Space.com reports: Laika, a stray dog scooped off the streets of Moscow, launched on the Soviet Union's Sputnik 2 mission in November 1957, just a month after Sputnik 1's liftoff opened the space age. The 11-lb. (5 kilograms) mixed-breed quickly died of overheating and circled Earth as a corpse until April 1958, when Sputnik 2 fell back into the atmosphere and burned up.

Laika was sacrificed to aid humanity's march into the cosmos, her pioneering mission and those of her successors designed to help show that our species could survive jaunts into the final frontier. A new documentary called "Space Dogs" asks us to examine that sacrifice and what it says about us. [Trailer here] "This film is about the relationship of another species to us humans. A species that has been used in space history in two ways: both as an experimental object and as a symbol of courage and heroism," directors Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter said in a statement.

"The dogs had to fulfill mankind's dream by conquering the cosmos for them," the duo added...

Kremser and Peter dug up stunning, never-before-seen footage of Laika and other Soviet space dogs. Some of these archival snippets show the pups being prepped for their landmark launches, their poor little bodies bristling with implanted tubes and wires. Other footage depicts post-landing processing of the shorn and wobbly strays fortunate enough to survive their orbital ordeals. Getting ahold of this priceless historic material was no easy task...

"Space Dogs" is not chiefly about Laika and her fellow space explorers; the historical footage comprises less than one-third of the roughly 90-minute film. The bulk of the documentary is devoted to strays on the streets of modern Moscow, especially one young dog with floppy ears who roams the city with charismatic enthusiasm.
This week saw the "virtual cinema launch" of the documentary, with a real-world release into theatres next weekend.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Former Theranos Chief Executive Officer Elizabeth Holmes is exploring a "mental disease" defense for her criminal fraud trial, in one of Silicon Valley's most closely watched cases. That possibility was revealed Wednesday when the judge overseeing the case ruled that government prosecutors can examine Holmes. The ruling was in response to the failed blood-testing startup founder's plan to introduce evidence of "mental disease or defect" or other mental condition "bearing on the issue of guilt," according to the filing. Holmes may be seeking to introduce the evidence to challenge the requirement that prosecutors prove her intent to do something wrong or illegal.

Holmes intends to use testimony from Mindy Mechanic, a clinical psychologist at California State University at Fullerton, according to the filing. Mechanic is an expert on the psychosocial consequences of trauma, with a focus on violence against women, and often provides expert testimony in cases involving "interpersonal violence," according to her faculty profile on the school's website. Barbara McQuade, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches at the University of Michigan law school, said mounting a so-called insanity defense won't be easy, as the defendant must meet a high standard of proof. "Contrary to what you may see in the movies, an insanity defense in federal cases is rare and hard to fake," McQuade said in an email. Holmes must show that, at the time she committed the alleged offenses, a severe mental defect made her "unable to appreciate the nature and quality or the wrongfulness of (her) acts." In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Edward J. Davila rejected Holmes's argument that she shouldn't have to submit to a psychological examination by government experts. The judge ruled that such an examination is fair given Holmes's intent to use testimony from Mechanic.

Dputiger writes: After nine months of work, I've published workflows, example videos, and screenshots showing how to restore Star Trek: Deep Space Nine from the rather potato quality of its DVDs to something you could plausibly call HD equivalent. These are the results. "With careful processing and good upscaling, it's possible to give Deep Space Nine a clarity that I think approaches that of what's typically referred to as 'HD' content, though it's still limited to the NTSC color gamut as opposed to later standards like Rec. 709," writes Joel Hruska via ExtremeTech. "At its worst -- allowing for some deviations from perfection -- it'll still look like the best damn DVD you've ever seen. At its best -- and I consider the shot of Sisko up there to be one of the best -- I'd argue that he, at least, comes across in HD levels of detail."

The article "is not a step-by-step tutorial on how to perform this process," Hruska writes, adding, "that will be its own project." There will, however, be enough information that anyone with a passing knowledge of AviSynth "should be able to recreate both approaches."

Either Rotten Tomatoes was destroying the film industry, or it didn't matter much at all, writes The Ringer, noting competing storylines about the influence of the film review-aggregating web site.

But they've now performed a statistical deep dive to try to answer the question, and concluded that "The truth likely lies in the middle: Rotten Tomatoes wasn't tanking the industry or single-handedly exposing that Baywatch was bad, but it wasn't irrelevant, either." In fact, our analysis reveals that Rotten Tomatoes scores are reliably correlated with box office performance, especially for certain genres. But the aggregator's influence may have been on the wane before the coronavirus struck, and it may matter less than ever in the present uncertain circumstances...

