Evan-Rachel-Wood-Emily-Clarke-and-Dwayne-Johnson-with-WarnerMedia.jpg The upcoming streaming service from WarnerMedia will reportedly cost $16-17 and will include HBO and Cinemax in a bundle. Announced in 2018, the project is one of the upcoming player in the competitive streaming platform business that is currently dominated by Netflix. The subscription service will also feature content from TNT, TBS, Adult Swim and more, ensuring that they have more than enough material to entice more customers. The rise of streaming platforms has significantly shaped the way people consumed media. As it rose in popularity through the years, evidenced by Netflix's success not just in North America, but also in countless foreign territories, entertainment companies have begun to develop their own respective services that would exclusively offer their content. Much of the focus has been on Disney's upcoming subscription service Disney+, especially with their long library of IPs to offer that has just become longer thanks to their acquisition of Fox's TV and movie assets. However, with more details emerging for WarnerMedia's plan to compete in the VOD ring, they're starting to prove that fans ought to also keep an eye on their in-development streaming platform. Wall Street Journal, citing sources that have personal knowledge of the matter, reveals some interesting tidbits about AT&T's WarnerMedia's subscription video-on-demand service, including its pricing which will likely be around $16-17 a month. That would include an HBO and its sister company, Cinemax bundle alongside its vast Warner Bros. TV and movie library. No word yet for the official name of the WarnerMedia streaming service, but it's expected to make its beta form debut in the fourth quarter of the year. The cost is significantly higher than WarnerMedia's competitors like Netflix ($12.99), Showtime ($10.99) and Hulu’s VOD packages ($5.99-11.99). It's also double the price of Disney+ introductory rate of $6.99. Warner-Bros-AT-T-Franchises.jpg WarnerMedia's unnamed SVOD may sound too expensive especially considering the pricing of other players, but it's only a bit costlier than HBO Now, which already retails for $14.99. Looking at all the additional content that subscribers are getting on top of HBO shows, it doesn't seem like too much of an increase. Last month, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson emphasized their diverse portfolio that will have something for everyone. Aside from blockbusters such as Aquaman, A Star Is Born, and the Harry Potter franchise, popular sitcoms such as Friends, Seinfeld and the recently-concluded The Big Bang Theory will also be available through the SVOD. On top of that, classics such as Casablanca, Dial M for Murder and My Fair Lady will also be accessible. No word yet how DC Universe fits in all this, but it's not outside the realm of possibility that it also gets consolidated with the rest in the SVOD. Depending on how WarnerMedia strategizes their content management for their streaming service, the public could actually be more inclined to sign up for it despite its steep pricing. Looking at the IPs they have at their disposal, they have countless cult favorite shows and movies in their roster especially since they plan on bringing a lot of their licensing right back. HBO has already made a name for itself for its original programming with shows like Game of Thrones and the ongoing Chernobyl, ticking that box for the upcoming SVOD. Then again, it's safe to reserve judgement until the platform is up and running. In the meantime, fans need to start recalculating their streaming service budgets and decide which platforms they'll sign up for and which ones they'll forego.

