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Prior to its inception, the M2 was rumored to feature a 10-core GPU, with the new custom silicon reported as being marginally faster than its predecessor, the M1. With the new SoC officially here, we get to know that Apple will continue to provide it in two GPU variants, with the base variant sporting an 8-core configuration. While that may be low for some potential buyers, note that it is a significant improvement from the very first Apple Silicon, as we will explain.

M1 Was Offered up to an 8-Core GPU, Whereas New M2 Starts With the Same Number of GPU Cores

With the exception of the new MacBook Pro, the redesigned MacBook Air with the M2 for the least expensive model, features an 8-core GPU. Assuming you are disappointed that Apple has maintained a practice of not revealing the entire picture during the official announcement, there is some silver lining in all of this. For instance, the M1 started out with a 7-core GPU, and customers had to pay a premium to get the 8-core GPU version.

With the M2, the base version ships with an 8-core GPU, with the maxed-out variant sporting a 10-core GPU. Those looking to maximize graphics performance will have their eyes set on the higher-end part, but it should be noted that just like before, you will be required to pay a higher price to get that performance increase. With the redesigned MacBook Air, it will be $100 extra, which will be justified in the majority of cases.

However, there will be no upgrades on the CPU side. What that means is that irrespective of which model you pick up, you will get the same number of CPU cores, with the M2 configuration including four high-performance cores and four power-efficient ones. In case you have not noticed, Apple has not discontinued the M1 MacBook Air and continues to sell it for $999.

Assuming that you do not care about having the latest and greatest, you can save a little money and get your hands on this model instead.

The post Apple’s M2 Will Be Available in Two GPU Variants, With Base Version Now Featuring 8 Cores by Omar Sohail appeared first on Wccftech.

(Superhero Bits is a collection of stories, updates, and videos about anything and everything inspired by the comics of Marvel, DC, and more. For comic book movies, TV shows, merchandise, events, and whatever catches our eye, this is the place to find anything that falls through the cracks.)

In this edition of Superhero Bits:

• "Deadpool 3" may well still be R-rated under Disney's roof.

• "Marvel's Spider-Man" is finally coming to PC. 

• The Rock continues to tease the "Black Adam" trailer.

• Marvel's "Blade" gets a cinematographer.

• All that and more!

Bloodshot Figure Is On The Way

The folks at Threezero have offered a little tease of their upcoming "Bloodshot" figure based on the Valiant Comics character of the same name. At the time of this writing, precious little has been revealed other than the above image on Instagram, but we can see this is more faithful to the comics than it is Vin Diesel's 2020 movie based on the hero (which somehow might get a sequel). No word yet on how much this is going to set you back or when pre-orders will go live, but stay tuned for more info in the near future.

Batman: Failsafe Interview With Chip Zdarsky And Jorge Jimenez

Writer Chip Zdarsky and artist Jorge Jimenez are set to usher in a new era for DC's flagship "Batman" title with issue #125, set to publish in July. The creative duo is apparently in it for the long haul, and they have big plans for the iconic hero. We get a little taste of those plans in the above interview, which was published recently by the official DC YouTube channel. For those who have been looking for an excuse to get into (or perhaps back into) "Batman" comics, this issue may well be a good jumping entry point.

Wyatt Russell Is Ready And Waiting To Return To Marvel As U.S. Agent

It remains woefully unclear as to when we will see Wyatt Russell again in the MCU as John Walker, aka the failed Captain America replacement known as U.S. Agent. He appeared as a major character in "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" and was offered something of a redemption arc in the show's finale, so it seems likely he'll show up again somewhere, someday. Russell, in speaking with The Hollywood Reporter recently, couldn't shed much light on things, but did express an eagerness to suit back up:

"I really enjoy playing the character and my experience working with Marvel was an unbelievable working experience and collaborative, working with Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan and Kari Skogland. The teams they have there are unbelievable, it's why they make great things. So, anytime I get the opportunity or hear about the chance to reprise a character or work for Marvel again, it's very exciting because the people are wonderful. So, hopefully, I'll get to do it again. We'll see."

At the very least, it doesn't seem like it would be tough to get him to sign on the dotted line.

Marvel's Spider-Man Is Finally Coming To PC

Initially released in 2018, "Marvel's Spider-Man" was quite the gift to fans of superheroes who also happen to love playing video games. The only unfortunate part of the whole deal is that the game was exclusive to PlayStation, as is also the case with "Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales" and the upcoming "Wolverine" game. Xbox s**t the bed on that one. Anyway, the good news is that the remastered version of the game is finally making its way to PC, opening up a great deal of accessibility to a ton of new players out there. The above trailer isn't really anything new, other than announcing that this is indeed happening, with the release date set for August 12, 2022. But it's good information to have for all you PC gamers out there.

The Blade Reboot Now Has A Cinematographer

The "Blade" reboot is quietly coming along behind the scenes at Marvel Studios. Reporter Will Mavity has revealed that cinematographer Damian Garcia ("Narcos: Mexico") has boarded the much-anticipated project. Mahershala Ali ("Moonlight") is still set to star in the lead role, with Delroy Lindo ("Da 5 Bloods") also on board. Bassam Tariq ("Mogul Mowgli") is in the director's chair, but there's no word yet on when filming will begin. Even so, it's starting to feel increasingly like cameras will get rolling before year's end.

The Rock Gives A Peek Behind The Scenes Of Black Adam

"Black Adam" has been undergoing seemingly significant reshoots for the past few weeks, and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson has been offering little glimpses behind the curtain here and there. In this case, he has offered a few more black and white images of him in costume as the crew is putting the finishing touches on said reshoots alongside "Jungle Cruise" director Jaume Collett-Serra. One of the big things here, for those who may not already know, is that the trailer is set to drop this Wednesday, so be on the lookout. We'll be sure to bring it your way as soon as it arrives.

Rejoice! Deadpool 3 Will Be R-Rated

There has been much confusion regarding "Deadpool 3" in the four years since "Deadpool 2" hit theaters, mostly because of the three years that have passed since the Disney/Fox merger closed. Well, the good news is that writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, who worked on the first two films, recently told The Playlist that the sequel will "absolutely" be R-rated despite being under Disney's roof. Reese had this to say to the outlet on that very topic:

"They're not gonna mess with the tone. I mean, I'd never say never, I guess there's an outside chance, but we've always been told it can be R-[rated], and we're proceeding as if it's R. We would like it to be R, we always have, so I don't think that'll change."

Ryan Reynolds is slated to return as the title character, with Shawny Levy ("Free Guy") on board to direct. No release date has been set.

Ms. Marvel Gets A New Poster

Lastly, the folks at Marvel have revealed a colorful new poster for "Ms. Marvel" ahead of the show's debut later this week. The stylish artwork comes from Doaly who, taking to Twitter, expressed gratitude for the opportunity to create this piece:

"Such a proud moment to of created this poster for Ms. Marvel, the MCUs first South Asian superhero. Feeling blessed and grateful, this one's for my daughter to show her brown girls can save the world." 

The premiere episode of "Ms. Marvel" drops on Disney+ on Wednesday.

Read this next: The 15 Most Anticipated Comic Book Movies And Shows Of 2022, Ranked

The post Superhero Bits: Deadpool 3 Is Absolutely R-Rated, A New Ms. Marvel Poster & More appeared first on /Film.

