The latest addition to Samsung's TV range is the Sero, a 43-inch TV that was designed with the millennial generation in mind and therefore pivots between horizontal and vertical orientations. From a report: It's a much smarter idea than the phrase "vertical TV" would lead you to believe. Acknowledging that most mobile content is vertical, Samsung says the Sero is designed to encourage young people to project more of their smartphone stuff onto the TV by allowing it to go vertical. Throwing in 4.1-channel, 60W speakers along with an integrated navy stand and a minimalist rear design, Samsung seems to hope this TV will function as both a music streaming hub and a handsome piece of furniture. When it's not used as a conventional TV or a phone enlarger, the Sero can also serve as a huge digital photo frame or a music visualizer, and Samsung's Bixby voice assistant will be on hand, too. Samsung intends to put the Sero on sale for 1.89m KRW (around $1,600) in its home market of South Korea at the end of May.

Avengers: Endgame has already earned more money in just five days than 17 of the 21 previous films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe did in their entire theatrical run (including Captain Marvel). The Wrap reports that it's the first time in history a movie has earned over a billion dollars in just its first weekend.

It demolished the record $640,521,291 global box office opening for the previous Avengers movie, Infinity Wars, in 2018. This weekend the sequel earned $1,209,000,000, with both Avengers films earning more than the next-biggest-opening films The Fate of the Furious and Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

In fact, "In one fell swoop, Avengers: Endgame has already made more than movies like Skyfall, Aquaman and The Dark Knight Rises grossed in their entire runs, not accounting for inflation," reports USA Today: To accommodate demand, Disney released Avengers: Endgame in more theaters (4,662 in the U.S. and Canada) than any opening before. Advance ticketing services set new records. Early ticket buyers crashed AMC's website. And starting Thursday, some theaters even stayed open 72 hours straight. "We've got some really tired staff," says John Fithian, president and chief executive of the National Association of Theater Owners. "I talked to an exhibitor in Kansas who said, 'I've never sold out a 7 a.m. show on Saturday morning before,' and they were doing it all across their circuit."

Not working in the film's favor was its lengthy three-hour running time. But theaters added thousands of showings for Endgame to get it on more screens than any movie before to satiate the frenzy.

For an industry dogged by uncertainty over the growing role of streaming, the weekend was a mammoth display of the movie theater's lucrative potency. Fithian calls it possibly "the most significant moment in the modern history of the movie business.... We're looking at more than 30 million American and more than 100 million global guests that experienced Endgame on the big screen in one weekend," Fithian says. "The numbers are just staggering...."

Disney now holds all but one of the top 12 box-office openings of all time. (Universal's Jurassic World is the lone exception...) After its acquisition of 20th Century Fox, Disney is expected to account for at least 40% of domestic box-office revenue in 2019, a new record of market share... The company's Captain Marvel -- positioned as a kind of Marvel lead-in to Endgame -- rose to No. 2 in its eighth weekend in theaters.
Comscore reports that the movie accounted for 88% of all ticket sales this weekend -- and that the total weekend box office of $400 million was the largest ever. Theatre owners hope this will also mean more ticket sales in the future, with millions of moviegoers exposed to trailers for upcoming films. And whatever happens, "This has got to be the biggest weekend in popcorn history," a senior media analyst for Comscore told USA Today.

"Think of the gallons of soda and the hot dogs sold!"

An anonymous reader quotes ABC News: 'Alien: The Play' returned to the stage at North Bergen High School one month after it took the internet by storm -- thanks to its elaborate costumes, stage design and nostalgia for the original film, released in 1979. The drama club only had enough money to put the production on for two nights in March, but the director of the film, Ridley Scott, ponied up $5,000 after the performance went viral. The students chose Friday, to honor the 40th anniversary of the film, for a packed show.

