Month: November 2023

Here’s the full trailer for Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon: A Child of Fire

Zack Snyder, Netflix hope the film and its sequel will launch a new space opera franchise

Zack Snyder and Netflix hope to launch a new franchise with Rebel Moon Part 1: Child of Fire, with Part 2 to release next year.

Netflix concluded its Geeked Week showcase yesterday with the release of the full trailer for director Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon: A Child of Fire. It's the first of two parts (with plans for a third film to make it a trilogy), and Snyder and the streaming giant hope the films will launch a new space opera franchise. There are already plans for a novelization of the film, a four-issue prequel comic, a narrative podcast, an animated series, and a four-player game for the Netflix gaming platform.

As we reported previously, years ago, director Zack Snyder had an idea for an epic Star Wars movie that he pitched to Lucasfilm. That project never panned out for a variety of reasons. But the idea continued to germinate until Netflix got on board. Apart from Star Wars, Snyder has said his influences include the films of Akira Kurosawa, especially Seven Samurai, and The Dirty Dozen. He has set his epic saga in a universe controlled by the ruthless and corrupt government of the Mother World (the Imperium) with an army led by one Regent Balisarius (Fra Fee). The rebel moon of the title is called Veldt.

Per the official premise:

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This inside-out design solves most of the rotary engine’s problems

LiquidPiston’s designs will show up first in UAVs and generators.

A small rotary engine next to a conventional-size 25 hp piston engine

Enlarge / On the left, LiqudPiston's High Efficiency Hybrid Cycle engine, on the right, a 25 hp Kohler KDW1003 diesel engine. (credit: LiquidPiston)

Rotary engines have an aura of cool. In games of Top Trumps, the V12 might have been king, but a rotary was a joker, a wild card. A lack of mainstream success no doubt contributes; there are reasons they were never commonplace, including their oil-burning apex seals, which created emissions and fuel-consumption headaches.

LiquidPiston thinks it has those problems solved, however, and in the process, it created a new internal combustion engine that's small and efficient. It has demonstrated its tech on the bench and in a go-kart, but also in uncrewed aerial vehicles for the US military.

While little about the rotary engine merits the word, in a "traditional" Wankel rotary, a triangle-shaped rotor turns within a chamber during its combustion cycle. Apex seals are fitted at the apices of the rotor, but they need constant lubrication with oil, plenty of which burns during combustion. So, a Wankel engine needs constant oil top-ups while dealing with the products of that burnt oil. And those apex seals wear down.

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Obesity drug Wegovy reduces cardiovascular risks for those at high risk

The finding means 15 fewer cardiovascular events per 1,000 patients treated.

Wegovy an injectable prescription weight loss medicine that has helped people with obesity.

Enlarge / Wegovy an injectable prescription weight loss medicine that has helped people with obesity. (credit: Getty | Michael Siluk)

The blockbuster diabetes and weight loss drug semaglutide (Wegovy, Ozempic, Rybelsus) reduced the relative risk of heart attack, stroke, or cardiovascular deaths by 20 percent in high-risk patients with cardiovascular disease but not diabetes during a large and long randomized, placebo-controlled trial.

That overall risk reduction equates to 15 fewer cardiovascular events per 1,000 patients treated. People on semaglutide in the trial lost an average of 9.5 percent of their body weight, an 8.5 percentage-point drop over those in the placebo group.

The study, which was previewed in an August press release by the drug's maker and trial-runner Novo Nordisk, was published in full Saturday in the New England Journal of Medicine, timed to a presentation of the findings at the American Heart Association conference in Philadelphia.

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We’ll know soon if Astra—the commercial space company—has a future

Astra’s two co-founders have made an offer to take the company private.

Astra's Rocket 3 vehicle lifts off from Alaska on November 20, 2021, on the company's first successful launch into orbit.

Enlarge / Astra's Rocket 3 vehicle lifts off from Alaska on November 20, 2021, on the company's first successful launch into orbit. (credit: Astra/Brady Kenniston)

Over the last two years, Astra has become one of just a handful of the dozens of startup launch companies to actually put something into orbit. This is a measure of the technical acumen of Astra engineers, who set out to execute on the vision of the company's cofounders, Chris Kemp and Adam London.

During the same period, Astra's financials have taken a nose dive. When Astra went public in mid-2021, it had a valuation of $2.6 billion. The company's market value is around $25 million, based on Astra's closing price on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

A week ago, Astra's market value was even lower. The number rose after Astra revealed Thursday that Kemp and London made an offer to take the company private in a bid to save the startup they established in 2016.

