Chris Hardwick's Blog, page 2054

Amazon, Reddit Join Net Neutrality Day of Action for an Open Internet

You’ve probably heard the term “net neutrality” a lot over the past few months (or even years), and if you’re unsure what it means, or just have a vague idea, we dove into the topic and the current state of it at length a few months ago. Basically, net neutrality means that internet users can’t be charged more for access or have the quality of their online experience hampered based on the sites or services they’re using, where they’re from, and other discriminatory things like that. It’s also good for websites and content providers, whose content can’t be squeezed out or silenced because they don’t have connections with service providers or things like that.

The reason it’s been a point of serious conversation recently, as John Oliver clearly and effectively explained on Last Week Tonight about a month ago, is because regulations that protect net neutrality were recently rolled back. A lot of your favorite websites aren’t thrilled about that, so now they’re banding together in hopes that they can inspire some change or at least bring awareness to the issue. Companies like Amazon, Reddit, Vimeo and Kickstarter are participating in a day of action to save net neutrality on July 12 (via Variety).

When that day comes, these and other sites will use their platforms to bring awareness to the net neutrality issue and hopefully mobilize users to make their voices heard and make policymakers realize that net neutrality is an important foundation of the modern internet.

“Net neutrality made it possible for Vimeo, along with countless other startups, to innovate and thrive,” Vimeo General Counsel Michael Cheah said in a statement. “Vimeo will proudly join our fellow tech brethren to rally Internet users nationwide to demand strong net neutrality rules to prevent ISPs from manipulating Internet traffic.”

We don’t know yet exactly what these sites will be doing on the 12th, but if you enjoy seeing Nerdist and your other favorite websites do exactly what they want to do whenever they want to do it, it would be in your best interest to participate however you can.

Featured image: SamJJordan/Flickr

Watch Bill Murray Cover Van Morrison at His First Ever Concert

As we previously told you, Bill Murray is heading out on tour with a program of classical music in support of an upcoming album called New Worlds. That tour hasn’t started quite yet, but Sunday night, he did give his debut musical performance, at the Dresden Music Festival in Germany. Sporting a black tuxedo, he performed a cover of Van Morrison’s “When Will I Ever Learn To Live In God?” with a group of collaborators from the album: cellist Jan Vogler, violinist Mira Wang, and pianist Vanessa Perez (via Consequence of Sound).

Unglaublich! #billmurray #vanmorrison #dresdnermusikfestspiele #kulturpalastdresden

A post shared by Steffi (@cutting_ice_to_snow) on Jun 4, 2017 at 9:41am PDT

In fan-shot footage, you can see Murray really belting out on his Morrison cover. Ever the showman, he also tossed roses to the crowd at the conclusion of his performance:

Bill Murray #dresden

A post shared by @holger_ka on Jun 4, 2017 at 4:22am PDT

Aside from the Morrison cover, New Worlds is also set to include music from West Side Story, and readings from Walt Whitman, Ernest Hemingway, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. As of April, he was working on the show and album in a Manhattan studio, so maybe this performance means he’s nearly done?

Whatever the case, Murray also announced his tour dates for 2017, so check those out below and let us know in the comments what other songs you’d be thrilled to see Murray take a stab at.

Bill Murray 2017 Tour Dates:

7/20: Napa, CA @ Festival Napa Valley

10/06: Santa Barbara, CA @ Granada Theatre

10/07: Palm Desert, CA @ McCallum Theatre

10/08: San Luis Obispo, CA @ Christopher Cohan Center

10/10: Chicago, IL @ Symphony Center

10/11: Buffalo, NY @ Kleinhaus Music Hall

10/13: Toronto, ON @ Koerner Hall

10/16: New York, NY @ Carnegie Hall

10/26: Dallas, TX @ AT&T Performing Arts Center

11/29: Portland, OR @ Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

12/01: Escondido, CA @ TBD

12/02: Palo Alto, CA @ TBD

12/04: Arcata, CA @ TBD

Featured image: Buena Vista Pictures

A Sushi Ferris Wheel Exists and You Can Own One

Sometimes you don’t know what you’re hungry for until it appears in front of you. Japanese rotating sushi bars are like a live menu, constantly tempting you visually with new items that you didn’t even know you wanted. Tamago, that sounds good. Unagi, I didn’t even see you there!