One of those in attendance: Sigourney Weaver, who starred as protagonist Ellen Ripley in the film. Weaver got a chance to meet the students who put on the play after the performance, and to say they were starstruck is an understatement. Student Gabriella Delacruz, who played Ripley in the stage version, called it "unreal..."

The New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts offered a surprise of its own after the show. Each of the members of the cast and crew received a $1,000 scholarship to the program's summer camp, while the graduating seniors -- including an almost-literally floored Delacruz -- with a $10,000 scholarship for college.

dryriver writes: A lot of people seem to believe that computers somehow need polygons, NURBS surfaces, voxels or point clouds "to be able to define and render 3D models to the screen at all." This isn't really true. All a computer needs to light, shade, and display a 3D model is to know the answer to the question "is there a surface point at coordinate XYZ or not." Many different mathematical structures or descriptors can be dreamed up that can tell a computer whether there is indeed a 3D model surface point at coordinate XYZ or behind a given screen pixel XY. Polygons/triangles are a very old approach to 3D graphics that was primarily designed not to overstress the very limited CPU and RAM resources of the first computers capable of displaying raster 3D graphics. The brains who invented the technique back in the late 1960s probably figured that by the 1990s at the latest, their method would be replaced by something better and more clever. Yet here we are in 2019 buying pricey Nvidia, AMD, and other GPUs that are primarily polygon/triangle accelerators.

Why is this? Creating good-looking polygon models is still a slow, difficult, iterative and money intensive task in 2019. A good chunk of the $60 you pay for an AAA PC or console game is the sheer amount of time, manpower and effort required to make everything in a 15-hour-long game experience using unwieldy triangles and polygons. So why still use polygons at all? Why not dream up a completely new "there is a surface point here" technique that makes good 3D models easier to create and may render much, much faster than polygons/triangles on modern hardware to boot? Why use a 50-year-old approach to 3D graphics when new, better approaches can be pioneered?

Zorro shares a report from CBS News: If you're looking for more "Avengers: Endgame" content to fill the void until you get to see the movie, Google has the perfect Easter egg for you. Open Google, search "Thanos," click the Infinity Gauntlet on the right side -- and watch as half of your search results turn to dust. The gauntlet -- complete with the six Infinity Stones -- will snap its fingers when clicked, just as Thanos did in "Avengers: Infinity War." But this time, instead of eliminating half of the universe's population, Thanos will eliminate half your Google Search results, perfectly balancing the internet. Make sure you turn the sound on.

Sinemia, a would-be rival to MoviePass, is closing down its U.S. operations -- telling customers it could not find "a path to sustainability" amid legal headaches, competitive pressures and the challenging economics of the business model. From a report: The company announced the shutdown in a notice on its website Thursday. "While we are proud to have created a best in market service, our efforts to cover the cost of unexpected legal proceedings and raise the funds required to continue operations have not been sufficient," Sinemia said in the statement. "The competition in the U.S. market and the core economics of what it costs to deliver Sinemia's end-to-end experience ultimately [led] us to the decision of discontinuing our U.S. operations." From the notice, it's not clear whether Sinemia will be extending refunds that may be due to subscribers.

Amazon is in discussion with various large music rights-holders regarding the launch of a high fidelity music streaming platform -- and that at least one major record company has already agreed to license it, news outlet Music Business Worldwide reported this week. sqorbit shares a report: MBW has heard this whisper from several high-placed music industry sources, who say the price of Amazon's new tier will likely be in the region of $15 per month. It's expected to launch before the end of 2019. "It's a better bit rate, better than CD quality," said one source. "Amazon is working on it as we speak: they're currently scoping out how much catalog they can get from everyone and how they'll ingest it." The best known existing hi-def music streaming offering comes from TIDAL, whose TIDAL Hi-FI subscription tier costs $19.99 per month and offers CD-quality lossless streams at 44.1 kHz / 16 bit. In addition, TIDAL also offers a 'Masters' quality offering for pickier audiophiles, which presents thousands of albums at 96 kHz / 24 bit.

