Renowned British naturalist David Attenborough is lending his voice to "Our Planet," Netflix's big-budget wildlife series. From a report: The 92-year-old broadcaster has been synonymous with the BBC's natural history output for decades but will now provide the voiceover for Netflix's eight-part series "Our Planet", which will be released in April. "'Our Planet' will take viewers on a spectacular journey of discovery showcasing the beauty and fragility of our natural world," Attenborough said as the series was announced on Thursday. "Today we have become the greatest threat to the health of our home but there's still time for us to address the challenges we've created if we act now. We need the world to pay attention."

Cable and satellite TV providers lost about 1.1 million subscribers during the July to September period, the largest quarterly loss ever -- and the first time the industry lost more than 1 million subscribers in a quarter, according to media and telecommunications research firm MoffettNathanson. From a report: After Dish Network reported its third-quarter earnings this week, the New York-headquartered research firm tallied up the publicly reported subscriber losses to arrive at the finding. Dish lost 341,000 subscribers in the third quarter, compared to adding 16,000 in the same period a year ago. Overall, Dish lost 367,000 satellite subscribers but added 26,000 Sling TV subscribers, the company said. Rich Greenfield, a media and technology analyst with financial services firm BTIG in New York, arrived at a similar conclusion and called it "the third-worst quarter in industry history and worst since Q2 2016."

WFMU's Free Music Archive -- a digital library of high-quality and legal downloads that users could listen to, remix, and share -- is shutting down due to funding shortages. The Verge reports: "The future is uncertain, has been my mantra lately," says Cheyenne Hohman, who's been the director of the Free Music Archive since 2014. The shutdown date was initially the 9th, but has since been pushed back to November 16th because the FMA is in early talks with four different organizations that are interested in taking the project over. "The site may stay up a little bit longer to ensure, at the very least, that our collections are backed up on archive.org and the Wayback Machine." Even so, it's not a perfect solution. "If it just goes into archive.org, it's going to be there in perpetuity, but it's not going to be changing at all," Hohman says. "It's not going to be the same thing, that sort of community and project that it was for ... almost 10 years."

Microsoft is using Minecraft to help employees get acquainted with a refresh of the company's campus in Redmond, Washington. CNBC reports: Earlier this year, Microsoft enlisted Blockworks, a company that uses Minecraft's digital building blocks for designing real-world projects, to create a miniature rendering of the campus facelift, which is scheduled for completion in 2022. They're using graphics that are far more immersive than two-dimensional photos and videos.

While Minecraft was designed for gamers, its immersive nature and the ability to quickly move around and construct edifices makes it easy to see how new buildings will look when inserted into an existing landscape. [James Delaney, a managing director at Blockworks] said Minecraft forces designers to sacrifice some accuracy because structures in real life don't always have the game's squared-off look, but the speed and ease of use more than made up for those deficiencies. It might take just 10 minutes to wrap up a single building, he said. Microsoft employees -- and anyone else with the education edition of Minecraft -- can now take a digital tour of the new campus and see how plans are developing. Outside of Microsoft, that access requires a subscription to Office 365 Education.

China's Tencent will soon require gamers to prove their ages and identities against police records, according to a new official statement yesterday. Under the new system, users will need to register their Chinese national IDs in order to play any games from Tencent. The Verge reports: Ten mobile games will get the new verification system by the end of the year, and all games offered by Tencent, including PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and League of Legends, will get the system by 2019. Tencent has been criticized by state-run People's Daily, which called Arena of Valor "poison," after reports that students were ditching their homework to play the mobile game.

Tencent has also faced direct regulatory pressure this summer, after President Xi Jinping pointed out that too many children were nearsighted and said the government was taking action. Beijing officially ruled to ban new games, cementing an unofficial pause that started back in March, costing Tencent up to $1.5 billion in lost revenue as it was unable to launch games it had been developing. In September, Tencent imposed the new verification system on Arena of Valor and created a feature that blurs the screen if minors look too closely at it. The new system simply enforces rules that Tencent had in place since last year: barring gamers who are 12 and under from playing more than an hour a day and establishing a curfew of 9PM. Those who are 13 to 18 can play up to two hours a day. Still, the system won't prevent minors from borrowing the phones of their parents and other adults.

20th Century Fox is using AI to predict what films people will want to see. According to a recently published paper, researchers from the company are using machine learning to examine trailer footage and compare the objects and events it identifies with data generated for other trailers. "The idea is that movies with similar sets of labels will attract similar sets of people," The Verge reports. From the report: As the researchers explain in the paper, this is exactly the sort of data movie studios love. (They already produce lots of similar data using traditional methods like interviews and questionnaires.) "Understanding detailed audience composition is important for movie studios that invest in stories of uncertain commercial," they write. In other words, if they know who watches what, they will know what movies to make.

To create their "experimental movie attendance prediction and recommendation system" (named Merlin), 20th Century Fox partnered with Google to use the company's servers and open-source AI framework TensorFlow. In an accompanying blog post, the search giant explains Merlin's analysis of Logan. First, Merlin scans the trailer, labeling objects like "facial hair," "car," and "forest" (taking into account how long these objects appear on-screen and when they show up the trailer). By comparing this information with analyses of other trailers, Merlin can try to predict what films might interest the people who saw Logan.

A new study published in the journal Emotion has found that playing the classic game of Tetris can help sooth the mind when you are awaiting uncertain news. The Week reports: The venerable video game was used in a recent experiment to create a state of flow -- the term psychologists use to describe a state of mind so engaged it makes the rest of the world fall away, and time pass more quickly. Researchers from University of California (UC) Riverside in the U.S. have found that state of perfect disengagement may improve the otherwise-emotionally unpleasant experience of waiting for uncertain news. In place of Tetris, in which blocks are flipped every which way and stacked into rows, one can substitute flow activities such as rock climbing, carpentry, playing chess, or swimming, researchers said.

For the research published in the journal Emotion, 290 undergraduate students were told the study would be about physical attractiveness. They filled out a questionnaire, after which a photo was taken of them. They were then told that students in another location would rate their physical attractiveness. While they were ostensibly being rated, the students were then asked to play Tetris for 10 minutes. [...] The participants who achieved flow -- those in the adaptive group -- experienced less negative emotion, and greater positive emotion than those who were bored, or for whom the level of play was too difficult.

OpenSourceAllTheWay writes: Back when PCs were more boxy looking than today and people used floppy disks to store stuff, there were a bunch of prank apps around that one could put on a DOS or Windows computer to annoy the hell out of siblings, classmates, coworkers and others. (Here is a listing of some older prank apps and some more recent Android prank apps.) Some prank apps would flip the Windows desktop upside down. Some would make the mouse pointer move in strange ways or make it give you the middle finger. Some would cause you to hit the right keyboard key and still mistype a word. Some would play an audio file in the background every now and then that gave the impression of your computer making strange noises for unknown reasons, even turning the OS volume up before the sound, and then down again, making it impossible to make the sounds stop. There are many more computer users today than there were back then, yet there doesn't seem to be much new in the way of prank apps -- at least for Windows. Why is that? Did Windows 8 cause PC users to lose their humor?

A reader shares a report from Ars Technica: Mario Segale, the Seattle real estate and construction business owner who inspired the name for Nintendo's famous mascot, passed away on October 27 according to reports from The Seattle Times and The Auburn Reporter. He was 84 years old. Segale owned the business park housing Nintendo's American arcade operation in the early '80s, when the company was busy converting thousands of disused Radarscope cabinets to play Donkey Kong. At the time, Nintendo of America President Minoru Arakawa and other executives were trying to come up with an Americanized name for the game's player avatar, who was still referred to as "Jumpman" at that point (a name that appears on early Donkey Kong cabinet art). As the story goes, when Segale came to Arakawa to demand payment for a late rent bill, inspiration struck.