"The Boys" is back with a vengeance in season 3, bloodier, funnier, and more poignant than ever. The show is also scarier than ever before, which is saying something since it tackled actual nazis in season 2. Now Homelander, everyone's favorite psychopath supes, has become unchained after appealing to like-minded supremacists during an unscripted speech.

Meanwhile, with the titular boys falling into doing whatever it takes to fight supes, Starlight is left as the moral center of the show — even as she finds herself in more danger than ever as she starts working more closely with Homelander. Things are dire in the world of "The Boys," but the show still finds time to be hilariously goofy and gross.

During an interview with /Film, Anthony Starr and Erin Moriarty discussed Homelander and Starlight's new dynamic, the moral center of the show, and also tease the much anticipated "Herogasm" episode.

Homelander Unchained

In episode 2 of the new season, during his televised birthday celebration, Homelander decides to show his real self to the world and rant about him being canceled and how there are shadow organizations pulling the strings of the world. This makes him more popular than ever with a certain demographic, and allows Homelander to shed his pretend Superman-like nice guy attitude. He is now unchained, not caring about those he is supposed to answer to, which Anthony Starr finds refreshing.

"[Homelander] has always answered to someone. He's always wanted to be the top of the heap, but he's always actually been a product that's been marketed and packaged for the world. And yeah, this season is the first time he's really stepping out on his own. The baby is leaving the nest, so to speak. And it's fun, because one of the great things about this show is we keep evolving these characters from episode to episode, season to season as people evolve in real life. So it keeps it fresh and it keeps it interesting and it keeps the idea tank deep [...] I feel very lucky to work on a show where the freshness is maintained like that."

The Moral Compass

As for Starlight, if just being on the Vought Tower with Homelander wasn't enough, she is now his co-captain of The Seven, and his on-camera girlfriend. To make matters worse, Hughie has fallen into despair as he discovered that Congresswoman Neuman has powers, and Butcher crossed a line and gave himself powers. But as Erin Moriarty assures us, her moral compass will not falter.

"In terms of her moral compass, the more anyone around her, the more their moral compasses sway, the more hers kind of stays intact because I feel like she needs to compensate. So for example, when she wants to save everyone -- and this is a bit of a spoiler later on -- during 'Herogasm' and Hughie doesn't want her to, she does everything she needs to do to get him out of her way so she can go save those people. And so it just goes to show that even Hughie isn't going to prevent her from keeping her moral compass intact. And if his sways, she's going to compensate."

With Queen Maeve practically out of the picture, Starlight and Homelander are working much more closely together this season, which Moriarty says greatly changes their dynamic moving forward.

"It was just really fun. I love when a scene is packed with tension," Moriarty continues. "And as we've been saying, you've kind of got the devil of the show and the angel of the show in a bunch of scenes together." ("I'm the angel," jokes Starr.) "Working side by side, putting on these masks with so much going on underneath the surface, it's just so fun and packed with tension and so many layers. And it's a dynamic I hope that we get to continue to explore."

Herogasm Is Coming

Moriarty also gave us a bit of a tease on the hotly anticipated "Herogasm" episode, based on the six-issue comic book limited series of the same name, which sounds absolutely bonkers.

"It was five days in a row, 12 plus hours a day, well over 12 hours, of just being surrounded by nudity. And it was pretty wild. I'd never been in a room with so many dildos, so many sex toys, so much nudity, so much simultaneous sex going on in all different ways. I had to do one scene with one character where I'm talking to him and he's totally nude. So I'm trying to maintain eye contact with him because that was on the first day and I'm still getting used to working around so many naked people."

The actor was also amused by watching the director orchestrate all of the debauchery that takes place in the edges of the frame.

"But I think my favorite part was observing the director of that episode, Nelson Cragg, who was so awesome, directing the people in the background who are simulating sex. He all of a sudden became a porn director. And the things that he was saying to them to get what he wanted for them to simulate sex, I think that was one of my favorite parts of filming the episode, is just observing him and then him yelling, 'Cut,' and shaking his head like, 'What am I doing?' But it was amazing, hilarious, and scarring at the same time."

"The Boys" season 3 is streaming on Prime Video, with new episodes every Friday.

Read this next: The 15 Best Better Call Saul Episodes Ranked

The post The Boys Actors Anthony Starr and Erin Moriarty on Homelander and Starlight's Dynamic [Interview] appeared first on /Film.

Movie vampires are never quite as weird as the "real" thing. On screen, the bloodsuckers are sometimes scary but more often sexy. They're strong and sleek and pretty much unstoppable unless confronted with one of their few weaknesses. All in all, most pop culture vamps are not overtly ridiculous.

But the vampires of "What We Do in the Shadows" have always marched to the beat of their own drum. The hilarious FX comedy, which is headed into its fourth season, has explored all sorts of lesser-known facets of real-life vampire mythology, like the creatures' need for ancestral dirt, or the existence of energy vampires. Apparently, though, there's one quirky folklore tidbit that the team hasn't been able to fit into the show yet.

"Part of vampire lore is that if you throw a bunch of rice on the floor, vampires have to count each grain before they can do everything else, sort of like an OCD thing," series executive producer and writer Paul Simms explained at a press event today. The rice gag seems to be his and fellow EP and writer Stefani Robinson's vampire joke white whale, as the pair admitted they've unsuccessfully attempted to shoehorn the bit in for four seasons and counting. "We've tried every variation of getting it in the script, but it's such a weird thing that requires so much explanation," Simms says.

As hilariously out-of-character as this rice-counting compulsion may seem -- I can't picture Lestat from "Interview With The Vampire" being hypnotized by rice -- it is a real part of the vampire mythos. According to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, several cultures have legends about undead bloodsuckers who possess a counting fixation. European tales of the being include a caveat about its seed and grain counting compulsion, while a trick Robinson mentions, about spilling a big bag of rice to distract a vampire, apparently comes from China.

Vampire Mythology Is Weird, Okay?

Despite the show's endless silliness, plenty of research went into creating the world of the Staten Island vampires viewers know and love, and the rice-counting is just one of several odd-seeming details the team found along the way. At the press event, Robinson also briefly mentioned a bit of lore about throwing a vampire's sock in a river to defeat it, a tradition that Rosemary Guiley's book "The Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Monsters" traces back to the Romani myth of the Mullo vampire. It's yet another tradition that seems utterly random in the modern day. Apparently, much of the world has funky variations of the vampire story, and very few of them are anything like Edward from "Twilight."

Simms says the team behind the show "spent a lot of time talking about rules" early on in the series, with Robinson adding that they consulted "vampire textbooks" to try to get a handle on how best to portray the popular figure. Robinson concluded that there's no real common denominator among pop culture vampires aside from their thirst for blood, but it sounds like the writing team has still been diligent about keeping up with the rules they've set up for themselves. For one thing, they admitted to writing themselves into some predicaments by introducing the concept of hypnotism, which should theoretically help Nadja, Lazlo, and Nandor out of just about any situation.

If the "What We Do in the Shadows" team can write around hypnotism, they can surely write in a hilarious gag involving the supernatural allure of a spilled, uncounted bag of rice in season 5. Until then, fans will have to be satisfied counting down the days until the fourth season, which premieres on July 12, 2022 on FX.

