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(credit: Netflix)

Netflix is bumping up the video quality of one of its original shows in an effort to get ahead of the high dynamic range (HDR) streaming game. According to a report by FlatPanelsHD, Netflix released the first season of Marco Polo in HDR as well as 4K, and more HDR-capable shows will come soon. Season two of the show has been confirmed for release in June 2016.

Netflix's corporate communications manager Yann Lafargue confirmed that certain programs will support HDR streaming now but was cryptic about shows to come in the future. "We are indeed live with HDR. It works with compatible TVs, both in HDR10 and Dolby Vision," Lafargue told FlatPanelsHD. "We have season one of Marco Polo for now, but much more content should be available shortly, so stay tuned."

HDR improves picture quality by making blacks darker and whites brighter, resulting in an image sharper and crisper than that of regular HD. Netflix appears to be embracing HDR more than 4K at the moment, although the company has been streaming some 4K content since 2014. At that time, Netflix's 4K content was limited not only by the number of shows available but also by the few TVs that could support the resolution.

Two B330s are shown in low-Earth orbit, with a Boeing CST-100 and SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked. (credit: Bigelow Aerospace)

Throughout our planet’s space-faring history, there have been two major impediments to putting a lot of private citizens into orbit. Only governments have had spacecraft, and there have been only a few government-controlled space stations to visit.  But now that may finally changing in a big way. Within less than two years, both Boeing and SpaceX should complete development of private capsules that will carry people into space. Two other companies, Blue Origin and Sierra Nevada, are also developing orbital spacecraft.

The second part of the problem may soon be addressed as well. Less than a week after the launch of Bigelow Aerospace’s experimental 13-foot habitat to the International Space Station, the company has announced an agreement with United Launch Alliance to deliver two much larger B330 habitats into orbit by 2020. Each of these habitats, which will be fully self-sufficient, has 330 cubic meters of habitable volume—about one-third that of the space station.

Financial details of the agreement were not released, but the move is significant because of its potential to become the first truly commercial human activity in space—people launching aboard private spacecraft and staying in a privately developed habitat. “We are standing on the very threshold of an expanded and permanent human presence beyond our planet, and the foundation for that future will be the commercialization of low-Earth orbit,” said Tory Bruno, president and chief executive of United Launch Alliance, at a news conference this week.

Garfum.com's new invention. (credit: USPTO)

A New Jersey man named Michael Garofalo had a patent he claimed covered online contests, and used it to demand money from other small businesses. But when the Electronic Frontier Foundation came to the defense of a photographer targeted by Garofalo last year, Garofalo quickly dropped his case. Last month, he and his lawyers were ordered to pay $29,000 in legal fees.

Now Garofalo, who owns the website Garfum.com, is asking for the fee smackdown to be reconsidered. His reasoning: since the US Patent and Trademark Office recently agreed to grant him another patent, nearly identical to the first, his case couldn't possibly be considered "exceptional."

"This new evidence shows that this case does not lack substantive strength," writes Garfum.com's lawyers, from the Texas-based Austin Hansley law firm. "Simply put, how could Plaintiff’s position lack substantive strength when the USPTO performed the same § 101 analysis as this Court and found nearly identical claims to recite patentable subject matter?"

Walt Disney Pictures

Mowgli and his wolf-mother bid each other farewell in a touching moment.

6 more images in gallery

Does the film universe need two live-action, CGI-boosted versions of The Jungle Book? Apparently so, as both Disney and Warner Bros. want to dig their computer-animated claws into Rudyard Kipling's famed colonial-India screed.

WB's version, which will count as motion-capture expert Andy Serkis' directorial debut, won't see the light of day until October 2018, which leaves Disney's stab at the story as the only live-action option for some time. Lucky for us, this Disney-fied version doesn't just win by default.

Give equal credit to Jon Favreau as director and Moving Picture Company as visual effects overseers. They had to contend with some serious baggage—namely, Disney's own hokey, Kipling-crippling cartoon version from 1967—and still came away with a warm, touching, and jaw-droppingly gorgeous film that has somehow split the difference between family-friendliness and the book's original vision.

Amazon won a Golden Globe this year for its original series Transparent. (credit: Amazon)

In 2015, a study was published that claimed that reducing prejudice against homosexual people was relatively easy. All it took was a brief conversation with a stranger who was going door to door talking about prejudice against homosexuals. Supposedly, participants’ attitudes remained changed up to three months after said conversation.

The study received widespread media coverage and was considered groundbreaking because we knew so little about how to reduce prejudice. Unfortunately, it turned out to be built largely on fraudulent data, and the study was retracted.

Ironically, the researcher who uncovered the fraudulent data in this first canvassing study, David Broockman, has now published his own study on the same issue. It demonstrates that canvassing actually does change participants’ attitudes toward transgender individuals and that this change in attitudes persists for at least three months.

(credit: Spies Like Us)

Microsoft has filed a lawsuit against the US government over the number of secrecy orders it has received to allow g-men and cops access to customers' e-mails and other records.

The software giant's chief legal officer Brad Smith said that gagging orders had been applied to 2,576 such demands over the course of an 18-month period. Microsoft's top counsel added that 1,752 (68 percent) of those secrecy orders had no end date—"This means we effectively are prohibited forever [Smith's emphasis] from telling our customers that the government has obtained their data," he said.

Smith added in a blog post: