Over the weekend, rumors circulated that Signal, one of the most trusted encrypted chat apps on the web, had a pretty bad zero-day vulnerability. The claims, which have now been all but debunked, swiftly caused a panic in the infosec community.
LA in 2026 will be a bid for another Worldcon in Anaheim, as revealed by the latest update to the LA in 2026 – Adventure Awaits! website. They have also announced their proposed dates. The Southern California Institute for Fan … Continue reading →
Officiella pressbilder på Oneplus första foldable har hamnat på webben via tyska sajten Winfuture. Telefonen heter Open och erbjuder en inre 7,8-tumsskärm som ska ha ett så gott som osynligt veck i mitten där panelen viks.
Enligt tidigare rykten är den yttre skärmen 6,31 tum. Båda skärmarna påstås erbjuda mycket hög upplösning. Övriga specifikationer som nämns är Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, 16GB LPDDR5X-RAM, samt två 48MP-kameror och en 64MP-kamera. Enhetens kamerasystem presenteras i samarbete med Hasselblad likt i tidigare Oneplus-flaggskepp.
Källan nämner även att Oneplus Fold börjar säljas med start redan 19 oktober. De som hoppats att Oneplus Open kommer bli en foldable-motsvarighet till Oneplus One – det vill säga ett prispressat flaggskepp som gör kraftfull teknik mer lättillgänglig – ser ut att bli besvikna.
Enligt Winfuture ligger nämligen amerikanska priset på strax under 1700 dollar. Om uppgiften stämmer är priset nästan lika högt som för Samsung Galaxy Fold 5.
So this is a little odd. Over the weekend, I saw a new TV spot for The Marvels and was struck by something: it was almost completely devoid of Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), both of whom were massive, massive parts of the previous two trailers released for the film. Instead, this clip…
Does anybody else have déjà vu? No, I’m not referring to the recent shifting of Ahsoka’s premiere date, but to the fact that for the second season in a row, Disney has announced one premiere date for Loki, then—a few weeks before the show’s supposed debut—moved the date.
Maybe it’s supposed to be a cutesy little reference to time slippage and timelines and oh hey did you remember that there’s a lot of time hijinks on this show? But mostly it just makes us sigh and update our calendars.
The date change comes with a little featurette in which executive producer Kevin R. Wright makes the debatable statement, “Loki has always been a villain.” He continues, “What we want to explore is also Loki finding what heroicism really looks like.”
Most of the actual show footage here is stuff we’ve seen in trailers, interspersed with a few little cast interviews and some behind-the-scenes action which mostly consists of people hugging each other. It’s very sweet! It also tells us very little about what the second season has in store.
But you haven’t got that long to wait. Loki now returns on October 5th, which is also the date Our Flag Means Death (and Lupin) return for our viewing pleasure. Plan your sofa time accordingly.
This post was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn’t exist.
Vissa betatestare har fått fram möjligheten att genomföra videosamtal i Whatsapp där avatarer representerar användaren, istället för att visa ett videoflöde från frontkameran. Varför då ha ett videosamtal överhuvudtaget och inte ett röstsamtal?
Användaren kanske inte känner sig bekväm med vanliga videosamtal – överhuvudtaget eller för stunden. Avataren speglar dessutom användarens huvudrörelser och ansiktsuttryck i realtid, så den animerade figuren rör sig på samma vis som användaren.
Enligt Wabetainfo kommer fler få tillgång till nyheten under de kommande veckorna.
As a teenager growing up in Ontario, I always envied the kids who spent their summers tree planting; they’d come back from the bush in September, insect-chewed and leathery, with new muscle, incredible stories, thousands of dollars, and a glow imparted by the knowledge that they’d made a new forest with their own blistered hands.
I was too unathletic to follow them into the bush, but I spent my summers doing my bit, ringing doorbells for Greenpeace to get my neighbours fired up about the Canadian pulp-and-paper industry, which wasn’t merely clear-cutting our old-growth forests – it was also poisoning the Great Lakes system with PCBs, threatening us all.
At the time, I thought of tree-planting as a small victory – sure, our homegrown, rapacious, extractive industry was able to pollute with impunity, but at least the government had reined them in on forests, forcing them to pay my pals to spend their summers replacing the forests they’d fed into their mills.
I was wrong. Last summer’s Canadian wildfires blanketed the whole east coast and midwest in choking smoke as millions of trees burned and millions of tons of CO2 were sent into the atmosphere. Those wildfires weren’t just an effect of the climate emergency: they were made far worse by all those trees planted by my pals in the eighties and nineties.
Writing in the New York Times, novelist Claire Cameron describes her own teen years working in the bush, planting row after row of black spruces, precisely spaced at six-foot intervals:
Cameron’s summer job was funded by the logging industry, whose self-pegulated, self-assigned “penalty” for clearcutting diverse forests of spruce, pine and aspen was to pay teenagers to create a tree farm, at nine cents per sapling (minus camp costs).
Black spruces are made to burn, filled with flammable sap and equipped with resin-filled cones that rely on fire, only opening and dropping seeds when they’re heated. They’re so flammable that firefighters call them “gas on a stick.”
After more than a decade of use, Apple’s new iPhone 15 will retire the company’s proprietary Lightning connector in favor of the USB-C port. The long-rumored change comes ahead of a December 2024 European Union deadline requiring all new phones sold in the region to ship with a USB-C connector for their charging port.…
Heating and cooling homes can be expensive, but thankfully, there are heat pumps. And these electric home coolers and heaters are efficient home systems even in extremely cold temperatures, new research has found.
In an era of misguided technological innovation, teachers in Sweden are taking things back to basics. A movement in the country’s education system is emphasizing analog technology like actual books and handwriting in a bid to make education more effective.
Disney’s The Little Mermaid just posted the biggest Disney+ debut of the year. According to the company, the film got “16 million views in its first five days” on the platform, making it “the most viewed Disney movie premiere on Disney+ since Hocus Pocus 2,” which came out just over a year ago.
The original plan from 1989 was that Terry's name went first outside the US because he sold more books in the UK and round the world and mine went first in the US because I sold more books in the US.
And that was how things remained until we did the Harpers edition in February 2006, and then, because Terry sold lots of books in the US and we wanted to be on both the P shelves and the G shelves, we did the two editions in the US:
Terry's name goes first on anything to do with the two of us as authors connected with the TV adaption.
Sadly, not uncommon. And, in many instances, the actor never finds out. Three occasions come to mind….
Offer goes out for a series lead. A counter-offer is made. We go back and forth. Eventually, we’re almost there except for one sticking point. They want a producer credit and this is something the production company is simply not willing to budge on.
The agent responds “Then this is a deal-breaker. We’re moving on.” So the production, in turn, moves on and casts someone else for the role. Two weeks later, the agent reaches out and inquires why we haven’t been in touch.
What happened to “We’re moving on?” Apparently, he wasn’t serious and is apoplectic we took him at his word. He gives up on the producer credit demand but, by this point, it’s too late. He is furious.
A year later I meet the actor at an event. They express regret at not having been able to close the deal but understood it was a money issue. I inform them it was NOT a money issue but a credit issue. According to them, they neither knew nor requested the producer credit.
Offer goes out for a series lead. Agent counters very high. We counter his counter, but the agent is adamant. The number he has presented us with is the bare minimum. We simply can’t afford it and move on.
The next year, the actor auditions for a three line guest spot on the show – but isn’t quite right for the role. The year after that, I’m introduced to them through a friend at a party. They express admiration for the show and regret their audition didn’t resonate with us.
I assumed they were deflecting blame to their agent, but their shellshocked response when I told them we had, in fact, made an offer made it clear they had never been told.
An actor I worked with had been doing quite well for themself and expressed an interest in working on a specific show. One of the producers of said show informed them that they had already reached out to their agent and been flatly turned down.
Instead, the agent had suggested another one of their clients who they DID end up casting. The actor was livid and demanded their agent and his entire team present themselves on the set of their current production to explain themselves. Much bowing and groveling and scraping ensued.
No actor should be involved in the minutiae of the deal-making producer. That’s what an agent/rep is for. A good one will look out for their client’s best interest and push for them to get them the best deal.
Every so often, however, it doesn’t work out that way. And, on those occasions, I think it’s important that their client be kept in the loop. Which isn’t always the case.
Every time I learn something new about the residual system within the streaming era I see red. This weekend it’s the fact that Eric Kripke, the man who created Supernatural, the hit show that went on for 15 seasons, at nearly 22 episodes per season, from 2005-2020, has never received residuals from Netflix.
Bad news: your car is a spy. If your vehicle was made in the last few years, you’re probably driving around in a data-harvesting machine that may collect personal information as sensitive as your race, weight, and sexual activity. Volkswagen’s cars reportedly know if you’re fastening your seatbelt and how hard you hit…
It’s crazy that these strikes are happening given that all the writers and actors are asking for is less than 0.3% of the revenue these studios make.
