The Los Angeles Times publishes a weekly "Boiling Point" newsletter about climate change and energy issues. And this week they examined whether the scientific fact of a change climate is reflected in the mass media: For the second year running, nonprofit consulting firm Good Energy applied its Climate Reality Check to the actual Oscar-nominated films [which] tests whether a movie and its characters acknowledge global warming... Of last year's 13 Oscar-nominated films that met Good Energy's criteria (feature-length movies set in present-day or near-future Earth) three passed the test. This year, there were 10 eligible films. Only "The Wild Robot" passed...

Maybe a few years from now, studios will release a torrent of movies and shows reflecting the realities of a scary-but-still-salvageable world, helmed by producers and writers jolted into renewed awareness by the infernos. But for now, the picture is bleak. A peer-reviewed study slated for publication this month, led by Rice University English and environmental studies professor Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, analyzes climate change mentions in 250 of the most popular movies of the last decade. The authors found that just 12.8% of the films allude to global warming. Just 3.6% depict or mention the climate crisis in two or more scenes. "A lot of times, it's really being mentioned in passing," Schneider-Mayerson said...

[Good Energy Chief Executive Anna Jane Joyner] pointed to another analysis led by Schneider-Mayerson, which found that movies passing the Climate Reality Check and released in theaters earned 10% more at the box office, on average, than films failing the test. Netflix, meanwhile, says on its website that 80% of its customers "choose to watch at least one story on Netflix that helps them better understand climate issues or highlight hopeful solutions around sustainability...." [Netflix's "Sustainability Stories" collection includes Dr. Seuss' The Lorax, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, and Waterworld]

Sponsors are interested in selling audiences on climate-friendly products, too. I was sitting in a movie theater last weekend enjoying "Captain America: Brave New World" — the latest entry in Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe — when, to my surprise, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) got out of his SUV and pulled his iconic red-white-and-blue shield out of the front trunk. Yes, a front trunk, where an internal combustion engine would normally be. That meant Captain America was driving an electric vehicle, right? Indeed, he was. I did some research after I got home and learned that Wilson was driving a GMC Hummer EV, the result of a paid partnership between Marvel Studios and GMC parent company General Motors.
Ironically, the movie does not at any point acknowledge global warming, the article points out (adding "Also, SUVs kill more pedestrians and cyclists than smaller cars.")

"But the more movies and TV shows spotlight climate solutions — electric vehicles, solar panels, induction stoves — the more likely people are to support those solutions. For Hollywood, that's a step in the right direction."

The UK is considering making households who only use streaming services such as Netflix and Disney pay the BBC license fee, as part of plans to modernize the way it funds the public-service broadcaster. Bloomberg: Extending the fee to streaming applications is on a menu of options being discussed by Prime Minister Keir Starmer's office, the Treasury and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named discussing internal government deliberations. Alternatives under discussion include allowing the British Broadcasting Corp. to use advertising, imposing a specific tax on streaming services, and asking those who listen to BBC radio to pay a fee.

The government is the early stages of examining how to overhaul the funding of Britain's public broadcaster when its current 11-year charter ends on Dec. 31, 2027. Ministers are looking to either retain and alter the current television license fee model or scrap it and instead fund the BBC through alternative models such as taxation or subscription. That's because viewing habits have changed as users gravitate toward on-demand services. [...] The license fee dates back to 1946, when consumers watched programs at the time of broadcast. It currently costs households who watch live TV or use BBC iPlayer $210.6 a year, an amount that usually rises annually with inflation. Even if they don't watch BBC programs, households are required to hold a TV license to view or stream programs live on sites including YouTube and Amazon Prime Video. However it's not needed by those who only watch on-demand, non-BBC content.

Today 34-year-old chess champion Magnus Carlsen married 26-year-old Ella Victoria Malone, "in a ceremony packed with guests on a sunny winter day in Oslo," reports Chess.com. According to Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet, a film crew from Netflix was also present. The streaming giant is shooting a chess-related TV show rumored to air in 2025... Ella Victoria is now expected to have a more central role in her husband's career. According to VG, she played a crucial role in securing Magnus a deal with fashion brand G-Star Raw...

Their wedding was surely a fairy tale, but the Carlsens aren't heading for their honeymoon just yet. Magnus is set to make his debut for St. Pauli in the German Bundesliga on January 10, when he'll face Dusseldorf led by none other than GM Gukesh Dommaraju.
The article adds that "For Carlsen, this caps off a whirlwind week that began in New York, highlighted by his eighth World Blitz Championship title," a victory that they say was "controversially" shared with Russian grandmaster Ian Nepomniachtchi. CNN reports: [Carlsen] had taken a 2-0 lead in the four-game contest before Nepomniachtchi launched a stunning comeback to level the scores, sending the match to a sudden death tie-break. The pair then drew the next three games, and it was later determined that they would share the title after the proposal was accepted by Arkady Dvorkovich, the president of chess governing body FIDE. "I thought, at that point, we had already played for a very long time and I was, first of all, very happy to end it, and I thought, at that point, it would have been very, very cruel on both of us if one gets first and the other gets second," Carlsen later told reporters....

[T]he decision to share the Blitz title with long-time rival Nepomniachtchi has sparked outcry from some of the world's top players — the first time in history that a world championship title has been shared. "This is a situation where I cannot stand with what Magnus has done," prominent player Hikaru Nakamura said on his YouTube channel. "I do not think that there is any precedent for this, when you put out rules about the game itself and then suddenly you decide, 'It's okay, we're going to go home' ... It's unconscionable to me...."

"FIDE goes from forfeiting Carlsen (over the jeans debacle) to creating an entirely new rule," Hans Niemann, whom Carlsen had defeated in the quarterfinals, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. "Seems like the the regulatory body of chess has no intention of being unbiased. They seem to only care about what one player thinks...." Former world champion Garry Kasparov made a pointed reference to the jeans controversy, writing on X: "I thought the first FIDE tiebreak was pants."
Magnus apparently tells his opponent "If they like refuse, we can just play short draws until they give up," according to a behind-the-scenes video clip posted to X.com. The CEO of FIDE, Emil Sutovsky, re-posted it on X.com, complaining that FIDE president Dvorkovich's decision to accept the players' proposed draw was made "under the spur of a moment, and of course, the video appeared much later. I do think it is VERY BAD though..."

FIDE later told CNN that "This situation has already prompted valuable discussions within FIDE management to improve our regulations." (And their article adds that some — including grandmaster Ivan Sokolov — suggested ties be settled with a new chess format known as Armageddon.) "In Armageddon, White has more time but a draw on the board counts as a win for Black," explains the Guardian — adding that back in 1983, "Fide determined the winner of a Candidates match by a roulette wheel."

The Guardian adds that Russian-born FIDE president Arkady Dvorkovich "probably felt he had little choice but to rubber stamp the agreement by the players." He would have been pilloried in Moscow as preventing a Russian world champion had he ruled otherwise, and a negative could also have provoked a series of the notorious Berlin draws, the standard method for a quick mutually agreed half point. However, that course of action would have brought the players into disrepute, and it is more likely that an inspired game or a blunder would have settled the final. The audience on Wall Street applauded the decision, but the considerable online reaction from professional players and fans has been mostly critical.

It was the first ever shared over-the-board individual world title in chess history.

Witcher 4's first trailer debuted at the 2024 Game Awards — a six-minute cinema-quality thriller. It's a teaser for a game that "aims to be the most immersive and ambitious open-world Witcher game to date," according to an announcement from CD Projekt Red. The trailer is pre-rendered in a custom build of Unreal Engine 5 on an unannounced NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPU. Powered by the same tech that The Witcher IV is built on, using assets and models from the game itself, it aims to provide players with a cinematic look at the kind of experience the game is aspiring to provide.
The trailer shows "a remote village that has been terrorized for generations by a fearsome monster demanding human sacrifices..." their announcement notes. ("At the heart of the trailer is Ciri's perspective as an outsider to the village.") "Geralt will appear in the game, but we don't want to spoil his role precisely," CD Projekt Red told IGN.

Kotaku reminds fans there's also Netflix's animated movie The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep in February 2025 — plus the first new Witcher novel in over a decade (with an English translation) expected sometime next year as well...

Thanks to Slashdot reader jjslash for sharing the news.

On November 24th, 1971 — 53 years ago today — a mysterious man jumped out of an airplane clutching $200,000 in ransom money. (He'd extorted it from the airline by claiming he had a bomb, and it's still "the only unsolved case of air piracy in the history of commercial aviation," according to Wikipedia.) Will modern technology finally let us solve the case — or just turn it into a miniseries on Netflix? And have online researchers finally discovered the definitive clue?

The FBI vetted more than 800 suspects, according to the Wyoming news site Cowboy State Daily, but in 2016 announced they were suspending their active investigation.

So it's newsworthy that the FBI now appears to be investigating new evidence, according to an amateur D.B. Cooper researcher on YouTube: the discovery of what's believed to be D.B. Cooper's uniquely-modified parachute: Retired pilot, skydiver and YouTuber, Dan Gryder told Cowboy State Daily that he may have found the missing link after uncovering the modified military surplus bailout rig he believes was used by D.B. Cooper in the heist. It belonged to Richard Floyd McCoy II, and was carefully stored in his deceased mother's storage stash until very recently... McCoy's children, Chanté and Richard III, or "Rick," agree with Gryder that they believe their father was D.B. Cooper, a secret that shrouded the family but wasn't overtly discussed. For years, they said, the family stayed mum out of fear of implicating their mother, Karen, whom they believe was complicit in both hijackings. Upon her death in 2020, they broke their silence to Gryder after being contacted by him off and on for years.

Gryder, who has been researching the case for more than 20 years, documented his investigation in a lengthy two-part series on his YouTube channel, "Probable Cause," in 2021 and 2022, where he connects the dots and shows actual footage of him finding the parachute in an outbuilding on the McCoy family property in North Carolina in July 2022. On Monday, Gryder released a third video, "D.B. Cooper: Deep FBI Update," where he announced the FBI's new and very recent efforts in his discoveries. After watching his first two videos, Gryder said FBI agents contacted Rick and Gryder to see the parachute. It was the first investigative move by the agency since issuing the 2016 public statement, declaring the case closed pending new evidence. Gryder and Rick McCoy traveled to Richmond, Virginia, in September 2023, where they met with FBI agents, who took the harness and parachute into evidence along with a skydiving logbook found by Chanté that aligned with the timeline for both hijackings, providing another vital piece in the puzzle, Gryder said....

During the meeting, Gryder said the agents called it a first step. If the evidence proved fruitless, they would have promptly returned the skydiving rig, he said, but that didn't happen. Instead, an FBI agent called Rick a month later to ask to search the family property in Cove City, North Carolina, which McCoy's mother owned and where Gryder had found the parachute and canopy... [Gryder says he watched] at least seven vehicles descend on the property with more than a dozen agents who scoured the property for about four hours... Rick said he has provided a DNA sample and was told by the FBI agents that the next step might be exhuming his father's body, but no formal terms and conditions for that process have been established thus far, he said.
A retired commercial airline pilot who was present in the Virginia FBI meeting said "It was clear they were taking it seriously" — noting it was the FBI who'd requested that meeting. The article cites two FBI agents who'd earlier already believed D.B. Cooper was McCoy. And the article points out that the FBI "has never ruled McCoy out, stating in a 2006 statement that he was 'still a favorite suspect among many.'"

A second article notes that Gryder supports the FBI's recent request to exhume McCoy's body. As he sees it, "The existing DNA marker comparisons studied so far only validate the need for this final extreme step and should close the mystery once and for all."

And the article adds that McCoy's children are "eager for closure and hope that the FBI finds the evidence agents need to close the D.B. Cooper case once and for all."

"Here's how Apple's next major product will work," writes Bloomberg's Mark Gurman: The company has been developing a smart home command center that will rival products like the Amazon Echo Hub and Google Nest Hub... The product will run many of Apple's core apps, like Safari, Notes and Calendar, but the interface will be centered on a customizable home screen with iOS-like widgets and smart home controls... The device looks like a low-end iPad and will include a built-in battery, speakers and a FaceTime camera oriented for a horizontal landscape view. The square device, which includes a roughly 6-inch screen, has sensors that let it change the interface depending on how far a user is from the screen. It will also have attachments for walls, plus a base with additional speakers so it can be placed on a table, nightstand or desk.