Read this next: The 10 Best Comedies Of The Last 10 Years

The post The Real Piece of Obscure Vampire Lore What We Do in the Shadows Hasn't Included (Yet) appeared first on /Film.

Not only are we super close to "What We Do in the Shadows" season 4 premiere on FX, but the show has been renewed for a fifth and sixth season! This sounds like it's going to be the biggest season yet, according to a press conference, attended by our own Valerie Ettenhofer. There is one episode in particular that is very elaborate, according to executive producer Paul Simms. That's saying something, after a vampiric council full of celebrities who have played vampires on shows and in films, baby Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch), the cursed witch hat, and so very many ravens. Did you not see the ravens?

"What We Do in the Shadows" is the story of vampires Nandor (Kayvan Novak), Laszlo (Matt Berry), and Nadja (Natasia Demetriou), energy vampire Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch), and Nandor's familiar Guillermo (Harvey Guillén). This season some of our friends are going to find love, go clubbing, as you can see from the teaser, deal with a crumbling mansion which is starving for care once Guillermo sets off on his adventure (though he's clearly back), and a trip to a hunting lodge. 

The episode we should be watching for, however, is episode 4, entitled "The Night Market." Paul Simms had some details for us on their biggest episode yet. 

'Every Kind Of Supernatural Creature'

Simms said of the episode:

Episode 4 called "The Night Market" is definitely our biggest, most elaborate episode we've done, where all the vampires go to the night market, which is where all the supernatural creatures of the city gather in a hidden place to barter and trade with each other. It's really an amazing episode, and we have the budget figures to prove it. It's a really cool episode where you see not just vampires, but every kind of supernatural creature you could imagine, and some that we've never seen before, all mingling together.

If you think about the kind of fun the set decorators have had with the mansion, just imagine what this is going to be like! I have a feeling we're going to have to go over this with a fine-toothed comb to get all the goodies. 

When we catch up with everyone again, we'll find Laszlo taking care of baby Colin (shudder). We'll take a trip to the Jersey Pine Barrens, meet new creatures, see Nadja open the hottest vampire nightclub in the Tri-State Area, and best of all, we'll get to meet more of Guillermo's family.

"What We Do in the Shadows" season 4 will premiere on July 12, 2022 with two episodes, and air weekly after that. Episodes will stream the next day on Hulu. 

Read this next: 12 Shows Like Stranger Things You Definitely Need To Stream

The post What We Do in the Shadows Season 4 Features the Show's Biggest, Most Elaborate Episode Yet appeared first on /Film.

At a jam-packed WWDC 2022 today, Apple unveiled the latest versions of iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, alongside hotly-anticipated new Apple silicon and health features. Today’s keynote also saw the arrival of the exhaustively leaked M2-powered MacBook Air, which incorporates the controversial screen notch from the company’s line of 2021 MacBook Pros.

But that wasn’t the most egregious crime against portable computer design committed on-stage in Cupertino today. No, instead, we need to talk about this thing.

This is the device Apple chose to represent a Windows laptop in demonstrating support for its new Passkeys feature on non-Apple hardware. It’s a design that provokes morbid curiosity for more than a few reasons, in part because it doesn’t appear to match any actual real-world PC notebook. (At least none that we’re aware of — shout out in the comments if it looks familiar to you.)

Instead, it’s a Frankenstein’s monster of laptop bits time-warped in from the late 2000s and assembled into an intentionally unattractive PC counterpart to Apple’s slick new MacBooks. Even if you assume this is a fairly small laptop, the screen borders are comically humongous in all directions. And that display is bolted to an absolute unit of a base sporting LEDs for charging, wireless connectivity, and HDD activity — presumably from the ancient mechanical drive lurking within. (I can hear the clicks just looking at this render.)

At least this cursed contraption has managed, somehow, to meet the official minimum hardware specifications of Windows 11, thus avoiding the dreaded “System requirements not met” watermark of shame on its desktop.

Nevertheless, Apple’s imaginary Windows laptop is a clunker of a machine that makes for a jarring comparison with Apple’s latest and greatest.

This is nothing new, though. Cupertino has a long history of concocting deliberately terrible-looking renders to showcase its services on rival platforms. Back in 2021, it demoed Facetime working cross-platform through this fever dream of an Android phone, featuring chonky bezels and, inexplicably, a screen cutout. It’s a level of ugliness that defies logic.

This handset combines the worst of recent Android design elements into something you might find in a carrier store’s bargain bin circa 2018.

And it turns out, the terrible Windows laptop shown at WWDC has reared its head in years past. In 2015, Apple used what appears to be the same fictional computer to show off Apple Music’s multiplatform chops, paired with a similarly unflattering hypothetical Android phone.

As long as Apple makes its products and services compatible with Windows and Android, it’ll need to represent the hardware that belongs to those ecosystems. Naturally, it wants to do that in a way that makes them look distinctly unappealing alongside their iPhone or MacBook counterparts — there’s no sense in showcasing the very best your competition has to offer, after all.

But the extremes to which Apple often goes in making these products look aggressively unappealing are impressive to behold — and more than a little comical. Who knows what horrors will emerge at future launch events should the tech giant choose to grace Android or Windows with yet more Apple services.

The post Apple unveiled the worst laptop of 2022 at WWDC appeared first on XDA.

In addition to announcing the M2 SoC, Apple used its WWDC keynote to also announce macOS 13 "Ventura". One of the interesting technical changes with macOS 13 is the ability to use Apple's Rosetta software for speedy execution of Linux x86_64 binaries running on ARM Linux VMs from Apple Silicon...

A few months have passed since we released ScummVM 2.5.1.

No matter if you expect the scorching heat of the upcoming summer or freezing blizzards in winter (depending on your favorite hemisphere): it’s release time again!

Our lovely developers added support, yet again, for a bunch of new ancient games that require testing:

• Sanitarium
• Hades Challenge
• Marvel Comics Spider-Man: The Sinister Six
• The 11th Hour
• Clandestiny
• Tender Loving Care (CD-ROM Editions)
• Uncle Henry's Playhouse
• Wetlands
• Chewy: Esc from F5

Besides these games, we’d appreciate it if you could check our release testing list - maybe you’ll even find your favorite game on there that has been sitting on that shelf for way too long.

And since ScummVM is about playing games in general, we’ve seen quite a bunch of changes across many, many engines - so this is the perfect time for giving your favorites another go.

The AGOS, SCI and SCUMM engine received some really extensive modifications which make all games using those engines very good testing targets as well.

All testing must be done with stable builds, not development ones. Please report any bugs or oddities on our issue tracker.

A detailed list of all exciting new features and fixes is available in our NEWS file.

Thank you very much for your support!

[link] [57 comments]

Car mechanic message boards are loaded with stories of customers who screw up their cars in hilarious ways. Maybe they’ve been using the emergency donut spare for a year, taking their car to an unscrupulous mechanic who only pretended to change the oil, or driving around with no tire.

Read more...

It’s hard to be a new parent, we know. Keeping yourself going is infinitely harder when you’re trying to nurture and care for a brand new human at the same time. Thankfully, there’s a lot of tech out there that helps ease the burden for moms and dads, from wireless earbuds and tablets, to a simple rattle that can help diffuse a potential meltdown. Tech won’t help with the mountains of dirty diapers or the sleepless nights, but it can at least help new parents stay sane.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/best-gifts-for-new-dads-110049541.html?src=rss

Zahn McClarnon should have starred in his own TV series a long time ago. The instinct to make him more of a main character was there toward the end of "Fargo" season 2, where he played the mercurial enforcer Hanzee, and since then, we've seen McClarnon costar or take on a recurring role in shows like "Westworld," "Barkskins," "Reservation Dogs," and "Hawkeye." However, in "Dark Winds," which premieres on AMC and AMC+ on June 12, the actor is front and center in a noir thriller with a writers' room made up of Native American voices.

"Dark Winds" hails from creator Graham Roland and showrunner Vince Calandra, both alums of Prime Video's "Jack Ryan." The show counts George R.R. Martin and Robert Redford among its executive producers, and it's based on the "Leaphorn & Chee" series of crime novels by Tony Hillerman. McClarnon plays the Navajo Tribal Police officer Joe Leaphorn, a role that the late Fred Ward inhabited in the 1991 film "The Dark Wind."

The network has touted this as a series made "with the full support and blessing of The Navajo Nation," and it helicopters the viewer over the buttes of Monument Valley and sets them down in the early 1970s without feeling the need to over-explain aspects of Indigenous culture such as the Kinaaldá running ritual. "Dark Winds" knows what an asset it has in McClarnon, who brings a soulful presence to the Leaphorn character, but the series also makes good use of his "Red Road" cohort, Kiowa Gordon, as well as Jessica Matten ("The Empty Man").

Together, these three actors, all of whom share a natural chemistry, form the magnetic core of "Dark Winds," which overcomes its occasionally pedestrian genre thrills with a unique sense of place and people that keep it watchable for six episodes.

Navajo Nation

"Dark Winds" begins in 1971 with a cold open of a daring armored car robbery, before we meet Leaphorn, who's not about to let any biker dudes steal artifacts off Navajo land. This is one of those shows where the music gives the opening credits a lush quality that actually makes sitting through them enjoyable.

Before long, Leaphorn finds himself wading flashlight-first into the scene of a horrific motel crime. An old man has been left dead on the floor with his eyes gouged out. The walls are spattered with blood and there are claw marks on the door, with another body in the bathtub.

Leaphorn, it turns out, has a personal connection to the case. His backstory is initially somewhat ill-defined, but it crystallizes more as the show goes on and begins swooshing the viewer into flashbacks. In among the allusions to a tragedy from his past, though, it's not always clear why certain characters bear a grudge against Leaphorn. Jim Chee is the role once played by Lou Diamond Phillips in "The Dark Wind," and is played here by Kiowa Gordon. The slow-mo, classic-rock introduction of Gordon's TV version of the character feels like something out of a Martin Scorsese film, or maybe it's just that Scorsese has his own project lined up involving Native Americans and the FBI, "Killers of the Flower Moon."

Chee is Leaphorn's new deputy, a Berkley grad who's been away from the reservation for nine years. As they get to know each other, there's some male bonding that goes on along with the requisite conflict you might expect from a buddy-cop narrative. Since homicide is a federal crime, the FBI has to take the lead on the investigation into the motel murders, so this puts Special Agent Whitover (Noah Emmerich) in their path, as well.

A History Of Oppression

As Bernadette Manuelito, Leaphorn's second-in-command, Matten provides a strong-willed yet vulnerable entry point into the show's sporadic supernatural leanings. Leaphorn also has a believable relationship with his wife Emma (Deanna Allison), a nurse whose English-to-Navajo translations go beyond surface politeness and cut right to the heart of the matter (in this case, the desire of a white doctor to sterilize a Navajo woman without her permission).

Rainn Wilson brings a dose of comic relief to "Dark Winds" in his brief role as the car salesman Devoted Dan. At times, the show openly confronts white oppression in a manner similar to what "Firebite" did in its Australian setting on AMC+ earlier this year. Though it may sound odd, there's one particular scene in "Dark Winds" that seems to delight in antagonizing Mormons, turning them into cartoon characters with a "puke green" car and "terrible taste in music," to the point where it almost seems like robbing Peter to pay Paul in terms of representation. However, if you start to research Native American history and the slavery that took place in Utah under the early Mormons, it becomes more apparent why that scene might be there.

"Dark Winds" has a few stumbles in terms of dialogue and dramatic effect, such as when it has the old man at the beginning say, "I saw something in the sky, one of the white man's mechanical birds," or when Leaphorn is talking about his assimilation school history in a later episode and he says, "The second I arrived, they cut my hair. Took my clothes. But they could never crush my spirit." Moments like these feel a bit overcooked, but on the whole, "Dark Winds" does not slip into that more than any other network drama.

Season Of The Witch

"Dark Winds" is a show that gets by on the strength of its cast and setting. It uses mystery as a hook and offers a window into a world of stunning landscapes and rich tribal history. Early on, it introduces the idea of black magic and protection and purification rituals, but while the drama is mostly sturdy, the supernatural aspect winds up feeling somewhat half-baked.

It reminded me of "True Detective" and all its talk of the Yellow King and Carcosa, in that such things were ultimately not that important to the plot, but merely something to add mystique or give background shading. The idea of witchcraft does have a basis in Navajo history, but in "Dark Winds," it's more of a mood that occasionally spills over into something overt that could make a person's hair go white.

AMC+ is a streaming service that might be a stop-and-start subscription for some people, but it's linked to the horror platform Shudder and has carved out a niche for itself by catering to genre fans. "Dark Winds" doesn't necessarily reinvent the wheel, and it's not the kind of series that is going to deliver earth-shattering revelations or cliffhangers, though the first episode does end on an interesting reveal. However, when it was all over, I didn't regret watching it, and I was glad for the time I spent with these characters in this world. If you're looking to go beyond Hollywood Westerns and be immersed in a different time and place, with a culture that has too often gone underrepresented or misrepresented in myths of the American West, "Dark Winds" brings the goods.

The first episode of "Dark Winds" airs on AMC at 9pm ET/PT on June 12, 2022, with it and the second episode being available to stream on AMC+ the same day.

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

The post Dark Winds Review: Zahn McClarnon Leads a Solid Cast in AMC's Navajo-Centric Foray Into Genre Thrills appeared first on /Film.

Gateway horror has waned in recent years. Several decades ago, it seemed that every network had at least one or two distinctly horror-themed shows aimed at young audiences. Currently, the vagaries of genre have shifted more toward fantasy and dystopia, though the advent of digital streaming has reignited interest in several classic pieces of '90s horror media.

These are the shows that an entire generation grew up with. Along with classic television movies such as "Don't Look Under the Bed" and "Cry Baby Lane," these shows gave young '90s horror fans their genre fix, all but guaranteeing a lifetime of horror loyalty. Some of these shows are animated, some are live-action, and some aired for years. Others were cut short far too soon. There are ghouls, goblins, ghosts, and monsters to be found in both overarching narratives and anthologies of terror. In retrospect, these 10 shows are considerably scarier than audiences might remember.

