The new 1.14 release of the Go programming language "is dotted with performance and security improvements," reports the developer news site DevClass, "but also gives devs more flexibility when it comes to module use."

And they also give a nice overview of Go's development process: Go is the language most containerization projects are built with. The wide adoption of this approach is one of the reasons that made the Go team implement a new feedback-based system for language enhancements. In it, only a limited number of new features are proposed for an upcoming release, giving the community room to weigh in on them. If they decide a change will do more good than harm the feature will make it into the new version. However, since alterations affect a quite wide range of people, they are often heavily disputed. This already led to the abandoning of a proposal thought to improve the language's often discussed error handling. Currently, a couple of new vet checks and minor adjustments are discussed for the 1.15 release.

Updates in Go 1.14 mainly concern the toolchain, runtime, and libraries. The only change to the language allows for methods of embedded interfaces to have the same name and signature as those on the embedding interface. Supposedly to facilitate the creation of somewhat safer applications, version 1.14 includes a hash/maphash package. The hash functions on byte sequences contained in it are meant to help with the implementation of hash tables or similar data structures. The Go team warns though that "the hash functions are collision-resistant but not cryptographically secure...."

Go 1.14 is the last release to run on macOS 10.11 and support 32-bit binaries on Apple's operating system. Meanwhile binaries for Windows come with data execution prevention enabled, experimental support for 64-bit RISC-V on Linux is included, and v1.14 should work with 64-bit ARM architecture on FreeBSD 12.0 or later.

Pier 1 Imports filed for bankruptcy Monday (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), "a victim of changing consumer tastes and an unforgiving retail environment," reports The Wall Street Journal. "Unlike many other retailers that have sought bankruptcy in recent years, the publicly traded Pier 1 -- with assets of $426.6 million and listed total debt of $258.3 million -- isn't weighed down with debt from an ill-timed leveraged buyout. Rather the company's struggles can be traced to increasing competition from online players, mass merchants and off-price retailers, such as Wayfair, TJX, HomeGoods, Bed Bath & Beyond, Cost Plus World Market and Amazon." From the report: Those rivals have increasingly moved into selling home furnishings and merchandise that were once virtually the exclusive domain of Pier 1, according to Hart Posen, a professor of management at the University of Wisconsin. "You'd see something in someone's house -- a wicker-rattan chair or an elephant-themed umbrella holder -- and know it came from Pier 1," Mr. Posen said. "You could buy it at Pier 1 or nowhere, but that's just not the case anymore."

The emergence of online operators such as Wayfair have rendered the backdrop for traditional chains all the more difficult, according to Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Brian Nagel. But there were also missteps that led Pier 1 to bankruptcy. The company was late to embrace e-commerce and was forced to build an online business from virtually nothing, said Mr. Nagel. Along the way, it had to absorb the costs of building distribution centers and other infrastructure, while also adjusting to the tighter margins from online sales. "When the company finally made its move online, it did so in a way that cannibalized the volumes and profitability of its physical stores," said Mr. Nagel. The Fort Worth, Texas-based company tried to revitalize the business with a program dubbed "Pier 1 2021: A New Day," but that effort failed.

"The bankruptcy filing comes after the chain made it through the critical holiday shopping season," adds The Wall Street Journal. "In early January, Pier 1 said it planned to close nearly half of its nearly 940 stores and a number of distribution centers. It had already hired a liquidation company to help close the locations. Pier 1 said it intends to use the bankruptcy process to complete closure of some 450 stores, including closing all of its locations in Canada."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A 3D model is sliced up into hundreds of 2D horizontal layers and slowly built up, one layer at a time. This layer-by-layer process can take hours or even days, but what if we could print the entire model at once? A new technique demonstrated by researchers from Switzerland's Ecole polytechnique federale de Lausanne (EPFL) -- and further detailed in this Nature article -- does just that and can print an entire model in seconds. The new technique builds a model by hardening a photosensitive resin with a laser, not unlike existing stereolithography (SLA) printers. The big difference here is the application of tomographic techniques, the same used in x-rays and ultrasounds, that allows for rotational printing. Laser light is modulated with a DLP chip (just like in old rear-projection HDTVs) and is blasted into a container full of resin. The laser covers the entire build volume, and the container of resin actually rotates while it's being exposed to the light. The laser projects the model at different rotational perspectives, which is synced up with the spinning resin, and a whole 3D model can be produced in seconds.

