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While plenty of gadgets cross our desks, we at Engadget also end up buying a lot of things for ourselves throughout the year. In 2022, some of us upgraded our TVs while others invested in new cookware and deskaccessories that upped our productivity. But there are plenty of things we've been loving recently that haven't made it onto the site. Here, our staffers look back on the year that was by gushing about their favorite items they bought this year.

Nest Hub Max

Sam Rutherford / Engadget

I got a Nest Hub Max last year for Christmas and over the past 12 months, it’s probably brought me more joy than any other gadget. By setting Google Photos to automatically upload pictures of my son to an album linked to the Nest Hub, every day I’m treated to a slideshow of all the fun times we’ve had. When people say kids grow up fast, they’re totally right. But as a photo viewer with voice controls, the Nest Hub max lets me relive those memories while being also an important part of my smart home control center. – Sam Rutherford, Senior Reporter

55-inch LG B2 OLED smart TV

Valentina Palladino / Engadget

In prioritizing big purchases for our new home, I knew I wanted to get a better TV and soon. Not only did we need a new one quickly for our living room while my fiance used our old one in the basement he’d claimed as his man cave, but I also wanted to see if I could get a good deal during Amazon’s October Prime Day event. I ultimately decided to splurge on the 55-inch LG B2 OLED smart TV when it dipped under $1,000 during that period. To say the difference from our old LED TV was instantly noticeable is not hyperbole: as soon as we set the thing up, we were stunned by the quality. Blacks are deep and colors are much more vibrant than on any TV we’ve had before.

We’ve watched a lot of things on it so far, from live sports to documentaries to sitcoms and everything looks much sharper and more colorful than we’re used to. We’re also pleasantly surprised by LG’s webOS. This is the first TV we’ve used with it and it was super easy to get accustomed to. We like how you can customize your homescreen and navigate either with the arrow keys on the remote or the convenient little cursor that flies around the TV screen. We now refer to it as the “good TV” in the house, with my fiancé opting to watch his weekly sports games on the B2 rather than in his basement sanctuary. — Valentina Palladino, Senior Commerce Editor

Chase Bliss Gen Loss v2

Chase Bliss

I have made no bones about my love of all things lo-fi and broken. What can I say? I like warbles. In my quest to make every instrument I own sound like it’s coming out of an old tape player I’ve tried a number of things, but in June I pre-ordered the Generation Loss MKII and I think my search is now complete.

The Generation Loss is one of the most popular lo-fi pedals ever made, and last year its creator, Tom Majeski of Cooper FX, joined the relentless experimenters at Chase Bliss. One of the first orders of business was updating his classic pedal. It’s pitched as a “VHS duplicator,” but that is greatly underselling things. While the original Gen Loss was just sort of a generalized tape simulator, the MKII version digs into the highly specific sonic characteristics of a variety of tape-based devices.

The company pulled apart and analyzed VHS players, Tascam Portastudios and dictaphones in an effort to find out what makes them unique. It covers everything from the subtle frequency drop off of old ¼-inch tape running through a reel-to-reel machine, all the way to the crushed hum that results when you make a copy of a copy of a VHS cassette. And if you’re not into the newer version that faithfully recreates particular tape formats, you can always throw one of Chase Bliss’ patented dip switches to turn on classic mode. — Terrence O'Brien, Managing Editor

Apple MagSafe Duo charger

Mat Smith / Engadget

I’ll admit it: My favorite gadget of the year is, well, something I bought last year. In spring 2021,I picked up Apple’s MagSafe Duo charger, which can charge both your iPhone and Apple Watch at the same time, all in a fold-up, compact form factor. While I could (and have) used it at home to charge my Apple devices overnight, I picked it up as a compact charging kit for when I traveled. As we all know, 2021 was not the year for roaming the globe. But as travel restrictions were lifted this year, I finally got to see if the pricey charger was worth the investment.

Yes, $129 was a lot for a dual charger, but it fulfilled the brief of using just a single cable and being so much more compact than most rival Apple Watch standup chargers. It unfurls like a makeup compact, meaning it can slip into anyone’s luggage with ease. Yes, I could take the Apple Watch cable, but in recent years these cables have USB-C, not USB-A sockets. Unfortunately, a lot of hotels (and charging plugs) still don’t have those, and if I’m visiting a different country, there are only so many things I can charge at once with a travel adapter.

After unfolding the two sides, the magnetic puck for Watch charging can also be folded out at 90 degrees, attaching to the wearable and allowing me to see the time when it’s set up. The small footprint means it fits on most nightstands and bedside tables at hotels, guest rooms and even window ledges. If space is at a premium, you can fold it around to charge a single device, whether that’s the watch or your iPhone. The MagSafe charger spot can also wirelessly recharge my AirPods if I ensure they’re in the correct position.

It’s not perfect. I’m increasingly frustrated at the sluggish charging speed when wirelessly charging my iPhone – even if this isn’t a problem when charging overnight. Hopefully, Apple will bring out another model that’s hopefully cheaper and faster to charge. When Apple eventually ditches Lightning, it’ll need to make a new one anyway. – Mat Smith, UK Bureau Chief

Bissell SpotClean Pet Pro

Bissell

Our new house has carpet on the second floor and, while it’s in pretty good shape, there were some stains we wanted to remove if possible before moving in. We also have a cat who occasionally eats too fast and, well, I probably don’t have to tell you the rest. Investing in a spot cleaner seemed like a no-brainer, and I’m glad I went with Bissell’s SpotClean Pet Pro. It’s fairly light at 13 pounds and not very big, so I can tote it around by its carrying handle to any place in my home. All you have to do is fill the solution tank with the proper ratio of cleaning liquid and water, plug the machine in, turn it on and use the included handle to scrub away stains.

I first used it on some of the carpet’s existing mystery marks and they easily came out after a few minutes of elbow-greased scrubbing. The SpotClean’s handle has a button that lets you control the amount of solution it sprays out, and while it’s running, it’s constantly sucking up excess water, filling up a separate tank with the dirty bits. The hardest part of using it is the scrubbing you have to do, and how much weight you want to put into it is totally up to you. I found most light stains came out quickly and without too much effort on my part, but I did spend more time on tougher spots. I also love that I can use this to deep clean upholstered furniture, like our old couch which is in desperate need of a refresh. This spot cleaner certainly isn’t the sexiest purchase I’ve made for our new home, but it’s one that will keep it looking fresh and clean for longer. — V.P.

Tushy Classic Bidet 3.0

Tushy

Everyone likes a clean butthole. I don’t think that’s a controversial thing to say. But while toilet paper does a decent enough job, sometimes it just doesn’t get the area clean enough. Which means you end up using more TP, potentially clogging the toilet in the process, and you still might not feel like it’s completely clean. That’s why I recently purchased the Tushy Classic 3.0, an affordable bidet that can fit with my existing toilet.

I’ve long wanted one of those fancy Japanese bidet toilets. But not only are they expensive, they require remodeling my bathroom with an additional outlet, which I simply can’t justify at the moment. The Tushy Classic 3.0, on the other hand, is only $130 or so, and it gets the job done at a fraction of the cost. Installing it is easy. All we did was attach it to our existing plumbing and we were done in about 10 minutes. It doesn’t use any electricity either. Turning the knob adjusts the water pressure while moving the toggle adjusts the angle of the spray nozzle.

We’ve been using it for a few months now, and we really do love it. We almost look forward to going number two, which is a strange thing to say. As a woman with monthly menstruation, I really appreciate that it helps get me much cleaner than with toilet paper alone. I think we end up using less TP as a result, too. I’d probably want to upgrade to a fancier bidet in the future, but for now, the Tushy Classic 3.0 more than does the job. — Nicole Lee, Commerce Writer

Blueland hand soap

Blueland

Before we moved into our new home, we had nearly exhausted the available storage in our apartment. Our tiny bathrooms had little to no space to store extra hand soap, bath wash and other necessities, so I resorted to stuffing our linen closet to the brim – so much so that I had to lean on the door to get it to close properly. So I turned to Blueland, which makes hand soap, cleaning supplies and the like that come in small tablets inside compostable pouches, and most of their formulas are plant-based, vegan and more environmentally friendly than cleaners you’ll find in big-box stores. All you do is drop the formula tablet into a container of water, shake it up and let it sit for a while until the whole tablet dissolves and then you can use the product.

I was immediately impressed with the foaming hand soap for a few reasons. First, a couple of packets took up significantly less space than even a refill jug of the soap I was previously buying, plus I liked the fact that I was purchasing one less plastic bottle by switching. Second, the soap actually worked as advertised. I had tried a couple of eco-conscious hand and dish soaps before this, and most of them had left me disappointed because I felt like they didn’t clean as well as standard solutions. But Blueland’s hand soap foamed up nicely and actually left my hands feeling clean after every wash, with no weird residue left behind.

I started off using the tablets in a mason jar outfitted with a foaming pump lid, but I’ve since graduated to Blueland’s own glass hand soap bottles, which are hefty and luxe. Ultimately, Blueland solved a few problems for me: I don’t have to waste as much space storing hand soap refills, I don’t have to create as much waste since I’m not buying those single-use plastic bottles anymore and I don’t even have to remember to buy hand soap when I go shopping because I get refills sent to my door every few months. — V.P.

Fujifilm XF 27 mm F/2.8

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

Earlier this year, when I started dabbling in photography as a hobby, I decided the best way for me to start honing my skills was to have my Fujifilm X-T30 with me at all times. The only issue was that, even the relatively light XF 35mm f/2 bought was a little too bulky to go everywhere. I ended up snagging one of Fuji’s 27mm pancake lenses used a few months back, and it’s barely left my camera since. More importantly, my camera has barely left my side since.

With this lens the X-T30 comfortably fits in my Peak Design Field Pouch, along with a cleaning cloth and brush, a notebook and pen, plus my keys. It’s so easy to just grab everything no matter where it is that I’m going. To my parents’ for a birthday dinner? Sure. Grocery shopping? Why not? Just around the block to walk my dog? Seems silly not to.

Obviously, the big feature here is size, but it’s not like you’re making a lot of tradeoffs to get there either. Images taken with the 27mm are insanely sharp. Even wide open at F/2.8 the corners are crisp and contrasty. Would a larger aperture have been nice? Sure. But this is plenty for street photography and family snapshots. My version doesn’t have an aperture ring sadly, but the newer model does. Honestly, my one real complaint is that the minimum focus distance is about 13.4 inches, and I often find myself wanting to get closer to my subject. Still, this is probably the best investment I’ve made in my budding love of photography. — T.O.

Anyday Everyday cookware set

Nader Khouri / Anyday

After a traumatic incident where I accidentally set a small fire in a hotel room during a work trip to Barcelona, I've always been extra careful about leaving metal in a microwave. So when my friend gifted me a set of Anyday bowls, telling me it was safe to place their metal lids in my microwave and cook whole meals with them, I was blown away.

The premise of these glass bowls is that they're designed to cook food in your microwave. The bowls themselves are made from thicker, thermal shock-resistant frosted glass so they'll better withstand temperature fluctuations without cracking. The lids keep steam in the dish to cook your food, and have vents to let out the excess. A silicone rim expands to accommodate extra pressure, and the stainless steel in the lids is curved in a way that Anyday says makes it "100% microwave-safe."

