Alien: Romulus director Fede Ãlvarez "briefly dropped into an Alien franchise subreddit this week to chat with fans about his new sequel," reports Deadline. "But the moderators weren't having it, flagging Ãlvarez as an imposter in a notice that he is 'permanently banned' from the subreddit." The moderator shared an update that Ãlvarez "was immediately reinstated and had a very friendly conversation with us. Awesome guy." They also shared the filmmaker's response. "I'm sorry, just found it hilarious," wrote Ãlvarez. "My bad. Not harm done. Thanks again for such great work moderating my favorite subreddit."
Fangoria notes this might not be the last Alien movie from director Alvarez: Talking with The Hollywood Reporter earlier this week, the Evil Dead and Don't Breathe director teased that ideas are in the pipeline for an Alien: Romulus sequel, which would — if it comes to fruition — be the eighth instalment in the legendary sci-fi horror franchise."
The Hollywood Reporter also notes that Ash, the "calculating synthetic character" from the original 1979 movie Alien (played by the late Ian Holm) got a kind of reprise in 2024 with another character named Rook: According to Ãlvarez, Rook was a collaborative decision with [Ridley] Scott, who also wanted to see another version of the artificial person he introduced 45 years ago. The Romulus team then received approval from Holm's estate, and using the English actor's headcast from The Lord of the Rings as a foundation, Legacy Effects built Rook's torso and head as an animatronic. The practical character was then enhanced by CG and deepfake AI technology for certain shots as needed... "There might be some deepfake in the eyes because it's the best when it comes to creating the likeness of the eyes, but it's a whole bag of tricks from 1970s and 1980s technology to technology from yesterday."
The article also notes one horrifying plot twist "received some respectful opposition to this unsettling choice from 20th Century and Disney, but that's precisely when [director Alvarez] knew he was on the right course." "If you're given an Alien movie by a corporation that is owned by Disney and they immediately say, 'Yeah, let's make it,' then you are failing somehow. So we really pushed it to the limit, and I'm glad we did."
Alvarez's social media feed also explores what Alien: Romulus would look like as trading cards or as 1950s comic book, shares posts from the movie's poster designer, and admits that "everything I do is influenced by Terminator / Alien / Predator."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Europe's aviation safety body is working with the airline industry to counter a danger posed by interference with GPS signals -- now seen as a growing threat to the safety of air travel. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) held a recent workshop on incidents where people spoofed and jammed satellite navigation systems, and concluded these pose a "significant challenge" to safety. Mitigating the risks posed by such actions will require measures to be enacted in the short term as well as medium and long term timescales, the two bodies said. They want to start by sharing information about the incidents and any potential remedies.

In Europe, this information sharing will occur through the European Occurrence Reporting scheme and EASA's Data4Safety program. Given the global nature of the problem, a broader solution would be better, but this would have to be pursued at a later date, EASA said. Inevitably, another of the measures involves retaining traditional navigation aids to ensure there is a conventional backup for GNSS navigation, while a third calls for guidance from aircraft manufacturers to airlines and other aircraft operators to ensure they know how to manage jamming and spoofing situations. As a further measure, EASA said it will inform all relevant stakeholders, which includes airlines, air navigation service providers, airports and the air industry, about recorded incidents.

Interference with global navigation systems can take one of two forms: jamming requires nothing more than transmitting a radio signal strong enough to drown out those from GPS satellites, while spoofing is more insidious and involves transmitting fake signals that fool the receiver into calculating its position incorrectly. According to EASA, jamming and spoofing incidents have increasingly threatened the integrity of location services across Eastern Europe and the Middle East in recent years. [...] The IATA said that coordinated action is needed, including sharing of safety data and a commitment from nations to retain traditional navigation systems as backup.

Long-time Slashdot reader swell shared Scientific American's report on the quest for neuromorphic chips: The human brain is an amazing computing machine. Weighing only three pounds or so, it can process information a thousand times faster than the fastest supercomputer, store a thousand times more information than a powerful laptop, and do it all using no more energy than a 20-watt lightbulb. Researchers are trying to replicate this success using soft, flexible organic materials that can operate like biological neurons and someday might even be able to interconnect with them. Eventually, soft "neuromorphic" computer chips could be implanted directly into the brain, allowing people to control an artificial arm or a computer monitor simply by thinking about it.

