Peter David, the highly regarded novelist and writer of comics like The Incredible Hulk, Young Justice, and X-Factor, has died at 68. The news was confirmed by David's friend and colleague Keith R.A. DeCandido via Facebook.David enjoyed a long and prolific career at Marvel and DC over several decades. He may be best remembered for his 12-year run on Marvel's The Incredible Hulk series, a sprawling saga that redefined the relationship between Bruce Banner and his alter ego and earned David and artist Dale Keown an Eisner Award in 1992. As much as Frank Miller is viewed as the definitive Daredevil writer/artist and Chris Claremont the definitive X-Men writer, David is widely regarded as the most important and influential Hulk writer of all time. Art by George Perez. (Image Credit: Marvel)David is also well known for co-creating Spider-Man 2099 and for his two runs on X-Factor. David's original X-Factor run saw the team, which was originally a reunion of the original five X-Men, remade into a government-sanctioned mutant strike force. His second X-Factor run again reinvented the team, this time as a detective agency led by Madrox the Multiple Man. At DC, David enjoyed successful and influential stints on books like Aquaman, Supergirl, and Young Justice. David also regularly worked on the Star Trek franchise in both comic book and prose form, with his best-known Trek work being the 1994 novel Q-Squared. Outside of books and comics, David worked on television shows like Babylon 5, Young Justice, and Ben 10: Alien Force and wrote video games like Shadow Complex and Spider-Man: Edge of Time.A Visual History of HulkDavid suffered from poor health in recent years, beginning with a stroke in 2012. His health issues prompted family friend Graham Murphy to organize a GoFundMe campaign in 2022 and again in 2025. David is survived by his wife, Kathleen O'Shea David, and his four children.Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket byfollowing @jschedeen on BlueSky.

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More After three hours at Google’s I/O 2025 event last week in Silicon Valley, it became increasingly clear: Google is rallying its formidable AI efforts – prominently branded under the Gemini name but encompassing a diverse range of underlying model architectures and research – with laser focus. It is releasing a slew of innovations and technologies around it, then integrating them into products at a breathtaking pace. Beyond headline-grabbing features, Google laid out a bolder ambition: an operating system for the AI age – not the disk-booting kind, but a logic layer every app could tap – a “world model” meant to power a universal assistant that understands our physical surroundings, and reasons and acts on our behalf. It’s a strategic offensive that many observers may have missed amid the bamboozlement of features.  On one hand, it’s a high-stakes strategy to leapfrog entrenched competitors. But on the other, as Google pours billions into this moonshot, a critical question looms: Can Google’s brilliance in AI research and technology translate into products faster than its rivals, whose edge has its own brilliance: packaging AI into immediately accessible and commercially potent products? Can Google out-maneuver a laser-focused Microsoft, fend off OpenAI’s vertical hardware dreams, and, crucially, keep its own search empire alive in the disruptive currents of AI? Google is already pursuing this future at dizzying scale. Pichai told I/O that the company now processes 480 trillion tokens a month – 50× more than a year ago – and almost 5x more than the 100 trillion tokens a month that Microsoft’s Satya Nadella said his company processed. This momentum is also reflected in developer adoption, with Pichai saying that over 7 million developers are now building with the Gemini API, representing a five-fold increase since the last I/O, while Gemini usage on Vertex AI has surged more than 40 times. And unit costs keep falling as Gemini 2.5 models and the Ironwood TPU squeeze more performance from each watt and dollar. AI Mode (rolling out in the U.S.) and AI Overviews (already serving 1.5 billion users monthly) are the live test beds where Google tunes latency, quality, and future ad formats as it shifts search into an AI-first era. Source: Google I/O 20025 Google’s doubling-down on what it calls “a world model” – an AI it aims to imbue with a deep understanding of real-world dynamics – and with it a vision for a universal assistant – one powered by Google, and not other companies – creates another big tension: How much control does Google want over this all-knowing assistant, built upon its crown jewel of search? Does it primarily want to leverage it first for itself, to save its $200 billion search business that depends on owning the starting point and avoiding disruption by OpenAI? Or will Google fully open its foundational AI for other developers and companies to leverage – another  segment representing a significant portion of its business, engaging over 20 million developers, more than any other company?  It has sometimes stopped short of a radical focus on building these core products for others with the same clarity as its nemesis, Microsoft. That’s because it keeps a lot of core functionality reserved for its cherished search engine. That said, Google is making significant efforts to provide developer access wherever possible. A telling example is Project Mariner. Google could have embedded the agentic browser-automation features directly inside Chrome, giving consumers an immediate showcase under Google’s full control. However, Google followed up by saying Mariner’s computer-use capabilities would be released via the Gemini API more broadly “this summer.” This signals that external access is coming for any rival that wants comparable automation. In fact, Google said partners Automation Anywhere and UiPath were already building with it. Google’s grand design: the ‘world model’ and universal assistant The clearest articulation of Google’s grand design came from Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, during the I/O keynote. He stated Google continued to “double down” on efforts towards artificial general intelligence (AGI). While Gemini was already “the best multimodal model,” Hassabis explained, Google is working hard to “extend it to become what we call a world model. That is a model that can make plans and imagine new experiences by simulating aspects of the world, just like the brain does.”  This concept of ‘a world model,’ as articulated by Hassabis, is about creating AI that learns the underlying principles of how the world works – simulating cause and effect, understanding intuitive physics, and ultimately learning by observing, much like a human does. An early, perhaps easily overlooked by those not steeped in foundational AI research, yet significant indicator of this direction is Google DeepMind’s work on models like Genie 2. This research shows how to generate interactive, two-dimensional game environments and playable worlds from varied prompts like images or text. It offers a glimpse at an AI that can simulate and understand dynamic systems. Hassabis has developed this concept of a “world model” and its manifestation as a “universal AI assistant” in several talks since late 2024, and it was presented at I/O most comprehensively – with CEO Sundar Pichai and Gemini lead Josh Woodward echoing the vision on the same stage. (While other AI leaders, including Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and xAI’s Elon Musk have all discussed ‘world models,” Google uniquely and most comprehensively ties this foundational concept to its near-term strategic thrust: the ‘universal AI assistant.) Speaking about the Gemini app, Google’s equivalent to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Hassabis declared, “This is our ultimate vision for the Gemini app, to transform it into a universal AI assistant, an AI that’s personal, proactive, and powerful, and one of our key milestones on the road to AGI.”  