If you’re booking summer travel and faced with a choice of similarly priced tickets on different airlines, it’s worth doing a little homework first. The Department of Transportation recently released its Air Travel Consumer Report, and included in its findings is data on the quality of services provided by each…
People use weighted blankets for a variety of reasons. According to Healthline, research suggests that the therapeutic blankets weighing between 5 and 30 pounds, “may benefit people with anxiety, autism, and insomnia, among other conditions.” Using deep-pressure stimulation, the blankets relax the nervous system and…
iPads aren’t exactly known for their gaming prowess, but plenty of people do use them for gaming on anyway. With a large screen and powerful chipsets, it does make a lot of sense. With iPad OS 16, Apple announced at this year’s WWDC that there are a ton of gaming-specific features being introduced.
The first is that Apple is bringing Metal 3 to iPads. Metal is a low-level and low-overhead API that combines functionality similar to both OpenGL and OpenCL in one API, for hardware-accelerated 3D graphics. It has the same FX upscaling as announced on the Mac.
Not only that, the company has announced a new API that lets apps download large assets in the background on iPads. It means games that require larger asset packs can do it while you play, so they can download new graphics packs or other important files.
Finally, Game Center will let you play without creating a new account. You can find friends, track progress, you can view if friends beat your high scores, see when they’re online, and other features, too. SharePlay will also make it easier to join and play with friends inside of Game Center.
If you’re an iPad gamer, then these features may interest you, though it’s a bit of a niche market. Games like Genshin Impact and Monument Valley look fantastic on one thanks to the bigger screen, but most gamers on iOS devices are more likely to use an iPhone. Still, it’s a good addition and gives the iPad a leg-up in the gaming department over competitors.
The post iPads are about to get a whole lot better at gaming appeared first on XDA.
"The Boys" is one of the best TV satires in recent years. A superhero show with biting social commentary and wrapped up in tons of depravity, gore, and nudity, it's equal parts hilarious and poignant -- and it's only getting better as time goes on.
One thing that makes the show stand out from other superhero adaptations is the care and nuance it gives its villains. They are all despicable, but fleshed out and with enough personality to feel distinct from one another.
This season sees The Deep get a bigger role after being kicked around a lot last season. There is also Victoria Neuman, a seemingly good person leading the fight against rogue supes who turned out to be a big super-powered killer. And lastly, there's this season's new big bad, Jensen Ackles' hotly anticipated Soldier Boy, possibly the only person capable of defeating Homelander.
/Film spoke with actors Jensen Ackles, Chace Crawford, and Claudia Doumit about why it's good being bad.
The big news coming into this season was that "The Boys" was going to introduce Soldier Boy, who, in the comics, is a clear parody of Captain America. In the show, he is reimagined as the very first superhero, a man who fought in WWII and is just as bigoted and racist as you'd imagine a WWII veteran with superpowers would be.
The character also gives fans of Jensen Ackles a different side of the actor than what we've seen before, with a deeper voice and different poise than his more recent roles. According to Ackles, he wanted to channel the mannerisms and voice of actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
"I kind of went back to, not anyone specifically, or any actor, any character specifically, but some of those old movies and those old movie stars from the '40s, the '50s and stuff, and just how they carried themselves, how they spoke, it was a different ... it had a different cadence to it. I just tried to do something a little different than, I think, what we're normally used to hearing, just to give him a little slight variation."
When it comes to The Deep, this season sees his return to the spotlight after he managed to escape the Scientology-like Church of the Collective and enjoying great success from his tell-all book. But is that enough to set The Deep on a path of redemption after all he's done? Don't count on it, says Chace Crawford.
"I don't know if he could ever be, like, fully redeemed. I think me and [showrunner Eric] Kripke have talked about that before, but they are putting him through the wringer, though. It's always fun because there's the Boys and the superheroes and The Deep on his own little like storyline. Especially season 2, he was off on his own boat, but it's great. It's a lot of fun. It's, obviously, the type of show we're doing. Again, the more absurd it is, the more nuanced and real you make it, like, "He really is in a relationship with this secret." It's really funny and I love it. It's right up my alley, my sense of humor, and I'm like, "Yes, I also know that guy, too."
Lastly, season 2 ended with the reveal that Victoria Neuman, a congresswoman and open critic of Vought, is actually a superhero who has killed a ton of people. Though we've met several heroes before, from Stormfront and Homelander to The Deep and Edgar, Neuman is the first character we've met who doesn't have a clear allegiance to anyone. For actor Claudia Doumit, that was the most appealing part of playing the character.
"It's wildly interesting, actually. It's endlessly fascinating to play Victoria Neuman because she is quite a duplicitous character and she plays both lines of the Boys and the suits and she's kind of in her own lane. But it's really interesting because I get to play her different with each character because she's a woman of many faces. The way that she interacts with Hughie is vastly different to how she interacts with Homelander or Starlight. She puts on the face that she thinks that will get her ahead in that conversation. It's actually really fun. I'm playing numerous people. [laughs] It's really fun."