Goosebumps

"Goosebumps," adapted from the R.L. Stine's series of books of the same name, is arguably the most famous '90s horror show for kids. It's been so popular, that there have even been two quasi-remakes of the material for contemporary audiences: 2015's "Goosebumps" and its sequel, "Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween." That's not all. Disney+ is currently developing another live-action series with the "Goosebumps" moniker.

What made the series so popular was its adroit balance of family-friendly pathos and some serious scares. Sure, it never pushed boundaries too far, but the likes of such episodes as "Stay Out of the Basement" and "Night of the Living Dummy II" were bonafide scare fests, rivaling adult-oriented fare with their perfect pacing and truly nightmarish imagery. "Goosebumps" ran for four seasons, and while some of its luster was lost the longer it went on, there are few — if any — better gateways for young horror fans.

Gargoyles

"Gargoyles" is practically dripping with nostalgia. An animated series airing on the Disney Channel of yore (and what a time that was) "Gargoyles" follows a group of gargoyles reawakened in modern-day New York City. Consequently, they become quasi-superheroes, protecting the city at night from all manner of menaces, including biker gangs, cults, and monstrous hybrids of eels and bats. It's truly scary stuff.

"Gargoyles" has enjoyed a favorable legacy, with IGN even listing it as the 45th best animated show ever made. With layered storytelling, mature themes, and a dollop of Shakespearean tragedy, "Gargoyles" was truly ahead of its time. It is a show that introduced young audiences to superhero mythos, Scottish folklore, and the harsh realities of the real world — all bundled together with stellar animation, fantastic heroes, and engaging narrative arcs. While it currently enjoys a cult following, nothing can match the sheer '90s' pleasure of plopping down in front of the television with a bowl of cereal in the early morning to check in on everyone's favorite stone guardians.

Ghostwriter

"Ghostwriter" was sort of like an adolescent "Murder She Wrote" if Jessica Fletcher was a spirit and Cabot Cove was a middle school. A group of friends from Brooklyn discovers the titular Ghostwriter, an invisible spirit who can communicate with them through the manipulation of text and letters, in a basement. Together, they become a kind of detective agency, solving crimes around their neighborhood and school alongside guest appearances from none other than the inimitable Samuel L. Jackson.

While not strictly scary, "Ghostwriter" more often than not followed innocuous crimes, including backpack theft and baby arson. Still, there were times when "Ghostwriter" got considerably darker than audiences might have expected, such as the time the crew had to save an actress from a violent homicidal stalker or when they stumble upon a kidnapping plot. Plus, the central conceit, a ghost who solves crimes, is innately scary in and of itself. Good for the "Ghostwriter" crew for keeping it around. Others might have been quick to exorcise a spectral detective from their lives and few could blame them.

So Weird

"So Weird" premiered on the Disney Channel in January 1999, airing until its cancellation in September 2001. Teenager Fiona Phillips (Cara DeLizia) tours with her rock-star mom (Mackenzie Phillips) while fancying herself a young Dana Scully. With clear nods to Fox's "The X-Files," "So Weird" was a pitch-perfect gateway for conspiracy-tinged horror fans not quite old enough for some of the truly terrifying "X-Files" beats.

There are gremlins, ghosts, girls escaping adolescent angst with astral projection, and even wormholes and immortal cults. Leaning hard into its forebearer's monster of the week template, "So Weird" practically guaranteed a new fright week-to-week, appealing to fans of all manner of science fiction and horror. It was the kind of procedural horror series for kids that audiences don't quite get enough of these days. Luckily, the series is currently streaming on Disney+, marking the first time it has been available since it aired.

AAAHH!! Real Monsters

"AAAHH!!! Real Monsters" is really stinking cute. The monsters, Ickis, Oblina, and Krumm, are ugly enough to be rendered lovable. Following the Pixar template, they're frightening while remaining accessible, ensuring that young audiences are more attuned to their hijinks than genuine terror they might impart. The trio attends an underground school for monsters, and most episodes follow their escapades traveling to the surface to scare humans as part of various class assignments.

Like others on this list, "AAAHH!! Real Monsters" was never especially scary, though there were times when it straddled the line and resembled something akin to a full-bore horror feature. "Attack of the Blobs" has monstrous blob monsters hatching and trying to eat everything in sight. "Where Have All the Monsters Gone?" gets truly existential, suggesting monsters disappear when they are no longer capable of being scary. A nostalgic tentpole, "AAAHH!!! Real Monsters" stands among the best of what the early days of Nickelodeon had to offer.

Extreme Ghostbusters

While '80s kids might remember "The Real Ghostbusters," adolescent paranormal enthusiasts in the '90s might better recall "Extreme Ghostbusters." A direct follow-up to the original series, "Extreme Ghostbusters" presents a world in which ghostly activity has been on the downturn. It has become all but nonexistent. Consequently, Dr. Egon Spengler (Maurice LaMarche, reprising his "Real Ghostbusters" role) has been alone, caring for Slimer and waiting with bated breath for another sign of paranormal pandemonium.

Luckily, it isn't long before the ghosts are back, and absent the original Ghostbusters, Egon has no choice but to recruit a bunch of college students. Abounding with slapstick comedy and paranormal antics, "Extreme Ghostbusters" never quite reaches the heights of the original, though it still manages a few dark and spooky moments all its own. In "The True Face of a Monster," the show tackles frighteningly prescient antisemitism, and in "The Crawler," the show goes full "Mimic" with bug monsters. Like the movies upon which it is based, "Extreme Ghostbusters" is a worthwhile entry point for young horror fans.

Todd McFarlane's Spawn

"Todd McFarlane's Spawn," also known as simply "Spawn," isn't strictly speaking a kids' show. Still, after originally appearing on HBO, reruns were aired as part of Cartoon Network's Toonami block, a perennial gateway for an entire generation of anime fans. The animated series is based on the comic character Spawn. Former government assassin Al Simmons is betrayed and killed by a close friend, and upon his death, vows to return. His soul goes to Hell, whereupon he makes a pact with the devil to return to earth. He is bamboozled once more, returning as a monstrous, rotting corpse, and as hellspawns are wont to do, he starts fighting everything and anything.

Violent, tense, and gorgeously animated, "Todd McFarlane's Spawn" was the show an entire generation snuck out of bed for, hoping to catch a peak of the coolest animated show they'd ever seen. At the time, animation was still predominantly marketed toward young audiences, and it was easy for kids to see the art style and presume the show was meant for them. It certainly wasn't, but it was a necessary steppingstone, not just to the full mythos of Spawn, but more adult-oriented horror fare in general.

Are You Afraid Of The Dark

There's not a millennial alive who doesn't remember the sheer terror of "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" The likes of "The Tale of Old Man Corcoran," and perhaps most famously, "The Tale of the Dead Man's Float," starring none other than Jay Baruchel, are horror staples for an entire generation. Throughout its first five seasons and before its revival at the end of the decade, "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" was never afraid to get, well ... dark.

With its signature title card, roots in oral tradition (friends huddled around a campfire, telling stories), and bonafide scares, "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" might be the preeminent horror show for young audiences. Like "Goosebumps," "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" always went a little bit further, letting its scares linger for an additional beat to truly solidify itself as the stuff of nightmares. The legacy is so strong that Nickelodeon revived it for two additional miniseries in 2019 and 2021, reminding audiences everywhere why horror isn't just fun — it's necessary.