The Academy of Motion Picture and Arts and Sciences has ruled that films from streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video will continue to be eligible to win Academy Awards. The Academy had considered changing Rule Two, which allowed any film to be eligible for an Academy Award as long as it had a seven-day run in a Los Angeles theater. From a report: That proposal, reportedly pushed by megadirector Steven Spielberg, would have made it difficult for streaming services such as Netflix to compete for the academy's big prizes by restricting eligibility to just films that got a significant run in theaters. Films that debuted online and only got a limited theatrical release simply would be out of luck. But when the academy's board of governors released its rules for next year's prize -- a book that runs to 35 pages, all told -- the would-be changes were not among them. "We support the theatrical experience as integral to the art of motion pictures, and this weighed heavily in our discussions," John Bailey, president of the academy, said in a statement released Tuesday night. "Our rules currently require theatrical exhibition, and also allow for a broad selection of films to be submitted for Oscars consideration." Further reading: Justice Department Warns Academy About Changing Oscar Rules To Exclude Streaming.

Luminary, a $100 million venture-backed podcasting company, will debut its service tomorrow. It offers two tiers to customers: subscription-based shows without ads or podcasts for free but deal with ads as a price. But it has already ruffled some feathers. From a report: When it rolls out to the public on iOS, Android, and the web, Luminary's podcast app will be missing some of the industry's biggest shows, including The New York Times's The Daily and Gimlet Media shows like Reply All and Homecoming. Shows by Anchor's network of smaller creators won't be on the app, nor will series from Parcast, both of which are owned by Spotify. By withholding their shows, the Times and Spotify are setting Luminary up to fail -- or at least struggle to get off on the right foot with users. It certainly seems like the first shot fired in the inevitable premium podcast war and could destabilize one of the first buzzy, well-funded entrants before it can make a dent in the industry. The decisions that happen now will reshape the way podcasts are distributed in the future.

Russia state news channel Rossiya 24 has introduced a robot presenter for some of its bulletins. The BBC reports that the robot, named Alex, "has already caused a stir, with some viewers complaining about his appearance and accusing him of peddling political propaganda." From the report: The robot was developed by Promobot in the city of Perm. His silicon head is modeled on the face of the company's co-founder Alexei Yuzhakov. At the moment, the robot anchor can only move his facial features and neck. However, the final robot will have fully mobile limbs as well. Production of the robot began in 2017 and should be fully complete later this year, according to Promobot. It said Alex had cost more than one million roubles ($15,600) to develop and that it had received orders for 12 more humanoids.

Rossiya 24 said its newest presenter was of Russian origin with "software and almost all of its components produced inside the country." Alex has delivered a number of bulletins for the channel, presenting news items about agriculture, a nuclear technology forum and micro-finance. Most observers think on-air Alex is a temporary stunt to inject some fun and promote innovative Russian technology in TV news.

Netflix has begun testing a shuffle button with some users of its Android app. "Spotted by one our tipsters, the Android app (specifically v7.6.0 build 19 34157) offered to randomly select something to watch," reports Android Police. "And in the playback controls, there's a shuffle icon with a 'Random Episode' label." From the report: It's unclear at this point whether this is just an experiment or if we'll see this roll out to a wider batch of people soon. For now, if you don't have this, you're stuck with picking something on your own.

You can now download the source code of every Infocom text adventure game, thanks to archivist Jason Scott who uploaded the code to GitHub. "There are numerous repositories under the name historicalsource, each for a different game," reports Ars Technica. "Titles include, but are not limited to, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Planetfall, Shogun, and several Zork games -- plus some more unusual inclusions like an incomplete version of Hitchhiker's sequel The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Infocom samplers, and an unreleased adaptation of James Cameron's The Abyss." From the report: The code was uploaded by Jason Scott, an archivist who is the proprietor of textfiles.com. His website describes itself as "a glimpse into the history of writers and artists bound by the 128 characters that the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) allowed them" -- in particular those of the 1980s. He announced the GitHub uploads on Twitter earlier this week. The games were written in the LISP-esque "Zork Implementation Language," or ZIL, which you could be forgiven for not being intimately familiar with already. Fortunately, Scott also tweeted a link to a helpful manual for the language on archive.org. Gamasutra, which first reported the news, notes that Activision still owns the rights to Infocom games and could request a takedown if it wanted.

