Just a few days ago, “The Acolyte” — a television series that merges the "Star Wars" franchise with murder mystery — dropped on Disney+. When the series was first announced, Lauren Chen, BlazeTV’s cinema pundit, was stoked. “How sick would it be to have an actual 'Star Wars' series that was simultaneously a dark thriller murder mystery?” she asks. “I think that could have been amazing.” But her excitement quickly deflated once she started actually watching the series. “Now that I've actually seen the first two episodes, though, I am quite sure that the people behind the show — Leslye Headland, specifically — doesn't know what a murder mystery is because if she did, I feel like she would never describe this show in such a way,” says Lauren. “As someone who does like murder mysteries, I want darkness, I want intrigue, I want mystery. What I got with ‘The Acolyte’ was not that.” For starters, the murderer isn’t a secret. In fact, the filmmakers reveal this information almost immediately. “If in the opening scene we see exactly who did the killing and how they did it. It's not a murder mystery,” scoffs Lauren. But that’s not the only way “The Acolyte” breaks the murder mystery genre code. “The [plot] twist was revealed like 20 minutes into the first episode,” sighs Lauren, adding that “any intrigue, any tension, or mystery that the show ever manages to build up, it dashes almost immediately.” For example, one of the major conflicts “is solved almost immediately,” leaving audience members yawning. “This is just not how murder mysteries work,” critiques Lauren. To hear the remainder of her analysis (including spoilers!), watch the review below. Want more from Lauren Chen?To enjoy more of Lauren’s pro-liberty, pro-logic, and pro-market commentary on social and political issues, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

It probably seems obvious, really. If a developer releases mod tools for a game it’s not surprising that suddenly, you’ll find a lot of mods. What is surprising, and has always been for Bethesda games in particular, is how fast mod makers work. The creation kit has finally launched for Starfield and players aren’t letting the community down with an absolute deluge of mods already out for the game. Continue reading Starfield mods explode in number after new creation kit release MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Starfield mods, Starfield outposts, Starfield traits

The attorney general’s claims of a non-politicized Justice Department are false and easily refutable.

NEW: Trump Legal Team Files Motion to Dismiss Based on Spoliation of Evidence in Classified Docs Case

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is finally rolling out the ability for creators to test and compare how multiple video thumbnails perform, the company announced on Tuesday. The feature was first announced last June, but at the time, it was only available to a few hundred creators. With the new tool, which YouTube calls “Thumbnail Test & Compare,” creators can test up to three thumbnails for a video. “YouTube will show your chosen thumbnails evenly across your video’s viewers, and then will select a winning thumbnail based on which one generates the most watch time share,” according to a post bylined from “Meaghan” on the YouTube team. (This idea is also known as A / B testing.) Creators will be able to see data about how thumbnails performed, though “it may... Continue reading…

Image: Flow Computing Flow Computing is making a tough to believe claim: it says it can 100x the performance of any CPU by shifting work to a special parallel processing unit (PPU) inside or outside the chip. And, it claims, it can double the performance of any existing computing code overnight, even if programmers don’t lift a finger to optimize for its new tech. The PPU could even fit into phones and watches, it says, dramatically improving their performance and battery life by offloading work from the CPU. But the company can’t quite show any of that today — because Flow hasn’t built a chip and doesn’t necessarily intend to build one, its co-founders tell The Verge. The company is a spinoff of the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, and it’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Online shopping changed how we buy things — and social media platforms are reshaping shopping again. TikTok Shop, the company’s in-app shopping feature, is quickly becoming a key retailer for the beauty industry, according to a report by Dash Hudson and NielsenIQ. TikTok Shop is now the ninth-largest online beauty and wellness retailer in the US and the second-largest in the UK, the report found. TikTok Shop’s footprint in the industry has been steadily growing over the past several months, according to prior research. AdWeek reports TikTok Shop has blown past competitors like major department stores, small beauty specialty stores, and direct-to-consumer brands. TikTok Shop has been available in the US for less than a year and allows... Continue reading…

Image: Best Buy Best Buy carried out another round of layoffs and job restructurings last week, with the company cutting some of its sales staff and reducing the pay for others, according to current and former employees who spoke with The Verge. Multiple people said their new pay will be much lower due to the changes. The layoffs appeared to have mostly targeted in-home sales roles called designers, who would go to customers’ homes to help identify products that would work in their space. It’s not clear how many were let go, but designers who weren’t laid off have been moved into a different, largely in-store role. Also, pay scales for a similar, existing in-store “consultant” position were revamped. Best Buy confirmed the layoffs in an email to The... Continue reading…

Apple made waves this Monday at its 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference by joining the AI trend in a major way. Apple Intelligence is coming to iPhone, iPad, and Mac this fall, bringing an upgraded Siri, ChatGPT integration, writing tools, and image generation with it. But even Apple will have to deal with the same AI issues as every other company. In an interview with The Washington Post on Monday, Apple CEO Tim Cook was queried about his confidence level that Apple AI won't hallucinate (which is when AI models generate incorrect or misleading information and present it as fact). "It’s not 100 percent," Cook could admit. "But I think we have done everything that we know to do, including thinking very deeply about the readiness of the technology in the areas that we’re using it in. So I am confident it will be very high quality. But I’d say in all honesty that’s short of 100 percent. I would never claim that it’s 100 percent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_EYoV1kZWk His answer is unsurprising but also a reminder that Apple felt it couldn't wait any longer to jump aboard this train (even if it should have). As impressive as the rapid proliferation of AI has been, we also see the growing pains on a daily basis. Remember when Google's Gemini-powered AI Overviews were telling people to put glue on their pizza? It's also worth noting that Apple Intelligence will lean on OpenAI's ChatGPT in some instances. The new GPT-4o model is incredibly impressive, but it's also imperfect. The issue for Apple was that it didn't have its own AI chatbot ready in time, so it partnered with OpenAI for now. Much like using Intel chips in Macs, Apple will likely move away from third-party solutions once it develops its own chatbot, but it can't make any promises about ChatGPT hallucinations. Don't Miss: Siri is getting a brand new look and an AI-powered upgrade The post Tim Cook isn’t confident Apple can stop AI hallucinations appeared first on BGR. Today's Top Deals Today’s deals: $20 Amazon credit, $79 AirPods, $20 Echo Pop, $899 M3 MacBook Air, $289 iScooter, more Today’s deals: $249 iPad, Sonos speakers from $199, $495 Apple Watch Ultra, $14 charging station, more Best Apple deals for June 2024 Today’s deals: $89 AirPods, $19 Roku, $307 Apple Watch S9, $500 off Husqvarna robot lawn mower, more

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle ruled on Tuesday that Florida's ban on gender alerting treatments for minors is unconstitutional.