A Pew Research Center survey found that only 53% of U.S. adults went to a movie theater in the past year, while 7% said they've never seen a movie in a theater at all. "The findings reflected a domestic box office still fighting to regain its footing since the COVID-19 pandemic, when ticket sales collapsed 81% in 2020 due to theater closures," reports Variety. From the report: In 2025, moviegoers in the U.S. and Canada bought 769.2 million tickets, less than half of the all-time peak of roughly 1.6 billion tickets sold in 2002, according to data from Nash Information Services. However, an August 2025 study field by NRG/National Research Group showed that 77% of Americans ages 12-74 went to see at least one movie in a theater in the previous 12 months.

Box office revenue peaked at an inflation-adjusted $16.4 billion in 2002, and annual ticket revenue held relatively steady through the 2000s and 2010s before falling to under $3 billion in 2020 when theaters closed for months. Last year, U.S. theaters sold just over $9 billion worth of tickets, per media analytics firm Comscore. The number represents a recovery, but nowhere near a full one, as ticket sales have been lagging around 20% below pre-pandemic levels.

China launched an uncrewed Shenzhou 22 spacecraft to serve as an emergency lifeboat for three astronauts aboard the Tiangong space station after a docked return craft was found to have a cracked window likely caused by space debris. "A Long March 2F rocket fired its engines and lifted off with the Shenzhou 22 spacecraft, carrying cargo instead of a crew, at 11:11 pm EST Monday (04:11 UTC Tuesday)," reports Ars Technica. "The spacecraft docked with the Tiangong station nearly 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the Earth about three-and-a-half hours later." From the report: Chinese engineers worked fast to move up the launch of the Shenzhou 22, originally set to fly next year. On November 4, astronauts discovered one of the two crew ferry ships docked to the Tiangong station had a damaged window, likely from an impact with a small fragment of space junk. [...] Now, 20 days after the saga began, the Tiangong outpost again has a lifeboat for its long-term residents. Astronauts Zhang Lu, Fu Wei, and Zhang Hongzhang will return to Earth on the Shenzhou 22 spacecraft next year, soon after the arrival of their three replacements.

The Tiangong astronauts will head outside the station on a spacewalk to inspect the damaged window on Shenzhou 20. Eventually, Shenzhou 20 will depart Tiangong and reenter the atmosphere with cargo. Assuming a smooth landing, Chinese engineers will have an opportunity to get a closer look at the damage on the ground to inform the design of future spacecraft. A preliminary assessment of the window indicates the crack is in the outermost layer of heat-insulating glass in Shenzhou 20's porthole window, according to Chinese state media. Engineers on the ground conducted simulations and wind tunnel ablation tests to determine whether the window might fail during reentry. "The results showed that the cracks would still propagate further," reported CCTV, China's government-run television network. "We held review meeting, and everyone agreed that ensuring the safe return of the astronauts was too risky with the glass damaged," Zhou said.

While this crew is just one month into their planned six-month expedition, an emergency could force them to leave the station and return home at any time. Although remote, another collision with space junk, a major systems failure, or a medical emergency involving one of the astronauts could trigger an evacuation. That's why Chinese officials wanted to quickly launch Shenzhou 22 to give the crew a ticket home.The International Space Station follows the same policy, with SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft and Russian Soyuz ships serving as lifeboats until their crews' scheduled return to Earth.

"Maybe you've heard that artificial intelligence is a bubble poised to burst," writes a Washington Post technology columnist. "Maybe you have heard that it isn't. (No one really knows either way, but that won't stop the bros from jabbering about it constantly.)"

"But I can confidently tell you that the money being thrown around for AI is so huge that numbers have lost all meaning." The companies pouring money in are so rich and so power-hungry (in multiple meanings of that term) that our puny human brains cannot really comprehend. So let's try to give some meaning and context to the stratospheric numbers in AI. Is it a bubble? Eh, who knows. But it is completely bonkers. In just the past year, the four richest companies developing AI — Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta — have spent roughly $360 billion combined for big-ticket projects, which included building AI data centers and stuffing them with computer chips and equipment, according to my analysis of financial disclosures.... How do companies pay for the enormous sums they are lavishing on AI? Mostly, these companies make so much money that they can afford to go bananas...

Eight of the world's top 10 most valuable companies are AI-centric or AI-ish American corporate giants — Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Broadcom, Meta and Tesla. That's according to tallies from S&P Global Market Intelligence based on the total price of the companies' stock held by investors. My analysis of the S&P data shows that the collective worth of those eight giants, $23 trillion, is more than the value of the next 96 most valuable U.S. companies put together, which includes many still very rich names such as JPMorgan, Walmart, Visa and ExxonMobil. No. 1 on that list, the AI computer chip seller Nvidia, last week become the first company in history to reach a stock market value of $5 trillion. That alone was more than the value of entire stock markets in most countries, Bloomberg News reported, other than the five biggest (in the U.S., China, Japan, Hong Kong and India)...

All the announced or under-construction data centers for powering AI would consume roughly as much electricity as 44 million households in the United States if they run full tilt, according to a recent analysis by the Barclays investment bank as reported by the Financial Times. For context, that's nearly one-third of the total number of residential housing units in the entire country, according to U.S. Census Bureau housing estimates for 2024.

According to a new study, almost half of America's new college graduates are winding up in jobs they didn't need to go to college to get. CBS News reports: If a graduate's first job is in a low-paying field or out-of-line with a worker's interests, it could pigeonhole them into an undesirable role or industry that's hard to escape, according to a new study (PDF) from The Burning Glass Institute and the Strada Institute for the Future of Work. Another study from the HEA Group found that a decade after enrolling in college, attendees of 1 in 4 higher education programs are earning less than $32,000 -- the median annual income for high school graduates. A college degree, in itself, is not a ticket to a higher-paying job, the study shows.

"Getting a college degree is viewed as the ticket to the American dream," said [Burning Glass CEO Matt Sigelman], "and it turns out that it's a bust for half of students." The single greatest determinant of post-graduation employment prospects, according to the study, is a college student's major, or primary focus of study. It can be even more important than the type of institution one attends. Choosing a career-oriented major like nursing, as opposed to criminal justice, gives graduates a better shot at actually using, and getting compensated for the skills they acquire. Just 23% of nursing students are underemployed, versus 68% of criminal justice majors. However, focusing on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects is not a guarantee of college-level employment and high wages, the study found. [...]

Many college graduates remain underemployed even 10 years after college, the study found. That may be because employers seeking college-level skills also tend to focus on job candidates' recent work experience, placing more emphasis on the latest jobs held by candidates who have spent years in the workforce, versus a degree that was earned a decade prior. "If you come out of school and work for a couple of years as waiter in a restaurant and apply for a college-level job, the employer will look at that work experience and not see relevance," Sigelman said.

Rotten Tomatoes celebrated its 25th year of assigning scores to movies based on their aggregate review. Now Vulture writes that Rotten Tomatoes "can make or break" movies, "with implications for how films are perceived, released, marketed, and possibly even green-lit". But unfortuately, the site "is also erratic, reductive, and easily hacked."

Vulture tells the story of a movie-publicity company contacting "obscure, often self-published critics" to say the film's teams "feel like it would benefit from more input from different critics" — while making undisclosed payments of $50 or more.) A critic asking if it's okay to pan the movie was informed that "super nice" critics move their bad reviews onto sites not included in Rotten Tomatoes scores.

Vulture says after bringing this to the site's attention, Rotten Tomatoes "delisted a number of the company's movies from its website and sent a warning to writers who reviewed them." But is there a larger problem? Filmmaker Paul Schrader even opines that "Audiences are dumber. Normal people don't go through reviews like they used to. Rotten Tomatoes is something the studios can game. So they do...." A third of U.S. adults say they check Rotten Tomatoes before going to the multiplex, and while movie ads used to tout the blurbage of Jeffrey Lyons and Peter Travers, now they're more likely to boast that a film has been "Certified Fresh...."

Another problem — and where the trickery often begins — is that Rotten Tomatoes scores are posted after a movie receives only a handful of reviews, sometimes as few as five, even if those reviews may be an unrepresentative sample. This is sort of like a cable-news network declaring an Election Night winner after a single county reports its results. But studios see it as a feature, since, with a little elbow grease, they can sometimes fool people into believing a movie is better than it is.

Here's how. When a studio is prepping the release of a new title, it will screen the film for critics in advance. It's a film publicist's job to organize these screenings and invite the writers they think will respond most positively. Then that publicist will set the movie's review embargo in part so that its initial Tomatometer score is as high as possible at the moment when it can have maximal benefits for word of mouth and early ticket sales... [I]n February, the Tomatometer score for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania debuted at 79 percent based on its first batch of reviews. Days later, after more critics had weighed in, its rating sank into the 40s. But the gambit may have worked. Quantumania had the best opening weekend of any movie in the Ant-Man series, at $106 million. In its second weekend, with its rottenness more firmly established, the film's grosses slid 69 percent, the steepest drop-off in Marvel history.

In studios' defense, Rotten Tomatoes' hastiness in computing its scores has made it practically necessary to cork one's bat. In a strategic blunder in May, Disney held the first screening of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny at Cannes, the world's snootiest film festival, from which the first 12 reviews begot an initial score of 33 percent. "What they should've done," says Publicist No. 1, "was have simultaneous screenings in the States for critics who might've been more friendly." A month and a half later, Dial of Destiny bombed at the box office even though friendly critics eventually lifted its rating to 69 percent. "They had a low Rotten Tomatoes score just sitting out there for six weeks before release, and that was deadly," says a third publicist.

