Author: Press Room
Are you on the case looking for a good new detective show to watch? Are you following the breadcrumbs and examining the evidence? Are you unbothered that I’m talking like a police procedural? Then you’re probably a detective diehard and have seen your fair share of crime series. You may need to dig a little deeper if you’re going to find something fresh. This is what this article is all about: uncovering those under-seen detective series that deserve more recognition. Some of these shows are ongoing, and some have long since wrapped up. All are worth a look. Dark Winds…
Pluribus has been a fascinating experiment thus far, with creator Vince Gilligan bringing his own brand of post-apocalyptic and dystopian fiction to the television landscape. As I suspected when it was first announced, it’s unlike almost anything else currently airing. There are no zombies, nuclear explosions, or a Mad Max-like wasteland involved here. No, instead, the world is brought to its “end” by an alien infection that turns almost every single human on Earth into a happy, content hivemind. But the audience focus is on Carol (Rhea Seehorn), one of only 13 people in the whole world immune to this…
A lot of people can’t do without Spotify, and it’s understandable. Its cross-device control, vast library, and new-music discovery make it hard to beat. Well, just last week, on a whim, I decided to open MusikCube in the terminal, and I never would’ve guessed that a command-line music player could feel like a revelation. It greeted me with a bare-bones, utilitarian interface, as I expected. But within minutes, it drew me in, and I found calm, quiet, and just pure music. Of course, MusikCube only plays music you own—it isn’t a streaming service. But that constraint gave me a more…
The last Star Wars movie to play in theaters was The Rise of Skywalker, six years ago. That may not seem like a long time in the long arc of the series—well over a decade passed between Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace, after all—but ever since Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012, they’ve wanted to flood the zone. We got five Star Wars movies between 2015 and 2019, plus a lot of TV shows after that. So, the absence of another proper Star Wars movie has been notable. Now finally, Disney is readying a couple of new movies…
Independent film fans unite! One of the better movie theater-going experiences one can have is heading to an indie film house and seeing a movie not many people are going to see at the same time as you. You go to an independent film to be impressed with the story and the acting rather than the overall spectacle of going to a film. Independent films are not always the easiest to track down, unless you make trips to an independent movie theater or attend a film festival. Ever since streaming services became a bigger part of the culture, the reach…
I’ve hit my breaking point with Spotify. Between the relentless price hikes and its annoying AI-generated music, I couldn’t justify the monthly bill anymore. So I went hunting for alternatives. Not the usual suspects like Apple Music or YouTube Music, which would just swap one subscription for another, but free options that wouldn’t nickel-and-dime me into submission. In the process, I discovered an ecosystem of open-source music streaming apps, all of which are YouTube Music clients that deliver ad-free streaming without subscriptions, logins, or guilt trips about premium features. Each one has a distinct personality and a reason you might…
The Sopranos. Sex and the City. The Wire. Veep. Game of Thrones. For decades, HBO was the place people went to see what was on the cutting edge of TV. The shows were deeper, denser, and bolder than anything else around. HBO still has a reputation for quality, but a new challenger is on the verge of stealing its prestige TV crown: Apple TV+. As HBO has embraced trends and therefore become a little more ordinary, Apple has reached into its cavernous war chest and spent money on challenging, original programming. We’re watching it turn into the creative powerhouse that…
Once upon a time, the only streaming app people really had to think about was Netflix, which is still the one most worth your money. Nowadays, every studio with even a shallow library has its own app, and it’s becoming hard to keep up. And not all streaming apps are created equal. Netflix has had the most time to figure things out, so you can usually count on it to at least work when you load it up. Others are busted to the point where it feels like the studios should pay you to watch them. One streaming app in…
When you’re looking into subscribing to a new streaming platform, you are likely to pay attention to the big-ticket movies and TV series. Those are probably why you’re interested in the service in the first place. Whether it’s Stranger Things for Netflix or Reacher for Prime Video, people flock to streaming services to watch the latest seasons of the biggest shows and releases of the newest movies. But the reason you might stay subscribed to a streaming service is for all the hidden gems that it offers. These can be shows and movies that you hadn’t heard of until you…
Ah, large language models. The latest miracle of humankind and the latest buzzword of the industry. Society can’t decide what to think of them. Some treat them as tools, some confide in them like old friends, and some have already built full-blown religions around them. What a mess. Regardless of the use case, one thing I’ll always enjoy is getting large language models like ChatGPT to break. And despite their supposed virtual omniscience, there’s still plenty that can shatter them. I mean, it’s a language model fed on the entire internet. What did you expect? I’ve talked before about prompts…