Courage The Cowardly Dog

"Return the slab or suffer my curse!" Originally airing on Cartoon Network, "Courage the Cowardly Dog" was preeminently concerned with laughs, with Courage, the titular pink dog, playing the role of the Bagges' straight man and responding to the absurdity around him while everyone else remains frustratingly dense. An entire list could be dedicated to some genuinely horrifying episodes of "Courage the Cowardly Dog." Inimitable and so unique to its time, the kind of content "Courage" spooled out regularly stands almost no chance of navigating modern censors.

In "Freaky Fred," Muriel's nephew, with a terrifying intonation, is intent on shaving Courage for being naughty. In "The Demon in the Mattress," "Courage" goes full homage in a love letter to "The Exorcist" after Muriel is possessed by a demon living in her mattress. There are homicidal cats, killer mermaids in rugs, and bonafide allusions to domestic abuse. In other words, "Courage the Cowardly Dog" was fun, funny, and often a stark reminder of just how terrifying the real world could be.

Eerie, Indiana

"Eerie, Indiana" didn't last long, and that's a genuine shame. Airing for one season from September 1991 until April 1992, its final episode remained unaired until 1993. While "So Weird" paid homage to "The X-Files," "Eerie, Indiana" was something of a kids-centric precursor, premiering two years before. Omri Katz stars as Marshall Teller, a teenager whose family moves to Eerie, Indiana, a virtual ghost town. As is always the case, the town is replete with strange sightings and weird happenings, and Marshall takes it upon himself to investigate the strange goings-on.

There are intelligent dogs with plans for world domination, bigfoot creatures hiding in the woods, gruesome accidents, possessed hearts, and all manner of other terrors. Had the show been given time to breathe, it likely would have developed into something truly special. As it stands, "Eerie, Indiana" is a hallmark of early '90s horror, a show as rooted in character as it is scares.

Tales From The Cryptkeeper

HBO's original "Tales from the Crypt" was replete with so much graphic nudity, gruesome violence, and foul language, it was never going to pass muster for a generation of young horror fans. Long before streaming, it was all but inaccessible to younger audiences. Luckily, Warner Brothers and Nelvana saw the potential, curtailing the more mature themes and content for an adaptation perfectly suited to burgeoning horror fans. Consequently, "Tales from the Cryptkeeper" was born.

While it never reached the horror heights of its predecessors on television and in print, it was a phenomenal gateway for young fans that told stories about vengeful fish, phantom pirates, and everyone's favorite — werewolves. Though the content was toned down, the show retained the original's charm, adopting an animation style perfectly suited to young children. Horror shows for kids are always worth getting excited about, all the more so when they're attached to a horror property as groundbreaking as "Tales from the Crypt."

Read this next: The 13 Scariest Animated Movies

The post '90s Kids Horror Shows That are Scarier Than You Remember appeared first on /Film.

10 of the most prolific mobile banking trojans have set their eyes on 639 financial applications that are available on the Google Play Store and have been cumulatively downloaded over 1.01 billion times. Some of the most targeted apps include Walmart-backed PhonePe, Binance, Cash App, Garanti BBVA Mobile, La Banque Postale, Ma Banque, Caf - Mon Compte, Postepay, and BBVA México. These apps alone

You can take the Middle-earth out of the hobbits, but you can't take the hobbits out of the Middle-earth, as the old adage goes. Does that sentence make any sense? Not really. Is it a thing I just made up as pretext to talk about Prime Video's series "The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power?" You betcha!

It's been known for a while that "The Rings of Power" wouldn't feature any hobbits proper. The show takes place in the Second Age of Middle-earth, which is thousands of years before a pack of dwarves party-crash Bilbo Baggins' hobbit-hole in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" and the ensuing events of "The Lord of the Rings." That also means it picks up at a point in Middle-earth history when hobbits have yet to do anything of major significance (besides smoking Pipe-weed and chillaxing, which is perfectly significant in my book) and haven't even settled down in the Shire.

In fact, the hobbits in "The Rings of Power" aren't technically hobbits at all but a type of proto-hobbit known as a harfoot. Their ranks include a pair of characters played by Megan Richards ("Wanderlust") and Markella Kavenagh ("My First Summer"), along with a fellow who goes by the very hobbit-y name of Sadoc Burrows (Sir Lenny Henry). It's the latter who is featured front and center in an image shared exclusively by Empire.

Along with the image, Henry provided some insight into what the harfoots are like on "The Rings of Power:"

"We're a nomadic tribe, moving with the weather and the fertility of the crops. We have big caravans on wooden wheels and we're very good at hiding things, because humans are much bigger than us and bring trouble."

'We're The Traditional Tolkien Little Guy'

A notable British actor, comedian, singer, and writer (hence the "Sir"), Lenny Henry is the co-founder of the British charity Comic Relief, and has been acting since the mid-1970s. He recently starred opposite Jodie Whittaker on the "Doctor Who" two-parter "Spyfall" and will co-star in not one, but two fantasy prequel series in 2022 in the forms of "The Witcher: Blood Origin" (where he plays Chief Druid Balor) and "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power."

Describing Sadoc and his fellow harfoots as "the traditional Tolkien little guy," Henry noted:

"Traditionally, the little people in this world provide comedy but also get to be incredibly brave. You're going to see us run the full gamut of emotions and actions in this adventure."

With their simple, pastoral attire, cloaks, and thick hair, the harfoots share a lot in common with their hobbit descendants, save for the obvious fact that they're not all white like in Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" film trilogies. Middle-earth, in general, will be more inclusive than it has in the past on "The Rings of Power," which has already led to the predictable racist outcry from a vocal segment of the franchise's fanbase.

Far from being concerned with this (as well he shouldn't), Henry is just happy to be part of an ongoing effort to make the fantasy genre more diverse:

"If you can't see it, you can't be it. Finally, in this show, kids are going to see people of color taking up space in the center of a fantasy series. We're very visible in this world and that's very exciting."

"The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" will premiere on Amazon Prime Video on September 2, 2022.

Read this next: 14 Remakes That Are Better Than The Original

The post Get Your First Look at the Proto Hobbits, the Harfoots, in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power appeared first on /Film.

California is currently in the middle of a megadrought, but droughts can happen in a variety of places and to a number of different degrees. Water conservation is something you should practice now, before a drought hits, not just once one arrives. Here’s what to do leading up to and during a drought.

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CD Projekt have thrown the doors open on the GOG Summer Sale today, and hiding in plain sight is Creative Assembly’s space survival horror Alien: Isolation. The scary stealth ‘em up is the first of a series of games published by Sega that are going DRM-free on GOG. Two Point Hospital and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine – Anniversary Edition will be joining the store at an unspecified date too.

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The OS/2 Museum has made available the first version of a display driver disk for Windows 9x running on VirtualBox. The driver uses a linear framebuffer and supports 8/16/24/32bpp modes with resolutions up to 1920×1200 pixels (see more below). The driver is not accelerated but tends to be very speedy on modern hardware.

I’d like to say that it was easy to adapt the existing Windows NT video miniport driver for Windows 9x… but of course it wasn’t. The Windows 9x display driver model is completely different and has nothing in common with NT. The Windows 9x display driver has much more in common with Windows 3.1 (and 3.0 and 2.x) drivers, and it has clearly directly evolved from those older drivers.