This is what gets me. The writers and actors aren’t asking for much but these CEOs are digging their heels in
It’s because it sets a precedent that the CEOs are terrified to set. That they will acquiesce to worker demands if the workers are resolute enough.
Because in an ideal world for these rich fucks, the workers give up, and the CEOs win, and its reinforced in the collective public mindset that all a strike does is “disrupt the economy, deprive people of valuable products, and waste people’s time”. The goal is to maintain the assertion that Strikes Don’t Work. I don’t think they genuinely give a shit about 0.15% of their revenue. What they care about is the OPTICS.
They cannot back down, for the exact same reason that WORKERS cannot back down. Because if the workers win, it shows people just that bit more that The Poors have power and ultimately we can make the rich do what we want if we put our fucking minds to it. And that, to the rich, is bad news bears to the highest degree.
I love the Fairphone’s ethos. It’s an Android-powered, modular smartphone that you can repair yourself. The company, same name as its product, launched its fifth-generation flagship, the Fairphone 5, and the device is Fairphone’s most polished product yet, with an OLED display, increased water resistance, and a bigger…
Because I am the sort of nerd who keeps track of these things, I will note that today marks the 20th anniversary of the first time I ever attended a science fiction convention. On August 28, 2003, having sold Old Man’s War to Tor at the beginning of that year, I decided it was time to meet my future audience and headed to Toronto, Canada to attend that year’s Worldcon, Torcon 3. I went to the airport to board a plane, forgot Toronto was in a different country and I would need a passport to travel, raced home for documents and then drove to Toronto, speeding all the way, to arrive just in time for my very first panel ever (“Day Jobs for Writers”). I was the last panelist to arrive so of course they made me be the moderator. And thus, I was unceremoniously tossed into the deep end of the science fiction convention pool, almost literally before I had caught my breath.
I understand that, here in 2023, it might seem implausible to some that I, Hugo winner and noted mega science fiction nerd John Scalzi, would have attended my very first science fiction convention at the relatively advanced age of (checks math) 34. But, remember, and in some cases, know for the first time, that up until I sold Old Man’s War to Tor, the writing sphere I had mostly existed in had been journalism. Yes, I had been reading and enjoying science fiction all my life, among other genres, but my writing focus was elsewhere. Socially I had never been tied into science fiction or what we would generally now understand as “nerd culture.” Yes, I was a nerd — I was a writer, the Venn diagram there has substantial overlap — but being a nerd wasn’t central to my identity, either personally or professionally.
What was my professional identity? Well, in 2003, I was mostly writing freelance journalism and corporate marketing, and occasional non-fiction books, and I was actually pretty happy about that state of affairs. I had sort of fallen backwards into getting a contract for Old Man’s War, and my assumption, even after getting a contract with Tor for that book and another book to be named later (it became The Android’s Dream), was that novel writing and science fiction would be an occasional side gig at best. I mean, that two-book deal was for $13,000, and I would get that money spread out over several years. On the basis of that, 2003 me did not see a whole lot of potential for novels being anything more than a glorified hobby.
Nevertheless, if I was going to write for the science fiction audience, I thought it would be useful to see who the core of that science fiction audience was. I knew Worldcons existed (that’s where they gave out the Hugos), and in 2003, media cons were not what they are now, or at the very least, there was still enough differentiation between comic book conventions and science fiction conventions that I didn’t see the point of going to the former rather than the latter. Worldcons seemed to me to be at the heart of my potential fandom. Off I went.
I have told the story of my immediate reaction to the Worldcon many times: I got there, did my panel, wandered around and then called my wife (on a payphone! 2003 was a different world!) and informed her I was at the Convention of Misfit Toys. I still stand by that initial impression — there’s nothing wrong with being a misfit toy, y’all — but I acknowledge here in the future that in that particular scenario, the actual misfit toy was me. I was coming from outside into a community and culture that had existed for actual decades (Torcon 3 was the 61st World Science Fiction Convention, after all), and one I had almost no context for, and knew almost no one in.
I mentioned as much to my editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden when I saw him in the Royal York Hotel lobby after I had called my wife; he was, literally, the only person I knew at the whole convention. His response to this was to seemingly randomly grab one of the people passing by, say “Cory Doctorow, this is John Scalzi. John Scalzi, this is Cory Doctorow. Cory, John is your con buddy for the rest of Worldcon,” and then leave. Cory sized me up for a second, said, “come on, then,” and then suddenly my problem of not knowing anyone at Torcon 3 was solved.