"The Boys" season 3 is streaming on Prime Video, with new episodes every Friday.
Read this next: The 14 Best Sci-Fi Shows On Amazon Prime
The post The Boys Season 3 Villains on Redemption, Deep Voices, and Shifting Allegiances [Exclusive] appeared first on /Film.
It’s summertime, people, and that means heat rash, going to work even though it’s a really nice day, and grilling hot dogs! The humble frankfurter may have been invented in Germany, but it has become a distinctly American food—according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, in 2020, 944.3 million pounds of hot…
Apple is getting more serious about gaming on Mac and iPad with the help of its M2 chips. At WWDC, the company showed off upscaling tech along the lines of NVIDIA's Deep Learning Super Sampling and AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution.
Metal 3 will include support for MetalFX Upscaling. Your Mac will render smaller frames that are less compute-intensive. MetalFX will upscale the visuals and apply temporal anti-aliasing. The idea is to deliver better and more efficient gaming performance with higher frame rates than might be possible from pure hardware-driven rendering.
Resident Evil Village will utilize the tech when that game comes to Mac. Capcom says the game will run at 1080p "effortlessly" on MacBook Air and at 4K on Mac Studio. No Man's Sky will also use MetalFX upscaling when it arrives on Mac and iPad later this year. Grid Legends is on the way to Mac as well.
Apple also announced a fast resource loading API that's designed to minimize loading time, akin to Microsoft's DirectStorage tech. It works by routing directing game data more directly from storage to the CPU. Apple says this will enable games to "easily access high-quality textures and geometry needed to create expansive worlds for realistic and immersive gameplay."
While Apple historically hasn't done a great job with supporting games (there's no native iOS app support for Stadia and Xbox Cloud Gaming for one thing), the introduction of MetalFX upscaling is a positive move. Getting big-name studios and publishers such as Capcom, EA and Hello Games on board could help turn the tide for Mac as a viable option for gamers. However, broader support for Steam games would be a bigger step in the right direction.
Follow all of the news from WWDC right here!
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
If you ask me, the idea of filmmakers planning out the overall arc of a story is given a little too much weight these days. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is commonly held up as a poster child of a studio knowing exactly what each movie was building to ... but that's actually not accurate at all, given the fact that many involved with the franchise have admitted to improvising on the fly when needed. As much as the recent "Star Wars" films have been derided because of Lucasfilm not knowing what direction to take the overall sequel trilogy, I'll die on the hill that they didn't need some master plan -- they just needed to hire the right directors who understood how to jump on board a moving train and evolve the story in compelling ways (like Rian Johnson).
Television is obviously a much different beast than film, but I'd argue that much of the same applies here, as well. "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul" co-creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould are famous for writing themselves into corners, without having any clear plan to follow, and forcing themselves to find the most creative and narratively satisfying solutions.
That brings us to the newest batch of quotes from JD Payne and Patrick McKay, the showrunner duo behind "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" series. Prime Video has released a few fresh looks at the upcoming epic today, but the latest information (along with a new image) from Empire might be the most fascinating yet, as we now know to officially expect five seasons of this new series.
Set in the Second Age of Middle-earth, long before the events seen in Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" trilogies, "The Rings of Power" is apparently taking the scenic route towards telling its particular version of the story that's loosely adapted from author J.R.R. Tolkien's writings found in the appendices of "The Return of the King." That roadmap apparently includes stipulations for five seasons and 50 hours of story, total. As JD Payne told Empire:
"The rights that Amazon bought were for a 50-hour show. They knew from the beginning that was the size of the canvas -- this was a big story with a clear beginning, middle, and end. There are things in the first season that don't pay off until Season 5."
"We even know what our final shot of the last episode is going to be," Payne remarks. Now, personally I tend to prefer an approach that involves throwing in every potentially great idea into the mix right from the outset, rather than "saving" anything for later installments down the line. In its prime, "Lost" might be one of the best examples of a series where the creators had absolutely no idea what their final destination would be ... but still made the journey to that endpoint as thrilling and entertaining as it could possibly be.
And for those about to cite the show's disappointing final season, allow me to point to "Game of Thrones" as a counterexample of a series where the creators knew exactly what the ending had in store, yet fumbled the conclusion anyway.
Of course, the biggest concern of Tolkien purists revolves around whether the story will stay faithful to the author's original writings. As much as the details of this new story told in "The Rings of Power" will be brand-new additions to Tolkien lore, the showrunners are insistent that viewers will have nothing to worry about. They took their cues directly from someone who once admitted that his story was meant to be carried on by others long after he was gone. According to Patrick McKay:
"It was like Tolkien put some stars in the sky and let us make out the constellations. In his letters [particularly in one to his publisher], Tolkien talked about wanting to leave behind a mythology that 'left scope for other minds and hands, wielding the tools of paint, music and drama.' We're doing what Tolkien wanted. As long as we felt like every invention of ours was true to his essence, we knew we were on the right track."
