An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Jazmin Jones knowswhat she did. "If you're online, there's this idea of trolling," Jones, the director behindSeeking Mavis Beacon, said during a recent panel for her new documentary. "For this project, some things we're taking incredibly seriously ... and other things we're trolling. We're trolling this idea of a detective because we're also, like,ACAB." Her trolling, though, was for a good reason. Jones and fellow filmmaker Olivia Mckayla Ross did it in hopes of finding the woman behind Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. The popular teaching tool was released in 1987 by The Software Toolworks, a video game and software company based in California that produced educational chess, reading, and math games. Mavis, essentially the "mascot" of the game, is a Black woman donned in professional clothes and a slicked-back bun. Though Mavis Beacon was not an actual person, Jones and Ross say that she is one of the first examples of Black representation they witnessed in tech. Seeking Mavis Beacon, which opened in New York City on August 30 and is rolling out to other cities in September, is their attempt to uncover the story behind the face, which appeared on the tool's packaging and later as part of its interface.

The film shows the duo setting up a detective room, conversing over FaceTime, running up to people on the street, and even tracking down a relative connected to the ever-elusive Mavis. But the journey of their search turned up a different question they didn't initially expect: What are the impacts of sexism, racism, privacy, and exploitation in a world where you can present yourself any way you want to? Using shots from computer screens, deep dives through archival footage, and sit-down interviews, the noir-style documentary reveals that Mavis Beacon is actually Renee L'Esperance, a Black model from Haiti who was paid $500 for her likeness with no royalties, despite the program selling millions of copies. [...]

In a world where anyone can create images of folks of any race, gender, or sexual orientation without having to fully compensate the real people who inspired them, Jones and Ross are working to preserve not only the data behind Mavis Beacon but also the humanity behind the software. On the panel, hosted by Black Girls in Media, Ross stated that the film's social media has a form where users of Mavis Beacon can share what the game has meant to them, for archival purposes. "On some level, Olivia and I are trolling ideas of worlds that we never felt safe in or protected by," Jones said during the panel. "And in other ways, we are honoring this legacy of cyber feminism, historians, and care workers that we are very seriously indebted to." You can watch the trailer for "Seeking Mavis Beacon" on YouTube.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: You might have a hard time stretching your memory to the Obama era, but back in 2013, Panasonic's plasma TVs were the critical darlings of the US market. They far outperformed their LED/LCD counterparts at a time when OLED was little more than a pipe dream for most. Then suddenly, under enormous pressure from ever-cheaper LED panels, Panasonic halted all plasma TV production. By 2016, the company had left the US TV space entirely. Now, over 10 years after its plasma models reigned supreme in the US, Panasonic TVs are back, baby.

Outside the US, Panasonic has remained a global leader in the OLED era. Rumors about a stateside return have been swirling for nearly as long as the brand has been away, but a global partnership with Amazon announced at CES 2024 kicked things into high gear. Today, Panasonic officially revealed the US launch of three premium TVs powered by Amazon's Fire TV smart interface: the flagship Z95A and "core" Z85A OLED TVs, and the W95A flagship mini LED TV. All three models are available now in limited sizes, as Panasonic begins its slow walk back to competing against LG, Samsung, and Sony. There are three models now available in the US: 55- and 65-inch OLED options and a Mini LED TV that measures up to 85 inches.

The Z95A is Panasonic's top OLED model featuring advanced gaming features, a 144-Hz refresh rate on select inputs, HDR10+, Dolby Vision support, and AI-powered picture modes. According to Wired, it boasts an impressive sound system developed with hi-fi audio brand Technics and employs Panasonic's proprietary microlens array technology for optimized brightness and heat management.

The Z85A is a step-down model offering similar gaming specs and smart home integration at a lower price, lacking the Z95A's specialized brightness and sound enhancements. It includes a game mode, HDR10+, Dolby Vision support, and a Mark II processor but only supports up to 120 Hz and doesn't have a built-in microphone for Alexa.

