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An Odd Trio of ‘Halloween’ Movies Is Returning to Theaters

The latest movies to come back to theaters are the Halloween franchise, which makes sense since it’s spooky season. But instead of just the original film or the more recent trilogy, we’re getting three installments that’ve been surprisingly grouped together. Along with the original 1978 Halloween, both Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers are also coming back to the big screen. The trio’s cinematic return comes courtesy of Trancas International

Geizhals Preisvergleich Donates USD 10k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

Geizhals Preisvergleich Donates USD 10,000 to The Perl and Raku Foundation Today The Perl and Raku Foundation is thrilled to announce a donation of USD 10,000 from Geizhals Preisvergleich. This gift helps to secure the future of The Perl 5 Core Maintenance Fund. Perl has been an integral part of our product price comparison platform from the start of the company 25 years ago. Supporting the Perl 5 Core Maintenance Fund means supporting both present and future of a substantial pillar of Modern

I Love Hallmark Movies, but This New Netflix Flick Shakes Up the Rom-Com Formula

You could argue that the newly released Miranda Cosgrove romance movie, The Wrong Paris, which arrived on Netflix last week, could have been a Hallmark movie. As someone who covers a lot of streaming and television content, I've watched at least 100 Hallmark movies over the course of my career, and the plot of The Wrong Paris, at least on paper, is the perfect Hallmark film. In it, a broke artist named Dawn (Cosgrove) applies to a dating show, thinking it takes place in Paris, France, but to he

FBI Carelessly Incinerates Large Amount of Meth, Sending Workers to Hospital

You work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and you're sitting on two pounds of seized methamphetamines that you need to get rid of. So what do you do? Burn it all in a pet shelter smack-dab in the middle of town, of course. It sounds beyond parody, but these are the events that played out in Billings, Montana, last Wednesday. And it did not go according to plan. As the Associated Press reports, the toxic smoke cloud from the incinerated meth — a dangerous and addictive stimulant — didn'

Fixing Hallucinations Would Destroy ChatGPT, Expert Finds

In a paper published earlier this month, OpenAI researchers said they'd found the reason why even the most powerful AI models still suffer from rampant "hallucinations," in which products like ChatGPT confidently make assertions that are factually false. They found that the way we evaluate the output of large language models, like the ones driving ChatGPT, means they're "optimized to be good test-takers" and that "guessing when uncertain improves test performance." In simple terms, the creator

OpenAI Realizes It Made a Terrible Mistake

OpenAI claims to have figured out what's driving "hallucinations," or AI models' strong tendency to make up answers that are factually incorrect. It's a major problem plaguing the entire industry, greatly undercutting the usefulness of the tech. Worse yet, experts have found that the problem is getting worse as AI models get more capable. As a result, despite incurring astronomical expenses in their deployment, frontier AI models are still prone to making inaccurate claims when faced with a pr

Exit 8’s director was inspired by watching people play the game

Few video game adaptations understand their source material quite like the Exit 8 film. It takes the rules and structure of the game — which strands players inside of a looping hallway in a Tokyo subway station — and then builds on them with actual characters and a story. And according to director Genki Kawamura, one of the reasons that the movie feels so fresh could be because of how he approached it. “I wasn’t necessarily thinking about a film adaptation of a video game,” he tells The Verge. “

Ex-DVD company employee gets 4 years for leaking Spider-Man Blu-ray

A former employee of a multinational DVD company was sentenced to four years in prison for stealing hundreds of pre-release DVDs and Blu-rays and leaking blockbuster movies online, the Department of Justice confirmed Thursday. Back in May, Steven Hale pleaded guilty to spending about a year between 2021 and 2022 stealing discs from his employer and selling them online through e-commerce sites. Among movies that Hale uploaded for illegal download were highly anticipated titles like Dune, as well

Crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Alone. By Stand-Up-Paddleboard

We will, of course, put a live tracker online for his journey, and thanks to modern communications equipment, the paddler will be able to send information, pictures and even videos from the middle of the Atlantic. Preparations for this special challenge have been ongoing for many months. However, for a project like this to come together, a lot of things have to fit together perfectly.

Man gets over 4 years in prison for selling unreleased movies

A Tennessee court has sentenced a Memphis man who worked for a DVD and Blu-ray manufacturing and distribution company to 57 months in prison for stealing and selling digital copies of unreleased movies. 37-year-old Steven R. Hale was charged in March with selling ripped DVD and Blu-ray discs of movies before their release. Prosecutors stated at the time that Hale had stolen numerous discs of movies that were being prepared for commercial distribution in the United States between February 2021 a

Decades-Old Waste Barrels Are Creating Toxic Dead Zones off LA’s Coast

Until 1972, the Pacific waters of Southern California served as a dumping ground for hazardous and industrial wastes. More than 50 years later, corroded metal barrels still litter the seafloor off the coast of Los Angeles, and scientists are only beginning to understand the consequences of casually tossing them into the ocean. Images of the barrels first surfaced in 2020, with some of them encircled by mysterious white halos on the seafloor. Experts initially linked the barrels to DDT—a toxic p

Smart ring maker Oura’s CEO addresses recent backlash, says future is a ‘cloud of wearables’

Oura CEO Tom Hale is trying to set the record straight about the smart ring maker’s partnership with the Department of Defense (DoD) and data miner Palantir, which is used by defense, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies in the United States and elsewhere. At the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference on Monday, Hale’s interview started off with a bang with his outright denial that the company was sharing user data with the government. “There was a lot of misinformation about this,” he said,

Ask HN: Good resources for DIY-ish animatronic kits for Halloween?

Does anyone know of good resources to make your own animatronic Halloween displays? I'm a software engineer, and not skilled in hardware per se. I would love to make some things together with my kids. For reference, they are 8, 10, 12 and VERY smart and they use Ubuntu as their desktop computers and can use flatpak from the command line. Not that I am bragging.... And, I would love to NOT spent $400 on just a single ridiculous junky thing from Lowes, and do that for multiple things. My budget

Are bad incentives to blame for AI hallucinations?

A new research paper from OpenAI asks why large language models like GPT-5 and chatbots like ChatGPT still hallucinate, and whether anything can be done to reduce those hallucinations. In a blog post summarizing the paper, OpenAI defines hallucinations as “plausible but false statements generated by language models,” and it acknowledges that despite improvements, hallucinations “remain a fundamental challenge for all large language models” — one that will never be completely eliminated. To ill

A Chemical in Plastic Is Wreaking Havoc on Unborn Children, Scientists Warn

Image by Getty / Futurism Studies Some doctors are now advising their pregnant patients to avoid plastic itself, which contains harmful chemicals that can hurt some mothers and babies alike. Marya Zlatnik, a University of California at San Francisco fetal medicine specialist, told the Washington Post that when giving some of her early-pregnancy patients the rundown of what they should and shouldn't consume or be exposed to, she's begun adding plastic products to her no-no list. Her concern: t

Playing Viking Chess with Whale Bones

Article body copy In central and eastern Sweden from 550 to 793 CE, just before the Viking Age, members of the Vendel culture were known for their fondness for boat burials, their wars, and their deep abiding love of hnefatafl. Also known as Viking chess, hnefatafl is a board game in which a centrally located king is attacked from all sides. The game wasn’t exclusive to the Vendels—people across northern Europe faced off over the gridded board from at least 400 BCE until the 18th century. But

I compared my Sonos Arc Ultra with an unlikely soundbar rival, and it went down to the wire

Jada Jones/ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. If you have $1,000 to spend on a soundbar, there are compelling options to choose from. Since its late 2024 release, the Sonos Arc Ultra has been at the top of the heap in this price range, but there are new competitors that give Sonos a run for its money. The Marshall Heston 120, for example, offers a unique design, cool features, and comes at the exact same price as the Sonos Arc Ultra. Also: 5 ways to instantly boost yo

What Are AI Hallucinations? Why Chatbots Make Things Up, and What You Need to Know

If you've used ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Grok, Claude, Perplexity or any other generative AI tool, you've probably seen them make things up with complete confidence. This is called an AI hallucination -- although one research paper suggests we call it BS instead -- and it's an inherent flaw that should give us all pause when using AI. Hallucinations happen when AI models generate information that looks plausible but is false, misleading or entirely fabricated. It can be as small as a wrong date i

I compared two of the best soundbars on the market, and Sonos has some serious competition

Jada Jones/ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. If you have $1,000 to spend on a soundbar, there are compelling options to choose from. Since its late 2024 release, the Sonos Arc Ultra has been at the top of the heap in this price range, but there are new competitors that give Sonos a run for its money. The Marshall Heston 120, for example, offers a unique design, cool features, and comes at the exact same price as the Sonos Arc Ultra. Also: 5 ways to instantly boost yo

If You’re Not Already Planning Your Halloween Costume, You’re Falling Behind

There’s no reason to delay getting in the spirit of Halloween as popular costume retailers begin to release this year’s slate of pop culture-inspired looks. From Spirit Halloween to BoxLunch to PetSmart, there are a ton of fandom fits across stores and online for the while family. For Squid Game fans we’re excited about the official collaboration between Spirit Halloween and the Netflix hit show. Fans can dress up as players, guards, and the Front Man and there’s an update for the Young-hee dol