Obviously, much of this will be in the eye of the beholder once the series finally debuts. But to hear McKay tell it, they found comfort in knowing that they were merely caretakers. "The pressure would drive us insane if we didn't feel like there was a story here that didn't come from us. It comes from a bigger place. It came from Tolkien and we're just the stewards of it. We trust those ideas so deeply, because they're not ours. We're custodians, at best."
"The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" will debut on Prime Video on September 2, 2022.
Read this next: The 15 Best Anthology TV Series Ranked
The post The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Has Five Seasons Already Mapped Out appeared first on /Film.
I got to The Sopranos party a little late. I probably could've gotten into the series when it was airing, but I think some of the themes would have eluded my 12-year-old brain. Also, The Sopranos works best when subverting the mafia cliches we've come to love. — Read the rest
So we knew that Diablo Immortal would have microtransactions. The team has been kind of mum on them overall outside of general platitudes that they wouldn't impact the game that much: but several posts and YouTube channels are actually breaking this down the new monetization model scientifically, and things aren't looking good for Diablo Immortal max stat requirements.
That material includes a Reddit post by daymeeuhn that showcases how far the stat and gem rabbit hole goes, a full explanation of pay-to-win from Gregg2G, and a rundown from the Bellular News channel. Let's break this down. A lot of the onus on the cracks in this system falls on legendary gems.
Legendary gems can drastically increase your stats, to the point where they can outweigh multiple slots of "traditional gear." You can get these, quasi-indirectly, through microtransactions: via buying "legendary or rare crests [boosters]" to go on better Elder Rift runs (randomized dungeon runs from Diablo 3). Legendary gems are so rare that at the current moment, you essentially need to purchase crests to see them drop reliably. While crests are technically given out as free rewards (at a limit of only a few a day for rare, and only a few a month for legendary), the chance of earning a legendary gem is very low (evidently 10%) compared to the drastically increased drop rate from premium legendary crests. It's also important to note that legendary gems have rarity levels, and free players cannot earn legendary gems higher than a "2-star rating." This isn't even taking into account the "Awakening" and "Resonance" mechanics, which further upgrade gear via premium dawning echo items.
Gregg2G posits that one player, the "Whale," who is at the top of the PVP charts, potentially paid $20,000 to get to where he is this early (with excessive amounts of legendary gems), and it could take around $110,000 to fully max out in the current environment. Yes, Diablo Immortal has PVP, which is obviously directly impacted by this system, and is unable to skirt the "well pay-to-win doesn't matter because the game is all PVE" excuse that many developers unsuccessfully try to use. It's suggested that true free players could take years to work up to the level of some of the Diablo Immortal max highest ranked paid players right now. Confusing right? Well that's by design.
This has sort of been addressed by a member of the development team on Twitter. Originally, the idea, communicated through a Blizzard post, was that "there is no way to acquire or rank up gear using money." The catch is that "gear" in these strict terms, means the "12 item slots." You can, however, essentially buy loot boxes (sorry, crest bonuses to do dungeons to get loot boxes) to acquire better gear; and the legendary gem system is not considered "gear" by the developer, even though it's an item that directly is attached to your character that increases your stats.
Expect our Diablo Immortal review later today. Suffice to say, this factors in!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jwn-aVc13VY
The post YouTuber posits that it takes over $100,000 to max out gear in Diablo Immortal appeared first on Destructoid.
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Tonight marks the penultimate episode of the third season of the excellent HBO black comedy "Barry," and last week's installment made it genuinely impossible to envision how this show gets to its already-renewed fourth season. You may recall that Barry Berkman (Bill Hader) leaped out of the frying pan — in the form of a trio of dirt bikers trying to kill him as part of a twisted vengeance-army plot hatched by Barry's old frenemy Fuches (Stephen Root) — only to unknowingly arrive in the fire — in the form of being poisoned in the home of the widow of his old military buddy (who he killed in season one). But with the father of Detective Janice Moss looking to meet Barry himself, we know the question isn't if Barry will survive the poisoning. It's how.
Compared to last week's pyrotechnics, "candy asses" starts in a more low-key fashion, in a full church congregation, where only one man — Ryan Madison's dad George Krempf (Michael Bofshever), the man grieving his actor son who Barry killed in the series' pilot episode — is unable to sit down when a hymn ends. Hmm. But then we cut back to Barry foaming at the mouth after eating a beignet he himself had purchased, but one that was poisoned by Sharon (Karen David). Though Sharon seems a little less at ease now, she's able to drape a cloth over Barry's face as he seemingly stops breathing. But he can't be dead. Not yet. Right?
After the silent opening title card, we see Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler) beginning to deliver his first streaming master-class video, as his agent Tom (Fred Melamed) teased in a previous episode. As was teased in a previous episode, too, Gene is being directed by his old flame Annie (Laura San Giacomo), who seems a bit less impressed than he is at the laughs gained by a very chintzy-looking taxi prop during Gene's monologue, in which he jumps from one poor actorly impersonation to another, from Pacino in "Serpico" to Hoffman in "Midnight Cowboy". "Hey, I'm actin' here!" Oof, Gene.
The next morning, Barry inexplicably wakes up, coughing, somehow not killed by the poisoned beignet. Understandably confused, Barry wakes up, exits Sharon's house, still in pain and able to shout a profanity or two (though don't get used to Hader speaking — he's mostly silent in this episode) only to find that the waves of the ocean are lapping through the residential area where he's in. And soon enough, Barry is on an endless beach, with a group of folks not too far from him staring into said ocean. So ... uh ... definitely not a dream.
Sally Reed (Sarah Goldberg), meanwhile, is finding some hard transitions in her first day in the writers' room for the BanShe streaming show "The New Medusas". The head writer seems initially unwilling to hear Sally's calmly pointed feedback about how one of the heroines' actions — "sucking and then eating" off some guy's genitals — doesn't actually track with the rest of the plotline. But even though the feedback does get through, Sally is unable to take the win, especially when she notices another, more rowdy writers' room that's being led by none other than her old acting-school colleague and ex-assistant Natalie (D'Arcy Carden). It's not enough that Natalie is now where Sally was at the start of the season, heading up her own show and belittling an assistant of her own. Natalie's show, where she plays a single mom with a teenage daughter trying to figure things out in New York City, seems so close to "Joplin" that Sally is overcome by a fit of rage much like that of her ex Barry, inspiring her to emergency-stop an elevator and shout in fury at Natalie for being "an entitled f**king c**t!" It's unnerving how quickly Sally is able to turn on her anger, even if it is indeed shocking to find Natalie moving up so quickly in the world.
NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan), meanwhile, has headed down South to Bolivia to find his lover Cristobal (Michael Irby), simply by shouting Cristobal's name in the middle of a crowded marketplace. He approaches a random street vendor, only to realize that this street vendor works for the Sifuentes family and has shot him via poison dart. "Yep, that's what I thought you were doing, but did not want to be rude," NoHo Hank says after having waited for ... a while for the vendor to prepare his weapon. Later, he wakes up in a dank cell by himself, realizing that two of his fellow Chechens are in an adjacent cell, being tortured by four Bolivians and Elena. Hank asks what he can do, and is told very little by the others, who are trying to escape but bleedingly badly: "Be ready."
Barry is still on the beach, and mildly baffled when he sees a sedan pull up. Its driver is none other than George Krempf, looking at him implacably. It's here that Bill Hader (as director) cuts to real life, where we realize that Barry did actually wake up from his poisoned beignet, and did escape Sharon's house, but is suffering some kind of late-acting paralysis, barely sitting up against a dumpster in a nearby alley ... and still staring down George. Uh oh.
Gene Cousineau, meanwhile, has some very good advice for his masterclass students: "Embrace your embarrassment!" It turns out that the person who may need that advice most of all is Annie, who whispers desperately to her script supervisor that she hasn't directed in decades and has no idea what she's doing. Her script supervisor tries to boost her spirits, at least to make Annie comfortable enough to act like she knows what she's doing. But considering that we just saw Annie teaching an art class, it tracks that she needs a bit of time to get back up to speed. After the filming is over, Gene and Annie are congratulated by an executive, the latter being invited to hear about some other upcoming projects.
Meanwhile, we see Fuches in his role as Kenneth Goulet going to visit Jim Moss (Robert Wisdom), the father of the dead Janice Moss. Jim invites Fuches to take a drive, where he calmly but carefully tries to ply more information about how this "Goulet" knows what exactly happened to his daughter. It's here that he tells Fuches a very disturbing piece of information, both for himself and for us: when Jim served in Vietnam and was captured as a POW, he convinced his own interrogator to kill himself. "...Was he depressed?" Fuches asks, reasonably a bit concerned about being in a car with a guy that tough. But Fuches should have focused more on the destination with Jim, as he only realizes too late where Jim was driving: to the police station, where Fuches is taken in for questioning. "I'm no kind of genius or anything," Fuches says right before seeing the cops, and ... uh, yeah, we know. Albert Nguyen (James Hiroyuki Liao) is baffled about why Fuches would approach Jim at all, but the LAPD see him and think he's the infamous Raven. Albert wants to interrogate Fuches with the cameras off, but Jim is taken aback when he hears offhand that multiple people — including Gene — have said Barry is responsible for Janice's death.
Jim doesn't waste much time, visiting Gene's wrap party and horrifying the acting teacher with his presence. He calmly and carefully — it's a solid tactic — explains what we've already seen happen: that Fuches visited him to tell him about who killed Janice, that he drove Fuches to the cops, and that Barry supposedly killed Janice. "Barry's a good kid," Gene says, not willing to anger his ex-student again after they seemingly made nice a few episodes ago. We know Gene is lying, of course, but Jim knows without the history of the whole series: all he has to do is look at the top of Gene's forehead, spot the flop sweat, and innately understand that Barry likely is the man to find next.
