An anonymous reader shares a report: The world of Secret Invasion is decidedly sketchy. With thousands of shapeshifting Skrulls on Earth, you can't trust what you think you're seeing. One second, you're looking at Nick Fury or an esteemed world leader; the next, you see their face morph into something (or someone) else entirely. This is a description of the plot of the new Marvel Cinematic Universe show on Disney Plus (as well as its comic book counterpart), which follows Nick Fury as he uncovers -- what else? -- a secret invasion by the Skrull population on Earth. But the concept of shape-shifting is also seen in the series' very different approach to its opening credits, which look like a sort of watercolor rendering of the key players and themes of Secret Invasion.

As we see a sort of jittery and ominous sequence of the Skrull green taking over more and more of the world, it looks a lot like if an AI was prompted with the concept of "Skrull cubism" -- which, actually, isn't that far off of what it is. As director and executive producer Ali Selim tells Polygon, the intro sequence was designed by Method Studios using artificial intelligence, something he thinks plays with the very themes of the show. "When we reached out to the AI vendors, that was part of it -- it just came right out of the shape-shifting, Skrull world identity, you know? Who did this? Who is this?" Selim says. Like many people, Selim says he doesn't "really understand" how the artificial intelligence works, but was fascinated with the ways in which the AI could translate the sense of foreboding he wanted for the series. "We would talk to them about ideas and themes and words, and then the computer would go off and do something. And then we could change it a little bit by using words, and it would change."

Charlie Brooker, the showrunner of "Black Mirror," revealed in an interview that he used OpenAI's ChatGPT to write an episode for the show's sixth season but deemed the results "shit." Gizmodo reports: "I've toyed around with ChatGPT a bit. The first thing I did was type 'generate Black Mirror episode' and it comes up with something that, at first glance, reads plausibly, but on second glance, is shit," the dystopian sci-fi auteur told Empire. "Because all it's done is look up all the synopses of Black Mirror episodes, and sort of mush them together. Then if you dig a bit more deeply you go, 'Oh, there's not actually any real original thought here.' It's [1970s impressionist] Mike Yarwood -- there's a topical reference."

While his experiments with generating an episode of Black Mirror with AI might have been deemed a failure, Brooker told the outlet that it did point out some of his writing cliches. "I was aware that I had written lots of episodes where someone goes 'Oh, I was inside a computer the whole time!'," he said. "So I thought, 'I'm just going to chuck out any sense of what I think a Black Mirror episode is.' There's no point in having an anthology show if you can't break your own rules. Just a sort of nice, cold glass of water in the face."

The House of Representatives in the United States plans to hold a hearing to investigate claims made by a whistleblower former intelligence official, David Grusch, that the US government possesses "intact and partially intact" alien vehicles. The Guardian reports: "There will be oversight of that," Comer told NewsNation. "We plan on having a hearing." Comer said he had heard about Grusch's claims, but added: "I don't know anything about it." The timing of the hearing is not yet determined, but a source familiar with the matter said a date is expected to be announced in the next few weeks. Tim Burchett and Anna Paulina Luna, Republican members of Congress from Florida and Tennessee, respectively, will lead the oversight committee investigation.

Burchett is working closely with House oversight committee leaders to prepare for a hearing, the congressman's office said. The witness list for the hearing has not yet been set, so it is unclear whether Grusch will publicly testify before the oversight committee. "Congressman Burchett's office is working through logistics, including a witness list of the most credible witnesses and sources who would be able to speak openly at an unclassified hearing," a spokesperson said.

Austin Hacker, a spokesman for the committee, told the Guardian in a statement: "In addition to recent claims by a whistleblower, reports continue to surface regarding unidentified aerial phenomena. The House oversight committee is following these UAP reports and is in the early stages of planning a hearing," Hacker said in a statement. "The National Defense Authorization Act for 2022 created the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office which coordinates among the Department of Defense, the intelligence community, Nasa, and other federal agencies to study UAPs. Americans, who continue to fund this federal government work, expect transparency and meaningful oversight from Congress."