Our first finding is that the average Rotten Tomatoes critic score has increased over time. Maybe movies have improved — or at least grown closer to critics' liking — or maybe the rise reflects changes in the makeup of Rotten Tomatoes' pool of reviewers... Whatever the reason(s) for the increasing scores, there's no evidence of greater negativity that could be turning off ticket buyers (which probably doesn't displease Fandango). The site bestows a "Fresh" rating on any movie with a 60 percent score or higher, and the average movie now clears that threshold....

Action movie earnings are the least closely associated with review scores, maybe because when people just want to see stuff blow up, they're willing to lower their standards in certain respects. Comedies and horror movies — particularly the latter — are far more consistent with the critical consensus. A perfectly scored action movie's earnings might double its budget, but a perfectly scored comedy can quadruple its budget, while a perfectly scored horror flick can beat its budget by 10 or 20 times...

The mystery of most interest to studio execs is whether Rotten Tomatoes has strengthened the relationship between the critical consensus and box office performance, which also existed in the pre-internet age. The evidence suggests that the studios were a tad too intimidated in 2017... However, there are some signs that increased attention to the critical consensus may have affected whether movies' earnings got out to fast or slow starts, even if it didn't dramatically lower or raise their final ticket tallies.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Every day, millions of people download or stream pirated content including movies, TV-shows, games, MP3s, and books. Many of these files originate from a small and tightly organized 'community' commonly known as The Scene, which is made up of dozens of smaller 'release groups.' These groups tend to operate in the shadows with little or no public profile. At least, that's what the unwritten rules dictate. That's for good reason as the people involved risk high prison sentences when caught. It's very rare for Scene group members to get busted but last week the US Government claimed a major victory. With help from international law enforcement partners, several raids and arrests were carried out, with the SPARKS group at the center of it all.

As soon as the first rumors about the raids started spreading on Tuesday, the number of Scene releases started to drop. A day later, when confirmation came in, it became even quieter. With data provided by Predb.org we take a closer look at these dropoffs, showing that some categories are affected more than others. Before delving into detailed groups, it's worth pointing out the overall impact, which can be summarized in two numbers. On Wednesday, August 19, there were 1944 new releases. A week later, a day after the first raids, this number was down to 168 releases. The drop in new releases happened across all categories.

An anonymous reader shares a report: "Mulan" producer Jason Reed was in Mexico City last March promoting his soon-to-be-released film when he got the call that Walt Disney was postponing its debut due to the coronavirus. What followed was a summer of discussions between Disney, Reed and director Niki Caro as the company wrestled with when and how to release the $200 million live-action remake of its 1998 animated hit. This weekend they'll all get to see if they made the right call. Disney is making "Mulan" available on its Disney+ streaming service for an extra $30 starting Friday. The film now joins others, including Universal's "Trolls World Tour" and Warner Bros.' "Scoob!," in bypassing theaters and going directly to consumers. It's a trend that has many in Hollywood concerned about the future of films in theaters. They might be worrying too much. Without theaters, Disney and other studios would struggle to replace the revenue they have historically gotten from releasing big-budget films first in cinemas, then home video and later TV.

"They understand how important the theater is as a channel for distribution," said Steve Nason, research director at the consulting firm Parks Associates. "They just couldn't wait any longer." Prior to the pandemic, "Mulan" had been scheduled to hit theaters March 27. The company had already held the red-carpet premiere and spent heavily on advertising. But the film was postponed three times before its Disney+ debut was set. Reviews so far are fairly strong. "Disney's spectacular do-over deserves the biggest screen possible," read the headline in Variety. Rotten Tomatoes gives the movie a 79% fresh rating, showing most critics agree. Disney is trying a hybrid approach. It's releasing the film in theaters in Asia, where cinemas have been back open longer and the Asian cast and story are likely to have strong appeal. In the U.S. and Europe, "Mulan" will be online, where Disney+ has already built a sizable subscriber base.

On Thursday morning a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Kennedy Space Center, carrying SpaceX's 12th batch of Starlink Internet satellites. The mission went nominally, with the first stage making a safe landing several minutes after the launch, and the full stack of satellites deploying shortly thereafter. From a report: Prior to launch, webcast commentator Kate Tice, a senior program reliability engineer at SpaceX, offered several details about development of the space-based Starlink Internet service. "We are well into our first phase of testing of our private beta program, with plans to roll out a public beta later this year," Tice said. For several months, SpaceX has been collecting names and addresses for people interested in participating in the public beta here. Tice also revealed the first official public information about internal tests, saying that SpaceX employees have been using Starlink terminals, collecting latency statistics, and performing standard speed tests of the system. "Initial results have been good," she said. These tests reveal "super-low latency," and download speeds greater than 100 megabits per second. This, she noted, would provide enough bandwidth to play the fastest online games and stream multiple HD movies at once.

In Christopher Nolan's new thriller, "Tenet," the fate of humanity pivots on characters moving back and forth through time. It is an epic, brain-bending exploration of ideas the filmmaker has spent decades examining. But now, as "Tenet" opens after multiple delays in cinemas around the world, it comes loaded with symbolism that its writer and director could never have foreseen. From a report: As the first big-budget theatrical release since Covid-19 struck, "Tenet" represents one of the biggest gambles in Hollywood history -- from the studio wagering it can release the movie amid the pandemic, to long-dormant theater chains banking on it spurring a recovery for their business, to potential ticket buyers balancing safety concerns with their urge to get back to the big screen. Mr. Nolan, though known as a champion of the theatrical experience, is somewhat uneasy with all the significance assigned to his sci-fi spy picture. "This is the most radical shift in my career, my lifetime, between the making of a film and the world it goes out into, and I'm still grappling with that," he says.

Starting with an Aug. 26 opening in parts of Europe and elsewhere, the rollout of "Tenet" reaches the U.S. Sept. 3. It is the fourth domestic release date for the movie -- which was delayed repeatedly as studio and theater executives dealt with shifting lockdown measures -- yet it is still unclear when it will open in regions where indoor theaters remain closed. That includes two cities that are normally first to get new movies, New York City and Los Angeles. When coronavirus lockdowns descended in March, Mr. Nolan says, his team's first challenge was to use remote methods to put the final touches on "Tenet" and turn it in on time to AT&T's Warner Bros. studio. Meanwhile, every big movie on deck for the season, starting with the James Bond installment "No Time To Die," retreated on the calendar to fall or next year. By contrast, Warner Bros. pushed back the July 17 release of "Tenet" by only two weeks, and later pushed it again. The studio never seriously considered an online premiere for "Tenet," a Warner Bros. executive says, even as others experimented with online releases, as Disney has done this summer with "Hamilton" and "Mulan." The movie enjoyed a strong $53 million debut overseas. "We are off to a fantastic start internationally and couldn't be more pleased," said Toby Emmerich, Warner Bros. Pictures Group chairman. "Christopher Nolan has once again delivered an event-worthy motion picture that demands to be seen on the big screen, and we are thrilled that audiences across the globe are getting the opportunity to see 'Tenet.'"

Yahoo News reports: On Friday, Chadwick Boseman's family posted a final tweet on his Twitter account, announcing that he had died after a four-year battle with colon cancer. Twitter confirmed on Saturday afternoon that this tweet from Boseman's account is now the most-liked tweet on Twitter of all time...
"The 43-year-old's death shocked many in Hollywood who were unaware he had spent the last four years fighting colon cancer," notes the Los Angeles Times. But the tweet confirmed that the nine movies he'd filmed over the last four years — including four Marvel movies — "all were filmed during and between countless surgeries and chemotherapy."

That tweet has now risen to over 7.1 million likes — 65% more than the previous record-holder. Variety reports: Previously, the most-liked tweet on Twitter was from former President Barack Obama, who shared the Nelson Mandela quote, "No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion." The tweet was posted on Aug. 12, 2017, the same day as the deadly Charlottesville, Va., car attack at a protest against white supremacists. Obama's former record-holding tweet has 4.3 million likes and 1.6 million retweets.

After Boseman's death, Obama was one of the countless people to post a tribute to the actor, who played Jackie Robinson in the film 42. "Chadwick came to the White House to work with kids when he was playing Jackie Robinson," the former president wrote. "You could tell right away that he was blessed. To be young, gifted, and Black; to use that power to give them heroes to look up to; to do it all while in pain — what a use of his years."
CNET reports: Many on social media expressed both shock and admiration that the actor continued to produce films during his illness, and many were deeply touched by a video circulating widely Saturday in which Boseman speaks of Ian and Taylor, two children with terminal cancer he'd been in touch with during filming for Black Panther. The kids' parents, Boseman said in the video, relayed that Ian and Taylor were trying to hold on until the 2018 Marvel superhero film came out. We now know Boseman was waging his own cancer fight as he spoke of the children, making the footage all the more poignant.
Twitter has now restored its #BlackPanther emoji for fans organizing watch parties of the 2018 movie, reports Variety, and while some remembered his commencement address at Howard or his impact on other actors, others are sharing stories closer to home: "I keep thinking about my 3-year-old in his Black Panther costume," the writer Clint Smith tweeted. "How he wore it almost every day when he got it, refused to take it off. The way he walked around saying. 'I'm the Black Panther.' How happy it made him. What Chadwick gave us was immeasurable. What an enormous loss."

