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AT&T is making its unlimited plan way more competitive http://ift.tt/2m0Syrz AT&T is rolling out a new unlimited plan this week that addresses some of its competitive deficiencies against Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint. A few weeks ago, AT&T joined the unlimited data party with a plan that, to be honest, wasn’t very good. It didn’t include any sort of tethering option and additional lines were pretty pricey. But the new one addresses those issues. Here’s the deal, and, as normal, it’s a little confusing: The first unlimited line is $90 per month, two lines are $145 per month, and then each additional line is an extra $20 per month. AT&T wireless customers who also subscribe to an AT&T video product (either DirecTV, DirecTV Now, or U-Verse TV) qualify for a $25 monthly bill credit on their DirecTV or U-Verse bill. The plan includes 10GB per line of tethering (slowed to a paltry 128Kbps after it’s exhausted) and, as before, after 22GB per line of data usage, AT&T may slow the data connection on that line if a particular tower is congested. Other devices, including tablets, mobile hotspots, and cars with Wi-Fi hotspots are $20 per month, while LTE-connected watches are $10 per month. Unlimited users are not required to use the throttled Stream Saver service that limits video streams to 480p. There’s also another, more lightweight plan, called Unlimited Choice that offers lower prices with lower speeds. Video is limited to 480p or 1.5Mbps, and overall data connections are maxed out at 3Mbps. Pricing starts at $60 per month for one line and $155 per month for four lines, with no discount for AT&T video subscribers. Customers on both plans can also talk, text, and use data when traveling in Canada and Mexico for no additional charge, and calls to Canada and Mexico are free as well. International texts are free to more than 120 countries. The plan ends up pretty similar to the competition, with all the major carriers offering 10GB of LTE tethering and Verizon and AT&T have similar soft caps on data usage depending on how crowded towers are. Though AT&T’s first foray in the great unlimited data war of 2017 was a poor showing, this new offering (less than two weeks later) is much more compelling. Both unlimited plans become available to customers on Thursday. Gadget News via The Verge http://ift.tt/oZfQdV February 26, 2017 at 03:11PM
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Here's our first look at Netflix's 'Bright,' starring Will Smith http://ift.tt/2m0OU0V Why would Netflix pay $90 million for a single film? Two words: Will Smith. The blockbuster star is teaming back up with David Ayer, the director of Suicide Squad, for Bright, a new fantasy action film. Tonight at the Academy Awards we caught our first glimpse at the movie, which basically looks like a bunch of Suicide Squad deleted scenes. Smith stars as a cop in a world where humans live alongside fantasy creatures, and he partners up with an orc (Joel Edgerton) to track down a superweapon. Netflix is reportedly aiming to make Bright a franchise, and given the star power involved, there's a good chance it'll encourage even more people to sign up for subscriptions. The streaming video company also reportedly paid over $100 million for Martin Scorsese's next film, The Irishman, with Robert DeNiro, as well as $60 million for the Brad Pitt-starring War Machine.