I should note that Cory did not necessarily have to be stuck with me for the whole convention. He could have just as easily and reasonably ditched me after an hour or so and gone on with his plans for the day. But he didn’t; he let me pad along with him and as a result I met people and began to form friendships that carry on to this day, mine with Cory not the least at all. And it gave me a sense of how a “big name” writer should be to newbies, that I have tried to emulate since. In 2003, Cory was already a Campbell (now Astounding) Award winner and his novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom had come out to much acclaim. He was a Pretty Big Deal, and he treated me — whose novel wouldn’t come out for another 18 months — like a peer. I appreciated it then, still do today, and try to pay forward the kindness he showed me with other writers when I can.
Twenty years on I don’t remember many of the details of the convention itself. I vaguely remember opening ceremonies, I remember how clearly happy Rob Sawyer looked to be given the Best Novel award that year, and I remember watching a new pal on a panel get deeply annoyed with another panelist. What I mostly remember, however, are the people I met and became friends with: Sitting in the bar with Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld, with Walter John Williams over there in the corner; having lunch with Nick Sagan who, like me, was new to all of this and comparing notes; chatting with Lesley Livingston at her booth because she was a sci-fi TV celeb in Toronto; listening to Charlie Stross after my reading, who advised me to slow down and actually, you know, breathe; getting an author autograph — my very first ever! — from Geoffrey Landis; having a long and amusing conversation with Robert Silverberg without actually knowing who he was; getting shushed with Lucienne Diver because our conversation was distracting a hotel room from an amusing Connie Willis story; and meeting Allan Steele and noting to him that he was the first person I ever sent fan mail to. These among many others are memories not lost in time, like tears in rain, but still there in my head, and happily so.
(There is one memory which I think is especially kind of fun, which is me sitting with Cory and Charlie in a coffee shop and me saying to my new friends “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if, like, one day we were all Hugo nominees together?” and them very kindly agreeing with the excitable new guy whose first novel wasn’t even out yet that, yes, that would be nice. Six years later, again in Canada, and guess what, there we all were on the Best Novel ballot together! We all lost to Neil Gaiman, sure! But that’s not the point.)
Torcon 3 was the only science fiction convention I went to in 2003; likewise the next Worldcon, in Boston, was the only one I went to in 2004. Then Old Man’s War came out, and I started going to more conventions, and then, eventually, I started going to many, often as a Guest of Honor, which is cool, but sometimes just to show up and see friends and colleagues, which is also cool. I go to so many now that it’s really easy to lose track, and the convention scene is much different now – and a much bigger deal – than it was twenty years ago. That’s mostly good, although I do miss some of the intimacy of the smaller universe that conventions were back in the day.
I won’t be at Worldcon this year; it’s in China, which is a jaunt, and it was moved to October when I’m busy here in the US, doing appearances at other conventions and festivals to promote Starter Villain, my upcoming novel. But I’m happy to say I’m on the Hugo slate this year (rather unexpectedly, from my point of view), and I’ll be at the next Worldcon, in Glasgow, next year. Worldcon is still important to me, and I like to attend when I can.
I’m hoping that the new writers and fans who are experiencing the Worldcon for the first time in 2023 will get to have the same experience that I had at my first: the dizzying disorientation followed by an introduction to a new community, and the beginning of friendships and professional acquaintances that can last decades. Everyone gets their first convention once. I hope if Worldcon is their first, like it was for me, that it’s a good one.
Welcome to the Convention of Misfit Toys, y’all. It’s good to have you here.
For those following the SAG and WGA strikes there’s new shit a-brewing, this time targeting background actors (aka extras).
Some may know that one of the issues SAG is fighting is that studios want to take virtual scans of background actors and use them in perpetuity (meaning forever) without any additional compensation to those background actors. So you would just see a bunch of AI generated humans in future movies based off of a background actor that worked one day.
This is already shitty because working as an extra for 3 days on a union set (if you receive a union voucher each day) is one of the main ways to qualify for SAG eligibility. This means that a lot of actors working background do not yet have union protection and likely do not have an agent or manager to protect them. Disney has already allegedly told background actors to do this on the set of Wanda Vision: https://www.avclub.com/wandavision-background-actors-say-disney-scanned-them-1850709900
There is one main company that supplies background actors for major union and non union productions. Central Casting. They love to brag about their very long influence in the industry - in old movies dating back to the 40s you can hear jokes about hiring extras from Central Casting.
