Welcome to Streaming Rewind, a weekly breakdown of the new and noteworthy as we work to help readers wade through the absolute deluge of television series and movies in the streaming space.Happy almost Christmas to all of those definitely working right now. I wish I were definitely working right now, but alas, I am writing this list of what to watch this weekend for all of you. (Insert sarcasm about my job being very hard.) Alright, what have we got this week? Lets seeThe Simpsons: O CMon All Ye Faithful (Disney+)This feels like a Christmas for cynicism and snark, and what better way to get that injected into your veins than via a long-beloved adult cartoon thats been around for most of our lives. In fact, the special marks the 35th anniversary since the original The Simpsons Christmas Special, Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire. Typing that, it occurs to me that for the younger readers, for those who 35 years could be more than their whole lives excuse me while I go turn to dust. I digress! This years Simpsons Christmas Special is up on Disney+ now. Its a double-episode that features British mentalist Derren Brown coming to Springfield and running amok. Homer gets hypnotized and believes hes Santa Claus, too. Who knows, maybe this will get you into the Christmas spirit! The Simpsons: Every Treehouse of Horror Episode Ranked Beast Games (Prime Video)If you were looking for the television version of a lump of coal, force the person who has been most awful to you this year to sit down and watch an episode of Beast Games. Its out now and we had, well, no real kind words for it here at IGN. Heres the verdict from our review: Beast Games is a reality show that tries and fails to translate the style of MrBeasts popular YouTube videos to a longer-form reality show. Its largely dull and without much of anything to get invested in, relying on constantly shouting at us about the stakes while frenetic editing slices everything to pieces. Its about what youd expect from an ever-hustling spectacle merchant like MrBeast, but that only makes it all the more exhausting to take in.What If? Season 3 (Disney+)What If? is back for Season 3! If youre not familiar with the Disney+ series yet, its a riff on the old comic runs of the same name that basically asked what if this weird stuff that didnt actually happen in canon occurred? Now, What If? has, by and large, played it pretty safe throughout its tenure, but Im hopeful that maybe theyll go hard in this final season of the show. Some of the episodes include "What If... Agatha Went to Hollywood?", "What If... the Emergence Destroyed the Earth?", and the series finale titled "What If... What If?" Were not sure whats actually coming in that finale, but cast details tell us Hayley Atwells Peggy Carter will be involved, and thats all I need to know in order to show up for something.PlayAlso New This WeekAnora December 17 (Digital and Demand)Aaron Rodgers: Enigma December 17 (Netflix)Secret Level (Second group of Season 1 episodes) December 17 (Netflix)The Six Triple Eight December 20 (Netflix)Juror #2 December 20 (Max)

Back in May 2020, Blaze Entertainment established a surprising new platform with the release of the Evercade handheld and 10 game cartridges, which featured a diverse selection of licensed retro games. Since then, the company has released two additional handhelds, two consoles, and even smaller Hyper Mega Tech-branded Super Pocket handhelds, as well over 50 additional multi-game cartridges. Now, Blaze Entertainment is back with a whole new form factor in the Evercade Alpha bartop arcade, which not only has a great selection of built-in games, but can also play the entire Evercade library. While the Alpha doesn't necessarily elevate the bartop arcade category, for retro gaming enthusiasts, it proves a fun new addition to the growing Evercade ecosystem.Evercade Alpha Design and FeaturesThere are two basic versions of the Evercade Alpha the first is themed around Street Fighter, while the second is Mega Man, and each has six built-in Capcom games more or less matching the respective theme. Style-wise, I found both versions aesthetically pleasing, with the Mega Man mirroring much of the arcade look from Mega Man: The Power Battle and the Street Fighter matching Street Fighter II: Champion Edition.On the front of the Alpha is a light-up faux coin slot power button between two cartridge slots. Below the left cartridge slot is a 3.5mm audio jack and USB-A port for a player 1 controller, and below the right cartridge slot is a USB-A port for a player 2 controller. And youll find the volume control just below the power button. The rear of the unit has a single USB-C port for power, and youll find the speakers are on the left and right of the cabinet.Looking for a retro controller?Out August 30Blaze Evercade VS-R Wired Controller$24.99 at AmazonCheck out our roundup of the best controllers, too!The control panel features a bat-top digital arcade joystick and six colored digital arcade buttons. Above the arcade buttons are small Start, Select / Coin Up, and Menu buttons. Above the control panel is an 8-inch 1024 x 768 resolution IPS display with a 4:3 aspect ratio. And to top it all off, a light-up marquee sits above the display.Besides the Alpha itself, there's an envelope with two additional marquees, USB-C to USB-A power cable, USB-A power adapter with plugs for three different regions, and a quick start guide in the box. Fortunately, there's not much to set up, as you can pretty much remove the Alpha from the box, peel off the plastic protectors, apply power, choose your language, set up Wi-Fi, update and restart, and then start playing.I was able to evaluate the standard Mega Man bartop arcade and the more expensive Deluxe Edition of the Street Fighter bartop arcade. The respective Deluxe Editions include six pieces of marquee art instead of the three that are in the standard edition packages, and are pre-fitted with the upgraded Sanwa stick and button arcade parts. Lastly, the Deluxe Editions come with an exclusive Evercade Alpha-branded USB controller, which is the same type that comes with the Evercade VS consoles.I first set up the Mega Man bartop and it was easy enough removing the plastic from the marquee protector after sliding it out, but the plastic protection on the screen bezel was more difficult. I had to loosen the bezel screws to get the last bits of plastic, as well as use tweezers, and even then there was a tiny bit left in the corner that I couldn't quite get. On the plus side, there was only a little dust from the factory behind the bezel, nowhere near as bad as you often get with similar Arcade1Up products. There was also a slight ding on the upper left of the cabinet, which, unfortunately, is not unusual for these types of pre-assembled arcade products.The Street Fighter Deluxe Edition model