The official premiere of Tenet has drawn many people to the movie theaters this week. On pirate sites, there's been plenty of interest too, as thousands of people are being tricked into downloading fake copies. Pirates are not the only ones being fooled though, as Warner Bros. has its eyes set on fake releases too. TorrentFreak reports: All around the world, millions of people have waited in anticipation for the release of Christopher Nolan's sci-fi thriller 'Tenet.' The film was initially scheduled to be released in July but, after several pandemic-related delays, Warner Bros. moved the premiere ahead to the end of August. [...] According to one anti-piracy expert, Tenet's release has all the ingredients for a "perfect storm for piracy." This prediction prompted us to take a look at how Tenet is doing on pirate sites today. This question is not hard to answer, as there is no 'real' pirated copy of the film out there. Instead, sites are overwhelmed with fake Tenet releases.

We didn't have to look far. Most torrent sites and other download portals have plenty of Tenet copies. Or at least, that's what uploaders lead users to believe. This includes The Pirate Bay, which faces a moderation backlog, by the looks of it. Most seasoned pirates will know how to avoid these fake torrents. That said, major titles such as Tenet often attract the attention of many novice users too, who will undoubtedly be disappointed. And not just because they can't see the film. These suspicious releases can lead to all sorts of malware, viruses, and worse. The two we downloaded appeared relatively harmless. They included a 700MB video file that shows a still image, asking people to check the readme file. The readme message itself sends people to a suspicious site that requests credit card details "for verification purposes." Needless to say, we declined that offer.

Lockdown measures enforced due to the Covid-19 pandemic brought about a surge in TV watching and online streaming, according to media watchdog Ofcom. From a report: Its annual study into UK media habits suggested adults -- many stuck indoors -- spent 40% of their waking hours in front of a screen, on average. Time spent on subscription streaming services also doubled during April. At the height of lockdown, adults spent an average of six hours and 25 minutes each day staring at screens. Screen time overall was up almost a third (31%) on last year. People watched streaming services, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+, for one hour 11 minutes per day, and 12 million people joined a service they hadn't used previously. Three million of these viewers had never subscribed to any service before.

Walmart said it's teaming up with Microsoft in a bid for TikTok. From a report: The retail giant confirmed to CNBC that it's interested in buying the tech company. TikTok is nearing an agreement to sell its U.S., Canadian, Australian and New Zealand operations in a deal that's likely to be in the $20 billion to $30 billion range, sources say. It has not yet chosen a buyer, but could announce the deal in coming days, sources say. With Walmart's confirmation, it joins several others bidding on the tech company, including Oracle. Walmart is pursuing the acquisition at a time when it's trying to better compete with Amazon. It plans to launch a membership program, called Walmart+, soon. The subscription-based service is the retailer's answer to Amazon Prime, which includes original TV shows and movies. In a statement, the big-box retailer said TikTok's integration of e-commerce and advertising "is a clear benefit to creators and users in those markets." It did not say how it would use TikTok or whether it would be part of Walmart+.

70% of America's movie theatres have now re-opened for business, reports NPR: "When our patrons come back, they'll see the safe environment we've provided for them," said John Fithian, president and CEO of the National Association of Theater Owners.

Fithian invited two medical experts and the heads of the country's biggest theater chains to launch a public awareness campaign dubbed "CinemaSafe," meant to ease moviegoer's fears. The campaign featured new industry-wide health and safety protocols, including mandatory face masks for moviegoers and employees, social distancing and regular sanitizing in theaters with better air ventilation, reduced theater capacity (most between 30% and 50%), and contact-less, electronic ticket sales.

