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Netflix’s ‘The Silence’ looks a lot like ‘A Quiet Place’

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While A Quiet Place might have hit theaters first, The Silence is based on a Tim Lebbon book published in 2015, and The Silence was greenlighted in 2017, well before A Quiet Place came out. In response to comments on his website, Lebbon admitted the parallels are “a little troubling.” “There are similarities, of course, but I’m confident that the movie of The Silence will stand on its own,” he wrote. “It’s going to be epic!”

The Silence brings its own star power with Stanley Tucci, Kiernan Shipka, Miranda Otto and John Corbett. It comes to Netflix on April 12th, and if you really want to compare the two films, you can always hop over to Prime Video, where you can rewatch A Quiet Place.

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Christchurch, we need more than digital-security theater

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That’s why I thought that article might be good to share, to help people avoid the trauma of viewing videos like that. After all, these videos are injected without consent into our online spaces with the intent to harm us, and inspire further violence.

There was one huge problem: The article’s instructions require you to change your account settings to block all “unsafe” content. That includes “unsafe” art, sex ed, non-explicit adult content, nudity, sex news, LGBTQ content and more. Because content settings on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and others all regard sex as equally unsafe as violence, it means also blocking diversity. (The same diversity that once made the internet a lot more fun.)

It also isn’t going to work. That’s because Facebook just showed us it cares way more about stopping people from enjoying sex than it does about stopping people from enjoying hate.

On Wednesday Facebook finally acknowledged that white nationalism, white separatism and white supremacy are all basically the same flavor of racist nonsense and said it would ban them. It won’t do it immediately, which would’ve been the right thing to do, but at some unspecified time next week.

This came three days after the Independent published an exclusive showing that despite the Christchurch horror and its online components, Facebook still allows neo-Nazi groups because they “do not violate community standards.” When the groups were brought to its attention, “Facebook refused to remove the content,” it reported, “and told researchers to unfollow pages if they found them ‘offensive.'”

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While headlines hail it as an overdue triumph, let’s just call it out for what it is: bullshit. The public has been doing everything it can to stop Facebook from providing a safe space for neo-Nazi groups and all their coded hate for years. Even in the aftermath of Charlottesville in 2017, Facebook doubled down on its policies that kept “supremacy” groups safe.

Facebook has not been specific about what pages it will prohibit or remove or how the policy will be enforced, and it has backed away from taking action on implied and coded hate. Unlike its overactive policing of nudity, human sexuality and sexual speech. You see, its policies on implied and coded sex talk are crystal clear.

Facebook did not say how many people viewed the 300,000 copies of the video (out of 1.5 million) that it didn’t catch in the first 24 hours of uploads. In a Twitter poll right after the attack, 91 percent of nearly 2,000 respondents said they thought Facebook, YouTube and Twitter should delay livestreams to better moderate hate content. The poll’s author, Shannon Coulter, who organizes anti-extremist product boycotts, said that discussing how to monitor at scale wasn’t the point; rather it was the choice the companies made to make this possible without oversight.

Coulter added, “These companies have already enacted a successful crackdown on ISIS’ use of social as a radicalizing/attention-getting tool. They know how to do it. They just haven’t done it to the Nazis yet, despite that contingent being larger.”

After 9/11, America entered a future of surveillance and privacy invasion in the name of safety and security. It was a blood-soaked gold rush of domestic spying, even though deep down we knew that no amount of TSA humiliation was going to make us safer. The term “security theater” was coined around all this. It is defined as “the practice of investing in countermeasures intended to provide the feeling of improved security while doing little or nothing to achieve it.”

Facebook, Google and Twitter have wrecked our privacy and security while facilitating the rise of internet-savvy, right-wing attacks and extremist terrorism. At the same time, these companies have brutally policed sex, art and LGBTQ content to the detriment of peaceful, real-life, diversity-positive communities — “for our safety.”

It’s impossible not to see this mess we’re in as anything but the most perverse kind of security theater.