So what makes it a “minidriver”? A Windows 2.x/3.x display driver has to implement a very significant chunk of GDI. Bit blits, lines, text output. There is a lot of cases to handle and a great deal of complexity. To give some sense of the complexity, the Windows 3.1 DDK sample driver for Video 7 cards is about 1.6 MB (circa 60,000 lines) of assembler source code. And that’s just for 8bpp displays.

Windows 9x drivers still have to do all that. The difference is that Windows 95 introduced the “DIB Engine”, a large library that implements more or less all of GDI and that the display driver can “punt” to. The minidriver has to set modes and implement various housekeeping tasks, but all drawing can be handled by the DIB Engine. The minidriver can implement what it can do better than the DIB Engine, but doesn’t have to.

The DIB Engine in Windows 95 (DIBENG.DLL) is very similar to the DIB Engine that Microsoft released in September 1994 as part of WinG (WINGDE.DLL). I do not know the exact timeline and history. The WinG DIB Engine was designed to draw to memory bitmaps using GDI. DIBENG.DLL does exactly the same thing, but takes the idea one step further by making the video framebuffer itself a memory bitmap, optionally using the VFlatD VxD to present a bank-switched graphics card as a linear framebuffer.

The exact history of the WinG and Windows 95 DIB Engine is unclear. WinG was released in September 1994, when Windows 95 was already well underway. It is possible that the DIB Engine was planned for Windows 95 and repurposed for WinG—which also ran on Windows 3.1 and NT 3.5. Or perhaps the DIB Engine was first written for WinG and then adopted for Windows 95.

Minidriver in C

The OS/2 Museum Win9x minidriver is written almost completely in C (using Open Watcom C/C++), in part to show that not only it can be done, but it isn’t even too difficult, and the code is significantly easier to understand than the all-assembly DDK sample code.

Writing the driver in C was mildly challenging. The biggest challenge was the fact that the Windows 9x display driver is a 16-bit driver, which means it has to deal with segmentation. That’s actually something which is easier to deal with in C, because the C compiler provides a lot more sanity checks than assembler can.

A somewhat nastier problem was that although the Windows DDK documents all the functions which the driver needs to implement and the DIB Engine functions it can call, the DDK does not provide prototypes for those functions. Although the documentation does pretend to list the prototypes, it often omits return types, more or less always omits the calling convention, and sometimes is a bit sloppy with argument types.

I spent a good deal of time trying to figure out why the CreateDIBPDevice function was failing. I kept looking for bugs in my initialization code, but in the end I discovered that even though CreateDIBPDevice is a 16-bit function, it returns a 32-bit value not in the DX:AX register pair but rather in the EAX register. The Windows 95 DDK completely fails to mention this non-obvious yet crucial detail; I found it “documented” in U.S. Patent 6,525,743.

The driver also implements and calls a couple of undocumented functions. One of the functions it calls is AllocCStoDSAlias, which Microsoft’s KB Article Q67165 admits is used in the Windows 3.0 DDK but says it “will not be supported in future versions of Windows”. In reality it was of course supported all the way to Windows Me…

Supported Resolutions

While the Windows DDK sample drivers are all hardcoded to support a small set of resolutions, the OS/2 Museum minidriver is not. It restricts the smallest resolution to 640×480 but not much beyond that. The maximum allowed is 5,120×3,840 pixels, but that is entirely untested.

The supplied .INF files sets up common resolutions up to 1,920×1,200 pixels, but users can edit the .INF file (or Registry) and add their own resolutions. Note that Windows 9x likely will have trouble if there are “too many” modes listed, and it is unknown what the highest resolution might be before funny things start happening.

Installation

The driver can be installed through the Display Properties dialog or through the Device Manager; the method used should not matter.

The driver works on Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me. No attempt has been made to discover how far back it might work with Windows 95 betas.

Today is a horror/genre fun fest with the beginning of Netflix‘s second annual Geeked Week. And what better way to start off the horrorfest than by dropping a first look of Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams!

Netflix has also dropped a brand new teaser for the upcoming spooptacular series, which you can check out in the player below.

The series is a sleuthing, supernaturally infused mystery charting Wednesday Addams’ years as a student at Nevermore Academy. Wednesday’s attempts to master her emerging psychic ability, thwart a monstrous killing spree that has terrorized the local town, and solve the supernatural mystery that embroiled her parents 25 years ago — all while navigating her new and very tangled relationships at Nevermore.

The WEDNESDAY series stars Jenna Ortega (Scream, The Fallout), Catherine Zeta-Jones (Chicago, A Little Night Music), Luis Guzmán (Boogie Nights, Traffic, Carlito’s Way), Gwendoline Christie (“Game of Thrones”, Welcome to Marwen), Christina Ricci (“Yellowjackets”, Sleepy Hollow), Hunter Doohan, Percy Hynes White, Joy Sunday, Emma Myers, Riki Lindhome, Jamie McShane, Georgie Farmer, Naomi Ogawa, and Moosa Mostafa.

The series is being directed and executive produced by Tim Burton (Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands). Al Gough and Miles Millar (“Smallville”, “Into the Badlands”) are both showrunners and executive producers on the WEDNESDAY series.

Also executive producing is Andrew Mittman for 1.21 (The Addams Family, Alphas), Kevin Miserocchi (Tee and Charles Addams Foundation), Kayla Alpert (Code Black, Up All Night), Jonathan Glickman for Glickmania (RESPECT, Addams Family 2), Steve Stark (Medium, The Event), and Gail Berman (The Addams Family, Alphas).

WEDNESDAY will have eight episodes.

The post [News] WEDNESDAY – Get a First Look at Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams appeared first on Nightmarish Conjurings.

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Several readers have shared the following report: Messaging apps that offer end-to-end encryption can claim that they're protecting their users by saying that they've thrown away the key -- metaphorical and literal -- and can't undo what's been scrambled in transmission. Telegram, however, claims it protects every user whether they use E2EE or not, saying that government data requests have to pass an especially high muster before they would comply and that they have never acceded to such request. Not so, a report claims. Der Spiegel reports from sources that Telegram has fulfilled a number data requests from Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office involving terror and child abuse suspects. Still more data requests for other criminal cases have been more or less ignored. [...] The German government has been pressuring Dubai-based Telegram to cooperate with its investigations into right-wing extremist groups who have been using the messaging platform to spread their cause and coordinate action. Telegram has ramped up its own enforcement actions recently, but its user and group bans have been as comprehensive as lawmakers have been looking for.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Almost two years since the launch of Apple's M1 chip — the first ARM-based "Apple Silicon" hardware — we finally have a successor: M2. While the M1 chip was notable for showing what Apple could accomplish with a more efficient mobile design (a dramatic departure from Intel's power-hungry x86 processors), the goal of M2 is about refinement rather than breaking new ground. This time, it's all about efficiency.

But given how far Apple has scaled the M1 — to the point where it basically fused two chips together to create the mighty M1 Ultra on the Mac Studio — it'll be intriguing to see how far Apple can take the M2's design (we've yet to hear about an updated Mac Pro, don't forget).