Barry seems like he's at death's door, for sure, stuffed into the back seat of the car driven by George. Once he pulls the car in, he pulls out a revolver and looks at it pensively. Again: uh oh.
Later that night, Sally is equally shocked to realize that her tirade against Natalie wasn't for naught — Natalie was wisely recording her via her cell phone and has posted it to a TMZ-style website, thus tarnishing Sally's already-shaky reputation. Sally's lost her job on "The New Medusas," and her agent Lindsay (Jessy Hodges) begs her not to even record a rushed apology. But when Lindsay arrives at Sally's apartment, she learns the actress didn't heed her advice, recording and sending a video to the same TMZ-style website that "isn't an apology -- this is damage control!" "My show is me, Lindsay, and she stole my f**king show!" Sally shouts, before essentially torpedoing her own career not only with an "I'm sorry if you're offended" apology but a tirade at Lindsay that leads the latter to drop her as a client. I should note that the way Hader stages this scene, with Sally backing away from Lindsay as she shouts, into a darkened room that swallows her up whole, is very effective.
Sally's career may be dead, but let's head back to Barry and George Krempf, the latter of whom is reminiscing about the imagined sound of his son's feet as a child, and equally imagined conversations with his son. "My wife thinks I'm losing my mind," he says wistfully. He explains that his love for Ryan even as a child was such that he initially found the will to cause violence against anyone who would harm the boy. "What would I do?" he asks out loud. But there is one common thread throughout all three seasons of "Barry", which is that our title character just keeps lucking into staying alive. Here, it's because George Krempf, with the means to kill Barry, can't do it. He can't bear the thought. "I want to see my son again," he all but gasps out (and boy, Bofshever -- a king of the It's That Guy! actors -- is excellent in this scene).
We cut back to Barry's dream on the beach, as he reaches the group of oceanic onlookers, only to realize that they are all the people he's killed over the years, from Chechen mobster Goran (Glenn Fleshler) to his old buddy Chris (Chris Marquette), the latter of whom is understandably confused and seemingly a bit annoyed when Barry waves at him as if to say, "Hey, bro!" Then they all -- also including Esther from last season and Cristobal's father-in-law Fernando -- look to the sky where they hear a cacophony of voices ... as Barry is roused back to life, wheeled into the hospital, as he sees that George Krempf killed himself right outside the hospital. Goddamn.
"candy asses" ends back at the LAPD, as Albert finally gets that off-camera interrogation with Fuches, asking him to once again explain what he's doing there. But Albert is really there to explain to Fuches who he is to Barry Berkman, so he can get a better sense of who Fuches is to Barry. When Albert asks him point-blank if Barry is "caught up in all this", Fuches talks about how sad it is that Chris was killed, taken away from his wife and son. "You ever wonder why Chris, who never saw combat, would even have PTSD?" Fuches asks pointedly, stating that Chris was at the wrong place at the wrong time instead. Essentially, he says Barry killed Chris without having to say those words. And with that, Albert hurriedly, angrily leaves the LAPD, but not before grabbing his revolver and loading it.
So, again, I will say: Uh oh.
That aside, "candy asses" is another very breathless, suspenseful episode in a season that has basically been at the same level of unbearable tension, at least in terms of the Barry/Fuches side of things. I do wonder, with just next week's season finale staring us in the face, what to make of the whole season, in that the balance between darkness (via the criminal work that Barry partakes in) and the relative lightness of industry satire leans so far on the darker side. And that's not a bad creative choice, but it makes the industry satire stand out a bit more. Take Gene, for instance, whose most key scene relative to Barry comes when Jim visits him briefly, a scene that could arguably have taken place at any location. (We don't see Gene again in this episode after Jim questions him.) Or Sally, whose behavior here is clearly intended to remind us of how she was verbally abused by Barry earlier in the season and is now flipping it around on Natalie. It's sad and well-acted and searing in its own way, but I do feel like the season has found less and less need for the industry satire as anything other than a balm from the bleakness of the title character's descent into Hell.
Because if I ask myself, right now, what I expect or hope or want from next week's finale, it's all about Barry and Fuches. Will Barry get a fuller, more complete sense of the vengeance army Fuches enacted? Has Fuches inadvertently gotten his most able soldier in said army in connecting some dots for Albert? And how the hell is Barry going to get out of it to survive to another season? (To that end, can this show possibly last more than four seasons?) "Barry" continues to be unpredictable and tense as ever, so while I have all these questions, I am genuinely glad that I have no idea where this show is going next.
OTHER THOUGHTS
-- Henry Winkler's portion of "candy asses" is mostly very light-hearted, especially his terrible impressions. "Stella! Get down here! I want to eat!" I think Tennessee Williams is turning over in his grave now.
-- One of the leads on "The New Medusas" is called "Medusabby". Solid detail.
-- D'Arcy Carden throws herself into the brief, seen-through-the-window description of her show when Sally spies on Natalie. When's D'Arcy Carden getting her star vehicle?