Marshall’s Mid-Century-Looking Soundbar Would Make Don Draper Cry Tears of Joy

Marshall’s lineup of non-rockstar-grade audio gear just got a little bigger. As a part of IFA 2025, the company announced the Heston 60, a more compact soundbar that complements its previously released Heston 120. As usual, Marshall is keeping things mid-century with a design that invokes its classic amps and includes tactile controls (buttons instead of knobs like those used on the Heston 120), woven fabric, and PU leather. It also comes in either cream or black, but if you don’t buy the cream

Marshall adds a subwoofer and compact soundbar to its Heston TV audio lineup

Marshall's family of TV audio gear is growing. The company has announced the Heston Sub 200 subwoofer and Heston 60 compact soundbar, both of which are now available for pre-order. The $700 Heston 60 is a smaller take on the first soundbar Marshall introduced earlier this year, the Heston 120, offering Dolby Atmos and DTS-X for more intimate spaces. With the Heston Sub 200, a $600 subwoofer that pairs with both soundbars, Marshall touts "a sound that can be truly felt." Both products come in Cre

Behold: Horror Icons Are Getting the Baby Yoda Treatment

It seems these days most major franchises want to cash in on that Star Wars Baby Yoda money by making their own adorable version of something within any given fandom. We saw it last year with the debut of Baby Beetlejuice in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and now this year we have Spirit Halloween‘s Horror Babies. The cuteness aggression is too real with Terrifier star Art the Clown—plus Chucky, Ghostface, lil’ Michael Myers, Leatherface, Pennywise, and others, all featured as infants in the Spirit H

New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

A new study co-authored by a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor finds that life expectancy gains made by high-income countries in the first half of the 20th century have slowed significantly, and that none of the generations born after 1939 will reach 100 years of age on average. Published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study by Héctor Pifarré i Arolas of the La Follette School of Public Affairs, José Andrade of the Max Planck Institute for Demographi

Cognitive load is what matters

Cognitive Load is what matters Readable version | Chinese translation | Korean translation | Turkish translation It is a living document, last update: August 2025. Your contributions are welcome! Introduction There are so many buzzwords and best practices out there, but most of them have failed. We need something more fundamental, something that can't be wrong. Sometimes we feel confusion going through the code. Confusion costs time and money. Confusion is caused by high cognitive load. It'

Cognitive Load is what matters

Cognitive Load is what matters Readable version | Chinese translation | Korean translation | Turkish translation It is a living document, last update: August 2025. Your contributions are welcome! Introduction There are so many buzzwords and best practices out there, but most of them have failed. We need something more fundamental, something that can't be wrong. Sometimes we feel confusion going through the code. Confusion costs time and money. Confusion is caused by high cognitive load. It'

There Goes the American Muscle Car

PONTIAC, Michigan—Traveling a fair amount for work outside of major metros requires relying on rental cars. And relying on rental cars quickly teaches you that while you might reserve a standard sedan every time, there is no reason to expect the rental car agency to actually give you the keys to a sedan when you show up at the counter. Eventually, you realize your fate is entirely in the hands of the rental car gods, and the rental car gods are capricious gods. Sometimes, the rental car gods f

Oh Dear, ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’

At San Diego Comic-Con 2024, Paramount teased our very first look at Star Trek: Strange New Worlds‘ third season with a clip that proved to be rather baffling. A contextless gag that saw Pike, Chapel, La’an, and Uhura seemingly permanently transformed into Vulcans, the clip immediately sparked discussion about the Vulcan crew’s sudden racially prejudiced treatment of Spock as, well, the extra half-Vulcan among them. What did Strange New Worlds think it was doing making a scene of jokily played

How Science Fiction Became the Key to This Year’s Most Buzzed About Concert

2001: A Space Odyssey. Star Wars. Star Trek. Tron. Blade Runner. Akira. The Fifth Element. Interstellar. Superman. Flash Gordon. The Matrix. That sounds like a list of the greatest sci-fi films of all time, but actually, it’s a list of the films mentioned during a discussion about the inspirations behind the Backstreet Boys’ popular new residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas, Nevada. This past July, one of the biggest boy bands of all time celebrated 20 years of their iconic album, Millennium, at

Nearly Every Whale Shark at This Tourist Destination Bears Human-Made Scars

The world’s largest living fish has plenty to fear from people. New research shows that a large proportion of whale sharks at a popular and protected tourism region bear scars caused by human activity. A large group of marine scientists examined more than a decade’s worth of whale shark sightings in the Bird’s Head Seascape off Indonesia. Among other things, they found that over half of the sharks had injuries attributable to humans. Many of these injuries were preventable, the researchers say,