As someone who mostly prizes convenience when it comes to cooking, I'm enamored with my Anyday bowls. I love steaming eggs and fish filets, but I can also cook rice, vegetables, pasta, and make nut butters, cakes and pretty much anything in the microwave with this system. Of course, anything requiring a sear, deep fry or broil won't work, and some of the recipes the company shared on its website are too complicated for my liking. But for making healthy steamed meals, the Anyday system is honestly a godsend (or friendsend). Best part: they're dishwasher safe, so I don't need to deal with the cleanup after. — Cherlynn Low, Deputy Editor

Madewell Zip-Top Transport Crossbody

Madewell

My go-to bag for years has been the Pearl crossbody from Lo & Sons, which I love for its compact size and multiple compartments. But it just wasn’t big enough for all the gear that I wanted to carry around with me. So for my birthday this year, I decided to buy myself a newer, larger, bag. I knew that I wanted it to be a crossbody – it feels more secure to me than a regular shoulder model – and I would prefer it if it had top handles. I discovered Madewell’s Zip-Top Transport Crossbody while I was browsing the web, and it seemed to fit the bill.

I’ve had it for a few months now, and it’s earned its place as my new everyday bag. It’s made from a vegetable-tanned leather that’s soft and worn with a slight waxed finish which feels lovely to the touch. The shoulder straps are detachable so I can swap them out if I want, or I can use just the top handles by themselves. The best thing about it for me is its size: at around 10 x 10 x 3 inches, it’s small enough to not weigh me down, but it’s also surprisingly roomy. It fits all my essentials and then some. That includes my wallet, phone, keys, earbuds, pens, my Kobo Libra 2 e-reader, a portable battery and, if I wedge it in correctly, even my Hobonichi Techo planner.

That said, I wish it had more compartments. It only has two inside pockets, which themselves are not that big. As a result, it’s easy for smaller items to get lost; I often have to spend time searching for my lipstick or hand sanitizer. My current solution is to keep these items in a separate small makeup pouch that can fit inside the bag so that it’s easier to fish out. It’s not perfect, but at least for me, the good outweighs the bad. — N.L.

Purist Mover water bottle

Jeff Dunn / Engadget

I spent $50 on a water bottle earlier this year, and surprisingly, I don’t feel like an idiot months later. That’s because the bottle is the Purist Mover, and it has largely solved the problem of my water picking up a metallic taste after a few weeks. The trick is an ultra-thin, unbreakable layer of glass that lines the interior and helps prevent odors and tastes from transferring. To my taste buds, this has actually worked. I still need to wash the bottle every so often, of course, but so far my water has never tasted like anything other than water.

This might seem like a pointless thing to brag about, but the Mover just feels nice, too. Its textured finish is pleasing to the touch, and its simple design looks high-end – for a water bottle, at least. There are multiple lid and size options available; I went with the 18-ounce model and “Union” spout cap, which has been fine, though the lid tends to make a whistling sound that sounds uncannily like hitting a bong. (Be warned if you’re ever off-camera during a work call.) I still can’t tell anyone they should spend this much on a water bottle, but the Mover does the thing I want, and I’m spending way less on wasteful plastic bottles as a result. — Jeff Dunn, Senior Commerce Writer

Fans have been waiting for "Avatar: The Way of Water" for almost a decade and a half now. James Cameron's first "Avatar" film was a marvel of technical innovation when it came out and while whether or not you liked the story depended on personal preference, there is no way to argue with how visually beautiful it was. 

The new film continues the story of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a human marine in the future who has his consciousness permanently encased in his Na'vi avatar, his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), and their growing family of children, both adopted and biological. The humans who cause so much destruction on Pandora are back, and they're trying to take resources again, bringing strife to the moon world, and hunting Jake. 

There are huge battles, gorgeous underwater scenes, and some spectacular CG and motion capture work. There is also, however, the use of high frame rate (HFR), something you may have seen before in films like "The Hobbit" trilogy or "Gemini Man." If you're not familiar with it, a standard film has 24 frames per second, which gives you a more cinematic aesthetic. HFR has 48 frames per second, which makes things sharper and more realistic — like you're watching a play.

That sounds great in theory, but in practice, it can be very disconcerting. In "The Way of Water," this HFR isn't the standard. It switches back and forth, sometimes within the same scene, and it's so jarringly awful that it takes away from everything else.

James Cameron Is 'Hacking' Faster Frame Rates

Not every theater can support HFR, but director James Cameron has a "hack" for that, as Variety reported in October. Cameron spoke at the Busan International Film Festival in South Korea, where he explained that they're using the HFR to "improve 3D where we want a heightened sense of presence, such as underwater or in some of the flying scenes." He said that the lower, more standard 24fps is better for scenes with people speaking. He explained the hack this way: 

"Can theatres support variable frame rate, switching back and forth within the movie between 24fps and 48fps? The answer is no, they just run it at 48fps. In any part of the scene that we want at 24fps, we just double the frames. And so, they actually show the same frame twice, but, but the viewer doesn't see it that way. And so, we just we're essentially using a simple hack to use the high frame rate platform that already exists."

In theory, that sounds great. I want to be very clear in saying that I appreciate Cameron's innovations. I think it's important to try things out and experiment, particularly in an artistic format. Sometimes things take getting used to. I used to hate 3D. It made me nauseated. It's better now, though one early scene in the movie made me close my eyes so I could keep the popcorn in my body. Still, it's better than it used to be.

None of the 3D advances would have worked without experimentation and a few dicey screenings. It's just that the HFR moving back and forth is incredibly distracting, and it completely took me out of the film and any enjoyment I might have gotten from it.  

You're Asking A Lot Of Our Eyeballs

If you saw one of the showings of "The Hobbit" films that used HFR, you may have noticed that certain scenes (the one that comes to mind is Bilbo in the cave with Gollum) where it looks like you're watching a stage play or an old BBC low-budget production. HFR is very different from what we're used to, and perhaps that's the issue. Maybe seeing it more would change our perceptions. Right now, however, it can be migraine-inducing, and switching back and forth makes it far worse. 

We're already dealing with the jarring move between CGI characters and environments and the military scenes with humans. It's beautiful, the things they do with the Na'vi, but it's not quite the same thing, and it's noticeable. Add in the frame rate back and forth, and it feels impossible for your eyes to track and adjust.  Sometimes the shift happens in the same scene, so while your eyes are refocusing and you're wondering why it looks different, you miss out on a story point or dialogue. Film is supposed to be immersive, and this made it less so for "The Way of Water."

Not Ready For Primetime

It's particularly noticeable in the battle scenes, in which James Cameron is a master of crafting. In one shot, we're watching a few Na'vi run across the screen in a standard way but in the next, the humans appear to be sped up, like someone changed the playback speed on a YouTube video. Have you ever been on a Zoom or Skype call where there is a lag, and then everything is double time for a few seconds to catch up to the live conversation? It happens constantly here. Add in Sigourney Weaver playing her own character's 14-year-old daughter, trying to keep names (which are often mumbled) and creatures straight, too many leads, the 3D, and the fact that half my butt had gone numb (the runtime is three hours and 10 minutes), it took me right out of the action.

Having said all that, it's a first shot across the bow, this frame rate business. It's relatively new tech, which means it takes time to perfect. I'm glad that, with everything the industry is going through now, people are still willing to take chances on stuff like this. I would just add that this isn't perfect by a long shot, and it's not ready for implementation in other films until there is another shift in the process. I hope this is better in the next sequel because the migraine I've had for the last 18 hours shows no sign of slowing down. 

"Avatar: The Way of Water" is currently in theaters. 

Read this next: Movies Like Avatar That Are Just As Visually Stunning

The post Avatar: The Way of Water's High Frame Rate is Awful and Distracting and This Can't be the Future of Movies, Right? appeared first on /Film.

What are the best medieval games? Rare is a videogame that doesn’t feature at least one sword, suit of armor, or roast chicken. Still, they’re usually mixed in with bearded hermits slinging magic fireballs, which we’re reliably informed your average medieval peasant had very little knowledge of.

To that end, we’ve assembled a list of the best PC games that eschew all the prophecy and pyrotechnics for good old-fashioned steel-on-steel action. Medieval games come in all different shapes and sizes, with some opting for a more fantasy game style. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is, after all, no basis for a system of government. Similarly, a level ten Necromancer against a blacksmith wearing a potato sack is no basis for a fair fight.

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For many, the words “office politics” conjure images of manipulating, back-stabbing, or slippery co-workers who kiss-up to the boss and flaunt their influence to get what they want. The words reek of unfairness and are almost always used to refer to the underbelly of the workplace. Many employees flat out refuse to…

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Let’s assume you have already dealt with the most important parts of your finances: your credit cards, bank accounts, spending, and investments. You’ve consciously decided what your Rich Life is, and you’ve built a financial system that is essentially on autopilot, letting you spend your time pursuing the things you love. You’re doing great. Especially considering that most people are still struggling with paying their monthly bills. So congratulations. But—of course there’s a “but”—if you’re seriously nerdy and want to know more about enhancing your finances, this is for you. Remember, though: This is extra credit, so don’t feel the need to follow the advice here unless you really want to.

Get Honest About Why You Want More

I was raised to be the best—to study harder, work longer, and perform better than everyone else. In many ways, those lessons have paid off. But I also see the dark side of blindly following the idea of being the best without reflecting on why you’re working so hard. So before you read on, ask yourself what the point of all of this work is. Is it to earn an extra $10,000? Or to actually live a Rich Life?

Sometimes financial advice just blindly encourages people to do “more, more, more” without stopping to ask, “Is this enough?” The concept of winning becomes the goal instead of knowing why you’re playing in the first place. When do you get to stop and enjoy all the hard work you’ve done?

I’ve seen too many people decide to take control of their finances (good), then change their lives to save money (good), then continue saving and become increasingly aggressive (not so good), and finally end up “living in the spreadsheet,” where they spend each day counting how much their money has grown (very bad). They’ve become obsessed with the game without realizing why they’re playing.

You do not want to live in the spreadsheet. Life is more than tweaking your asset allocation and running Monte Carlo simulations on your investments.

How To Keep Going 

Now it’s time to ask why you want to keep going. If the answer is, “I want to take a lavish vacation every year and splurge on first-class tickets,” great! If your answer is, “I’m saving aggressively for the next three years so we can afford to move into our dream neighborhood,” awesome. I can show you how to achieve both of those goals even faster.

To do that, let’s go through an exercise I call “Taking It From the Clouds to the Street.”When I ask you, “Why do you want more?” The common answers are “freedom” or “security.” Those are fine, but I want to challenge you to go deeper. The problem is that high-level, vague visions never motivate us as much as we’d hope. True motivation is often real, concrete—on the street. It’s something that affects our day-to-day life.

If you had to get extremely specific about why you want to earn your next $10,000 and you had to bring your answer from the clouds to the street, what would you say?

What’s your street-level motivation? You could create some lofty life purpose—or you could take a ten-minute walk and figure out what gets you excited at this exact moment. The answers are often a lot simpler than you think.

Your motivation could be taking a taxi to happy hour at five p.m. instead of sweating on the train, or paying for a friend to join you on a glamping trip. One of my early street-level motivations was being able to order appetizers when I ate out!