If you think that muting and removing extremist and conspiracy content is an impossible game of whack-a-mole, you’d be wrong. Watch a video on YouTube to see how quickly its algorithm begins to shovel content in your face leading you down dark tunnels of ever-worsening white nationalist fervor. Next, take a cruise around social media sites using a German VPN to see what it looks like when hate speech content is disallowed. Same for Facebook and Twitter. It’s suddenly not a nightmare. Weird, right?

In late 2017, Germany enacted a law against online hate speech — and has enforced it by fining companies and making real-life arrests for posting and inciting racial hatred online. The country decided Facebook and Twitter weren’t doing enough to stop hate speech and propaganda — while Facebook fought against Germany’s conclusion to protect itself from the company.

If Germany has to pass a law to stop your company from creating the next Hitler… I can’t think of a clearer sign saying you’re doing something very, very wrong. Hell, you could even try a half-ass stopgap, like prohibiting livestreams and video uploads during terror attacks. But no.

In the aftermath of Christchurch and the failed efforts to contain the disturbing video of the attacks, a significant number of people dumped Facebook. In the most high-profile instance, AirAsia’s CEO Tony Fernandes rage-quit Facebook, saying, “New Zealand was too much for me.” Fernandes explained in a series of tweets that he was walking away from his 670,000 followers on the service because “Facebook could have done more to stop some of this.”

And so it falls back to us to protect ourselves from Facebook. The thing about changing our settings on whatever platform is that it’s a setup: We lose the edgy internet and voices we want to hear but still don’t weed out the evil jerks ruining it for everyone else. It’s no coincidence that the puritanism of Facebook, YouTube, Apple and even the soft-puritanism of Twitter is all aligned with conservative values. Sex censorship is literally a Nazi value. So until they prove otherwise, for our own safety we should consider these companies as socially conservative with a vested interest in promoting white nationalism.

If we’ve learned anything from the internet in the past 20 years, it’s that sex is synonymous with diversity. And its most social function is to teach the importance of consent. Specifically, informed consent: when permission is granted with explicit understanding of the consequences. Looking back at what’s happened to our private data under social media’s terms of service, it seems to me that it serves them all too well to keep the public misinformed about consent.

Instead we have harmful content proliferating while women, LGBTQ people, people of color and all things sex-positive are silenced in the name of “safety.” You’d think that exposure to these voices would engender empathy. And you’d be right.

In a recent article examining violent online conspiracy theories in light of Christchurch, the conclusion was that those theories can’t necessarily be stopped. They’re part of the human condition, whether they’re our fascination with Roswell and the CIA creating lesbianism or Rush Limbaugh saying that Christchurch was a setup to smear the right.

Consistently, it found, conspiracy followers “punch up.” Meaning, conspiracies — like ones motivating the QAnon murder suspect to the Christchurch shooter — address pain points where people believe they lack power and control over their own lives. “Empower people,” the article states, “give them a sense of control, operate with transparency, and conspiracy theories seem to become less appealing.”

There is no need to tolerate “free speech” trolls on Twitter. The company just needs to actually enforce its rules against abuse. Facebook banning sex talk and art nudes while giving Holocaust-denial discussion groups space to fester is at best a deeply cynical interpretation of global community stewardship. At worst, it is a new form of deliberate cruelty, and a disturbing performance of the absence of empathy.

Image: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images (Zuckerberg)



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Apple to shut down Texture on May 28th now that News+ exists

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Unlike when Apple closed Beats Music, there’s currently no support for Android or Windows. You’ll have to pick up an iOS device or Mac if you want to use News+ right now. And simply speaking, the likelihood of a subscriber buying an iPad or Mac just to keep service going is rather slim. Those users are more likely to jump to alternatives like Scribd, even though those services might not offer the same selection as Apple.

It’s an unusual move when Apple is otherwise making its services widely available. Apple Music is available on Android, Windows and even third-party smart speakers, while Apple’s TV app will be available on smart TVs as well as competing media hubs like Fire TV and Roku players. It doesn’t appear that Apple is eager to make News+ ubiquitous, at least not in the short term.