A former intelligence official turned whistleblower, David Charles Grusch, has provided extensive classified information to Congress and the Intelligence Community Inspector General about covert programs involving the retrieval of intact and partially intact vehicles of non-human origin. Grusch alleges that this information has been illegally withheld from Congress, and he has filed a complaint claiming illegal retaliation for his disclosures. Other intelligence officials, both active and retired, have independently corroborated similar information about these programs. The Debrief reports: The whistleblower, David Charles Grusch, 36, a decorated former combat officer in Afghanistan, is a veteran of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). He served as the reconnaissance office's representative to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force from 2019-2021. From late 2021 to July 2022, he was the NGA's co-lead for UAP analysis and its representative to the task force. The task force was established to investigate what were once called "unidentified flying objects," or UFOs, and are now officially called "unidentified anomalous phenomena," or UAP. The task force was led by the Department of the Navy under the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. It has since been reorganized and expanded into the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office to include investigations of objects operating underwater.

Grusch said the recoveries of partial fragments through and up to intact vehicles have been made for decades through the present day by the government, its allies, and defense contractors. Analysis has determined that the objects retrieved are "of exotic origin (non-human intelligence, whether extraterrestrial or unknown origin) based on the vehicle morphologies and material science testing and the possession of unique atomic arrangements and radiological signatures," he said. In filing his complaint, Grusch is represented by a lawyer who served as the original Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG). "We are not talking about prosaic origins or identities," Grusch said, referencing information he provided Congress and the current ICIG. "The material includes intact and partially intact vehicles." In accordance with protocols, Grusch provided the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review at the Department of Defense with the information he intended to disclose to us. His on-the-record statements were all "cleared for open publication" on April 4 and 6, 2023, in documents provided to us.

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: The truth may be out there about UFOs, or what the government currently calls "unidentified anomalous phenomena" (UAPs). But finding it will require collecting data that are more rigorous than the anecdotal reports that typically fuel the controversial sightings, according to a panel of scientists, appointed by NASA to advise the agency on the topic, that held its first public meeting [on Wednesday].

The 16-person panel, created last year at the behest of NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, is not itself evaluating UFO claims. Instead, it is advising NASA on how the agency can contribute to federal investigations that have been led by the Department of Defense (DOD) and intelligence agencies, says panel chair David Spergel, an astrophysicist and president of the Simons Foundation, who spoke to Science ahead of the meeting. "NASA is a public agency, an open agency, that encourages the use of the scientific method for looking at results." But science can only be done when there are data to work on, he adds. "You're not going to learn much from fuzzy pictures from the 1950s." So far, most "unidentified" phenomena flagged by the military have ended up being weather balloons, drones, camera glitches, or undisclosed military aircraft, Spergel says. "It's very unlikely there are space aliens that travel through space and use technology that looks remarkably like what we have right now." [...]

It remains to be seen whether NASA will devote any further funding to study UAPs beyond the $100,000 allocated for the panel, which will issue a report this summer. Many scientists would be reluctant to have existing funds steered away from more conventional lines of research in the search for signatures of life or extraterrestrial intelligence. As the panel meeting wound down, Spergel said no UAP so far demands the existence of extraterrestrials. "We have not seen the extraordinary yet." Most incidents end up being more mundane. Panel member Scott Kelly, a former NASA astronaut and naval aviator, recounted flying in an F-14 off the coast of Virginia, when his co-pilot swore that he saw a UAP. "We turned around," he said. "We went to go look at it. It turns out it was Bart Simpson, a balloon."