Revolving sushi bars are slowly making their way to the States but have been a staple of Japanese dining for some time. The ease and quickness of sitting down and grabbing food cafeteria-style is paired with the fun of having a train of food rotate in front of you.

If you feel like you’re missing out on the sushi thrill ride, now you can entertain yourself at home with Tomy’s new Ferris wheel sushi party. As a fan of both food and amusement parks, I have to say the idea of combining the two is quite intriguing. Rocket News notes that the six-carriage Ferris wheel toy was designed to look like the one at Fuji-Q Highland amusement park, located near the base of Mount Fuji.

For this table-top mini version, everything you need is provided in one giant box: a Ferris wheel and carts, a rice paddle and plates, and oh yes—all the extra track you need to launch your sushi right off the ride!

Indeed, if the twirling Ferris wheel of fish wasn’t enough to make your meal more exciting, there’s also a launch button that will hurl your sushi right towards you. All this entertainment comes at a steep price of ¥10,778 ($98 US) but think of the other mealtime possibilities—it’s the perfect portal for breakfast bagels, dessert cupcakes, or anything else you might way to catapult across the table to your dining companions.

The Sky Party Sushi Big Ferris Wheel can be purchased on the Tomy website and will be available in July.

Are you ready for a thrilling sushi meal at home? Let us know in the comments and tag @nerdist and @justjenn on twitter to tell us your favorite piece of sushi.

Images: Tomy

What Do Snoke’s Redesigned Guards Tell Us About THE LAST JEDI?

Supreme Leader Snoke may not technically be the Emperor of the First Order, but he is stepping out of the shadows in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Previous LEGO leaks have given us a glimpse of Snoke’s new clothing and his precious bling. Now, word has emerged that Snoke’s Praetorian guards are also getting a part in the sequel. Today’s Nerdist News is breaking down the latest rumors about a potentially big action sequence.

There may be spoilers ahead for The Last Jedi. Proceed with caution!

If you’ve ignored our warning, then it’s time to join host and the only confirmed survivor of Hosnian Prime, Jessica Chobot, as she shares a new report from Making Star Wars about the Praetorian guards. You may recall that the Emperor’s Imperial Guards in Return of the Jedi looked freakin’ amazing…until we all realized that they didn’t really do anything in the film. For the new trilogy, we doubt that the Praetorian guards would even be used if they weren’t going to get a showcase moment in the story.

But what could drive the Praetorian guards into action? The latest rumors suggest that it will be an assassination attempt on Snoke’s life that will pit Poe, Finn, General Leia, and Rose against the Praetorian guards. And we can’t help but think that it would be a great twist if somehow, Snoke lost his life in this movie instead of waiting for justice to come in Episode IX. If that happens, it could also lead to a massive power vacuum in the First Order’s power structure. Perhaps that would even be enough for Kylo Ren to seize control of the First Order for himself.

What do you think about the latest rumors surrounding Snoke and his Praetorian guards? Let’s discuss in the comment section below!

Newly Discovered ‘Hot Jupiter’ Exoplanet Has Blazing Star-Temperature Surface

NASA researchers and citizen scientists have been flooding our imaginations lately with thousands of newly discovered exoplanets, including a whole boatload of candidates for habitable planets, as in the case of Trappist-1 and its seven wanderers. But a newly discovered exoplanet is now being added to the list of exotic far-away worlds we’re aware of, and it’s of an extremely rare type. It’s name is KELT-9b, and thanks to its proximity to its parent star, it’s surface temperature is 7,800 degrees Fahrenheit (4,600 Kelvin) making it hotter than some stars.

The “Hot Jupiter,” which comes via the New York Post, was discovered by astronomers at Ohio State, Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. The discovery was published in the journal Nature, and made using two Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) telescopes, which were shared amongst the universities’ researchers—because an extremely little telescope can go a long way if you share it!