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The best home printers

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The best all-around home printer: Inkjet all-in-one

Who this is for: Families—particularly those with school-age kids—or anyone who needs a machine that can reliably do it all.

Why we like it: HP’s OfficeJet Pro 8720 is one of the least annoying printers we’ve ever used, thanks to its straightforward setup, reliable Wi-Fi, smooth touchscreen interface, and well-designed software. It can print from pretty much any device you can think of, because it works with Windows, MacOS, Linux, ChromeOS, iOS, and Android. In our testing for the best all-in-one printer, we found that this model delivers great-looking color prints and sharp text. Because it’s an all-in-one machine, it can print, scan, and copy two-sided, and does so at a rapid clip. It will even send faxes, if that’s still something you need to do.

The HP’s up-front cost is reasonable for this sort of machine, and operating costs are low: under 2¢ per page for black-and-white and under 10¢ per page for color. This model can also take advantage of HP’s unique Instant Ink program, which is a great option if you print a lot of full-color pages or glossy photos. We also love the 8720 model’s design; its recessed output tray, which keeps your printed pages from getting knocked to the floor, is a stroke of ergonomic genius.

Home printer

With the output tray neatly placed behind the OfficeJet Pro 8720 printer’s touchscreen, your documents won’t fall onto your desk or floor after you’ve printed them. Photo: Kyle Fitzgerald

Flaws but not dealbreakers: Because it’s an inkjet printer, the 8720 can clog if it’s left unused for too long, so an inkjet may not be best for you if you don’t print often. (Fixing a clog requires wasteful cycles that deplete your ink tanks.) Laser printers don’t have this issue, but a laser all-in-one that can print in color costs about twice as much up front. The 8720 is also not the most versatile machine when it comes to handling nonstandard printing media. For example, you have to take out your letter paper and adjust the guides each time you want to print on envelopes or labels, because this printer has neither a secondary paper tray nor a bypass slot—features common to more professional (and more expensive) machines. Last, the front USB port is convenient for printing photos and saving scans, but won’t let you print PDFs or Word files; to get that capability, you need to upgrade to a more expensive model.

Dimensions: 19.7 by 20.9 by 13.4 inches

Weight: 33.02 pounds

Pages per minute (stated, monochrome/color): 24/20

Cost per page (monochrome/color): 1.9¢/9.7¢

Learn more in our full guide to the best all-in-one printer.

A home office powerhouse: Color laser printer

Who this is for: Home- and small-business owners, or people who simply don’t want to deal with the clogs that can plague inkjets.

Why we like it: The HP Color LaserJet Pro M254dw is our pick for the best laser printer because it’s easy to use, produces brilliant results, and enjoys laser printing technology’s superior reliability. No matter how long you leave it sitting unused, you can turn it on and it’ll start printing more or less right away—and without wasting any toner on cleaning cycles. Though it’s more expensive than a comparable monochrome laser printer, it’s also far more flexible. In addition to crisp text, it produces vivid color graphics and can even turn out respectable photos (just not on photo paper). Print speeds are quick, and per-page costs are reasonable. This model’s smartphone-style color touchscreen makes changing settings simple, and HP’s PC and mobile software is the best in the business. Unlike most other printers, the M254dw can connect to 5 GHz wireless, which should speed up big print jobs and helps ensure that the printer won’t lose connection over time.

Home printer

If you print on envelopes or labels often, you’ll appreciate the M254dw model’s single-feed bypass slot for odd-sized media. Photo: Rozette Rago

Flaws but not dealbreakers: The M254dw can take a minute or two to get going for very large print jobs. We saw this issue only once during testing, but several owners have reported it in reviews. Because this printer comes with a skimpy set of “starter” toner that’s good for only 800 black-and-white and 700 color pages, you’ll probably need to buy replacements within a year or so of purchase. Getting cartridges with the highest possible capacity makes the best financial sense, but a full set for this machine will cost around $400, or nearly twice as much as the machine itself. Thanks to all that toner, this printer is big (long, in particular) and heavy; make sure you have a space that can accommodate it. And, of course, the M254dw is just a printer—it doesn’t include copy, scan, or fax capability. To get those features, you’ll need to upgrade to a model like our color laser all-in-one pick.