Gadget News via Engadget http://www.engadget.com February 26, 2017 at 03:06PM
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Casey Affleck wins the Best Actor Oscar for his role in Manchester by the Sea http://ift.tt/2lKLjmB Surprising no one, Casey Affleck has just won the Oscar for Best Actor for his lead role in Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea. He takes home the award after besting the likes of Denzel Washington and Ryan Gosling for their performances in Fences and La La Land, respectively. Affleck’s win tonight was almost assured after taking home the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama at last month’s Golden Globes. Indeed, his performance in Manchester has already been called one of the top performances of the year. In the film, he plays Lee Chandler, a handyman who must return to the titular small town after the death of his brother to care for his teenage nephew. The film’s tragic beauty won over critics early on, and Affleck playing Lee so effectively was a big part of it. However, Affleck’s win tonight is marred by the sexual harassment scandal that has followed him through awards season. Multiple lawsuits have alleged that the actor was sexually and emotionally abusive during the production of his 2010 documentary I’m Still Here, with Affleck, among other things, telling a cinematographer that she should have sex with the production crew. Those suits were settled out of court. Critics were quick to respond to Affleck’s nomination after it was announced last month. Fresh Off the Boat star Constance Wu tweeted at length about the optics of the nomination:
Evidently, the scandal wasn’t enough for Oscar voters to give the award to someone else. Gadget News via The Verge http://ift.tt/oZfQdV February 26, 2017 at 03:04PM
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NASA starts wind tunnel tests for its quiet supersonic jet http://ift.tt/2lKFG7M NASA's plans for a quiet supersonic jet, the QueSST, just became tangible: the agency and Lockheed Martin have started wind tunnel tests for the future X-plane. It's a scale model at this stage, but it will be subjected to winds as high as Mach 1.6 (950MPH) to gauge both its aerodynamic performance as well as parts of its propulsion system. The tests should run until the middle of 2017. Whether or not QueSST moves beyond these tests will depend on funding approval. If it does get the go ahead, though, the next step is making an honest-to-goodness aircraft poised to fly in 2020. That goal is still a long way off, but it now seems more achievable than it did a year ago. Source: NASA Gadget News via Engadget http://www.engadget.com February 26, 2017 at 02:54PM
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La La Land’s Damien Chazelle wins the Oscar for Best Director http://ift.tt/2m0Gfvs Damien Chazelle has won his first Academy Award as the director of the movie musical La La Land. He was also nominated for the film’s screenplay earlier in the night, and was previously nominated for the screenplay of his 2014 breakout film Whiplash. Chazelle won in a field populated by acclaimed newcomer Barry Jenkins (Moonlight), the questionably redeemed Mel Gibson (Hacksaw Ridge), recent hitmaker Denis Villeneuve (Arrival), and Academy favorite Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester by the Sea). In a fairly cookie cutter acceptance speech, he thanked his fellow nominees, “Emma [Stone] and Ryan [Gosling] for bringing the movie to life,” and his wife, emphasizing that La La Land is “a movie about love.” The win was expected after Chazelle won Best Director at the Golden Globes in January, part of a record-breaking awards sweep for La La Land. Leading up to the Oscars, he also won awards from the Director’s Guild of America, the British Academy of Television and Film, and the Broadcast Film Critics Association, among others. The 32-year-old filmmaker is just months younger than Norman Taurog, the deceased director of the 1931 film Skippy, who had held the record as the youngest person to win the Academy Award for Best Director. This makes five wins for La La Land so far, including Original Song, Original Score, Production Design, and Cinematography. La La Land is also up for the prizes of Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Picture, which will be announced shortly. Gadget News via The Verge http://ift.tt/oZfQdV February 26, 2017 at 02:50PM
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So there was a DeLorean at the Oscars? http://ift.tt/2lW61QR For reasons that are still unclear, Seth Rogen and Michael J. Fox arrived on the Oscars stage in a DeLorean before presenting the Academy Award for Best Film Editing to Hacksaw Ridge. Rogen was even wearing Nike Air Mags. He then broke into singing a song from Hamilton. I’m very confused. All this was probably to celebrate Back to the Future, which Rogen talked up in a filmed segment before he arrived on stage. It was quite possibly the coolest random moment in an evening full of random moments that felt shoe-horned in from out of nowhere. The awards show opened with a lengthy number featuring Justin Timberlake singing “Can’t Stop the Feeling” from Trolls. Later, Kimmel rained candy from the ceiling, invited a bus full of tourists into the venue to greet the celebrities sitting in the front row, and continued his war against Matt Damon. Very little of this made sense, but hey it’s 2017 and this is our reality. Michael J. Fox and Seth Rogen emerge from a DeLoreanGadget News via The Verge http://ift.tt/oZfQdV February 26, 2017 at 02:50PM
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Samsung’s Oscars ads are basically a promise that its phones won't explode anymore http://ift.tt/2lpeHw4 Samsung aired three new commercials during the Academy Awards tonight, continuing the company’s recent trend of using Oscars airtime to try and sell phones. But this year’s ads also served as a not-so-subtle promise that the Galaxy Note 7’s exploding battery last year was just a fluke. “Quality is our priority,” says the first commercial, made by the company whose smartphones once posed a flight risk. The second focuses on Samsung’s 8-point battery safety check, winking heavily at the fact that a battery that’s gone through such rigorous inspections probably won’t set fire to your Levi’s. The last presents popular YouTubers like Casey Neistat and “shitty robot” inventor Simone Giertz as the creators of the future. Samsung usually goes big at the Oscars — last year, the company put William H. Macy in a Gear VR and in 2015 Ellen DeGeneres took a sponsored selfie — but this year’s commercials show a new focus on less traditional forms of celebrity... and a renewed focus on phones that don’t explode. Gadget News via The Verge http://ift.tt/oZfQdV February 26, 2017 at 02:43PM
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Netflix wins an Oscar for documentary short 'The White Helmets' http://ift.tt/2m0OqHR While we were expecting Amazon to score an Oscar first for Manchester by the Sea, Netflix ended up beating out that film with a Best Documentary (Short Subject) Oscar for The White Helmets. Directed by Orlando von Einsiedel, the film centers on a group of volunteer rescue workers for the Syrian Civil Defense Force, also known as "The White Helmets," who risk their lives to help civilians in that war-torn country. The group has saved more than 60,000 lives so far, and they've also been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. As you might have guessed, The White Helmets is available to watch on Netflix now. Gadget News via Engadget http://www.engadget.com February 26, 2017 at 02:18PM
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Watch Jimmy Kimmel troll Donald Trump on Twitter from the Oscars stage http://ift.tt/2m0yVQr In an okay joke, a rare island in an ocean of terrible jokes, Jimmy Kimmel tweeted at Donald Trump from the Oscars stage. The tweets themselves could have been funnier, but it was a pretty good jab at our president, who has lashed out at 20-time Oscar-nominee Meryl Streep for an awards show speech she gave about him and who can’t seem to resist tweeting about his every annoyance, paranoid conspiracy theory, and perceived slight. Kimmel tweeted “u up?” and a reference to the bizarre Streep feud.
— Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) February 27, 2017 For Twitter’s part, here is a reaction from a member of their Communications team.
Kimmel tweeted from a Samsung phone, which surprised a lot of live-tweeters but makes sense because Samsung regularly sponsors the Academy Awards. Gadget News via The Verge http://ift.tt/oZfQdV February 26, 2017 at 02:07PM
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The Jungle Book wins the Oscar for Best Visual Effects http://ift.tt/2mkVpMz The Academy Awards nominated the best of the best for the visual effect category this year, but in the end there could be only one winner, and it was Disney’s The Jungle Book. The film was part of a crowded field that included a variety of films from different genres. Laika’s Kubo and the Two Strings brought some stop-motion flair to the proceedings, Deepwater Horizon showed off Industrial Light & Magic’s ability to recreate real-world locations dealing the most harrowing of situations, and The Jungle Book was able to create a photorealistic world where humans could interact with walking, talking animals. However, it was ILM’s blockbuster work on Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Doctor Strange that seemed to lead the field. The latter film’s surreal, mind-bending visuals — which called to mind everything from Inception to 2001: A Space Odyssey — seemed a particularly likely candidate, as did the digitally-recreated Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher that featured in Rogue One. Instead, it was director Jon Favreau’s reimagining of Disney’s classic animated film that took home the prize. The win should only bolster Disney’s confidence in its live-action strategy — or should we say, visual-effects-and-live-action strategy — and the studio will have plenty of opportunities to build off tonight’s visual effects success. Favreau is also set to direct a similar remake of The Lion King, as well as a sequel to The Jungle Book itself. Gadget News via The Verge http://ift.tt/oZfQdV February 26, 2017 at 01:53PM |
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