Netflix is establishing an NYC production hub that will include six sound stages in Brooklyn and an expanded office in Manhattan's Flatiron District. "It should create 'hundreds of jobs' (including 127 executive, marketing and production development roles) over the next five years, and should foster up to $100 million in investments, according to Governor Cuomo," reports Engadget. From the report: The sound stages will also have the capacity for "thousands" of jobs, Cuomo said, although that's likely to vary widely based on what's in production at any given time. Not surprisingly, there are financial incentives attached to the move. The state is offering up to $4 million in tax credits over 10 years, although those are contingent on Netflix's ability to both create the 127 promised office jobs and keep the 32 existing positions.

MoviePass users apparently hit the exits en masse after it scaled back the number of movies users could see each month. From a report: The flailing cinema-subscription provider has seen its subscriber rolls plunge from a peak of more than 3 million to just 225,000 in under a year, according to a new report. The numbers were reported by Business Insider, which cited "internal data" it had obtained. Asked for comment, a MoviePass spokeswoman declined to confirm the subscriber figure. In June 2018, MoviePass claimed it had signed up more than 3 million subscribers for its $9.95 monthly plan, which let customers see one movie every single day. But that proved unsustainable, and MoviePass was forced to change that to a three-movies-per-month plan. In August 2018, MoviePass began to convert subscribers on annual subscription plans to the three-movies-per-month subscription plan, by giving annual subscribers the option to either cancel or refund their annual subscription or continue on the new three-movies-per-month subscription plan.

Slashdot reader xavdeman writes: Hot on the heels of its announcement of the specifications of the next PlayStation, Sony has revealed a new crackdown on explicit content. Citing "the rise of the #MeToo movement" and a concern of "legal and social action" in the USA, Sony has said it wants to address concerns about the depiction of women in video games playable on its platform as well as protect children's "sound growth and development." The new rules were reportedly already responsible for puritan cutscene alterations in the Western PS4 release of the multi-platform title Devil May Cry 5, where lens flares were used to cover up partial nudity.

According to a report by Brad Sams at Thurrott, Microsoft is going to expand its range of audio hardware with the introduction of a set of wireless earbuds. They will accompany the Surface Headphones, a premium-priced pair of wireless headphones that Microsoft released last year. Ars Technica reports: Microsoft has shipped earbuds before: the Zune media player came with earbuds with a feature that sounds simple but is actually ingenious: the earbuds were magnetic and would stick together back to back. The result? Much less cable tangling when you put them in your pocket or bag. Surface Headphones seem to be competitive with other noise-cancelling over-the-ear headphones: their wireless range is great, the noise cancelling is solid, and their volume and noise-cancelling dials are a joy to use, but their battery life and Bluetooth audio standard support are both weak. As such, Microsoft is not totally without experience in this area and has shown that it can engineer thoughtful, compelling designs. How the putative earbuds will stand out from the crowd remains to be seen, of course.

The existing Surface Headphones were codenamed Joplin, raising the question: Janis or Scott? The earbuds make the answer to that question clear; they're apparently codenamed Morrison, as in Jim, meaning that the over-the-ear headphones are clearly named for Janis. Sams says that "Surface Buds" has been mooted as their retail name, with a possible launch in 2019.

