STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

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‘Arctic’ Trailer Has Mads Mikkelsen Trying to Survive in the Icy Wilderness

Bleecker Street has released the trailer for Arctic. The film sees Mads Mikkelsen who becomes stranded in the Arctic after an airplane crash and must venture out into the unknown to survive.

I’m always here for survival movies, especially when you’ve got Mads Mikkelsen in the lead, so I’ll be eager to check this one out. The trailer does a solid job of selling the survival aspect, and while it doesn’t seem like anything that will break out of the tropes of the genre, the genre is pretty exciting, so I’m eager to see what director Joe Penna does with it.

The film opens in select theaters on February 1st and also stars Maria Thelma Smáradóttir.

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RALPH LAUREN’S 1938 BUGATTI 57SC ATLANTIC COUPE

While we cover a lot of stellar vehicles — be they from private sellers or auctions — with tangible prices, some of the most exceptional and rarest of vehicles do not have a numerical price point, as they are contained in private collections. As such, it’s hard to pin down what might be the most valuable car in existence. However, Ralph Lauren’s 1938 Bugatti 57SC Atlantic Coupe is certainly in the running.

Originally designed by Jean Bugatti — son of the brand’s founder, Ettore — this is clearly a magnificent automotive masterpiece. But its beauty is eclipsed by its rarity, as only two are known to be in existence: this one and one that recently sold for $38 million. There was a third, however, it was destroyed in a train accident back in the 1950s. But don’t expect this beauty to hit the auction block anytime soon, as Lauren loves it so much, he just drew inspiration from the car for a new line of watches. Between its pristine condition (there’s a ton of original parts including horsehair-stuffed goatskin leather seats), extreme scarcity, and a powertrain said to give it a top speed of over 124mph (remarkable, considering its model year). It’s easy to see why this gem is estimated to be worth over $40 million.

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Polyhedron Bar Cart

When the Death Star, Epcot Center’s Spaceship Earth, and a wheeled magic 8-ball somehow have a baby, the result is Restoration Hardware’s attention-grabbing Polyhedron Bar Cart. It may not possess the ability to obliterate planets or predict your future, but it’s certain to entertain into the wee hours of the morning. This mid-century Italian design-inspired sphere of spirits opens up to greet you with its wares. The multi-faceted exterior is made of matte black finished wood, while the interior is lined with smoked mirrors on hinged flaps that may make you look better after exploiting the bar cart’s offerings. The three deploying flaps that open like the petals of a flower also act as serving surfaces, while the center of the Polyhedron houses the goods and the barware. Just don’t try to impress anyone after being over-served by trying to locate your house on this dark and angular globe. $2495

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3 hours ago, MIKA27 said:

China Successfully Touches Down Chang'e 4, First Soft-Landed Craft On The Far Side Of The Moon

 

And in other news today, China has just announced construction of military "resorts" on the far side of the moon...

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This Kettle Promises To Instantly Heat Water To The Perfect Temperature As You Pour

A watched pot might never boil, but if you blink, you’ll miss Heatworks new Duo carafe working its magic. Using the company’s proprietary heating technology, the carafe promises to instantly heat cold water to any temperature while it’s being poured, drastically reducing the amount of energy it uses, and all but eliminating the wait for a piping hot cup of tea.

Heatworks’ Ohmic Array Technology works similar to how a microwave oven heats food. Instead of heating water by first super-heating a submerged metal element that transfers heat energy, the technology uses graphite electrodes to pass electricity directly through H2O, exciting the minerals in the water which in turn instantly increase the liquid’s temperature. The system relies on sophisticated electronics to ensure the water doesn’t get any hotter than a pre-set temperature and to eliminate the risk of leaked current causing unpleasant shocks to users. But it’s a big improvement to how water heaters have inefficiently worked for decades.

The technology almost sounds like it borders on science fiction, but Heatworks already sells an $US800 ($1,124) on-demand home water heater that relies on the technique, and at last year’s CES, it introduced a countertop dishwasher called the Tetra that doesn’t require any plumbing connections for hot water. At this year’s CES, Heatworks is announcing that pre-orders for the $US299 ($420) Tetra will start sometime in early 2019, but also revealed another new home product that uses the Ohmic Array Technology to further improve life in the kitchen.