Why do you want to earn the next $1,000 or $10,000 or $25,000? Don’t worry about an answer that’s in the clouds. Get brutally honest and bring your answer down to the street.

If you’ve gotten clear about why you want more, let me show you a few things you can do to achieve it.

Two of my favorite things are concerts and coaching high school lacrosse. Thanks to my job and salary I am able to buy VIP tickets to concerts and have scheduling flexibility to hold a full-time job in addition  to  coaching high school lacrosse.

—DANIEL SNOW, 38

When I go grocery shopping, I don’t look at the prices of things. I get whatever I need and want. Before, I needed to figure out how to make $50 work for the week. Now, if a recipe calls for a pound of Gruyère, I’ll get it. I might be surprised at the register, but it’s all good. I don’t need to take anything back.

—ELZ JONES, 44

How to Accumulate More and Grow Faster: Feed Your System

The automatic system is great, but it’s fueled by only one thing: the money you feed it. That means that your system is only as strong as the amount you put in it.

This is where your purpose comes in handy. For example, if you want to FIRE (become Financially Independent and Retire Early) in fifteen years, you know to double down and save/invest aggressively. Alternatively, if you want to live large in Manhattan, you could give yourself a generous spending plan for cocktail bars and Seamless delivery (a decision I know well).

Of course, the very best way is to say “yes and yes”—yes, I want to save aggressively, and yes, I want to live an incredibly Rich Life. With enough planning (and, depending on your goals, a high enough income), you can often do both.

Remember: Because the rewards of investing as early as possible are so tremendous, one of your key drivers will be feeding as much as possible into your system.

I automated my savings so that I was saving a substantial amount while paying off credit card debt. This allowed me to pay for a wedding and also buy a house at the bottom of the market in San Diego. My home increased in value from $250,000 to $700,000, and the absurdly low mortgage payment allows us to live relatively stress free in a popular, beautiful area.

—ALISSA MCQUESTION, 34

To put it another way, if you found a magical money machine that took $1 in and spit $5 out, what would you do? You’d put as much as you could in it! The only catch is, it takes time: Every dollar you invest today will be worth many more tomorrow.

How Rich Will I Be In . . .

How much will your monthly investment be worth, assuming an 8 percent return?

IF YOU INVEST . . .

Amount	$100 A Month	$500 A Month
After 5 Years	$7,347	$36,738
After 10 Years	$18,294	$91,473
After 25 Years	$95,102	$475,513

Don’t just take it from me, though. Go to bankrate.com and open up one of their investment calculators. Enter in your monthly investment contribution, assuming an 8 percent return. You’ll likely see that your current contributions will grow more slowly than you thought. But by adding a small amount per month—even $100 or $200 more—the numbers will change dramatically.

I outlined a Conscious Spending Plan that suggested general percentages of income to allocate for savings and investing. Your first goal was to aim for those percentages. Now it’s time to move beyond those amounts so you can save and invest as much as possible. I know, I know. “Invest more? I can’t squeeze out another cent!”

This is not about me wanting to deprive you. Actually, quite the opposite: Because compounding works so effectively, the more you save now, the more you’ll have later (by a huge amount). You saw this in the Bankrate calculator. Now go in and play around with your Conscious Spending Plan to see how you can eke out a little more to put toward your investments every month.

Optimizing your plan might involve doing some serious bargaining when you make major purchases like a car or house. Or you might need to cut your expenses as ruthlessly as possible, which I cover here. You may even think about negotiating a higher salary or getting a higher-paying job. No matter how you go about it, be sure that you’re shoveling the maximum amount possible into your system every month. Remember, it’s never easier to do this than now—and the more you feed into your system now, the sooner you’ll reach your goals.

I went from manually paying my bills every month to automatically paying my bills, automating savings, and planning the whole years’ worth of expenses. Now I have even automated monthly donations to charity   as    well. I almost never worry about money now, and after growing up with the constant struggle of money being short, this really makes me feel a lot better.

—MICHAEL STEELE, 40

How Do I Invest More? is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

A Rust variant of a ransomware strain known as Agenda has been observed in the wild, making it the latest malware to adopt the cross-platform programming language after BlackCat, Hive, Luna, and RansomExx. Agenda, attributed to an operator named Qilin, is a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) group that has been linked to a spate of attacks primarily targeting manufacturing and IT industries across

Astronomers have long held that one of the reasons the Earth has been able to support life while other planets cannot is due largely to its very particular distance from the Sun. According to an article published by Cornell University in 2015, the Earth could only be from between 0.95 AU to 1.69 AU away from the Sun and still support life, often called the Goldilocks Zone. To remind you of 6th-grade astronomy, 1 AU is about 93 million miles. Moons throughout the solar system, however, also might have the possibility of supporting life thanks to their warm atmospheres and the presence of water. Europa, one of Jupiter's largest moons, seems like the most likely candidate for hosting life, followed by Saturn's Enceladus. 

The actual astronomy of Pandora, the setting of James Cameron's "Avatar: The Way of Water" is never explicitly laid out in the films, and there isn't a lot of time spent in stellar cartography. What audiences do know is that Pandora is a very Earth-like moon, orbiting a gas giant, that can support a large variety of life, including the Na'Vi. Many of the animals are sentient, as is a living network of psychic roots that seem to stretch down to the center of the planet. Humans can't breathe the air on Pandora, though. 

The climax of "The Way of Water" is a massive conflagration between the Na'Vi and the interloping human Marines and whalers that would kill the plant as soon as look at it. The fight begins at dusk, lasts all night, and resolves just as the sun is rising. Appropriately, the characters never talk about "sundown," but instead talk about "eclipse." Pandora is not turning away from the sun, but the moon is orbiting its gas giant so that the sun is obscured. 

Pandora Is In Alpha Centauri

How big is the sun that Pandora sees, what is the gas giant it orbits, and how fast does Pandora move? Let's examine.

There is a real-life heavenly body called Pandora, incidentally, but it is an icy, potato-shaped moon that orbits Saturn. The Pandora of "Avatar," according to expanded universe lore, orbits the fictional planet Polyphemus, a gas giant that, in turn, orbits around Alpha Centauri A, a.k.a Rigil Kentaurus, one of three real-life stars in a three-star system. Alpha Centauri A and B are a binary system, and A is slightly larger than our sun, and about 1.5 times brighter. It is classified as a G-type star, also called a yellow dwarf. At last count, no planets have yet been detected in the system. It would take five straight years of observation to see if planets pass in front of, or affect the gravity, of the Alpha stars. 

To date, most of the planets that have been detected are called "Hot Jupiters," in that they are enormous gas giants that orbit terribly close to their suns. Any Earth-like planets haven't yet been observed. Judging by that gauge, then, one might postulate that Polyphemus would orbit terribly close to Rigil Kantaurus. Whenever the sun is seen in "Avatar," however, it looks to be about as big as ours, leading one to believe that Polyphemus is about 1 AU away from its sun. "The Hot Jupiters," incidentally, would be an excellent name for a ska band.

The fight scene in "The Way of Water" lasts through the night, but doesn't seem to take very long. Indeed, a little bit of thought will reveal that it might not be dark on Pandora very often. 

The Length Of A Day On Pandora

Polyphemus, orbits Alpha Centauri A. Alpha Centauri B, however, being a smaller star, also orbits around Alpha Centauri A. Because of its constant proximity to two suns, Pandora would seemingly receive light almost year round. According to facts extrapolated from various fan sites, Pandora's nights, remain light for about half of its year. Also, it seems that Pandora has a high axial tilt of 29°, making for a complicated and wild timing schedule when it comes to days and nights. There doesn't seem to be an actual timed calendar when it comes to mapping days and hours. The Na'Vi seem to be able to roll with the planet's cycles, however, and they do know precisely when the sun(s) will be obscured; the Na'Vi children know they have to be in bed by nightfall/eclipse.

The actual length of a year or a day on Pandora, then, is hard to gauge. It can be said that there are definitely nights that last no more than 100 Earth minutes on Pandora. As taken from an online "Avatar" wiki: "Polyphemus occasionally eclipses Alpha Centauri B at night for about one hundred minutes, but the light reflected by the planet still keeps the night from being dark." Take wikis with a grain of salt, however.

It seems that the nighttime climax of "The Way of Water," then, was not much longer than two episodes of "Star Trek." Given that the final sequence takes as long as it does, then there may not be much cinematic time compression at play. The final sequence of "The Way of Water" could very well be happening in real-time. 

Read this next: What These Avatar Scenes Look Like Without CGI

The post How Long is the Day-Night Cycle On Avatar: The Way of Water's Pandora? appeared first on /Film.

It seems there has been a boom in Match-3 games. They seem to be a popular target for casual gaming on mobile devices/in browsers. But what’s better than playing Match-3 on your mobile phone? Playing Match-3 under DOS!

I say ‘new game’, but it was released in August last year. So yes, it’s a ‘new’ game for DOS, but I’m rather late to the party. Anyway, the game is Super Space Fuel Inc., and it was made by some friends I know from my demogroup DESiRE.

Code is done by sBeam, graphics by VisionVortex, and music by No-XS.

The game requires EGA, and has AdLib music. In theory it can run on any machine with an 8088 CPU or better. In practice you probably want at least a Turbo XT or 286 for the best gaming experience.

The game was written in Turbo C. You can download the game for free, and if you make a small donation, you can also download the source code, if you are interested. Of course I hope you will donate, as any retro DOS stuff, especially with EGA and AdLib, deserves a reward.

Dosgamert made a video with gameplay to get a decent impression of the game:

You may recognize the music. And I must say, the graphics and animation look very slick. Hope you like it!

This is a draft that I have kept around since March 16, 2019, so it is about time I finally finish and publish it.

This story started somewhere in 2015, when a user named Keropi posted a thread on the Vogons forum, about cloning a Music Quest card. What is a Music Quest card, you may ask? It is a clone of the Roland MPU-401 MIDI interface. Keropi had collected a lot of information on it in a previous thread. But I suppose that begs the question: what exactly is a Roland MPU-401?

I would gather that most people know MPU-401 as a standard for MIDI on the PC, and then usually they are familiar with the UART-mode aka ‘dumb’ mode, since that is the simple interface, which most clones, including many Sound Blasters, support, and which was also used for the later Wave Blaster standard.

An actual MPU-401 is somewhat different though. For starters, strictly speaking, the MPU-401 is not a PC device. It is an external module, and it looks like this:

As you can see, it has a connector labeled “To Computer”. So what do you connect this to? Well, this explains why Roland designed it like this: the MPU-401 is the “MIDI Processing Unit”. This unit contains a Z80 processor and some support chips, and does the actual MIDI handling:

So technically this is like a computer on its own. Roland decided to make this part generic, so they only had to design a simple interface for the various computer systems around in the 80s, and use the same MPU-401 unit for all of them. For the PC, the interface was a simple ISA card, known as MIF-IPC:

So for the PC, a Roland MPU-401 interface was actually a setup of both the ISA card and the MPU-401 unit.

Intelligent Design

Okay, so we mentioned the ‘dumb’ mode. But what is ‘intelligent mode’? This is why the MPU-401 is such a complex design: it is actually a basic hardware MIDI sequencer (Roland calls it a ‘Conductor’ in its manual). That is: you can send MIDI data to it in advance, and queue it up with timestamps, and the device will send out the MIDI data at the correct time by itself. Then it will signal the host with an interrupt that it is ready to receive new data.