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Disney Pulls TV Channels From Vietnam, Govt. “Concerned” Piracy Will Run Riot

A newspaper run by the Communist Party of Vietnam is reporting the “disappearance” of a number of popular channels from pay TV packages. Citing National Geographic and Nat Geo Wild as examples, the paper notesthey’re owned by Disney. Vietnam’s Ministry of Information and Communications is said to be “concerned” that the withdrawal will allow piracy to run rampant in Vietnam. Multiple high-level trade reports in the U.S. note that piracy has been rampant for years.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

disneyGiven the sheer scale and reach of pirate sites either operated from Vietnam, or with direct connections to Vietnam, describing the country as a global piracy problem wouldn’t be a stretch.

After being briefed by Hollywood for the umpteenth time, that’s certainly the view of the United States government. Yet despite reported progress, including an overhaul of Vietnam’s copyright laws and promises to crack down on piracy, including the formation of a specialist anti-piracy unit, nothing has had any visible effect.

However, turn off a few legal TV channels inside Vietnam and suddenly piracy is a real concern.

International Pay TV Channels Withdraw

Sài Gòn Giải Phóng, a media outlet owned by the Communist Party of Vietnam, published a report yesterday claiming that during October and November, TV channels “disappeared” from pay TV subscription packages. National Geographic and Nat Geo Wild were named specifically along with their owner, Disney.

Other channels under the same ownership including Fox Movies, Fox Sports, Disney Channel and Disney Junior, were previously withdrawn, the paper reported.

To explain the exodus, the article cites Nguyen Thanh Lam, Vietnam’s Deputy Minister of Information and Communications. He says that film companies and other entertainment content businesses, Disney included, believe that traditional television has run its course and video-on-demand services are the future.

Since launching the Disney+ service, the article continues, Disney has begun to put everything it has onto the platform; it even had a message during the service’s launch ceremony: “Goodbye cable TV.”

Disney+ is indeed widely available; Aladdin and Anastasia can be viewed in Algeria and Albania, Bambi and Bagheera in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Unfortunately nothing for Vietnam, though, since Disney+ isn’t available there.

The article stresses the entire Southeast Asian market has seen international TV companies withdraw content but according to recent data, Disney+ is available in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

As things stand, there’s no real option to view the lost channels in Vietnam anymore, at least not legally.

Vietnam’s Government Voices Piracy Concerns

The theory that making content legally available is the only way to ensure legal sales appears clear to Vietnam’s government. The last thing a market needs is a gap opening up for pirates to exploit, as the article explains:

According to the Ministry of Information and Communications, although the withdrawal from the pay cable TV market in Vietnam is due to a change in the business orientation of the above channels, this also raises many concerns about the gap that these channels will leave behind. What is left is an opportunity for pirates, pirated websites, and illegal profits to run rampant when people’s need to watch sports, watch movies, listen to music….is very large

To show the scale of the demand, the article cites figures compiled by the Ministry of Information and Communications. As of October 2023, the number of pay TV subscribers in Vietnam reached 18.7 million, an increase of 12.3% over the same period last year. Pay TV revenue as of the third quarter of 2023 had reached VND 7,500 billion ($307.5 million), up 1.4% over the same period in 2022.

The government is apparently seeking recommendations on which companies can step in to fill the pay TV gap; it also appears to be painting the loss as an opportunity.

“From a positive perspective, the withdrawal of international television channels is also an opportunity for domestic television channels to have more customers,” the Communist Party-owned publication notes. “Besides, if people continue to support pirated websites, businesses providing official services will no longer buy copyrighted content at high costs – something that happened in the past. At that time, people will also be disadvantaged.”

If Only Someone Could Do Something

Regardless of the overt or underlying reasons for withdrawing the channels, entertainment companies have a primary mission to generate profit and if a business is profitable in certain regions or product areas, those are only discarded for exceptional reasons. There are significant problems in Vietnam regarding the country’s Cinema Law (report, page 10 (pdf)) but the piracy problem never gets any better.

When Vietnam did conduct some kind of crackdown, the focus wasn’t on U.S. content being pirated and then distributed all over the world, it was on pirated sports content from overseas being consumed inside the country. Blocking a reported 1,000 sites presented few problems for the authorities then.

Yet according to the U.S. Department of Trade, despite Vietnam being host to the world’s “most egregious piracy sites” there is no clear or effective enforcement path available against these sites or their operators.”

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.