-- I really like Anthony Carrigan as NoHo Hank, and the Hank/Cristobal relationship was a fascinating subplot in the first half of the season, but I fear it's going to be given a bit shorter shrift than needed in the back half of the season. (All things considered, I'm a bit surprised NoHo Hank got less screen time here than even Gene or Sally, considering he's in mortal danger.)
-- "You want a phone book to hit him with? A sock full of coins?" LA's finest, folks!
-- "Robust? Lantern-jawed?" Fred Melamed really excels at rattling off adjectives that don't fit Gene Cousineau.
Read this next: Batman Movies Ranked From Worst To Best
The post Barry's Penultimate Season-Three Chapter Goes to the Ocean appeared first on /Film.
As Apple fans and the wider tech community gear up for WWDC, there are common areas of anticipation. Indeed, WWDC is fairly predictable in some sense, with new versions of iOS, iPad OS, tvOS, and whateverelseOS Apple has for the year being debuted. It’s also a developer conference, so those building on and for Apple, get their eyes on the latest and greatest. But there’s a more low-key announcement I want to see from Apple this year: iTunes being terminated. Put it out to pasture, it’s done. Nobody would miss it.
This idea first resonated in my mind upon reading a piece by a former colleague, Daryl Baxter over at TechRadar. Windows is the last bastion of iTunes and as Baxter’s headline reads, it’s almost like a punishment. I have never conversed with a single person who has ever enjoyed using iTunes either on Windows or Mac. I’ve been using it for about 19 years and it’s never been fun. So it’s time to go.
The ‘modern’ iTunes for Windows has hardly moved along from the earliest incarnations. At first, it was a necessary evil. If you wanted to use an iPod and you had a Windows PC, you had to use iTunes. It was entirely required to transfer your digital music to your digital music player.
Even in the early days of the iPhone, iTunes had a place. It was clunky to use but for transferring to and from your shiny new Apple phone, it was something you lived with.
But those days are far behind us. Apple has just discontinued the iPod and who connects their iPhone or iPad to a computer to transfer files anymore? The truth is that even Apple doesn’t see a reason to use iTunes anymore, after all, it was pulled from the Mac a few years ago. But Windows users are left to suffer, with a product that sees updates but never actually improves.
Its sole purpose nowadays is as a front-end to Apple Music, your previously purchased music and video library, and the iTunes Store. Everything you do on your iPhone and iPad is wireless. If iTunes for Windows provided access to Apple TV+, there might be an argument to keep it. But it doesn’t, so there isn’t. And again, Apple discontinued it on its own desktop platform three years ago. If there were reason to keep it, that wouldn’t have happened, would it?
On the Mac, you have Music, Podcasts and Apple TV+. All of these apps are better than the clunky mess that is iTunes for Windows. If Apple has enough paying customers for its music service on Windows that it cares enough to keep iTunes alive, then give us the better apps.
Apple Music is available as a web app, and it’s decent enough. But it doesn’t have offline music. There is also a far superior third-party app called Cider. And right now this is the only way anyone should use Apple Music on Windows, albeit, again, without offline music. If you need to be offline, you have to use iTunes.
Cider, though, is magnificent, even in its early days. It’s a free, open-source application with a UI reminiscent of the Apple Music web app. But it goes much further, with a whole raft of settings and customizations. I’ve got a Dracula theme running on mine. It’s not just visuals, either, there are features to tweak audio, apply lyrics, link to Discord even some experimental plugins. It even has podcasts.
There’s still plenty to be done and some features, such as sync, are labeled as a work in progress. But it’s hosted on Github and has a beta or stable channel you can follow.
Cider isn’t just available on Windows, but it does at least serve as a worthwhile alternative to having iTunes in your life. Made better by the fact that it’s a really good app. Check it out either on Github, the Microsoft Store, or install it through the Windows Package Manager.
Nobody is surprised Apple prioritizes its own platforms. But nobody is going to be so fed up with iTunes that they’d run out and buy a Mac. Services like music, podcasts, and TV need to be platform agnostic. Windows just has the numbers. Would the iPod have taken off like it did if it had remained a Mac-only product? Definitely not.
Apple has been pretty generous with supporting other platforms with its media services. Apple Music is on Android and the major smart speakers and Apple TV is available on games consoles and competing smart TV platforms. The precedence for the guardians of iTunes to be a bit more generous to its customers who don’t drown themselves entirely in Apple hardware is there. By all accounts, the Mac apps are pretty nice to use. Sure would be nice to have them on Windows.
So please, Apple, finally do the decent thing. The iPod is gone, and iTunes needs to follow.
The post All I want at WWDC is for Apple to kill iTunes for Windows appeared first on XDA.
This recent Patreon post from Luke Scull lists a number of people from the NWN community who have now joined The Blades of Netheril project in some capacity. It also pushes the release date of Doom of Icewind Dale, the project's first chapter, back to September.
