will automatically recharge its neural assembly; and the Wormhole Brain allows the ship sight into the economy and conflict levels of unvisited systems on the Galaxy Map.
I know how you feel. You just walked out of Jordan Peele's "Nope," and as you sort through your take on the filmmaker's latest genre provocation, you find yourself gripped with the desire to pump more Michael Wincott into your movie-mad veins. This is understandable. This is sane. This is right. Sooner or later, everyone comes to the realization that Michael Wincott is one of filmdom's most delectable character-actor delicacies. That rasp, that devilish gaze ... can we talk more about that rasp?
Wincott hasn't exactly been a well-kept secret, but he's had a bad habit of blowing it out in box-office disappointments. That these films missed with audiences wasn't his fault. Wincott, if he deigns to work with you, always brings that sleazy-sexy thing. His characters might be rotten for your mental and physical health, but if you've gotta have a vice, Wincott's one helluva narcotic.
With "Nope" poised to drive a new generation of worshippers to the First United Church of Wincott, please allow me, an early adopter of the creed, to get you hooked on the goods.
Talk Radio (1988)
The Toronto-born Wincott had appeared in a number of Canadian films during the late-'70s and early-'80s, and popped as the doomed, mobbed-up owner of a literal spaghetti factory on the "Bread and Roses" episode of "Miami Vice," but it was his unsettling turn as the deranged fan of Eric Bogosian's shock jock Barry Champlain in "Talk Radio" that put him on the map as a character actor.
Champlain courts disaster when he invites Wincott's Kent into the studio for a live, on-air appearance. The DJ's been receiving death threats, and this unvetted lunatic is all over the map. Wincott plays Kent as a psychotic Steven Tyler. He's a harmless goof when waxing rhapsodic over Bruce Springsteen's model wife Julianne Phillips, but turns volatile when he rages about corporate control of the populace. Champlain hurls nonstop, condescending insults at Kent, and due to Wincott's unpredictably manic energy, we can't tell if or when he might snap and attack his trash-talking hero. Director Oliver Stone frames him so unnervingly tight, that the acrid scent of stale cigarettes and cheap booze wafts off the screen.
Wincott dominates every second of this encounter. Unsurprisingly, Stone brought him back for "Born on the Fourth of July" and "The Doors."
1492: Conquest Of Paradise (1992)
Wincott's capacity for exuding cruelty is on full, hissable display in Ridley Scott's Christopher Columbus biopic, "1492: Conquest of Paradise." As the famed explorer's mutinous commander, Wincott simmers and sneers like he's the second coming of Basil Rathbone's Guy of Ginsbourne from "The Adventures of Robin Hood." The film is always visually stunning, but only occasionally involving. Aside from Vangelis's invigorating score and Adrian Biddle's captivating cinematography, Wincott's the liveliest element in the film. The scene where he hacks off an Indigenous Lucayan's arm for allegedly stealing gold solidifies our sympathies with the wavering Columbus (a strangely uncompelling Gérard Depardieu). Without his delicious villainy, Scott's epic would be a hollow, picturesque bore.
The Crow (1994)
Wincott finally gets to play the main heavy in "The Crow," and he is unfathomably evil as Detroit crime boss Top Dollar. Wincott puts the whole package to work: the gravelly voice and that come-hither-if-you-dare (and you ought not) sexuality has never been more intoxicating.
The film ups the perverse ante by thrusting him into an incestuous relationship with his half-sister (Bai Ling), and you're still powerless to resist this cretin's appeal. Their introduction — where Top Dollar gazes upon the lifeless body of an unfortunate threesome participant and sighs, "I think we broke her" — was shockingly depraved in 1994 and would be unthinkable in a mainstream comic book movie now. The film is irrevocably stained by the negligent on-set killing of star Brandon Lee, so this is a hard movie to watch, much less defend. Perhaps that's why Wincott didn't rocket to the top of filmmakers' villain wish lists. He was primed for stardom, and for whatever reason, retreated to character-actor work.
Dead Man (1995)
Wincott's Conway Trill is one of three (supposedly) highly skilled killers hired by moneyed industrialist Robert Mitchum to find and kill the man (Johnny Depp) who murdered his dirtbag son (Gabriel Byrne).
Wincott is perfectly suited to Jim Jarmusch's droll aesthetic. He's basically working a dialed-back variation on Roberto Benigni's wild-card character in "Down by Law." Trill is a loquacious idiot who verbalizes every fool notion that pops into his mind. Jarmusch cannily uses Wincott to transition away from Depp's narrative, leading off scenes with non-sequitur observations like, "Ever wish you were the moon?" or "Rome weren't built in a day, Cole. 'Course, I wasn't overseein' that particular job."
It's amazing a man this scatterbrained ever succeeded as a hired killer, and once he meets his fate at the bottom of Lance Henriksen's tummy, we can't help but wonder if his exploits were, like everything else that dribbles out of his mouth, a bunch of hooey.