This video shows how KELT-9b, and exoplanets in general, are found. Astronomers look for periodic dips in a given star’s light, which signals that an object is consistently passing in front of the star. Image: YouTube / NASA’s Ames Research Center

KELT-9b is so blazingly hot because of its short orbital distance from its parent star, KELT-9. In fact, KELT-9b orbits so closely to KELT-9 that a “year” for it—the time it takes for the planet to make a full revolution around its parent star—only takes 1.5 Earth days. And due to the fact that KELT-9b is tidally locked with KELT-9 (that is, it only ever shows one side to KELT-9 because its orbital period is equal to its rotation period), only one side of the planet is as hot as Hell-O operator please give me number nine. Despite only one side of the planet getting blasted, Keivan Stassun, a professor of physics and astronomy at Vanderbilt and co-director of the study, told NASA that “‘KELT-9 radiates so much ultraviolet radiation that it may completely evaporate the planet.'”

This newly discovered Jupiter-like world is so incredibly hot that it’s being vaporized by its own star! Details: https://t.co/BQHFwPzaew pic.twitter.com/jkNx2aNHvn

— NASA (@NASA) June 5, 2017

KELT-9b is also odd because it orbits KELT-9 perpendicular to the star’s spin axis. As NASA points out in its press release, “That would be analogous to the planet orbiting perpendicular to the plane of our solar system.”

But despite the oddities of this world, astronomers still say that it’s worth exploring because it fills in gaps in our knowledge of how planetary physics work under extreme conditions. KELT-9b may be so hot on its dayside as to only allow for atomic metals, while on its nightside, it may be cool enough for molecules to form, for example. KELT-9b may even have a tail like a comet, due to KELT-9 blasting the planet’s atmosphere away from itself.

What do you think about this Hot Jupiter? Does it kind of remind you of a partially cooked Hot Pocket too? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Images: NASA / JPL-Caltech

Will NASA beat Elon Musk to colonizing the Sun?!?!

Talking GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY with Gerry Duggan, Plus COWBOY BEBOP and PlayStation

While we like to think of every installment of Nerdist News Talks Back as among the most important bullet points on the timeline of human events, today’s episode is a particularly special outing. Joining host Jessica Chobot and Nerdist Senior Editor and The Dan Cave‘s own Dan Casey for this latest discussion on the hottest in geek culture is honored guest Gerry Duggan. Avid comic readers will surely know Duggan for his work on Deadpool, Uncanny Avengers, Secret Wars, Doctor Strange, and, most recently, All-New Guardians of the Galaxy and will be excited to hear that he visits Nerdist News Talks Back with a few secret codes that can be redeemed for Guardians comics at Marvel.com… that is, if he can find them. (Keep watch throughout the episode—he just may dig a few up.)

If there’s one thing we here in the pop culture biz know for sure, it’s that nostalgia is never to be underestimated. That’s a lesson one Sony executive could have taken before claiming, in defense of PlayStation’s resistance to backwards compatibility, that most contemporary fans wouldn’t be interested in revisiting old games. Needless to say, the comments—accompanied by some maligning of the old games’ aesthetics—earned a bit of backlash from the gaming community. So where do we stand on the issue?

via GIPHY

Speaking of reviving old favorites, this morning couriered the announcement that Cowboy Bebop would be finding new life as a live-action American series! Excited though we may be, we do have some questions. Will the world of Cowboy Bebop resonant just as well today as it did almost 20 years ago? Can it work just as effectively as a live-action series as it did in animation? And who on Earth could possibly play the iconic roles of Spike, Jet, Faye, and Ed?

Back to Duggan! We’re thrilled to have the esteemed writer on hand to discuss his changes to the Guardians canon. Notably, he’s made Drax a pacifist and relegated Groot to the youthful form we first met in the movies. What other changes has he got planned for the cosmic crusaders? And speaking of stirring the pot, maybe we can get a few answers about Duggan’s recent decision to have our beloved Agent Coulson off our likewise beloved Deadpool!

Let us know what you think of old PlayStation games, a new Cowboy Bebop, and everything Dugganian!

Featured Image: Disney/Marvel

Lasso Multiple Dianas with Funko’s WONDER WOMAN Figures

We’re living in a post-Wonder Woman world. If you’re in the same boat as me, you’re looking at any and all merch because you want to bring a piece of the film and what it meant to you into your home. We showed off some apparel and accessories fit for an Amazonian recently, and now, it’s time to look at offerings from Funko. They previewed their Wonder Woman exclusives in April, but with the awesomeness of Diana of Themyscira fresh in our heads, we’re taking a look at these collectibles previewed at Toy Fair earlier this year.

