“Sony has made bad Spider-Man spinoff movies before, but Kraven the Hunter is another level of terrible.” I’ve steadfastly refused to watch any of Sony’s Spider-Man spinoffs. No Venom, no Madame Web, and certainly not this one. Sony keeps making them mostly so that they can keep their legal obligations that allow them to retain the exclusive rights to Spider-Man, not because anyone is looking forward to a Kraven the Hunter movie. But the other reason is that they do well enough for them in terms of money. The only way we can get this kind of garbage to stop is to stop paying to see them. That includes watching them “for free” when they make their way to streaming services, which also get the studio income and is also an indicator that people want them.

Kraven the Hunter is the flimsiest strand in Sony’s spider-free web

Kraven the Hunter lays bare what Sony’s universe of Spider-Man spin-offs has always been: a bad idea.

www.theverge.com

Wes Davis at The Verge: “The Vision Pro’s ultrawide Mac display is very close to being a killer app”. As I wrote earlier, I love the new display modes. I’ve taken another trip since writing that, and it really is amazing to have that kind of workspace on a plane. I also had a day where the power was being worked on in my area, so I worked from my Starlink-connected van, and used the Vision Pro to have a bigger monitor setup than just the laptop screen. It’s a revelation, honestly, to have such a powerful environment in challenging conditions like in a van or on a plane. As the article says, “…if it’s not in killer app territory, it’s at least right next door to it.”

The Vision Pro’s ultrawide Mac display is very close to being a killer app

And I’m not even an ultrawide display guy.

www.theverge.com

Via The Verge:

Moonbase is more than just a power strip—it’s a futuristic command center for your gaming setup, creative workspace, or office on the moon. With a sleek, futuristic lunar base-inspired design, it combines the best of both worlds: a power strip with 3 spacious AC “nodes” and a 240 W GaN USB-C charger with 4 USB-C ports. Ultra fast charging for 7 devices at once including multiple laptops, gaming handhelds, tablets, phones, and more—all while keeping your setup clutter-free and looking interstellar.

Love it! Backed.

Variety: “It’s looking like Chris Evans will return in ‘Avengers: Doomsday’”. They need to figure out how to make movies without leaning on the old guys.

Chris Evans Circling Appearance in ‘Avengers: Doomsday’

Chris Evans will return in “Avengers: Doomsday.”

variety.com

Mark Gurman, via Gruber (since I don’t have a Bloomberg sub): “Apple is now working on a major effort to support third-party hand controllers in the device’s visionOS software and has teamed up with Sony Group Corp. to make it happen.”

That’s great news, if true. The hand controls are good, but they’re not good enough for a lot of games.

Gurman: Apple and Sony Are Working to Bring PlayStation VR Hand Controller Support to Vision Pro

Link to: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-12-08/apple-sony-talk-playstation-vr-ps-vr2-hand-controller-support-for-vision-pro

daringfireball.net

This series seems like a bad idea pitched to capitalize on having the wonderful Michelle Yeoh stay in the franchise. I’ll give it a chance, but I’m skeptical.

OpenAI:

“Today, we’re adding ChatGPT Pro, a $200 monthly plan that enables scaled access to the best of OpenAI’s models and tools. This plan includes unlimited access to our smartest model, OpenAI o1, as well as to o1-mini, GPT-4o, and Advanced Voice.”

It looks like you’ll have to pay the $200/mo if you really want to use o1 for much. I’ve been using the existing $20/mo. ChatGPT Plus plan this weekend…not that much…and got the following: “You have 5 responses from o1 remaining. If you hit the limit, responses will switch to another model until it resets December 10, 2024.” Claude backs me off for a few hours sometimes, but days? Oof.

The New York Times: “The First New Film Camera in 20 Years Was Just Released”. While this is definitely not that—Leica came out with a new version of the M6 just a couple years ago—it is neat. I love the look of it, although $500 is pretty steep for a point-and-shoot.

The First New Film Camera in 20 Years Was Just Released. Our Photo Experts Think It’s Fascinating.

The Pentax 17 is a bold experiment: a brand-new, $500 film camera with a quirky design. Can it survive—and even thrive—in a digital world?

www.nytimes.com

What a tense, drama-filled story. I can’t imagine.

An I.V.F. Mix-Up, a Shocking Discovery and an Unbearable Choice (Published 2024)

Two couples in California discovered they were raising each other’s genetic children. Should they switch their girls?

www.nytimes.com

It’s sad to see this come to an end, but it also appears that what I celebrated as Microsoft really getting creative was a one-off, and its quality apparently didn’t keep up with the design. I wish we’d see more of this kind of thing.

Microsoft ends Surface Studio 2 Plus production with no successor in sight

It looks like it’s the end of the Surface Studio device.

www.theverge.com

This is a scary, but fascinating and well-presented story about the threat of a nuclear warfare program in space.

Opinion | The Warning (Published 2024)

No shockwave. No mushroom cloud. But a space nuke would change life on Earth forever.

www.nytimes.com

Neat!

An air pressure sensor lets this bike computer calculate wind resistance

Calculating wind speed is a breeze.

www.theverge.com

The company behind Arc is building a new AI web browser called Dia. I really liked Arc, their previous browser, and that’s part of the problem: it’s been clear that they have been spending less time on Arc, starting with their AI-driven mobile browser. They also spent a lot of time on Arc for Windows, which slowed Arc’s feature progress. Now they’re making a whole new browser.

In the meantime, I started using Safari more, mostly to try out some of its new features, but I ended up not going back to Arc. I get that companies have to find a way to sustain themselves, and the lack of a way to make a business out of Arc was one of my concerns in adopting it. I’m not as angry as people in the comments section on that article are, but it is disappointing. Maybe this new thing will be amazing someday, but I’m not going to jump in until it’s clear that it has a future.

The company behind Arc is building a new AI web browser called Dia

With an AI cursor that knows what to say when you don’t.

www.theverge.com