Fithian says the protocols will be followed by more than 2,600 theater locations, including more than 30,000 screens in the U.S. The National Association of Theater Owners used guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

"It's important to understand that going to the movies is not risk free," said David F. Goldsmith, an epidemiologist at George Washington University who consulted with the National Association of Theater Owners on the protocols. Still, during the announcement, he said he had not seen any medical literature evidence showing movie theaters around the world have been a venue for viral transmission of COVID-19. "Honestly, time will tell," he said.
The New York Times reports that six U.S. states say it's still too dangerous to open their movie theatres — New York, California, New Jersey, North Carolina, Maryland and New Mexico.

But Megan Colligan, the president of Imax Entertainment, countered at a news conference Friday that "Some people go to the gym, some people go to church, some people need to go to the beach and surf, and some people really do need to go to the movies."

Want a movie where a protagonist your age, race, sexuality, gender, and religion becomes an Olympic swimmer? You got it. Want a movie where someone demographically identical to your boss gets squeezed to death and devoured by a Burmese python? Your wish is its command. From a report: Want to leave out the specifics and let fate decide what never-before-imagined movie will be entertaining you this evening? Black Box has you covered. After you make your choices -- and of course pay a nominal fee for the serious computational heavy lifting necessarily involved -- your order is received at Black Box HQ, and an original movie will be on its way shortly.

Black Box converts your specifications into data -- or if you didn't ask for anything specific, a blob of randomly generated numerical noise will do -- and the creation process can begin. That first collection of ones and zeros will become a prompt, and will be fed into a type of A.I. called a transformer, which will spit out the text screenplay for your movie through a process a little like the autocomplete function on your smartphone. That screenplay will then be fed into a variation on today's vector quantized variational autoencoders -- neural nets that generate music, basically -- producing chopped up little bits of sound that, when strung together, form an audio version of the spoken dialogue and sound effects in your custom movie, plus an orchestral score. Finally, in the most challenging part of the process, those 90 minutes of audio, along with the screenplay, get fed into the world's most sophisticated GAN, or generative adversarial network. Working scene by scene, the Black Box GAN would generate a cast of live action characters -- lifelike humans, or at least human-esque avatars -- built from the ground up, along with all of the settings, monsters, car chases, dogs, cats, and little surprises that make it feel like a real movie.

In honor of its 100th anniversary, AMC is reopening theaters across the nation today after closing down because of the coronavirus pandemic. "[F]or one day only, tickets will be priced at their 1920 cost of 15 cents apiece," reports CNET. From the report: More than 100 AMC locations are scheduled to reopen Aug. 20, including in areas across Georgia, Texas, Connecticut, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Massachusetts, Indiana, Florida, Illinois, Missouri, Nevada, Minnesota, Ohio, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, Kansas and Oklahoma, as well as Washington, DC. Some of the movies being shown on the 15-cent day include throwbacks like Inception, Black Panther, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Grease and Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. Once the 100th anniversary pricing concludes, those movies will be priced at $5 per ticket.

The reopening is the first step in AMC's phased plan for the US. It aims to have 600 theaters, or two-thirds of its operations, open by Sept. 3 in time for the launch of Christopher Nolan's Tenet, which has been repeatedly delayed due to COVID-19. The rest of its theaters will reopen when state and local officials give the go-ahead.

Slashdot reader shirappu writes: A study published on June 25th in IEEE Transactions on Multimedia looked at creating an automated program to analyze the movements in video frames and create sound effects to match the scene. In movies and television, this work is called Foley and is considered an important part of crafting the experience, but is also time consuming and sometimes costly.

The AI Foley system created in the study works by extracting image features from video frames to determine appropriate SFX. It then analyzes the action taking place in the video, and attempts to synthesize SFX to match what is happening in the video. In a survey where students were shown automated sound effects, 73% though the automated effects were more genuine than the original sound effects. It's worth noting that the automated system performed best when timing was less important (e.g. general weather) versus when timing was key (e.g. typing, thunderstorms).

In recent years Amazon has become a major force in television and film, so we have seen that the company can succeed in generating popular mass entertainment. Why is the company struggling so badly with games? Discussing the question with people involved with Amazon Games, some common themes emerge. From a report: "We're bringing a lot of Amazon practices to making games," Mike Frazzini, Amazon's vice president for game services and studios, told me in March. That isn't working because video games are fundamentally a creative endeavor, not the sort of purely quantifiable mass consumer product or service that Amazon knows how to make. No less than great novels or films, great top-end games cannot be created through user data requirements, A/B testing, behavioral analytics, user surveys and iterative critiques by departments ranging from security to finance. Yet games must jump through all those hoops at Amazon, according to people in a position to know. That product development sensibility can work for chintzy mobile games that are made to extract as much money as possible from players but does not work in creating multibillion-dollar long-term franchises that generate not just revenue but emotional loyalty. Instead, thinking of games like tech products just leads to watered-down games without a strong point of view or creative direction.