was packaged similarly. With lessons learned from the previous unboxing, I loosened the bezel screws, then removed the two plastic cap screw covers to the left and right of the control panel. From there, I removed the screws and panel so I could more easily peel off the rest of the plastic. There were no dings on this one other than a chip above the right control panel screw cover, as well as some misaligned screw covers.The USB AC adapter included with the Mega Man was defective. Fortunately, any good USB power source can power the Alpha via its USB-C port. The same type of USB AC adapter, which had no issues, was included with the Deluxe Edition Street Fighter.Evercade Alpha Built-in Games and Menu SystemThe main menu has five options on the left-hand side of the screen, and the first at the top lists the built-in games. Below are the rosters built-in for the built-in games on both the Mega Man and Street Fighter editions of the Evercade Alpha.Evercade Alpha Mega Man Edition games:Carrier Air WingFinal FightKnights of the RoundMega Man: The Power BattleMega Man: The Power FightersStriderEvercade Alpha Street Fighter Edition games:Street Fighter II: Champion EditionSuper Street Fighter II TurboSuper Puzzle Fighter II TurboStreet Fighter Alpha: Warriors' DreamsStreet Fighter Alpha 2Street Fighter Alpha 3The second menu option showing a cartridge lists the games on any cartridge inserted into the slots. The third menu option shows the game of the month, which is free every month between April and December, and its automatically downloaded when you connect to Wi-Fi. For example, the game of the month for November 2024 was Batty Zabella, a point-and-click adventure game for the Game Boy from 2022, and the game of the month for December 2024 was Murtop, a modern retro-style arcade game native to the platform. This area also shows any hidden games you've unlocked.It looks great, plays great, and makes for a great entry into the growing Evercade ecosystem of retro gaming goodness.The fourth menu option, showing three cartridge boxes, lists the entire Evercade library. It's automatically updated with both announced and recently released content, and also tracks the cartridges you've inserted into the Alpha. The final menu option, a gear, is for settings. From here, you can adjust the display, theme, sound, network, accessibility options, and more. Besides the standard Evercade themes, both the Mega Man and Street Fighter editions each have their own exclusive themes, which are selected by default.One of the negatives with the menu system is that it doesn't always show what button to press to perform a function. For instance, on the main menu, you can use either the joystick or B button to go back to the left-hand side, but theres no on-screen indication that you can do so. It's by no means a dealbreaker and something youll eventually figure out, but for such a relatively well-thought-out menu system, it would have been nice to have just a bit more consistency with the on-screen control labels.Games in the menus get showcased with its artwork and a screenshot with it denoting the original release year. You can choose to have it run gameplay by selecting Demo with Y, or go to the game's main page with Select. When you're at the game's main page, you can read details, see how the controls are mapped, select a previous save state, or review play stats, which include the amount of time played, how many times played, save state count, and load count.Once you start a game, it works like it did on the original platform, which, for the built-in games, were all arcade releases. You can coin-up with the dedicated button, then press Start to begin. Pressing Menu lets you save, load, review and modify the control mapping, change the display settings, reset, or quit. For display settings, you can change the aspect ratio (which is set to the original ratio by default), enable scanlines, or add a decorative bezel. Since the Alpha's built-in screen is already in 4:3, you can only see a selected bezel if the aspect ratio is set to pixel perfect.The display is relatively small at just 8.0 inches, but it's not a bad size since you're up close. Fortunately, the games the Alpha plays are retro affairs, so they benefit from the more compact display and look great. Viewing angles are also top-notch with very little dimming even at more extreme angles.The sound is surprisingly good as well, especially for the form factor. It's not going to fill a room, of course, but it gets quite loud, and theres minimal distortion even at maximum volume. And while there's not much bass, what's there still has enough presence not to sound too hollow. Plugging in good speakers or headphones via the 3.5mm audio jack will sound better, of course. However, its unfortunate that, like all Evercade hardware, the Alpha lacks any type of Bluetooth support.In terms of the built-in games themselves, they look, sound, and control great with no noticeable emulation issues. The arcade-quality Sanwa joystick and buttons on the Deluxe are worth the upgrade if you can find that pricier model, but the choice of joystick on the standard model is surprisingly nearly as good, just with a slightly looser feel. I did like the Sanwa buttons on the Deluxe better than the generic buttons of the standard, however, as they were less noisy overall and just felt a bit more responsive. Of course, even if you don't get a Deluxe, Blaze Entertainment made it easy to upgrade the controls yourself with a choice of standard arcade parts.Evercade Alpha Game Library and Control OptionsThe ace-in-the-hole for any Evercade hardware is not necessarily what's built-in, but rather its growing cartridge library. Through the end of 2024, there have been 63 cartridge releases totaling more than 520 games from the arcade, Atari 2600, Atari 7800, NES, Sega Genesis, Super NES, Atari Lynx, PlayStation 1, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, GBA, Intellivision, N64, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, and MSX, as well as newer titles native to the platform.Every cartridge comes in a small plastic case, along with a color manual, though, as with the Alpha's built-in games, basic instructions are also always provided on a particular game's main page. While it can be jarring to have the Alpha switch controls to what's native for a particular platform, where, for instance, B is sometimes an action button rather than back, that's unavoidable given the diversity of platforms emulated.Cartridge cases are loosely categorized by color, with console (red), arcade (purple), and home computer (blue), as well as number. Some cartridges enter what's called Legacy status, where no more are produced, but if a cartridge is generally available it typically retails for between $20 and $30.Like the Evercade VS consoles, and unlike the Evercade