Why did they make MIDI so complex back in the day? These were early days. MIDI was introduced somewhere around 1983, and the Roland MPU-401 is to my knowledge the first available MIDI interface for home/personal computers, and was introduced in 1984, and supported computers such as the Commodore 64, Apple II and MSX, and of course the IBM PC.

So we are talking early 80s 8-bit machines, with limited memory and processing power. Sure, these machines could play music, but this was generally synchronized to the display refresh rate, so you had an update rate of 50 or 60 Hz. This severely limited you in terms of tempo. MIDI allowed for much higher resolutions, as it was aimed at professional musicians in a studio setting.

Now, while I have developed a MIDI player myself a few years ago, and explained how you could get the high resolution of MIDI even on an original IBM PC or PCjr, there are two obvious limitations here:

1. My player requires preprocessing of the data, so you cannot play MIDI files as-is. It can only be output as a single data-stream, no separate MIDI tracks, as you would have in a sequencer.
2. Playing a MIDI file is possible, but recording and editing of MIDI will not work in realtime with this approach, as you would need to convert between MIDI and preprocessed data.

So for various reasons it made a whole lot of sense to use an MPU-401, which has hardware that is custom-designed to record and play back MIDI data in realtime, with its own clock (we have seen that the IBM Music Feature Card also has its own clock that is designed to handle MIDI timings, although it is not as advanced as the MPU-401 is). You could easily guarantee that your MIDI data was played at the correct time, without having to worry about what the CPU was doing. And editing MIDI data was also simpler, as you wouldn’t need to convert to some internal system clock that was not even remotely similar to the timestamps that MIDI uses (which are based on a 1 MHz clock).

So in short, ‘intelligent mode’ is where you offload playback to the MPU-401, rather than just outputting the MIDI data in realtime, where you need to make sure that your CPU output routine is accurately timing each byte. The MPU-401 has a total of 8 ‘tracks’ internally, where you can queue up timestamped data for each of these tracks in a fire-and-forget fashion.

Who cares?

One of the problems with the MPU-401 was that it was very expensive. Aside from requiring the ISA board and the MPU-401 unit, you’d also need an actual synthesizer. In 1987, Roland introduced the MT-32, a somewhat affordable semi-professional MIDI module (a synthesizer without a keyboard attached, basically), which became somewhat of a de facto standard, as Sierra and various other game developers started to support MPU-401+MT-32 as an audio device.

But by the time MIDI started to gain traction, we were approaching the 90s, and PCs had become much more powerful. On the one hand, playing MIDI in realtime wasn’t such a big problem anymore. On the other hand, games generally had MIDI music that was already quantized to a relatively low resolution anyway (somewhere in the 140-270 Hz range for example) that ‘dumb’ UART mode output was good enough. And since the PC has always been the platform of the lowest common denominator, and most cheap sound cards only supported the UART mode of the MPU-401, most games won’t require ‘intelligent mode’ compatibility.

For that small selection of software that does require a full MPU-401 though, your options were limited. There is a software solution known as SoftMPU, which emulates the intelligent stuff on the CPU-side, so you can upgrade your UART MPU-401 to a full intelligent MPU-401 with this TSR. Downside is that it requires a 386 CPU or better. So for your 286 or older machine, you still need a hardware solution for true MPU-401 compatibility.

But we can anyway

As technology progressed, it became simpler and cheaper to integrate both the host interface and the MPU-401 on a single ISA card. Roland introduced its own MPU-IPC, where the external module was now a simple breakout box:

And later still, they introduced the MPU-401AT, which had mini DIN connectors on the card itself, and a Wave Blaster interface to plug a MIDI module directly on the card:

And of course there were other parties that made their clones of the concept. The original MPU-401 setup was rather complex and expensive to clone. But when one can integrate it all on a single card with off-the-shelf parts, it becomes feasible to try and make a cheaper alternative to the Roland offerings. This is where the Music Quest comes in. It was one of these clones, and it was a good one, as with the later v010 firmware, it is considered to be 100% compatible with Roland:

So, after this lengthy introduction, we can now finally get to the actual card this blog is about:

Because well, if a card is made mostly from off-the-shelf parts, like a Z80 and an EPROM, in this day and age, it is not that difficult for a single skilled individual to design and build their own PCB, dump the roms, and clone the clone.

And this is what was done here. What’s great about this, is that it is a good clone of a good clone: people can now get their hands on reliable MPU-401-compatible hardware at relatively low cost. I received mine a few years ago, and wanted to write about it, as I was quite happy with the product. Better late than never, I suppose.

I received a somewhat later revision, which also includes a Wave Blaster interface:

And another revision has been developed since, which uses a higher level of integration on the PCB:

So, if you want a good MPU-401 interface for your retro DOS machine, either for running MIDI software, or developing your own MPU-401 routines, I can recommend this card. For some more information, software, and a link to the order form, you can go to the Serdashop store page for this card.

Fixes the Master Server Issues along with other major fixes

This week we start with an unplanned discussion about the weird state of VR and its uncertain future, the frustrations and spectacle of Avatar: The Way of Water, and then we actually talk about games! Games like High on Life, Portal RTX, Feedvid Live, Tiny Solar System, Vampire Survivors on iOS, and quite a lot more.  This week's music:  A Perfect Circle - Orestes

Cybercriminals find new targets as the amount of data collected by companies continues to grow.

Horror films in the '90s have a dubious reputation. Depending on who you ask -- and often how old they are -- the last decade of the 20th century is either a wasteland filled with one or two terrifying films or the years when they fell in love with scary movies. The '70s and '80s dominated horror with the birth of many slasher franchises. "Friday the 13th," "Halloween," and "A Nightmare on Elm Street" gave us iconic killers, a seemingly endless number of sequels, and a new and empowering archetype to root for: the final girl. But horror films in the '80s mostly centered on the killers, with few final girls appearing in more than a single film series entry. Genre icon and legendary scream queen Jaime Lee Curtis started moving away from horrors in the '80s. By the '90s, the horror genre needed a change.

The decade began with unprecedented acclaim for the genre, with back-to-back Academy Award wins for actresses in horror. "The Silence of the Lambs" swept the Big Five at the Oscars -- a feat that has only occurred three times in film history. But this prestigious trend didn't last. Aside from some early outliers, young starlets and final girl characters kept horror alive throughout the '90s. After a decade of male killers, 15 women picked up the torch and carried the genre into the 21st century.

Kathy Bates

The decade began with a bang and a scream queen for the ages. Rob Reiner's 1990 adaptation of Stephen King's terrifying novel "Misery" made a star of its central villain Kathy Bates, who earned an Academy Award for her performance. As a nurse who saves her favorite author from a car crash in the middle of a raging blizzard, Annie Wilkes initially seems like the perfect person to nurse Paul Sheldon (James Caan) back to health. However, Annie's mental instability soon becomes apparent, and it seems she has no plans to bring Paul to a hospital or let him go.

Bates' performance turns on a dime between hero worship and unhinged anger. Her joy at having a new Paul Sheldon book to devour is infectious, perfectly contrasting the terror of her murderous rage when she realizes her favorite character, Misery Chastain, has been killed. The scene where she "hobbles" Paul is considered one of the scariest scenes in film history.

Four years later, Bates portrayed another Stephen King character: the title character in Taylor Hackford's "Dolores Claiborne." Bates plays an aging housekeeper falsely accused of murdering her wealthy employer, who confesses to the long-ago murder of her husband. The film movingly explores female friendship and the lengths women go to support one another. These two memorable roles established Bates as one of Stephen King's best scream queens.

Winona Ryder

Winona Ryder made a name for herself in Tim Burton's quirky horror comedies "Beetlejuice" and "Edward Scissorhands." But the actress stepped into horror in the '90s as Mina Murray in Francis Ford Coppola's star-studded adaptation of "Dracula." Ryder portrays a Victorian bride who becomes drawn away from her reliable finacé Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) by the mysterious Count Dracula (Gary Oldman), who believes her to be the reincarnation of his long-lost love. The blood-soaked love story is a visual feast: Coppola fills nearly every inch of the screen with gothic imagery. His film remains one of horror's most romantic films.

Ryder would later star in a monster movie of a different sort in "Alien: Resurrection," the fourth entry in the classic sci-fi franchise. Set 200 years after "Alien 3," Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) has been cloned to harvest the gestating baby within her. Ryder plays Call, a mysterious crew member determined to hijack the newborn aliens. But the diminutive pixie may have an ulterior motive. Written by Joss Whedon, the film carries the snark that defines '90s horror films. Unfortunately, this of-the-moment banter feels out of place on the futuristic ship. "Alien: Resurrection" is often ranked near the bottom of the franchise's six films. This is Ryder's only appearance in the franchise, and the film marked Weaver's final on-screen appearance as Ripley.

Virginia Madsen

One of the most beloved killers to emerge from the early '90s era of horror is Tony Todd's Candyman, a hook-handed killer who haunts the grounds of Chicago's infamous Cabrini-Green Housing Project. According to legend, Candyman can be summoned by saying his name five times in the mirror and then turning out the light. Those brave enough to complete the task will see him appear behind them, and his bloody hook will kill them. Virginia Madsen (Virginia Madsen) is the film's final girl, a grad student writing a thesis on urban legends, who summons Candyman. She quickly becomes entranced by the sympathetic villain and finds herself framed for Candyman's crimes.

"Candyman" has a complicated legacy and has since been reevaluated through the lens of white feminism and privilege. Despite its compassionate representation of the Cabrini-Green residents, many take issue with Helen's savior arc and cavalier attitude around entering a community without permission to study its members. Nia DaCosta's 2021 sequel reclaims Candyman for the oppressed community he represents.

Madsen's portrayal of Helen is her most notable role of the decade. However, she appeared in two more horror films before the turn of the century. In "The Prophecy," Madsen joins Elias Koteas and Christopher Walken as an elementary school teacher caught in a war between the angels. In Jan de Bont's effects-heavy remake of "The Haunting," she portrays Nell's (Lili Taylor) domineering sister, Jane.

Heather Langenkamp

Heather Langenkamp is one of the most beloved Scream Queens of the '80s. Her breakout role came in "A Nightmare on Elm Street," Wes Craven's imaginative slasher about a child murderer named Freddy Krueger who hunts the teens of Elm Street and kills them in their dreams. Langenkamp is Nancy, the film's final girl who inspired generations of fans with her refusal to give Freddy the power of her fear. She also appears in the fan favorite "A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors," helping a new generation of teens battle Freddy with their collective strength.

Ten years after starring in the original film, Langenkamp returned to Elm Street in "Wes Craven's New Nightmare," a precursor to the meta-horror films that would dominate the rest of the decade. Langenkamp plays herself, the famed actress from the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise who winds up hunted in reality by the fictional killer she fought on screen. "Nightmare on Elm Street" co-stars John Saxon and Robert Englund portray themselves in the film -- even Craven has a cameo! Jaime Lee Curtis would make a similar return in the 1998 film "Halloween H20: 20 Years Later" and again in David Gordon Green's "Halloween" trilogy. But Langenkamp is arguably the first returning final girl to headline a horror film.

Natasha Henstridge

When most think of horror movie monsters, they picture hairy wolfmen, demonic clowns, or tentacled aliens dripping with goo. They don't expect an alien to look like supermodel Natasha Henstridge. In "Species," Henstridge is an alien/human hybrid called Sil: the result of a scientific experiment to splice human cells with alien DNA. Raised in a lab, Sil is a beautiful woman with superhuman strength. She uses her power to escape her glass cell and destroy anyone in her way. Sil reaches adulthood at an astonishing speed and soon begins to hunt for a suitable mate. The film follows a group of scientists who try to track her down before she can spawn a life force that may destroy the human race.

Henstridge returns in "Species II" as Eve, a docile clone of Sil. Eve was designed to be studied but finds that her services are needed when a male astronaut becomes infected with the alien DNA on a trip to Mars. Both films serve as hokey and gory sci-fiction horror fun while commenting on female sexuality and gender norms. Henstridge would return to the franchise one more time in 2004, but her most successful outing as the gorgeous alien remains in the original film. The franchise suffers from dated understandings of gender essentialism, but "Species" and "Species II" stand out as interesting landmarks in feminist horror.

Drew Barrymore

Drew Barrymore has been a scream queen practically since birth. She first won attention with her literal scream at the age of seven as the charming Gertie in Steven Spielberg's "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" then as the titular "Firestarter" in Mark L. Lester's adaptation of Stephen King's novel. As Barrymore entered her teenage years, her life became a different kind of horror story. In her memoir, "Little Girl Lost," Barrymore recounts her struggles with addiction and lack of parental guidance. Her role as Ivy in the psychological thriller "Poison Ivy" mirrors this turmoil. After residential treatment following a suicide attempt, she won legal emancipation from her mother and began the long road to recovery.

Barrymore is now mostly known for her roles in romantic comedies and her endearing talk show, but she holds an essential place in the horror genre. She signed on to play the lead role in Wes Craven's new film, "Scream," a meta-slasher about a serial killer who taunts his victims by quizzing them about scary movies over the phone. Rather than play the film's heroine Sidney, Barrymore fought to play Casey Becker, a student who dies in the opening scene. She sacrificed the starring role, hoping to shake audience expectations that the pretty blond would survive until the final frame. In a nod to the legendary Psycho, her early death disrupted genre norms, paving the way for a new leading lady and a revolution in the horror landscape.

If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing 988 or by calling 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.

Neve Campbell

Before "Scream," Neve Campbell was known as Julia Salinger from "Party of Five." Moments after Casey's death, Campbell's Sidney Prescott debuted on screen. Sidney becomes the primary target of Ghostface, the masked killer who haunts the suburban town of Woodsboro, California. "Scream" represents a departure from traditional slashers, as its characters live in a world where horror movies exist and the slasher formula is ubiquitous. Its most famous scene involves film geek Randy (Jamie Kennedy) standing in front of a TV showing "Halloween" while explaining the rules of surviving a horror movie.

Sidney gives a similar speech to the killer (whom she believes to be a prank caller) when asked why she doesn't watch scary movies. "They're all the same," she says. "Some stupid killer stalking some big-breasted girl who can't act and is always running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door." Craven's scary movie would turn the genre on its head and usher in a new wave of slasher films that would dominate the rest of the decade. Campbell had a role in "The Craft" released shortly before "Scream," but her role as Sidney made her one of horror's most beloved final girls.

Campbell will not return in the upcoming Scream 6. After twenty-five years of surviving the masked killer, Sidney may finally be able to live her life in peace with her family.

Courteney Cox

Neve Campbell is not the only television star to appear in Wes Craven's game-changing meta-slasher, "Scream." Cox was known to audiences as the uptight but loveable Monica Geller on the NBC juggernaut "Friends" when she portrayed the soulless reporter and true-crime author Gale Weathers. At first, Sidney detests Gale, punching her in the face for her attempts to capitalize on her mother's murder. But Gale becomes determined to make a name for herself, reporting on a series of crimes she coins the Woodsboro Murders. As the two women survive countless attacks from different iterations of Ghostface, they become lifelong friends and sister survivors.

Though she's delightful in every appearance as Gale -- "Scream 3" bangs notwithstanding -- Cox's best film in the franchise is "Scream 2." Returning to investigate another masked killer, Gale reunites with uneasy ally Sidney and former flame, Deputy Dewey Riley (David Arquette), whom she fell for in the original film. Gale tugs at our heartstrings when she seemingly watches Dewey die on the other side of the soundproof glass. She also helps Sidney defeat the dual Ghostface killers. However, Gale's refusal of the spotlight and insistence on riding with Dewey to the hospital solidifies her as a beloved franchise star. Her offscreen marriage to Arquette made the on-screen pairing that much better.

Jennifer Love Hewitt

Once "Scream" became a massive hit, studio executives fell over themselves to greenlight a teen slasher they could spin into a franchise. The most popular of these attempts is "I Know What You Did Last Summer." Loosely based on the novel by Lois Duncan, the film follows Julie James and her four friends as they accidentally run over a man on the night of their high school graduation. Fearing for their futures, the teens cover up the murder by dumping the body. They agree to keep the secret and go their separate way. However, someone else witnessed the crime. (The film's title refers to a note Julie receives one year later from a mysterious stalker hellbent on making them pay.)

Penned by Kevin Williamson, who also wrote "Scream" and "Scream 2," the film is more of an earnest murder mystery than a meta-slasher. However, its witty banter, trendy characters, and lack of nudity and gore make it a quintessential '90s horror film. Hewitt starred alongside Neve Campbell in "Party of Five" when she made her horror movie debut. She reprised her role as Julie James in the film's bizarre tropical sequel, "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer." But after the original film, her status as the '90s scream queen became cemented. Who can forget her standing in the middle of the street and screaming, "WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?"

Sarah Michelle Gellar

Of all the '90s scream queens on this list, few have made as much of an impact as Sarah Michelle Gellar. After years of smaller roles and commercials, Gellar smashed onto the horror scene in 1997 as the titular slayer in Joss Whedon's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Taking over for Kristy Swanson, who originated the role in the 1992 film of the same name, Gellar developed a character that's vulnerable and strong and still inspires generations of fearless women today.

The year also saw Gellar star in "I Know What You Did Last Summer" as Helen Shivers, Julie's best friend whose plans to become a serious actress after high school go awry in the wake of their clandestine hit and run. Her tragic but thrilling death sequence during a Fourth of July parade is the film's highlight. Gellar also appears in "Scream 2" as Cici, a film student and sorority sister who falls victim to Ghostface while alone in her sorority house -- again providing one of the film's most compelling deaths. Gellar married her "I Know What You Did Last Summer" co-star Freddie Prinze Jr. and starred with him in several live-action "Scooby Doo" movies, featuring "Scream" alum Matthew Lillard. After taking a break from acting, Gellar returned as headmistress of a posh high school in the Netflix film "Do Revenge," a role that sees her symbolically pass the torch to a new generation of young starlets.

Jada Pinkett Smith

Jada Pinkett Smith was an established name in the film world, having starred in critically acclaimed films like "Menace II Society" and "Jason's Lyric," before leaping into horror with 1995's "Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight." A horror comedy spinoff from the late-night HBO horror anthology series, the film has become a genre classic, featuring Pinkett Smith as the ex-con Jeryline, who teams up with a drifter to defend the human race against an army of demons.

Pinkett Smith's other notable horror role is in the opening of "Scream 2," which doubles as a fantastic short film. As Maureen, Pinkett Smith criticizes horror for its lack of Black leads while on a date with her boyfriend, lobbying to see a Sandra Bullock film. Instead, they see "Stab," a cinematic retelling of the Woodsboro Murders. In a packed theater filled with audience members wearing Ghostface costumes supplied by the studio, the killer hides in plain sight and kills Maureen. She wanders to the screen, begging for help before dying on stage in front of the film's title card. The audience finally realizes this isn't a publicity stunt, as the killer quietly slips out of the theater. Maureen's heartbreaking death perfectly sets the stage for a film that expertly examines its predecessor and the concept of horror sequels.

Michelle Williams

Michelle Williams is now known for her dramatic roles including four Oscar Nominations and a Primetime Emmy for "Fosse/Verdon." Gen Z remembers her as Jen Lindley, the bad girl with a heart of gold on The WB's "Dawson's Creek." But before she became a household name, Williams played a brief but pivotal role in 1990's horror. Williams starred as a young Sil in the 1995 film "Species," breaking out of the lab-prison before rapidly aging and transforming into Natasha Henstridge.

Three years later, Williams played a supporting role in "Halloween H20: 20 Years Later." The film is known as the first return to the franchise for the original final girl Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), 20 years after her iconic performance in 1978's "Halloween." Going by Keri Tate, Laurie is the headmistress of an elite boarding school. Williams plays Molly, a student who is dating Laurie's son. Laurie's decision to turn the tables on Michael and hunt him through the deserted campus is the film's highlight. But Williams is a surprisingly effective final girl. She's the one who first notices Michael lurking around campus, and she shares the traditional classroom exposition scene with Curtis. Williams has only returned once to the horror genre in the 2010 film "Shutter Island," but her fantastic '90s performances as heroine and monster keep hope alive that she will one day return to reclaim her scream queen throne.

Rebecca Gayheart

Previously known to teen audiences as the Noxzema Girl and Dylan McKay's Ill-fated wife Toni, Rebecca Gayheart made her horror debut in a small but memorable role as ditzy sorority girl Lois in "Scream 2." She followed this up with a career highlight -- portraying Brenda Bates in "Urban Legend." The slasher film follows college students plagued by a killer styling their murders after modern mythology. Brenda eventually reveals she's the killer and gives a deliciously unhinged monologue explaining her crimes to the final girl Natalie (Alicia Witt), complete with a slide show explaining her motivation and 1,000 candles. With smeared eyeliner and increasingly curly hair, Brenda became one of the best on-screen female killers.

Gayheart followed this killer role with the black comedy "Jawbreaker." A spiritual successor to "Heathers," the film follows a group of popular high school girls who accidentally kill the prom queen in a prank gone wrong. Gayheart is Julie, a mean girl who finds her conscience when the plot to cover up the murder grows more elaborate. Glasses and a newfound embrace of denim show her increasing virtue. The stacked cast includes Rose McGowan, Julie Benz, and Judy Greer as wallflower turned queen bee. Poorly received at the time, Jawbreaker shocked audiences with its biting satire and sexuality. Now it has become a cult classic and is considered way ahead of its time.

Katie Holmes

It seems that every young TV starlet was getting in on the horror game in the late '90s. The trend offered stars and studios alike bankable young actresses would draw in teen crowds who might not ordinarily go to horror films. The genre was steadily moving away from the nudity-filled '80s slasher, making it less risky for well-known TV stars hoping to break into film. During her tenure on "Dawson's Creek," Katie Holmes released two horror films at the tail end of the era.

Holmes starred in the 1998 film "Disturbing Behavior," a fun nod to "The Stepford Wives" and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." The film follows a group of misfit teens targeted by a group of model students known as the Blue Ribbons. Holmes plays against type as bad girl Rachel Wagner whose goth look and seductive demeanor are a significant departure from the studious and conservative Joey Potter she was currently playing on "Dawson's Creek."