The EPFL writes, "The system is currently capable of making two-centimeter structures with a precision of 80 micrometers, about the same as the diameter of a strand of hair. But as the team develops new devices, they should be able to build much bigger objects, potentially up to 15 centimeters." In this first public demonstration, the build volume is 16mm x 16mm x 20mm, making it one of the smallest 3D printers on earth. An 80 um resolution is also nothing to write home about and can be bested by ~$500 consumer SLA printers. It is very fast, though, and the technique is just getting started. The researchers have set up a spin-off company called "Readily 3D" to develop and market the technology.

Starting today, companies across the world have a new free web service at their disposal that will automatically send out email notifications if one of their employees gets phished. From a report: The service is named "I Got Phished" and is managed by Abuse.ch, a non-profit organization known for its malware and cyber-crime tracking operations. Just like all other Abuse.ch services, I Got Phished will be free to use. Any company can sign-up via the I Got Phished website. Signing up only takes a few seconds. Subscribing for email notifications is done on a domain name basis, and companies don't have to expose a list of their employee email addresses to a third-party service. Once a company's security staff has subscribed to the service, I Got Phished will check its internal database for email addresses for the company's email domain. This database contains logs from phishing operations, with emails for phished victims.

"On the surface, who could disagree with quashing the idea of supposed killer robots?" writes Slashdot reader Lasrick.

"Dr. Larry Lewis, who spearheaded the first data-based approach to protecting civilians in conflict, wants us to look a bit closer."

From the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: The proponents of a UN ban are in some respects raising a false alarm. I should know. As a senior advisor for the State Department on civilian protection in the Obama administration, I was a member of the US delegation in the UN deliberations on lethal autonomous weapons systems... Country representatives have met every year since 2014 to discuss the future possibility of autonomous systems that could use lethal force. And talk of killer robots aside, several nations have mentioned their interest in using artificial intelligence in weapons to better protect civilians. A so-called smart weapon -- say a ground-launched, sensor-fused munition -- could more precisely and efficiently target enemy fighters and deactivate itself if it does not detect the intended target, thereby reducing the risks inherent in more intensive attacks like a traditional air bombardment.

I've worked for over a decade to help reduce civilian casualties in conflict, an effort sorely needed given the fact that most of those killed in war are civilians. I've looked, in great detail, at the possibility that automation in weapons systems could in fact protect civilians. Analyzing over 1,000 real-world incidents in which civilians were killed, I found that humans make mistakes (no surprise there) and that there are specific ways that AI could be used to help avoid them. There were two general kinds of mistakes: either military personnel missed indicators that civilians were present, or civilians were mistaken as combatants and attacked in that belief. Based on these patterns of harm from real world incidents, artificial intelligence could be used to help avert these mistakes...

Artificial intelligence may make weapons systems and the future of war relatively less risky for civilians than it is today. It is time to talk about that possibility.

A small number of prolific U.S. Twitter users create the majority of tweets, and that extends to Twitter discussions around politics, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center out today. Building on an earlier study, which discovered that 10% of users created 80% of tweets from U.S. adults, the organization today says that just 6% of U.S. adults on Twitter account for 73% of tweets about national politics. TechCrunch reports: Though your experience on Twitter may differ, based on who you follow, the majority of Twitter users don't mention politics in their tweets. In fact, Pew found that 69% never tweeted about politics or tweeted about the topic just once. Meanwhile, across all tweets from U.S. adults, only 13% of tweets were focused on national politics. The study was based on 1.1 million public tweets from June 2018 to June 2019, Pew says (2,427 users participated).

Only 22% of U.S. adults even have a Twitter account, and of those, only 31% are defined as "political tweeters" -- that is, they've posted at least five tweets and have posted at least twice about politics during the study period. Within this broader group of political tweeters, just 6% are defined as "prolific" -- meaning they've posted at least 10 tweets and at least 25% of their tweets mention national politics. This small subset then goes on to create 73% of all tweets from U.S. adults on the subject of national politics. What's concerning about the data is that it's those who are either far to the left or far to the right who are the ones dominating the political conversation on Twitter's platform. A majority of the prolific political tweeters (55%) say they identify as either "very liberal" or "every conservative." Among the non-political tweeting crowd, only 28% chose a more polarized label for themselves. The report goes on to say that the polarized subgroup heavily leans left. "For example, those who strongly approve of President Trump generated 25% of all tweets mentioning national politics. But those who strongly disapprove of Trump generated 72% of all tweets mentioning national politics. (They're also responsible for 80% of all tweets from U.S. adults on the platform.)"