Strange Days (1995)
When you can't get Bono, you go with Wincott. Actually, even if you can get Bono, why the hell aren't you going with Wincott? The role of Philo Gant, a super-skeezy music producer looking to make a fortune off his murdered hip-hop collaborator, would've played like sanitized evil in the hands of a global, image-obsessed rock star like Bono. He could've never convincingly burrowed into the industry muck to which he owes his gilded career. Wincott? Drape a sweat-soaked robe decked out with gaudy gold piping on my man, and he'll give you the willies for days.
Released in 1995, Kathryn Bigelow's "Strange Days," conceived by James Cameron and co-written with Jay Cocks, used the 1992 Los Angeles Riots as a precursor to a turn-of-the-millennium reckoning. It's a dazzling parade of scumbag characters (Tom Sizemore, Richard Edson, and William Fichtner get in on the down-and-dirty fun), but Wincott out-scuzzes them all as the drugged-out, amoral Gant.
Matt Berry is a comic genius. If you've watched the FX series "What We Do in the Shadows," you already know about the brilliant improv and comic timing of not only Berry but the entire cast. If you haven't, the show is based on the mockumentary film of the same name by Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement, and your stomach will hurt from laughing once you dive in.
It's the story of a group of vampires who live in a dilapidated mansion in Staten Island, along with a familiar who is also sort of a vampire hunter. It's weird, and silly, and has so many quotable lines that I barely know where to start. Okay, fine; they call a neighbor's Super Bowl party a "Superb Owl" party and now I will never call it anything else.
Berry plays Laszlo Cravensworth, a British vampire who is obsessed with sex, claims to be Jack the Ripper, makes vulva topiaries in the yard, and turns into a bat. When he does that, he yells the word, "Bat!" If you haven't seen the show, you might not get how funny that is, but I promise you, it's one of the best moments of every episode he says it in. As it turns out, this line was not only improved, but according to an interview with Polygon, Berry doesn't remember how it happened in the first place. I guess when you throw out funny lines like it's nothing, you can't remember them all. Of course, his co-star Natasia Demetriou who plays Laszlo's wife and fellow bloodsucker Nadja remembers how it all happened.
Bat!
In the interview, Berry revealed that not even executive producer Jemaine Clement can remember how it happened. "It's probably something where I felt that the scene had to end kind of naturally," he said, "and it was my way of getting out of the scene. It's like the improvisations started to kind of dry out. So I thought, 'Screw this, I need to get out of there.'"
Demetriou remembered it, though, saying, "I remember where the first 'Bat!' came from. I could be mistaken, but we were on the bridge in that park in L.A. for the pilot. And then it was like, 'Right Matt, so you're going to bat away,' and so you just went, 'Bat!'" Berry added, "It's always funny if someone says the thing that they're going to do. That's probably why I said it." Demetriou replied that she was "dying with laughter" at the time and that it wasn't in the script.
I remember watching the first time Berry said it and thinking "That is so stupid," while laughing until my eyes teared up. Try explaining why a single word is funny to someone, though. It doesn't work, so I'm just going to request that you watch the first episode.
"What We Do in the Shadows" is currently airing its fourth season (along with the earlier ones) on FX and Hulu. It has already been renewed for seasons 5 and 6.
DigiTimes recently reported that Intel is suffering from an oversupply problem with its more prominent processors and wants to limit the supply soon. The company has revealed strategies to increase the price of CPUs shortly to force computer vendors to purchase larger quantities immediately. The power play by the company seems relatively aggressive in blatantly stating, "You better purchase our CPUs while you can buy at the current price because this is your last chance." While not a new business strategy, the effect of Intel pressuring vendors will reduce sales several months later.
Intel pressures vendors with looming price hikes to oversupply their current stock of Intel CPUs
Sources for Digitimes are unsure of Intel's success with the aggressive strategy but are stating that we should begin to see cost increases as soon as the fall season for processors and Wi-Fi chips. Intel's current plan for success will require both vendor's needs and own strategies, as well as calculating the amount of overstock they can maintain.
There is also clear speculation that Intel's increasing price strategy for their processors will affect DIY and OEM markets and the reported mobile markets. Intel has planned to increase mobile processors to help resolve part of the market inflation and has taken the necessary precautions to contact consumers about the changes. Nothing may be safe from Intel's price adjustments.
DigiTimes estimates show that notebook volumes this next quarter will increase 14.3% due to a lack of demand during the second quarter of 2022. Intel also used COVID restrictions in China for the lower market. The marketplace is also about to see a significant change in the next several weeks as back-to-school retail seasons are about to begin before the holiday season at the end of the year. Apple, HP, and more are expected to see a flux in the marketplace, with Apple seeing a 43% increase and HP a 25% increase in shipments from the material shortages seen during the second quarter.
Intel is not the only company that has attempted a strategy recently, as AMD made a similar approach at the end of last year. Unfortunately, Disgust met AMD with vendors who declined the plan from the company, and AMD had to keep pricing the same. Intel continued to keep prices low, but it appears they can no longer maintain that cost stance.
Prices on CPUs are expected to increase at the end of this year, but Intel may not raise prices after all, depending on many different elements. Intel may want to keep costs down to eliminate older processors to make room in the market for next-gen CPUs. Right now, everything is speculation and estimations, so there is no true answer to what Intel may or may not do at this point. Lastly, Raptor Lake processors from the blue team are expected to launch shortly.