Check it out:
A very warm hello to all my Patrons, and everyone else for that matter! Last month was exceptionally busy, and I have some great news to share. The first big piece of news is that Daniel Morris, aka Irongron, Lead Area Designer on Tyrants of the Moonsea and head honcho at Arelith, will be joining the project as Lead Area Designer. This will free me up to finish the remaining writing before I turn my full attentions to scripting.
In case you're unfamiliar with Daniel's work, Arelith is by far the largest Persistent World active for NWNEE. In fact, it accounts for something like 30% of the current active player base. He's created a world that pushes the boundaries of what is possible in the NWN engine and possesses a talent for building beautiful areas that is quite astonishing. It's fantastic to know that Doom of Icewind Dale will look every bit as good as Tyrants of the Moonsea, and perhaps even better!
If you'd like to check out Arelith, please follow the above link. You can also support the Arelith team on Patron here.
The second piece of news is that Bill Harper, Lead Artist on NWNEE and Technical Artist/General Toolset Wizard on Tyrants of the Moonsea, will be helping out where he can, time permitting. This will be a huge boost for the project, as no one knows Neverwinter Night as well as Bill. Bill has undertaken the immense talk of bringing the entirety of NWNEE's artwork up to HD standards. You can check out his work on the Vault and support him in his endeavours here.
The third piece of news is that a talented musician named Raphael has volunteered to create ambient music for Doom of Icewind Dale. This will hopefully mean that with the four incredible cinematic and combat tracks produced by Will Musser (http://www.willmusser.com/), the module will feature a complete OST.
But Luke, you may ask, when is Doom of Icewind Dale going to be released? You said it would be June!
Well, yes, I did. It was my goal, and honestly, we're not far off. Assuming the writing and areas are finished in July, and scripting takes 4-6 weeks of (pretty intensive) labour, I'd like to get the beta sent out in late August, with the public release landing in September. This is a little later than I'd planned, but honestly, it will be worth it. I'm committed to what is, in effect, seven Premium Modules forming an epic campaign over the next few years. A little extra time to make sure the first chapter really blows everyone's socks makes sense to me. I've been on the NWN scene for 20 years and I've since become a professional game designer and internationally published author and I still love doing this, so have no fear I'll see it through the completion. It's my happy place.
I'd like to take this opportunity to again thank everyone who has contributed toward this project. I know sometimes it may feel like you're not seeing an immediate reward for your generosity, especially when I'm not able to post here as frequently as I'd like - but rest assured every penny you donate goes towards making awesome new NWN content and that you're directly responsible for making this project happen. In particular, I'd like to give a shout-out to a few anonymous donators who this month gave the project a large, unexpected boost. Thank you all!
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Old PCs can't cope with the demands of modern operating systems and software. While upgrading hardware such as memory can help, the better solution is a lightweight operating system.
We’re in the the middle of a broiling summer, with record-breaking temperatures recorded all over the world. Now more than ever, sweating is completely normal—and crucial for regulating our body temperature— but arriving at work with your shirt already soaked from your morning commute isn’t a good look for anyone. But…
If you want to improve your computer performance, you can try enabling Windows 10's GPU hardware scheduling. This feature was included by Microsoft in the May 2020 update, and since then, many gamers have given it a try to see if it helps them or not. However, your computer’s GPU might not support it.If you want to know more about GPU hardware scheduling, keep reading as we discuss how it works, the system requirements, and how you can turn it on.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
I never loved cars, but I did take them for granted. At college in Ohio, cars represented the only means other than an irregular shuttle to go anywhere or do anything outside of school. They are essential to the lives of millions of people in the United States and around the world. But they are also dangerous. According to the World Health Organization, roughly 1.3 million people worldwide die in car accidents each year. In the United States alone, a report by the National Safety Council found that cars killed 42,060 people in 2020.
"Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior" ends with a car chase. Our hero Max drives a Mack truck to transport a settlement's full stock of gasoline to safety. He is pursued by a flotilla of cars and motorcycles, scavenged from the dump and fitted with weapons. One of them is the charismatic leader Humungus, who bears a needlessly ornate Smith & Wesson. Another is Wez, a mad man with a mohawk whose loved one was killed by Max's ally the Feral Kid. These eccentric heroes and villains blast through the Australian outback at high speeds. You could not simulate the film's climactic chase with the computer effects available at the time. You needed real people to jump from one car to another, real cars to smash. The most "mad" thing about the "The Road Warrior" is not the fetish gear or the violence. It is that when the Mack truck crashes in the climax, it is being steered by a person.
Real people were hurt during the making of "The Road Warrior." An authorized video on the film's production captures the injury of Guy Norris. Filling in for Vernon Wells as "Wez," Norris drove his motorcycle directly into a wrecked car and sent himself flying, as required by the script. Ideally, Norris was to control his descent, landing on safety material in such a way as to avoid serious injury. Unfortunately, Norris flipped over several times in the air and lost control. He broke his leg upon hitting the ground. The scene was kept in the film, but Norris himself was removed from set for the rest of the production. To the cast and crew, Norris's injury was an unfortunate accident, a reminder that every stunt carries a risk no matter how carefully the team prepares in advance. To the narrator of the documentary, it is proof that "nothing is more exciting or dangerous than the make-believe world of the movies."