Dimensions: 15.4 by 18.7 by 11.7 inches

Weight: 32.6 pounds

Pages per minute (stated, monochrome/color): 22/22

Cost per page (monochrome/color): 3¢/15¢

Learn more in our full guide to the best laser printer.

Affordable and reliable: Monochrome laser printer

Who this is for: People who don’t need a printer on a daily basis, but still appreciate having one for the few times a year when they need to print.

Why we like it: The Brother HL-L2350DW is simple, fast, dependable, easy to set up, and affordable to operate. And because it’s a laser printer, it can sit for weeks or months between print jobs and start up again without trouble. But although it’s a budget model, it’s not short on features. For the $100-ish asking price, you get automatic duplex printing capability, a large 250-sheet paper tray, reliable Wi-Fi connectivity, and the option to use high-yield toner cartridges—which means you don’t have to buy them very often. This printer works with Windows, MacOS, Linux, ChromeOS, iOS, and Android. As for print quality, in our testing to choose the best laser printer, we found that this model is more than good enough for any text-based document, but it might need a few settings tweaks to produce a graphics-heavy document you’d want to hand out to other people. It’s also extremely compact, which means it can fit in tight spaces (like a bookcase shelf) where other printers can’t go.

Home printer

At just a hair over 7 inches tall, the HL-L2350DW is extremely compact, so it can fit in places other printers can’t. Photo: Rozette Rago

Flaws but not dealbreakers: It’s a little flimsy and the packaging isn’t great, so if you buy one, be sure to check for any plastic parts that might have gotten bumped out of place in transit. We don’t recommend printing via Brother’s iPrint&Scan software, because it results in excessive, detail-destroying contrast. And if you use a Chromebook, you should be aware that the printer’s default settings might prevent it from working with Google Cloud Print; to get it working, you need to disable IPv6 in the Networking section of the printer’s Web control panel.

Dimensions: 14.0 by 7.2 by 14.2 inches

Weight: 15.9 pounds

Pages per minute (stated): 32

Cost per page: 3.3¢

Learn more in our full guide to the best laser printer.

Gallery-worthy prints at home: Photo printer

Who this is for: Serious photographers, or those who aspire to be.

Why we like it: The Epson SureColor P600 is capable of delivering gallery-quality prints up to 13 inches wide, and can print panoramas up to 10 feet long. It can also print on a huge variety of media, including metal and CDs. Though its color photos caught our eye while testing for the best photo printer, we especially loved the black-and-white output; it’s as close as you can get to traditional darkroom prints at home. Those prints will last you a long time, too: the P600’s UltraChrome HD pigment ink is one of the longest-lasting consumer inks. The touchscreen interface is a cut above what you’d get from most rivals. Ink costs are reasonable, and you can get extra-large-capacity tanks, so you’ll need to fill up less often. In addition to Wi-Fi, this printer has USB and Ethernet connections for faster printing.

Home printer

The Epson SureColor P600 makes photos that will last the rest of your life (and then some) if displayed in a UV-protective frame or stored in a photo album. Photo: Amadou Diallo

Flaws but not dealbreakers: As with most photo printers, print speeds are glacial—a standard 8-by-10-inch photo takes more than 3 minutes to print, and that time balloons to almost 6 minutes over Wi-Fi. This printer wastes ink when switching between matte and photo black inks (about 3 mL each time), because they share the same ink line to the print head. And if you use paper other than Epson’s own, you’ll have to seek out the appropriate media settings and ICC color profiles; frustratingly, Epson doesn’t include them.

Dimensions: 24.2 by 32 by 16.7 inches

Weight: 33.07 pounds

Cost per mL of ink: $1.24

Learn more in our full guide to the best photo printer.

This guide may have been updated by Wirecutter. To see the current recommendation, please go here.

When readers choose to buy Wirecutter’s independently chosen editorial picks, Wirecutter and Engadget may earn affiliate commissions.