This vision was made tangible through I/O demonstrations. Google demoed a new app called Flow – a drag-and-drop filmmaking canvas that preserves character and camera consistency – that leverages Veo 3, the new model that layers physics-aware video and native audio. To Hassabis, that pairing is early proof that ‘world-model understanding is already leaking into creative tooling.’ For robotics, he separately highlighted the fine-tuned Gemini Robotics model, arguing that ‘AI systems will need world models to operate effectively.” CEO Sundar Pichai reinforced this, citing Project Astra which “explores the future capabilities of a universal AI assistant that can understand the world around you.” These Astra capabilities, like live video understanding and screen sharing, are now integrated into Gemini Live. Josh Woodward, who leads Google Labs and the Gemini App, detailed the app’s goal to be the “most personal, proactive, and powerful AI assistant.” He showcased how “personal context” (connecting search history, and soon Gmail/Calendar) enables Gemini to anticipate needs, like providing personalized exam quizzes or custom explainer videos using analogies a user understands (e.g., thermodynamics explained via cycling. This, Woodward emphasized, is “where we’re headed with Gemini,” enabled by the Gemini 2.5 Pro model allowing users to “think things into existence.”  The new developer tools unveiled at I/O are building blocks. Gemini 2.5 Pro with “Deep Think” and the hyper-efficient 2.5 Flash (now with native audio and URL context grounding from Gemini API) form the core intelligence. Google also quietly previewed Gemini Diffusion, signalling its willingness to move beyond pure Transformer stacks when that yields better efficiency or latency. Google is stuffing these capabilities into a crowded toolkit: AI Studio and Firebase Studio are core starting points for developers, while Vertex AI remains the enterprise on-ramp. The strategic stakes: defending search, courting developers amid an AI arms race This colossal undertaking is driven by Google’s massive R&D capabilities but also by strategic necessity. In the enterprise software landscape, Microsoft has a formidable hold, a Fortune 500 Chief AI Officer told VentureBeat, reassuring customers with its full commitment to tooling Copilot. The executive requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of commenting on the intense competition between the AI cloud providers. Microsoft’s dominance in Office 365 productivity applications will be exceptionally hard to dislodge through direct feature-for-feature competition, the executive said. Google’s path to potential leadership – its “end-run” around Microsoft’s enterprise hold – lies in redefining the game with a fundamentally superior, AI-native interaction paradigm. If Google delivers a truly “universal AI assistant” powered by a comprehensive world model, it could become the new indispensable layer – the effective operating system – for how users and businesses interact with technology. As Pichai mused with podcaster David Friedberg shortly before I/O, that means awareness of physical surroundings. And so AR glasses, Pichai said, “maybe that’s the next leap…that’s what’s exciting for me.” But this AI offensive is a race against multiple clocks. First, the $200 billion search-ads engine that funds Google must be protected even as it is reinvented. The U.S. Department of Justice’s monopolization ruling still hangs over Google – divestiture of Chrome has been floated as the leading remedy. And in Europe, the Digital Markets Act as well as emerging copyright-liability lawsuits could hem in how freely Gemini crawls or displays the open web. Finally, execution speed matters. Google has been criticized for moving slowly in past years. But over the past 12 months, it became clear Google had been working patiently on multiple fronts, and that it has paid off with faster growth than rivals. The challenge of successfully navigating this AI transition at massive scale is immense, as evidenced by the recent Bloomberg report detailing how even a tech titan like Apple is grappling with significant setbacks and internal reorganizations in its AI initiatives. This industry-wide difficulty underscores the high stakes for all players. While Pichai lacks the showmanship of some rivals, the long list of enterprise customer testimonials Google paraded at its Cloud Next event last month – about actual AI deployments – underscores a leader who lets sustained product cadence and enterprise wins speak for themselves.  At the same time, focused competitors advance. Microsoft’s enterprise march continues. Its Build conference showcased Microsoft 365 Copilot as the “UI for AI,” Azure AI Foundry as a “production line for intelligence,” and Copilot Studio for sophisticated agent-building, with impressive low-code workflow demos (Microsoft Build Keynote, Miti Joshi at 22:52, Kadesha Kerr at 51:26). Nadella’s “open agentic web” vision (NLWeb, MCP) offers businesses a pragmatic AI adoption path, allowing selective integration of AI tech – whether it be Google’s or another competitor’s – within a Microsoft-centric framework. OpenAI, meanwhile, is way out ahead with the consumer reach of its ChatGPT product, with recent references by the company to having 600 million monthly users, and 800 million weekly users. This compares to the Gemini app’s 400 million monthly users. And in December, OpenAI launched a full-blown search offering, and is reportedly planning an ad offering – posing what could be an existential threat to Google’s search model. Beyond making leading models, OpenAI is making a provocative vertical play with its reported $6.5 billion acquisition of Jony Ive’s IO, pledging to move “beyond these legacy products” – and hinting that it was launching a hardware product that would attempt to disrupt AI just like the iPhone disrupted mobile. While any of this may potentially disrupt Google’s next-gen personal computing ambitions, it’s also true that OpenAI’s ability to build a deep moat like Apple did with the iPhone may be limited in an AI era increasingly defined by open protocols (like MCP) and easier model interchangeability. Internally, Google navigates its vast ecosystem. As Jeanine Banks, Google’s VP of Developer X, told VentureBeat serving Google’s diverse global developer community means “it’s not a one size fits all,” leading to a rich but sometimes complex array of tools – AI Studio, Vertex AI, Firebase Studio, numerous APIs. Meanwhile, Amazon is pressing from another flank: Bedrock already hosts Anthropic, Meta, Mistral and Cohere models, giving AWS customers a pragmatic, multi-model default. For enterprise decision-makers: navigating Google’s ‘world model’ future Google’s audacious bid to build the foundational intelligence for the AI age presents enterprise leaders with compelling opportunities and critical considerations: Move now or retrofit later: Falling a release cycle behind could force costly rewrites when assistant-first interfaces become default. Tap into revolutionary potential: For organizations seeking to embrace the most powerful AI, leveraging Google’s “world model” research, multimodal capabilities (like Veo 3 and Imagen 4 showcased by Woodward at I/O), and the AGI trajectory promised by Google offers a path to potentially significant innovation. Prepare for a new interaction paradigm: Success for Google’s “universal assistant” would mean a primary new interface for services and data. Enterprises should strategize for integration via APIs and agentic frameworks for context-aware delivery. Factor in the long game (and its risks): Aligning with Google’s vision is a long-term commitment. The full “world model” and AGI are potentially distant horizons. Decision-makers must balance this with immediate needs and platform complexities. Contrast with focused alternatives: Pragmatic solutions from Microsoft offer tangible enterprise productivity now. Disruptive hardware-AI from OpenAI/IO presents another distinct path. A diversified strategy, leveraging the best of each, often makes sense, especially with the increasingly open agentic web allowing for such flexibility. These complex choices and real-world AI adoption strategies will be central to discussions at VentureBeat’s Transform 2025 next month. The leading independent event brings enterprise technical decision-makers together with leaders from pioneering companies to share firsthand experiences on platform choices – Google, Microsoft, and beyond – and navigating AI deployment, all curated by the VentureBeat editorial team. With limited seating, early registration is encouraged. Google’s defining offensive: shaping the future or strategic overreach? Google’s I/O spectacle was a strong statement: Google signalled that it intends to architect and operate the foundational intelligence of the AI-driven future. Its pursuit of a “world model” and its AGI ambitions aim to redefine computing, outflank competitors, and secure its dominance. The audacity is compelling; the technological promise is immense. The big question is execution and timing. Can Google innovate and integrate its vast technologies into a cohesive, compelling experience faster than rivals solidify their positions? Can it do so while transforming search and navigating regulatory challenges? And can it do so while focused so broadly on both consumers and business – an agenda that is arguably much broader than that of its key competitors? The next few years will be pivotal. If Google delivers on its “world model” vision, it may usher in an era of personalized, ambient intelligence, effectively becoming the new operational layer for our digital lives. If not, its grand ambition could be a cautionary tale of a giant reaching for everything, only to find the future defined by others who aimed more specifically, more quickly.  Daily insights on business use cases with VB Daily If you want to impress your boss, VB Daily has you covered. We give you the inside scoop on what companies are doing with generative AI, from regulatory shifts to practical deployments, so you can share insights for maximum ROI. Read our Privacy Policy Thanks for subscribing. Check out more VB newsletters here. 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These days, our tech experiences are all about speed—and our expectations for instant action are actually kinda insane. Think about it: Not so long ago, phones, computers, and especially the internet were all painfully slow (at least, by today’s sonic-speed standards). Things have come a long way in a short time. And for most of us now, if something doesn’t load within a fraction of second, we grow impatient and maybe give up entirely—like when a webpage has the audacity to take a handful of seconds to show up and we click away in an indignant huff. Hey, we’ve all been there. What’s especially wild, though, is that while the standards for speed have skyrocketed forward, the way we measure this stuff has remained mostly the same. At least, until now. This week, I’ve got an incredibly cool and tantalizingly new tool to share with ya. It’s an overdue update to the way we think about speed and assessing the allegedly lightning-fast connections we all pay for. Get ready for a whole new way to think about the tech in front of you. Psst: If you love these types of tools as much as I do, check out my free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. You’ll be the first to find all sorts of simple tech treasures! The internet speed test—reinvented Traditionally, when we talk about tools for testing your tech connection speed, we think about things like Ookla’s Speedtest, the native Google speed testing system, or the newer Cloudflare Internet Speed Test service. We’ve covered those types of tools before​. They’re all useful, in different ways—but they’re also all variations on the same tried-and-true type of speed assessment that’s been around for ages now. Today’s tool is different. But it comes from a familiar source—someone who knows this area inside and out. It’s the brand-new brainchild of the guy who created Ookla’s Speedtest, arguably the first internet speed test that became broadly known and embraced by the masses. ➜ It’s called Orb​. And it’s decidedly different from your typical tech speed tester. 👁️ Orb works by looking not only at the basic power of your connection but also its responsiveness and reliability. The idea is that all of that adds up to create a more complete and ultimately meaningful view of your connection quality. 💡 And that number isn’t only about bragging rights, either: It’s meant to help you make sure you’re actually getting the speed you’re paying for—and then able to pinpoint precisely where and when any problems pop up. ⌚ You’ll need about two minutes to set Orb up and take it out for a spin. First, install the appropriate Orb app​ for whatever type of device you’re using. Orb is free to use, and it’s available for most major platforms—Android​, ​iOS​, ​Windows​, ​MacOS​, even ​Linux​. If you’re using a Chromebook, you can go with either the Android app or the Linux version. Open up the app and follow the quick steps to get it set up and ready. Orb will prompt you to sign in or create an account, but you can skip over that if you’d rather. The account just makes it possible to sync your testing data and view it from other devices. Once that swift onetime setup’s out of the way, you’ll see Orb’s dashboard—with a tremendous amount of detail that lets you peek under the hood and learn exactly how much your current connection leaves to be desired. Orb assesses your internet connection across numerous measures beyond just basic data transfers. Specifically: Responsiveness tells you how quickly your connection acts and how much lag you’ve got going. Reliability looks at the consistency of your connection and its responsiveness over time. And speed is the more standard measure of how quickly bits and bytes move across your connection (as measured by Cloudflare—the same basic speed testing tool we’ve recommended before​!). It all adds up to give you a never-before-visible complete picture of your internet speed quality—on your current device as well as any other devices on which you’ve installed the app and signed in. If you sign into Orb, you can see results from any connected devices in a single streamlined dashboard. Knowledge is power, as they say. And with Orb’s in-depth intelligence firmly in your mitts, you’ll be armed to the gills and ready to confirm that everything’s working the way it oughta—and ready to point your finger at the precise problem, if and when one appears. Orb is available on all major platforms​, via a variety of native apps. It’s completely free for personal use. (The company also sells large-scale enterprise software setups, which seems to be where it intends to make money.) The tool comes from known, reputable internet researchers and is ​explicit about the fact​ that it doesn’t do anything disconcerting with the limited amount of data it collects. Treat yourself to even more tech-enhancing goodness with my free Cool Tools newsletter. You’ll get an instant introduction to an incredible audio app and a new off-the-beaten-path gem every Wednesday!