Last but not least is Panasonic's W95A flagship miniLED model, offering gaming-ready features like a 144-Hz refresh rate on two HDMI inputs and local dimming for deep contrast and high brightness. It includes the same smart-home integration as other models but features a more standard sound system, and Alexa control is available only through the remote.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Thursday, ABC announced an upcoming TV special titled, "AI and the Future of Us: An Oprah Winfrey Special." The one-hour show, set to air on September 12, aims to explore AI's impact on daily life and will feature interviews with figures in the tech industry, like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Bill Gates. Soon after the announcement, some AI critics began questioning the guest list and the framing of the show in general. [...] Critics of generative AI ... question the utility of the technology, its perceived environmental impact, and what they see as blatant copyright infringement.

"Sure is nice of Oprah to host this extended sales pitch for the generative AI industry at a moment when its fortunes are flagging and the AI bubble is threatening to burst," tweeted author Brian Merchant, who frequently criticizes generative AI technology in op-eds, social media, and through his "Blood in the Machine" AI newsletter. "The way the experts who are not experts are presented as such what a train wreck," replied artist Karla Ortiz, who is a plaintiff in a lawsuit against several AI companies. "There's still PLENTY of time to get actual experts and have a better discussion on this because yikes." On Friday, Ortiz created a lengthy viral thread on X that detailed her potential issues with the program, writing, "This event will be the first time many people will get info on Generative AI. However it is shaping up to be a misinformed marketing event starring vested interests (some who are under a litany of lawsuits) who ignore the harms GenAi inflicts on communities NOW." The AI TV special will feature "some of the most important and powerful people in AI," said ABC. They include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, YouTube creator Marques Brownlee, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin from the Center for Humane Technology, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and author Marilynne Robinson.

The show will air on September 12 on ABC (and a day later on Hulu) in the U.S.

Kotaku reviews Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft's latest AAA title: I was staring at a wall. It was an early mission in Ubisoft's latest behemothic RPG, Star Wars Outlaws, in which I was charged with infiltrating an Empire base to recover some information from a computer, and this wall really caught my attention.

It was a perfect wall. It absolutely captured that late-70s sci-fi aesthetic of dark gray cladding broken up by utilitarian-gray panels covered in dull blinking lights, and I stopped to think about how much work must have gone into that wall. Looking elsewhere on the screen, I was then overwhelmed. This wall was the most bland thing in a vast hanger, where TIE Fighters hung from the ceiling, Stormtroopers wandered in groups below, and even the little white sign with the yellow arrow looked like it was a decade old, meticulously crafted to fit into this universe. I felt sheer astonishment at the achievement of this. Ubisoft, via multiple studios across the whole world, and the work of thousands of deeply talented people, had built this impossibly perfect area for one momentary scene that I was intended to run straight past.

Except I ran past it three times, because the AI kept fucking up and I was restarted at a checkpoint right before that gray wall over and over. I'm struggling to capture the dissonance of this moment. This sense of absolute awe, almost unbelieving admiration that it's even possible to build games at this scale and at this detail, slapped hard around the face by the bewilderingly bad decisions that take place within it all. Brokerage firm UBS said in a note to clients: Based on the 621 ratings thus far the game has received a score of 4.8 (out of 10). This tracks behind previous blockbuster releases by Ubisoft in Assassin's Creed and Far Cry, behind competing open world games released in 2024 and behind other major recent Star Wars Games released by EA in 2019 and 2023. The user ratings, which are generally unfavourable lag its generally favourable critic reviews (game received a score of 76 by critics).

Early user ratings suggest downside risk to our 10m units forecast for the game: While we previously felt the largely positive critic reviews made our 10m units sold look achievable (a component upon which we forecast +4% FY25 net bookings growth), the user ratings now suggest downside risk to our estimates. Previous Ubisoft games in Assassin's Creed and Far Cry which sold 10m+ units in their first fiscal year all received higher user ratings and were instalments of well entrenched franchises.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Too often, new tech product or service launches seem like solutions in search of a problem, but not this one: ESPN is launching software that lets you figure out just where you can watch the specific game you want to see amid an overcomplicated web of streaming services, cable channels, and arcane licensing agreements. Every sports fan is all too familiar with today's convoluted streaming schedules. Launching today on ESPN.com and the various ESPN mobile and streaming device apps, the new guide offers various views, including one that lists all the sporting events in a single day and a search function, among other things. You can also flag favorite sports or teams to customize those views.

"At the core of Where to Watch is an event database created and managed by the ESPN Stats and Information Group (SIG), which aggregates ESPN and partner data feeds along with originally sourced information and programming details from more than 250 media sources, including television networks and streaming platforms," ESPN's press release says. ESPN previously offered browsable lists of games like this, but it didn't identify where you could actually watch all the games. There's no guarantee that you'll have access to the services needed to watch the games in the list, though. Those of us who cut the cable cord long ago know that some games -- especially those local to your city -- are unavailable without cable.

Samsung Electronics said it will provide Tizen OS updates for its newer TVs for at least seven years, starting with models released in March this year and some 2023 models. Business Korea reports: [Yoon Seok-woo, President of Samsung Electronics' Visual Display Business Division] emphasized that the seven-year free upgrade for Tizen applied to AI TVs would help Samsung widen the market share gap with Chinese competitors. Tizen, an in-house developed OS, has been applied to over 270 million Samsung smart TVs as of last year, making it the world's largest smart TV platform and a key player in leading the Internet of Things (IoT) era. "AI TV will act as the hub of the AI home, connecting other AI appliances like refrigerators and air conditioners," Yoon explained. "We will expand the AI home era by enabling users to monitor and control peripheral devices through the TV even when it is off or when the user is away." This connectivity is a key differentiator from Chinese competitors, according to Yoon.

In the first half of this year, Samsung Electronics maintained the top spot in the global TV market with a 28.8% market share by revenue. However, the combined market share of Chinese companies TCL and Hisense has reached 22.1%, indicating fierce competition.

"It's going to be violent," warns the creator of Terminator Zero, an eight-episode anime series premiering Thursday August 29th on Netflix. "It's going to be dark, it's going to be horrific, and it's going to be arresting."

And the Netflix blog has now shared the first six minutes online: In the world of Terminator, the future is never set, yet some things are guaranteed: The Terminator is still a cyborg that feels no remorse, pity, or fear. The anime series TERMINATOR ZERO, landing on Netflix on Aug. 29 — known to fans as Judgment Day — looks different from any incarnation of the Terminator franchise we've seen before, but you can tell from these opening six minutes that the brutal, sophisticated action will remain.

"I realized the first minutes of the show have to declare what it is," creator and executive producer Mattson Tomlin tells Tudum. A joint production between Skydance and the Japanese animation studio Production I.G, TERMINATOR ZERO has the challenge of drawing in both anime fans and fans of the Terminator series. "The way to do that was to have a sequence that had no dialogue, that was really planting a flag in letting everybody know this is going to be violent, it's going to be dark, it's going to be action-driven, it's going to be horrific, and it's going to be arresting," says Tomlin, who previously wrote Project Power for Netflix and is currently writing The Batman Part II. "That's just what it has to be."
The series follows "a new batch of characters who live in Japan in 1997," writes CBR — and in an interview the show's director said "There's a balance" when representing Japan's actual culture while keeping the show futuristic: One of the things that I really took for granted was guns. [Points to self] Dumb American over here had to write a scene where Eiko gets into a parking lot and smashes the window of a car, goes to the glove box, takes out a revolver, and it instantly gets flagged. [Other people working on the series] were like, "No, we don't have guns. What you are describing, that's over there. We're over here in civilization where that can't happen." That triggered a really fruitful and creatively challenging discussion about weapons. The military has guns and the police have guns. That's kind of it. So these characters have to arm themselves. How are they going to do it? What could we do? And that's why the Terminator has a crossbow. Eiko has all of these different weapons that she concocted from a hardware store. It was all born out of that.

Alien: Romulus director Fede Ãlvarez "briefly dropped into an Alien franchise subreddit this week to chat with fans about his new sequel," reports Deadline. "But the moderators weren't having it, flagging Ãlvarez as an imposter in a notice that he is 'permanently banned' from the subreddit." The moderator shared an update that Ãlvarez "was immediately reinstated and had a very friendly conversation with us. Awesome guy." They also shared the filmmaker's response. "I'm sorry, just found it hilarious," wrote Ãlvarez. "My bad. Not harm done. Thanks again for such great work moderating my favorite subreddit."
Fangoria notes this might not be the last Alien movie from director Alvarez: Talking with The Hollywood Reporter earlier this week, the Evil Dead and Don't Breathe director teased that ideas are in the pipeline for an Alien: Romulus sequel, which would — if it comes to fruition — be the eighth instalment in the legendary sci-fi horror franchise."
The Hollywood Reporter also notes that Ash, the "calculating synthetic character" from the original 1979 movie Alien (played by the late Ian Holm) got a kind of reprise in 2024 with another character named Rook: According to Ãlvarez, Rook was a collaborative decision with [Ridley] Scott, who also wanted to see another version of the artificial person he introduced 45 years ago. The Romulus team then received approval from Holm's estate, and using the English actor's headcast from The Lord of the Rings as a foundation, Legacy Effects built Rook's torso and head as an animatronic. The practical character was then enhanced by CG and deepfake AI technology for certain shots as needed... "There might be some deepfake in the eyes because it's the best when it comes to creating the likeness of the eyes, but it's a whole bag of tricks from 1970s and 1980s technology to technology from yesterday."
The article also notes one horrifying plot twist "received some respectful opposition to this unsettling choice from 20th Century and Disney, but that's precisely when [director Alvarez] knew he was on the right course." "If you're given an Alien movie by a corporation that is owned by Disney and they immediately say, 'Yeah, let's make it,' then you are failing somehow. So we really pushed it to the limit, and I'm glad we did."
Alvarez's social media feed also explores what Alien: Romulus would look like as trading cards or as 1950s comic book, shares posts from the movie's poster designer, and admits that "everything I do is influenced by Terminator / Alien / Predator."

Instagram is adding a new feature today that will "allow users to add a song on their profile -- much like Myspace in the early 2000s," writes The Verge's Mia Sato. From the report: The music added to a user's profile shows up in the bio area, according to screenshots shared by Instagram. A song will be featured on a profile until the user removes or replaces it. But unlike Myspace, songs won't autoplay -- people viewing a profile with a song can play and pause the track. Users can add a song by going to the "edit profile" page, where they'll be able to search for and select a track from Instagram's library of licensed music that's also available for things like Reels or posts. From there, users will be able to select a 30-second-long portion of the song to add.

Lionsgate is recalling its latest trailer for Francis Ford Coppola's epic "Megalopolis," which featured a littany of fabricated quotes from famous film critics. From a report: "Lionsgate is immediately recalling our trailer for 'Megalopolis,'" a Lionsgate spokesperson said in a statement provided to Variety. "We offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for this inexcusable error in our vetting process. We screwed up. We are sorry."

The trailer, released on Wednesday morning, aimed to position Coppola's latest film as a work of art that would withstand the test of time, much like his previous masterpieces "The Godfather" and "Apocalypse Now." The video included several quotes from critics panning Coppola's previous work -- but none of the phrases, attributed to the likes of Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael, could be found in any of their reviews.

The old Sonos app won't be making a return to replace the buggy new version. According to Sonos CEO Patrick Spence, rereleasing the old app would make things worse now that updated software has already been sent out to the company's speakers and cloud infrastructure. The Verge reports: In a Reddit AMA response posted Tuesday, Sonos CEO Spence says that he was hopeful "until very recently" that the company could rerelease the app, confirming a report from The Verge that the company was considering doing so. [...] Since the new app was released on May 7th, Spence has issued a formal apology and announced in August that the company would be delaying the launch of two products "until our app experience meets the level of quality that we, our customers, and our partners expect from Sonos." "The trick of course is that Sonos is not just the mobile app, but software that runs on your speakers and in the cloud too," writes Spence in the Reddit AMA. "In the months since the new mobile app launched we've been updating the software that runs on our speakers and in the cloud to the point where today S2 is less reliable & less stable then what you remember. After doing extensive testing we've reluctantly concluded that re-releasing S2 would make the problems worse, not better. I'm sure this is disappointing. It was disappointing to me."

Rotten Tomatoes and Fandango are rolling out a new "Verified Hot" rating for users who actually bought a ticket to the movie being reviewed. "The designation is only given to theatrical movies that have reached an audience score above 90 percent among user ratings," adds IndieWire. From the report: Movie ticketing app Fandango is the parent company to Rotten Tomatoes, so if you bought your ticket through Fandango and then rated a movie using that same user info on Rotten Tomatoes, RT is able to confirm you bought a ticket and can filter out anyone else who may just be rating things blindly. A rep for RT tells IndieWire the goal is to work with other partners so that other people who don't use Fandango can still be considered verified.