Subscribers to "NFL Sunday Ticket" can watch broadcasts of every Sunday game of American football. But for access next season, "fans will have to Google it..." warns the Associated Press — because Thursday the football league announced plans to distribute their game package on YouTube TV and YouTube Primetime Channels.

Google beat out both Apple and Amazon by offering over $2 billion a year for 7 years — but Yahoo Finance believes it's more about drawing attention to YouTube's streaming TV services. "Don't expect the package to be profitable, one analyst warned." "They're not making money on this — this is a loss leader," Michael Pachter, managing director of equity research at Wedbush, told Yahoo Finance Live, referencing YouTube TV's current price point of $64.99. "I don't think they make a penny at that level...."

"It's an extremely expensive package of content," Tim Nollen, analyst at Macquarie Group, previously told Yahoo Finance Live, noting the Sunday Ticket package was not a profitable service for DirecTV [which since 1994 has held the exclusive broadcast rights in the U.S.]

[...] YouTube TV has more than 5 million subscribers and trial users as of July. "Five million subscribers is just not enough," Pachter stressed. "Even if all 5 million pay the $400 bucks a year...they're going to barely cover their costs." Still, despite the lack of profitability and sky-high price tag, Pachter noted YouTube might be best positioned to take advantage of the package, especially as the demand for live sports escalates. "I think they can be smart about how they carve up the content," Pachter said, suggesting the platform could more easily sell games to bars and restaurants.

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

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

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

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

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

On Wednesday Phoronix cited a blog post by C++ game developer Malte Skarupke claiming his spinlocks experiments had discovered the Linux kernel had a scheduler issue affecting developers bringing games to Linux for Google Stadia.

Linus Torvalds has now responded: The whole post seems to be just wrong, and is measuring something completely different than what the author thinks and claims it is measuring.

First off, spinlocks can only be used if you actually know you're not being scheduled while using them. But the blog post author seems to be implementing his own spinlocks in user space with no regard for whether the lock user might be scheduled or not. And the code used for the claimed "lock not held" timing is complete garbage.

It basically reads the time before releasing the lock, and then it reads it after acquiring the lock again, and claims that the time difference is the time when no lock was held. Which is just inane and pointless and completely wrong...

[T]he code in question is pure garbage. You can't do spinlocks like that. Or rather, you very much can do them like that, and when you do that you are measuring random latencies and getting nonsensical values, because what you are measuring is "I have a lot of busywork, where all the processes are CPU-bound, and I'm measuring random points of how long the scheduler kept the process in place".

And then you write a blog-post blamings others, not understanding that it's your incorrect code that is garbage, and is giving random garbage values...

You might even see issues like "when I run this as a foreground UI process, I get different numbers than when I run it in the background as a batch process". Cool interesting numbers, aren't they?

No, they aren't cool and interesting at all, you've just created a particularly bad random number generator...

[Y]ou should never ever think that you're clever enough to write your own locking routines.. Because the likelihood is that you aren't (and by that "you" I very much include myself -- we've tweaked all the in-kernel locking over decades, and gone through the simple test-and-set to ticket locks to cacheline-efficient queuing locks, and even people who know what they are doing tend to get it wrong several times).

There's a reason why you can find decades of academic papers on locking. Really. It's hard.
"It really means a lot to me that Linus responded," the blogger wrote later, "even if the response is negative." They replied to Torvalds' 1,500-word post on the same mailing list -- and this time received a 1900-word response arguing "you did locking fundamentally wrong..." The fact is, doing your own locking is hard. You need to really understand the issues, and you need to not over-simplify your model of the world to the point where it isn't actually describing reality any more...

Dealing with reality is hard. It sometimes means that you need to make your mental model for how locking needs to work a lot more complicated...

Ticketmaster is turning to new technology to help fight ticket fraud. The ticketing giant today unveiled its next-generation digital tickets, "Safetix," which are tied to the ticket holder's mobile device through an encrypted barcode that automatically refreshes every few seconds. From a report: The tickets will also support NFC technology, allowing fans to enter venues through a "tap and go" experience. The company says ticket holders will later this year be able to add their contactless ticket to Apple Wallet, so they can enter a venue with their iPhone or Apple Watch. This will also involve the use of proximity-based technology which automatically selects the tickets when the phone is held near the ticket reader. Apple and Ticketmaster already tested SafeTix this month during the fintech conference Transact, Ticketmaster says.

alphadogg writes "The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference sold out in just two minutes today, blowing away last year's record of two hours. Tickets went on sale today at 10 a.m. PDT, as was announced yesterday, when Apple said its event would be held June 10-14 at Moscone West in San Francisco. Apple WWDC runs neck-and-neck with the annual Google I/O event in the race for hottest tech show. The Google event, slated for May 15-17 at Moscone Center, sold out in 45 minutes this year. While transferring tickets for WWDC is generally not allowed, an ambitious eBay seller is attempting to get $10K for the $1,600 ticket."