Central Casting has been including an electronic document for all actors in their database to sign as part of onboarding. Signing it gives Central Casting the right to use your images, your videos, and YOUR LIKENESS in perpetuity, forever. They would OWN your likeness. Instead of it being a studio supplying the AI background actors, it would be Central Casting instead.
Receiving any work from Central Casting in the future is conditional upon signing it. No signature = no extra work = no extra income for union actors trying to make health insurance minimums, no union extra work for pre-SAG members.
SAG already reached out to Central Casting to tell them to stop. Central Casting refused.
Edit to say: this is not new. It’s part of actors onboarding and is called the Photo, Image, and Video Release. It’s phrased to sound like you are just giving them permission to use your image and video for CC’s website and promotional purposes. But the actual language is much broader. It’s only recently being brought up as a point for discussion because some casting directors (who are generally supportive of the strike) started pointing it out.
Central Casting is owned by Entertainment Partners which is also a giant software conglomerate and owns a lot of the software used to organize background casting and pay actors. https://www.ep.com/company/about-us/
We will not return to Arrakis in 2023. Warner Bros. has confirmed that Denis Villeneuve’s sequel to the smash hit Frank Herbert adaptationDune will now release March 15, 2024, a four-month delay from its original planned November 2023 release.
Do Not Let HR do this to you. It is not illegal to talk about wages in the work place. I did and got a 12% raise!
True info. Now let me add something: The power of documentation. (I was a long time steward in a nurses union.)
Remember: The “‘E” in email stands for evidence.
That cuts both ways. Be careful what you put into an email. It never really goes away and can be used against you.
But can also be a powerful tool for workplace fairness.
Case 1: Your supervisor asks you to do something you know is either illegal or against company policy. A verbal request. If things go wrong, you can count on them denying that they ever told you to do that. You go back to your desk, or wherever and you send them an email: “I just want to make sure that I understood correctly that you want me to do xxxxx” Quite often, once they see it in writing, they will change their mind about having you do it. If not, you have documentation.
Case 2: You have a schedule you like, you’ve had that schedule for a while, it works for you. Your supervisor comes to you and says “We’re really short-handed now and I need you to change your schedule just for a month until we can get someone else hired. It’s just temporary and you can have your old schedule back after a month.” A month goes by and they forget entirely that they made that promise to you. So, once again, when they make the initial request, you send them an email “I’m happy to help out temporarily, but just want to make sure I understand correctly that I will get my old schedule back after a month as you promised.” Documentation.
[Image ID: Text reading: In the middle of a busy clinic at our practice, I got pulled in by my manager to speak to HR, who must have made a special trip because she lives several states away, and told I was being 'investigated’ for discussing wages with my other employees. She told me it was against company policy to discuss wages.
Me; That’s illegal.
Them: (start italics) three slow, long seconds of staring at me blankly (end italics) Uh…
Me: That’s an illegal policy to have. The right to discuss wages is a right protected by the National Labor Relations board. I used to be in a union. I know this.
HR: Oh, this is news to me! I have been working HR for 18 years and I never knew that. Haha. Well try not do do it anyway, it makes people upset, haha.
Me: people are entitled to their opinions about what their work is worth. Bye.
I then left, and sent her several texts and emails saying I would like a copy of their company policy to see where this wage discussion policy was kept. She quickly called me back in to her office.
HR: You know what, there is no policy like that in the handbook! I double check. Sorry about the confusion, my apologies.
Me: You still haven’t given me the paper saying that we had this discussion. I am going to need some protection against retaliation.
HR: Oh haha yes here you go.
I just received a paper with legal letterhead and an apology saying there was no verbal warning or write up. Don’t even take their shit you guys. Keep talking about wages. Know your worth. /End ID]
At one of my old (shit) jobs my boss would continually come have these verbal discussions with me and would never put anything in writing I took to summarizing every discussion we had in email. Like “just to confirm that you asked me to do X by Y date and you understand that means I won’t be able to complete the previous task you gave me until Z date - 2 weeks later than originally scheduled - because you want me to prioritize this new project.
The woman would then storm back into my office screaming at me for putting the discussion in writing and arguing about pushing back the other project or whatever. At which point I would summarize that conversation in email as well. Which would bring her storming back in, rinse and repeat ad nauseum.
Anyway I cannot imagine how badly that job would have gone if I hadn’t put all her wildly unreasonable demands in writing. Bitch still hated me but she could never hang me for “missing deadlines” because I always had in writing that she’d pushed the project back because she wanted something else done first.
Paper your asses babes. Do not let them get away with shit. If they won’t put what they’re asking you to do in writing then write it up yourself and email it to them.
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