handhelds, the Alpha has two hot swappable cartridge slots. Besides the convenience of having two sets of additional games immediately available, inserting certain cartridge combinations unlocks additional games. For instance, inserting both the legacy Atari Collection 1 (01) and Atari Collection 2 (05) cartridges unlocks the Atari 7800 version of Dark Chambers.I found the Alpha an ideal way to play many of the games in the library.One area where the Alpha lags behind the Evercade VS consoles is with multiplayer support. Unlike the consoles, which support up to four controllers, the Alpha only supports two at this time, with just a few exceptions. Typically, iIf you plug in an Evercade-compatible gamepad into the first USB port, it will mirror the main control panel as player 1. However, in the built-in Knights of the RoundOne quirk of the library is that the legacy Namco Museum Collection 1 (02) and Namco Museum Collection 2 (06) cartridges are not licensed for Evercade VS series console output to a TV, although those games do work when output to a TV from the original handhelds. Fortunately, since the Alpha is self-contained and has no HDMI output, those games work just fine, although its a shame theyre not the arcade versions, but rather home ports.Since the Evercade platform only supports digital controls, the small number of games that could benefit from analog control, like the Nintendo 64's Glover, found on Piko Interactive Collection 4 (39), are optimized to make the best use of what's available. As such, every game, from Pong to Tomb Raider, works just fine with the Alpha's digital arcade control panel. For instance, in Tomb Raider (from Tomb Raider Collection 1 (40)), as with the original Evercade handheld and the Super Pockets, there are no L2 or R2 buttons on the Alpha. You'll need to hold down L1 and R1 at the same time and move the joystick left or right to side step left or right, respectively, rather than just pressing L2 to side step left, or R2 to side step right. Again, most games don't make use of eight buttons, let alone the six found on the Alpha, but it's something to take note of if you don't have an alternative controller handy.Besides Blaze Entertainment's own Evercade gamepads, the platform is generally compatible with the same controllers and adapters that the Polymega works with. This includes Polymega's own controller, the 8BitDo Arcade Stick, and modern Xbox, PlayStation, Switch or Wii controllers via the 8BitDo USB Wireless Adapter 2.While I'm an Evercade platform fan and have every one of their handhelds and consoles, overall, I found the Alpha an ideal way to play many of the games in the library. While it's nice to enjoy classic games on a handheld or big-screen TV, there's something extra special about sitting in front of a mini arcade-style setup with a proper 4:3 aspect ratio display. It's a great middle-ground and is a form factor that's absolutely justified being added to the growing Evercade ecosystem.Purchasing GuideYou can get both versions, the Street Fighter and Mega Man Evercade Alpha, on Amazon for $249.99. You can also find the any of the Evercade cartridges for additional games between $20 and $30 on Amazon as well.

Jared Leto will be terrorizing the Masters of the Universe as the villain Skeletor in the upcoming live action movie adaptation.The Hollywood Reporter says Leto has joined the cast of the upcoming Masters of the Universe movie as the villain Skeletor, opposite Nicholas Galitzine who was cast as He-Man. Rounding out Skeletor's evil crew are Sam C. Wilson as Trap Jaw, Hafthor Bjornsson as Goat Man, Kojo Attah as Tri-Klops, and the previously cast Alison Brie as Evil-Lyn. Idris Elba has been cast as Man-at-Arms while Camila Mendes will play Teela.Skeletor is the main villain in the Masters of the Universe, and is a skull-faced wizard who wishes to take over the planet of Eternia. He is known for his distinctive voice, which I'm very interested to hear Jared Leto's take on.PlayBased on the popular line of Mattel toys, this particular live action adaptation of He-Man has been in development hell for years before finally gaining traction. Bumblebee director Travis Knight has been announced as the director, and will be working from a script written by fellow Laika creative Chris Butler who directed the animated film ParaNorman.This will be the second live action He-Man movie following a Masters of the Universe film released in 1987 starring Dolph Lundgren as He-Man, and Frank Langella as Skeletor.He-Man is having a kind of renaissaince as of late. A new He-Man animated series is currently on Netflix titled Masters of the Universe: Revelation featuring the voice talents of Mark Hamill as Skeletor. A third season titled Masters of the Universe: Revolution is set to premiere in 2024. Our review says the animated series "uses the original He-Man sandbox to truly go wild and explore these characters in ways that allow them to break tired molds and dissolve old conventions."What are your thoughts on Leto taking on the role of Skeletor? Let us know in the comments below.Matt Kim is IGN's Senior Features Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

The visual effects supervisor talks Cassandra Nova, Gambit, and more.By Dan Brooks(Credit: Disney)In a surprise twist midway through Deadpool & Wolverine, our titular protagonists are marooned in the Void: a Mad Max-like wasteland of desert and forgotten heroes. Their time in this multiverse purgatory takes up a significant chunk of the movie and features many of its greatest moments, from surprise character appearances to action set pieces, and Industrial Light & Magic was charged with bringing it all to the screen. Just from reading the script, visual effects supervisor Vincent Papaix knew that this section of Deadpool & Wolverine would be key to the movies overall success.Everybody was super motivated, he tells ILM.com, and we all knew that this movie was going to be special.Deadpool & Wolverine went on to become the biggest R-rated movie of all time following its theatrical release this summer, a true cinematic event during a challenging time for the film industry. To mark its arrival on Disney+, ILM.com caught up with Papaix to discuss how ILM realized some of the blockbusters impressive visual effects in the Void sequences. Grab a chimichanga and join us.