Streaming television is going through an existential crisis, involving the people who make it and the viewers who watch it. Its revolutionary zeal has naturally faded, as that initial wave of near limitless expansion, boundless creative opportunities and vast archival choices crashes ashore, after a spate of megamergers and a drop in new subscribers. From a report: Just when streaming has finally attracted more viewers than cable or broadcast TV, its major players are engaged in a long-predicted war for subscribers, who are becoming all too aware of rising subscription prices and, both subtly and directly, a change in what programs get made and how long they stick around. Commercials could soon become more common, and services may be bundled (for one low monthly price!), already triggering visions of a future that recalls the dark days of cable.

The list of seismic rumblings in recent weeks is long, as chronicled in the Hollywood Reporter, Variety and elsewhere: Warner Bros. Discovery is cutting shows from its archives and unfinished movies from HBO Max as it prepares to merge it with its sister streaming service Discovery Plus, having promised its shareholders a $3 billion cut in costs. Faced with a plunging stock price and worrisome subscriber loss, Netflix plans to add an advertising-supported model for a lower price and may crack down on password sharing. Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus, which can all be subscribed to in a cable-esque bundle, are raising prices after taking a more than $1 billion hit in the fiscal third quarter. [...] The fear of having your show or movie deleted on an executive's whim -- a growing reality for many, including Katai -- is compounded by the fact that in the post-DVD digital age, viewers may never be able to access the shows again. Showrunners might not even have physical copies of their own work. And that's not the only downside for creators.

Today is Disney+ Day, and, as part of its perks, the company is offering Disney+ subscribers a new AR experience in conjunction with the short film "Remembering," starring and produced by "Captain Marvel" Brie Larson and directed and written by filmmaker Elijah Allan-Blitz. The eight-minute-long movie features a companion augmented reality app that allows users to scan their TV with an iOS device to watch an extension of the movie on the small screen. TechCrunch reports: In "Remembering," Larson plays a writer who forgets an idea she had when her phone rings and interrupts her thoughts. The writer's inner child -- played by the young actress Dusty Peak -- helps her recover her lost idea, which is represented as a flying and talking cluster of light, also voiced by Larson. The inner child lives in "The World of Imagination," a fantastical wonderland full of rainbows, shooting stars and dolphin-shaped clouds. The movie aims to spark a discussion about why it is essential to remember your younger self and all the creativity you once had. In doing so, it explores concepts like the origin of ideas and why adults can sometimes be reluctant to use their imaginations.

In years past, Disney has created a number of AR experiences, but this is the first AR app that connects directly to content on the Disney+ platform, the company told TechCrunch. It's an experiment in seeing if AR can serve to enhance movie storytelling even when viewers are watching in their living rooms. The "Remembering" AR component itself is designed to bring "The World of Imagination" alive to viewers by having them engage with the film using their smartphones. [...] The AR app is only available on iOS devices. There are currently no confirmed plans for the app to become available on Android devices. Viewers aren't required to download the app to watch the film and can choose to have a passive viewing experience instead.

An anonymous reader shares a report: This Saturday was dubbed "National Cinema Day," in which theaters around the US cut their ticket prices to $3 in an effort to keep bringing people back to the movie theater. And it worked! More than 8.1 million people went to the movies on Saturday, Variety found, compared to 1 million the day before and 1.7 million the day after. National Cinema Day brought the biggest crowds to theaters of any day in 2022, which leads to one inevitable conclusion: people will go to movies when movies only cost three bucks. Who knew!

One thing not needed to get the butts back in the seats? New movies. August has been a month-long movie doldrums, the result of so many pandemic shutdowns and general supply chain issues. Tom Cruise always has the answer, though: the top grosser of the day was Top Gun: Maverick, which added about $6 million to its box office haul over the long weekend. (Cruise and co. have been keeping theaters afloat all summer, actually, bringing in $698 million overall since the movie's release in May.) Spider-Man: No Way Home, which came out last Christmas, took second place in the box office. The best-performing new movie this weekend -- Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul. -- came in at #14. But the real dark horse, the shark in the water nobody saw coming, was a little flick you might have heard of called Jaws. Playing in theaters around the country, the movie made about $2.6 million over the three-day weekend.

A survey this year by Equity, the UK union for actors and other performing arts workers, found that 65 per cent of members thought AI posed a threat to employment opportunities in the sector, rising to 93 per cent of audio artists. This wasn't just an amorphous fear about the future: more than a third of members had seen job listings for work involving AI and almost a fifth had undertaken some of this work. From a report: A range of AI start-ups are developing tools for use in film and audio, from making actors look and sound younger to creating AI voices that can be used for marketing campaigns, consumer assistants or even audiobook narration. Audio is such a popular medium now that companies need lots of it, but human actors are expensive and nowhere near as flexible as an AI voice, which can be made to say anything at the push of a button. These companies typically hire actors to provide hours' worth of audio which can then be turned into a voice-for-hire.

VocaliD, for example, offers a range of voices such as "Malik" ("warm, soothing, urban") "Terri" ("educated, optimistic, sophisticated") and "AI Very British Voice" ("trustworthy, warm, calm.") Sonantic, another AI company which was just acquired by Spotify, creates voices that can laugh, shout or cry. Its voices are often used by video game companies in the production process so they can play around with different scripts. They're not as good as humans, but they don't need to be. Industry experts say no one is going to use AI to narrate the audiobook of a bestselling novel, but there is still a market to be tapped in the vast number of lower-profile books that are published or self-published every year. Audiobook.ai, for example, says it can create an audiobook in 10 minutes with 146 voices to choose from in 43 languages.

Just months after Samsung announced that it's bringing non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to its TVs, now LG's doing the same. From a report:The company's new NFT marketplace, called LG Art Lab, lets you "buy, sell and enjoy high-quality digital artwork" from your TV. For now, only users in the US with an LG TV that runs webOS 5.0 or later can access the app, which is available to download from the TV's home screen. Through the portal, you can buy and sell digital works made available through LG's NFT drops. The first one of these drops is set to occur on September 22nd and features a set of metallic-looking NFTs from sculptor Barry X Ball. Since I just so happen to own a compatible LG TV, I downloaded and tried out the app for myself... and there's not much going on there yet. The app is pretty empty, and there aren't any NFTs that you can browse through and buy right now.

Amazon's new $465 million series — a prequel to the Lord of the Rings — drew more than 25 million viewers on just its first day, according to Reuters, "a record debut for a Prime Video series."

The Independent shared reactions from J. R. R. Tolkein fans, including one who said "it looks like they put absolutely all that Amazon money to use for scenes." First up, the praise. Many are agreeing that the show's costly budget, which positions it as one of the most expensive shows of all time, has paid off, with the series boasting impressive visuals.... @marklee3d added: Rings of Power has done a great job of capturing the feel of Tolkien's world. The challenge is creating a compelling story where one didn't exist before. The show's success lies in pulling that off."

Agreeing that the "spirit" of Tokkien has been captured, @suzannahtweets wrote: "I'm far less concerned about little lore details than I am about the spirit. And while I thought that Peter Jackson fundamentally misunderstood the spirit of Tolkien in ALL his movies, so far the spirit of THE RINGS OF POWER feels remarkably authentic to Tolkien...." However, others argued the show felt "goofy" and featured "terrible" dialogue, with some suggesting that "Tolkien himself" would be "ashamed" of the series.
But "by releasing the first two episodes instead of just the more predictable first, Amazon gave The Rings of Power a strong start," argues Cinemablend. Collider's senior TV editor praises the show's "stunning visuals, compelling characters, and magnetic lead," while one podcaster even called the show "a cinematic masterpiece... masterfully orchestrating a mythology that fans have been waiting for."

Deadline reports that "Critics reviews, save a scathing piece in the UK Daily Mail, have generally been positive for The Rings of Power, as measured by aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic.... As of Friday evening, the IMDb rating stood at a respectable 7.1 out of 10." And Variety adds that Amazon had already taken steps to thwart review bombers three weeks ago: Starting around the time of the launch of the distaff baseball dramedy "A League of Their Own," which premiered its full first season on Aug. 12, Amazon Prime Video quietly introduced a new 72-hour delay for all user reviews posted to Prime Video, a representative for the streamer confirmed to Variety. Each critique is then evaluated to determine whether it's genuine or a forgery created by a bot, troll or other breed of digital goblin.

The practice caught notice after the premiere of the first two episodes of "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power"... The series appears to have been review bombed — when trolls flood intentionally negative reviews for a show or film — on other sites like Rotten Tomatoes, where it has an 84% rating from professional critics, but a 37% from user-submitted reviews. "The Rings of Power" has been fending off trolls for months, especially ones who take issue with the decision to cast actors of color as elves, dwarves, harfoots and other folk of Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth. Amazon's new initiative to review its reviews, however, is designed to weed out ones that are posted in bad faith, deadening their impact.... Whether Amazon successfully beat back the tide of internet trolls for "The Rings of Power" will likely be revealed on Sunday.
Reuters reports that future episodes of the series will be released weekly until the October 14 season finale.

"Amazon plans to let the full story unfold in 50 hours over five seasons."

"Every movie, every showtime, every format — $3.00" announces the web site for America's "National Cinema Day."

UPI explains: While not all theaters will be participating in the day, most major American chains, including AMC, Regal, Cinemark and Marcus are all taking part.... In addition to major cinema chains, dozens of independent, small and art-house theaters will be offering $3 tickets as well. Vox noted that the day should be busy, considering that a large chunk of the film industry has recovered from COVID-19. The outlet reported that total domestic ticket sales this summer exceeded $3 billion — though this is still an estimated 20% less than summer 2019.
More details from CNBC: Jackie Brenneman, president of the nonprofit Cinema Foundation, tells CNBC Make It that the idea for a national movie theater holiday was in the works well before 2020, but that the Covid-19 pandemic forced those plans to be postponed.

After Regal Cinemas parent company Cineworld held a similar event in the UK in February to great success, Brenneman said planning began in earnest to replicate the promotion across the pond. "It gave a model template for how we could do something at that scale in the United States," she says....

The flat $3 price for any movie in any format is also meant to encourage moviegoers to check out premium formats such as Dolby and IMAX. "It's an opportunity to get people to try out the new technologies and see how they like it," Brenneman says....

There are thus far no plans in place to repeat National Cinema Day next year, but Brenneman says the hope is this won't be a one-off event.

Netflix is moving up the timeline for the debut of its cheaper, ad-supported plan to November -- in order to get out before the Dec. 8 launch of the Disney+ tier with advertising. From a report: In July, Netflix told investors that it was targeting the launch of the ad-supported plan "around the early part of 2023." But now, Netflix's ad-supported is set to go live Nov. 1 in multiple countries, including the U.S., Canada, U.K., France and Germany, according to industry sources who have been briefed on the streamer's plans. That would be a little over a month before Disney+ Basic, priced at $7.99/month, hits the market in the U.S.

Netflix declined to comment. "We are still in the early days of deciding how to launch a lower-priced, ad-supported tier and no decisions have been made," a company rep said. Sources confirmed the new Nov. 1 launch date, which was previously reported by the Wall Street Journal. Netflix and its exclusive ad partner, Microsoft, have requested ad buyers submit initial bids next week, with a "soft $65 CPM" -- the cost per thousand views -- meaning that the company is open to negotiating the ad rates. That's well above industry CPMs of sub-$20. Sources speculate Netflix's request for proposals from ad buyers will function as a Dutch auction, with the company looking to see what the market will bear.

Some of the most acclaimed films in animation history are finally available to rent online. GKIDS, the animation specialist distributer, has released the catalog of acclaimed Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli starting Tuesday. From a report: 22 films from the studio -- including Oscar winner "Spirited Away" and nominees such as "Howl's Moving Castle" and "When Marnie Was There" -- will be made available to rent on all major digital platforms, including Apple TV, Amazon VOD, Vudu, Google Play and Microsoft. The films will be be priced at $4.99 per title, and all will be available in HD, with most being offered in the original Japanese language as well as English dubs.

The news marks the first time that Ghibli's films have been made available via digital rental. The catalogue has been one of the pillars of GKIDS' business since the distributer acquired the North American film distribution rights to the studio's films in 2011, followed by the home media rights in 2017 -- previously, the majority of Studio Ghibli films were distributed via the Walt Disney Company. Since 2017, GKIDS has partnered with Fathom Events to host a series of limited run screenings of the studio's films throughout the year. The catalog was made available for digital purchase in 2019, and GKIDS has an exclusive deal to stream the films in the United States on HBO Max, where they have been included since 2020.

Twitter has launched a test version of Twitter Spaces today that includes podcasts, "letting you listen to full shows through curated playlists based on your interests," reports The Verge. From the report: The redesigned Spaces tab opens with Stations, topic-based playlists combining podcast episodes pulled from RSS with Twitter's social audio events and recordings. It functions like a Pandora station but for spoken word and is pretty different from the a la carte listening podcast consumers are used to on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Live and upcoming spaces are still in the tab, further down the page. The test will roll out to a random group of users across the world, initially only in English. The more users listen, the more tailored the audio Stations will become. But Twitter isn't starting from square one -- the company is relying on what it already knows about its users' interests to curate the playlists. It'll draw from the interests of people they follow, as well.

"What we're really trying to capture here is as if it's like another user recommending you something," Twitter senior product manager Evan Jones, who focuses on audio, told Hot Pod. Podcast discovery is notoriously difficult, limited either to top 100 charts, hand-picked selections on apps, or -- more often than not -- word of mouth. No platform has managed to crack it, yet. It's easy to imagine the promotional possibilities around being able to share and listen to podcasts in the same app, but it's not quite there yet. The test does not yet have a clipping capability, and listening can only happen in the Spaces tab, not on the timeline. That being said, Spaces has a clipping feature that could be applied to podcasts at some point.

Fans think 2022 has been one of the best years for blockbusters this century. Critics think it's been one of the worst. From a report: When Sony released its film adaptation of the video game "Uncharted" in February, critics were quick to tear it apart. The Wall Street Journal called it "bloodless, heartless, joyless, sexless and, with one exception, charmless." New York Magazine deemed it "curiously empty." MovieFreak.com dismissed it as "a bona fide disaster." And yet, audiences ate it up. The movie, which stars Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg, opened to $44.2 million at the domestic box office and went on to gross $401.8 million worldwide. It is one of the 10 highest-grossing movies of the year. "Uncharted" also initiated one of the biggest disputes between critics and fans in modern movie history. Audiences have given higher scores than critics to all 10 of the year's biggest movies. The average audience rating for "Jurassic World Dominion" on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb is a 67. The average critics score on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic is 34. That is a difference of 33 points. "Jurassic World Dominion" is one of three movies (along with "Uncharted" and "The Gray Man") where audiences and critics disagree by more than 30 points.

It may seem as though critics typically pan the year's biggest hits. But that is not the case. While audiences do tend to give blockbusters a higher score than critics, the average gap in their ratings is usually around 5 points. There has been at least one year where critics gave the biggest movies higher ratings than audiences. And there have been many years where the difference is negligible. In 2022? It is not so much a gap as a chasm. Audiences have given the top 10 movies an average score more than 19 points higher than critics, by far the biggest difference this century. The only two of the year's 10 biggest movies where audiences and critics are even close are "Top Gun: Maverick" and "The Batman."

United Launch Alliance has been developing a heavy-lift space vehicle since 2014 (with investment from the U.S. military) called the Vulcan Centaur.

So CNN reports that the ashes of the late Star Trek actress Nichelle Nichols "will head to deep space on a Vulcan rocket." Nichols' cremated remains will be aboard the first Celestis Voyager Memorial Spaceflight, which will launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Celestis, Inc., is a private company that conducts memorial spaceflights. Among the remains also aboard the flight will be the ashes of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry; his wife, Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, who played various roles in the show and films; and James Doohan, who played Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in the films and TV series....

The spaceflight will travel beyond NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and into interplanetary deep space. In addition to cremated remains, capsules onboard will also carry complete human genome DNA samples from willing participants.

People can participate in the flight — by having DNA or loved ones' remains in a spaceflight container — for a price starting at $12,500, and reservations close August 31. (Celestis offers other voyages that don't travel as far, but can cost less than $5,000.) Ahead of the flight's liftoff, Celestis will host a three-day event with mission briefings, an astronaut-hosted dinner, launch site tours, an on-site memorial service and launch viewing. All events will be shown via webcast, according to Celestis.
An announcement on the flight's site invites fans of Nichelle Nichols to "share your own story about how she inspired you and it will be sent into deep space aboard the first Celestis Voyager Memorial Spaceflight — the Enterprise Flight, launching later in 2022."

Every Friday Politico interviews someone about "The Future in Five Questions". This week they interviewed Neal Stephenson (who they describe as "the sci-fi author who coined the term 'metaverse' and now a Web3 entrepreneur in his own right.")

Stephenson began by sharing his thoughts on a big idea that's underrated. Neal Stephenson: Desalination. It's an incredibly obvious, kind of simple process. Nothing is more basic than having water to drink, so it's kind of hiding in plain sight, but coupled with cheap energy from photovoltaics it's going to make big changes in the world. When you look at how much water, or a lack thereof, has shaped where people live and how people make food, the notion that we might be able to engineer ways to get fresh water in a new way could be revolutionary.

What's a technology you think is overhyped?

Stephenson: I'm going to go with an oldie: rockets. It's just a historical accident that chemical rockets became our only way of putting stuff into space, and if we had started at a different time we would have ended up doing something that works better.

One alternative would be beaming energy from the ground to vehicles, using lasers or microwaves. That seems like a doable project right now. There's nuclear propulsion, which I think is probably never going to happen at scale, because it's politically impossible, but even something as simple as constructing a very tall building or a tall tower and using that as a launch platform, or as a way to accelerate things up upward, could really change the economics of spaceflight.
Stephenson also says the book that most shaped his conception of the future was Robert Heinlein's 1958 novel Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. And the biggest surprise of 2022 was Ukraine's strong response after Russia's invasion. "Most people who are paying attention have understood that drones and other new technologies are going to change the way wars get fought, but we're seeing it unfold and mutate in real time in Ukraine.

"These guys are taking old Cold War grenades and disassembling them, and putting on homemade fuses and attaching 3D printed fins and dropping them out of consumer-grade drones, to a significant effect on the battlefield...."

In 2004 Neal Stephenson answered questions from Slashdot's readers.

Polygon reports that during a streaming event, the publisher of the Magic: the Gathering card game promised a new themed set of cards commemorating Doctor Who's 60th anniversary. But that's not their only new set: The Lord of the Rings: Tales from Middle-earth is also releasing in Q3 of 2023, but it will be a fully draftable booster set and legal in modern format of competitive play....

Individual cards portray familiar heroes and villains including Frodo, Gandalf and the Balrog. In order to capture the scale of J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy battles, the set will also feature new borderless scene cards. Each has a piece of art that can stand alone, but 18 of them will come together to produce a particularly epic scene from the trilogy — such as the Battle of the Pelennor Fields from The Return of the King. The art from Tyler Jacobson, who's provided illustrations for more than 100 Magic cards and for Dungeons & Dragons books including The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, is full of small details including the Dark Tower Barad-dûr in the background.
The article points out that the game publisher has previously published crossover decks for The Walking Dead and Fortnite.

This story is for long-time Slashdot reader tezbobobo, who argued earlier this week that Slashdot's been remiss in its coverage of Magic: the Gathering news: For years I've seen Dungeons & Dragons, Sony Playstation and Nethack show up occassionally on the front page of Slashdot. So where are the rest of the nerd games?

Magic: the Gathering has one of the most loyal and active fanbases, and the creators have been churning out new and interesting cards for decades. Even as it tops the trading card pile, it's made inroads into the digital sphere, with online version in Arena and Magic Online. It's available on PC, Mac, Ipad.

Crop of expensive fantasy adaptations from Amazon and HBO Max served up at subsidised prices. Financial Times: Since 2016, the veteran US television executive John Landgraf has been predicting the arrival of "peak TV" -- the moment when the number of new scripted shows reaches an all-time high. The streaming boom has proved him wrong every time but he gamely made the prediction again this month, telling guests at the Television Critics Association press tour that 2022 would mark "the peak of the peak TV era." Landgraf, chair of Disney's FX network, conceded that he could be wrong this time too. But there is little doubt that this autumn will present audiences with a flood of some of the most expensive television ever produced. On September 2, Amazon Prime will release its adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, with an estimated budget of $465mn for the first season -- almost enough to make Top Gun: Maverick three times over.

HBO Max's House of the Dragon -- the prequel to Game of Thrones -- is reported to have cost $200mn for the season's 10 episodes. At Disney Plus, Star Wars: Andor will lead a large slate of new programmes that include a Pinocchio remake, She Hulk, and a spin-off of the Cars franchise. These shows are being served up to consumers at subsidised prices by streaming platforms making record losses. The only profitable exception is Netflix, but the industry pioneer's market value has plunged almost $200bn over the past year because of slowing subscriber growth. Its share price is languishing at a four-year low. The forthcoming crop of new programming was given the green light during a headier time, when Wall Street cheered as streaming services committed lavish sums to compete. But faith in the streaming business model -- and investor tolerance for profligate spending -- has waned as Netflix's once-blistering subscription growth has gone into reverse.

[...] On top of that, there are growing concerns that inflation will bite into discretionary spending, including on streaming services. "Everyone [in Hollywood] is throwing big dollars after big things," said Niels Juul, who was an executive producer of Martin Scorsese's Netflix film The Irishman. "But [subscribers] are inundated now to the point where they are looking at their monthly bills and saying, 'Something's got to go -- I've got $140 worth of subscriptions here!'" Even so, Tom Harrington at Enders Analysis said consumers were still getting a better deal than the streaming companies themselves. "People get through $100mn of TV in a day and say: 'what's next?' From a consumer point of view that is great. But for a video operator, it's clearly unsustainable."

The world's largest comprehensive database on Japanese anime, Anime Taizen, was opened to the public today, August 25, at 13:00 (JST). Taizen means "A book that collects all things related to the matter" in Japanese. Crunchyroll reports: Since 2015, The Association of Japanese Animations (AJA) has been promoting the "Anime NEXT_100" project to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Japanese animation. As a major initiative of the project, this database was first released on a trial basis on October 22, 2021, and after confirming functionality and operation, and making improvements and updates, it has now been released to the public. As of the end of July 2022, Anime Taizen has approximately 15,000 registered titles, mainly Japanese commercial anime works released from 1917 to the present. In addition to title name searches, the database has search functions for chronology, Japanese syllabary, keywords, etc. As a result of the research to date, the number of episodes amounts to approximately 180,000.

The rise and catastrophic fall of what was once Canada's most valuable company is set for the big screen. CBC.ca reports: Blackberry will tell the story of Waterloo, Ont.-based Research in Motion (RIM), creators of the titular device, which for a time was the world's most popular smartphone. The film stars Canadian actor Jay Baruchel as company co-founder Mike Lazaridis and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Glenn Howerton as co-CEO Jim Balsillie. The film was adapted from the 2015 book Losing the Signal: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of BlackBerry, by Sean Silcoff and Jacquie McNish. Toronto's Matt Johnson directs and also appears in the film as RIM's other co-founder, Doug Fregin. The cast also includes Cary Elwes, Saul Rubinek and Michael Ironside.

RIM was founded in 1984 by business partners Lazaridis and Fregin, who had previously worked together on a failed LED sign business. After a decade of dabbling in various other technology projects, they turned their attention to the two-way communications systems that would become the foundation for the BlackBerry device.

After years of revelations about strange lights in the sky, first hand reports from Navy pilots about UFOs, and governmental investigations, Congress seems to have admitted something startling in print: it doesn't believe all UFOs are "man-made." Motherboard reports: Buried deep in a report that's an addendum to the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, a budget that governs America's clandestine services, Congress made two startling claims. The first is that "cross-domain transmedium threats to the United States national security are expanding exponentially." The second is that it wants to distinguish between UFOs that are human in origin and those that are not: "Temporary nonattributed objects, or those that are positively identified as man-made after analysis, will be passed to appropriate offices and should not be considered under the definition as unidentified aerospace-undersea phenomena," the document states.

The admission is stunning chiefly because, as more information about the U.S. government's study of UFOs has become public, many politicians have stopped just short of claiming the unidentified objects were extraterrestrial or extradimensional in origin. The standard line is typically that, if UFOs exist, then they're likely advanced -- although human-made -- vehicles. Obama refused to confirm the existence of aliens but did say that people have seen a lot of strange stuff in the sky lately when asked directly on The Late Show with James Corden, for example. But now Congress seems to want to specifically distinguish between objects that are "man-made" and those that are not. The admission is stunning chiefly because, as more information about the U.S. government's study of UFOs has become public, many politicians have stopped just short of claiming the unidentified objects were extraterrestrial or extradimensional in origin.

A large question, of course, is why Congress is seemingly admitting this now, in public. After all, lawmakers are privy to classified information that the general public isn't. "It strains credulity to believe that lawmakers would include such extraordinary language in public legislation without compelling evidence," Marik von Rennenkampff, an Obama-era DoD official, said in an op-ed in The Hill about the budget. According to the op-ed, the comments were first noticed by UFO researcher Douglas Johnson. "This implies that members of the Senate Intelligence Committee believe (on a unanimous, bipartisan basis) that some UFOs have non-human origins," von Rennenkampff continued. "After all, why would Congress establish and task a powerful new office with investigating non-'man-made' UFOs if such objects did not exist?" "Make no mistake: One branch of the American government implying that UFOs have non-human origins is an explosive development."

The first fruit of YouTube's new podcast strategy has taken shape with a new "Explore" page "Podcasts." 9to5Google reports: youtube.com/podcasts is now live and is linked to on the existing Explore page alongside: Trending, Music, Movies & Shows, Live, Gaming, News, Sports, Learning, and Fashion & Beauty. It appears to have first gone live in late July, and is slowly becoming more widely available as it's not showing up for all users we checked with today. Available on desktop web and mobile, it's very rudimentary at this point. There are carousels, which can be expanded via "Show all," for "Popular episodes," "Popular podcast playlists," "Recommended," and "Popular podcast creators." The rest of this page links to various categories: Comedy, True Crime, Sports, Music, and TV & Film.

You're just browsing through regular video thumbnails rather than anything more optimized. Meanwhile, tapping one just opens the regular player on Android, and doesn't even default to the "Listening controls" available for YouTube Premium subscribers. You get large buttons and shortcuts to like, save, and quickly adjust playback speed. The podcast experience for end users will presumably get more optimized over time, while it remains to be seen what the UI in YouTube Music is going to be.

MoviePass, a subscription service for movie theaters which shut down three years ago, is making a return. From a report: Remember the golden days of MoviePass, in early 2018, when $9.95 a month got you unlimited movies? And then, remember when right after, MoviePass reported a $40 million dollar loss in May 2018 and tried and failed over and over again to restructure, before finally calling it quits in 2019? Well, MoviePass is back! Starting on Aug. 25 at 9 am EDT, you can sign up for a waitlist at the MoviePass website for the beta version of the new model. But it's not the same MoviePass we once knew and loved, which, let's be real, was always too good to be true. Instead, this time there will be three subscription price tiers -- $10, $20, and $30 -- each with a different number of "credits" to use each month to see movies. MoviePass has not revealed how many credits each tier gets, nor how many credits are needed to reserve a ticket.