It would be tempting, then, to assume that the crew of "The Road Warrior" was a team of daredevils who risked their necks each and every day for the fun of it, and that the final product only became more exciting because people could have died on set at any time. Fair enough. There is a sense of danger to real bodies in peril that can only be found today in Tom Cruise films or "Mad Max: Fury Road." But "The Road Warrior" was not a reckless production. In fact, "The Road Warrior" could only have been as good as it was because the cast and crew took safety seriously.
George Miller, the director of the "Mad Max" films, was a doctor before he made movies. According to Kyle Buchanan's "Blood, Sweat & Chrome," he grew up in Queensland operating on victims of car crashes. He would carry the memory of that violence with him to the set of the first "Mad Max" movie. The film's production was a disaster; at the very beginning of the shoot, two members of the crew broke their legs in a motorcycle accident on the way to work. Miller nearly quit his job as director on the spot. "We haven't even started," he said, "and people are gonna die." Thankfully, he changed his mind. Miller came to realize over the course of production that the challenges that intimidated him were just part of filmmaking. "It wasn't until I spoke to Phil Noyce and Peter Weir, and they said, 'Oh, it's always tough ...' it really changed my attitude." Miller made movies following "Mad Max" with the knowledge that filmmaking could kill as surely as a car.
Crashing the Mack truck in "The Road Warrior" meant planning for every eventuality to protect the life of the driver. According to the website Mad Max Movies, the glass of the windscreen was replaced with steel to protect the driver from broken glass and outside projectiles. The back of the cabin was reinforced by a steel framework to prevent the trailer mounting from penetrating the cabin, should the mounting break from the force of impact. A safety crew followed in a dune buggy, with an ambulance and helicopter at hand to rush the driver to safety if needed. Every one of those layers of safety, even the ones that remained untested, were necessary to avoid injury or death.
The driver of the Mack truck in the film was not a stunt driver by trade. According to Luke Buckmaster's book "Miller and Max," Dennis Williams was a truck driver who met members of the "Road Warrior" crew at a car dealership. When the team told him what they planned for the climax of the film, Williams knew that there was no way Max's actor Mel Gibson could successfully crash a complex vehicle like the Mack. They needed somebody with experience driving trucks to do the job. The one member of the team with said experience, Gerry Gauslaa, was busy doing stunts. In the end, Williams himself was hired to crash the truck. Williams was understandably terrified; after all, his job wasn't to crash trucks, but to avoid crashing trucks at all costs. If he botched the stunt and left the truck insufficiently damaged, the film would be in serious trouble.
Williams managed to pull off the stunt successfully. For this we can credit his bravery and personal expertise. We may also credit members of the crew who offered him advice, like the previously mentioned Guy Norris. But most important of all was the culture of "The Road Warrior" production. The crew had more money to work with and were also more experienced than when the first "Mad Max" was produced. They shot scenes quickly and efficiently, but took great care in doing so. Whether a crewmember was a professional like Guy Norris or a relative amateur like Dennis Williams, every measure possible was taken to ensure that they would emerge from the production in one piece. Later George Miller projects like "Fury Road" were much harder on the crew, but were just as concerned with ensuring their physical safety.
What this means, of course, is that the folks who brought earlier "Mad Max" films to life would return to the later ones. Fair and responsible treatment breeds loyalty as surely as genius. Dennis Williams was hired once again as a stunt driver for "Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome." Guy Norris served as supervising stunt coordinator on the set of "Fury Road," and personally crashed the War Rig in the finale. It's tough to imagine "Mad Max," or practical effects in general, having a future in Hollywood without the input of experienced craftspeople like Williams or Norris.
Digital effects today are farmed out to countries without unions willing to work cheap, long hours. In recent projects like "Rust," members of the crew lost their lives due to lax safety precautions. Perhaps it is true that "nothing is more exciting or dangerous than the make-believe world of the movies." But movies are made by people, and those people are certainly not make-believe. We need a film industry that treats bodies with care; we need more doctors.
Read this next: The Best Movies Streaming Right Now: Malignant, A Hero, And More
The post Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior's Stunts Were More Dangerous Than You Think appeared first on /Film.
Nintendo in 2022 means one thing and one thing only, and that’s the Switch. The handheld/home console hybrid is the name in gaming right now, outselling not only the next-gen consoles from Microsoft and Sony, but Nintendo’s own Wii over the course of its five-year lifespan.
When it comes to breakfast, the prevailing theme is carbs, carbs, carbs: a lot of cereals, toast, granola bars, and bagels. Of course, carbs aren’t bad, they’re just one element of a complete diet (and happen to be an easy option in the morning). With a little effort, though, you can add proteins, fats, fiber, fruits,…