Rotten Tomatoes also expanded its Popcornmeter designations. Anything with an audience score above 60 percent of people rating it as 3.5 stars or higher will be labeled "Hot," and movies below that 60 percent threshold are now "Stale." The "Certified Fresh" badge for movies that achieve a strong enough critics score has been around for a while, but in 2020 RT introduced a "Top Critics" feature such that you could filter out the dozens or hundreds of aggregated critics from unreliable sources who could be skewing a film's score. Anyone can vote or rate movies on Rotten Tomatoes if you're an audience member, but you can also filter out ratings from those not considered "verified."

Rotten Tomatoes made some other tweaks too under the hood: Both the Popcornmeter and Tomatometer need to meet a new minimum number of reviews published for a score to appear. Not everything gets reviewed widely, so the threshold varies depending on a film's total projected domestic box office forecast. A full list of "Verified Hot" films can be found here.

A new TV series is capturing the dramatic saga of the The Pirate Bay, the notorious file-sharing website that openly challenged the entertainment industry in the early 2000s. A just-launched teaser is available on YouTube. TorrentFreak reports: A few years ago, news broke that The Pirate Bay story was being turned into a TV series. Written by Piotr Marciniak and directed by Jens Sjogren, who also made the "I am Zlatan" documentary, production was in the hands of B-Reel Films, working for the Swedish broadcaster SVT. American distribution company Dynamic Television scooped up worldwide rights. As far as we know, international deals have not yet been announced. The Swedish premiere on November 8 is coming closer, however, and a few days ago SVT released an official teaser.

The founders of The Pirate Bay -- Anakata, Brokep and Tiamo -- are played by Arvid Swedrup, Simon Greger Carlsson and Willjam Lempling. The teaser doesn't give away much, but it's interesting that one of The Pirate Bay's infamous responses to legal threats features prominently. The teaser quotes from Anakata's response to a letter from DreamWorks, written twenty years ago. The movie company sent a DMCA takedown notice requesting the removal of a torrent for the film Shrek 2, but the reply was not what they had hoped for. "As you may or may not be aware, Sweden is not a state in the United States of America. Sweden is a country in northern Europe. Unless you figured it out by now, US law does not apply here," Anakata wrote. "It is the opinion of us and our lawyers that you are ........ morons, and that you should please go sodomize yourself with retractable batons."

The response was public information and made it into the series. Whether there will be any new revelations has yet to be seen, however, as none of the site's founders were actively involved in production. Instead, the producers used interviews with other people involved, plus the vast amount of public information available on the Internet. That includes the infamous responses to legal threats. Time will tell how the producers and director have decided to tell this story. Production took place in Stockholm, Sweden, but also ventured to other countries, including Chile and Thailand, where Fredrik Neij was arrested and paraded in front of the press in 2014.

TV manufacturers are shifting their focus from hardware sales to viewer data and advertising revenue. This trend is driven by declining profit margins on TV sets and the growing potential of smart TV operating systems to generate recurring income. Companies like LG, Samsung, and Roku are increasingly prioritizing ad sales and user tracking capabilities in their TVs, ArsTechnica reports. Automatic content recognition (ACR) technology, which analyzes viewing habits, is becoming a key feature for advertisers. TV makers are partnering with data firms to enhance targeting capabilities, with LG recently sharing data with Nielsen and Samsung updating its ACR tech to track streaming ad exposure. This shift raises concerns about privacy and user experience, as TVs become more commercialized and data-driven. Industry experts predict a rise in "shoppable ads" and increased integration between TV viewing and e-commerce platforms. The report adds: With TV sales declining and many shoppers prioritizing pricing, smart TV players will continue developing ads that are harder to avoid and better at targeting. Interestingly, Patrick Horner, practice leader of consumer electronics at analyst Omdia, told Ars that smart TV advertising revenue exceeding smart TV hardware revenue (as well as ad sale margins surpassing those of hardware) is a US-only trend, albeit one that shows no signs of abating. OLED has become a mainstay in the TV marketplace, and until the next big display technology becomes readily available, OEMs are scrambling to make money in a saturated TV market filled with budget options. Selling ads is an obvious way to bridge the gap between today and The Next Big Thing in TVs.