CNN has a story about a Chinese prototype helicopter that looks like a UFO. Slashdot reader ClickOnThis shares the report: China has been unveiling a lot of new weaponry lately, but one of their latest reveals looks really, well, out of this world. Called the "Super Great White Shark" by Chinese media, the aircraft conjures up images of 1950s sci-fi movies more than 21st century technology. But China says the "armed helicopter" was designed for the "future digital information battlefield." State-tabloid the Global Times published an image gallery of the aircraft, calling it a fusion of modern, proven helicopter designs -- such as the American AH-64 Apache and CH-53 Sea Stallion as well as the Russian Ka-52 and Mi-26 copters. It also has the blended-wing design employed by stealth aircraft, including the US B-2 bomber. [...] The prototype was displayed last week at the China Helicopter Exposition in Tianjin. It was a static display only. The aircraft is landbound -- at least for now.

According to a new report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ocean warming is accelerating and sea levels are rising more quickly. "The report is a synthesis of the most up-to-date climate science on oceans and ice, and it lays out a stark reality: Ocean surface temperatures have been warming steadily since 1970, and for the past 25 years or so, they've been warming twice as fast," reports NPR. From the report: Sea levels are also rising increasingly quickly "due to increasing rates of ice loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets," the report states. The report also discusses a relatively new phenomenon in the oceans: marine heat waves. That's a big deal for coastal communities whose economies rely on fish and other seafood. Marine heat waves in recent years drove a cascade of changes in marine life off the coast of the Pacific Northwest, which in turn led to disastrous seasons for commercial fishermen.

Rising water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico have also affected weather in that region. When sea surface temperatures are unusually high, it helps fuel larger, wetter tropical storms. For example, Hurricane Harvey and Tropical Depression Imelda came inland and dropped incredible amounts of rain on Texas in the past two years. The U.N. panel's report suggests multiple actions that local, state and national leaders can take to slow ocean warming and rising, and to adapt to its impacts. First and foremost, the authors reinforce what has been known for decades: Greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels are the main driver of changes in the world's oceans, and the global economy must undergo a dramatic transformation to reduce those emissions. [T]he report also notes that if greenhouse gas emissions are immediately and dramatically curtailed, some impacts of ocean acidification could be avoided this century.

"Erecting a new building ranks among the most inefficient, polluting activities humans undertake," reports Qz. "The construction sector is responsible for nearly 40% of the world's total energy consumption and CO2 emissions, according to a UN global survey. A consortium of Swiss researchers has one answer to the problem: working with robots."

Over four years, 30 different industry partners joined a team of experts at ETH Zurich university for a cutting-edge "digital fabrication" project: building the DFAB House. Timber beams were assembled by robots on site, it used 60% less cement, and it features some amazing ceilings printed with a large-scale 3D sand printer. "This is a new way of seeing architecture," says Matthias Kohler, a member of DFAB's research team. The work of architects has long been presented in terms of designing inspiring building forms, while the technical specifics of construction has been relegated to the background. Kohler thinks this is quickly changing. "Suddenly how we use resources to build our habitats is at the center of architecture," he argues. "How you build matters."

DFAB isn't the first building project to use digital fabrication techniques. In 2014, Chinese company WinSun demonstrated the architectural potential of 3D printing by manufacturing 10 single-story houses in one day. A year later, the Shanghai-based company also printed an apartment building and a neoclassical mansion, but these projects remain in the development phase. Kohler explains that beating construction speed records wasn't necessarily their goal. "Of course we're interested in gaining breakthroughs in speed and economy, but we tried to hold to the idea of quality first," he says. "You can do things very, very fast but that doesn't mean that it's actually sustainable...."

Beyond the experimental structure in Switzerland, Kohler and Dillenburger explain that they're interested in fostering a dialogue with the global architecture and construction sectors. They've published their open-source data sets and have organized a traveling exhibition titled "How to Build a House: Architectural Research in the Digital Age," opening at the Cooper Union in New York this week.

An anonymous reader quotes Engadget: Bioprinting holds great potential for repairing injuries, testing drugs or replacing whole organs, but it's currently limited in complexity, viability and speed -- you can't just create tissue on a whim. Soon, though, it might be a matter of crafting whatever you need when you need it. Scientists at EPFL and University Medical Center Utrecht have developed an optical system that can bioprint complex, highly viable living tissue in "just a few seconds." It would represent a breakthrough compared to the clunky, layer-based processes of today.

The approach, volumetric bioprinting, forms tissue by projecting a laser down a spinning tube containing hydrogel full of stem cells. You can shape the resulting tissue simply by focusing the laser's energy on specific locations to solidify them, creating a useful 3D shape within seconds. After that, it's a matter of introducing endothelial cells to add vessels to the tissue.

The resulting tissues are currently just a few inches across. That's still enough to be "clinically useful," EPFL said, and has already been used to print heart-like valves, a complex femur part and a meniscus. It can create interlocking structures, too.

Spotify today extended the free-trial period for its Premium service from one month to three, tripling the amount of time listeners can take full advantage of the streaming giant's offerings without paying for them. From a report: According to the announcement, the offer is "always-on/not limited time," and will roll out across Spotify Premium plans globally: Individual and Student (where available) starting today, as well as Family (where available) and Duo (where available) in the coming months. The announcement notes that the free trial is open only to users who haven't already tried Premium (and is "not available on Headspace, non-recurring products and most carrier billing (except for individual in JP, AU, DE, CH and Student in JP)."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: People unjustly kept away from feline companionship due to an allergy are rejoicing this week, after news resurfaced of a potential vaccine that makes cats less able to cause allergies. But while this research is promising, a finished product won't be available any time soon. The vaccine in question is being developed by Swiss-based Hypocat and is the company's lead experimental and namesake drug. This April, Hypocat published results from a study on the vaccine. And it's this news that the internet has, for reasons lost to the void, started to buzz about again.

The study, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, details a very clever strategy to tackle cat allergies. The vaccine doesn't try to desensitize the immune system of people allergic to cats, as other existing immunotherapies like allergy shots do. Rather, it attempts to train the immune system of cats to go after a specific protein, or allergen, that they naturally produce called Fel d 1. It's supposed to accomplish this trick by hitching a genetically modified version of the protein to a virus-like particle derived from a plant virus (only being a particle, it shouldn't be capable of causing disease). Some 90 percent of people with a cat allergy produce antibodies to Fel d 1. So if successful, the vaccine would basically turn cats hypoallergenic by greatly reducing the amount of Fel d 1 they make and eventually spew into our noses and mouths. While the company behind the vaccine says it's been in discussions with both U.S. and European drug approval agencies, Gizmodo notes that "even if these trials started today and the vaccine passed them with flying colors, you'll still have to wait years before it could hit the market."

From a report: Looking for a specific podcast has always been a straightforward process: Plug in the title or the host's name in an app store or search engine and you're golden. But when you're not sure what you're looking for or just want to peruse your options based on a topic, you've had to rely on articles with roundups of different shows, random Twitter recommendations, or bounce from platform to platform with your query. Sites like Listen Notes and Audiosear.ch (until it shut down in 2017), among many other startups determined to crack podcast discovery, were created to solve this problem by aspiring to be the Google for podcasts. But now Google wants to be the Google for podcasts.

Starting today, the company announced that it's updating its search function to include playable episodes within the search results around a topic. So if you're looking for "podcasts about grilling" or "knitting podcasts," results will surface with relevant episodes "based on Google's understanding of what's being talked about on a podcast," according to a Google blog post, "so you can find even more relevant information about a topic in audio form."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PetaPixel: A team of scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) have figured out how to capture super slow-motion footage using what's called an "Event Camera." That is: a camera that sees the world in a continuous stream of information, the way humans do. Regular cameras work by capturing discrete frames, recapturing the same scene 24 or more times per second and then stitching it together to create a video. Event cameras are different. They capture "pixel-level brightness changes" as they happen, basically recording each individual light "event" as it happens, without wasting time capturing all the stuff that remains the same frame by frame.

As ETH Zurich explains, some of the advantages of this type of image capture is "a very high dynamic range, no motion blur, and a latency in the order of microseconds." The downside is that there's no easy way to process the resulting "footage" into something you can display using current algorithms because they all expect to receive a set of discrete frames. Well, there was no easy way. This is what the folks at ETH Zurich just improved upon, developing a reconstruction model that can interpret the footage to the tune of 5,000+ frames per second. The results are astounding: a 20% increase in the reconstructed image quality over any model that existed before, and the ability to output "high frame rate videos (more than 5,000 frames per second) of high-speed phenomena (e.g. a bullet hitting an object)," even in high dynamic range "challenging lighting conditions." Their findings have been published in a research paper titled High Speed and High Dynamic Range Video with an Event Camera.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A new network of 3D-printed gun advocates is growing in America -- and this time things are different. Unlike previous attempts to popularize 3D-printed guns, this operation is entirely decentralized. There's no headquarters, no trademarks, and no real leader. The people behind it reckon that this means they can't be stopped by governments. Known only by his online moniker, Ivan the Troll is the de facto spokesman of an underground wave of 3D-printing gunsmiths. Ivan says he knows of at least 100 people who are actively developing 3D-printed gun technology, and he claims there are thousands taking part in the network. This loose-knit community spans across the whole world.

They communicate across several digital platforms, including Signal, Twitter, IRC, and Discord. They critique each other's work, exchange 3D gun CAD files, offer advice, talk theory, and collaborate on future blueprints. These 3D-printed gun enthusiasts -- who share similar ideas and political viewpoints on gun control -- mostly found each other online via gun control subreddits and forums. Ivan is just one small part of this network. He says he is from Illinois, and is of "college age," but otherwise he remains mostly anonymous, to lie low. At the same time though, he's launched bombastic PR videos demonstrating the new 3D-printed gun parts he's created in his garage, including a Glock 17 handgun frame. Ivan's group says the legal challenges around Defence Distributed and the company's founder Cody Wilson are irrelevant. According to the report, the group is uploading their files individually on services such as Spee.ch, a media-hosting site underpinned by the LBRY blockchain, "and they aren't waiting for anyone to give them permission." It adds: "They've made their own 3D-printed gun designs, modified old ones, and are keeping all the Defence Distributed ones available for free too."

New submitter Nico Schottelius writes: It's 2019 -- who has switched to systemd, who hasn't and what can I use if I don't like systemd? Here's the answer in short.From the blog post: If you are reading this post you're very much likely not a fan of systemd already. So we won't preach on why systemd is bad, but today we'll focus more on what are the alternatives out there. Our approach is obviously not for settling for less but for changing things for the better. We have started the world after systemd project some time ago and the search isn't over. So what are the non-systemd distros out there? The author makes a case for why you should consider the suggested distros, but here's the list: Devuan, Alpine Linux, Artixlinux, Void, Slackware, Gentoo, and GNU GUIX.

gollum123 shares a report from the BBC: Last month, the Swiss unveiled a smart new banknote to stash in their wallets. The purple 1,000 franc bill was the latest in the Swiss National Bank (SNB) series to undergo a revamp. But this revamp comes as other nations are phasing out their high-value notes and as cash usage declines in European nations, albeit at greatly differing rates. In Switzerland, cash remains the dominant payment method. Here, there's an assumption everyone carries cash, even in an increasingly digital economy. Most don't get caught out buying a sandwich or paying for a haircut when the card payment machine is out of order. If you have to pay for a coffee with a 100 franc note, no need to apologize -- no one will ask if you have something smaller. And for those big-ticket items, some banks even allow you to withdraw up to 5,000 francs per day (or 10,000 a month) at the cash machine without advance notice. Buying a car that costs tens of thousands with cash is also not that unusual.

Why then do the Swiss prefer cash? Two simple reasons are that cash is widely considered to be part of their culture and people believe that using it allows them to track their spending more easily. In Basel, 53-year-old Chris Troiani confirmed this, saying many people she knows still prefer the reassurance of carrying big bills in their wallet. There's also the identity factor: the Swiss identify with cash in part because of how they see themselves. This is a nation which values privacy and doesn't like being told what to do. They see themselves as different to their European neighbors and closely guard those traditions which set them apart, such as languages, political system and currency.

Michael Stapelberg, maintains "a bunch" of Debian packages and services, and says the free software Linux distro "has been in my life for well over 10 years at this point."

Today he released a 2,255-word essay explaining why he's "winding down" his involvement in Debian to a minimum, citing numerous complaints including Debian's complicated build stack, waits of up to seven hours before package uploads can be installed, leading to "asynchronous" feedback -- and Debian's lack of tooling for large changes.
The closest to "sending out a change for review" is to open a bug report with an attached patch... Culturally, reviews and reactions are slow. There are no deadlines. I literally sometimes get emails notifying me that a patch I sent out a few years ago (!!) is now merged. This turns projects from a small number of weeks into many years, which is a huge demotivator for me.

Interestingly enough, you can see artifacts of the slow online activity manifest itself in the offline culture as well: I don't want to be discussing systemd's merits 10 years after I first heard about it.

Lastly, changes can easily be slowed down significantly by holdouts who refuse to collaborate. My canonical example for this is rsync, whose maintainer refused my patches to make the package use debhelper purely out of personal preference. Granting so much personal freedom to individual maintainers prevents us as a project from raising the abstraction level for building Debian packages, which in turn makes tooling harder.
There's also several complaints about old infrastructure -- for example, "I dread interacting with the Debian bug tracker. debbugs is a piece of software (from 1994) which is only used by Debian and the GNU project these days." Stapelberg also complains that the "painful" experience of developing using Debian "leaves a lot to be desired," and adds that "It baffles me that in 2019, we still don't have a conveniently browsable threaded archive of mailing list discussions."

"My frustration level ultimately exceeded the threshold," Stapelberg writes in the essay, adding "I hope this post inspires someone, ideally a group of people, to improve the developer experience within Debian." He'll soon transition packages to be team-maintained "where it makes sense," but also "orphan packages where I am the sole maintainer... For all intents and purposes, please treat me as permanently on vacation..."

"I will try to keep up best-effort maintenance of the manpages.debian.org service and the codesearch.debian.net service, but any help would be much appreciated."

MikeChino writes: The world's first home designed, planned, and built with mainly digital processes just opened its doors in Switzerland. Developed by eight ETH Zurich professors, DFAB House is a pilot project showcasing futuristic building technologies that may someday work their way into our homes. It's topped with a solar array that generates, on average, 1.5 times more energy than the unit needs (an intelligent control system eliminates the risk of load peaks), [and there are waste heat recovery systems to recycle heat from shower trays back into the boiler.] Some of the pioneering ETH-developed construction processes include: "Mesh Mould technology, in which an autonomous 'In Situ Fabricator' robot builds a 3D mesh formwork for concrete load-bearing walls; Smart Slab, a lightweight concrete slab with 3D-printed sand formwork that's less than half the weight of a conventional concrete slab; Smart Dynamic Casting, an automatic robotic slip-forming process; and Spatial Timber Assemblies, a digital prefabrication process that uses a dual robot system to create timber frame modules," reports Dwell, adding that people "manually filled in formwork, bolted CNC-milled and 3D-printed pieces into place, and tweaked the digital design process."

An anonymous reader writes from a report via NPR: Netflix announced this week that it has acquired the rights to stream Chinese sci-fi blockbuster "The Wandering Earth," which has already grossed more than $600 million globally and hit number two in the all-time Chinese box office rankings since it was released in theaters Feb. 5. Netflix will translate the movie into 28 languages and release it in more than 190 countries. The movie, based on a short story by Hugo award winner Liu Cixin (author of "Three Body Problem" and "Ball Lighting") is set in a distant future in which the earth is about to be devoured by the sun. Using propulsive engines, humans turn earth into a spaceship and try to launch it out of the solar system and the planet is saved by a Chinese hero (rather than American ones as typically seen in Hollywood sci-fi movies.)

For China's film industry, the release marks a major milestone. "Filmmakers in China see science fiction as a holy grail," Raymond Zhou, an independent critic, told The New York Times. "It's like the coming-of-age of the industry." Two sci-fi movies, "The Wandering Earth" and "Crazy Alien," which is also inspired by Liu's work, topped this Chinese New Year movie season. Inkoo Kang wrote at Slate that the film "understands what American blockbusters are still loath to admit: Responding to climate change will pose infrastructural challenges on a massive order and require drastic measures on a planetary scale. Perhaps it takes a country like China, which is accustomed to a manic rate of construction and grandness of organizational possibility, to seriously consider how dramatically humanity will have to reimagine our ways of life to survive such a catastrophic force."