Like real neurons — but unlike conventional computer chips — these new devices can send and receive both chemical and electrical signals. "Your brain works with chemicals, with neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin. Our materials are able to interact electrochemically with them," says Alberto Salleo, a materials scientist at Stanford University who wrote about the potential for organic neuromorphic devices in the 2021 Annual Review of Materials Research. Salleo and other researchers have created electronic devices using these soft organic materials that can act like transistors (which amplify and switch electrical signals) and memory cells (which store information) and other basic electronic components.

The work grows out of an increasing interest in neuromorphic computer circuits that mimic how human neural connections, or synapses, work. These circuits, whether made of silicon, metal or organic materials, work less like those in digital computers and more like the networks of neurons in the human brain.... An individual neuron receives signals from many other neurons, and all these signals together add up to affect the electrical state of the receiving neuron. In effect, each neuron serves as both a calculating device — integrating the value of all the signals it has received — and a memory device: storing the value of all of those combined signals as an infinitely variable analog value, rather than the zero-or-one of digital computers.

Sarah Whitten writes via CNBC: The coronavirus pandemic has fundamentally changed the entertainment industry. With movie theaters shuttered, studios have been forced to either delay their film releases or turn to on-demand and streaming options to present their content to audiences. While cinemas are preparing to reopen this month, eagerly awaiting new films in July, it's still unclear if there is enough demand to keep these businesses profitable. [...] Industry members worry that if films begin to shift towards on-demand and streaming that all of the metrics that were used to gauge success could disappear.

It's easy to figure out if a film is successful because studios give out all of the necessary information. You know the production budget, can ascertain that the marketing budget was about half of the production budget and then you see the box office receipts. If the box office numbers are larger than the production and marketing budgets, then the movie was a success. If that number is smaller, it was a flop. There's even data about how many screens a film was shown on in a given weekend and the average that film made per screen. These metrics not only help studios determine the profitability of a movie, but can also aid in its marketing. [...] In the world of streaming, and even on-demand and home video, that level of transparency is not present. There are very few sources that track the home entertainment market and even fewer companies that share their data on the subject.

Of course, the model for subscriptions services is very different from that of theatrical releases. Consumers pay up front a flat fee for a month's worth of content on a service like Netflix or Disney+, whereas theaters charge per view. So, it's difficult to assign a monetary amount to a movie released on a streaming service. The strongest measure of success for streaming services is total number of subscribers. This figure can be used to persuade content makers to work with one platform instead of another because of the potential reach they could have with an audience. It's not a guarantee that all of those subscribers will watch the content, but they will be exposed to it. [...] [However] it's very difficult to determine if someone signed up for a service just to watch one program. The report notes that Netflix counts a "view" as someone who chose to watch a program for at least two minutes, which is "pretty useless," according to Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter. "Who cares how many people watched a particular movie (other than them and the press)? It doesn't translate to revenue unless the movie is the reason to join the streaming service."

"Netflix gauges the success of shows by calculating how many viewers it was getting compared with the cost of the show," reports CNBC. "Without viewership data from any of Netflix's shows, it's difficult to determine how big of an audience a show on the platform needs to achieve in order to be considered viable by the company."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: Advertisers on Facebook are able to completely rewrite the displayed headline for news stories, CBC News has learned, opening the door for potential disinformation to spread on the platform while using news media branding as cover. When placing an ad on the platform, one option is to include a link to a website, including links to news stories. The news story's real headline is auto-filled into the ad copy, but advertisers have the option to rewrite the headline. However, the article's website address still appears in the ad, giving the impression that the headline is the one written by the article's author. This policy raises the possibility that it could be abused by political parties or third-party advertisers during the federal election campaign. The article provides an example where the UK's Conservative Party ran an ad containing a BBC article whose headline was, "14 billion pound cash boost for schools." However, the actual BBC story is headlined "School spending: Multi-billion pound cash boost announced," and instead put the number at 7.1 billion pounds, criticizing the government's use of 14 billion pound figure as not the usual way of calculating spending.

Facebook is aware of the issue and said it is planning changes. "We have a system that gives publishers control over how their links appear on Facebook. We're working to put additional safeguards in place by the end of this year to make sure advertisers don't misuse this tool," said a Facebook spokesperson in an email to CBC News.

"The fight for space internet supremacy is on," writes the consumer policy expert at BroadbandNow, calculating the benefits of these additional broadband competitors: Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites for broadband internet access are beginning to display signs of real potential. Recently, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin pulled back the curtain on its space intentions by announcing Project Kuiper, a 3,236-satellite constellation. Additionally, Elon Musk's SpaceX Starlink recently launched a rocket containing 60 satellites from Florida's Cape Canaveral... Both players, alongside others like OneWeb, are spending billions in space in hopes of making further billions annually once the satellites go into service for consumers in the US and around the globe. SpaceX will initially launch service to North America, but once its full array is in place, the company has plans to roll the service out across the entire planet. Ostensibly, anywhere with access to open skies could be covered. Amazon has global aspirations for its project as well...

The arrival of this technology is likely to drive down monthly internet prices for hundreds-of-millions of Americans... According to further analysis of our market-wide pricing database covering plans and pricing from more than 2,000 ISPs, the average "lowest available monthly price" for the estimated 104 million Americans with only one wired broadband provider is $68. For the 75 million Americans with two choices, that average lowest price drops to $59. For the lucky 15 million Americans with five or more choices, it's $47. Because LEO technology will ostensibly be available everywhere in the US, as well as globally, this indicates the powerful influence the entrance of the technology will have on internet prices as new markets gain access to an additional true "broadband" option and competition heats-up.

Our projections show that that low-latency, LEO satellite internet is likely to have a similar impact on average regional prices as wired, low-latency wired providers. Extrapolating this additional competitor across all US households, the introduction of LEO satellite internet could save Americans over $30 billion... Shortly after, these same transformative benefits could spread to countries across the globe, permanently altering the landscape of the internet as we know it.

When India blew apart one of its satellites orbiting Earth last week, it created hundreds of pieces of orbital debris, and some of those pieces are large enough and high enough to pose a potential threat to the International Space Station, NASA says. "That is a terrible, terrible thing to create an event that sends debris in an apogee that goes above the International Space Station," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said, referring to the debris' highest point in orbit. "And that kind of activity is not compatible with the future of human space flight that we need to see happen." NPR reports: In calculating the Indian test's potential impact last week, he said NASA determined that the risk of small debris hitting the space station was increased by 44 percent over a period of 10 days. "It's unacceptable, and NASA needs to be very clear about what its impact to us is," Bridenstine said, discussing space debris and India's anti-satellite test at a town hall event Monday.

As he spoke about the heightened risk, the NASA administrator also emphasized that both the space station and the astronauts aboard it are safe. The station can be maneuvered out of harm's way if needed, he added. But another danger, he said, is that "when one country does it, then other countries feel like they have to do it, as well." "The good thing is, it's low enough in Earth orbit that over time, this will all dissipate," Bridenstine said on Monday. Those pieces are expected to burn up as they re-enter Earth's atmosphere. India's intercept of its own satellite created 400 pieces of orbital debris, Bridenstine said. "What we are tracking right now -- objects big enough to track, we're talking about 10 centimeters [4 inches] or bigger -- about 60 pieces have been tracked," he said. "Of those 60, we know that 24 of them are going above the apogee of the International Space Station."