Sophie-Turner-as-Jean-Grey-in-X-Men-Dark-Phoenix.jpg DARK PHOENIX PROVIDES AN UNSATISFYING ENDING TO THE X-MEN FILM FRANCHISE, WITH A STORYLINE THAT'S NEITHER CHARACTER-DRIVEN NOR WELL-DEVELOPED. The X-Men film franchise has been around, in some form or another, for nearly two decades since kicking off with X-Men in 2000. Now, with the recent finalization of the Disney-Fox deal, the franchise will officially come to a close. The last of the mainline X-Men movies, Dark Phoenix, sees longtime writer-producer Simon Kinberg make his directorial debut in another attempt to adapt Marvel Comics' Dark Phoenix Saga storyline. As such, the film is tasked with both wrapping up the prequel series that began with X-Men: First Class and giving the Dark Phoenix Saga a better adaptation than 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand... a job it's, sadly, not up for. Dark Phoenix provides an unsatisfying ending to the X-Men film franchise, with a storyline that's neither character-driven nor well-developed. Dark Phoenix sees a fully realized X-Men team lead by Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) - consisting of Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), Beast (Nicholas Hoult), Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), Cyclops (Tye Sheridan), Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and Quicksilver (Evan Peters) - go on a mission to space in perhaps the film's most entertaining sequence insofar as it features all the X-Men using their powers as a team. However, Jean is hit by some kind of cosmic force appearing to be a solar flare. Though she manages to survive, her already incredible powers are amplified and she has trouble controlling them. When Jean accidentally kills a member of the X-Men, she seeks the help of Magneto (Michael Fassbender), but seeing the danger she poses, he banishes her from his mutant homeland. With no where else to go, Jean is approached by a mysterious woman (Jessica Chastain), who has sought the power within Jean, but whose intentions are not innocent. Jennifer-Lawrence-and-Sophie-Turner-in-Dark-Phoenix.jpg For Dark Phoenix, Kinberg serves as director and penned the film's script, after working on the much maligned X-Men: The Last Stand, as well as prequel installments X-Men: Days of Future Past and X-Men: Apocalypse. Although Dark Phoenix is bound to earn comparisons to The Last Stand (since both adapt the Dark Phoenix Saga storyline), this latest movie focuses much more on Jean Grey - but at the expense of the other characters and elements of the story. Dark Phoenix goes cosmic to introduce the source of the Phoenix Force, and an alien race that seeks to obtain its power, but fails to fully establish either the mechanics of the force or the aliens beyond a one-dimensional motivation. Dark Phoenix also follows the thread of a tenuous relationship between humans and mutants - a common theme of X-Men movies - although, here, Charles works to maintain it at great risk to the X-Men. But again, that's not well developed and largely used to move the plot forward or set up certain action set pieces. All these underdeveloped secondary elements and supporting characters would be understandable if Dark Phoenix were to use the bulk of its runtime to give Jean Grey a truly compelling, character-driven story - but it doesn't. The mechanics of how Jean's powers work or how the Phoenix Force affects them isn't explained well enough for her actions to make sense, and Jean isn't established enough as a character in these films for her dark turn to have any emotional impact. Kinberg uses close ups on his actors to focus on core emotional beats, but rather than complement a compelling script, these close ups are a stopgap to fill an emotional void in the script. Turner and the rest of the cast do what they can with the script, but the foundation simply isn't there, and certain lines of dialogue are more likely to elicit laughter than the desired emotional response. So Jean Grey is ultimately a confusing character whose actions and motivations make little sense, leading a larger cast of characters who make similarly baffling decisions. Dark-Phoenix-Magneto-Brotherhood-Mutants.jpg Further, big emotional beats also fail to land because they rely too much on the franchise's legacy, but with three years since the last X-Men movie, casual audiences simply aren't invested enough for that to work. It's possible that Dark Phoenix is a more satisfactory adaptation of The Dark Phoenix Saga than The Last Stand was, and to the film's credit, it does introduce certain interesting ideas by going cosmic. But few, if any of these ideas are fully expanded. Overall, the movie relies too much on a foundation within the franchise that simply hasn't been established effectively enough. It may service longtime fans of the film series and the comic books (though it also may not), but it will likely leave casual fans scratching their heads. As the seventh and final movie in Fox's X-Men franchise, Dark Phoenix doesn't conclusively wrap up the series in a satisfactory way - though that may be chalked up to the filmmakers not knowing it would be the last mainline installment when they started work on it. It's unclear how exactly Fox's deal with Disney affected Dark Phoenix, but it means the X-Men film series concludes on one of its less satisfying chapters. Though completionists and X-Men fans may still find some enjoyment in Dark Phoenix, it's by no means a must-see superhero movie, nor do the visuals and action set pieces (of which there are some) necessitate seeing it in IMAX. Ultimately, Dark Phoenix doesn't work as a single entry in the larger franchise, nor does it build effectively on what came before, leaving Fox's X-Men films without a satisfying conclusion to the nearly two-decade old series.

