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New Rejects, Kyiv (2026)

21/08/2022

Though Sigourney Weaver’s Dr. Grace Augustine ultimately died in the first Avatar film, one of the first surprising details director James Cameron shared about the film’s sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, was that Weaver was set to return as a mysterious new character. While Avatar’s story of symbiotic aliens could potentially have led to resurrecting Dr. Augustine in an imaginative way, it turns out that The Way of Water’s taking a much more surprising approach to incorporating Weaver back into the franchise.

Dr. Grace Augustine may be gone, but Sigourney Weaver’s returning to the world of Avatar as a new character.

19/08/2022

Like most of Marvel’s recent Phase 4 films, Thor: Love and Thunder is a sequel that tries its best to work as a standalone movie, but its story works best if you come to it having seen some of the studio’s other recent tentpole movies. Set some time after Avengers: Endgame, Thor: Love and Thunder gets right back to the ongoing story — or myth, depending on how you look at it — of how Thor Odinson (Chris Hemsworth) became one of Earth’s most legendary heroes after leaving the original Asgard.

Thor: Love and Thunder has plenty of jokes but not much else.

13/08/2022

Comics can be pretty depressing these days. Existential drama, dark storylines, and epic battles for the fate of the galaxy are all regular occurrences. But on the other side of the spectrum is Check, Please, a heartwarming hockey comic that’s the feel-good equivalent of a slice of warm apple pie.

The perfect weekend comic read.

11/08/2022

Comics have never been bigger: with Marvel TV shows, DC movies, and indie adaptations growing by the day, comic books have never been more prominent in pop culture. This biweekly Verge column recommends comic series new and old, whether you’re a longtime fan or a newcomer.

With most mainstream comics today tending to skew more toward sci-fi superheroes, Boom Studio’s Coda is a perfect gateway for those who prefer swords and sorcery — set in a magical post-apocalypse with some of the best comic art around.

Who doesn’t want a demonic pentacorn?

09/08/2022

Trese is one of the most interesting new shows on Netflix, a gritty detective story set in a modern-day Manila beset by all kinds of supernatural forces. It’s great, but it also ends quickly: the debut season is only six episodes long. Luckily, if you’re looking for more of Alexandra Trese, there’s plenty to dig into with the books on which the show is based.

Now a Netflix anime.

07/08/2022

The lawsuits, covered earlier today by The Hollywood Reporter, were filed in New York and California against the heirs of Steve Ditko, Don Rico, Don Heck, and Gene Colan, as well as Stan Lee’s brother and Marvel collaborator Lawrence Lieber. They ask courts to declare that Disney has sole ownership of comics like The Avengers, Iron Man, Amazing Spider-Man, Strange Tales, and Tales of Suspense — including the characters and story elements that have formed the basis for Disney’s lucrative Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Marvel settled a lawsuit with Jack Kirby’s family in 2014.

05/08/2022

Disney has just announced delays for its 2022 Marvel films, along with the upcoming fifth Indiana Jones movie, all of which have been pushed back to later in the year or moved to 2023.

The Marvel movie shifts are the usual chain reaction delay: to push back one movie means pushing back all of them, so there’s a domino effect in pushing everything back a bit:

Marvel’s heroes are no match for production delays.

23/07/2022

Google has placed one of its engineers on paid administrative leave for allegedly breaking its confidentiality policies after he grew concerned that an AI chatbot system had achieved sentience, the Washington Post reports. The engineer, Blake Lemoine, works for Google’s Responsible AI organization, and was testing whether its LaMDA model generates discriminatory language or hate speech.

The engineer’s concerns reportedly grew out of convincing responses he saw the AI system generating about its rights and the ethics of robotics. In April he shared a document with executives titled “Is LaMDA Sentient?” containing a transcript of his conversations with the AI (after being placed on leave, Lemoine published the transcript via his Medium account), which he says shows it arguing “that it is sentient because it has feelings, emotions and subjective experience.”

‘Is LaMDA sentient?’

22/07/2022

Sometimes, even as a tech reporter, you can be caught out by how quickly technology improves. Case in point: it was only today that I learned that my iPhone has been offering a feature I’ve long desired — the ability to identify plants and flowers from just a photo.

It’s true that various third-party apps have offered this function for years, but last time I tried them I was disappointed by their speed and accuracy. And, yes, there’s Google Lens and Snapchat Scan, but it’s always less convenient to open up an app I wouldn’t otherwise use.

But, since the introduction of iOS 15 last September, Apple has offered its own version of this visual search feature. It’s called Visual Look Up, and it’s pretty damn good.

It works very simply. Just open up a photo or screenshot in the Photos app and look for the blue “i” icon underneath. If it has a little sparkly ring around it, then iOS has found something in the photo it can identify using machine learning. Tap the icon, then click “Look Up” and it’ll try and dredge up some useful information.

Like Google Lens built straight into your iPhone

21/07/2022

Microsoft is phasing out public access to a number of AI-powered facial analysis tools — including one that claims to identify a subject’s emotion from videos and pictures.

Such “emotion recognition” tools have been criticized by experts. They say not only do facial expressions that are thought to be universal differ across different populations but that it is unscientific to equate external displays of emotion with internal feelings.

“Companies can say whatever they want, but the data are clear,” Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University who conducted a review into the subject of AI-powered emotion recognition, told The Verge in 2019. “They can detect a scowl, but that’s not the same thing as detecting anger.”

Experts say AI emotion recognition is unscientific.

20/07/2022

Andrej Karpathy, Tesla’s head of AI and a key leader in the development of Autopilot, its driver assist feature which requires supervision by a human, announced on Twitter Wednesday that he’s leaving the company.

“It’s been a great pleasure to help Tesla towards its goals over the last 5 years and a difficult decision to part ways,” Karpathy wrote. “In that time, Autopilot graduated from lane keeping to city streets and I look forward to seeing the exceptionally strong Autopilot team continue that momentum.” In a follow-up tweet, Karpathy said he has “no concrete plans for what’s next” but wants to revisit “my long-term passions around technical work in AI, open source and education.”

Andrej Karpathy is leaving, but Elon Musk wished him well.

19/07/2022

A payload making its way to the International Space Station could help researchers back on Earth finally solve a climate mystery that’s stymied scientists for years. NASA launched a key instrument for its climate research, called the Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT), aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft Thursday night from the Kennedy Space Center.

Dust is a surprisingly powerful force up in the atmosphere, which is why NASA is determined to better understand it. The tiny particles waft up from deserts and other arid regions, and depending on many different factors, they can have a cooling or heating effect on our planet. Which scenario is actually playing out across the globe, however, continues to elude scientists.

Is dust heating or cooling our planet?

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