Holmes followed this role with "Teaching Mrs. Tingle," Kevin Williamson's directorial debut. Holmes portrays Leigh Ann Watson, a top student who will do anything to be named valedictorian. Premiering three months after the mass shooting at Columbine High School shocked the nation, audiences had no appetite for murderous teenagers. The film was a box office bomb, foreshadowing the end of the '90s teen horror era.

Heather Donahue

The final entry on this list is wildly different from anyone who comes before her. Heather Donahue was an unknown actress when she signed up for an experimental film in which she and two other actors would venture into the woods, film their material, and heavily improvise scenes. "The Blair Witch Project" is not the first found footage horror film, but its massive success and terrifying premise made it one of the most profitable films of all time.

Heather is a film student who goes on a camping expedition with her two-man tech crew to make a documentary about the Blair Witch, rumored to haunt the woods outside of Burkittsville, Maryland. As they trek further into the woods, Heather Donahue, Josh Leonard, and Mike Williams become targeted by a mysterious force as the scenery seemingly shifts around them.

Even though the film was a massive hit, the audience lambasted Donahue. As an assertive woman in an unglamorous role, she was called misogynistic names and mocked for a tear-filled monologue when she blames herself for the team's predicament. Unfortunately, this heavy criticism caused the talented actress to abandon the film industry altogether. But her performance is a landmark in feminist cinema that will go down in history as one of the bravest portrayals of all time.

Read this next: The 15 Best Final Girls In Horror Movies Ranked

The post '90s Scream Queens That Kept The Horror Movie Genre Alive appeared first on /Film.

Modder ‘AndratVA’ has shared the final trailer for Mario Kart 64 HD, an incredible HD Texture Pack for the classic Nintendo 64 Mario Kart game. And, as the title suggests, PC gamers can use Nintendo 64 emulators in order to enjoy a truly HD Remaster of this game. Going into more details, Mario Kart 64 … Continue reading PC gamers can now enjoy an amazing HD Remaster of Mario Kart 64 →

The post PC gamers can now enjoy an amazing HD Remaster of Mario Kart 64 appeared first on DSOGaming.

Back in 2019, a completed version of the unfinished Tyrants of the Moonsea premium module was released as a DLC for Beamdog's Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, thanks to the efforts of original creator Luke "Alazander" Scull. Working on Tyrants seems to have motivated Luke to revisit some of his other early work in the NWN modding scene. Last summer, he announced on his blog that he intended to create a new episodic module series called The Blades of Netheril as a sequel to the original Neverwinter Nights campaign (and more broadly to the official expansions and Luke's own modules as well). Such an ambitious undertaking has naturally taken longer than originally expected, so in September Luke decided that he would start out by producing enhanced edition remakes of the first two modules in his original trilogy, 2002's Siege of Shadowdale and 2005's Crimson Tides of Tethyr. After a couple of missed deadlines, Siege of Shadowdale: Enhanced Edition was finally released on the Neverwinter Vault last night as a free module for NWN:EE. Here's its trailer and description:

Last May, AMD released the new AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2, which advanced upscaling for AMD and the company's graphics technology and hardware. On December 15, 2022, the company announced that 101 games are now supporting AMD FSR 2, which, combined with AMD FSR 1, brings the library of AMD FSR-compatible games to 230 titles.

AMD publishes an updated list of AMD FSR 2 game titles, bringing the number of compatible titles just shy of rival NVIDIA

The company posted an updated list of the games as of December 14, 2022, which will be supported by the revised AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.

Some of these titles already utilize AMD FSR 1, and this list is subject to change depending on some releases.

• Abyssworld
• Asterigos
• As the Light Goes Out
• Ballads of Hongye
• Battle Teams 2
• Boundary
• Cepheus Protocol
• Chernobylite
• Choo-Choo Charles
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Dead Island 2
• DEATHLOOP
• DEATH STRANDING DIRECTOR'S CUT
• Deep Rock Galactic
• Disco Elysium
• Destroy All Humans! 2- Reprobed
• Dying Light 2 Stay Human
• Edge of the Abyss Awaken
• EVE Online
• EVERSPACE 2
• Evil Reap
• F1 22
• Farming Simulator 22
• Forspoken
• Frostpunk 2
• Forza Horizon 5
• Genshin Impact
• Ghostwire: Tokyo
• God of War
• Gotham Knights
• Grapple Hoops
• Ground Branch
• Grounded
• Gungrave G.O.R.E.
• Highline Volleyball VR
• Hitman 3
• Hogwarts Legacy
• Hoiwa Hub
• Judgment
• Like a Dragon: Ishin!
• Lost Judgment
• Kayak VR: Mirage
• Kingshunt
• Lies of P
• Martha Is Dead
• Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales
• Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered
• Miasma Chronicles
• Microsoft Flight Simulator
• Need For Speed Unbound
• Nightingale
• NiShuiHan
• No Man's Sky
• No One Survived
• orbit.industries
• Paragon: The Overprime
• Party Animals
• Perfect World Remake
• PERISH
• Project Haven
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Remnants
• Rescue Party: Live!
• Saints Row
• Scathe
• Scorn
• SCUM
• SCP: Pandemic
• Shibainu - VR Katana Simulator
• Skull and Bones
• STAR WARS: Jedi Survivor
• Strayed Lights
• Stuntfest - World Tour
• Super People
• Swordsman HD
• The Bridge Curse Road to Salvation
• The Callisto Protocol
• The Chant
• The Eternal Cylinder
• The First Descendant
• The Invincible
• The Outlast Trials
• The Riftbreaker
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
• There Won't Be Light
• Thymesia
• Tiny Tina's Wonderland
• UNCHARTED: Legacy of Thieves Collection
• Under the Waves
• Unknown 9: Awakening
• VAIL VR
• VALHALL: Harbinger
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong
• VEIN
• Warhammer 40,000: Darktide
• Warhaven
• Warstride Challenges
• Wayfinder
• Will To Live Online
• WuWeiZhengTu

At the same time, NVIDIA confirmed that their upscaling technology, NVIDIA DLSS 3, is available in 250 games and is supported by the newest generation of NVIDIA RTX 40 series graphics cards. AMD will update the company's current upscaler to FSR 3 but is not anticipated until 2023.

In May 2022, we released FSR 2, which has seen adoption skyrocket. Now, there are 230 #FSR supported games, with 101 having FSR 2. In 2023, we are excited for continued collaboration with talented developers implementing FSR across a variety of platforms. https://t.co/WGUyoRzqcx pic.twitter.com/Xs44qoro1k

— AMD Radeon (@amdradeon) December 15, 2022

AMD also revealed that UL's 3DMark, the widely used graphics benchmarking software, will see an update that will include a new Feature Test for FSR 2.2, allowing users to test every upscaling quality profile from the company. UL's 3DMark software already features Intel XeSS feature tests and all generations of NVIDIA DLSS feature tests. Both companies have updated their list fairly regularly, with NVIDIA introducing updates monthly.

The post AMD FSR Now With Up To 230 Games Support, 101 Games Shipping With FSR 2 Already by Jason R. Wilson appeared first on Wccftech.

While Debian 12.0 "Bookworm" will hopefully be out around mid-2023, Debian 11.6 is out this weekend as the newest point release to the current Debian 11 "Bullseye" stable series...

The maximum utmost

The NES library has north of 700 games on it. That’s a lot, but in terms of successful consoles, it’s kind of in the mid-range. It still makes it difficult to choose any number of the best games. That’s probably why no one has been brave enough to make a Top X NES games list. I’m not saying I’m the bravest person in the world, but I am saying I have no shame.

One thing to note is that while I’ve played a staggeringly wide range of the NES library, I haven’t played everything. For example, I haven’t played Bases Loaded 3, and I’m open to the possibility that it’s the apogee of the NES library. This also isn’t about which games were most popular or influential. That’s another topic. These ones are the best for a myriad of other reasons.

I’m also not including Famicom exclusives, though I’d love to. If I was, just know that Metal Max would be stomping all over these games. That and Kunio-Kun. But, alas, here are the top 10 NTSC NES games.

10. Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988)

This is going to be the top pick for a lot of people, and it’s here because I do love Super Mario Bros. 3; it just doesn’t get my thighs grinding. There’s a lot to love about it, though. For one thing, it plays like something that belongs to another console generation, effortlessly pulling off 4-way scrolling and fast movement. The level of variety on hand is insane, the level design is practically in a class of its own, and there’s a tonne of extras and secrets tucked away. Decades later, it still stands as one of the plumber’s best house calls. The fact that there’s such a night and day difference between Super Mario Bros. 3 and the first Super Mario Bros. while them both belonging to the same console is impressive.

9. Dragon Warrior (1986)

You can feel free to substitute your personal favorite Dragon Warrior (or Dragon Quest) game, but the original still feels the best to me. I prefer its simplicity and open design. Final Fantasy and the three subsequent games in the Dragon Warrior series take the formula in interesting directions, but if this list tells you anything, it’s that I value focus and polish over scale.

I love the twists Dragon Warrior throws at you, and I’m happy it can be completed in, like, ten hours. Its cheerful design makes it a bit more inviting than CRPGs at the time, and its simplicity makes it a great fit for consoles. Really, I love the complete NES run of Dragon Warrior games, but if I had to pick just one, it’s the original.

8. Contra (1988)

In arcades, Contra was a merciless quarter-muncher. It was difficult to see even a fraction of it without giving up most of your allowance. In its home 8-bit form, it’s still extremely brutal, but at least it took all your money upfront. Contra on the NES is the seminal run-and-gun shooter, and it made a home for the series on console. It’s smooth, easily readable, varied, and nicely polished. Plus, its soundtrack is pretty kicking on top of it.

Contra would be followed up by Super C, which is fine but not quite as excellent as the first. This would lead to console-exclusive titles in the series, like Contra 3: The Alien Wars and Contra: Hard Corps. None of those are as good as Metal Slug, but we had to start somewhere.

7. Batman (1989)

Batman: The Video Game has very little to do with Batman the 1989 movie. It has more to do with Ninja Gaiden and Castlevania, but you play as purple Batman and spend most of your time in sewers fighting robots.

The thing about Batman is that it’s like Ninja Gaiden if it was better designed. There’s wall jumping and gadget throwing, but it never resorts to simply spamming enemies at you and completely changing the rules just to screw you over. It’s one of the most difficult games I’ve completed, but I feel like I earned it. Learning to time those jumps in the clock tower, mastering everything on the utility belt, and somehow toppling Joker made for a satisfying conquest.

6. Mega Man 2 (1988)

The first Mega Man title sold in North America about as well as a box of live wasps. Thankfully, Capcom reluctantly green-lit a sequel, and even more thankfully, they tried it again over here. With an easier difficulty and uglier box art. Look, Mega Man 2 is already one of the breezier of the original 8-bit titles, but if you’re playing on “Normal” difficulty, it’s stripped of all challenge. The inappropriately named “difficult” is the way the Elder Gods intended, and I’m not just saying that as a flex. It’s actually equivalent to the Famicom version’s setup.

When you’re on the proper difficulty, Mega Man 2 has it all. Great soundtrack, solid level design, and memorable boss battles. A lot of people prefer Mega Man 3 to this title, but I think that’s bupkiss. Mega Man 3 is too long, and I find it has the visual flavor of wallpaper paste. Awesome opening song, though.