Indeed, with companies like Samsung and LG making big deals with analytics firms and other brands building their businesses around ads, the industry's obsession with ads will only intensify. As we've seen before with TV commercials, which have gotten more frequent over time, once the ad genie is out of the bottle, it tends to grow, not go back inside. One side effect we're already seeing, Horner notes, is "a proliferation of more TV operating systems." While choice is often a good thing for consumers, it's important to consider if new options from companies like Amazon, Comcast, and TiVo actually do anything to notably improve the smart TV experience for owners.

And OS operators' financial success is tied to the number of hours users spend viewing something on the OS. Roku's senior director of ad innovation, Peter Hamilton, told Digiday in May that his team works closely with Roku's consumer team, "whose goal is to drive total viewing hours." Many smart TV OS operators are therefore focused on making it easier for users to navigate content via AI.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Disney has now agreed that a wrongful death lawsuit should be decided in court following backlash for initially arguing the case belonged in arbitration because the grieving widower had once signed up for a Disney Plus trial. "With such unique circumstances as the ones in this case, we believe this situation warrants a sensitive approach to expedite a resolution for the family who have experienced such a painful loss," chairman of Disney experiences Josh D'Amaro said in a statement to The Verge. "As such, we've decided to waive our right to arbitration and have the matter proceed in court."

The lawsuit was filed in February by Jeffrey Piccolo, the husband of a 42-year-old woman who died last year due to an allergic reaction that occurred after eating at a restaurant in the Disney Springs shopping complex in Orlando. The case gained widespread media attention after Piccolo's legal team challenged Disney's motion to dismiss the case, arguing that a forced arbitration agreement Piccolo signed was effectively invisible.

Apple's Podcasts app is now available on all major web browsers, allowing you to stream episodes directly from the web at www.podcasts.apple.com. TechCrunch reports: The new dedicated web experience aims to make it easier for anyone with a web browser on any device to access podcasts. Web listening has been available for some time; however, in order to listen to an episode, users had to look up a show on a search engine and go to the show's Apple Podcasts Preview page.

Now Apple Podcasts on the web has launched a new interface, allowing users to access features that were previously only available on the app. These include browsing millions of shows, accessing sections like Library and Top Charts, purchasing premium podcast subscriptions, and more. Listeners can sync their Apple Accounts to be able to pause a podcast and save their play progress to listen to later, as well as see their followed shows and subscriptions. Users without an Apple Account can also use the web experience but can only browse and listen. You can try it out by listening to the latest episode of the SourceForge Podcast!

In the 1980s, a radio show about home computers was broadcast on a handful of California radio stations. 40 years later, reel-to-reel tapes of the shows were re-discovered — and digitized — by an Internet Archive special collections manager.

An Internet Archive blog post tells the story: Earlier this year archivist Kay Savetz recovered several of the tapes in a property sale, and recognizing their value and worthiness of professional transfer, launched a GoFundMe to have them digitized, and made them available at Internet Archive with the permission of the show's creators...

Interviews in the recovered recordings include Timothy Leary, Douglas Adams, Bill Gates, Atari's Jack Tramiel, Apple's Bill Atkinson, and dozens of others. The recovered shows span November 17 1984 through July 12, 1985.

Many more of the original reel-to-reel tapes — including shows with interviews with Ray Bradbury, Robert Moog, Donny Osmond, and Gene Roddenberry — are still lost, and perhaps are still waiting to be found in the Los Angeles area. [Though there appears to be a transcript of the Gene Roddenberry interview.]

The stories of how The Famous Computer Cafe was created — and saved, 40 years later — is explored in an episode of the Radio Survivor podcast. The podcast interviewed show co-creator Ellen Fields and archivist Kay Savetz, providing a dual perspective of how the show was created and how it was recovered.

The recovery of these interviews, 40 years after their original airing, holds out hope that many more relics and treasures still await discovery.
You get another perspective on the past from the show's advertisements for 1980s software (and from the production values of 1980s-era radio technology).

Bill Gates was just 29 when he recorded his interview. And Douglas Adams was 32.

Slashdot reader Dave Knott writes: After once again being plagued by controversy, this time due to a thwarted ballot-stuffing campaign, the 2024 Hugo Awards have been awarded at the 2024 World Science Fiction Convention.