Patton-Oswalt-as-Max-from-The-Secret-Life-of-Pets-2.jpg THOUGH THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS 2 FEATURES PLENTY OF CUTESY ANIMAL SHENANIGANS, THIS ONLY DOES SO MUCH TO COMPENSATE FOR ITS FLIMSY AND EPISODIC STORY. Since its founding in 2007, Illumination has come to specialize in animated entertainment that's targeted strictly at younger kids, even more so than the films made by rival studios like Disney and Pixar. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, either; not everything needs to be as deep as Inside Out or Ralph Breaks the Internet. And based on the box office success of properties like Despicable Me and The Secret Life of Pets, there's clearly a demand for Illumination's brand of zany animation. All the same, a sequel like The Secret Life of Pets 2 leaves something to be desired. Though The Secret Life of Pets 2 features plenty of cutesy animal shenanigans, this only does so much to compensate for its flimsy and episodic story. The Secret Life of Pets 2 divides its many furry characters among three plot threads. One of them follows Max (Patton Oswalt, taking over from Louis C.K. in the first movie) and Duke (Eric Stonestreet) as they becoming dog-parents to Katie's (Ellie Kemper) toddler, Liam. The other two involve Snowball (Kevin Hart) and new addition Daisy (Tiffany Haddish) teaming up to rescue a white tiger from the circus, and Gidget (Jenny Slate) trying to recover Max's favorite squeaky toy, after he gives it to her for safe-keeping. For the large part, these storylines are pretty disconnected and feel like separate vignettes that've been loosely strung together to form a three-act narrative. And while they eventually come together when the film's climax rolls around, that only makes them seem somewhat less disjointed. Snowball-and-Daisy-in-The-Secret-Life-of-Pets-2.jpg Max's storyline, in particular, is a curious one. The first Secret Life of Pets was essentially Toy Story with house pets, with Max and Duke filling in for Woody and Buzz Lightyear. It made sense for the movie, however, and boiled down to a story about a figurative only-child adjusting to life with a new sibling. For the sequel, longtime Illumination film writer Brian Lynch transforms Max into an insecure dad who needs to learn to be less over-protective of his (human) kid. As a result, Max's arc in The Secret Life of Pets 2 is something that only really speaks to adults and doesn't feel like a natural continuation of his journey in the previous movie. He receives some guidance from Rooster (Harrison Ford, who's basically playing Harrison Ford as an animated Welsh Sheepdog) along the way, but Rooster's advice often comes off feeling like a regressive criticism of modern parenting techniques, more than anything else. The other plot threads here are far sillier and less substantial, but they're also where The Secret Life of Pets 2 works best. While there's a slight animal rights message to Snowball and Daisy's adventure together, it's otherwise an excuse for Hart's delightfully kooky white rabbit to pretend he's a superhero. Haddish's Shih Tzu is a smarter and more capable foil to Hart's character (similar to the actors' roles in last year's live-action comedy Night School), but their dynamic serves the movie's purposes well enough. By comparison, most of the comedy in Gidget's subplot involves the ditzy Pomeranian getting a crash-course from Chloe (Lake Bell) in how to be a cat. The Secret Life of Pets 2 resorts to some tedious gags based around stereotypical feline behavior in these scenes, but it throws enough jokes at the wall to land some full-blown laughs along the way. (And, of course, there's also bathroom humor for the juice box crowd to giggle at.) Secret-Life-of-Pets-2.jpg Generally speaking, though, director Chris Renaud (who also helmed the original movie) keeps The Secret Life of Pets 2 moving at an energetic pace, and avoids stretching the overarching story any thinner than it already is. The sequel's animation is similarly glossy and playful, if not as richly detailed or expressive as the visuals from other recent mainstream computer-generated films. Illumination's character designs haven't evolved much over the years, either, and the movie's humans are only slight variations on the non-animals featured in the studio's previous films; for example, Nick Kroll as a villainous circus owner has pretty much the exact same curved nose as Gru. Overall, The Secret Life of Pets 2 is as bubbly and fluffy (pun partially intended) as its predecessor, but feels like it's treading water, when it comes to its aesthetic qualities. As a whole, The Secret Life of Pets 2 has the same problem as Illumination's Despicable Me spinoff Minions: it plays out like a series of shorts that've been padded out into a somewhat ungainly full-length feature. Obviously, for a lot of people (families especially), The Secret Life of Pets' four-legged heroes and their antics are the real attraction, and the sequel ought to deliver enough of what they're looking for. Still, while other Illumination films have balanced their wacky comedy with simple and even touching stories, this one struggles to do the same. Fans of the original movie may want to check this one out anyway, but hopefully The Secret Life of Pets 3 (if it happens) will give them something a little more substantial to chew on.