5. Punch-Out!! (1987)

I respect Punch-Out!! because I feel it’s a solid idea perfectly executed. Technically, it’s a port of a game that was released in arcades years earlier, but the mere fact that it was refocused to not just being a quarter-munching monster makes it a lot more enjoyable on console. As long as you’re on a setup without horrendous input lag, the visual cues and timing all make for a perfect challenge. Well, until you get into the top tier of boxers. I still can’t actually topple Mike Tyson, because when my attention span faces off against consistently getting my ass kicked, my attention span never makes it three rounds.

4. The Legend of Zelda (1986)

I often associate the original Legend of Zelda as the game that got me into gaming. I was extremely young at the time, but watching my father play through it gripped my mind. However, there are a lot of formative games from my youth that I rarely return to, and Legend of Zelda isn’t one of them. For whatever reason, I’ve developed a habit of returning to it almost annually for another playthrough.

Zelda had a massive impact on the direction of game development, but, as I’ve stated, this list isn’t about influence. Stripped of that, The Legend of Zelda is an open game that respects your abilities as an inquisitive human. Maybe a bit too much, but somehow I was able to figure out which bushes to burn, and that’s my mind isn’t letting that go.

3. River City Ransom (1989)

With the severe graphical memory limitations of the NES, beat-’em-ups were a tricky genre to pull off. However, we did get a few gems, including some of the most ubiquitous ports of the Double Dragon and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games. Those are fine, but I think Technos’ weird experiment in the Kunio-Kun series stands as the best.

Upgrading your character through food and items, River City Ransom has as much to do with shopping as it does with fighting. When fists go up, it becomes a ridiculous brawl, taking full advantage of its expressive art style. It’s one of the few games I can name that allows you to use the second player as a weapon.

I would include more Nekketsu/Kunio-Kun games on this list if they weren’t Famicom exclusive. Check out the Double Dragon & Kunio-Kun: Retro Brawler Bundle if you’d like a taste of what we missed in the west.

2. Gun*Nac (1990)

The NES had some great shoot-’em-ups in its library, though many of them were ports of arcade titles, and many more didn’t even make the journey to our front-loaders. Gun*Nac is a major exception, and it’s easily the best on the console.

Featuring amazingly fast scrolling and near-flicker-free graphics, it’s a technical masterpiece. To add to that is an unending variety of enemies and a slew of weapons and bombs to clear the screen. Gun*Nac is unbelievably robust, especially considering its 8-bit trappings. If you haven’t tried it or even heard of it, you’re missing out.

1. Castlevania (1986)

There’s no question in my mind that Castlevania is the best game on the NES. From both an aesthetic and design standpoint, it’s flawless. Featuring tightly refined controls, perfect enemy placement and behavior, a stiff but fair challenge, and a surprising amount of variety, I still consider it to be the best in the series and on the system. Considering the Castlevania series already has enough banger titles to fill its own highly subjective top 10 list, I think that says it all.

Don’t think this is an off-the-cuff decision, either. When my NES library explorations finally reached Castlevania, I knew I had reached the peak. Now that I’ve dug even further, I’m even more certain of it. Castlevania is what 8-bit perfection looks like.

The post Top 10 best NES games of all time, ranked appeared first on Destructoid.

This post contains spoilers for the series finale of "Better Call Saul."

The character of Saul Goodman is one that's defined the career of Bob Odenkirk since first taking on the role in the second season of "Breaking Bad." Saul was such a popular character that after the show ended its critically acclaimed five-season run, AMC announced the prequel/sequel series "Better Call Saul," with Odenkirk as the lead. When an actor spends much of their career with a single character, you'd think it would be hard to diversify work after that point. Odenkirk, however, found new and exciting ways to take his experience with a character like Saul into roles that were vastly different.

The most recent example is Odenkirk's character in the 2021 action film, "Nobody." The movie focuses on a retired assassin named Hutch, who lives a quiet and restrained life in the suburbs and springs back into action following a home robbery that leaves him frustrated with his life. Before the hard-hitting comedic action of "Nobody," it would have been hard to imagine Odenkirk in such a physically demanding role. It was critical aspects of his Saul Goodman performance, however, that sold the actor as a relatable action hero.

'The Character Of Saul Goodman Is Indefatigable'

Although Bob Odenkirk is only two years apart in age from Keanu Reeves, the two actors have had vastly different careers leading up to their action roles in "John Wick" and "Nobody." So when Odenkirk wanted to do an action movie, there was a level of uncertainty about whether he could sell audiences on his action star potential. In an interview with GQ, Odenkirk was asked how he sold the idea of someone like him starring in an intense, highly choreographed action film like "Nobody." Rather than being shot down, the actor was encouraged by his colleagues. To Odenkirk, it was because of the characteristics he had shown while playing Saul:

"I was expecting to get shot down by everyone I know. The first person I call is my manager, Marc Provissiero. And Marc says, 'You're right, Bob. You might be able to do an action movie.' The character of Saul Goodman is indefatigable. He has a lot of heart."

Throughout "Better Call Saul," especially in the first couple of seasons before he became Saul, Odenkirk's Jimmy McGill displayed extraordinary perseverance while trying to do the right thing. The character has always shown an indomitable will, even if it meant digging through the garbage of a retirement home in order to help his mistreated clients.

A Bonafide Action Star

Even in the later seasons of the series and in the flash-forwards, Saul Goodman showed himself as a character not taken down easily — even when he went into hiding, he still re-emerged from the monochrome shadows to triumphantly transform into Saul Goodman one more time. How the character got himself back up after every dangerous situation is precisely why Bob Odenkirk sees Goodman as an action hero, as he told GQ:

"He gets knocked down over and over, he never quits coming back, and he's not above doing something devious. In a lot of ways, that's an action hero — except he doesn't fight. And that's how people know me around the world, more than Mr. Show or any of the comedy I've done."

The fact that most people know Odenkirk as Saul Goodman better than any other character he's played shouldn't be seen as a hindrance. Odenkirk doesn't view it that way, and how he leveraged his Saul performance to get "Nobody" made is an excellent example of how actors could reach into performances from their past and channel them into something new and fresh. While "Nobody" is mostly a clone of "John Wick," Odenkirk turning into a bonafide action star and using his physical appearance to make him look and feel like an underdog is admirable. If a sequel to "Nobody" eventually comes around, Odenkirk will hopefully continue to channel the action-hero traits of Saul Goodman.

Read this next: The 18 Best Crime Dramas In TV History

The post Why Bob Odenkirk Saw Saul Goodman As 'Action Hero' appeared first on /Film.

I’ve always wanted Nintendo to remake the original Legend of Zelda. Sacrilege, I know, but surely there is room for a different take on the adventure classic that not only spawned a franchise, but inspired RPGs across the genre. While there are no plans for an NES Zelda remake anytime soon, there is one way you can…

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The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency within the Department of Commerce, announced Thursday that it's formally retiring the SHA-1 cryptographic algorithm. SHA-1, short for Secure Hash Algorithm 1, is a 27-year-old hash function used in cryptography and has since been deemed broken owing to the risk of collision attacks. While hashes are designed to be

Microsoft-owned code hosting platform GitHub this week announced multiple security improvements, including free secret scanning for public repositories and mandatory two-factor authentication (2FA) for developers and contributors.

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From fetching cookware to craveable food subscriptions, our experts have uncovered a bounty of gift options for beginners and seasoned cooks alike.

QEMU v7.2 is released. QEMU is a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer.When used as a machine emulator, QEMU can run OSes and programs made for one machine (e.g. an ARM board) on a different machine (e.g. your own PC). By using dynamic translation, it achieves very good performances.When used as a virtualizer, QEMU achieves near native performances by executing the guest code directly on the host CPU. A host driver called the QEMU accelerator (also known as KQEMU) is needed in this case. The virtualizer mode requires that both the host and guest machine use x86 compatible processors....More

Directed by Damien Chazelle, the Old Hollywood tale stars Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and Diego Calva.

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]

We’ll never truly get to relive the ‘90s again, but technology is getting us pretty darn close. This moment, you could be sitting in your modern home in 2022, surrounded by iPhones, big screen OLED TVs, and smart gadgets of all kinds, all the while experiencing a room decked out with classic posters, old-school TVs,…

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As one half of /Film's Scariest Scene Ever Boyz™ with Chris Evangelista, it's my pleasure to present the scariest movie moments of 2022. Yes, they're mostly horror films — but terrifying sequences can exist outside rigid horror boundaries. You might not be shocked to find "Smile" or "Barbarian" mentioned below, but what about the awards contender that starts things off? Or my favorite film of 2022 that no one's talking about coming in at the top spot? It's been a rock-solid year for being scared senseless. Let's go ahead and recount all the extra nightmares that cycled through my head.

Tár - The Underground

"Olga?"

"Tár" stars an all-but-locked Best Actress in Cate Blanchett as Berlin Philharmonic composer-conductor Lydia Tár. Her life throttles off the rails as indecent accusations tarnish her good name, leading to faint breaks in storytelling that might be Lydia's projected fractures or actual reality. Writer and director Todd Field pushes Lydia to the brink, even into horror genre territory. So well, in fact, I'm fully invested in a Todd Field horror movie someday.

My favorite breakout occurs when Lydia follows virtuoso cellist Olga (Sophie Kauer) home to her slummy apartment, a dilapidated complex with dingy subterranean floors where Lydia descends. It's something out of any haunted asylum movie where a character investigates dripping and desolate passageways where no good lurks — and then Lydia starts hearing pitter-patters. Then, a dog appears at the opposite end of the hallway, which causes Lydia to bolt upstairs from the beast before smashing her head. It's Horror 101 suspense in a hunt-versus-prey scenario, drawn to the razor's edge.

Watcher - I Gave You All The Clues, Mister Police

"Mr. Webber made a complaint with us today about a neighbor who has been harassing him."

Chloe Okuno's "Watcher" is all about the horrors of unbelieved women with stalkers, and plenty of lurking in shadows shoots a sour tingle up spines — but the scariest scene, to me, happens inconspicuously. Maika Monroe is the victim here (Julia), and Burn Gorman's neighborhood creeper Daniel? A serial killer known as "The Spider."

Maika's shaken housewife abroad finally knocks on Daniel's apartment door, but she flees — Gorman's master manipulator shows up later that night at Julia's door with a policeman. Daniel so expertly twists the scenario to be interpreted that Julia is the stalker — the policeman presumes the dilemma is a misinterpretation on both parts. The whole while, Daniel plays his role as a socially awkward hermit to divert attention from his slasher behaviors — Julia equated to another overly emotional woman waiting to become a slain statistic. Julia is finally made to shake her harasser's hand in front of witnesses. The horrors of humanity are always worse than fictitious monsters.

Speak No Evil - No More Talking

"We just want to go home."

Christian Tafdrup's "Speak No Evil" is one of the year's crowning feel-bad horror flicks, exploring the horrors of vacation friends and trusting strangers. A Danish couple meets a Dutch family on their Tuscan getaway, which prompts the Dutch clan to invite their newfound Danish companions for a visit to their homestead. Danish father Bjørn (Morten Burian) loves the idea of doing something rustic and breaking the monotony of their city malaise. Bad idea.