This year's winners are:

* Best Novel: Some Desperate Glory, by Emily Tesh
* Best Novella: Thornhedge, by T. Kingfisher
* Best Novelette: "The Year Without Sunshine", by Naomi Kritzer
* Best Short Story: "Better Living Through Algorithms", by Naomi Kritzer
* Best Series: Imperial Radch, by Ann Leckie
* Best Graphic Story or Comic: Saga, Vol. 11, written by Brian K. Vaughan, art by Fiona Staples
* Best Related Work: A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?, by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith
* Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
* Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: The Last of Us: "Long, Long Time", written by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, directed by Peter Hoar
* Best Game or Interactive Work: Baldur's Gate 3, produced by Larian Studios
* Best Editor Short Form: Neil Clarke
* Best Editor Long Form: Ruoxi Chen
* Best Professional Artist: Rovina Cai
* Best Semiprozine: Strange Horizons, by the Strange Horizons Editorial Collective
* Best Fanzine: Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together, editors Roseanna Pendlebury, Arturo Serrano, Paul Weimer; senior editors Joe Sherry, Adri Joy, G. Brown, Vance Kotrla
* Best Fancast: Octothorpe, by John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty
* Best Fan Writer: Paul Weimer
* Best Fan Artist: Laya Rose
* Lodestar Award for Best YA Book: To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose
* Astounding Award for Best New Writer: Xiran Jay Zhao

In his new memoir, Imminent, former senior intelligence official Luis Elizondo claims that a supersecret program has been retrieving technology and biological remains of nonhuman origin for decades, warning that these phenomena could pose a serious national security threat or even an existential threat to humanity. The New York Times reports: Luis Elizondo made headlines in 2017 when he resigned as a senior intelligence official running a shadowy Pentagon program investigating U.F.O.s and publicly denounced the excessive secrecy, lack of resources and internal opposition that he said were thwarting the effort. Elizondo's disclosures at the time created a sensation. They were buttressed by explosive videos and testimony from Navy pilots who had encountered unexplained aerial phenomena, and led to congressional inquiries, legislation and a 2023 House hearing in which a former U.S. intelligence official testified that the federal government has retrieved crashed objects of nonhuman origin.

Now Elizondo, 52, has gone further in a new memoir. In the book he asserted that a decades-long U.F.O. crash retrieval program has been operating as a supersecret umbrella group made up of government officials working with defense and aerospace contractors. Over the years, he wrote, technology and biological remains of nonhuman origin have been retrieved from these crashes. "Humanity is, in fact, not the only intelligent life in the universe, and not the alpha species," Elizondo wrote. The book, "Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for U.F.O.s," is being published by HarperCollins on Aug. 20 after a yearlong security review by the Pentagon.

A federal judge blocked the launch of Venu, a sports streaming joint venture by Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery, due to concerns it would substantially lessen competition and harm FuboTV. Variety reports: Fubo launched in 2015 as a start-up focused on streaming sports programming. [...] Venu, expected to launch in late August ahead of the start of the NFL's coming fall season and priced at an initial price tag of $42.99 per month, was to carry all of the sports offerings of ESPN, Fox Sports 1 and 2, and TNT for a price that is seen as more than a regional sports network but less than a full programming package available via YouTube TV or Hulu + Live TV. The three parent companies are targeting a new generation of consumers who disdain the high costs of traditional cable packages are more at home with signing up for streaming venues that are relatively easy to get in and out of based on the availability of favorite entertainment programs or sporting events.

Judge Garnett found that once Venu launches, FuboTV would face "a swift exodus" of large numbers of subscribers, and indicated she felt "that Fubo's bankruptcy and delisting of the company's stock will likely soon follow. These are quintessential harms that money cannot adequately repair." Fubo alleged that Venu's launch "will cause it to lose approximately 300,000 to 400,000 (or nearly 30%) of its subscribers, suffer a significant decline in its ability to attract new subscribers, lose between $75 and $95 million in revenue, and be transformed into a penny stock awaiting delisting from the New York Stock Exchange, all before year-end 2024," the judge said in her decision. "We respectfully disagree with the court's ruling and are appealing it," Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery said in a statement. "We believe that Fubo's arguments are wrong on the facts and the law, and that Fubo has failed to prove it is legally entitled to a preliminary injunction. Venu Sports is a pro-competitive option that aims to enhance consumer choice by reaching a segment of viewers who currently are not served by existing subscription options."