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a Motherboard article: Now, frustrated with a lack of transparency and trust around official accounts of UFO phenomena, a team of developers has decided to take matters into their own hands with an open source citizen science project called Sky360, which aims to blanket the earth in affordable monitoring stations to watch the skies 24/7, and even plans to use AI and machine learning to spot anomalous behavior. Unlike earlier 20th century efforts such as inventors proposing "geomagnetic detectors" to discover nearby UFOs, or more recent software like the short-lived UFO ID project, Sky360 hopes that it can establish a network of autonomously operating surveillance units to gather real-time data of our skies. Citizen-led UFO research is not new. Organizations like MUFON, founded in 1969, have long investigated sightings, while amateur groups like the American Flying Saucer Investigating Committee of Columbus even ran statistical analysis on sightings in the 1960s (finding that most of them happened on Wednesdays). However, Sky360 believes that the level of interest and the technology have now both reached an inflection point, where citizen researchers can actually generate large-scale actionable data for analysis all on their own.

The Sky360 stations consist of an AllSkyCam with a wide angle fish-eye lens and a pan-tilt-focus camera, with the fish-eye camera registering all movement. Underlying software performs an initial rough analysis of these events, and decides whether to activate other sensors -- and if so, the pan-tilt-focus camera zooms in on the object, tracks it, and further analyzes it. According to developer Nikola Galiot, the software is currently based on a computer vision "background subtraction" algorithm that detects any motion in the frame compared to previous frames captured; anything that moves is then tracked as long as possible and then automatically classified. The idea is that the more data these monitoring stations acquire, the better the classification will be. There are a combination of AI models under the hood, and the system is built using the open-source TensorFlow machine learning platform so it can be deployed on almost any computer. Next, the all-volunteer team wants to create a single algorithm capable of detection, tracking and classification all in one.

All the hardware components, from the cameras to passive radar and temperature gauges, can be bought cheaply and off-the-shelf worldwide -- with the ultimate goal of finding the most effective combinations for the lowest price. Schematics, blueprints, and suggested equipment are all available on the Sky360 site and interested parties are encouraged to join the project's Discord server. There are currently 20 stations set up across the world, from the USA to Canada to more remote regions like the Azores in the middle of the Atlantic [...] Once enough of the Sky360 stations have been deployed, the next step is to work towards real-time monitoring, drawing all the data together, and analyzing it. By striving to create a huge, open, transparent network, anyone would be free to examine the data themselves.

In June of this year, Sky360, which has a team of 30 volunteer developers working on the software, hopes to release its first developer-oriented open source build. At its heart is a component called 'SimpleTracker', which receives images frame by frame from the cameras, auto-adjusting parameters to get the best picture possible. The component determines whether something in the frame is moving, and if so, another analysis is performed, where a machine learning algorithm trained on the trajectories of normal flying objects like planes, birds, or insects, attempts to classify the object based on its movement. If it seems anomalous, it's flagged for further investigation.

All across North America today, over 2,000 comic book stores are celebrating Free Comic Book Day. As it enters its third decade — the event started in 2001, according to Wikipedia — there'll be over two dozen free comic books to choose from this, and enthusiastic stores trying to dial up the fun even more.

16 stores are also giving away Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania in special "ant-sized" boxes — the size of penny — with tiny versions of the cover art from the full-sized Blu-Ray disc boxes (along with a code for a digital version of the movie). The Bleeding Cool site has a running list of stores doing additional special "cool stuff," including cookie giveaways, discounts on paperbacks and comic books, and personal appearances by comic book writers and artists.

Geek-friendly free comic books this year:

• Dark Horse Comics' Star Wars/ Avatar: The Last Airbender
• D.C. Comics is offering Dawn of DC — Knight Terrors
• Marvel is offering several multi-character books, including Spider-Man/Venom, the Avengers/X-Men, and a sampler of the upcoming graphic novel biography of Stan Lee
• IDW's free comics include the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• There's also the official prequel to the new Street Fighter 6 video game
• Also available: Runescape: Untold Tales/God Wars
• Fantagraphics even has a preview of its upcoming Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers book.
• Archie Horror Presents: The Cursed Library

Bleeding Cool also has previews the artwork from Star Trek: Prelude to Day of Blood, a teaser for a coming "comic book crossover event between IDW's main Star Trek comic and the Star Trek: Defiant series" (that's also accompanied by a Lower Decks comic book story).

Just remember, in 2017 NPR had this advice for visiting comics fans. "While you're there, buy something... The comics shops still have to pay for the 'free' FCBD books they stock, and they're counting on the increased foot traffic to lift sales."

An anonymous reader shares a report: A young Harrison Ford will grace cinema screens for 25 minutes this summer -- aided by some new Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) software. The news that LucasFilm's Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny would feature a de-aged Ford came at the end of last year, but an interview with director James Mangold in Total Film just revealed it will be for almost a fifth of the film's running time.

The fifth Indiana Jones iteration starts with an opening scene from 1944 -- about eight years after Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark took place. "My hope is that, although it will be talked about in terms of technology, you just watch it and go, 'Oh my God, they just found footage. This was a thing they shot 40 years ago," Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm and a producer, told Empire. The rest of the movie shoots forward to 1969, with Indy on a mission to prevent a comeback of Nazism.

Cory Doctorow just wrote a new thriller "about cryptocurrency shenanigans that will awaken you to how the world really works," according to his publisher. Doctorow calls Red Team Blues "a book about the financial rot at the center of Silicon Valley... a kind of anti-finance finance thriller."

The publisher describes the book's hero as "a self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. " He knows computer hardware and software alike, including the ins and outs of high-end databases and the kinds of spreadsheets that are designed to conceal rather than reveal. He's as comfortable with social media as people a quarter his age, and he's a world-level expert on the kind of international money-laundering and shell-company chicanery used by Fortune 500 companies, mid-divorce billionaires, and international drug gangs alike.

He also knows the Valley like the back of his hand, all the secret histories of charismatic company founders and Sand Hill Road VCs. Because he was there at all the beginnings. He's not famous, except to the people who matter. He's made some pretty powerful people happy in his time, and he's been paid pretty well. It's been a good life.

Now he's been roped into a job that's more dangerous than anything he's ever agreed to before — and it will take every ounce of his skill to get out alive.
"I write when I'm anxious, and right now these are anxious times," Doctorow explained last month in Publisher's Weekly, describing what he'd learned about selling audiobooks without going through Amazon's service Audible. This time Cory got 4,080 backers to pledge $152,735 to fund an audiobook for Red Team Blues read by Wil Wheaton that his Kickstarter campaign stressed would be DRM-free. ("Every audiobook sold on Audible be wrapped in Amazon's Digital Rights Management technology, which is a felony for you to remove, even if the copyright holder asks you to. It's punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine!")

Red Team Blues is the first book in a new trilogy, and Cory is now making in-person appearances to promote the book — starting today (and tomorrow) at the LA Times Festival of Books at the University of Southern California. Tuesday he'll be in San Diego, and a week from Sunday he's appearing in San Francisco, before heading to Portland, Mountain View, Berkeley, and Gaithersburg Maryland.

The Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which was created last year to investigate unidentified flying objects (UFOs), said on Wednesday that they have not found any evidence of aliens in its analysis. The office within the Secretary of Defense is, however, tracking more than 650 potential cases of so-called "unidentified aerial phenomena" -- up from the 350 reports referenced in an unclassified intelligence report released earlier this year. Half of them are considered "especially interesting and anomalous." The Register reports: At hearings (one open and one closed) held by the Senate Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities this week, Sean Kirkpatrick said most sightings of UFOs are not as strange as they first appear. They are often balloons, unmanned aerial systems, or aircraft, and look odd due to natural phenomena. "I want to underscore that only a very small percentage of [unidentified anomalous phenomena] (UAP) reports display signatures that could reasonably be described as anomalous," he said during this opening testimony at the hearing.

AARO has failed to resolve some incidents, but it's not because something is inexplicable but due to a lack of data. "In our research, AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics," Kirkpatrick confirmed. In other words: It's not aliens. Kirkpatrick said that if the Office does find sufficient scientific data supporting the idea of an object of extraterrestrial origin, it would share its findings with NASA and alert US government personnel. Amateur UFO spotters are fine, he said, but need to apply scientific method to their claims. Further reading: Pentagon Official Floats a Theory For Unexplained Sightings: Alien Motherships

The official in charge of a secretive Pentagon effort to investigate unexplained aerial incursions has co-authored an academic paper that presents an out-of-this-world theory: Recent objects could actually be alien probes from a mothership sent to study Earth. Politico reports: In a draft paper dated March 7 (PDF), Sean Kirkpatrick, head of the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, and Harvard professor Avi Loeb teamed up to write that the objects, which appear to defy all physics, could be "probes" from an extraterrestrial "parent craft." It's unusual for government officials, especially those involved in the nascent effort to collect intelligence on recent sightings, to discuss the possibility of extraterrestrial life, although top agency officials don't rule it out when asked. After Loeb posted it online, the paper gained notoriety from a post on Military Times and has also circulated among science-focused news outlets.

More than half of the five-page paper is devoted to discussing the possibility that the unexplained objects DoD is studying could be the "probes" in the mothership scenario, including most of the page-long introduction. One section is titled: "The Extraterrestrial Possibility" and another "Propulsion Methods." Kirkpatrick's involvement in the academic paper demonstrates that the Pentagon is open to scientific debate of the origins of UFOs, an important signal to send to the academic world, experts said. But they add that his decision to attach his name to a theory considered in most academic circles to be highly unsubstantiated also raises questions about AARO's credibility.

The paper explains that interstellar objects such as the cigar-shaped "Oumuamua" that scientists spotted flying through the galaxy in 2017 "could potentially be a parent craft that releases many small probes during its close passage to Earth." The paper goes on to compare the probes to "dandelion seeds" that could be separated from the parent craft by the sun's gravitational force. It examines the physics of how the smaller craft could move through the Earth's atmosphere to reach the surface, where they could be spotted by humans. The paper notes that the "probes" could use starlight to "charge their batteries" and the Earth's water as fuel. It also speculates on the motive for aliens to send exploratory probes to Earth. "What would be the overarching purpose of the journey? In analogy with actual dandelion seeds, the probes could propagate the blueprint of their senders," the authors write. "As with biological seeds, the raw materials on the planet's surface could also be used by them as nutrients for self-replication or simply scientific exploration."

For the first time, you can now buy or rent every single Star Trek movie in the latest 4K and HDR standards. That includes all six movies based on the original series cast, all four featuring The Next Generation's cast, and the more recent J.J. Abrams films. Ars Technica reports: On April 4, Paramount released an UltraHD Blu-ray set that included Star Trek: Generations, Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection, and Star Trek: Nemesis along with several special features. The set marks the first time these films have been available in a 4K and HDR home video release. Alongside the Blu-rays, the films also became available on on-demand storefronts like Apple's TV app.

Last year, the original series films (Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country) received the same treatment. The reboot films (Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Star Trek Beyond) have long been available in modern formats. So as of this week, all 13 theatrically released Star Trek films are finally available in 4K and HDR. The latest releases also support the Dolby Atmos audio standard in addition to Dolby Vision HDR.

A Cornell University researcher has developed sonar glasses that "hear" you without speaking. Engadget reports: The eyeglass attachment uses tiny microphones and speakers to read the words you mouth as you silently command it to pause or skip a music track, enter a passcode without touching your phone or work on CAD models without a keyboard. Cornell Ph.D. student Ruidong Zhang developed the system, which builds off a similar project the team created using a wireless earbud -- and models before that which relied on cameras. The glasses form factor removes the need to face a camera or put something in your ear. "Most technology in silent-speech recognition is limited to a select set of predetermined commands and requires the user to face or wear a camera, which is neither practical nor feasible," said Cheng Zhang, Cornell assistant professor of information science. "We're moving sonar onto the body."

The researchers say the system only requires a few minutes of training data (for example, reading a series of numbers) to learn a user's speech patterns. Then, once it's ready to work, it sends and receives sound waves across your face, sensing mouth movements while using a deep learning algorithm to analyze echo profiles in real time "with about 95 percent accuracy." The system does this while offloading data processing (wirelessly) to your smartphone, allowing the accessory to remain small and unobtrusive. The current version offers around 10 hours of battery life for acoustic sensing. Additionally, no data leaves your phone, eliminating privacy concerns. "We're very excited about this system because it really pushes the field forward on performance and privacy," said Cheng Zhang. "It's small, low-power and privacy-sensitive, which are all important features for deploying new, wearable technologies in the real world." "The team at Cornell's Smart Computer Interfaces for Future Interactions (SciFi) Lab is exploring commercializing the tech using a Cornell funding program," adds Engadget. "They're also looking into smart-glasses applications to track facial, eye and upper body movements."

A video of the eyeglasses can be viewed here.

It was exactly 30 years ago that The X-Files began filming in Vancouver. Now X-Files creator Chris Carter tells CBC's On the Coast that the groundbreaking TV series is going to be "remounted" by Black Panther director Ryan Coogler: Carter says he thinks the series would need to be significantly tweaked for current audiences. "We're so steeped in conspiracies now," he said. "The X-Files dealt with a central conspiracy, but now the world is so full of conspiracies that I think that it would be a different show."
The original X-Files series is available for streaming on Disney+. (And Wikipedia notes there was also a six-episode 10th season ran in 2016 and a 10-episode 11th in 2018.) There was also a Lone Gunmen spin-off series in 2001 (co-created by Vince Gilligan, who went on to produce and create Breaking Bad).

The CBC also reports that a documentary about the show will be released this fall. "Superfans Lauren Krattiger and Carly Blake have created The X-Files Fan Retrospective, where they conducted more than 90 interviews with crew members, cast and fans to memorialize the show and its impact."

But don't get your hopes up for an X-Files cartoon. "A few years ago it was announced that Chris Carter was developing an X-Files animated series titled The X-Files: Albuquerque..." writes GeekTyrant, "but unfortunately, it's no longer moving forward at Fox." It was going to revolve around an "office full of misfit agents who investigate X-Files cases too wacky, ridiculous or downright dopey for Mulder and Scully to bother with." It's explained that these agents are basically the X-Files' B-team.
Thanks to Slashdot reader GoJays for sharing the news.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Almost two decades after the release of the Guillermo del Toro-directed Hellboy, the character is getting yet another reboot. Millennium Media has confirmed that Hellboy: The Crooked Man will enter production next month in Bulgaria, Deadline reports. Casting for the titular character (originally played by Ron Perlman and then David Harbour) is yet to be announced, but the new film will be directed by Brian Taylor, best known for the Jason Statham action movie Crank.

Perhaps most interesting is that the comics' original creator Mike Mignola has written the script for the upcoming film alongside Chris Golden. Both were reported to have worked on the script for the 2019 reboot by The Hollywood Reporter, though Andrew Cosby ultimately ended up with sole credit for writing the screenplay. The 2019 reboot is widely considered to have been both a commercial and critical failure, bringing in roughly $55 million at the box office on a budget of $50 million.

Ryan Graves, former Lt. U.S. Navy and F/A-18F pilot who was the first active-duty fighter pilot to come forward publicly about regular sightings of UAP, says more data is needed about unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). "We should encourage pilots and other witnesses to come forward and keep the pressure on Congress to prioritize UAP as a matter of national security," writes Graves in an opinion piece for The Hill. An anonymous Slashdot reader shares an excerpt from his report: As a former U.S. Navy F/A-18 fighter pilot who witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) on a regular basis, let me be clear. The U.S. government, former presidents, members of Congress of both political parties and directors of national intelligence are trying to tell the American public the same uncomfortable truth I shared: Objects demonstrating extreme capabilities routinely fly over our military facilities and training ranges. We don't know what they are, and we are unable to mitigate their presence. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) last week published its second ever report on UAP activity. While the unclassified version is brief, its findings are sobering. Over the past year, the government has collected hundreds of new reports of enigmatic objects from military pilots and sensor systems that cannot be identified and "represent a hazard to flight safety." The report also preserves last year's review of the 26-year reporting period that some UAP may represent advanced technology, noting "unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities."

Mysteriously, no UAP reports have been confirmed to be foreign so far. However, just this past week, a Chinese surveillance balloon shut down air traffic across the United States. How are we supposed to make sense of hundreds of reports of UAP that violate restricted airspace uncontested and interfere with both civilian and military pilots? Here is the hard truth. We don't know. UAP are a national security problem, and we urgently need more data.

Why don't we have more data? Stigma. I know the fear of stigma is a major problem because I was the first active-duty fighter pilot to come forward publicly about regular sightings of UAP, and it was not easy. There has been little support or incentive for aircrew to speak publicly on this topic. There was no upside to reporting hard-to-explain sightings within the chain of command, let alone doing so publicly. For pilots to feel comfortable, it will require a culture shift inside organizations and in society at large. I have seen for myself on radar and talked with the pilots who have experienced near misses with mysterious objects off the Eastern Seaboard that have triggered unsafe evasive actions and mandatory safety reports. There were 50 or 60 people who flew with me in 2014-2015 and could tell you they saw UAP every day. Yet only one other pilot has confirmed this publicly. I spoke out publicly in 2019, at great risk personally and professionally, because nothing was being done. The ODNI report itself notes that concentrated efforts to reduce stigma have been a major reason for the increase in reports this year. To get the data and analyze it scientifically, we must uproot the lingering cultural stigma of tin foil hats and "UFOs" from the 1950s that stops pilots from reporting the phenomena and scientists from studying it. Last September, the U.S. Navy said that all of the government's UFO videos are classified information and releasing any additional UFO videos would "harm national security."

Avatar: The Way of Water "has passed Star Wars: The Force Awakens as the fourth highest-grossing movie of all time," reports Variety: Director James Cameron's sci-fi epic has now earned $2.075 billion at the global box office. Star Wars: The Force Awakens, another sci-fi sequel released long after previous installments, finished its theatrical run with $2.064 billion after hitting theaters in December 2015.

With this latest box office milestone, Cameron now has three of the top four highest-grossing movies in history — the original Avatar is still the champion [with $2.92 billion], while Titanic sits in third place [with $2.2 billion].

[The second-highest grossing film of all time is Avengers: Endgame with $2.79 billion.] Avatar: The Way of Water has quickly moved up in the record books, surpassing Spider-Man: No Way Home ($1.92 billion) on Jan. 18 and Avengers: Infinity War ($2.05 billion) shortly after on Jan. 26....

A third "Avatar" entry has already been set for release in December 2024 and there are plans for a fourth and fifth to continue the intergenerational saga
Some context from The A.V. Club: The highlight of that big pile of planetary currency being a massive $229 million turnout in China, where it's one of the first Disney movies to play in the country's lucrative markets in some time.

As it happens, James Cameron told GQ back in November, ahead of his sequel's release, that his "fucking expensive" movie would have to post these kinds of numbers to be anything other than a loss for the studio. "You have to be the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history," he noted at the time. "That's your threshold. That's your break even."
Wikipedia points out that when box office figures are adjusted for inflation, the highest-grossing film of all time is still the 1939 Civil War drama Gone with the Wind. And the next top-grossing films of all-time?

• The original Avatar
• Titanic
• The original Star Wars (1977)
• Avengers: Endgame
• The Sound of Music (1965)
• E.T. the Extra Terrestrial (1982)
• The Ten Commandments (1956)
• Doctor Zhivago (1965)
• Star Wars: the Force Awakens

"One of the most beloved sci-fi novels of the 21st century finally has been adapted for television to huge acclaim," writes Esquire, "and it's out now." Their article includes embedded videos of Tencent Video's live-action adaptation of Three-Body Problem, which is streaming free on YouTube with English subtitles. "They're already getting great reviews online, with an 8.7 IMDb score for the adaptation that is being acclaimed for its faithfulness to the original bestselling novel."

