Month: May 2022

Enlarge / Unsurprisingly, things get strange in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. (credit: Marvel Studios)

On paper, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a formulaic Marvel Studios superhero romp. Its plot beats read like sticky notes slapped onto an overpaid executive’s wall: A superhero arrives, seems all-powerful, then runs into an unstoppable foe. That strife turns the world upside down, and in resolving that change, the hero mends something in themselves to ultimately save the day, all while finding equal parts comedy and heart when the film’s world gets weird.

But a great film can succeed even while twisted around a formulaic plot, and it’s here that Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (launching tonight in the US as a theatrical exclusive) wins out. Even though it comes with the Marvel Studios pitfall of predictability, it also stands as a grand example of the company letting filmmakers be themselves—and shows how clever, visually arresting filmmaking can transform “formulaic” plot beats into a fascinating journey for multiple characters. (Plus, after so much alternate-universe wackiness in multiple Spider-Man films, this film surprises by finding refreshing uses of the concept.)

What better way to show how far the universe of Marvel films has come in the past two decades than to have Sam “is he seriously dancing” Raimi stretch out his weird filmmaking legs and regain his blockbuster-level comfort?

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Steven Puetzer)

The Federal Trade Commission today said it “has moved to stop Internet service provider Frontier Communications from lying to consumers and charging them for high-speed Internet speeds it fails to deliver.”

Frontier was sued by the FTC in May 2021, and on Thursday, it agreed to a settlement with the FTC and district attorneys in Los Angeles County and Riverside County who represented the people of California. Frontier must pay $8.5 million to California “for investigation and litigation costs” and another $250,000 that will be distributed to Frontier customers who were harmed by Frontier’s alleged actions.

Frontier must also make changes, such as letting customers cancel service at no charge and “discount[ing] the bills of California customers who have not been notified that they are receiving DSL service that is much slower than the highest advertised speed,” the FTC said.

Enlarge / HP Elite c645 G2 Chromebook. (credit: HP)

AMD is upping the ante when it comes to Chromebooks. While still a ways off from having Chrome OS devices with the capabilities of the Ryzen 6000 mobile CPUs, Team Red announced the Ryzen 5000 C-series for Chromebooks on Thursday. The top chip in the series has eight of AMD’s Zen 3 cores, giving systems that use it more x86 CPU cores than any other Chromebook. The chips aren’t just a nice idea either; HP and Acer have already detailed Chromebooks they plan to release with the chips this year.

The 7nm Ryzen 5000 C-series ranges from the Ryzen 3 5125C with two Zen 3 cores and a base and boost clock speed of 3 GHz, up to the Ryzen 7 5825C with eight cores and a base clock speed of 2 GHz that can boost to 4.5 GHz. For comparison, the highest end Intel chip found in Thursday’s Chromebooks, the i7-1185G7, has four cores and a base clock speed of 3 GHz that can boost to 4.8 GHz. You can take a look at the Ryzen 5000 C-series full specs below:

AMD Ryzen 5000 C-series specs. (credit: AMD)

On their own, the chips aren’t that exciting. They seemingly offer similar performance to the already-released Ryzen 5000 U-series chips. The Ryzen 5000 C-series also uses years-old Vega integrated graphics rather than the upgraded RDNA 2 found in Ryzen 6000 mobile chips, which, upon release, AMD said are “up to 2.1 times faster.”

Enlarge / All aboard. (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Regular readers may remember how the viral success of Wordle led to an unexpected flood of downloads for an unrelated, six-year-old iOS game that also happened to be called Wordle! (note the exclamation point.) Those readers may also remember how mobile developer Steven Cravotta pledged to donate some proceeds from his unexpected Wordle! windfall to charity.

Since that report, though, Cravotta’s Wordle! has ended up in the hands of mobile gaming powerhouse AppLovin after selling for an undisclosed sum (as first noticed by TechCrunch). In doing so, the multi-billion-dollar company seems to have found a legal way to exploit the popularity of the Wordle name and brand to make millions of dollars in revenue.

A tale of two Wordles