Liz Feldman's dark comedy starring Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini has become a critical darling and potential awards season player. Dead to Me is alive and well at Netflix. The streamer used its For Your Consideration Emmy panel on Monday night to announce that its dark comedy from creator and showrunner Liz Feldman is officially returning for a second season. Stars Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini will return for the newly announced season two and will reprise their roles as friends-turned-enemies-turned-friends Jen and Judy, respectively. It's unclear if co-star James Marsden will return, given the events of the season one finale. (We won't spoil that, but read Feldman's comments on the surprising ending here.)While Netflix, like other streamers, does not release viewership data, Dead to Me has become a critical darling and stands as a potential awards season player. The "traumedy" currently has an 87 percent rating among critics and impressive 93 percent audience score on RottenTomatoes.com. Dead to Me hails from CBS TV Studios and counts Gloria Sanchez Productions' Will Ferrell and Adam McKay among its executive producers. Christie Smith, who manages Feldman, also exec produces alongside Gloria Sanchez's Jessica Elbaum. Applegate also is credited as an EP on the series, which marks her first TV role in seven years. Applegate said that Feldman (The Ellen Show, 2 Broke Girls) talked her out of "semi-retirement" to star on the show.

Jaimie-Alexander-Lady-Sif-Thor-Dark-World.jpg Marvel Studios executive producer Victoria Alonso is teasing Jaimie Alexander could return as Lady Sif in the future. Alexander made her debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2011's Thor. She and the Warriors Three's screen time were limited thanks to Thor's Earthly adventure, but they all did return in Thor: The Dark World two years later. Sif was featured a bit more in the action and set up further as a possible romantic interest for Chris Hemsworth's Thor, but this was the last time she appeared on the big screen. Alexander's only other MCU appearance to this point came with two appearances on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., once in the middle of season one and again in season two. That last appearance for Alexander came in 2015, so it's been nearly four years since she last played the Asgardian warrior. Unlike the Warriors Three though, Sif is still alive as far as we know in the MCU, giving fans hope that she could return soon. In a recent AMA on Reddit, Marvel Studios executive producer Victoria Alonso was asked if there are any plans to bring Sif back in the movies. She couldn't say too much on the matter, but didn't rule out the possibility of her returning. She said, "Never say never. We love Sif the character as we do our actress, Jaimie Alexander." Sif.jpg This is far from confirmation that Sif will return to the movies, but it also wouldn't make much sense for Alonso or anyone with the MCU to completely rule out a return like this. Unless Sif had died offscreen, there's always the possibility that she could make another appearance. Marvel was even planning to bring Alexander back for Thor: Ragnarok, but Alexander's filming schedule for her NBC show Blindspot didn't allow for it to happen. This was probably for the best for Sif though, as she likely would've been swiftly killed off like her friends. Alonso's response may have been explicitly about Sif's chances of appearing in MCU movies again, but Disney+ also offers Marvel Studios the ability to bring her back in a bigger way. Rumor has it that this is precisely what they want to do too. A Lady Sif series on Disney+ hasn't been confirmed and likely won't happen in the immediate future, but it will be easier to get done with Blindspot coming to a close after next season. So, whether it be in the movies or on Disney+, we'll have to keep our fingers crossed that Lady Sif's MCU return is coming soon.

Lord-of-the-Rings-Story-Header-With-Elrond.jpg Amazon Prime is taking people back to Middle-earth with their Lord of the Rings TV show, which has its story set during the Second Age. Development on the new Lord of the Rings TV show is officially underway with lots of key information - casting, production details, and so forth - still being kept under wraps despite an active Twitter account dropping clues about the show's intended story and time period. Following Christopher Tolkien's resignation from the Tolkien estate as Estate Director in 2017, Amazon Studios announced plans to develop a new TV show based on the Lord of the Rings story. Unlike Peter Jackson's big screen adaptations of both the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit stories, it's believed Amazon will cover major events from Middle-earth's Second Age with a focus on Sauron's rise and the forging of the Rings of Power. This storyline was covered briefly in Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring but even casual Lord of the Rings fans know that there is much, much more to the story of Sauron's rise and fall. Despite the lack of confirmed information about the new Lord of the Rings show, we know that it will be set during Middle-earth's Second Age. In J.R.R. Tolkien's history of Middle-earth, time has been split into