Koreantoast writes: It's no secret that governments across the globe have been taking advantage of new technologies to create stronger surveillance systems on citizens. While many have focused on the actions of intelligence agencies, local police departments continue to create more sophisticated systems as well. A recent article highlights one new system deployed by the Fresno, California police department, Intrado's Beware. The system scours police data, public records, social media, and public Internet data to provide a "threat level" of a potential suspect or residency. The software is part of a broader trend of military counterinsurgency tools and algorithms being repurposed for civil use. While these tools can help police manage actively dangerous situations, providing valuable intel when responding to calls, the analysis also raises serious civil liberties questions both in privacy (where the data comes from) and accuracy (is the data valid, was the analysis done correctly). Also worrying are the long term ramifications to such technologies: there has already been some speculation about "citizen scores," could a criminal threat score be something similar? At very least, as Matt Cagle of the ACLU noted, "there needs to be a meaningful debate... there needs to be safeguards and oversight."

Recently the founder of the Mars Settlement Research Organization and author of The International Mars Research Station Shaun Moss agreed to sit down and answer any questions you had about space exploration and colonizing Mars. Below you will find his answers to your questions.

Michael J. Ross writes "In the past, a Web developer tasked with building an online store would most likely do so using a dedicated e-commerce system, instead of a content management system (CMS), because even though the leading CMSs offered more features and flexibility, they did not provide robust e-commerce capabilities, such as product listings, bulk import, pricing in multiple currencies, a built-in shopping cart, and integration with tax and shipping information sources. Since that time, e-commerce systems have become more like CMSs, by adding features such as blogging and forums. At the same time, CMSs are continually expanding their e-commerce potential, usually in the form of developers adding plug-ins. For developers using Drupal, there traditionally have been two major e-commerce plug-ins (known as "modules"): Ubercart and e-Commerce. The former has emerged as the leader, and is explored in Drupal E-commerce with Ubercart 2.x." Read on for the rest of Michael's review.

Ben Crowell writes: "The economics of college textbooks is goofy, because the person who picks the book isn't the person who has to pay for it. Combined with the increasing consolidation of the publishing industry, this has blown the lid off of textbook prices over the last decade. But remember what the World-Wide Web was basically about before the Dot-Com Detour? It wasn't about marketing dog food, it was about democratizing publishing. Many textbook authors these days are using the internet to bypass the traditional publishing system, making their books available for free downloading. Although MIT's Open Courseware project gets most of the press, the movement started before that, and is going strong. In this article, I've reviewed five calculus textbooks that are either free as in speech or free as in beer." Read on for Crowell's take on each of the five books he's selected -- and pass the review on to any math teachers you know.

Dan writes "OpenBSD's Theo De Raadt provides an update on his team's efforts to remove potential buffer overflows within OpenBSD code by always calculating what the bounds of an operation are. They have been going through the source tree cleaning out all calls to sprintf(), strcpy(), and strcat(). Theo says that they have removed (replaced) approximately 2000 occurences of these functions." (The same buffer overrun-squashing effort was mentioned earlier this month.)

Reader stern contributed this review of Sizing Up a Start-Up: Decoding the New Frontier of Career Opportunities, and it could just save you a few seconds worth of the exorbitant IPO salary you hope starts flowing soon. Or thought of another way, it could save you several days worth if you're working on campus through the student employment office.

bob asks: "I work for an idependant agency of the US goverment. My group supports about 350 people, or about 20% of the agency's staff. Most of our users spend their days crunching enormous piles of numbers, calculating models, simulations, projections and other scientific type stuff. We were strictly a Unix (with some mainframe) shop from about 1985-1995, when agency- (and industry-for that matter) wide "standards" forced us to implement NT desktop machines so our people could run things like MS Office and PeopleSoft.However, with a bunch of work and with extensive use of various tools like Samba and Hummingbird's eXceed, we were able to make this change without significant damage to our Unix environment. In fact, this has been working pretty smoothly and we had begun to evaluate the practicality of replacing most of our NT servers with Linux machines, contingent on the Samba ACL code reaching a reasonable level of stability. Sadly, we now are faced with what, on first glance, would appear to be a larger threat: Active Directory."

Tom Christiansen , perl god, writer, and the guy that once kicked me out of #Perl for asking a question about sockets has written us another excellent feature. This one talks about modern keyboards, and the problem with them. It's an entertaining piece with gratuitous Who references so it's all good by me.