Apple

The M2 chip supports up to 24GB of unified memory, compared to just 16GB with the M1, as well as double the memory bandwidth (1000 GB/s). And once again, it offers 8 cores (4 high performance, 4 high-efficiency). Apple claims the efficiency cores are vastly improved, and overall you can expect an 18 percent increase in multithreaded performance over the M1. The M2 chip can be equipped with up to 10 GPU cores, which are 35 percent more powerful than the M1's at their greatest power state.

Video editors may benefit the most from this new chip, as the M2 includes support for ProRes encoding and decoding, along with 6K external displays. The chip's neural engine is also 40 percent faster, which will significantly speed up AI tasks.

The M2 chip will arrive first in the redesigned MacBook Air, which adds a bigger screen and loses the iconic wedge shape, as well as the 13-inch MacBook Pro. (Hopefully, it'll make its way to the Mac Mini soon.) While the M2 may seem like an incremental update, that's not exactly a bad thing for Apple. The M1 astounded us two years ago, and the many variations of that chip can still take on the latest from Intel and AMD. If anything, the existence of the M2 chip should drive down the cost of M1 machines significantly.

Follow all of the news from WWDC right here!

Apple has just announced that the 13-inch MacBook Pro is joining the MacBook Air as the second Apple laptop powered by the new M2 chipset, which was also announced today. Unlike the MacBook Air, the 13-inch MacBook Pro isn’t getting a visual refresh, but it’s getting all the benefits of the new chip, so you’re going to see much better performance. It has a new 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU, and up to 24GB of unified memory.

As for what that means when it comes to performance, Apple claims the new MacBook Pro is 39% faster in image processing and gaming compared to the M1-powered MacBook Pro. The APple M1 used an 8-core GPU, so it-s clear that the new 10-core GPU is helping here. What’s more, the M2-powered MacBook Pro can be configured with up to 24GB of unified memory (RAM), which is 50% more than what you could get with the M1. This also helps with performance.

If you’re still using an Intel-powered MacBook Pro, specifically with an 8th-generation Core i7, the performance uplift adds up to 3.4x for image processing and 3.3x for gaming. Apple also threw some other metrics around, including three times faster ProRes transcoding (compared to the M1 MacBook Pro). Apple also touts up to 20 hours of battery life, which continues to be a major strength of Apple Silicon.

Aside from performance, not a whole lot has changed with this model. In fact, Apple has kept the Touch Bar around, even though it was removed in the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro. The display is the same 13.3-inch panel with P3 wide color and 500 nits of brightness. UNlike the larger MacBook Pro models, there’s no notch for the webcam on this one, but the camera does have an “advanced ISP”that should help improve image quality.

The new MacBook Pro will be available next month starting at $1,299. If you’re a student, you can get it starting at $1,199. That’s the same starting price as previous models.

The post New 13-inch MacBook Pro comes with a new Apple M2 and up to 24GB of unified memory appeared first on XDA.

Even though WWDC 2022 is primarily a software-focused event, Apple proceeded with an announcement of the M2 SoC, which will serve as the direct successor to the M1 found in previous-generation Macs. There are significant upgrades in tow, especially on the GPU side, where Apple now states that the custom silicon features a 10-core part. There is a lot more announced, so let us jump into the details.

Apple States Its Latest M2 Is Made on the Second-Generation 5nm Technology, Supports up to 24GB LPDDR5 Memory, With New GPU up to 35 Percent Faster

During its presentation, it was mentioned that the new M2 was made on the second-generation 5nm process, which in this case, TSMC would likely be mass producing the SoC. That is already a significant improvement compared to the M1, which was fabricated on TSMC’s 7nm node. The advanced manufacturing process now means that the M2 will be more power-efficient than its predecessor, along with having up to an 18 percent faster CPU and 35 percent GPU.

The improvement in architecture also means that the new M2 touts 20 billion transistors, features a 16-core Neural Engine that is 40 percent faster than the previous iteration, and is capable is conducting up to 15.8 trillion operations per second. If you look carefully, the M2 is slightly bigger than the M1 in terms of die size, which allowed Apple to cram in all those transistors. Also, for those of you who may not have noticed, the number of CPU cores and their configuration remains the same.

Just like the M1, the M2 features four high-performance cores and four power-efficient ones. However, on the GPU side of things, where the M1 was limited to an 8-core GPU, Apple has bumped up that number and given its latest silicon a 10-core GPU, which should bring notable improvements in graphics-related tasks.

Of course, the RAM chips will be soldered to the logic board, so customers will have to configure their machines before they confirm their purchase. Aside from this, Apple states that the M2 can deliver a 100GB/s memory bandwidth, and it supports up to a 6K external display. With the amount of horsepower to drive signal to a 6K external monitor, the M2 will likely be able to power multiple low-resolution displays too.

In short, the improvements on paper are plentiful, but we will have to see in future benchmarks and comparisons how big of a leap Apple engineered when compared to the M1, so stay tuned for those details. You can take a look at the image to see what the new M2 brings to the table, and let us know down in the comments.

The post Apple Announces M2 SoC for Future Macs With 8-Core CPU, Upgraded 10-Core GPU, 20 Billion Transistors, LPDDR5 Support and More by Omar Sohail appeared first on Wccftech.

As suggested in numerous leaks over the last few weeks, Apple has finally lifted the covers off the next generation of Apple silicon. The new Apple M2 chip builds upon the success of Apple’s first ARM-based SoC and focuses on offering better power efficiency, along with some performance gains.

According to Apple, the new Apple M2 chip features the same unified memory architecture as its predecessor, but it offers better performance with less power consumption. The chip packs 20 billion transistors, a whopping 25 percent more than the M1. In addition, the new memory controller delivers 50 percent more bandwidth than the one found on the M1 and supports up to 24GB of unified memory.

The new Apple M2 chip packs an 8-core CPU consisting of four high-efficiency cores and four high-performance cores. Thanks to this, Apple claims that the M2 delivers 18 percent better performance than the Apple M1. Apple goes so far as to claim that the new M2 chip is 1.9x faster than a 10-core PC laptop chip while using a quarter of the power. Apple also says that the new chip delivers 87 percent of the power of a 12-core PC chip while using a quarter of the power, but we’ll thoroughly test these claims as soon as we get our hands on the new MacBook Air.

Along with an upgraded CPU, the new Apple M2 also features a next-gen GPU with up to 10-cores (two more than the M1). The GPU helps the new chip deliver 25% better graphics performance than the M1 and up to 35% when going full tilt. As with the CPU, Apple claims that the upgraded M2 GPU offers 2.3x faster GPU performance than a 10-core PC laptop.

Apple has also packed a couple of other interesting features on the new M2 chip, including a Secure Enclave, a Neural Engine, a next-gen Media Engine with 8k, H.254, HEVC video, and ProRes support. The new Media Engine helps the M2 output multiple streams of 4K and 8K videos and offer 6K external display support. The Apple M2 will debut on the new MacBook Air and updated MacBook Pro 13.

The post The new Apple M2 SoC offers 18% better CPU and 25% better GPU performance than the M1 appeared first on XDA.

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…

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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…

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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.

An Old-Timey Supervillain

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."

Is Redemption Off The Table?

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."

A Duplicitous Character

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.