Despite Disney's efforts to keep as much of Avengers: Endgame under wraps as possible before the latest Marvel blockbuster hits theaters next week, several minutes of blurry Avengers: Endgame footage have leaked. From a report: The footage reveals some significant plot details, and GIFs, screenshots and descriptions -- none of which we're sharing here -- are spreading across the likes of Twitter and Reddit. Given the level of anticipation and hype surrounding Avengers: Endgame, Disney has trodden very carefully when it comes to revealing information about the movie. Press and critics have yet to see the film and you can bet everyone involved with the production has had to sign iron-clad non-disclosure agreements. However, Disney has shown critics 10 minutes of footage in the US and around 20 minutes in South Korea.

American entertainment giant Starz is continuing to remove tweets that link to a TorrentFreak news report about leaked TV-shows. From a report: Last week we posted a news article documenting how several TV-show episodes had leaked online before their official release. Due to the leaks, complete seasons of unreleased TV-shows such as "The Spanish Princess," "Ramy," and "The Red Line," surfaced on pirate sites. In most cases, there were visible signs revealing that the leaks were sourced from promotional screeners. The leaks also hit Starz, as three then-unreleased episodes from its TV series "American Gods" appeared online as well. The American entertainment company was obviously not happy with that, but its response was rather unconventional.

Soon after the news was published, Starz issued a takedown request through The Social Element Agency, requesting Twitter to remove our tweet to our own article. Twitter was quick to comply and removed the tweet that supposedly infringed Starz copyrights. We disagreed. The article in question never linked to any infringing material. It did include a screenshot from a leaked episode, showing the screener watermarks, but those watermarks were central to the story, as we explained in a follow-up piece. The good news is that many legal scholars, journalists, and lawyers agree with our stance. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), for example, responded that Starz has no right to silence TorrentFreak and also shared that opinion on Twitter, where many others chimed in as well. That's when things started to spiral out of control. Starz takedown efforts only encouraged more people to share the original story about the leaks, which is a classic example of the 'Streisand Effect'. However, Starz didn't budge and issued takedown notices against those tweets as well.

Slashdot reader Dan Drollette shared this article from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists where a specialist in nuclear security analyzes Game of Thones, citing dragons "as living, fire-breathing metaphors for nuclear weapons." Despite the fantasy setting, the story teaches a great deal about the inherent dangers that come with managing these game-changing agents, their propensity for accidents, the relative benefits they grant their masters, and the strain these weapons impose upon those wielding them. "Dragons are the nuclear deterrent, and only [Daenerys Targaryen, one of the series' heroines] has them, which in some ways makes her the most powerful person in the world," George R. R. Martin said in 2011. "But is that sufficient? These are the kind of issues I'm trying to explore.

"The United States right now has the ability to destroy the world with our nuclear arsenal, but that doesn't mean we can achieve specific geopolitical goals. Power is more subtle than that. You can have the power to destroy, but it doesn't give you the power to reform, or improve, or build."

It makes for a bleak outlook. Or, as a character repeatedly warns in the first episode: "Winter is coming."

"Winter is coming for fans of the hit television series Game of Thrones, with the final season set to hit screens around the world after a near two-year hiatus," reports the South China Morning Post. There were 96 million views for a discussion about the show on China's Twitter-like platform Weibo.

"But those watching inside China are also bracing for the chill of censorship." In recent years, Chinese authorities have ramped up the pressure on the television and film industries to clean up content they deem vulgar or politically incorrect. This has led to some serious censorship of foreign productions. Recent examples include the removal of scenes of smashed heads and bare flesh from the American superhero film Logan, and the apparent manipulation of a scene in Oscar-winner The Shape of Water so that a naked woman is made to appear to be wearing clothes...

In a bid to get around the censorship, many Chinese Game of Thrones fans have turned to virtual private networks and torrent download websites to access unexpurgated versions of their favourite episodes.
Tencent Video holds the exclusive distribution rights for the show in China, leaving one Weibo user to post "I'm begging Father Tencent not to censor too much, thank you."

Another added "This censored version is not interesting. I would pay money to watch the uncut version."