Apple envisions customers using the device as an intercom, with people FaceTiming each other from different rooms. They'll also be able to pull up home security footage, control their lights, and videoconference with family while cooking in the kitchen. And it will control music throughout the home on HomePod speakers. The device will work with hundreds of HomeKit-compatible items, a lineup that includes third-party switches, lights, fans and other accessories. But the company doesn't plan to roll out a dedicated app store for the product. Given the lack of success with app marketplaces for the Vision Pro, Apple Watch and Apple TV, that's not too surprising.
Looking ahead, the article concludes "The success of this device is still far from assured. Apple's recent track record pushing into new categories has been spotty, and its previous home products haven't been major hits."

But Gurman shares the most interesting part on X.com: If the product does catch on, it will help set the stage for more home devices. Apple is working on a high-end AI companion with a [$1,000] robotic arm and large display that could serve as a follow-up. The company could also put more resources into developing mobile robots, privacy-focused home cameras and speakers. It may even revisit the idea of making an Apple-branded TV set, something it's evaluating. But if the first device fails, Apple may have to rethink its smart home ambitions once again.
Gurman also writes that Apple is also working on a new AirTag with more range and improved privacy features (including "making it more difficult for someone to remove the speaker.")

Disney has officially launched its password and account-sharing crackdown, rolling out what it is calling its "paid sharing program" to users in the U.S. and in many regions around the world this week. The rollout follows the company sharing plans to crackdown on unauthorized usage on its streaming service earlier this year. From a report: The paid sharing program has a couple of options for users, per a blog post published Wednesday: People sharing an account with someone outside their household can add that person as an "Extra Member" for $6.99 per month for Disney+ Basic, or $9.99 for Disney+ Premium, both discounts to the normal retail price. Only one Extra Member will be allowed per account, and it is not available as part of the Disney Bundle. In addition, users sharing an account can also subscribe to Disney+ themselves, and can transfer an eligible profile to the new account to keep their watch history and settings. The password-cracking effort has helped Netflix boost its subscribers count in recent quarters.

Former MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe pleaded guilty to securities fraud, admitting he misled investors about the viability of the company's $9.95-a-month movie subscription service, and faces up to five years in prison. His co-defendant, former Helios and Matheson CEO Ted Farnsworth, faces similar charges and is scheduled for trial in March 2025; Farnsworth has been in federal custody since August 2023 due to bond violations involving misuse of company funds. Variety reports: Farnsworth and Lowe were the architects of MoviePass' doomed all-you-can-watch offering, which resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in investor losses in 2017 and 2018. Investigators found that Lowe tried to stem the losses by throttling the service, forcing high-volume users to reset their passwords and verify their tickets. The two men were charged in November 2022 on counts of wire fraud and securities fraud. According to Lowe's plea agreement, the government estimates the total losses from the scheme at $303 million -- though Lowe contends it is less than that. Lowe remains free on bond, and is due back in court in Miami on March 21 for a status conference. Lowe published a memoir in 2022 in which he reflected on the downfall of MoviePass, entitled "Watch and Learn: How I Turned Hollywood Upside Down with Netflix, Redbox, and Moviepass."

As Comic-Con hits San Diego, "part of the big news in 2024 is that the con won't have a corresponding virtual or online event this year," according to Polygon, "for the first time since 2019."

But there's still some big scifi media news, according to CNET's Comic-Con coverage: Disney revealed a new Doctor Who addition to the franchise that will jump back to the 1970s with the Sea Devils, an ancient group of beings who arise from the sea. Made in partnership with the BBC, the series... will air on Disney Plus, where fans can currently stream season 14 of Doctor Who starring Ncuti Gatwa.
And there's also an upcoming Doctor Who Christmas special.