Four Ages with each Age lasting approximately 3,000 years, give or take. Both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings stories take place late in Middle-earth's Third Age, ending with the beginning of the Fourth Age as Aragorn becomes king in Return of the King. Because Amazon's Lord of the Rings series will be taking up back to the Second Age, we'll be meeting an entirely new cast of characters (sorry, Hobbit fans). LORD OF THE RINGS TV SHOW TAKES PLACE IN EARLY SECOND AGE Amazon-Lord-of-the-Rings-TV-Show-Header.jpg One of the biggest clues about the expected story and time period for Amazon's Lord of the Rings is known from the map featured on the Lord of the Rings Twitter account. Since the account first started tweeting, we've seen new photos of the evolution of Middle-earth regularly posted with the most recent tweet of a map showing a map that confirms the elf kingdom Lorinand and Numenor, the kingdom of men raised from the sea by the Valar, are there. But Mordor and its most prominent landmark, Barad-dur, aren't on the map yet. Lord of the Rings historians will tell you this means the Amazon series will begin somewhere early in Middle-earth's Second Age before Sauron rose up and the Rings of Power were forged under Celembrior of Eregion. Sauron begins building Barad-dur in S.A. 1000, 500 years after he comes back to Middle-earth. The rise of Numenor runs parallel to Sauron's rise, with tensions beginning in Middle-earth as Sauron makes his power more visible in Mordor. By S.A. 1600, the One Ring has been forged and the story we know of Middle-earth's collective battle to defeat Sauron (the backstory shown in Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring) begins. Based on all of this, the most logical estimate for the time period of Amazon's Lord of the Rings is somewhere between S.A. 1000 and S.A. 1600 but there could be flashbacks, flash-forwards, or time jumps that help to compress the amount of time covered onscreen as the story tracks the major events of the Second Age. What is very clear from the map is that the time period will be focused on the middle of the Second Age and will likely end around the time of the forging of the One Ring and the Rings of Power, ostensibly because we already know the big Lord of the Rings story beats from that point onward. WHAT HAPPENED IN MIDDLE-EARTH'S SECOND AGE? Sauron-silhouette.jpg Knowing that Amazon's Lord of the Rings takes place during the early to mid-Second Age (S.A. 1000-1600) also helps clue viewers in on what events we should expect to see. This time period is mostly focused on the rise of Sauron as well as the lives of elves and men. Amazon's Lord of the Rings story will most likely be concerned with the first rumblings of Sauron's return to Middle-earth and his eventual emergence on the scene in S.A. 1000 as he begins building Barad-dur in Mordor. Until S.A. 1600, Sauron is quietly gaining power as he attempts to control all of Middle-earth. The threat he poses and the ways in which he attempts to get that control will likely figure into the story. As Sauron begins acquiring more and more power during this time, we know the Numenoreans understand the threat he poses as they begin building safe havens across Middle-earth, including Lond Daer, Umbar, and beyond. The Numenoreans also have long had problems with the Valar, the beings who helped raise Numenor from the sea and give it to the humans. The Valar banned the Numenoreans from sailing too far west for fear they would reach the Undying Lands. The Numenoreans feel wronged by the ban and believe they are owed the right to reach the Undying Lands and get access to immortality. We should expect to see this clash of power figure into the show, too, especially since the Numenoreans' insolence toward the Valar on this issue will help to explain how Numenor comes under the control of Sauron in S.A. 3255 with total ease. AMAZON'S LORD OF THE RINGS CAN SHOW THE RINGS' FORGING Dwarven-Rings-of-Power.jpg Another big clue about where the Lord of the Rings story will go can also be found on the show's Twitter timeline. In addition to sharing screengrabs of the map of Middle-earth in the Second Age, lines from the Rings of Power epigraph have also been shared as captions. The creation of the Rings of Power occurs in S.A. 1500, near the end of the time period the Amazon Lord of the Rings series will most likely cover. Sauron creates the 20 rings - 19 for the human, elf, and dwarf leaders of Middle-earth and one for himself - and allows these leaders to believe the rings will help to keep the balance of power. Unbeknownst to the others, Sauron intends to control them via their rings thanks to Sauron forging his One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom. The forging of the Rings of Power and Sauron's subsequent forging the One Ring would be the climax of the series because it's such a pivotal event. It's likely that the creation of the rings and the further understanding by the humans, elves, and dwarves of the evil power Sauron now has because of the One Ring will be the main event the Lord of the Rings series will build toward. Since the war to defeat Sauron occupies the latter half of Middle-earth's Second Age, we could also see the first stirrings of an uprising as season 1 comes to a close.