For example, Amazon executives told me that while designing Crucible they solicited private input from hundreds of streamers and esports figures -- people who play video games for a living and definitely know fun when they feel it. So how could the company ingest that input and still churn out a mediocre product? Turns out, the questions Amazon asked the game pros were generally incremental -- "Which weapon do you prefer?" "What classes and enemies do you enjoy?" -- rather than stepping back and asking, "Does this overall concept work?" That's why Crucible can feel like it was put together with bits and pieces of other successful games, rather than forging a strong vision of its own. The entire structure of most successful game publishers is built around protecting and insulating the creative people -- writers, artists and designers -- from the business. Take-Two does not tell Rockstar what the story of the next Grand Theft Auto should be. Mike Morhaime spent decades shielding the creative engine at Blizzard Entertainment from various corporate owners as Blizzard created StarCraft, Warcraft and Diablo -- iconic franchises all.

Many precincts of the entertainment business are run by financial professionals, but the successful ones -- whether in television, music, film or games -- learn to let the creative people create. "Amazon is run not even by finance guys but by tech guys who instead of putting their creatives outside the bubble and protecting them from the culture, hired them into the bubble and expected them to work within that confine," said one person involved with Amazon's game efforts. "Amazon culture is great for product, horrible for creative endeavors." It is impossible to imagine Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon Studios, issuing her own version of Frazzini's pronouncement: "We're bringing a lot of Amazon practices to making movies." That is because when it comes to film and television, Amazon lets people with deep industry experience run the show and acquire projects being made by outside professionals. Salke was president of NBC Entertainment before joining Amazon two years ago. Her boss, Mike Hopkins, who joined Amazon in February, was previously chief executive of Hulu and chairman of Sony Pictures Television. Frazzini, meanwhile, had no significant game industry experience before joining Amazon.

schwit1 writes: Moviegoers will have to pay only 15 cents for tickets at AMC cinemas on Aug. 20, when the chain starts to reopen amid the coronavirus outbreak. The cheap tickets will be available at more than 100 theaters across the U.S. The deal, a throwback to the price the company charged when it was founded in 1920, is intended to lure customers who may be worried about venturing into a theater because of the risk of contracting COVID-19.

The world's last Blockbuster is offering movie fans the opportunity to spend the night in the store by booking through Airbnb. The Independent reports: The opportunity to book a one-night stay in the last of the nearly defunct video rental stores, which only remains in Bend, Oregon, will be possible thanks to the property's owner, Sandi Harding. "As the last standing location in the world, our BLOCKBUSTER store is an ode to movie magic, simpler times and the sense of community that could once be found in BLOCKBUSTER locations around the world," Harding explains in the Airbnb listing.

Starting on 17 August, residents of Deschutes County will be able to book the store, which has been transformed into a living room complete with TV and pull-out couch, for either 18, 19, or 20 September. According to the press release, guests who successfully book the store, which will be available for just $4, will be treated to "all the movies your heart could desire." "Whether you want to stay up until sunrise or pass out on the couch, we've created the perfect space complete with a pull-out couch, bean bags and pillows for you to cosy up with 'new releases' from the 90s," the Airbnb listing reads. "Crack open a two-liter of Pepsi before locking into a video game, charting your future in a game of MASH, or watching movie after movie." Those who aren't eligible for the opportunity can visit the store's living room set-up as customers starting on 21 September -- or call the store for a personalized movie recommendation.

Microsoft plans to make its Project xCloud streaming service for its Xbox Games Pass subscription service available to the public starting Sept. 15, following nearly a year of public testing. From a report: The company said the service, which allows people to play games over the internet in a similar way we stream Netflix movies today, will be included in its $14.99 per month Xbox Games Pass Ultimate service. That subscription, which launched last year, gives players access to more than 100 games on the Xbox and PC, as well as access to Microsoft's Xbox Live social network. Microsoft plans to offer the accompanying app for its service for tablets and phones powered by Google's Android software, using a Wi-Fi or cellular connection. The company also teased a partnership with Samsung, which will likely be announced at that tech giant's big Unpacked event on Aug. 5. The company declined to say when a version of its app will be made available for Apple iPhones and iPads powered by that company's iOS software. "It's our ambition to scale cloud gaming through Xbox Game Pass available on all devices," a Microsoft spokesman added.