dumb

Unless you're a steadfast supporter of regular cable and direct-to-home TV programming and services, you would've have noticed that a lot of new content depends on the Internet. Although you do have access to a wide variety of programming through your regular set-top box, you're missing out if you don't get on board the streaming revolution. Many of the best TV shows and movies are now found online, and often available exclusively via streaming services like Netflix, Hotstar, and Amazon Prime Video. Even if you're sold…

At the 1990 Academy Awards, the nominations for documentary featured a surprising number of actors. Dustin Hoffman lent his voice to a film about the Aids memorial quilt, Joe Mantegna told the tale of one US county’s crack epidemic, while Gregory Peck narrated a biography of chief justice Earl Warren. Fast forward to this year’s ceremony and the actors had gone quiet. With the exception of Riz Ahmed’s dubbing on the English-language version of Flee, the shortlisted films had no booming star narrator. In fact, they had no…

Photo: JEONGHYEON NOH (Shutterstock)Though it had been around for a while before then, 2011 was the year that Twitter first started popping off for all sorts of reasons, and that means brands started taking notice. One of those brands was the toy giant Mattel, which that year released PuppyTweets, a gadget that promised to let your dog take part in the new hotness that was Twitter Dot Com. In practice, PuppyTweets is just a plastic tag hooked up to an associated Twitter account that you, the owner, set up. When then tag…

via Lucasfilm Star Wars fans are discussing the aspects of the franchise they dislike, yet aren’t serious enough to destabilize their fandom. The conversation began in r/StarWars via user –TheForce–, who posted, “What is something about Star Wars you think is dumb, but overlook anyway?” Ironically, the highest upvoted answer is “the fans.” Like a large, diverse country, the Star Wars fanbase scrutinizes—and is scrutinized for—every action, no matter how innocuous or insignificant. In as much as they’re annoyed…

Elon Musk hasn’t tweeted in 10 days, but his Twitter account is once again news because time is a flat circle. This is why we must now scrunch our faces, cock our heads to one side and strain to recall a weed joke shared by the chief executive on August 7, 2018. Otherwise, we’ll never understand why activist investors are shouting for the Securities and Exchange Commission to intervene in Tesla’s shrinking board. On that fateful day, Musk said he was “considering taking Tesla private at $420”…

The Jurassic World: Dominion film is coming out Friday and ahead of its release, reviews have started to trickle out like a mosquito who bravely managed to escape from sap, and, for the moment, the consensus is that extinction may be needed now. Over at The Hollywood Reporter, David Rooney writes in his review today that fans of the series deserve better, what is onscreen appears to be presented with the notion that audiences have the attention span of insects, and the human villain of the piece is ultimately a…

You just want to turn on your TV and play a video game or use your Apple TV or Roku to watch a favorite show, but any time you have to tinker with your TV's interface, there are ads everywhere. Ads in the bar that shows the inputs, ads on the screen where you have apps installed--it feels like they're everywhere. It's almost impossible to get a "dumb" TV these days and still have anything like modern features. There are, however, ways to interfere with the constant assault of ads on your devices, and we…

At this point of his career, The Dwayne Johnson Movie has become a subgenre unto itself, regardless of which methods he’s using to save the world. San Andreas ticks virtually every single one of them, delivering exactly what audiences were expecting, for better or worse. Does he play a current or former member of the law enforcement or military? Los Angeles Fire Department helicopter rescue pilot Ray Gaines says yes. Are some of his regular collaborators involved behind the scenes? The disaster epic marked Johnson’s…

The US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has demonstrated the ability of air-dropped bombs to sink ships with the effectiveness of a submarine-launched torpedo at a fraction of the cost. On April 28, an F-15E Strike Eagle fighter sank a full-scale vessel in the Gulf of Mexico using a single 2,000-lb (907-kg) "Quicksink" GBU-31 Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM).Attacking ships with bombs isn't new. In 1921, US Army Brigadier General Billy Mitchell started a revolution in naval warfare when he staged a test bomber…