Meanwhile, Saturday night, USA Today ran a special article with late-breaking announcements about Marvel's Cinematic Universe: Marvel has already won Comic-Con, with a raucous screening of "Deadpool & Wolverine" followed by a high-tech drone show, and the box office, with the new movie on track to have one of the best openings of all time... Robert Downey Jr. returns to the MCU as Doctor Doom in Avengers: Doomsday. Kevin Feige says the Fantastic Four will be in the next two Avengers movies... And here comes the Fantastic Four [movie] a year from now. It starts filming Tuesday in the UK...
The article says Marvel's Fantastic Four presentation included "a Fantasti-Car that hovers across the stage — and that castmembers also appeared from the upcoming Thunderbolts* movie.

More geeky news:

• Amazon Prime showed a new four-minute trailer with clips from season two of its J.R.R. Tolkein prequel, "The Rings of Power". (And there was also a three-minute blooper reel for Season 4 of Prime's superhero-themed series, "The Boys".)

• Paramount+ showed a trailer for the Star Trek universe's first streaming movie, Section 31. There was also a trailer for season 5 of the animated comedy Star Trek: Lower Decks — plus a particularly strange clip from the fourth season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

• Keanu Reeves accepted the Inkpot award for his contribution to the world of film and comics — partly because since 2021 Reeves has been co-authoring a Kickstarter-funded comic book called BRZRKR. (Netflix plans to adapt it into a movie.)

• Next February will see the release of Captain America: Brave New World, in which the Incredible Hulk may get some competition from Harrison Ford, who's been cast as the Red Hulk.

But things got a little too real Friday when a fire at a nearby steakhouse forced the evacuation of the immersive "Penguin Lounge" — which was promoting Max's new prequel series to 2022's movie The Batman.

Netflix has started booting subscribers off its cheapest ad-free subscription tier, "starting with the UK and Canada, with more countries inevitably to follow," reports MacRumors. From the report: The streaming giant has reportedly begun notifying users via on-screen messages about the last day they can access the service unless they upgrade. One Reddit user shared a notification they had received from the Netflix app, saying: "Your last day to watch Netflix is July 13th. Choose a new plan to keep watching." Customers are being prompted to instead choose the cheaper Standard with ads, or the more expensive Standard or Premium 4K plans.

The Basic plan, which costs $11.99 per month in the United States, has not been available to new subscribers since last year. In its early 2024 earnings call, Netflix announced its intention to retire its Basic plan in some countries where the ads plan has been introduced, starting with Canada and the UK in the second quarter, and then "taking it from there." Netflix said in May that its ad-supported streaming tier has 40 million global monthly active users, up 35 million from a year ago.

Netflix is following through on its plan to phase out its cheapest ad-free tier for existing subscribers. From a report: As spotted in numerous posts on Reddit, Netflix is now asking some basic plan subscribers to choose a new plan to stay subscribed to Netflix. One Reddit user received a notification on their Netflix app, saying "Your last day to watch Netflix is July 13th. Choose a new plan to keep watching." Subscribers paying $11.99 / month for the basic plan will have to choose either the $6.99 ad-supported tier, the $15.49 ad-free tier, or the $22.99 ad-free 4K premium plan.

An anonymous reader shares a report: If you've been mindlessly scrolling through streaming services and have been feeling even less enthused than usual, you may not be entirely to blame: almost all major US streamers have been cutting their original TV output this year, according to new analysis (paywalled) from Variety.

From content monolith Netflix, which released 203 original shows in the first half of 2023 compared with 174 in H1 '24, to Disney+, which has halved its already-slim original TV library as it continues an apparent shift to quality over quantity, shrinkage has hit the streaming world hard. Indeed, of the 8 major streamers Variety studied from Luminate data, only Max and Peacock maintained their output level year over year. All told, the number of original seasons fell 19% at the 8 streamers tracked.

An anonymous reader shares a report: We're at a transitional moment in streaming -- user growth is slowing and major players are looking to consolidate, but the long-promised dream of profitability finally seems within reach (especially if you're Netflix). The perfect time, then, for The New York Times to interview many of the industry's big names -- including Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, Amazon's Prime Video head Mike Hopkins, and IAC chairman Barry Diller -- about what they think comes next.