The scare in question happens well after the Dutch hosts out themselves as the evilest of criminals. Dutch father Patrick (Fedja van Huêt) has taken Bjørn's family hostage in their car, and Bjørn has become submissive. Patrick's associate arrives and hops in the car, turning his attention to Bjørn's daughter Agnes (Liva Forsberg) — cutting her tongue out and abducting her as both parents utter useless words of comfort. We can presume what comes next — child trafficking, abuse, etcetera — but true horror exists in the bleakness of witnessing it all happen, with no one stopping the depravity.

Soft & Quiet - The Incident

"This is all because you decided to stand the f*** up for yourself."

Beth de Araújo's "Soft & Quiet" is a repugnant horror-thriller about despicable hatred bred by white nationalism — a title I can't blanket recommend but can commend as effective. What starts with a gut-turning pie decoration unveiling devolves into caucasian women discussing antisemitism, xenophobia, and Aryan greatness before acting out their racist fantasies. The like-minded women encounter minority persons to whom they decide to teach a lesson, breaking into their house as a scare tactic — until it becomes more.

De Araújo treats "Soft & Quiet" as a one-take film, which heightens the worsening sense that there's no stopping the action on-screen as the home invasion scene unfolds. We can only watch as innocent townsfolk whose violation is looking different are "accidentally" harmed and murdered by these Daughters of Aryan Unity who show what making America great again really means — violence, dehumanization, and eradication without any real plan. Chaos turns to a kidnapping laced with slurs and derogatory insinuations, as the "practical joke" becomes an outright assault. Take your pick of timestamps from when the women enter an empty house to them leaving, it's all domestic horror.

The Harbinger - Your Super Can't Save You

"He says he's happy to meet you."

Andy Mitton uses the COVID-19 pandemic as a backdrop for "The Harbinger" so well. It's a film about the horrors of isolation and the island feeling of social disappearance, except with a Plague Doctor demon with Freddy Krueger powers.

How we meet said demon is the scariest scene in "The Harbinger." Monique (Gabby Beans) is quarantining with her friend in an NYC apartment, where she hears a sick child coughing upstairs. There's a ruckus, and within seconds, the infected child comes crashing through their ceiling. Monique is petrified, first by the possible viral infiltration and child's body, then as she looks towards the doorway and hears a clicking noise (subtitled as "dark chattering"). The titular Harbinger lowers itself head-first into the front doorway, revealing its raven-black beaked mask. The undead child is now standing upright and makes an unfortunate introduction to Monique that will haunt her for the film's remaining duration.

Grimcutty - The Legend Appears

"Baby, put the knife down."

John Ross's online cryptid meme-horror flick "Grimcutty" is scary for one scene — that's the first time Grimcutty crawls from a "Death Note" mold and enters a suburban home. I'm not a fan of the movie, but Grimcutty's grand entrance is a thing of nightmares. The camera focuses on an empty doorway after a wooden creek, only for a hand to grasp around the frame and a head to appear. Grimcutty's Slender Man size means he has to lean through the doorway, only adding to the imposition factor. It's a shame that the more we see of Grimcutty, the worse he looks because his introduction is textbook horror amplification. If only the next 100ish minutes held firm.

The Sadness - You'll Poke Your Eye Out!

"I'm going to have a lot of fun with you."

Rob Jabbaz's "The Sadness" is a movie about monsters without morality — The Purge meets 28 Days Later. An outbreak where civilians turn sadistic and act on their worst impulses becomes a disgusting parade of extreme atrocities. "The Businessman" (Tzu-Chiang Wang) is a recurring figure who stabs out eyes and is sick of being called a subway pervert — so he becomes the ultimate evolution of his called-out self.

In a hospital, after The Businessman finds the woman whose eye he removed in a wheelchair, The Sadness reaches its height of depravity with maddening disgust. The Businessman can infect his one-eyed victim any way he chooses, but left alone, and corrupted by thoughts that suggest only the worst, he shoulders off his suspenders, unzips his pants, removes the eyepatch and — yup. They don't show everything, but sound design is enough to cause turned heads. The kind of scene you can't stomach and sure as hell earns a "horrifying" classification.

Nope - The Esophagus

"What if I told you that today you'll leave here different. I'm talking to you. Right here, you are going to witness an absolute spectacle. So what happens next?"

I already wrote about what I dare anoint the scariest scene of Jordan Peele's sci-fi western "Nope" as part of Scariest Scene Ever. When Jean Jacket descends on Ricky "Jupe" Park's (Steven Yeun) Star Lasso Experience, everyone's sucked into the extraterrestrial's mouth. To this point, we only know what goes in usually doesn't come out — but then Ricky's wife Amber (Wrenn Schmidt) is shown inside Jean Jacket's esophagus, slithering upward along the slimy tissue track while she's being eaten alive. It's claustrophobic and confirms that what happens to victims is just as bad as we'd imagine. NOPE!

Deadstream - The Hanging Woman

"I unleashed her. I unleashed Mildred."

Oh look, another Scariest Scenes Ever nomination! Joseph and Vanessa Winter's "Deadstream" is often funnier than frightful, but that doesn't stop a hanging woman only seen on livestream footage from nailing the film's top scare. Disgraced YouTuber Shawn Ruddy (Joseph Winter) attempts to maneuver around the swinging ghost of Mildred Pratt, who only appears on his stream, which he holds in front of the camera as he approaches the supposed location of her dangling corpse above the exit staircase. Shawn keeps lifting and lowering his livestream view, inching closer to the inevitable jolt we see a mile away — he drops the tablet once more, and there's Mildred! She cackles, lunges toward the camera, and causes quite the jump scare. Who said fear couldn't be fun?

Smile - The Laptop

"Laura? [fainter] Roooooose."

As Parker Finn's "Smile" proves, the existence of jump scares is not an immediately deplorable horror scenario — it's all about execution. As Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) scrubs over an audio file, replaying the same snippet looking for clues, she leans closer to the screen. I would presume that a digital blur in the shape of something unsettling would burst in Rose's face, but Parker hits us harder. As Rose focuses on some rogue voice in the clip, a ghoulish figure right next to Rose suddenly shouts her name, breaking the silence. Is it the opposite of surprising? Maybe. Does it impact like a Mack truck doing 80mph? Scary is scary, y'all.

V/H/S/99 - Spiders In The Coffin

"Just be brave."

Johannes Roberts' "V/H/S/99" segment "Suicide Bid" is a laundry list of phobias crammed into an anthology segment. College freshman Lily (Alexia Ioannides) accepts a sorority hazing ritual that involves being buried in a graveyard, jumping into a coffin in the name of Greek popularity. The found footage perspective means we're watching via a camera with Lily, all cramped in a wooden casket, and then she opens a box — full of not-so-small spiders. Lily freaks the hell out as the arachnids crawl over her face — supposedly confirmed by the V/H/S/99 production crew to be practical — as claustrophobia, arachnophobia, and taphophobia create this terrifying trifecta of terror. Nah! Just ... nah.

Hypochondriac - Donnie Darkish

"There are no wolves, it's the shrooms."

Addison Heimann doesn't hide "Donnie Darko" influences throughout "Hypochondriac" with a reinvention of Frank the Rabbit. Zach Villa stars as a potter confronting deeply-rooted traumas, which brings about this entity in a wolf costume eerily similar to Frank's figure. Villa's character sees the wolf repeatedly, with a specific hot tub visualization tipping the scare factor scales. Villa's Will glimpses the wolf-thing while soaking for relaxation, its beady eyes piercing through nighttime blackness from afar as its head tilts, and we can hear disembodied dialogue like, "I'm stuck." Will's fixation presents the two in a standoff until the thing bounds toward Will on all fours with a snarling purpose. It's straightforward, obvious, and it works — it's a scary scare!

Barbarian - Don't Go Downstairs

"Someone bit me."

In Zach Cregger's "Barbarian," the first full-body scare happens unpredictably. Tess Marshall (Georgina Campbell) books a rental in a rundown Detroit neighborhood that's already occupied by Keith Toshko (Bill Skarsgård) — a double-guest snafu. Cregger wants you to think there's something nefarious going on as Keith welcomes Tess inside, Tess making sure to lock every door after entering rooms alone. Surely Keith is a psychopath luring Tess into his trap with alcohol and charming banter ... right?

Wrong! As my partner Chris Evangelista writes in a recent Scariest Scenes ever column, the scariest scene of Barbarian happens to Keith in the rental's basement. Tess reveals suspicious rooms and a camcorder downstairs, which Keith goes to investigate. She ventures after Keith when he stops responding to find another opening and a pitch-black tunnel system. Keith screams for help, emerges wounded, and then the duo is attacked by a naked mutant-like woman who bashes Keith's head to smithereens against the wall. It all happens so quickly, which makes for quite an unexpected fright as "Barbarian" proves its outward presentations are deceptive facades.

Satan's Slaves 2 - I'm Not Dead Yet

"Are you scared? You should only fear Allah."

Joko Anwar takes a simple formula of lights-on, lights-off scaresmanship into the top ranks of 2022's most terrifying scenes. The surviving family from "Satan's Slaves" moves into a North Jarkarta apartment complex only to have their past follow on the night of a major rainstorm that cuts the power. Frightened child Toni Suwono (Endy Arfian) finds himself in a unit with two dead wrapped bodies waiting to be buried (Indonesian significance), which definitely won't come alive — right?

Toni must explore the unit with matches as his light, and the flame continuously flickers out. Each time the room becomes illuminated again, we wait for the bodies to stare wide-eyed at Toni, or worse, to come alive. Anwar teases, prods, and draws out the scene until delivering his spooky payoff when the expected happens — but it's about execution, not familiarity.

The Fallout – The Incident

"What was that? Was that a gun?"

Megan Park's feature debut "The Fallout" is traumatic, terrifying, and maybe not classifiable as traditional "horror," but features the most horrific scene of the year. Trigger warning, but it's a no-punches-pulled movie about the aftermath of a school shooting that we witness happen. Jenna Ortega and Maddie Ziegler play high schoolers sharing the girl's bathroom when POP POP — gunshots are heard from the hallway. The classmates dash into a stall and stand atop the toilet, cowering as screams, panic, and the rat-a-tat of assault fire pierces through their paralyzed silence. Niles Fitch bursts in quivering, teary-eyed, and covered in blood — his character's brother is one of the shooting victims. They huddle above toilet water, send what could be their last messages, and pray they don't become another forgotten statistic.

The film premiered March 17, 2021 at Austin's SXSW film festival — the same year a record high 35 American school shootings were reported. Park is sickened by an America where outrage over pronouns trumps gun restrictions and child safety. The scene traps viewers in an active shooter scenario from a teenager's perspective because they're the ones whose innocence is stolen — real people, not pictures on a news report. The ones whose lives are at risk, friends are slain, and souls are traded for some rando's rights to own weapons that no civilian needs unfettered access to at all times. This is the scene that shattered my soul in 2022 because it's a nightmare no one should live — yet here we are, with 49 school shootings this year and another new record. Put that high score on the board, America. We earned it.

Thoughts and prayers, of course.

Read this next: The Best Horror Movies Of 2022, Ranked

The post The Scariest Scenes of 2022 appeared first on /Film.