Many commercials continue to play on ad-supported streaming services after viewers turn off their television, new research shows, a problem that is causing an estimated waste of more than $1 billion a year for brands. From a report: The findings come as an ever-growing share of ad dollars is shifting from traditional TV to streaming platforms, a trend that is likely to accelerate now that industry giants Netflix and Walt Disney's Disney+ have embraced the idea of offering an ad-supported version of their services. Some 17% of ads shown on televisions connected through a streaming device -- including streaming boxes, dongles, sticks and gaming consoles -- are playing while the TV is off, according to a study by WPP's ad-buying giant GroupM and ad-measurement firm iSpot.tv.

That is because when a TV set is turned off, it doesn't always send a signal to the streaming device connected to the TV through its HDMI port, GroupM said. As a result, the streaming device will continue playing the show and its ads unless users had exited or paused the streaming app they were watching before turning off their TV. Due to the nature of the problem, using a smart TV -- on which streaming apps are loaded -- makes it far less likely that ads would be shown while the TV is off, since in this instance the television and streaming device are just a single piece of hardware. GroupM said it found "virtually no incidence" of the issue on smart TV apps. The study, which included smart TVs and some hooked up with a streaming device, found that on average, between 8% and 10% of all streaming ads were shown while the TV was off.

Samsung has been caught cheating by designing its TVs to recognize and react to test patterns used by reviewers. The company promises to provide software updates to address the situation. From a report: Reviewers, calibrators and certification bodies typically use a 10% window for HDR testing, which simply means that it takes up 10% of the screen. In this window multiple steps from black to white as well as a set of colors are measured. Samsung has designed its TVs to recognize this and other commonly used window sizes, after which the TV adjusts its picture output to make measurements appear more accurate than the picture really is. When using a non-standard window such as 9% (everything else equal), the cheating algorithm can be bypassed so the TV reveals its true colors. This is deliberate cheating, an orchestrated effort to mislead reviewers. Vincent Teoh of HDTVTest first identified and documented the issue on Samsung's S95B QD-OLED TV. FlatpanelsHD has since identified and documented the issue on Samsung's QN95B 'Neo QLED' LCD TV where it gets even worse. QN95B not only changes its color and luminance tracking during measurements to appear very accurate, it also boosts peak brightness momentarily by up to 80%, from approx. 1300 nits to 2300 nits. This is possible because the power supply can send short bursts into the miniLED backlight -- these cannot be sustained without damaging the panel. In our QN95B review we found no evidence of the TV surpassing 1300 nits with real content.

Disneyland's Galaxy's Edge, aka "Star Wars Land," lets its visitors "immersively" experience the planet Batuu during the period between Star Wars: Episode VIII — The Last Jedi and Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker. But there's some big changes coming, reports SFGate.com: Disney recently announced — at the "From a Galaxy Far, Far Away to Disney Park Near You" panel at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim 2022 event — that main characters from the immensely popular Disney Plus series "The Book of Boba Fett" and "The Mandalorian" would begin appearing at Disneyland.

Yes, including the universally adored, merchandise and meme-dominating Grogu, aka "Baby Yoda."

However, there is one sarlacc-sized snag: Those stories are set about five years after Return of the Jedi, and about 25 years before The Force Awakens, which raises a galaxy of questions about how this will impact Galaxy's Edge. The introduction of new characters into the attraction will either break the timeline of Star Wars land or, perhaps, unburden it from self-imposed shackles. This could be a good thing, the article suggests, since "Currently there is frankly not a lot of character interaction on Batuu." Kylo Ren pops in on occasion to interrogate guests, and some stormtroopers march around. Rey and Chewie pose for pics, R2-D2 wheels around, and Vi randomly shows up. But that's about it. There is no BB-8 or C-3PO, no Poe or Finn walking around, no Captain Phasma (who died in "The Last Jedi"). The cast members do their part to speak the local lingo of "bright suns" and "till the spire," but Black Spire Outpost feels somewhat unpopulated. It looks and feels like a Star Wars town, but lacks true full immersion. Oga's Cantina does feel lived in, and always crowded, but the closest immersive experience is Savi's Workshop, where building a lightsaber is a damn near religious experience, complete with the Force ghost voice of Yoda.