Long-time Slashdot reader gordm writes: The YouTube playlist offers the first 4 episodes (of a 30 episode series) for free, although the videos include Chinese ads.... Be sure your YouTube subtitles are turned on.

I've only watched episode one and noted the most unpleasant reaction I had during my first-read of the book is front-loaded into episode one of the show... that is, it is suggested GMO and advanced technologies are a blight upon humanity. I kept reading, and I'm glad I did. But for any viewers put off by that moment, and not knowing what Three-Body Problem is about... that moment pays off later.
Esquire calls the original book "not only the most successful Chinese science fiction novel of the century so far, but likely the most successful and acclaimed science fiction series in the world since 2000, winning the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for Best Novel..."

Netflix says its own adaptation of Three-Body Problem will also be released before the end of 2023.

Stephen Colbert is joining the team that is adapting Roger Zelazny's "The Chronicles of Amber" for television. Variety reports: Colbert will now executive produce the potential series under his Spartina production banner. Spartina joins Skybound Entertainment and Vincent Newman Entertainment (VNE) on the series version of the beloved fantasy novels, with Skyboudn first announcing their intention to develop the series back in 2016. The books have been cited as an influence on "Game of Thrones," with author George R.R. Martin recently stating he wanted to see the books brought to the screen.

"The Chronicles of Amber" follows the story of Corwin, who is said to "awaken on Earth with no memory, but soon finds he is a prince of a royal family that has the ability to travel through different dimensions of reality (called 'shadows') and rules over the one true world, Amber." The story is told over ten books with two story arcs: "The Corwin Cycle" and "The Merlin Cycle." The series has sold more than fifteen million copies globally. The search is currently on for a writer to tackle the adaptation. No network or streamer is currently attached. Colbert and Spartina are currently under a first-look deal at CBS Studios, but they are not currently the studio behind the series. "George R.R. Martin and I have similar dreams," Colbert said. "I've carried the story of Corwin in my head for over 40 years, and I'm thrilled to partner with Skybound and Vincent Newman to bring these worlds to life. All roads lead to Amber, and I'm happy to be walking them."

"Most companies are trying to create lab-grown meat with little to no genetic engineering, which despite shifts in attitude is still frowned on," writes Fast Company. And other companies "think that modifications like this will complicate getting regulatory approval," especially in Europe, which considers CRISPR to be a form of genetic modfication.

But then there's the cultivated meat startup SciFi Foods (formerly Artemys Foods). Fast Company reports that its CEO/cofounder Joshua March became "obsessed" with cultivated meat "after reading about it in The Player of Games, a 1988 science fiction novel by Iain M. Banks that is beloved by techies." For a while, March sat on the sidelines running other startups. "I didn't think I had to do anything," he says, "that it would happen on its own." But years ticked by, and there was little advancement in what was then usually referred to as lab-grown meat. "I honestly became pretty disenchanted with the companies in the space and all the arm waving about how the costs would be solved." If he wanted it to be a real thing in the world, he'd have to do something. He'd have to play the game.

Unlike virtually every other startup in the space — and according to the Good Food Institute, there are 152 cultivated meat companies as of the end of 2022, operating in 29 countries — March and SciFi are using CRISPR (the technology that makes gene editing as easy as using a 3D printer) to hasten its advances. To Kasia Gora, SciFi's CTO, it's merely an engineering challenge. "We take a synthetic biology approach to figuring out how to make scalable beef cell lines," she tells me. The key is engineering cycles that enable rapid prototyping. The best cell lines will go on to create the next round of modifications....

SciFi is betting that the only way to economically scale cultivated meat is with CRISPR, and that by making iterative tweaks they can create dependable cell lines with rich, meat-y flavor. "We have an eventual target of $1 per burger at commercial scale," March says. Once harvested, beef cells will be formulated into a blended burger that is mostly like the plant-based burgers you may already know — soy protein and coconut oil. SciFi's secret sauce is adding a small percentage of SciFi cells (5% to 20%, according to March) to reward our taste buds with the beef-y notes we may think are missing from competitors like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat.