New footage from HBO Max’s 2023 slate teases The Last of Us and more. The next Alien film gets an intriguing code name. Megan Fox has joined S.K. Dale’s new sci-fi thriller. Plus, more teases for Henry Cavill’s final season on The Witcher. Spoilers now!
Warner Bros. has been a very busy studio this year when it comes to situations that feel like they are On Fire All the Time. But few have been tumultuous as the last few weeks and months in the studio’s DC Comics wing of moviemaking, where the arrival of a new leadership team has upended the movie slate as we know it.…
YouTube is ready for some more football. The streaming service has snagged the rights to the NFL Sunday Ticket package, which offers access to out-of-market games that air on FOX and CBS each Sunday. DirecTV, the current home of Sunday Ticket, has held the rights since 1994, but the bundle will move to Google’s streaming service next season.
Apple and Amazon were also believed to be in talks for Sunday Ticket. Apple was reportedly the frontrunner at one point, but it’s said to have dropped out of the race last week, leaving Amazon and Google to duke it out.
Sunday Ticket will be available as an add-on for YouTube TV subscribers or as a standalone option on YouTube Primetime Channels, an à la carte service that debuted last month. YouTube hasn’t revealed how much it will charge for Sunday Ticket yet. Sunday Ticket plans for the 2022 season on DirecTV started at $294.
NFL 👏 Sunday 👏 Ticket 👏 is coming to YouTube Primetime Channels and @YouTubeTV in *2023*. pic.twitter.com/c8sbA25IXw
— YouTube (@YouTube) December 22, 2022
YouTube and the NFL didn’t announce the terms of the deal. According to The Wall Street Journal, YouTube will pay $2 billion per year in a seven-year pact. That’s around $500 million more per season that DirecTV is paying. However, DirecTV is believed to have between 1.5 million and 2 million Sunday Ticket subscribers, and it has been losing money on the package for years.
In a statement, the NFL said it and “YouTube will work together to determine additional ways to support distribution of NFL Sunday Ticket in commercial establishments such as bars and restaurants.” The Journal suggested that could lead to YouTube paying the league another $200 million per year.
The NFL and YouTube have been partners for several years, dating back to the debut of the league’s main channel on the platform in 2015. Two years ago, YouTube TV subscribers gained access to NFL Network and NFL RedZone. Those will stay on YouTube TV under the terms of the expanded pact. Additionally, the two sides will grant some YouTube creators access to certain NFL tentpole events for content opportunities.
The Sunday Ticket agreement is a major coup for Google. YouTube TV is already home to other sports networks, such as those from the NBA and MLB, but having exclusive rights to a bundle that offers many out-of-market NFL games is likely to draw more users to the streaming service. Amazon Prime Video has an 11-year deal to stream Thursday Night Football games that started this season. Apple is pushing further into live sports as well, with a 10-year deal to stream every Major League Soccer game via Apple TV starting in 2023.
The rapper reportedly told investigators that politics wasn’t a reason for his presence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
This past year was one of dire climate warnings, from bombshell IPCC reports to a summer of floods and fires to disturbing droughts across the world. And yet, entrenched interests were still working against climate action as hard as ever in 2022.
Google has announced that two of its latest privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), including one that blurs objects in a video, will be provided to anyone for free via open source. The new tools are part of Google’s Protected Computing initiative designed to transform “how, when and where data is processed to technically ensure its privacy and safety,” the company said.
The first is an internal project called Magritte, now out on Github, which uses machine learning to detect objects and apply a blur as soon as they appear on screen. It can disguise arbitrary objects like license plates, tattoos and more. “This code is especially useful for video journalists who want to provide increased privacy assurances,” Google wrote in the blog. “By using this open-source code, videographers can save time in blurring objects from a video, while knowing that the underlying ML algorithm can perform detection across a video with high-accuracy.”
The other with the unwieldy name “Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) Transpiler, allows developers to perform computations on encrypted data without being able to access personally identifiable information. Google says it can help industries like financial services, healthcare and government, “where a robust security guarantee around the processing of sensitive data is of highest importance.”
Google notes that PETs are starting to enter the mainstream after being mostly an academic exercise. The White House recently touted the technology, saying “it will allow researchers, physicians, and others permitted access to gain insights from sensitive data without ever having access to the data itself.” Google noted that both the US and UK governments are held a contest this year to develop PET solutions around financial crime and public health emergencies.
“One of my triggers, I’ve discovered, is holding onto gifts. As a result, gift-giving holidays like Christmas can be a minefield.”
Cup Noodle: I can’t tell you how many I’ve eaten in my life, but if you take my college years into account, it has to be well over a million. Okay, maybe not that many, but definitely in the hundreds. And to celebrate the food, Nissin teamed up with Bandai to create this 1:1 scale model Cup Noodle (affiliate link). I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.
The model contains over 50 pieces to assemble, all of which were created using 3D scans of an actual Cup Noodle. I appreciate that because realism is important when I’m considering a food model to build. I mean, if I don’t end up with something I can’t convince a niece or nephew to take a bite out of, what’s the purpose?
Was I feeling so inspired by this post that I drove to the grocery store for a Cup Noodle to have for lunch? Yes. Did I also swing by Taco Bell on the way home because I knew a Cup Noodle wouldn’t fill me up? Also yes. At least I’m honest with myself.
South Korea’s top spy agency revealed on Thursday that state-sponsored North Korean hackers had stolen $1.2 billion in cryptocurrency and other digital assets from targets around the world over the last five years.
This story was originally published by Grist. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter here.
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