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Sinemia offers more details on why it has been terminating accounts

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Sinemia says this is part of its stance against fraud. “This kind of vigilance helps us combat misuse, ensuring all our customers continue to enjoy movies at affordable and sustainable prices,” the company said in a press release. Supposedly, the company only terminated “a small number” of accounts, about three percent. The explanation probably won’t make customers who have been cut off feel any better, and this month’s debacle only reminded us of issues the company has run into in the past.

Along with this update, Sinemia launched another new ticket plan. For $14.99 per month, this “Always Unlimited” plan will let subscribers see one 2D movie per day, with no restrictions on showtimes. It offers a “level of flexibility competitors can’t match” a company spokesperson said. We’ll see if Sinemia’s approach — which seems to be a never-ending stream of new ticket plans — will be enough to win back customer trust.

The list of actions that can get you booted from Sinemia are below:

  • Unauthorized use of the Sinemia card/cardless outside of its intended purposes, resulting in fraudulent financial activity. For example, this could be purchasing concessions at the theater instead of a movie ticket.
  • Using multiple Sinemia accounts on the same device.
  • Not checking in at the theater before or after your movie.
  • Seeing the same movie more than three times.
  • Creating multiple Sinemia accounts for the same person.
  • Sharing one’s Sinemia membership to buy tickets for other people. This includes not only people buying tickets and selling to others but also people sharing their own tickets with friends and family members.
  • Manipulation of location data resulting in deceptive ticket purchases. For example, faking GPS data on a phone.
  • Reasonable suspicion of fraud and/or abuse.

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Saying goodbye to Telltale’s ‘The Walking Dead’

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“We need to go deeper.”

In my playthrough, at least, AJ never became a pacifist or an unhinged death machine. He once said that he “liked” killing someone, but that was about it. Clementine was clearly shocked but managed to explain the nuances of when and why it’s okay to kill someone in this strange new world. After that, he seemed to calm down and find his humanity again.

For now, it’s impossible to know what, if anything,was lost in the shift from Telltale to Skybound Games. The script and general story beats probably stayed the same — the achievement/trophy list and associated names were never altered, for instance. Individual scenes could have been condensed, however, or simplified to ease production in the latter stages.

Ultimately, I can only judge what I’ve had the chance to play. The episodes are polished but occasionally uneven, with stiff animations and a couple of jarring scene transitions. The structure of the finale is particularly odd, with a sudden climax at the end of the first act and an intriguing but ultimately unnecessary flashback in the middle. It’s a personal opinion, but I also wish the developers had saved Clementine’s conversation with Lee for the finale rather than episode three. The series started with Lee, and it would have been fitting to hear his voice closer to the end credits.

I won’t spoil the ending here. The final twist is controversial, though, and asks the player to believe an unlikely (yes, even by Walking Dead standards) chain of events. Regardless, I’m glad the ending exists for people like me who have stuck with the series through its many highs and lows. It’s not a perfect send-off, but it’s better than a half-finished season.

The Walking Dead

James is able to move and hide within ‘herds’ of walkers.

Devindra Hardawar

DevindraHardawar
Senior Editor

Telltale’s Walking Dead series was a narrative awakening for me when it debuted in 2012. I’ve been gaming since I was five, but I missed out on the heyday of PC adventure titles. So The Walking Dead‘s combination of well-written interactive storytelling, cinematic style and compelling player choices felt completely fresh and exciting. It was the stepping stone that Telltale’s quick ascent was built on — and something that inspired other developers to explore similar titles, like Square Enix’s excellentLife is Strange.

It’s just a shame the developer couldn’t keep up. When Telltale abruptly shut down last September, I was profoundly disgusted with how it treated its employees — so much so, that I didn’t have much interest in finishing The Walking Dead‘s final season. I loved the first episode, but I was perfectly fine with letting its cliffhanger be my last memory of the series. When Skybound announced it was willing to complete the season by bringing over some Telltale workers, I was moved by their devotion to Clementine. After being unceremoniously laid off, the former Telltale employees would be well within their rights to move on to other projects. But they stuck around to finish Clementine’s story properly — they were as committed to the character as I was.

Every decision I make for Clementine feels like something I’d tell my daughter in a few years.

Coming back to The Walking Dead after several months was a bit of a trip. I played the first episode a month before my daughter Sophia was born, and I found it to be an intriguing exploration of how you’d raise a child during the zombie apocalypse. Now, six months later, and fully committed to diaper-changing dad life, I’m looking at the series through fresh eyes. Every decision I make for Clementine feels like something I’d tell my daughter in a few years. I want her to be strong, but not cruel. Wise, but not a know-it-all. If I could manage it in this game, surely I could handle it in the real world.

More than ever, I just want Clementine and her young charge, AJ, to be happy. But this being The Walking Dead, that never lasts too long. I know how this works — I’m fully prepared for this season to break my heart eventually. I just hope Clementine finds some sort of peace.

The Walking Dead

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Instagram finally tests a fast-forward feature for videos

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In a move so overdue you’re probably checking the date stamp on this article, Instagram could finally be about to launch a seek bar on videos posted on users’ feeds. The feature, discovered by app researcher Jane Manchun Wong, would let you skip backwards and forwards through a video without having to start it again from the beginning (as every other video player ever made already allows).

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Canon takes on Fujifilm’s Instax with its IVY instant cameras

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Canon IVY CLIQ and CLIQ+ instant cameras

The CLIQ+ has an 8-megapixel sensor and full-lens selfie mirror, compared to 5 megapixels and a smaller mirror on the cheaper CLIQ. The CLIQ+ also has a ring flash around the lens, on top of the normal flash, for better, softer selfies and portraits, along with wireless Bluetooth connectivity. That lets you pair it with the Canon Mini Print mobile app, allowing you to add filters, photo frames and text, or remotely shoot group photos.

Canon is late to launch an instant camera, considering the money to be made. Fujifilm sold 8.5 million Instax units in just three quarters last year, nearly doubling its sales in all of 2016, and sells its own film consumables on top of that. Unfortunately, Zink film is inferior to Fuji’s Instax film, which may dissuade instant camera aficionados looking at Canon. Still, Canon’s pricing is pretty attractive, at $100 for the IVY CLIQ and $160 for the CLIQ+. They’ll arrive in stores in April of 2019.

Canon IVY CLIQ and CLIQ+ instant cameras

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Oppo’s next phone has a wedge-shaped pop-up camera

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Oppo F11 Pro’s camera is mounted on a tiny pop-up component that’s not much bigger than itself, whereas Oppo Find X has a pop-up that takes up the phone’s full width. As you can see in the video and photos Slashleaks released (embedded above), the upcoming model isn’t like either of those two. If it’s true that the leaked photo is from a casemaker, then this truly might be the next Reno’s final design.

An Oppo exec publicly mentioned two planned Reno devices in the past. One of them has contrast autofocus, phase detection autofocus and a graphite heat spreader, while the other is the 10x hybrid zoom edition of that model with the two aforementioned autofocus technologies, along with laser autofocus and vapor cooling. It’s unclear if the phone in these leaks is either of those, so it’s probably safer to wait for Oppo’s official announcement before you get too excited.

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Indie game ‘Hyper Light Drifter’ is becoming an animated series

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Preston said the project is still in its very early stages, and they’re still figuring out how to turn an atmospheric 2D pixel game into a full-fledged animated show. He told Polygon that they’re “leaning a lot more towards something that’s representative of the game on the style side.” What he means by that, we don’t really know at this point. It’s very much possible for the show to end up with anime-style animation, though, considering Shankar’s previous projects. The end product may even have a Studio Ghibli-esque feel, seeing as Hayao Miyazaki’s work was a major influence on the game.

Of course, those are merely speculations. Preston and Shankar aren’t even sure if the show would be a silent series or if there’s at least some dialogue involved — the game itself has no written words and dialogues are presented in symbols and images. For now, they’re reaching out to writers whom they believe can lead the show.

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