The battery-powered Duo Carafe features Heatworks’ unique heating technology built right into its lid. It can be stored in the fridge like a Brita pitcher, providing filtered cold water as needed. But when you want coffee, tea, or even instant ramen, the Duo can instantly dispense boiling water instead, heated to within a single degree of a specified temperature.

The company doesn’t expect to launch pre-orders for the Duoy until 2020 at the earliest, and there’s no word on what pricing. It will undoubtedly be more expensive than your average plug-in kettle, but for those of us with no patience, not having to stand around waiting for water to slowly heat could be worth the premium price tag.

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Jabra's Beautiful New Headphones Cancel Noise With AI

Jabra is jumping in the big boy noise-cancelling headphone game, and it’s ready to brawl. The company just announced the Elite 85h headphones at CES in Las Vegas. While the over-ear-design looks like a fatter version of the very well reviewed Jabra Move headphones, the new active noise-cancelling feature sounds intriguing. It apparently uses artificial intelligence to drown out sound.

The new Jabra Elite 85h come with 40-millimetre drivers, six microphones (four for ANC and two hybrids for ANC and phone calls), as well as hands-free voice assistant control. Jabra also says they get 32 hours of battery life which would blow a lot of the competition out of the water. But the AI-powered noise cancelling seems to be the star of the new headphones’ show. Using technology from the German AI company audEERING, the Elite 85h can detect over 6,000 sound characteristics and filter out the noise more specifically. According to Jabra, that means these cans know when a loud train is coming down the tracks and specifically tunes out the loud train sound.

It’s hard to know if this fancy technology speak amounts to a meaningfully different experience for now. We haven’t tested the Jabra Elite 85h, although the company says it will show off a prototype on the CES showroom floor. However, there’s reason to believe that Jabra’s not bluffing. The Danish company earned its reputation from making high-end headsets for phone calls, so it knows microphones and audio engineering. It also recently blew our minds with the Elite 65t truly wireless noise-cancelling earbuds.

The Jabra Elite 85h will sell for $US300 ($422) and come in four colours: black, titanium black (which is grey), gold beige, and navy. Select styles will hit Aussie stores in April.

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Nintendo May Stop Creating Home Consoles In The Future

If you’re of a certain age, it’s kind of hard to think of video games and not instantly say Nintendo. It used to be a phrase, “We’re gonna go play Nintendo.” That’s changed over the years with different consoles and the way we’ve come to know gaming, but nothing lasts forever and it’s very possible in 50 years, none of the companies we know today will ever exist in console gaming. However, Nintendo may get there a little faster than others, if you believe a recent interview with Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa, who in an interview with Japanese financial newspaper Nikkei said the day will probably come when Nintendo stops making consoles altogether.

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“It has been over 30 years since we started developing consoles. Nintendo’s history goes back even farther than that, and through all the struggles that they faced the only thing that they thought about was what to make next. In the long-term, perhaps our focus as a business could shift away from home consoles – flexibility is just as important as ingenuity.”

It’s an interesting statement considering how the company brought themselves back into the conversation with the Nintendo Switch last year. But from a financial standpoint, the amount of money the company puts into consoles could be saved if they decide to go a digital route somewhere down the road. But that’s probably a long ways off because while Nintendo is fine doing things like crossover events and even crossplay between consoles, they have remained stingy on sharing their IPs on other consoles.

Sonic The Hedgehog, Pac-Man, Crash Bandicoot, just some of the names of characters you can now find on multiple consoles. But if you want to play a modern Mario game (that wasn’t emulated), there’s only ever been one company to go to. And as cool as it would be to see the company go digital and release games across the spectrum… we just don’t see any Nintendo properties coming to a streaming service or rival company anytime soon. So while this goal may be in their sights, it’s still many, many years away.

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Daredevil: Vincent D’Onofrio Willing to Make Offer Netflix Can’t Refuse to Save Series

Anyone who knows Marvel lore knows you never count The Kingpin out – and that includes the Netflix version’s real-life “alter-ego” Vincent D’Onofrio, who isn’t taking the streaming service’s cancellation of popular series Marvel’s Daredevil lying down – and he’s urging the fans to do the same. While clearly the primary antagonist in the show’s first and third seasons, D’Onofrio took to Twitter to play the role of “hero” to urge fans to put pressure on Netflix to continue the series.

Here’s a look at the actor’s tweet, which also included a link to a petition site and the hashtag #SaveDaredevil. Important note: sign-ups on the petition have doubled since D’Onofrio tweeted about it.

Quote

 

@vincentdonofrio
 Welcome to #SaveDaredevil https://www.savedaredevil.com/

 

Welcome to #SaveDaredevil
Bringing together fans of Marvel's Daredevil to #SaveDaredevil from cancellation: Sign the petition, write letters, send napkins, and spread #SaveDaredevil all over social media!savedaredevil.com

 

While Netflix has been known to revive and reboot shows from other networks, the only original show they extended was the popular Sense 8 – giving the Wachowskis a film to wrap up the series after just two seasons.

The Marvel series was the latest victim of a string of cancellations from Netflix. Following the “disappearance” of The Defenders and the abrupt cancellations of Iron Fist and Luke Cage shortly after their second seasons, the streaming service dropped their biggest bombshell by giving “The Man Without Fear” the ax only a month after the release of the third season – which many consider the series’ best.

The success of Daredevil was the impetus for five additional Marvel shows: Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Defenders, and The Punisher. With its third season currently finished production, Netflix remains tight-lipped on the future of Jessica Jones; and The Punisher premieres its second season this month. The hammer (not Thor’s) is expected to drop as well on both shows as well, after their current season runs.

Cast and crew of the show joined D’Onofrio in urging Netflix to reconsider its decision – or continue on Disney-owned rival Hulu. One major problem: even if Disney brings back the series and characters, there’s a very good chance Disney would want a fresh start for the series.

 

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Lose yourself in this highly addictive “murder map” of medieval London

A birds-eye view of London from the south looking north (1572), one of the maps used to create an interactive map of murders in medieval London.

In July of 1316, a priest with a hankering for fresh apples sneaked into a walled garden in the Cripplegate area of London to help himself to the fruits therein. The gardener caught him in the act, and the priest brutally stabbed him to death with a knife—hardly godly behavior, but this was the Middle Ages. A religious occupation was no guarantee of moral standing.

That's just one of the true-crime gems to be found in a new interactive digital "murder map" of London compiled by University of Cambridge criminologist Manuel Eisner. Drawing on data catalogued in the city Coroners' Rolls, the map shows the approximate location of 142 homicide cases in late medieval London. The map launched to the public in late November on the website for the university's Violence Research Center, and be forewarned—it's extremely addictive. You could easily lose yourself down the rabbit hole of medieval murder for hours, filtering the killings by year, choice of weapon, and location. (It works best with Google Chrome.)

"The events described in the Coroners' Rolls show weapons were never very far away, male honor had to be protected, and conflicts easily got out of hand," said Eisner, who embarked on the project to create an accessible resource for the public to explore the historical records. "They give us a detailed picture of how homicide was embedded in the rhythms of urban medieval life."

A screenshot of the "murder map," with digital "pins" representing locations of 142 murders in medieval London.

Eisner geocoded all the cases after determining approximate locations for the crime scenes. Often, the records were vague on that score, but the murder of Christina de Mestre in 1300 was very specific: she was killed in the "churchyard of St. Mary de Wolcerchehawe in the Ward of Walebrok." The murders usually occurred in public streets or squares, and Eisner identified a couple of "hot spots" with higher concentrations than other parts of London. One was a particular stretch of Cheapside running from St Mary-le-Bow church to St. Paul's Cathedral. The other was a triangular area spanning Gracechurch, Lombard, and Cornhill, radiating out from Leadenhall market.

The perpetrators were mostly men (in only four cases were women the only suspect). As for weapons, knives and swords of varying types were the ones most frequently used, accounting for 68 percent of all the murders. The greatest risk of violent death in London was on weekends (especially Sundays), between early evening and the first few hours after curfew. Roam the streets during those hours, and you'd be far more likely to end up like John of Canterbury, a saddler who was beaten by a couple of boatmen with wooden oars, "inflicting a wound that penetrated the brain." Poor John died the following day.

As Eisner notes, "Sunday was the day when people had the time to engage in social activities—drinking and playing games that would occasionally trigger frictions leading to assault." Mondays were the second most likely day for homicides, perhaps because frictions spilled over from the weekend. And, Eisner says, sometimes victims of violent assault didn't die right away (like John the Saddler), lingering for hours, days, and sometimes weeks before succumbing to their injuries. "Over 18 percent of victims survived at least a week after the initial trauma, probably dying eventually from infections or blood loss," said Eisner.

The population of London in the 14th century likely ranged between 40,000 and 100,000 people. In a city of 80,000, the medieval London murder rate would be 15 to 20 times higher than an English town of comparable size today, according to Eisner. But he is leery of drawing direct comparisons to modern society. "We have firearms, but we also have emergency services," he said. "It's easier to kill, but easier to save lives."

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GORDON & MACPHAIL CAOL ILA 1968 WHISKY

Founded in 1846, the iconic Caol Ila Distillery is one of the Islay regions most respected distilleries. This 1968 expression from Caol Ila joins several other historic drams that makeup Gordon & MacPhail's Private Collection. The 50-year-old single cask whisky was aged in refill Sherry hogshead and is not only one of the more complex whiskies you'll ever try, but is also the oldest Caol IIa ever bottled. Only 199 bottles exist, each made of hand-blown crystal and encased in a handmade wooden veneer box. $9.5K

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The RetroChamp Turns The Original NES Into A Nintendo Switch-Inspired All-In-One Handheld

Thirty years after the original Game Boy was first released, handheld gaming is as popular as it’s ever been. Smartphones provide endless entertainment, and Nintendo’s current flagship console is even a portable device. But what if 1983-era technology had allowed the original NES to go portable? My Arcade’s new Retro Champ re-imagines Nintendo’s original 8-bit console as a Switch-like portable.

Unlike Nintendo’s NES and SNES Classic Edition consoles which come packed with a small selection of classic games, My Arcade’s Retro Champ can play the entire library of 8-bit NES and Famicom games—assuming you still have the original cartridges lying around.

On the back of the Retro Champ you’ll find two opposing cartridge slots that can accommodate those giant slabs of plastic that feel like gaming relics at this point. As a result, the Retro Champ is no where even close to being pocket-friendly. Compared to even the Nintendo Switch, it’s massive, and will be relegated to backpacks and shoulder bags.

The Retro Champ also includes HDMI connectivity for big-screen 8-bit gaming.

The hefty design does have its advantages, however. My Arcade has given the Retro Champ a generous seven-inch LCD display, and has packed the console with enough batteries to keep it running for up to 35 hours on a full charge. And for those times when you get tired of holding the portable up to your face, it has a built-in kickstand and can be played with My Arcade’s wireless controllers. It even has an HDMI port so you can enjoy your favourite 8-bit titles on a larger screen.

The Retro Champ is expected to arrive sometime in June this year, with a reasonable $US80 ($112) price tag. If you’ve lamented not being able to connect your antique NES hardware to your modern TV, this seems like a fun solution that also throws in the option to 8-bit game on the go.

There's no word on if it will be available in Australia.

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Here's The Latest Anthem Trailer

Nvidia's keynote for CES 2019 had a surprise special trailer for Anthem, showing off Nvidia's AI-powered anti-aliasing tech and some new gameplay.

Bioware's action-adventure, which is due out in just over a month, made a surprise appearance as part of the GPU-centric section of Nvidia's keynote. The 4K video shows off a few more environments and graphics, as well as some short snippets of gameplay.

Anthem is due out on PC, PS4 and Xbox One on February 22.

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‘Polar’ Trailer: Mads Mikkelsen Is a Ruthless Assassin Who Just Wants Peace and Quiet

Netflix has released the first trailer for its upcoming movie Polar, based on the graphic novel “Polar: Came from the Cold” by Victor Santos. It stars Mads Mikkelsen as the world’s top assassin, who has retired now and just wants some peace and quiet. That is not to be, however, as his former employer marks him as a liability, and sends a host of hungry young assassins to take him out and collect the money they’ve placed on his head. As you can imagine, it is not as easy as they think.

Polar is not to be confused with Mikkelsen’s movie Arctic (Trailer posted last Friday), also being released in 2019, which is a tale of survival following a plane crash (you can watch the trailer for it here). He is fighting to survive in both, but in Polar, he is the danger.

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Metro Exodus Receives a New Story Trailer

It’s been nearly two years since we first heard about Metro Exodus, and as we creep up on the official release, we got a new story trailer. Deep Silver released a fresh new look at the game through the eyes of sniper Anna, as we get a better look into the world of Metro 2035 coming on PS4 and XBOX One. The game looks pretty good based on what we see here, which is a mix of story and gameplay, but we won’t know for certain what to expect until Metro Exodus is released on February 15th.

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New ‘Captain Marvel’ Trailer

 

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Infiniti QX Inspiration EV concept

Sans any functional grille and as big and bold as a concept car can be, the Infiniti QX Inspiration is a physical foreshadowing of the luxury brand’s electrified future. The QX Inspiration follows in the footsteps of the radical Q Inspiration sedan that bowed last year. The crosssover EV, however, removes any semblance of a grille in favor of near-solid front end that’s accented by an illuminated logo and brand lettering. Though details on the concept are sparse, the unabashed aesthetic is dramatic with ultra-thin headlights, pronounced body creases, and blackened pillars for a “floating roof” look. The interior will have Japanese styling elements and more generous room than QXs of old thanks to the flat floor an EV affords. Most importantly, though, is what the QX represents, an unmitigated electrified and hybridized future by 2021. See the QX Inspiration in the flesh at the upcoming Detroit Auto Show.

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Vizio Has A Wacky Idea For Futuristic Dolby Atmos Soundbars

One of the most exciting innovations for home entertainment is Dolby Atmos. The technology adds an element of height to the audio coming out of your sound system, and the effect is honestly game-changing. Vizio has a wacky idea about how to make Atmos even better. What if your soundbar could do Atmos at will? Or, more specifically, what if your soundbar could swivel like a sassy robot and adjust itself to whatever you’re watching?

That’s exactly what a new concept soundbar from Vizio can do. It looks like any other soundbar in that it’s long and obviously contains speakers. However, what makes this concept especially interesting is what could be described as handles on either end. There are drivers in there, and the entire module rotates based on the experience you want. If you want the height that Dolby Atmos offers, those handles can point up at the ceiling. If you’re a purist and want a more direct delivery, the drivers can point straight ahead.

Vizio gave us a demo of the concept soundbar at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, and the effect was enlightening. When engaged in Atmos mode, the soundbar bounced music off the ceiling as you’d typically expect from a top-firing speaker. This is a fantastic effect if you’re watching an Atmos-mixed movie and want to feel the sound all around you. But for certain content, like a smooth jazz track, that effect doesn’t make as much sense. So the drivers on the Vizio soundbar rotated and sent the music straight forward.

It’s hard to say how valuable a feature like this would be for the average audio enthusiast. Vizio did say that it had audiophiles in mind when designing this system, although, the most casual TV-watcher will appreciate the difference between Atmos sound and the traditional mode. Vizio also has a curious role to play in the ecosystem since it currently offers the cheapest Atmos soundbar available. What’s especially interesting about Vizio’s concept, however, is the idea that home audio hardware can be responsive and dynamic. It’s intriguing that we might soon have speakers that move and adjust according to the input. It’s fun to see, too.

Vizio won’t say if or when this soundbar concept could become a reality. It might just be a parlor trick that illustrates the difference between Atmos sound, which adds height, and regular audio, which is regular. It’s a cool trick nevertheless.

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International Space Station Telescope Makes Amazing Observation Of Black Hole Eating Stuff

A telescope on the International Space Station made an incredible high-resolution measurement of the x-rays resulting from a black hole sucking up matter that could have important implications for astronomers’ understanding of these mysterious objects.

Scientists know that black holes emit high-energy x-rays when they eat up matter, but how and from where has been a matter of discussion. The ISS’s Neutron star Interior Composition Explore, or NICER, has allowed scientists to observe these x-rays like never before. This observation could help scientists better understand not just black holes a few times the mass of the Sun like the one observed here, but perhaps the billion-solar-mass behemoths at galactic centres as well.

“There has been a debate about how black holes evolve,” Erin Kara, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Maryland and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, told Gizmodo. “We see them go into these crazy outbursts when they have a disk of material falling into them... What’s responsible for the outburst is something that’s been debated since black holes were discovered.”

Black holes are regions of space so massive and compact that beyond a certain point, called the event horizon, no matter or energy (including visible light) can escape their gravitational pull. But when they suck up matter from a nearby companion star, they show complex structure. An “accretion disk” of matter shredded by the black hole’s gravity orbits it like Saturn’s rings, and hot gas, called a corona, sits above the ring in the region of the black hole’s pole. These mass-eating events are typically accompanied by blasts of high-energy x-rays from the corona, transitioning into lower-energy x-rays originating from the accretion disk.

But how does the eating process progress? Does the disk begin further away, and then move closer to the event horizon? Or is it instead the corona that moves inward while the disk remains close to the black hole?

Understanding this process required high-resolution measurements of the x-rays—not only did scientists need to know the energy of the x-rays, but also the exact time that they arrived to the microsecond or less. Scientists are ultimately looking for what they call “reverberation lags” or “light echoes.” Light echoes are essentially high-energy x-rays from the corona, some of which hit the accretion disk resulting in lower-energy x-rays. Scientists are interested in measuring the time between the initial flash and the lower-energy echoes.

Scientists observed the light echo from a black hole called MAXI J1820+070 with NICER. The data revealed that the lag was six to 20 times shorter than previous measurements, according to the paper published today in Nature. This might simply have been because NICER can measure the timing with better precision than other instruments.

“To measure these light echoes to half a millisecond is incredible,” said Kara. Just imagine—scientists could measure the time between the x-rays and their echoes to 300-nanosecond resolution for a black hole around 10,000 light-years away.

The scientists were able to turn the measurement into an inference about the accretion process. The shorter echo implied that the accretion disk reached much closer to the event horizon than previously thought, meaning that it’s the corona that gets smaller, rather than the accretion disk that moves closer, over time.

“It’s a cool measurement that resolves a lot of tensions we saw in slightly lower resolution measurements,” Daryl Haggard, assistant professor of physics at McGill University, told Gizmodo.

But the paper has its limitations. Haggard cautioned that this was just one source. “This could be a particular behaviour of this accreting black hole system,” she said. “That’s always a problem when you have a single source. We’d like to see the same behaviour observed in outbursts in other stellar-mass black holes.” And there might be other interpretations that match the data, as well.

Still, the paper could have important implications. It would resolve an inconsistency between the largest supermassive black holes and these smaller stellar-mass black holes. Supermassive black holes’ accretion disks extend nearly the whole way to the central black hole, and the previous measurements had implied that smaller black holes’ disks didn’t—a confusing discrepancy. The new results demonstrate that perhaps they just needed to look with better equipment.

It’s a neat observation and shows that at least one small black hole is more similar to supermassive black holes than previously thought. And it’s pretty cool that it came from a telescope on the International Space Station.

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Rare Snow Has Turned Greek Ruins Into A Winter Wonderland This Week

Athens just put in a pretty strong bid for the 2026 Winter Olympics. A huge dip in the jet stream has allowed polar air to plunge into the normally temperate Mediterranean, dumping snow in Greece’s capital and beach resort towns.

On Tuesday, otherworldly scenes emerged across the country as snow caked iconic tourist attractions like the Acropolis and bent olive and cypress trees’ branches. Tourists and locals alike stopped to gawk at the ethereal sites and snap photos.

Athens was far from the only locale to see snow. That coastal resort town of Thessaloniki in northeast Greece was buffeted by snow. Drone footage shows the incongruous scenes of snow on the Mediterranean beaches that are normally a tourist hot spot (at least a few locals still decided to take a polar bear plunge).

The snow was more than a photo op, though. It also stranded motorists and led to disrupted rail service. At least one inbound flight was re-routed from Thessaloniki due to poor visibility, according to France24.

And the flakes also came with a blast of polar air, which France24 reports has claimed at least three lives. Reuters reports that the northern Greek city of Florina recorded an all-time low of minus-9 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-23 degrees Celsius). Meanwhile much of the country has seen temperatures dip 20 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius) below normal for this time of year.

The pattern befalling Greece has brought wild weather to the rest of Europe as well. Ski resorts in the Alps have seen up to 100 inches of snow fall, creating deadly avalanche conditions. Winter storms have also battered northern Europe with winds and coastal flooding, including some of the worst flooding in decades in Denmark. But it’s the Greek snow that’s been a real show stopper.

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Netflix Releases Trailer for ‘IO’ Starring Anthony Mackie

Anthony Mackie is coming to Netflix in a dystopian sci-fi feature film called IO, and we’ve finally got a full-length trailer for it.

As a young scientist searches for a way to save a dying Earth, she finds a connection with a man who’s racing to catch the last shuttle off the planet.

IO is set to hit Netflix on January 18th 2019.

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Netflix Gets Its Own Killer Time Loop Show In The First Russian Doll Trailer

Normal time loop stories are out. Time loop stories based around someone dying over and over? In.

Netflix has just dropped the first trailer for Russian Doll, a new show from Amy Poehler, Natasha Lyonne, and Leslye Headland about a woman named Nadia (played by Lyonne), who finds herself sent back to a set point in time one evening after being killed in a traffic accident.

Eventually, she learns via the medium of deaths both banal (falling down various flights of stairs) and extravagant (being shot), that she’s caught in a torturous time loop, fraying her relationships with the people around her and seeing her slide into questions of her own sanity.

Check it out below, although here’s a warning that it’s pretty NSFW, although more for cursing than the violence. Put some headphones on, or something!

Between stuff like Edge of Tomorrow, Source Code, and Happy Death Day, the idea of a darker, death-driven Groundhog Day isn’t exactly unique—at least, what we’ve seen of it so far. But it’s going to be interesting to see how the pretense this time-loop story is built on is kept up over an entire season of TV instead of just in the confines of a two-hour movie.

We’ll find out just what Russian Doll has to add to the murder-Groundhog genre when it hits Netflix February 1.

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First ‘Velvet Buzzsaw’ Trailer: Jake Gyllenhaal Leads a Netflix Horror Movie about Art

Netflix has released the first trailer for the upcoming film Velvet Buzzsaw, and it is certainly not what we expected. Written and directed by Nightcrawler filmmaker Dan Gilroy, the film stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo and is described as a thriller set in the contemporary art world scene of Los Angeles, “where big money artists and mega-collectors pay a high price when art collides with commerce.”

But looking at this trailer, Velvet Buzzsaw looks like it could technically be considered a straight-up horror movie. Gyllenhaal appears to play an art critic of some sort, but things go topsy turvy when a woman passes off some strange artwork created by her deceased neighbor as her own. The art, it appears, has the power to injure or kill—either that or these people are going through some insane hallucinations.

Indeed the film looks to be dripping with symbolism and metaphor and may even be somewhat satirical in tone, and this is all just very exciting. Anticipation was high for Gilroy’s second feature, Roman J. Israel Esq., but that movie was a pretty big letdown—an unfocused, unsatisfying character study that ultimately didn’t really go anywhere. Velvet Buzzsaw, meanwhile, appears to be hewing back to the darker themes and tones of Nightcrawler, with an incredible cast to boot. I cannot wait.

First reactions to the film will arrive in just a couple of short weeks, when it premieres at the Sundance Film Festival. Collider will be on the ground at the prestigious festival so you can look forward to our review at that time. For now, check out the Velvet Buzzsaw trailer in its full glory below. 

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DOGFISH HEAD ALTERNATE TAKES WHISKEY

While most folks have probably heard of Dogfish Head’s beers — they were, after all, pioneers of the craft movement — you might not realize they’ve also got a distilling arm that’s been making spirits (on a small scale) since 2002. Their reach is about to get a bit wider, however, as they’ve announced that they’ve started bottling their very first whiskey, called Alternate Takes: Volume 1.

Made entirely at their brand-new, state-of-the-art distillery in Milton, Delaware, this music-inspired whiskey was actually aged in charred American oak barrels and finished in casks that previously contained the brand’s own Barrel Honey Rum. The resulting spirit is complex, medium-bodied, and smooth — to be enjoyed either in a classic cocktail, on the rocks, or neat. For now, it’s only being distributed to Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and Washington D.C at a price of $45 a bottle. We just hope they opt for a wider release, so the rest of us can get our hands on some.

[MIKA27]

Our Sun Could One Day Turn Into A Crystal Ball

At the end of its life, our Sun could end up as a crystal—and physicists now have observational evidence to back up that theory.

Scientists have predicted that as white dwarfs cool, they can crystallize in a phase transition somewhat like water freezing into ice. New research from scientists in the UK, U.S., and Canada provides evidence of this transition in a survey of nearby white dwarfs. This is especially interesting to us because scientists predict that our own Sun’s fate is to become a white dwarf.

White dwarfs are small, faint, and incredibly dense stars, the result of stars like the Sun running out of the fuel that powers their nuclear fusion. They have masses around that of the Sun but are only around the size of the Earth. They consist of a densely packed plasma of atoms and their electrons. The electrons are forbidden from sharing exact states by the rules of quantum mechanics, so they exert a pressure that keeps the stars from collapsing.

Though they’re plasmas, scientists have long predicted that these squished atoms should eventually crystallize, beginning at the stars’ centres. There’s been indirect observation of the crystallization, but scientists now claim to have observed the process directly. They describe their findings in a paper published in Nature.

Models suggest that when white dwarfs crystallize, they release heat in order to enter the lower-energy phase, the way heat energy leaves water as it freezes into ice. This would slow down the star’s cooling, an effect that scientists can observe directly.

The team analysed a catalogue of 15,109 white dwarf candidates within 100 parsecs (326 light-years) of our Sun using data from the Gaia satellite. And indeed, they found a “pile-up” of stars at certain locations along a plot of colour versus brightness. That’s evidence of stars going through the phase transition from plasma to crystal, according to the paper.

Obviously, this is dependent on modelling, and perhaps other explanations could explain the data better. But it’s exciting stuff—this would imply that many white dwarfs could be older than scientists thought, since the crystallization slows the ageing process.

And one day our Sun, too, may be a beautiful crystal ball. And we’ll be dead.

[MIKA27]

Gaze Into The Giant Storm Swirling Over The Pacific Ocean

Forget Bad Winter, a season of Boring Winter is upon the Northern Hemisphere.

There, a massive winter storm is churning that’s been perfectly captured by not one but two satellites. Despite its prodigious size, it has no name. It is just storm. 

Himawari-8, the Japanese satellite centered over the western Pacific, caught the storm as it ramped up while GOES-17, the spiffy new American satellite over the eastern Pacific caught it as it swirled toward North America. From both sides, the storm is absolutely gorgeous. You can see the Himawari-8 image up top, and here’s the GOES-17 iteration as it wraps toward Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.

Big boys like this bomb out in the North Pacific with some regularity each winter, thanks to sharp gradient of cold air in the Arctic and warm air in the tropics coupled with a potent jet stream. But this sucker is impressive even by North Pacific standards. On Thursday, the storm’s central pressure bottomed out at 937 millibars, pressure commonly associated with powerful hurricanes (Hurricane Florence hit 939 millibars for comparison). It runs from Alaska to California tip to tail.

The United States' National Weather Service Ocean Prediction Center, which remains in operation despite the shutdown, tweeted that the storm was churning up waves up to 56.7 feet in height in the North Pacific. As it continued its march toward the West Coast, the storm kept its comma-shaped structure that makes it look like a classic nor’easter. The storm is one of a parade of low pressure systems is expected to continue into next week, bringing rain and snow to the West Coast as well as the possibility of more meteorological eye candy.