So how would new characters impact this? If Mando appears at Galaxy's Edge, are guests to assume he (and Grogu) are still bouncing about by the time of the sequel series...? The town of Black Spire Outpost might come to resemble Fantasyland, for instance, where multiple characters occupy their own zones and don't intersect...

Regardless, this change further populates Galaxy's Edge, which is good for the guest who wants to take a lot of character photos. It also allows Disney to roll out their most popular modern characters, and potentially open the door for them to showcase original trilogy and prequel trilogy characters (which are having a moment right now).

But it does create major story hiccups.

Music streaming giant Spotify has revealed that it's intending to make a big splash in the audiobooks business. Trusted Reviews reports: At the company's Investor Day 2022, CEO Daniel Ek revealed that the company would be branching out into audiobooks following its successful music and podcast offerings. Several months ago, Spotify announced its agreement to acquire audiobook distribution platform Findaway, which was a surefire indicator that it was thinking big in this area. Whie that deal has yet to close, Ek has confirmed that he sees audiobooks as "a massive opportunity."

The overall book market today is worth $140 billion, yet audiobooks only represent 6 to 7% of that. In the most developed audiobook markets that figure is closer to 50%, so Spotify as seeing this as a potential $70 billion market that it's going to compete with Amazon and its Audible platform for. Spotify revealed that it's planning to relaunch the audiobook arm of its streaming service later this year. As this suggests, you can already access audiobooks through Spotify, but it's not a particularly well fleshed out offering, and it's not easily accessible. No specifics were mentioned on the pricing of this audiobook offering.

An anonymous reader shares a report: At Roku, a video-streaming platform operator that's suffered a punishing stock plunge, employees are buzzing about the possibility of an acquisition -- and their talk and hopes are pinned on Netflix. Employees at Roku have been discussing the possibility of a Netflix acquisition in recent weeks, according to people familiar with the matter. The chatter comes as Roku's stock has dropped about 80% since late July on weaker demand for video streaming and lower set-top-box sales.

Roku competes with Apple, Amazon, Google, and Samsung in the market for streaming devices, and some of those industry titans are battling with the smaller company for lucrative video-ad dollars. The collapse in Roku's stock made it hard to compete with its larger tech rivals on pay in a tight labor market. The result has been a staggering increase in equity grants to employees, leaving Roku well underwater on stock-based compensation. Roku has been seen as an acquisition target before -- including last year, when, according to The Wall Street Journal, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts considered purchasing the company. In January, the departure of a top Roku executive stoked questions about the company's future.

HBO Max has canceled the sci-fi TV show Raised by Wolves after two seasons. From a report: Originally ordered to series for the cable channel TNT, its first season premiered in 2020, and four months after HBO Max launched, it ranked as the service's top streaming series. The first two episodes were directed by Ridley Scott, and the plot, which focused on two androids raising human children on a desolate alien planet, aligned well with the hallmarks of his style. [...]

Before the cancellation, cast members were calling on watchers to advocate for the show's future. Abubakar Salim, who played "Father" in Raised by Wolves, hinted in a Twitter thread last week that the show's fate was in jeopardy with the hashtag #RenewRaisedByWolves, while referring to the merger of HBO Max parent company WarnerMedia and Discovery, which was completed in April. HBO Max said in a statement to Variety, which first broke the news: "While we are not proceeding with a third season of Raised by Wolves, we are beyond grateful to the stellar cast and crew, our creators Aaron Guzikowski, Ridley Scott, David W. Zucker, and the entire team at Scott Free Productions, for their beautiful artistry and unique ability to immerse fans into the world of Kepler-22b."

This week saw the premiere of The Orville: New Horizons on Hulu — a third season, now streaming after two seasons on broadcast TV from 2017 to 2019. Seth MacFarlane (the show's creator/star) tells the Hollywood Reporter how that will change the Orville: "The biggest difference for me being on Hulu is that I don't have to tell a story that's exactly 43 minutes long every week because I have to make room for a certain number of commercials.