What I like best about Funko’s approach to Wonder Woman is that they’re offering Pop! figures featuring multiple Dianas. Amazonian Diana? Check. Diana Prince? Check. Diana in that killer blue dress? Check. Look:

Amazonian Wonder Woman Pop!, available now from Hot Topic

Blue Dress Wonder Woman Pop!, available now from GameStop

As you probably noticed in the captions, these items are exclusives to various retailers such as Hot Topic, Entertainment Earth, and others. You’ll have to do a bit of hopping around the web to acquire all the toys you want, but hey, you’re an Amazon, right? You can handle perusing the internet.

Scroll down to the gallery below to see more Wonder Woman figures, including a two pack of Pop! vinyls with Steve Trevor. Take a look at the captions to find out where to score each figure.

How many Wonder Woman film toys do you plan on adding to your shelves? If you’ve already accumulated a collection, tweet photos to us at @nerdist and @amy_geek or drop a link in the comments.

Images: Funko

CARS 3’s Cruz Ramirez Knows All About Imposter Syndrome

Cars 3 drives into theaters on June 16 and brings a new character to the Pixar franchise: Cruz Ramirez. Young, enthusiastic (sometimes overly so), talented, and knowledgeable, Cruz is not the kind of personality Lightning McQueen wants to be around as he attempts to return to the racetrack after recovering from a severe crash. He doesn’t really have a choice, though. Cruz, a trainer at Rust-eze, is responsible for getting Lightning back on track; in the process of doing so, she comes into her own.

From what I saw at a press event for Cars 3, Cruz’s aspirations and journey will push her into the spotlight. In many ways, she’s the polar opposite of Lightning. He’s overconfident and arrogant—at one point he does the car equivalent of mansplaining (carsplaining?) to Cruz. She, on the other hand, doesn’t feel quite so sure of herself; her self-doubt prevents her from following her dreams of putting her wheels to the pavement.

Cruz is every person who’s ever experienced the unnerving tendrils of impostor syndrome wrapping around their brain. Cruz is every person who’s ever experienced a lack of confidence. For many of us, particularly for many women I know, Cruz is the very picture of relatable.

In a key scene in the movie, Cruz asks Lightning about becoming a racer. She asks him, “What was it like for you? How did you know you could do it?” He replies, “I just never thought I couldn’t.” The exchange summarizes the difference in their levels of self-belief. Female Pixar employees connected to the scene. Cars 3 writer Kiel Murray said, “We played that [scene] for women in the studio and a lot of the women, particularly in leadership positions, said they felt that way. They said they wished they felt as confident as they should be in their position and that they had this self-doubt that would plague them.”

The writers hit upon the idea of Cruz’s back story once they cast Cristela Alonzo to voice her. They’d put Cruz in a few different roles–a clerk, a super fan, a techie–before making her a trainer at Rust-eze, but something was missing. Then Alonzo shared her history with the writers. “Cristela was awesome. As we were building Cruz and trying to figure out who she was, her own backstory was really inspirational,” Murray said, “She talked to us about trying to break into comedy, and how hard it was, and how she felt so different and she looked different and she sounded different. She talked about growing up in a small town and just a lot of stuff that felt relevant for our character.”

Armed with information from Alonzo, Murray pursued the theme of confidence. She looked at her daughter and sons and tracked their levels of confidence. She said, “I started reading about confidence and the new studies about girls being less confident and why that is, the confidence gap, self-limiting, and the phenomenon of showing up at tryouts at art class or whatever and looking around and seeing everyone else’s work and going, ‘I’m not good enough. I’m walking away.'”

Though it’s not strictly a gender issue, the confidence gap does exist. In many situations, especially in the workforce, women are less self-assured than men. Leaning in, taking a seat at the table, and other workplace catchphrases distill to an important message as cliche as it is true: believe in yourself.

