Phictly’s new app brings people together over their favorite books and TV shows
Phictly helps fans find niche clubs for their favorite books, shows, and movies, offering intimate, spoiler-safe communities with flexible pacing and tracker tools.
Entertainment
Wicked: For Good is a soaring second act that brings it all full circle
When Jon M. Chu first announced that his big-screen Wicked adaptation would be split into two parts, there was concern about whether the original musical’s second act could be fashioned into a fully fleshed-out movie. Compared to the stage show’s lengthy first act, where all the musical’s most recognizable songs are front-loaded, the second act […]
Bethesda’s $300 Pip-Boy 3000 replica can measure (harmless) radiation
Bethesda is now selling a highly-detailed wearable replica of the Pip-Boy 3000 from Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. It was designed using the 3D models of the accessory in the games to make it as accurate as possible, and is available for preorder now for $299.99, with shipping expected to start as early as […]
The music industry is all in on AI
Two years ago, “BBL Drizzy” was the AI music shot heard around the world: a song with vocals that sounded like Drake bubbled up from nowhere and launched what was shaping up to be a battle of artistry, likeness, and of course, copyright. The big three labels – Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment, […]
Amazon is using AI to create video recaps of its biggest streaming shows
Amazon Prime Video is testing another new generative AI-powered feature to help catch you up on a show you’ve been watching before starting a new season. Video Recaps uses AI to identify a show’s important plot points and create a short but “theatrical-quality” summary video that combines a selection of clips with music, dialogue, and […]
HBO has renewed its Game of Thrones spinoff shows for more seasons
HBO’s latest Game of Thrones prequel series hasn’t even premiered yet, but there are already plans for it to run for at least one more season. Today, HBO announced both A Knight for the Seven Kingdoms and House of the Dragon have been renewed for second and fourth seasons, respectively. In addition to the Game […]
No, typing an AI prompt is not ‘really active’ music creation
Suno, the AI music startup being sued by the big three major labels, the RIAA, and even some indie acts for illegally training its model on copyrighted material, just raised $250 million (which might help pay its legal bills). What caught my eye in the Wall Street Journal article about the funding round and the […]
I’m officially done with YouTube Kids
The details are fuzzy, but I think my husband and I downloaded the YouTube Kids app to our TV sometime in 2022, when between one and three members of the household came down with the flu at the same time. Like countless parents of toddlers before us, we needed something, anything, that would buy us […]
Netflix signs a three year deal to stream MLB live events and games
Today, Major League Baseball announced new media rights deals with ESPN, NBCUniversal, and Netflix that run for the next three seasons. The Netflix deal brings live MLB games to its platform and continues to grow its library of sports programming in an arrangement that Front Office Sports reports is worth about $50 million per year. […]
Demonschool channels Buffy and Persona for delightfully demonic RPG action
In one particularly memorable sequence in Demonschool – the new tactical RPG from Necrosoft that, after a few hiccups, releases on November 19th – I throw a doll at a zombie’s head, dispatch it with a roundhouse kick to the jowls as I watch my friends sweep demons off the floor in vortices of blood, […]