We may have to rethink the assumption that Silicon Valley is the hotbed of innovation in which all the world's best and brightest want to work and live. TechCrunch has a piece by an invited expert on the reverse brain drain already evident and growing in the US as Indian, Chinese, and European students and workers in the US plan to return home, or already have. From an extensive interview with Chinese and Indian workers who had already left: "We learned that these workers returned in their prime: the average age of the Indian returnees was 30 and the Chinese was 33. They were really well educated: 51% of the Chinese held masters degrees and 41% had PhDs. Among Indians, 66% held a masters and 12% had PhDs. These degrees were mostly in management, technology, and science. ... What propelled them to return home? Some 84% of the Chinese and 69% of the Indians cited professional opportunities. And while they make less money in absolute terms at home, most said their salaries brought a 'better quality of life' than what they had in the US. ... A return ticket home also put their career on steroids. About 10% of the Indians polled had held senior management jobs in the US. That number rose to 44% after they returned home. Among the Chinese, the number rose from 9% in the US to 36% in China."

Last Thursday you got to Ask Questions of the Green Party's US Presidential nominee, David Cobb He answered 12 of the most highly rated comments. A thanks goes to Mr.Cobb for taking the time to explain some of his positions to us. Read on to see what he has to say.

Tony Stanco, host of the most recent eGovOS meeting is putting together anyone. I've included the salient information below - but one thing of note is that it's going to be an opportunity for open source vendors to hook up with the government. In other conference news, I've got my plane ticket for CALU - woohoo!

Lathiat writes "Well its happening! In the last year or so, the use of IPv6 has been booming with the advent of news web sites, increasingly popular tunnel brokers and simply more users! So I have decided to run a mini-conference prior to Linux.Conf.Au. Linux.conf.au is the Australian Technical Linux Conference - it tours around the Australian cities every year organised by the local LUG in that region - this year it is being hosted by PLUG - The Perth Linux Users Group in Perth, Western Australia. The speaker line up for 2003 is looking to be great and is now available on the website - see http://www.linux.conf.au You can register for the IPv6 mini-conference at http://ipv6.ztsoftware.net/register.php and view the current schedule at http://ipv6.ztsoftware.net/schedule.php The IPv6 mini-conference will be held before the start of linux.conf.au on Monday 20th January. To attend the IPv6 Conference - you must also attend the main conference ... or else ... The IPv6 mini-conference is included with every ticket to linux.conf.au! That's two for the price of one - also running on the second day will be the Linux Gaming Mini Conference - for all your fragging needs - as well as the educationaLinux and Debian mini-conferences. We are also looking for more speakers! We currently have 2-3 slots open for other speakers to participate - so give Trent 'Lathiat' Lloyd an email at lath-ipv6(AT)irc-desk(DOT)net - and check out the website at http://ipv6.ztsoftware.net/ (Its IPv6 Connected too!) Well I hope to see all of you registering, coming along and having a LOT of fun, if you have any question just give me a yell - lath-ipv6(AT)irc-desk(DOT)net. - Trent Lloyd (IPv6 Mini-Conference Organiser)" If you've never been to this conference I highly reccomend it.

So the night after the live action Tick debuted on Fox, we rounded up 10 questions and sent them off to Ben Edlund, the Tick's original creator. Here are his answers. And you can download your official Tick poster (pdf format) here.

Rack up a debt or crime, no matter how minor or how many years ago, and you're tagged for life, sometimes unfairly, sometimes erroneously, in mushrooming, linked databases used by credit and collection agencies, banks, governments, insurers and employers. In recent months, I've been getting a ton of e-mail offering fresh horror stories from people -- many of them students -- snared by information-tracking programs disgorging past debts and misdemeanors to unaccountable, indiscriminate business entities. This is just a taste of how privacy (and dignity) are being eroded by technology. (Note: First of a two-part series.)

Until this week, I've been unconvinced by those who say the U.S. election process needs to be conducted with computers instead of paper, pencil, and punchcards. I've changed my mind. It's time to take a good hard look at our ancient voting system, and bring it up to date. When today's 14-year-olds go to vote in the 2004 elections, will they still take the pencil from the volunteer, slide the punchcard into the molded plastic, and turn the weird knobs? Or will they use the technology they've grown up with?