Cruz’s story is about finding confidence. It’s also the story of one of the lead storyboard artists on the film, Louise Smythe. She brought an important perspective to the scene discussed above, because she knew the nervousness and fear Cruz felt. Writer Mike Rich said, “She [Louise] had self diagnosed herself with imposter syndrome. She felt like she was the small fish in the big pond at Pixar. She did not think she could do this job, and she was hiding it behind a smile every day.”

The scene wasn’t having the emotional resonance they strive for at Pixar, and Smythe’s work on the boards helped change the perspective and put the emphasis on Cruz rather than Lightning. “The movie up to this point, the movie in general, is Lightning McQueen’s movie–he’s our main character. He’s been dominant,” Rich said, “We all know Lightning McQueen is brash and cocky, he says a lot, he takes up a lot of screen real estate. He’s been very clear about what he thinks about Cruz; she’s a means to an end for him.”

But Cruz starts to speak up, and Smythe helped pull her into the spotlight. “We realize this was a pivot point, and we were going to start hearing from Cruz that she’s not just a tool–she’s a person and McQueen was going to see this for the first time, too. What Louise brought to this was this idea we’re going to shift the screen balance a little bit for this moment and bring Cruz forward and minimize Lightning McQueen as she’s starting to tell her story and dig in,” Rich said.

Sometimes when you can’t find confidence for yourself, you can give others a necessary boost.

Images: Disney/Pixar

Bring Home Snoke and More with STAR WARS SDCC Exclusives from Funko

It’s almost time for San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC)! And by almost, I mean the event is kicking off on July 19 this year; so it’s still over a month away but feels like it’s around the corner. In any event, it’s close enough for toy manufacturers to roll out announcements about exclusives for 2017, and Funko has dropped photos of their first wave of Star Wars Pop! vinyl figures. They include various eras of Star Wars from Rogue One to The Force Awakens with Bodhi Rook, a combat assault tank trooper, a holographic Princess Leia and R2-D2 combo, and a six inch holographic Snoke. Yep, a super-sized Snoke.

Take a 360 degree look at the Pop! figures in this oddly soothing video:

The music and Star Wars combo is lulling me into relaxation—and that’s precisely the sort of mood to put people thinking about the stress of SDCC in.

Of these releases, I’m most excited about Princess Leia and I’m surprisingly into this design for holographic Supreme Leader Snoke. Maybe because I see so many Snoke theories and jokes around social media I just can’t get him out of my head?

Funko knows how to fan the Snoke flames, too. They sent this tweet to Lucasfilm Story Group Creative Executive Pablo Hidalgo:

.@pablohidalgo Do you like our new Snoke Pop? We have a Snoke theory to go with along it. Fair warning – our Snoke theory sucks.

— Funko (@OriginalFunko) June 5, 2017

Take a look at Bodhi Rook (I’ve heard he’s the pilot), the combat assault tank trooper, and holographic Princess Leia and R2-D2 in the gallery below.

Which of these Funko Pop! vinyls will be on your shopping list for SDCC? What’s your plan of attack to get this and other exclusives? Tell us all in the comments.

Images: Funko

Overview of Apple’s Jam-packed WWDC 2017 Conference

On Day 1 of this year’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC or “dub dub”—really that’s a nickname for it) in San Jose, California, CEO Tim Cook and Co. rolled out a massive array of product updates across their stable of hardware and software offerings, including Apple TV, iMac, iOS, macOS, iPad, Apple Pay and Apple Music. But despite all of those gadgets and services receiving their annual love—which this year included a lot of AR, VR, and machine learning additions—the biggest reveal from the most valuable tech company in America was a completely new product line, the HomePod. Here’s a quick breakdown of the new in-home music companion/smart speaker, as well as all the other big highlights from the two-hour presentation.

The HomePod

The HomePod was the final product announcement (the classic “one more thing”) for this year’s WWDC, and it stands as Apple’s foray into the smart speaker market, which is currently dominated by Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Google Home. The device, which is powered by Siri, is less than seven inches tall, and looks, as most of the internet will tell you, like a ball of yarn. A ball of yarn that costs $349.

Was this the HomePod inspiration? pic.twitter.com/EXoj1y1cHk

— Jenna Ezarik (@jennaezarik) June 5, 2017

Focusing on the music aspect of the smart speaker device—yes, the device works best with Apple Music—Apple seems to be attempting to distinguish its HomePod from the significantly cheaper Echo and Google Home with its acoustic prowess. The HomePod is powered by Apple’s A8 chip (the same one that powers the latest iPhones), and purportedly delivers a next-level listening experience thanks to an array of seven beam-forming tweeters, precision acoustic horns, and a four-inch woofer. Like Amazon and Google’s offerings, Apple’s HomePod can also assist you with reminders, information about news, traffic, and sports, and general knowledge: Anything you can do with Siri on your phone, basically.

iMac Pro and macOS Updates 

The iMac and macOS operating system are both getting updates, with a heavy focus on graphics processing for the former and a focus on the Safari web browser for the latter.

All of the iMacs are getting refreshed with brighter screens, double the max memory, and USB-C ports for faster data transfer. Graphics processing will also be improved across the line-up (80% for the lower-level 21.5-inch model), and the top-echelon will now have 8GB of Video RAM and 5.5 teraflops of computing power in order to handle VR development. Apple has also revealed its iMac Pro, which is simply a beast.

The iMac Pro, which is priced at a staggering $4,999 and will be available in December, is, according to Apple’s Newsroom, an “entirely new workstation-class product line designed for pro users with the most demanding workflows.” With a “27-inch Retina 5K display, up to 18-core Xeon processors and up to 22 Teraflops of graphics computation” the iMac Pro is the most powerful computer Apple has ever made.

As for macOS, the new version of Apple’s desktop operating system, it comes with a slight name change from Sierra to High Sierra, as well as a lot of improvements to Safari. Apple claims Safari is now the fastest web browser available, and that it boasts Intelligent Tracking Prevention to help you protect your identity (and avoid marketing algorithms hounding you), and auto-play blocking to detect auto-playing videos, like loud, annoying ads, and immediately block them.

iOS11, iPad, Apple Watch Updates

All of Apple’s mobile devices are receiving updates as well, including Apple Pay, Siri updates, and messaging updates for iOS11, a new 10.5-inch iPad Pro for the iPad line, and a new operating system, OS 4 for the Apple Watch.

With Apple Pay now baked into your SMS messenger, you can pay friends directly, rather than use an app like Venmo. Siri is also receiving more conversational voices, and will also be able to do real-time translation for people speaking two different languages. Better quality photos, machine-learning enabled slideshow presentations, and live video that can be trimmed will also be available.

As for the iPad lineup, all of their screens will have brightness increased by 50%, and the smaller version of the new iPad Pro is .8 inches larger than its predecessor and 30-40% faster. There’s also now a lower-latency Apple pencil so that it feels more like natural writing. There’s also a keyboard available, and with the new specs, it’s reasonable to consider the larger 12.9-inch iPad Pro as a solid desktop substitute, although it does cost $1,099.

The Apple Watch will mostly be getting a lot of new bells and whistles rather than any new functionality, including a “proactive Siri face,” a Toy Story animations face, and a kaleidoscope face. The Apple Watch will also be able to connect with a new wave of gym equipment rolling out from some Apple partners, and have Native Bluetooth for connecting with health monitoring devices.

ARKit and VR 

Last, but certainly not least were Apple’s ARKit and VR demonstrations. The ARKit is Apple’s way of adding augmented reality functionality to iOS, and a  representative from Sir Peter Jackson’s WingNut Films was on hand to show off a pretty mind-blowing AR display that happened on a table in front of the crowd in real time, and also looked like the ideal way to play Dungeons and Dragons (or Dejarik?).

As for VR, Apple demonstrated how its new line-up of iMacs with all their computing power are perfect for developing content in the VR space with a Stars Wars demonstration that took place on Mustafar. The demonstration foreshadows the narrative capabilities with VR, as well as how hard it is to not trip while one of those sets is on your face.

On top of all this, Amazon Prime will also be coming to Apple TV, and the App Store is getting a total revamp in order to look far simpler. As for the iPhone 8? We’ll have to wait until September.

What do you think about Apple’s rollout of products and updates for this year? Let us know your thoughts below!

Images: Apple