There seemed to be broad agreement on most of the big themes: More ads, higher prices, and fewer big swings on prestige TV. These changes are all united by the shift towards profitability, rather than growth-at-all-costs. If the initial prices of many streaming services seemed unsustainably low at launch, it turns out they were -- prices have been steadily rising, while the streamers have also introduced more affordable subscription tiers for viewers who are willing to watch ads. In fact, some execs told The Times that streamers will keep raising prices for the ad-free tiers with the aim of pushing more customers to sign up for ad-supported subscriptions instead. The growth of ad-supported streaming could also affect the kinds of movies and shows that get produced, since advertisers generally want to reach a mass audience -- think of the heyday of ad-supported network TV, with its endless shows about doctors and cops, compared to the more ambitious fare on subscription-supported HBO.

Apple is seeking a senior engineer to help build a television and sports app for Android, a sign the company is finally bringing its TV+ service to the rival smartphone platform. From a report: In a job listing published in recent days, Apple said it's looking for someone to lead the development of "fun new features" and "help build an application used by millions to watch and discover TV and sports." The move suggests that the company is looking to gain market share in video streaming -- and is setting aside its rivalry with Android in order to chase additional users. It's rare for Apple to develop software for Google's Android, which competes with its iOS platform. The TV+ service, launched in 2019, is Apple's answer to Netflix or Disney+, and the company has spent heavily on feeding it with original content.

Space.com calls it a movie "adding more combustible material to the inferno of AI unease sweeping the globe." Its director tells them James Cameron was a huge inspiration, saying Atlas "has an Aliens-like vibe because of the grounded, grittiness to it." (You can watch the movie's trailer here...)

But Tom's Guide says "the reviews are just as shocking as the movie's AI." Its "audience score" on Rotten Tomatoes is 55% — but its aggregate score from professional film critics is 16%. The Hollywood Reporter called it "another Netflix movie to half-watch while doing laundry." ("The star plays a data analyst forced to team up with an AI robot in order to prevent an apocalypse orchestrated by a different AI robot...") The site Giant Freakin Robot says "there seems to be a direct correlation between how much money the streaming platform spends on green screen effects and how bad the movie is" (noting the film's rumored budget of $100 million)...

But Tom's Guide defends it as a big-budget sci-fi thriller that "has an interesting premise that makes you think about the potential dangers of AI progression." Our world has always been interested in computers and machines, and the very idea of technology turning against us is unsettling. That's why "Atlas" works as a movie, but professional critics have other things to say. Ross McIndoe from Slant Magazine said: "Atlas seems like a story that should have been experienced with a gamepad in hand...." Todd Gilchrist from Variety didn't enjoy the conventional structure that "Atlas" followed...

However, even though the score is low and the reviews are pretty negative, I don't want to completely bash this movie... If I'm being completely honest, most movies and TV shows nowadays are taken too seriously. The more general blockbusters are supposed to be entertaining and fun, with visually pleasing effects that keep you hooked on the action. This is much like "Atlas", which is a fun watch with an unsettling undertone focused on the dangers of evolving AI...

Being part of the audience, we're supposed to just take it in and enjoy the movie as a casual viewer. This is why I think you should give "Atlas" a chance, especially if you're big into dramatic action sequences and have enjoyed movies like "Terminator" and "Pacific Rim".

Richard Currie reports via The Register: A simple misclick at a London law firm led to a surprise divorce for an unsuspecting couple. An employee at Vardags, self-described specialists in high-net-worth marital breakdowns, opened the wrong file when applying for a divorce in His Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) online portal. With a click more potent than Cupid's arrow, the solicitor "issued a final order of divorce in proceedings between Mrs Williams, the applicant wife, and Mr Williams," court papers [PDF] say.

The digital slip occurred on October 3, and thanks to the system's "now customary speed," as described by Judge Sir Andrew McFarlane, President of the Family Division, marital bonds were finally and totally severed in a mere 21 minutes, less time than most couples spend arguing over what to watch on Netflix. When Vardags realized the blunder two days later, it scrambled to reverse the order. The application was made "without notice to the Husband's solicitors -- the Wife's solicitors considered at the time that this was the correct approach given that the Final Order itself had been made without notice."

In the ensuing legal melee, Mr Williams, previously unaware of his sudden single status, received a letter sent by HMCTS the same day as the accidental divorce, stating that he was no longer married. But it was not until October 11, a week later, that he was formally informed of his bachelorhood by his ex-wife's solicitors. Meanwhile, his solicitors entered the fray, demanding that the case be brought before the President of the Family Division to sort out this matrimonial muddle.

TechCrunch reports this week that Meta "is denying that it gave Netflix access to users' private messages..." The claim references a court filing that emerged as part of the discovery process in a class-action lawsuit over data privacy practices between a group of consumers and Facebook's parent, Meta. The document alleges that Netflix and Facebook had a "special relationship" and that Facebook even cut spending on original programming for its Facebook Watch video service so as not to compete with Netflix, a large Facebook advertiser. It also says that Netflix had access to Meta's "Inbox API" that offered the streamer "programmatic access to Facebook's user's private message inboxes...."

Meta's communications director, Andy Stone, reposted the original X post on Tuesday with a statement disputing that Netflix had been given access to users' private messages. "Shockingly untrue," Stone wrote on X. "Meta didn't share people's private messages with Netflix. The agreement allowed people to message their friends on Facebook about what they were watching on Netflix, directly from the Netflix app. Such agreements are commonplace in the industry...."

Beyond Stone's X post, Meta has not provided further comment. However, The New York Times had previously reported in 2018 that Netflix and Spotify could read users' private messages, according to documents it had obtained. Meta denied those claims at the time via a blog post titled "Facts About Facebook's Messaging Partnerships," where it explained that Netflix and Spotify had access to APIs that allowed consumers to message friends about what they were listening to on Spotify or watching on Netflix directly from those companies' respective apps. This required the companies to have "write access" to compose messages to friends, "read access" to allow users to read messages back from friends, and "delete access," which meant if you deleted a message from the third-party app, it would also delete the message from Facebook.

"No third party was reading your private messages, or writing messages to your friends without your permission. Many news stories imply we were shipping over private messages to partners, which is not correct," the blog post stated. In any event, Messenger didn't implement default end-to-end encryption until December 2023, a practice that would have made these sorts of claims a non-starter, as it wouldn't have left room for doubt.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Do you remember Facebook Watch? Me neither. Mark Zuckerberg's short-lived streaming service never really got off the ground, but court filings unsealed in Meta's antitrust lawsuit claim "Watch" was kneecapped starting in 2018 to protect Zuckerberg's advertising relationship with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. "For nearly a decade, Netflix and Facebook enjoyed a special relationship," said plaintiffs in filings (PDF) made public on Saturday. "It is no great mystery how this close partnership developed, and who was its steward: from 2011-2019, Netflix's then-CEO Hastings sat on Facebook's board and personally directed the companies' relationship"

The filings detail Hastings' uncomfortably close relationship with Meta's upper management, including Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. During these years, Netflix was allegedly granted special access to Facebook users' private message inboxes, among other privileged analytics tools, in exchange for hundred-million-dollar advertising deals. This gave Facebook greater dominance in its all-important ad division, plaintiffs allege, so the company was fine to retreat from Netflix's streaming territory by shuttering Watch. In 2017, Facebook Watch began signing deals to populate its streaming service with original TV Shows from movie stars such as Bill Murray. A year later, the service attempted to license the popular '90s TV show Dawson's Creek. Facebook Watch had meaningful reach on the home screen of the social media platform, and an impressive budget as well. Facebook and Netflix appeared ready to butt heads in the streaming world, and the Netflix cofounder found himself in the middle as a Facebook board member. [...]