"That's not how storytelling works — different stories are different lengths, and you start to fall into this cadence where you're shaving scenes down, you're cutting things that don't need to be cut. The best part about being on Hulu is that those moments where you want to linger on an actor's face because it's meaningful and it helps to tell the story? You can do that. You have the time; you can be indulgent in that way."
MacFarlane tells TV Guide the series is now "a dramatic sci-fi show with comedic elements that come about from the character's personalities." And MacFarlane tells ABC News, "I think people can expect a lot more than they think they can." It's not just Covid that's the reason that it's taken so long. It's a pretty massive uptick in scope. We're only doing 10 episodes, as opposed to 12, they're longer episodes. The scope of these episodes is much more film-like. I think people are a little unprepared for what's to come. Disney and Hulu really gave us the resources to do this right, and we've put it all on the screen.
Long-time Slashdot reader Marxist Hacker 42 wrote a journal entry (with some spoilers) about the new season's premiere episode, noting "a very powerful morality tale" that led to a fifth act with "some prime technobabble worthy of the show's Star Trek heritage." (While long-time Slashdot reader antdude calls it "better than the newer Star Trek like Picard," long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo calls it "an enjoyable watch, and would have been the highlight of the week if it wasn't for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds overshadowing it."

GameRant argues that The Orville in general "is actually truer to the Star Trek spirit than any of the franchise's contemporary entries."

And the series will also stay true to its Yaphit, reports Yahoo Entertainment: Behind the scenes, The Orville team bid farewell to one longtime crew member during the production of Season 3. Comedian Norm Macdonald has voiced fan favorite character, Lt. Yaphit, since the show's freshman year and completed recording his dialogue prior to his death from leukemia last September.

MacFarlane says that he wasn't aware of Macdonald's illness during their three-season collaboration. "As I finish the episodes, the emotion that I feel more than anything is gratitude that he left us with all this great stuff," he remarks. "I was very moved by the fact that he had continued to record for us and continued to play this part. As sad as it is, I'm happy there's more Norm yet to come through The Orville."

Asked whether Macdonald's passing means that Yaphit's tenure aboard The Orville will also conclude at the end of Season 3, MacFarlane suggests that fans may not have seen the last of the gelatinous lieutenant. "We do have a plan," he teases. "We would not do Yaphit without Norm, but there is a plan for how we are going to handle it if we are lucky enough to do Season 4." (As of now, a fourth season is up in the air as the cast's contracts have expired.)

Sad news from long-time Slashdot reader NormalVisual: Synthtopia reports that Dave Smith, founder of the legendary synthesizer manufacturer Sequential Circuits and creator of the MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) standard, died this past Wednesday.

Some of Smith's notable creations include the Prophet 5, one of the first commercially available digitally-controlled polyphonic analog synthesizers, and the Prophet-600, the first available device to offer MIDI...

Smith, who held degrees in both computer science and electronic engineering from UC Berkeley, was scheduled to appear at this year's National Association of Music Merchant (NAMM), but died suddenly. No cause of death has yet been released.
Smith's Wikipedia entry calls his 1977 Prophet 5 "the world's first microprocessor-based musical instrument" and a crucial step forward as a programmable synthesizer.

And this week Billboad magazine hailed Smith as "a key figure in the development of synth technology in the 1970s and 1980s." With Sequential (originally known as Sequential Circuits), Smith released various sequencers and programmers to be used with the Moog and ARP synthesizers prevalent at the time, before designing his own release: the Prophet-5, first polyphonic synth with programmable memory, to allow sounds to be stored and re-accessed at any time. The Prophet-5 quickly became the gold standard in its field, used in the recording both of epochal '80s blockbuster LPs like Michael Jackson's Thriller and Madonna's Like a Virgin and envelope-pushing scores for era composers like John Carpenter and Vangelis....

Smith's greatest legacy might be the introduction of MIDI to synth technology... Smith's invention (along with Roland pioneer Ikutaro Kakehashi and Sequential engineer Chet Wood) of MIDI allowed unprecedented levels of synchronization and communication between different instruments, computers and other recording equipment, which was previously incredibly difficult to achieve — particularly between equipment designed by separate manufacturers. The innovation of MIDI helped facilitate the explosion of forward-thinking programming and creativity throughout the industry of the '80s, essentially making the future of pop music accessible to all.

Smith would also develop the world's first computer synthesizer as president of Seer Systems in the '90s, and launched the company Dave Smith Instruments, an instruments manufacturer, in 2002. He has won many lifetime awards for his work in the field of musical technology, including a Technical Grammy for MIDI's creation in 2013 (an honor he shared with Kakehashi).

French officials are continuing their centuries-long battle to preserve the purity of the language, overhauling the rules on using English video game jargon. From a report: While some expressions find obvious translations -- "pro-gamer" becomes "joueur professionnel" -- others seem a more strained, as "streamer" is transformed into "joueur-animateur en direct." The culture ministry, which is involved in the process, told AFP the video game sector was rife with anglicisms that could act as "a barrier to understanding" for non-gamers. France regularly issues dire warnings of the debasement of its language from across the Channel, or more recently the Atlantic. Government officials must replace words such as "e-sports" and "streaming" with approved French versions, the new rule says.

Would you drink a glass of Klingon Blood Wine? Or Cardassian Kanar Red Blend? Maybe you'd prefer the Andorian Blue Premium Chardonnay, or the United Federation of Planets Special Reserve Sauvignon Blanc...

Star Trek wines — a collaboration between CBS Consumer Products and Wines That Rock — has now added those four new flavors to their original two (which Ars Technica described as "far better than we expected, although very much over-priced.") So Ars hosted a wine tasting including the new wines, with their six testers joining "Q himself — aka actor John de Lancie." Also taste-testing was The Orville writer Andre Bormanis (a former science advisor for Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise).

"Wine assessments were anonymous, in keeping with the gathering's super-casual vibe. And the wine was purchased out of pocket, not gifted for promotional purposes."

They'd tried this once before in 2019. Their three-year mission? To explore strange new wines... Next up: A Bordeaux blend from Chateau Picard (although the label claims it's a 2386 vintage to keep the conceit going): 85 percent cabernet and 15 percent merlot. As I noted [in 2019], this is a bona fide winery, with a centuries-old vineyard in the St.-Estephe region. It just so happens that Jean-Luc Picard's family has long run a fictional vineyard of the same name, albeit in the Burgundy region rather than Bordeaux — it features prominently in Picard. The real winery agreed to collaborate on a special edition of their cru bourgeois vintage for the Star Trek collection.

The Bordeaux blend also came out on top with the 2022 tasting crew, who declared it "perfectly quaffable" and "surprisingly good." The wine is light and dry, "easy on the palate," with "a clean finish," and fairly well balanced. It's almost as if Bordeaux wine makers have had centuries of experience to draw upon. This was the only bottle the tasting crew polished off completely.

Alas, the four new varieties in the Star Trek wine collection fall far, far short of their predecessors....

I will give the Star Trek Wine folks props for creative bottle design, especially the corkscrew shape of the Cardassian blend. The broad consensus was that the Klingon Blood Wine is trying to be a pinot noir and falling short; it's basically a very fruity California cabernet, with perhaps a hint of pepper. "Whoever supplied this blood ate nothing but fruit salad the week prior," one taster noted, with another simply writing, "Way too sweet." The most generous assessment was that it is "drinkable but not extraordinary...."

With the evergreen caveat that taste in wine is highly subjective, here's our recommendation. Stick with the original two bottles for your Star Trek wine, or save yourself some money and get something comparable for a fraction of the price — unless, of course, you're really keen to collect the whole set of unusual bottle designs. Or you're a Cardassian who loves really sweet wine.
Meanwhile, William Shatner himself is raising money for charity by auctioning off a bottle of "James T. Kirk" whiskey — the actual prop used on Star Trek: Picard. "The bottle does not contain real Bourbon just a colored liquid," its description notes — but the bottle has actually been autographed by 91-year-old Shatner.

CNET reviews Obi-Wan Kenobi, the new six-episode miniseries premiering today on Disney+ It's a question that's vexed Star Wars fans for decades: How did the bad guys not find Luke Skywalker when he was literally hiding in his father's old home? New Disney Plus miniseries Obi-Wan Kenobi, streaming now, will reveal the answer. But the real question is, can a minor continuity error actually be stretched out to create an entire TV series worth your time?

And is there really a compelling story to be told when you already know how it turns out?

Thankfully, on the strength of the first two episodes — both available to stream on Disney Plus today, followed by further installments each Wednesday — the answer appears to be yes. Obi-Wan Kenobi (the show) is an assured, pacey and exciting new series with a great cast, from creators who know how to use familiar elements — and, crucially, how to hold some back — in a story that is, most importantly, character-driven....

With blaster battles and bounty hunter droids and sneering Imperials, it's all satisfyingly Star Wars, with some nifty worldbuilding like battered drug dealers and a poignant cameo that stops Obi-Wan in his tracks. On top of that are fun new characters — look out for Flea from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, plus Kumail Nanjiani clearly having the time of his life — combined with compelling conflicts for the characters we know.

It turns out even when you think he's a beaten man, Obi-Wan Kenobi still has a few tricks up his sleeve.
CNET describes Kenobi's character — played again by Ewan McGregor — as "hugely compelling.... a broken war veteran who not only lost a surrogate son but also saw his whole civilization fall to darkness," in a series set just before the original Star Wars movie (Episode 4: A New Hope) — so, just after Revenge of the Sith.

"More than any recent Star Wars shows, it's built from Star Wars at its best (the original film) and Star Wars at its worst (the overblown, computer-effects-blighted prequel trilogy)."

An anonymous reader shares a report: With the 2020 release of the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, we've started to see the era of console games that finally make full use of TVs capable of 4K resolutions (i.e., "Ultra HD" 3840x2160 pixels) that have become increasingly popular in the marketplace. Now, though, at least one TV manufacturer is already planning to support 8K-capable consoles (i.e., 7680x4320 resolution) that it thinks could launch in the next year or two.

Polish gaming site PPL reports on a recent public presentation by Chinese TV and electronics maker TCL. Tucked away in a slide during that presentation is a road map for what TCL sees as "Gen 9.5" consoles coming in 2023 or '24. Those supposed consoles -- which the slide dubs the PS5 Pro and "New Xbox Series S/X" -- will be capable of pushing output at 8K resolution and up to 120 frames per second, according to TCL's slide.

Industry trade group the National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC) could be dropping the "cable" moniker as it eyes a potential name change. Fierce Video reports: A trademark application filed by NCTC on May 17 shows one proposal for a new name: National Content & Technology Cooperative. An NCTC spokesperson confirmed to Fierce that the organization will be changing its name, but said it is considering a large number of options and hasn't yet settled on a final decision. The spokesperson noted it's taking time to register potential names, but some of the other choices on the table include simply "NCTC," "NCTC Online" or even sticking with its current brand of the National Cable Television Cooperative. [...] According to the application, it appears NCTC is also considering losing the image of a coaxial cable that's currently featured in its logo.

So why the potential shift away from cable? One factor could be that the industry has clearly changed since NCTC formed in 1984, with cable operators in recent years deemphasizing traditional video offerings. The "Cable Television" part of the group's name is becoming less accurate over time, said Brett Sappington, VP of Interpret. "Broadband, not television, is the cash cow for the cable industry," he told Fierce Video. "Many of the organization's members are actually moving away from offering their own video service and are, instead, focusing on broadband bundled with streaming services." [...] Along with industry changes come some shifts in perception as well. "Cable TV doesn't necessarily have a positive connotation today," Sappington noted. "In fact, many online TV services such as Sling TV or FuboTV emphasize why consumers should 'drop cable' and go with their services instead," he continued.

Researchers may have pinpointed the source of a famous supposed alien broadcast discovered nearly a half century ago. Space.com reports: The prominent and still-mysterious Wow! Signal, which briefly blared in a radio telescope the night of Aug. 15, 1977, may have come from a sun-like star located 1,800 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. "The Wow! Signal is considered the best SETI (or the search for extraterrestrial intelligence) candidate radio signal that we have picked up with our telescopes," Alberto Caballero, an amateur astronomer, told Live Science. [...] The Wow! Signal most likely came from some kind of natural event and not aliens, Caballero told Live Science, though astronomers have ruled out a few possible origins like a passing comet. Still, Caballero noted that in our infrequent attempts to say hello to E.T., humans have mostly produced one-time broadcasts, such as the Arecibo message sent toward the globular star cluster M13 in 1974. The Wow! Signal may have been something similar, he added.

Knowing that the Big Ear telescope's two receivers were pointing in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius on the night of the Wow! Signal, Caballero decided to search through a catalog of stars from the European Space Agency's Gaia satellite to look for possible candidates. "I found specifically one sun-like star," he said, an object designated 2MASS 19281982-2640123 about 1,800 light-years away that has a temperature, diameter and luminosity almost identical to our own stellar companion. Caballero's findings appeared May 6 in the International Journal of Astrobiology. "I think this is perfectly worth doing because we want to point our instruments in the direction of things we think are interesting," Rebecca Charbonneau, a historian who studies SETI at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and who wasn't involved in the work, told Live Science. "There are billions of stars in the galaxy, and we have to figure out some way to narrow them down," she added.

But she wonders if looking for only sun-like stars is too limiting. "Why not just look at a bunch of stars?" she asked.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: The ordeal of three people, who edited major movies down to 10 minutes and then uploaded those summaries to YouTube, is not over yet. After being arrested and found guilty in a criminal court last year, they now face action in the civil courts. A total of 13 companies including Toei, Kadokawa, Nikkatsu, and Fuji, say they are entitled to at least $3.9 million in copyright damages. [...] Clear indications of how seriously the anti-piracy groups and media companies are taking this action were on display after the lawsuit was filed last week. A press conference was held in Tokyo with a representative of CODA and three attorneys present to answer questions on the case.

Those present, including CODA director Takero Goto, highlighted that the three defendants committed criminal acts when they uploaded the movie edits and then profited from advertising revenue. The civil action aims to underline those convictions with a strong message that rightsholders will not allow people to free-ride on creators' content without facing significant financial consequences. The overall message is one of deterrence coupled with the reaffirmation of copyright law, Goto said.

More than one in 10 cases of coronary heart disease could be prevented if people reduced their TV viewing to less than an hour a day, research suggests. From a report: Coronary heart disease occurs when fatty material builds up inside the coronary arteries causing them to narrow, reducing the heart's blood supply. Researchers say cutting down on time spent in front of the TV could lower the risk of developing the disease. "Reducing time spent watching TV should be recognised as a key behavioural target for prevention of coronary heart disease, irrespective of genetic susceptibility and traditional risk markers," said Dr Youngwon Kim, an assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong and an author of the research.

While the team did not look at what was behind the association, Kim said previous studies had found excessive TV viewing time is associated with adverse levels of cholesterol and glucose in the body. "Unfavourable levels of these cardiometabolic risk markers may then lead to increased risk of developing coronary heart disease," he said. Writing in the journal BMC Medicine, Kim and colleagues report how they used data from 373,026 white British people aged 40-69 who were part of an endeavour known as the UK Biobank study.

"62-year-old Val Kilmer was just 26 when he played Iceman in the 1986 movie Top Gun," remembers long-time Slashdot reader destinyland.

But in 2015 Kilmer lost his voice to throat cancer, remembers Parade: In his 2020 memoir I'm Your Huckleberry, Kilmer joked that he has less of a frog in his throat and more of a "buffalo." He said, "Speaking, once my joy and lifeblood, has become an hourly struggle."

Kilmer has teamed up with Sonantic, a U.K.-based software firm that uses artificial intelligence to copy voices for actors and production studios, to replicate his speech, using old recordings of his voice and existing footage. Kilmer elaborates on the process of finding his voice again through AI in a video posted to YouTube in August 2021. In his new AI-enhanced voice, which does indeed emulate the speech audiences are familiar with, Kilmer says: "People around me struggle to understand me when I'm talking, but despite all that, I still feel I'm the exact same person, still the same creative soul. A soul that dreams ideas and stories constantly.

"But now I can express myself again, I can bring these dreams to you, and show you this part of myself once more. A part that was never truly gone, just hiding away."

Kilmer's health struggles, his childhood tragedies and his ambitious career were recently documented in the acclaimed 2021 feature-length doc Val, now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. Top Gun: Maverick screened at the Cannes Film Festival to rapturous reviews, with thunderous fanfare including an air show. Though reports say audiences gave the action picture (currently sitting at a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes) a five-minute standing ovation, with audible responses throughout the picture, mainly at the groundbreaking stunt work, it's also been reported an audience-favorite scene is the "overwhelming" emotional response to the reunion of Tom Cruise and Kilmer.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: Today sees an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of 1970s children's programming giants Sid & Marty Krofft. (Born in 1929, Sid Krofft will turn 93 in July). And reportedly Marty Krofft has now partnered with NFT producer Orange Comet "in a multiyear contract to release NFTs based on the often enigmatic and much-beloved television shows they have brought to us since 1969."

The first one commemorates Land of the Lost — dropping sometime after September.

Today I learned their big break in America came from making puppets for Dean Martin's show, followed by designing and directing the Banana Splits and a string of successful children's shows on Saturday mornings. ( Land of the Lost, H.R. Pufunstuf, Lidsville, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters...) Looking back, Krofft muses that even today somewhere in New York City, "some guy 50 years old, remembers the damn theme songs. Because there were only three networks, so basically every kid in America saw our shows." In the article Marty Krofft describes their style as "a nightmare and bizarre" — or, more pragmatically, as "Disney without a budget" (while crediting future Disney CEO Michael Eisner for being their mentor).

Yet the article adds that "They were nearly unstoppable with styrofoam, paint and cloth. In a digital universe of truly endless possibilities, there is no telling where they could take their stories."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Jokes, sarcasm and humor require understanding the subtleties of language and human behavior. When a comedian says something sarcastic or controversial, usually the audience can discern the tone and know it's more of an exaggeration, something that's learned from years of human interaction. But PaLM, or Pathways Language Model, learned it without being explicitly trained on humor and the logic of jokes. After being fed two jokes, it was able to interpret them and spit out an explanation. In a blog post, Google shows how PaLM understands a novel joke not found on the internet.

Understanding dad jokes isn't the end goal for Alphabet, parent company to Google. The capability to parse the nuances of natural language and queries means that Google can get answers to complex questions faster and more accurately across more languages and peoples. This, in turn, can break down barriers and move humans away from communicating with machines through predetermined means and instead more seamlessly interact. This can include answering questions in one language by finding information in another or writing code to a program as a person is speaking into the model with a specific task.

PaLM is Google's largest AI model to date and trained on 540 billion parameters. It can generate code from text, answer a math word problem and explain a joke. It does this through chain-of-thought prompting, which can describe multi-step problems as a series of intermediate steps. On stage, Pichai described it as a teacher giving a step-by-step example to help a student understand how to solve a problem. If what Pichai said on stage is accurate, Google has essentially leapfrogged over Star Trek and 400 years of fictional AI development, as evidenced by the character Data, who never truly understood the subtleties of humor. More so, it seems that Google has caught up with TARS from the movie Interstellar, which takes place in the year 2090, an AI that was so adept at humor that Matthew McConaughey's character told it to tune it down.

Vangelis, the Greek composer and musician whose synth-driven work brought huge drama to film soundtracks including Blade Runner and Chariots of Fire, has died aged 79. The Guardian reports: Born Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou in 1943, Vangelis won an Oscar for his 1981 Chariots of Fire soundtrack. Its uplifting piano motif became world-renowned, and reached No 1 in the US charts, as did the accompanying soundtrack album. [...] Chariots of Fire became inextricable from Vangelis's timeless theme, and the music became synonymous with slow-motion sporting montages. "My music does not try to evoke emotions like joy, love, or pain from the audience. It just goes with the image, because I work in the moment," he later explained. His score to Blade Runner is equally celebrated for its evocation of a sinister future version of Los Angeles, where robots and humans live awkwardly alongside one another, through the use of long, malevolent synth notes; saxophones and lush ambient passages enhance the film's romantic and poignant moments. "It has turned out to be a very prophetic film -- we're living in a kind of Blade Runner world now," he said in 2005.

Later in the decade he scored the Palme d'Or-winning Costa-Gavras political drama Missing, starring Jack Lemmon; the Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins drama The Bounty; and the Mickey Rourke-starring Francesco. He worked again with the Blade Runner director, Ridley Scott, on 1992 film 1492: Conquest of Paradise, and elsewhere during the 1990s, soundtracked Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon and documentaries by Jacques Cousteau. [...] A fascination with outer space found voice in 2016's Rosetta, dedicated to the space probe of the same name, and Nasa appointed his 1993 piece Mythodea (which he claimed to have written in an hour) as the official music of the Mars Odyssey mission of 2001. His final album, 2021's Juno to Jupiter, was inspired by the Nasa probe Juno and featured recordings of its launch and the workings of the probe itself in outer space.