While the broad strokes of Segale's role in Mario's naming remain consistent, the particulars can change with the retelling. David Sheff's seminal Nintendo history Game Over suggests the executives exclaimed "Super Mario!" after Segale's visit in 1981 (though the book misspells his name "Segali"). As Benj Edwards notes in an in-depth 2010 exploration of the tale, though, the "Super" descriptor for the character wouldn't become common until the release of Super Mario Bros. in 1985. Other retellings over the years go so far as to suggest that the "Super" came from Segale's role as "superintendent" of the building, but these stories offer little in the way of direct evidence. Ars mentions a 1993 Seattle Times article that quotes Segale as joking, "You might say I'm still waiting for my royalty checks."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Telecompaper: AT&T has blocked its HBO and Cinemax channels for Dish and Sling TV customers over a carriage dispute. This is the first channel blackout for HBO in its 40 years of operation. Pay-TV provider Dish and OTT services Sling TV said AT&T is making "untenable demands designed specifically to harm customers, particularly those in rural areas, as well as damage competing pay-TV providers" and that at the time of the merger, no guidelines were set in place to ensure AT&T "played fair" for HBO and Cinemax subscribers, regardless of their pay-TV provider.

Dish said AT&T is demanding it pay for a guaranteed number of subscribers, regardless of how many people actually want to subscribe to HBO. The company noted that during the arbitration process, AT&T will have to restore its channels to Dish customers. The company and Sling TV will credit customers on their bill for the time they do not receive either HBO or Cinemax. Dish added that it is also offering customers a free preview of HDNET Movies. An HBO spokesperson said in a statement: "During our forty-plus years of operation, HBO has always been able to reach agreement with our valued distributors and our services have never been taken down or made unavailable to subscribers due to an inability to conclude a deal. Unfortunately, Dish is making it extremely difficult, responding to our good faith attempts with unreasonable terms. Past behavior shows that removing services from their customers is becoming all too common a negotiating tactic for them. We hope the situation with Dish changes soon but, in the meantime, our valued customers should take advantage of the other ways to access an HBO subscription so they can continue to enjoy our acclaimed programming."

According to new research, the average cost households pay for cable is now up to $107 a month -- that's a 50% increase since 2010 when cable bills were $71.24 a month. When compared to last year, it's only a 1% increase, "thanks in large part to increasing fees for things like regional sports licensing and taxes," reports Streaming Observer. From the report: Leichtman Research Group's data was gathered through a telephone survey of 1,152 households from throughout the United States. The research found that 78% of American households still subscribe to a paid TV subscription. That percentage is down from 86% in 2013, 87% in 2008, and 81% in 2004, but 78% is still a pretty high figure given how high cable costs continue to rise each year and how affordable streaming video services are in comparison.

The FCC chairman insists that he is driven by a market-based approach to regulation. In a story, published Tuesday, an LA Times columnist uses the simple example of set-top boxes to argue the agency has, instead, been captured by the industry it regulates. From the story: Spectrum TV and internet customers will see their rates go up again in November. Among other increases, the broadcast TV surcharge will rise to $9.95 from $8.85 a month, and the monthly fee for a set-top box will jump to $7.50 from $6.99. It was that last charge that got my attention -- and got me thinking about the economics involved. How much do cable boxes actually cost? Why do their monthly fees keep going up when the cost of similar technology, such as TVs and computers, goes down over time? Not surprisingly, my attempts to answer these questions were met with stonewalling from industry players.

Spectrum, owned by Charter Communications, the dominant pay-TV company in Southern California, clammed up real fast when I asked how much they pay for the boxes they lease to subscribers. Nor would it comment on how much cash flow the boxes generate, or why fees keep rising even as the number of residential TV subscribers dwindles (down 66,000 more in the third quarter). Dennis Johnson, a company spokesman, said only that the 7.3% higher box charge in November -- more than three times the inflation rate -- represents a "modest increase" that is "comparable or even lower than our major competitors."

The FilmStruck indie, arthouse and classic film subscription-streaming service will shut down next month, Turner and Warner Bros. Digital Networks announced this week. The New Yorker's film critic Richard Brody writes: The site isn't accepting any new subscribers, and it's a good bet that it won't be adding films, either. In the year and a half that I've been offering recommendations here of movies to stream, FilmStruck titles have featured prominently. One could keep busy, happy, and cinematically sustained for a long time on the sole basis of FilmStruck movies, and all the more so with the inclusion of movies from Turner Classic Movies. (The movie diet wouldn't be an entirely balanced one: the site does poorly with such domains as American independent filmmaking, African cinema, and the past forty years of film history. Its over-all flaw is its reliance on recognized classics: the programming of the site is more responsive than it is proactive, and it might have been improved by more personalized, idiosyncratic selections that would have made it more like a permanent online film festival.)

The site instead offered various modes of promotional outreach. Some, such as essays, and some home-produced videos, were significant works in themselves, but the site over all diluted its offerings with a home page of diversions and distractions that felt like a tawdry sampling of multiplex ballyhoo raising an unwelcome racket amid the art-house tranquillity. That conspicuously commercial waiting room to the classic-cinema library suggests the culture clash at the heart of the enterprise, the one that arises from its odd original fusion of Criterion with TCM, which was then a part of Time Warner -- and which foreshadowed its doom. That air of doom arises from more than the inherent conflicts of the high-culture outpost and the mass-market colossus. Slate's arts and culture critic Joanna Scutts writes: FilmStruck did not care who you were: It set out to teach you something new, not just to feed you more helpings of what you already know you like. It employed a team of smart women and brought in directors like Barry Jenkins to record short, passionate introductions to films they loved. Its personality shone through tightly curated collections, from a timely gathering of all the previous incarnations of A Star Is Born, to a larger batch of Japanese horror titles, to deep dives into a particular director or cinematographer. It offered up inventive double-feature pairings and led you through its extensive archives in ways that were creative, cheeky, thought-provoking, and unpretentious. It made it clear that a passion for art-house and classic film was not exclusive to old white men. That kind of personality, that kind of discoverability, that kind of curation, can't be replicated by an algorithm. It takes time, money, and effort. It takes thought and education. It takes human beings.

Zorro shares a report from Entertainment Weekly: The first-ever official Star Trek comedy series has been ordered. CBS All Access has greenlit an animated series from Emmy-winner Mike McMahan, a writer on Adult Swim's sensation Rick and Morty The half-hour series is titled Star Trek: Lower Decks and will tackle the Federation from a comedic perspective, focusing "on the support crew serving on one of Starfleet's least important ships." Fans will recognize the Lower Decks title as referencing the name of one of the best episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

A new report from The Information says that Apple's upcoming TV service that is in the works to showcase its original TV shows will be available in more than 100 countries next year. The service will launch in the United States in the first half of 2019, with a global expansion to follow later in the year. MacRumors reports: According to The Information, Apple's original content will be made available for free to Apple device owners, a rumor we heard earlier this month from CNBC. While Apple's content will be available at no cost, Apple will encourage users to sign up for television subscriptions from other cable networks such as HBO or STARZ. Apple has reportedly started negotiating with content providers about what it will pay to carry TV shows and movies, but programming is not expected to be the same in each country. It is also not quite clear how Apple content will be positioned alongside content from third-party services.

According to a press release posted today, Netflix is planning to raise $2 billion to help fund new content, including "content acquisitions, production and development, capital expenditures, investments, working capital and potential acquisitions and strategic transactions." TechCrunch reports: The funds will be raised in the form of senior unsecured notes, denominated in U.S. dollars and euros, it said. This debt offering is the sixth time in under four years that Netflix is raising $1 billion or more through bonds, noted Variety, which was among the first to report the news. As of September 30, Netflix's long-term debt had reached $8.34 billion, up 71% from $4.89 billion in the year ago quarter, it said during its last earnings, Variety's report also noted. Netflix recently explained during its Q3 2018 earnings that it needs to continue to invest in original programming in order to remain competitive. "Content companies such as WarnerMedia and Disney/Fox are moving to self-distribute their own content; tech firms like Apple, Amazon and others are investing in premium content to enhance their distribution platforms," the letter also stated. "Amid these massive competitors on both sides, plus traditional media firms, our job is to make Netflix stand out so that when consumers have free time, they choose to spend it with our service," it had said.

Winamp, the world's most famous media player, has released version 5.8 to make it compatible with today's modern operating systems such as Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. Bleeping Computer notes that there hasn't been a new updates released since 2014, when Radionomy purchased Winamp from AOL. Some other new features include standalone audio player support, an auto-fullscreen option for videos, updates scrollbars and buttons, and bug fixes.

From the report: Radionomy has stated that they are not stopping here and have big plans for Winamp. In an interview with TechCrunch, Radionomy CEO Alexandre Saboundjian, revealed that a massive release is planned for 2019 that aims to add cloud support for streaming music, podcasts, and more. "There will be a completely new version next year, with the legacy of Winamp but a more complete listening experience," Saboundjian stated in the interview. "You can listen to the MP3s you may have at home, but also to the cloud, to podcasts, to streaming radio stations, to a playlist you perhaps have built."

Steam VR is introducing a new feature called "Motion Smoothing" that will give PCs with low-end hardware the power to deliver VR experiences more smoothly. "It functions like Motion Smoothing for TV and Asynchronous Spacewarp for Oculus devices, which are frame-rate smoothing techniques that generate synthetic frames between two real ones in order to avoid a stuttery experience," notes Engadget. From the report: When Steam VR determines that an experience is lagging or dropping frames, Motion Smoothing automatically kicks in. It drops an app's framerate from 90FPS to 45FPS and generates a synthetic frame for every real one to mimic real 90FPS. If things get especially bad, it can generate two to three frames for every real one instead. Steam explains that the feature "dramatically [lowers] the performance requirements," allowing PCs with lower end hardware to "produce smooth frames." Take note, however, that the feature will not work with the Oculus Rift or with Windows Mixed Reality headsets. You can only take advantage of it if you have an HTC Vive or a Vive Pro, and if you're running Windows 10 -- all you need to do is right-click on Steam VR and select beta under Tools in Library.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Open plan offices, once the darling of design, are now showing their fault lines. To get a little bit of personal space, we've come up with all sorts of solutions, from phone booths to furniture designed to create a sense of privacy. All of those ideas seem totally, completely normal compared to this new project from Panasonic. The tech company's Future Life Factory design studio partnered with Japanese fashion designer Kunihiko Morinaga to develop an open-plan solution to end all open-plan solutions. Say hello to Wear Space. Wear Space is, for lack of a better description, like equine blinkers for humans. The strip of flexible material wraps around the back of the head and covers the side of the eyes, blocking up to 60 percent of a wearer's peripheral vision, Panasonic says. Think of it as a sign for potential bothersome coworkers that broadcasts, "I'm busy."

Andrew Liszewski, writing for io9: Casting anyone other than Harrison Ford in the role of Han Solo just feels like sacrilege, but since Ford is now 76 years old, playing a younger version of himself would be all but impossible. Or at least impossible if you rely on the standard Hollywood de-aging tricks like makeup and CG. Artificial intelligence, it turns out, does a pretty amazing job at putting Ford back into the role of Solo. The YouTube channel "derpfakes" has been posting videos that demonstrate the impressive, and at times frightening, capabilities of image processing using artificial intelligence. Using a process called deep learning, an AI analyzes a large collection of photos of a given person, creating a comprehensive database of them in any almost any position and pose. It then uses that database to intelligently perform an automatic face replacement on a source clip, in this case replacing actor Alden Ehrenreich's face with Harrison Ford's.