Netflix was a large advertiser to Facebook, and plaintiffs allege Zuckerberg shuttered its promising Watch platform for the sake of the greater advertising business. Zuckerberg personally emailed the head of Facebook Watch in May of 2018, Fidji Simo, to tell her their budget was being slashed by $750 million, just two years after Watch's launch, according to court filings. The sudden pivot meant Facebook was now dismantling the streaming business it had spent the last two years growing. During this time period, Netflix increased its ad spend on Facebook to roughly $150 million a year and allegedly entered into agreements for increased data analytics. By early 2019, the ad spend increased to roughly $200 million a year. Hastings left Facebook's board later in 2019.
UPDATE: Meta (Again) Denies Netflix Read Facebook Users' Private Messenger Messages.

"My favorite kind of science fiction involves stories rooted in real science..." writes NPR's reviewer. "[T]here is something special about seeing characters wrestle with concepts closer to our current understanding of how the universe works."

The Verge calls it an "impressive" and "leaner" story than the book, arguing "it's a good one — and very occasionally a great one" that introduces the author's key ideas, though channelling "the book's spirit but not its brilliance."

And Slate calls it a "downright transformative" adaptation, "jettisoning most of the novel's characters and plucking scenes from all three books," while accusing it of "making the trilogy's expansive and philosophical story into something much more pedestrian and digestible."

But Reuters notes there's huge interest in China over this adaptation (by the co-creator of Mem>Game of Thrones) for the first Asian novel to win the Hugo Award for best science fiction novel. "The new series was trending on Chinese social media platform Weibo on Friday," reports Reuters, "with 21 million views so far." (The show came in first on Weibo's "top hot" trend rankings, they add, "despite Netflix being officially inaccessible in China. Chinese viewers would have had to watch the Netflix series from behind a VPN or on a pirate site.")

So what was their verdict? CNN reports Netflix's adaptation "has split opinions in China and sparked online nationalist anger over scenes depicting a violent and tumultuous period in the country's modern history." Among the country's more patriotic internet users, discussions on the adaptation turned political, with some accusing the big-budget American production of making China look bad. The show opens with a harrowing scene depicting Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, which consumed China in bloodshed and chaos for a decade from 1966... "Netflix you don't understand 'The Three Body Problem' or Ye Wenjie at all!" read a comment on social media platform Weibo. "You only understand political correctness!"

Others came to the show's defense, saying the scene closely follows depictions in the book — and is a truthful reenactment of history. "History is far more absurd than a TV series, but you guys pretend not to see it," read one comment on Douban, a popular site for reviewing movies, books and music.

Author Liu said in an interview with the New York Times in 2019 that he had originally wanted to open the book with scenes from Mao's Cultural Revolution, but his Chinese publisher worried they would never make it past government censors and buried them in the middle of the narrative. The English version of the book, translated by Ken Liu, put the scenes at the novel's beginning, with the author's blessing... Various other aspects of the show, from its casting and visual effects to the radical changes to the story's original setting and characters, also attracted the ire of Chinese social media users. Many compared it to a Chinese television adaptation released last year — a much lengthier and closer retelling of the book that ran to 30 episodes and was highly rated on Chinese review platforms.

The Netflix adaptation featured an international cast and placed much of the action in present-day London — thus making the story a lot less Chinese.

Netflix's new sci-fi drama Spaceman centers on Czech astronaut Jakub Procházk, described by Polygon as "painfully introverted, emotionally repressed, and above all, quiet... so muted and compressed, he seems like a trauma victim." The film, adapted from the 2017 novel Spaceman of Bohemia written by Czech author Jaroslav KalfaÅ(TM), is a solemn drama in the mold of Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris, or to some degree, Christopher Nolan's Interstellar. The story revolves around Jakub's disintegrating frame of mind after eight months alone in space as he investigates a glowing cosmic phenomenon that's become visible from Earth. Meanwhile, his wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan), heavily pregnant and going through her own breakdown back home, decides to leave Jakub, and his handlers (Isabella Rossellini among them) work to keep him from finding out. And then the giant spider appears, and Jakub worries that he's losing his mind.
CNN says Sandler's deal with Netflix "means pretty much doing whatever he wants, which, in the case of Spaceman, means traveling to the furthest reaches of space as the near-solitary star of a pretentious, message-heavy drama."

You can watch a trailer here. The movie enjoys a "limited theatrical release" this weekend, and will stream on Netflix starting March 1.