(Credit: Disney)A sunny day in the VoidAs fantastical as the Void may sound, director Shawn Levy and star/producer Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool) aimed to make it a believable setting and something that fans could relate to. They really wanted it to feel as grounded and real as possible, Papaix says. To achieve this, the filmmakers started the old-fashioned way, more or less.One thing for them was to shoot in natural conditions. Thats why most of the shoot was outdoors, Papaix says. So they shot in a landfill in the UK and in various locations in the UK to get that kind of natural light feel.This did create certain challenges, however. You dont control the elements, Papaix says simply.When Deadpool and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) first arrive in the Void, they quickly proceed to beat the tar out of each other. This fight was shot outdoors in summer 2023 and then, due to the writers and actors strikes, finished in winter 2024. As a result of the pause and change in seasons, the color of the sky appeared slightly different. Though Levy and Reynolds initially hoped to digitally correct any inconsistencies in the look of the sky, ILM encouraged the filmmakers to keep this to a minimum. One thing that was great about working with Shawn and Ryan and [Marvel visual effects supervisor] Swen Gillberg was that they are very collaborative, Papaix says. We did a few shots and a few tests and we realized the best outcome was to embrace the plate. So, based on the plate, if its sunny, lets try to augment that. If its stormy, lets try to be more stormy and then well look at how it plays in the cut. And every shot was kind of hard to direct in that way. Its making sure that it plays nicely, but if you look at the sequence, theres some variation as you would have in a natural daylight. You can be in an area and within 10 minutes it can be from sunny to cloudy to stormy, depending on what is happening. So we focused on making it look as real as you can.Finally, to increase the grandeur of the Void, from scale to background elements, ILM came in to digitally augment what was captured in-camera.Our work was focusing on creating a seamless transition from the foreground set to a CG extension of the Void, Papaix says. Overseeing adding everything that was needed to the Void, including the detritus. There are all those different objects scattered throughout the Void. So obviously [we were] making sure they integrated, but the Void needed to feel real, and not feel like the foreground was on a stage in bluescreen extended into a CG world.(Credit: Disney)(Credit: Disney)A new villain emergesThe evil twin of Charles Xavier, Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin) debuts in Deadpool & Wolverine as the ultimate authority in the Void. Unpredictable and hugely powerful, shes a frightening villain that Wolverine and Deadpool must overcome. With guidance from Levy and Reynolds, ILM set out to illustrate her abilities in a subdued but unnerving way.She can control a lot of things with her mind, Papaix says. They wanted something fairly subtle to not overpower what was the power. It was important to show what it was doing to the people and not too much to [show] the power itself, not too much magic or anything. So it was more a subtle distortion to explain that theres something happening.And what Cassandra does is indeed creepy: She seems to have a predilection for passing her fingers through the skulls of her enemies, including the Merc with a Mouth.We went through different aspects, from being creepy and caressing his face with almost spider-like fingers. All that was digital and a very complex simulation to kind of deform the masks in CG. What gets tricky is that its easy to do a collision, but we had to do a half collision and half penetration going through. So thats actually a very complex simulation to control. And it was fully art-directed, meaning we had to control every aspect of the effect. We started with the performance of the fingers, and once we had the right emotion, then we worked on the simulation of how the mask should deform and, at the same time, kind of breaks open to let the finger go through. In the end, Papaix was more than happy with the result.I read a lot of great reactions. People felt an itch, a little bit. It feels creepy but in a good way, because thats definitely what the filmmakers were after.(Credit: Disney)Johnny Storms quick exitCassandra sends Johnny Storm (Chris Evans reprising his original Marvel role from the Fantastic Four films) to a truly unfortunate demise, ripping off his skin and driving him into the ground. Its a shocking momentgruesome with a dark sense of humorin a movie full of them.This was part of the script from day one, Papaix says. That was a moment that was very important for the filmmakers. But where to begin for an effect so unlike anything previously seen in a Marvel movie? Ripping out the skin was very graphic, so we had to study images.ILM turned to Real Bodies: The Exhibition, a long-running museum showcase that features actual human specimens, for reference. It made for a decidedly unique creative process. The real [body in the exhibit] is very dry and has been preserved. We wanted to make it look fresh, so we had to add a lot of blood and liquids to make sure we felt that this just happened. So we are dripping blood, dripping fat. That was very gross. The daily session with the artists was always interesting.Once ILM knew how the effect should look, they began building a digital Johnny.The way we proceeded with this was creating an asset, Papaix explains. So a skeleton asset, we called it, with all the flesh and all the organs in there. We based everything, all the proportions, on Chris Evans. We have his scan. We created a digital version of Chris for Johnny Storm, even for the Human Torch version when he was on fire.Then it was time to get down to the de-skinning business.So we started from that and then we ripped off his skin. Its pretty much what you can imagine, but in CG, Papaix says with a laugh. The shell of the clothes and skin were removed, revealing the skeleton with all the flesh. We tried to create some strings of blood coming out of him. In an effort to maintain the series comedic tone, ILM added some elements to hopefully make this scene a little more Looney Tunes and less Hellraiser.It was kind of a cartoony moment, but in a good way he has that moment blinking his eyes, and its like, What just happened to me? And then he drops.(Credit: Disney)(Credit: Disney)Gambit gets his dayThe Void segment culminates with Deadpool, Wolvie, and a band of fan-favorite heroes launching a siege against Cassandra and her forces. While fans delighted at seeing each back in action, one required visual effects that are essential to the character.A lot of attention was put to Gambit [Channing Tatum], Papaix says. We studied a lot of the comic books to see what was happening with his cards and [mutant power]. In the comics and iconic X-Men cartoon, Gambit charges playing cards, resulting in a purple glow; when he tosses them, they leave a trail and explode on impact. We went for a various range of showcasing the power to the point that I remember a version where we probably went too far too glowy and too flamey-looking. And thats something that was not pleasing to Shawn, for good reason. He wanted to be grounded, again, to reality. So the cards its the X-Men and all, but its important to have the cards telling the story.As a solve, ILM illustrated a slower buildup of Gambits mutant power. We were focusing mostly on the card and the energy within the card. There was a closeup in the cavern, when you see the card activating, and its within the pattern of the card. For the battle, we made some trails to be able to see it, because a card is very small. True to the comic.(Credit: Disney)(Credit: Disney)A lasting collaborationDeadpool & Wolverine is a success for Papaix on several levels, from the commercial and critical reception to more personal reasons.I had the chance to work on the first Deadpool in 2016. Time flies. So this one already was quite special in my career, and having the opportunity to supervise the third one was also quite special. Knowing that Hugh Jackman was attached as Wolverine, there were so many good things.But looking back at the film, he seems to mostly value the time with Levy, Reynolds, and Marvel. They were great collaborators. Obviously, hes a director and he makes his call, but he was very keen on hearing peoples suggestions. But the collaboration for me is one of the highlights of the show with Swen and with Marvel, and pitching those ideas to Shawn and Ryan. They also thanked us. We know thats something that not every filmmaker does, but at the end of the project we got a thank you video from Ryan and Shawn to share with our team at ILM, and its always fun to see that they appreciate the work. Obviously, they see the people on set, but when you do post-production, they receive the image. So they dont really realize that we were 275 people making this happen. We did about 30 minutes of the movie, 614 shots, but it was a global team. It was mostly Vancouver and San Francisco, but also other ILM sites working with us. But it was 275 people. Thats quite a big group of people making it up to show those crazy visual effects on screen.(Credit: Disney)Dan Brooks is a writer who loves movies, comics, video games, and sports. A member of the Lucasfilm Online team for over a decade, Dan served as senior editor of both StarWars.com and Lucasfilm.com, and is a co-author of DK PublishingsStar WarsEncyclopedia. Follow him on Instagram at@therealdanbrooksand X at@dan_brooks.

State Watch Pornhub to block access in Florida amid lawsuit over states age verification lawby Ty Russell12/19/24 01:36 PM ET TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) Pornhub says it will block access to its website in Florida as an adult entertainment advocacy group sues over the states new law requiring age verification.HB-3, an act relating to online protections for minors, will go into effect in the Sunshine State on New Years Day, requiring adult websites to prevent children from accessing them.Mike Stabile, a public policy director with Free Speech Coalition, a group that advocates for the adult entertainment industry, says he is concerned about the steps that will be used to verify someones age.When youre uploading an ID or when youre doing this type of verification, nothing is ever secure, Stabile said.Free Speech Coalition is the lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit seeking to prevent the law form taking effect over privacy and free speech concerns.You are asking people who are legal adults to risk their privacy and risk possible surveillance to access the internet, Stabile said.Since 2022, 19 states have passed laws requiring age verification to access adult websites.Ian Corby, the director of global group Age Verification Providers Association, pushed back, saying personal information will be protected.The Florida law includes, explicitly, a requirement for anonymous age verification done by a third-party. Our entire industry was created to prove your age online and not have to disclose your identity, Corby said.Its a measure that was passed with overwhelmingly bipartisan support.All we are trying to do is to make the same laws apply in the online world as applied in the real world, Corby said.Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody is listed as the defendant in the case.As a mother, and Floridas Attorney General, I will fight aggressively in court to ensure the ability to protect Florida children, Moody said.Aylo, Pornhubs parent company, released a statement after vowing to block access to users statewide as a form of protest that read in part:First, to be clear, Aylo has publicly supported age verification of users for years, but we believe that any law to this effect must preserve user safety and privacy, and must effectively protect children from accessing content intended for adults.Unfortunately, the way many jurisdictions worldwide, including Florida, have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous. Any regulations that require hundreds of thousands of adult sites to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information is putting user safety in jeopardy. Moreover, as experience has demonstrated, unless properly enforced, users will simply access non-compliant sites or find other methods of evading these laws.Read the full lawsuit below

The Government Is Shutting Down Because Elon Musk Has Factories in ChinaTheres a mundane reason for the late-term chaos, and its called a conflict of interest.by David Dayen December 20, 202412:00 PMRSSPrintIn a sense, Donald Trump is picking up where he left off. Most of us remember the last official act of his presidency as the Capitol Riot, but just before that, just before Christmas 2020, he inserted himself late into a government funding fight that he had been previously disinterested in. Congress had agreed to a bipartisan year-end omnibus spending bill that included the first COVID relief measures in nine months. The bills were already passed, until Trump decided that some of the spending sounded funny, and individuals should get $2,000 checks instead of the $600 on offer. He refused to sign the omnibus without them.Within hours, Democrats wrote an expanded checks bill and passed it through the House, but Mitch McConnell refused to let it advance, and Trump grudgingly signed the omnibus anyway, climbing all the way down. The $2,000 checks became an issue in two special elections in Georgia that Republicans lost. The road to the Biden agenda went through Trumps anger-fueled, failed gambit to renegotiate a congressional deal after it was complete.Almost four years to the day, were back here again. But this time, Trump is a side player in the show. He and his transition team reportedly had no problem with the 2024 version of a year-end spending bill until this week. Then Elon Musk starting posting into a frenzy about how a perfectly normal bipartisan agreement represented a total betrayal, lying about the contents in the process. Trump had to be roused to back up his co-president, getting House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to construct a partisan solution while inserting an eleventh-hour, two-year suspension of the debt limit to prevent the Republican trifecta from having to deal with that nuisance in the next Congress.The remaining gasps of the Tea Party right, who see the debt limit only as an opportunity to force spending cuts, refused to go along with that piece, with 38 of them opposing the Johnson bill on the floor yesterday. Democrats werent about to vote for a bill they had no say in (if the offer was to eliminate the debt limit for all time, they should go for it, but this is not that), and it failed. House Republicans are vowing to try again today, but they will likely need a two-thirds vote on anything today (its procedurally complicated; suffice to say that they cant wait for the Rules Committee to report out a rule, forcing a vote under suspension of those rules). That means any bill will need Democratic votes, and nothing suggests that there are any negotiations with Democrats afoot. So the government will shut down at midnight.That brings us back to the initial reason for the blowup: Elons endless scroll. Which appears to be tied to none of the inaccurate reasons he offered on X, but an old standby for billionaires: personal financial and business incentives. The original bill would have made it harder for Musk to build Tesla factories in Shanghai.The word for this is oligarchy, and oligarchs dont think about the country first.This is the first scandal of the second Trump term, and take a long look, because its going to look like all the other scandals: a conflict of interest among his impossibly wealthy advisers and aides (or from Trump himself) seeps over into policy.The measure at issue is known as the outbound investment provision. We have heard for years about the problem of manufacturing businesses shipping jobs overseas to China, with its low worker wages and low environmental standards. China typically forces businesses wanting to locate factories in its country to transfer their technology and intellectual property to Chinese firms, which can then use that to undercut competitors in global markets, with state support.Congress has been working itself into a lather about China for years now, and they finally came up with a way to deal with this issue. Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Bob Casey (D-PA) have the flagship bill, which would either prohibit U.S. companies from investing in sensitive technologies in China, including semiconductors and artificial intelligence, or set up a broad notification regime around it.The bill would add some reporting requirements and enhanced reviews as well; in general, it expands restrictions that the Treasury Department has already put forward in regulatory rules. Codifying those rules into statute means that they cannot be changed by successive administrations.Cornyn-Casey passed the Senate last year, and after about a year of legislative wrangling, a final outbound investment package made it into the year-end bill. Were taking a necessary step to safeguard American innovation against bad actors and ensure our lasting dominance on the world stage, Cornyn said in a statement.Funny story: Elon Musks car company has a significant amount of, well, outbound investment. A Tesla Gigafactory in Shanghai opened in 2019; maybe a quarter of the companys revenue comes from China. Musk has endorsed building a second Tesla factory in China, where his grip on the electric-vehicle market has completely loosened amid domestic competition. He is working with the Chinese government to bring Full Self-Driving technology to China, in other words, importing a technology that may be seen as sensitive. Musk has battery and solar panel factories that are not yet in China, but he may want them there in the future.You can argue about whether the U.S. should be restricting investment in China. But its incontrovertible that a billionaire who has a bunch of investments in China and wants to make more all of a sudden disrupted a normal congressional process that was going to restrict that investment with a bunch of lies from his media platform. And lo and behold, when the new funding bill emerged, the outbound investment feature was dropped. In fact, all traces of provisions related to China were removed from the bill.Donald Trump preens as someone determined to get tough on China. But hes empowered someone with serious business entanglements in China to seemingly serve as a barrier to any policies related to China over the next four years.The current White House resident (remember him) picked up on this. In a statement, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre noted that Republicans are breaking their word to support a bipartisan agreement that would lower prescription drug costs and make it harder to offshore jobs to China. The prescription drug reference has to do with a major reform of pharmacy benefit managers, which was also taken out of the new bill.So Donald Trump, alleged leader of the realignment of populist Republicans, scuttled a spending bill primarily to shield the richest man in the worlds investments in China and the profits of UnitedHealth Group, owners of the second-largest pharmacy benefit manager.This is going to be a constant theme of the next four years. Personal business interests are going to constantly take precedence over governance in the Trump/Musk White House. The word for this is oligarchy, and oligarchs dont think about the country first. Millions of federal employees, including service members, wont see paychecks over Christmas, national parks will be shut down, food inspections and countless other government functions will stop because a Elon Musk doesnt want anyone poking around his business in China.Happy New Year.Back to Search ResultsDavid DayenDavid Dayen is the Prospects executive editor. His work has appeared in The Intercept, The New Republic, HuffPost, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and more. His most recent book is Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power.Read more by David DayenDecember 20, 202412:00 PMUnlike many news organizations, the Prospect has remained staunchly committed to keeping our journalism free and accessible to all. We believe that independent journalism is crucial for a functioning democracybut quality reporting comes at a cost.This year, were aiming to raise $75,000 to continue delivering the hard-hitting investigative journalism youve come to expect from us. Your support helps us maintain our independence and dig deeper into the stories that matter most.If you value our reporting, please consider making a contribution today. Any amount helps secure our future and ensure we can continue holding power to account.

Pictured: Terminator: Resistance Image: Reef Entertainment (via Steam)The Switch is home to all sorts of franchises but one series Nintendo fans haven't got their hands on this generation is Terminator.It seems this could all be set to change with the discovery a game called Terminator 2D: No Fate has been rated by the Australian Classification Board for the Nintendo Switch and multiple other platforms.Image: Australian Classification BoardAs you can see above, the title received an 'M' for 'mature' rating earlier this week on 19th December 2024 and will contain violence and coarse language.Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube789kWatch on YouTube It will be published and developed by Reef Entertainment - a UK-based developer known for the 2019 first-person shooter Terminator: Resistance. When we find out more, we'll be sure to let you know.

Originally known as the George Robert White Health Unit Number 2, this Colonial Revival style building is located on North Margin Street in the North End of Boston, and is significant as an early health center providing health and education services for some of Bostons most underserved residents. The building was constructed in 1923 as one of the neighborhood-based health centers built in Boston in the 1920s and early 1930s from funding by the George Robert White charitable trust. George Robert White (1847-1922), a longtime resident of Boston, worked in the office of the Potter Drug and Chemical Company as a boy, eventually becoming president and an owner of the corporation. He was an investor in real estate and reportedly was known for many years as the largest individual taxpayer in Boston. Upon his death, his will specified that his bequest to the city, about $5 million in 1922 (approximately $93 Million valued today), would be held in a permanent charitable fund to be used for creating public utility and beauty and for the use and enjoyment of the inhabitants of Boston. The North End Health Unit was the second built (the first was in the West End), and designed in the Colonial Revival style from plans by Coolidge and Shattuck, later known as Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch & Abbott. Since the 1970s, the building was occupied by the Knights of Columbus, a fraternal organization, until 2020, when the building was renovated and converted into housing with 23 units for elderly residents.

Gold and cryptocurrency mining present sustainability quandariesgettyThe election of President Trump has caused a sudden surge in cryptocurrency stocks given his willingness to experiment with alternate monetary policy, including the gold standard. Cryptocurrency is often conflated with exchange or fiat currencies like the dollar but in fact it has more in common with reserve currency like gold. Cryptocurrencies are limited by energy and processing power of computational systems just as gold is limited by physical capacity to mine and refine the material. There are thus some key similarities but also fundamental differences between having gold versus a currency like Bitcoin as a reserve standard. Currently the only country which is making Bitcoin as a legal-tender currency exchange medium is El Salvador. However, the International Monetary Fund has recently ordained some erosion of Bitcoin friendly laws in the country as a precondition for a $1.4 billion loan.Amidst all the ambition and anxiety over cryptocurrency in the Age of Trump, it may be worth reviewing key features of the gold standard from a sustainability perspective. Since mining bitcoins requires enormous amounts of energy while mining gold is highly pollution intensive one may wonder how there could be any positive outcome of these currencies. However, there are some key features of how these currencies limit the potential for resource consumption that should be considered.The rise of the gold standard can be traced back to the work of a scientist of no less eminence than Sir Isaac Newton, who also had the distinction of serving as the Master of the Royal Mint and was also fascinated by the alchemists desire to turn lead into gold. The elemental quality of gold as a rare and durable primary resource may have played some role in Newtons championing of the gold standard, particularly in comparison to its more reactive competing metal silver. The popularity of silver as a currency was largely due to the abundant stocks of the metal that were discovered in South America by the Spaniards, particularly in the mines of Potosi (in present-day Bolivia) which continues to be a region of ecologically questionable mineral extraction.Celebrated chronicler of the Klondike gold rush, Jack London, conceded in his back-of-the-envelope cost benefit analysis that the miners had probably invested over $220 million dollars to build infrastructure and sustain themselves in order to dig up around $22 million of gold. Yet to him, this calculation at the turn of the twentieth century was still weighted in favor of the yellow metals worth. He noted still that this monumental effort was still of inestimable benefit to the Yukon country, because natural obstacles will be cleared away or surmounted, primitive methods abandoned, and hardship of toil and travel reduced to the smallest possible minimum.Gold was almost universally valued, but there were some rare exceptions to the rule. In highly resource scarce communities, such as the desert tribes of the Sahara, the mineral commodity of choice was not an inert metal like gold but a compound formed by one of the most reactive metals in the periodic table sodium. Peter Bernstein describes the comparison between gold and salt in the eyes of the Saharan tribesmen: What must those poor diggers have thought of the funny people from the North country who swapped inestimable salt for stuff whose only role was to give men pride and pleasure by letting them see its luster.MORE FOR YOUFollowing Newtons earlier interest in gold, there was a period of uncertainty worldwide until huge reserves of gold were discovered in Southern Africa towards the end of the nineteenth century. The United States instituted the gold standard during a similar period of gold obsession. From 1834 onwards, gold was considered alongside silver as a standard reserve metal in monetary policy with a fixed price of gold set at $20.67 per ounce which remained in force until 1933. During this period, there was a global resurgence in the primacy of gold, particularly towards the end of the nineteenth century due to gold rushes worldwide. These rushes fueled phenomenal growth in various industrial sectors and paved the way for many other sectors of the economy to develop.The arguments against the gold standard have been predicated on how it limits the range of policy tools dealing with extenuating circumstances, such as the needs of a wartime economy. Following World War II, the Bretton Woods agreement, which created the World Bank and related financial institutions, recognized the salience of gold by keeping a reserve currency system, albeit with a variable price of gold. Following the Vietnam War, President Nixon withdrew from the international gold exchange standard completely. The US dollar itself became trustworthy enough in the eyes of the international community for it to be liberated from the shackles of gold. However, these shackles are precisely what many current proponents of the gold standard consider so compelling.The gold standard has the potential to instill discipline in monetary policy and can prevent governments from wantonly printing money and causing inflation. The standard can also prevent governments from overspending and creating huge deficits hence its current popularity with many in the Tea Party and MAGA movements in the United States. From an ecological perspective, the gold standard has the attraction of linking economic growth to natural resource constraints. However, the environmental impact of mining gold is so intense that any support for resurrecting the gold standard is summarily dismissed by many activists. For example, each ounce of gold produces 30 tons of waste, and the US EPA estimates the cost of cleanup for existing metal mines to be around $54 billion. The main argument for gold mining relates to the estimated 15 to 20 million livelihoods of gold miners and the major tax revenues it brings to many impoverished countries where it is mined.Given the durability of gold and its ease of recycling, the gold standard can in principle be maintained without having to mine more gold. Furthermore, if gold is being used as a reserve in and of itself, the main issue of consequence is property rights over the gold. If there were international consensus on the global gold reserves still in the ground, then trade and ownership of such reserves could also be handled through an international treaty system that regulates ownership of gold reserves, rather than through physical extraction of the metal. For example, if the worlds total gold deposits could be centrally certified and shares issued for buying these reserves, the same purpose could be served as stockpiling gold in a vault. In other words, a nations gold reserves could remain stored in their natural underground state, rather than being mined, purified, and deposited in a Fort Knox-like vault.Some discounting factor could be added to account for the accessibility of certain deposits versus others and countries which have gold on their land could get preferred purchase rights to the shares similar to how company founders or employees have preferred stock options. While this would be environmentally preferable to the present system of mining and storage, ecological economists would be right to ask: why not simply anchor currency to some other metric of planetary carrying capacity which could be considered in the same way? Perhaps a leave it underground approach to gold could be a first step on the road to considering more ecologically benign means of storing and measuring wealth.The gold standard has a checkered history in terms of its overall efficacy in economic development but there is little doubt that we need to instill some discipline within our financial institutions. Historically, gold mining and the gold standard have contributed to a great deal of ecological devastation. However, they have also contributed to the great enterprise and economic growth of the modern era. The gold standard unwittingly acknowledged the connection between monetary power and natural resource reserves, which constitute the core of many contemporary environmental ideologies. While the earlier proponents of the standard did not envisage this connection, the discipline they sought was the result of the natural limits of gold extraction and the underlying finite gold reserves.Current conversations about resurrecting the gold standard or indeed linking even cryptocurrency to gold should focus on this underlying presumption of the standard. Indeed, such an approach may help to also bridge the perceived tension between environmentalists and conservative politicians and economists. The take-home message remains that the salience of a gold standard for financial discipline is due not only to the nature of gold itself but is a product of the fact that gold is a relatively scarce natural resource with the persistent allure of durability. Revisiting a hybrid form of the gold standard paradigm could provide a potential solution to dealing with the challenge of excessive public and private sector consumption within a capitalist framework.

How to solve today's Wordle.SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty ImagesLooking for Fridays Wordle hints, clues and answer? You can find them here:We have just this weekend before Christmas and then one final weekend of December and 2024 before its a brand new year, with new resolutions to slowly give up on. Is that too cynical for a Saturday? Maybe Im just jaded. I hope everyone is off to a great festive start this winter break!In any case, we have a Wordle to solve!How To Solve Todays WordleThe Hint: Individual grass.The Clue: This Wordle ends with a vowel.Okay, spoilers below!...The Answer:Today's WordleCredit: Erik KainWordle AnalysisEvery day I check Wordle Bot to help analyze my guessing game. You can check your Wordles with Wordle Bot right here. Play Puzzles & Games on ForbesI screwed the pooch on this one, though it all ended up okay. My opening guess, SPIRE, wasnt great but it also wasnt terrible. I only had one green box and I decided to just leave it in place for my second guess. Then I made a terrible mistake and re-used the R that came up grey in the first word. GRATE only slashed the number of potential solutions down to 17, and FLAKE only carved that number down to 5. Luckily, I guessed correctly with my fourth and final guess: BLADE for the win!Competitive Wordle ScoreI get 0 points for guessing in four and 0 points for tying the Bot. All zeroes everywhere. Zero the hero. That reminds me of a song:How To Play Competitive WordleGuessing in 1 is worth 3 points; guessing in 2 is worth 2 points; guessing in 3 is worth 1 point; guessing in 4 is worth 0 points; guessing in 5 is -1 points; guessing in 6 is -2 points and missing the Wordle is -3 points.If you beat your opponent you get 1 point. If you tie, you get 0 points. And if you lose to your opponent, you get -1 point. Add it up to get your score. Keep a daily running score or just play for a new score each day.Fridays are 2XP, meaning you double your pointspositive or negative.You can keep a running tally or just play day-by-day. Enjoy!Todays Wordle EtymologyThe word blade comes from Old English "bld", meaning "a leaf of a plant" or "a cutting edge of a weapon or tool." This term is rooted in Proto-Germanic "blad" (leaf or flat surface) and is related to Old Saxon blad, Old Norse bla, and Gothic blada.The original sense likely referred to something flat and thin, like a leaf, and later extended to the cutting edges of knives, swords, and other tools.Let me know how you fared with your Wordle today on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. Also be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me here on this blog where I write about games, TV shows and movies when Im not writing puzzle guides. Sign up for my newsletter for more reviews and commentary on entertainment and culture.