In the court of public opinion, acolytes of great architects are rarely treated as legends themselves. Take Chicago-area architect Don Erickson, who apprenticed with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin from 1948 through 1951. Although the Chicago Tribune lauded Erickson’s work as “delicate, beautiful, and always original” after his death in 2006, local interior designer Jennie Bishop reports that most of his houses “are often purchased and torn down or so drastically changed that you can’t recognize them.”Bishop discovered an exception in 2021, when a friend in real estate suggested a meeting with clients who had just purchased the Winnetka, Illinois, residence that Erickson had designed for photographer Richard Boyer in 1966. “I went in blind and just gasped,” Bishop recalls of arriving at the impeccably preserved home, adding, “I was saying silent prayers that they would not rip things out or depart from Erickson’s vision.”Bishop sourced a circular sectional, designed by Adrian Pearsall, for the great room’s living area. She and one of the clients plan to replace its vintage upholstery when the homeowners’ two young sons are less rambunctious. In the living area, a pair of lounge chairs upholstered in a Schumacher checkerboard pattern stand guard over an original fireplace. Bishop’s invocations were answered quickly, when the husband and wife described their predilection for living in unique spaces. They also explained that they had promised the previous homeowner to steward this midcentury gem and envisioned a delicate renovation ahead. Bishop started the commission as cofounder of Chicago-based Studio Gild, and she completed the project under her recently launched AD PRO Directory firm Bishop Studio.The Winnetka residence features several hallmarks of a Frank Lloyd Wright–designed house. Applying Wright’s concept of “pressure and release” to the 6,000-square-foot interior, for example, Erickson created a skinny formal entry hall that he made even more narrow by arcing a raised fireplace hearth into the space. Just beyond the hearth, the newcomer overlooks a great room that is as expansive as the entry was constrained.“We didn’t want all the fixtures to look like they had been left there,” Bishop says of layering a contemporary lighting vocabulary into the well-preserved interior. For the kitchen island, she specified a Light Object 015 from Naama Hofman to shed strong uniform light on the work surface. The island’s Afternoon Plus stools are from DWR. The kitchen’s perimeter cabinetry traces one of the orioles with which original architect Don Erickson had lined the west elevation of the house. The millwork was done by Abruzzo Kitchen & Bath. The kitchen’s breakfast area, as seen from the hallway dividing the great room from the dining room: a Heritage Unicolor pendant from Taiwan-Lantern tops the custom table and banquette; leather sling dining chairs from CB2. Other aspects of the house, such as its fan-patterned brick floors, historically evocative windows, and balletic ceilings, suggest that Erickson counted himself among the likes of A. Quincy Jones and Edward Durrell Stone—architects who were trying to reshape High Modernism for a popular American audience.Bishop determined that the Winnetka project required neither window replacement nor ceiling removal. At first, she planned to leave the enchanting brick floor untouched too. “We thought that its muted colors were original,” she says, “but we discovered a warmer palette underneath the kitchen appliances.” While Boyer and the homeowners who followed him had maintained the interior with almost religious devotion, their years of cleaning and coating the floors had unintentionally dulled their appearance. So began an exhaustive process of diamond sanding and resealing the surface, which Bishop admits caused moments of second-guessing: “It was painful to get to where we are, but now I’m super happy for the rusty and spicy colors that we achieved. We dramatically changed the house and honored it simultaneously.”A Maho sectional sofa by Wendelbo and a pair of vintage hammock chairs anchor the Florida room, which distinguishes itself from the great room by stepping down from the living area. The Florida room is oriented south to the patio. Bishop completed the project’s other major intervention in a similar spirit. While redoing the primary and children’s bathrooms in the bedroom wing, the interior designer preserved the spaces’ organization into eight-by-eight-foot modules and specified surfaces featuring period-appropriate patterns and colors. To make the three-compartment primary bathroom more gracious, she converted a never-used sauna into a wet room that remains crowned in its original cedar. (Bishop notes that she could upgrade plumbing and electrical systems largely without touching the house’s historic fabric thanks to a crawl space that Erickson had presciently included under the bedroom wing.)For the house’s furnishings, Bishop dotted the interior with antiques. For new and custom pieces, she leaned more toward complementing rather than aping the past. “We’re surrounded by so much wood in this house that we expressed ourselves with stone,” she cites as one example. Bishop also explains that the trio’s admiration for this palimpsest has only grown with time, so much so that the homeowners have granted her right of first refusal, should they someday decide to sell the house.The house is ostensibly L-shaped in plan, its east- and south-facing crook enfolding a generous patio area. Bishop and the homeowners are spreading the love by including the nest in a home tour hosted by Community House. The annual event raises funds for the local nonprofit and, this year, it promises to raise the profile of Erickson too. Bishop reinvented the service entrance, located immediately adjacent to the three-bay garage, as a cozy entry wrapped in Cranes wallpaper by Milton & King. “Nothing in this house is super precious,” Bishop says, noting that the homeowners enjoy entertaining at home. To wit, the designer created a double-pedestal dining room table topped in Jadore Quartzite “that could be danced upon.” It is overseen by a Rib Vault Light by Talbot & Yoon. Within the great room, the Florida room’s glassed-in corner contains a vintage pedestal table surrounded by Crate & Barrel chairs upholstered in a House of Hackney bouclé. Bishop says she purchased and arranged the pieces on her own volition to help the then-unconvinced homeowners envision the vignette as a place for sipping wine or playing mah-jongg, “and they never left.” The primary bedroom occupies a semidetached volume at the easternmost end of the house. Here, a walnut Feve Desk from Ferm Living overlooks a custom king-size bed finished in wine-colored Kirkby Design upholstery. Like so many other original finishes in the house, the cedar ceilings in the primary bathroom suite were perfectly preserved. Bishop tacked a Mori pendant by RBW above the room’s middle module rather than tear into the cedar planks. The primary bath is a suite of three eight-by-eight-foot modules linked by travertine flooring. Jupiter’s Axis Wall Sconces flank the double vanity. The primary bath and this walk-in closet face one another across a hallway. Because the primary bedroom is so clearly distinguished from the rest of the house in plan, the two dressing areas form a metaphorical proscenium to the sanctum. The house’s privacy-giving serpentine wall is visible from the kids’ bathroom, in which a custom vanity sits against a backdrop of Claybrook Confiserie and Concrete Collaborative Pacifica tiles. The interior’s many swaths of pink are no accident—it is the husband’s favorite color. Bishop leaned into the hue with gusto for the powder room, using Sarah Von Dreele’s Brian XL wallpaper, a Twin 1.0 sconce, a slab of Quartzite, and other flamingo-like sources. Architect Don Erickson placed a serpentine brick wall in front of the house’s north elevation to shield the sleeping wing’s bathing and dressing areas.

Gigabyte’s Aero line of laptops is intended for media pros, those who need production power in a relatively portable package. Or at least they were intended for that. The new Aero X16 model that debuted at Computex 2025 hopes to thread the needle between creators and gamers, both of whom need extra oomph in their laptops. This new design goes with a popular AMD CPU plus Nvidia GPU combo, topping out with a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and a GeForce RTX 5070 with 85 watts of TGP, and it can be disabled with a MUX switch if you need more battery life than sheer pixel-pushing power. All of that hardware is shoved into a 16-inch chassis that’s under 17mm thick and 4.2 pounds light, an impressively sleek design. There’s a plethora of ports, though only one is USB-C (4.0). You get three USB-A ports, full-sized HDMI and Thunderbolt, and an old-fashioned barrel charger if you need to recharge faster than USB allows. The juicy bits for me are under the hood, where you have two M.2 slots for storage, two user-accessible SO-DIMMs for RAM, and a 76.1-watt-hour battery. But it’s not all good news. PCWorld’s Adam saw it in person and wasn’t impressed with the 2560×1600 IPS screen with 165Hz of refresh. That’s pretty good in gamer terms, but creators might not be satisfied. Adam says that even with a Pantone verification and 100 percent of SRGB coverage, it’s lacking full Adobe RGB color space. It’s an upgrade option Adam would like to see in the future. Gigabyte is also refreshing its A16 and A16 Pro gaming laptops. The A16 is making do with older CPUs from AMD and Intel and an RTX 5070 card with a max TGP of 80 watts. Step up to the Pro version and you get access to a newer Intel Core 7 250H and an RTX 5080 screaming at 115 watts. The Aero X16 is launching in June or July while the A16 should arrive in October. The beefier A16 Pro will be here in August. We have no idea what they’ll cost… which might as well be the official slogan of Computex 2025. For more on the latest laptops, be sure to subscribe to PCWorld on YouTube. Check out our weekly podcast The Full Nerd while you’re at it.

The last 48 hours have been a wild rollercoaster ride for AI hardware. On Tuesday, Google ended its I/O keynote — a roughly two-hour event with copious references to AI — with its vision for Android XR glasses. That included flashy partnerships with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker, as well as the first hands-on opportunity with its prototype glasses for the developers and the majority of tech media alike. On the ground, it was among the buzziest things to come out of Google I/O — a glimpse of what Big Tech thinks is the winning AI hardware formula.A day later, Jony Ive and Sam Altman kicked down the door and told Google, “Hold my beer.”If you’ve somehow missed the headlines, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that the company was buying Ive’s AI hardware startup for $6.5 billion. That alone was enough to set the tech media sphere ablaze. After all, Ive is the legendary figure behind the iPhone and Apple Watch’s iconic design, revered for his relationship to Steve Jobs. Altman is not only the most recognizable figure in this new AI era, he’s also frequently compared to Jobs himself. It’s a narrative that writes itself. But for gadget nerds, the real nugget was the tidbit that Altman had seen an actual prototype from Ive. They coyly dropped hints that this mystery gadget would be to AI what the iPhone was to mobile computing. It was, they implied, unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. That in turn set everyone hunting for clues and leaks about what this device could possibly be.RelatedHere’s what we know so far. In a leaked call reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Altman told OpenAI staffers it’s not a phone, or glasses — the form factor that Meta and Google are betting big on. Altman also indicated that Ive wasn’t keen on a device that had to be wearable. It would be part of a “family of devices,” screenless, and a “third core” gadget outside of your phone and laptop. It’s something that can be stuck into your pocket but also displayed on your desk. Altman has described the prototype as one of the coolest pieces of technology ever, while Ive also threw shade at the Humane AI Pin and the Rabbit R1, the two biggest AI hardware flops of 2024.It’s enough to make any gadget nerd scream.Right now, we’ve entered what I’d call the spaghetti phase of AI hardware. Big Tech and smaller gadget makers alike are throwing anything and everything at the wall to see what sticks. Silicon Valley wants generative AI on your devices. It’s just that no one agrees on what’s the best approach, or what people would actually pay for and use. You could also view it like the board game Clue, except instead of murder suspects, rooms, and weapons, we’re all trying to guess who’s going to crack the code in terms of form factor, company, and use cases. Is it Samsung with Project Moohan in your living room as you ask Gemini to take you to Tokyo? Meta with its Ray-Ban glasses on a Thai beach as its Live AI feature translates a drinks menu? Bee or Plaud in a boardroom, diligently summarizing action items from your meeting? Or maybe it’s Ive and Altman — with whatever this prototype will do in whatever scenarios we’re meant to use it.Meta has been vocal about how smart glasses are the ideal form factor for AI hardware. Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The VergeAn educated guess right now would need to include a few key elements, combined with a good-faith reading of what’s been leaked. (Of course, acknowledging that Ive in particular is a whiz at cheeky misdirection.) There are a few things AI gadgets have had in common thus far:CamerasSpeakersMicrophonesBatteriesSome kind of internet connectivityPortabilityThese are the ingredients needed to enable multimodal AI — as in, a device that can see what you see, access a large language model, be with you wherever you go, interact with you to answer questions, and last long enough to be useful in a variety of scenarios. Given these parameters, it’s no surprise that Big Tech has largely landed on wearable gadgets, particularly glasses and pins. The thing most players in this space can’t agree on is whether the average person will want a display. So far, Ive and Altman don’t seem to think so.Right after the news broke, I suspected this meant some kind of headphone or a mini portable speaker scenario. Then earlier today, notable supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claimed that the current prototype is “slightly larger than the AI Pin, with a form factor as compact and elegant as an iPod Shuffle.” A potential use case involves you wearing it around the neck, that there’ll be cameras and microphones, and that it will connect with smartphones and computers.Now imagine this, but with a camera and perhaps slightly longer with a pinch of Ive design. That’s what I’m betting on. Image: PlaudThat leads me to believe we’re talking about something that’s a mix between the Plaud NotePin and the AI Pin. Plaud’s device can be worn in various ways, including as a necklace, is pill-shaped, and gives off a sleek, compact vibe. Meanwhile, the Humane AI Pin had a camera, speaker, microphone, and the Apple-esque elegance in terms of design. (Even if it violated nearly almost every tenet of good wearable design, got too hot to wear comfortably, and required an expensive LTE subscription.) In some ways, that means we’re kind of talking about an always-listening, smart body cam (that could also be a decorative item on your desk).I could be completely off-base. I’m holding space for Ive and Altman to have not only reinvented the wheel, but redefined the next era of mobile computing. And that ambiguity is kind of the point. We don’t know — and according to leaks, probably won’t until late 2026 or 2027. That’s just enough time to dangle a few tantalizing tidbits, drum up curiosity and hype, and crucially, build anticipation that will possibly be sweeter than whatever it is they eventually launch. Strategically, it also lets Ive and Altman throw rivals off their game — make us all question, are smart glasses really the best vehicle for AI?In other words, this is the fun part where anything is possible.See More:

SEGA and Relic Entertainment have announced Warhammer 40K: Space Marine Master Crafted Edition, a remaster of the original Warhammer 40K: Space Marine that initially launched on PS3, Xbox 360, and PC in 2011. Announced during the Warhammer Skulls livestream event, this remaster will be arriving on PC and Xbox Series X/S in a matter of weeks on June 10, 2025. There's currently no news regarding a potential PS5 launch, though it could just be because this will be a timed console-exclusive for Xbox Series consoles. It'll also be available to play through Xbox Game Pass on day one. Developer SneakyBox was the studio SEGA chose to work on this remaster, and is a "thoughtful restoration" of the original game, according to SneakyBox producer Vaidas Mikelskas (per IGN). "Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine - Master Crafted Edition isn't just a technical upgrade - it's a thoughtful restoration. We aimed to preserve the spirit of the original while modernizing the experience for today's players. This is more than just Master Crafted Edition, it's a respectful dialogue between past and present, preserving what made the original special while making it shine for a new generation of players." This new version lets players enjoy the first Space Marine game at 4K with remastered audio, an overhaul to the control scheme, improved character models, textures, and all of it is applied to the original game and every bit of downloadable content it received in the years after launch. You can add the Space Marine Master Crafted Edition to your wishlist on Steam, Xbox, and the Epic Games Store, and it'll be available on June 10 for $39.99 USD. Last year, the long-awaited sequel, Space Marine 2, was one of the biggest games of the year. Though it might not have reinvented the wheel, it provided a very fun and bloody time, even if it was repetitive. Following up that success with a remaster of the first game is great news for fans of Space Marine 2, especially those new to the series, as they now have the chance to revisit the first game without having to play the original 14-year-old version. Also announced during today's Warhammer Skulls event was Warhammer 40K: Dark Heresy, the next Warhammer CRPG from Owlcat. Deal of the Day

There’s a fresh wave of co-operative action-slash-shooters on the horizon, all vying for your squad’s attention and all looking decent, for the most part: ARC Raiders, FBC: Firebreak, Marathon, amongst others. It feels like we’re on the cusp of a new golden age in online co-op, so to pitch Elden Ring Nightreign as the cream of the crop, as one of 2025’s biggest games, we must be confident it has both the magic to entice players into its world and the power to make them stay.  We’ve between now and Nightreign’s worldwide release on 30th May to convince you this is the one to plump for if you’re on the fence as to which of 2025’s upcoming blockbuster co-ops to funnel your hours into. Straight off the bat, first thing to state with Elden Ring Nightreign is this is a standalone adventure. Not only do players require zero prior knowledge of Elden Ring’s expansive narrative and lore to get the best out of Nightreign but, unlike last year’s Shadow of the Erdtree expansion, players don’t even need to own the original title. This is a one-time purchase, not live service, no seasons, or battle passes – at least, there’s nothing officially announced at time of this feature’s creation. Instead, squads of three can jump right in and start battling away in a reimagined version of Elden Ring starting area Limgrave, rebranded here as Limveld. The premise is straightforward enough: Elden Ring Nightreign is an action survival adventure with roguelike structure. Three warriors find themselves castaway in a hostile realm, an environment lulling them in with its lush pastures and golden canopies, yet bandits, soldiers, and monsters – some cameoing out of Elden Ring, some brand-new creations cooked up by FromSoftware – stalk the landscape. The task is to kill and pillage, to scavenge the loot of your slain foe to level up during each run. Runs last three days, and this scavenging phase takes place during daytime. An ever-shrinking battle royale-style perimeter – confusingly dubbed the Night Rain, as in rain shower – channels players to the map’s centre where an end-of-day boss awaits. The clock is ticking, and as a result exploration is much less cerebral than FromSoft’s usual Souls style. Exploration is still critical mind, just done at a ramped-up pace. Supporting all the bandit slaying are subterranean caves dotted with treasure, guarded bastions harbouring documents, short environmental puzzles, and middling bosses. Should squads survive two nights in Lemveld then they’ll be transported to an arena known as the Spirit Shelter where they can put all their skills and upgrades to the test and take on one of eight pre-chosen mega bosses, known as Nightlords. If Elden Ring’s boss battles are anything to go by, these climactic showdowns at the end of a couple of days’ toil are sure to be a spectacle. Each run begins with players at level one but Nightreign’s upgrades, via discoverable runes, come quickly. In fact, levelling up in this Elden Ring spin-off is extremely fast, and to demonstrate Nightreign’s pick-up-and-play ethos adding XP to your character isn’t as arduous a task as it is in FromSoftware’s other titles. Spending runes here levels up your character whilst boosting their overall stats. There’s no time to labour over which ability to upgrade. Furthermore, each of the game’s playable heroes can wield just about every weapon; it’s their unique skills and abilities which distinguish them from each other. So, build customisation is a shade more limited compared to traditional RPG levelling up, but it is possible in the form of randomised loot which, of course, is dropped by downed enemies. Some of this loot functions passively – weapon stat buffs, elemental and physical affinities, and numerous other effects – and some is housed in breakable chests that usually contain some sort of consumable to upgrade weapon damage or similar. Progression outside of the action exists too in the form of advancing character stories. See, in between runs players return to an alternative version of the Roundtable Hold from Elden Ring and here, alongside affixing permanent runic upgrades, they’ll be able to experience a form of narrative progression for each of the game’s eight hero characters. Before we get into describing these characters in-depth, it’s worth pointing out that FromSoftware have stated that as each character’s story advances then the world of Limveld will re-shape and react in tandem. It’s incarnation upon starting the game is a mix of fixed structures and landmarks, but – to alleviate any staleness – there’ll be elements of variation in where enemies spawn and the like. As an aside, dramatic, unexpected changes can occur too: crashing meteorites, boss ambushes, and… uhm, sudden volcanoes. So, onto Elden Ring Nightreign’s cast of heroes and, yes, we’re calling them heroes as FromSoftware have clearly gone down the route that’s well established by Apex Legends and Overwatch, et cetera. Each hero in Elden Ring Nightreign is uniquely skilled, with their own abilities and combat style. Together with collectable loot and upgrades, this blend of skills across three-player teams is sure to create innumerably powerful synergies. Unlike FromSoft’s usual fayre, there isn’t ability to create or customise these characters beyond permanent upgrades and collectable outfits. As you’d expect, there’s breadth to the cast though. All info on their uniqueness is available on Bandai Namco’s website, but just know that each playable hero possesses distinct passive ability, character skill, and ultimate art, the latter being a powerful signature move. Wylder is an easy to learn tough to master hero who’s attacking and defensive capabilities are evenly balanced. Their passive ability – Sixth Sense – allows them one free respawn, presumably retaining runes that’d be dropped in any other death. Raider is tough as old boots, a powerful, armour-clad sea farer who wields humungous weapons. Ironeye is an archer with pinpoint accuracy, Recluse is the mage able to conjure powerful spells and cursed magic. Guardian is defensive, with a solid shield that can withstand the most ferocious attacks. Finally, Duchess is like the spy, nimble, swift, and evasive, with an ultimate art capable of making herself and the rest of the squad invisible. At face value, without considering any runic powerups, there’re clear strategies that Nightreign players can pursue. For example: Ironeye’s character skill marks enemy weakpoints, Raider’s retaliate skill pummels the marked enemy until they recoil, before Wylder unleashes their powerful character art onslaught stake to finish the stunned foe off. The fact that these situations will occur at breakneck speed is enticing. FromSoftware, as per reports of early demo players, haven’t reinvented the wheel when it comes to Elden Ring’s combat. Veterans of The Lands Between will feel right at home when the skirmishes commence. With scalable difficulties – another first in FromSoftware’s Souls canon – there’s the hope here that players with less finely-tuned reflexes will finally be able to enjoy the ravishing combat upon which FromSoft have made their name. Players cannot expect this to perform like a multi-player Soulslike though, no. Elden Ring Nightreign is very much its own thing, taking the macabre universe already established in its single player guises and translating it into an experience more akin to Apex Predators or – sacrilegiously perhaps – Fortnite. It’s a sure-fire winning combination, and one that has potential to elevate Elden Ring Nightreign above the pile of co-op games coming out before the end of the year.  Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

While other streaming services thrive on carefully selected and endlessly curated (meaning: limited) selections of movies, Tubi's a bit different: It feels like the Wild West, with everything from originals; to popular hits; to critically acclaimed favorites; to the lowest-brow, lowest-budget movies you'll find this side of an old Blockbuster. In that spirit, here's a sampling of some of the best stuff currently streaming on Tubi, and it's a wide variety—the streamer will not be pinned down. If you're unfamiliar, Tubi is a free, ad-based service, but generally I find the ads to be less obnoxious and less frequent than on other, similar streamers. Interstellar (2014) Christopher Nolan's mind-bending, but oddly plausible, sci-fi epic takes Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, and Jessica Chastain on a hunt through space and time to find a new home for humans in a near-future during which we've made Earth unlivable. You can stream Interstellar here.Color Out of Space (2019) Nicolas Cage is at his Nic Cage-iest in this H. P. Lovecraft adaptation about a family's descent into madness. A beautiful, horrifying, utterly unique sensory experience. You can stream Color Out of Space here.Friday (1995) An unquestioned classic of stoner comedy, Friday sees Ice Cube and Chris Tucker accidentally smoking weed that they were meant to sell. And who among us hasn't? The two slackers set out to borrow or make the money back during a misadventure-packed Friday. You can stream Friday here. Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan (alongside Stephanie Hsu and Jamie Lee Curtis) led Everything to Oscar glory a couple of years back, with Yeoh starring as Evelyn Quan Wang, a middle-aged immigrant running a laundromat with her husband. An IRS audit leads to a trip through a wildly outlandish, and ultimately emotional, journey through a multiverse of possibilities. You can stream Everything Everywhere here.Dune (1984) You've probably seen the recent Denis Villeneuve adaptation, but you might be less familiar with this messy and fascinating take from director David Lynch. Kyle MacLachlan leads an all-star cast in a movie that doesn't quite an achieve greatness, but nevertheless offers up a bevy of wild ideas, distinctive visuals, and Lynchian madness. You can stream Dune here. Some Like It Hot (1959) Tubi offers up a better assortment of classics than many of the other streamers, most of which have shifted to a newer-is-better focus. Hot stars Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis as a couple of jazz-age musicians who run afoul of a mob boss, deciding to escape by posing as members of an all-female band (one that, memorably, includes Marilyn Monroe). Director Billy Wilder pitches the farce just right, at the intersection between smart and silly. You can stream Some Like It Hot here. Evil Bong (2006) No socially redeeming value here, just a goofy comedy horror movie about a bong that transports smokers to another planet, one where they're to be murdered by exotic dancers. Tommy Chong co-stars in this movie from Full Moon Features, purveyors of fine low-rent horror movies. You can stream Evil Bong here. Ghost World (2001) Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) face high school graduation, and a crush on Steve Buscemi, in Terry Zwigoff’s indie dark comedy. You can stream Ghost World here.Donnie Darko (2001) Jake Gyllenhaal stars in this memorable emo mind-bender about a troubled teenager who dodges disaster thanks to a bit of sleepwalking. An instant cult classic, it's the movie all the cool kids were talking about back in the day. You can stream Donnie Darko (director's cut) here, or the theatrical version here. Hollywood Shuffle (1987) Robert Townsend directs himself as Bobby Taylor, a satire about the perils of navigating the Hollywood system for an actor simultaneously too black and not black enough for the tastes of studio bosses. Through elaborate fantasy sequences and parodies of popular movies, Townsend creates a sharp and often extremely funny sendup that’s (sadly) still relevant. You can stream Hollywood Shuffle here.Barbarian (2022) One of the more divisive horror movies of the past few years (I love it), Barbarian stars Georgina Campbell as a woman who rents an Airbnb only to have a man (Bill Skarsgård) show up claiming that he also has rented the house. He seems nice enough, so she lets him in—enough of a premise for a horror movie right there, but Barbarian has twists that you'll never see coming. You can stream Barbarian here.Showgirls (1995) As with most of Paul Verhoeven's other films, it's possible to view his notoriously trashy film as either dark satire or unintended camp. It's tremendous fun either way and, though it quickly gained a reputation as garbage, it's far more watchable than many other better-reviewed films. You can stream Showgirls here.Rec (2007) This Spanish import is top-tier found footage, involving a group of firefighters on an emergency call who wind up trapped inside a building at the center of a creeping zombie infection. That limited, specific geography is key to the movie's brisk, efficient, and nerve-jangling effectiveness. You can stream Rec here.Planet of the Apes (1968) Astronaut Charlton Heston finds himself on an unknown (wink wink) planet in the distant future where he rather quickly finds himself in the power of the world's ape overlords. From a slightly goofy premise came this dark, disturbing, and timely fable. You can stream Planet of the Apes here. The Apartment (1960) Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine star in this searing, bittersweet, but ultimately humane comedy. MacLaine's Fran Kubelik is an elevator operator having an affair with the big boss at an insurance company, while Lemmon's Bud Baxter gets ahead by loaning out his apartment to upper management for various extramarital assignations. The budding friendship between the two threatens both of their careers. You can stream The Apartment here. Whale Rider (2002) Pai is a 12-year-old Māori girl and the direct descendant of their tribe’s traditional notable ancestor, the Whale Rider—except that, traditionally, women can’t lead. Star Keisha Castle-Hughes became the youngest nominee for a Best Actress Oscar for her open, genuine performance. You can stream Whale Rider here. The Descent (2006) Getting lost in those caves is scary enough, even before we discover that we're not alone down there. The ultimate in spelunking horror. You can stream The Descent here.Menace II Society (1993) A searing, raw portrait of urban violence in the 1990s, the Hughes Brothers' film follows Caine Lawson (Tyrin Turner) and his friends as they struggle for a better life amid crime and poverty, but who find themselves drawn deeper into crime and cruelty. The performances here are all phenomenal. You can stream Menace II Society here. Beauty Shop (2005) This Barbershop spin-off follows widowed hairstylist Gina Norris starting over in Atlanta with her daughter, and opening her own shop when a job doesn't pan out. Queen Latifah is as delightful as ever, and is joined by a great cast including Alfre Woodard, Della Reese, Alicia Silverstone, Andie MacDowell, Kevin Bacon, and Djimon Hounsou. You can stream Beauty Shop here.Room 237 (2012) This fascinating documentary explores, without judgement, the many (and often truly wild) theories and interpretations around Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. Probably not what you're after if you want a bit of film analysis, but as an exploration of conspiratorial thinking? You could do a lot worse. You can stream Room 237 here. Terrifier (2016) Damien Leone's low-budget slasher series quietly build into a queasy empire, with the most recent film being a legit box office smash. Here, literal clown-from-hell Art stalks partygoer Tara Heyes and her sister Victoria (Scaffidi) on Halloween night. You can stream Terrifier here. Return of the Living Dead (1985) This horror comedy with punk style is both a knowing parody of zombie movies while also managing to be an impressively gory thriller in its own right that moves the whole genre forward. Plus, it’s got a great death-rock soundtrack. You can stream Return of the Living Dead here.Frankenhooker (1990) A disreputable and goofy but surprisingly effective horror comedy, Frankenhooker stars former Penthouse Pet Patty Mullen as the movie's take on Mary Shelley's monster, made in the image of a med student's dead fiancée and built from sex workers. The style and special effects here are pretty great. You can stream Frankenhooker here.Ghost in the Shell (1995) One of the best anime films of all time, at least when it comes to sci-fi and cyberpunk, Ghost in the Shell boasts impeccable style in addition to the thoughtfulness and complexity of its story. Major Motoko Kusanagi is a cyborg security agent hunting an enigmatic hacker known only as "the Puppet Master" in the rapidly approaching year 2029, a time when the rise of AI threatens even the idea of individual existence. You can stream Ghost in the Shell here. The Leather Boys (1964) A classic of British kitchen sink realism, a movement in the 1960s that saw hyperrealistic portraits of, often, angry teens and young people, The Leather Boys sees young couple Reggie and Dot becoming increasingly estranged when Reggie mostly wants to just hang out with his biker friends. Among those friends is Pete, who seems to be developing an attraction to Reggie that goes a bit beyond that of a typical biker bro. You can stream The Leather Boys here. North by Northwest (1959) One of Hitchcock's best (and that's saying quite a bit), North by Northwest is a nearly non-stop thrill ride, seeing Cary Grant's Roger Thornhill hunted across the country by criminals who've mistaken him for someone else. It's as funny as it is clever, and nearly impossible to stop watching once you've started. You can stream North by Northwest here.Lars and the Real Girl (2007) The sweetest, most charming movie about the romance between a man and his life-like love doll that you're likely to encounter. You can stream Lars and the Real Girl here.They Call Me Trinity (1970) A classic spaghetti western, Trinity (kicking off a trilogy, appropriately enough), stars Terence Hill and Bud Spencer as brothers Trinity and Bambino, who help defend a Mormon settlement from bandits and a land-grabbing Major (Farley Granger). It's a rare comedy to come out of Italy's obsession with westerns, and a lot of fun for it. You can stream They Call Me Trinity here. The Wiz (1978) Long before Wicked reinvented (or at least reinterpreted) L. Frank Baum, the Broadway musical on which this movie is based imagined Dorothy Gale as a Black teacher from Harlem. The joyous film version is nearly a who's who of Black talent in the 1970s: Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Nipsey Russell, Ted Ross, Mabel King, Theresa Merritt, Thelma Carpenter, Lena Horne and Richard Pryor all play roles, while Quincy Jones, Luther Vandross, and Charlie Smalls all contributed to the music. You can stream The Wiz here. Cabaret (1972) Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey star in this essential musical about the good times and extravagant style of Weimar Germany giving way to the rising tide of fascism. You can stream Cabaret here.