“Game of Thrones” star Peter Dinklage is in negotiations to star opposite Rosamund Pike in the thriller “I Care a Lot,” sources said. J Blakeson penned the script and will direct with shooting scheduled for this month. Pike will play Marla Grayson, a highly successful legal guardian with a knack for using the law to her benefit and her clients’ detriment. But when she cherry picks her seemingly perfect client, she soon realizes looks are deceiving. Dinklage’s role is being kept under wraps. Teddy Schwarzman’s Black Bear and Blakeson’s Sugar November are producing, with Black Bear fully financing. Producers are Schwarzman, Ben Stillman and Michael Heimler alongside Blakeson. Sacha Guttenstein will executive produce. The pic marks Dinklage’s first major film role since his hit HBO show “Game of Thrones” ended last month after an eight-season run, which earned him three Emmys for the role of Tyrion Lannister. Though the show’s final season took more than a year to shoot, Dinklage still found ways to stay busy in feature films, appearing in “Avengers: Infinity War” as well as lending his voice to “The Angry Birds Movie 2,” which bows later this year.

Bill Skarsgard, who broke out as Pennywise the Clown in “It,” is attached to star in the drama “Gilded Rage,” sources said. Director Charlie McDowell is set to write and direct the movie with Jake Gyllenhaal and Riva Marker producing via their Nine Stories banner. Jeremy Steckler of Conde Nast Entertainment is also producing. The film is based on Benjamin Wallace’s Vanity Fair article about the infamous murder of Investment banker Thomas Gilbert Sr., whose death was originally believed to be a suicide until an investigation proved otherwise. Skarsgard will play Thomas Gilbert Jr., who was arrested for the crime and is still awaiting trial to this day. Gilbert originally pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, but he has resisted subsequent plea deals, while his mother foots the bill for his defense. Skarsgard became a household name as Pennywise the Clown in the box office hit “It” and is set to reprise the role in the sequel this fall. He also appeared in the Hulu series “Castle Rock” as the mysterious “Kid” and in the Sundance darling “Assassination Nation” as Mark. Most recently, Skarsgard wrapped production on the Antonio Campos’ and Netflix adaptation of “The Devil All the Time,” which also stars Tom Holland, Chris Evans, Mia Wasikowska and Robert Pattinson.

It features KGB officers searching for a CIA agent stationed at the nuclear power plant. As HBO's Chernobyl series comes to an end, a Russian TV network is creating its own take on the 1986 nuclear disaster. The series was commissioned by NTV, a top free-to-air network, owned by Gazprom Media, the media arm of the natural gas giant Gazprom. It was partially financed by the culture ministry, which provided 30 million rubles ($460,000). The total budget has not been made public. Principal photography was done last year in neighboring Belarus and the series is currently in postproduction. Few details have been revealed so far, except for a short synopsis, which states that the series will follow a group of Soviet KGB officers tasked with uncovering a CIA agent stationed at the Chernobyl nuclear plant and involved in espionage. NTV is known for pro-Kremlin programming. The air date of the series has not yet been announced. Chernobyl aired in Russia on Amediateka, "the home of HBO." Although some local viewers criticized Chernobyl for inaccuracies and overall failure to catch the spirit of the Soviet regime's final years, the series was generally well received in Russia. On KinoPoisk, the local analog of IMDb, its average rating is 9.1.

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Full-screen mode in Google Chrome offers a minimalistic approach that eliminates almost all distractions while you read an article or try to work online. Become the productivity guru you always wanted to be by removing tabs, navigation buttons, extensions dock, and Omnibox. How to Activate Full-screen Mode Fire up Chrome, and then navigate to a web page that you want to visit in full-screen mode. Click the menu button, and then click on the full-screen mode icon (the empty square) located next to Zoom mode about halfway down the menu. Alternatively, press the F11 key on your keyboard to activate full-screen mode (if you’re using a Chromebook, look for the key that looks just like the icon represented in the menu). https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content...U9YLSsg0D2.png What you get is a view of the web page without the elements of Chrome that can quickly advert your attention to less important things. https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content...EOwLw7jeqt.png Full-screen mode is excellent for staying on one website, and it lets you traverse the internet with direct links only. If you want to visit another website via the Omnibox, you have to exit full-screen mode. As you may have noticed, when you enter full-screen mode, the menu icon disappears along with the Omnibox. So how do you exit it to navigate to a different website? Simple: press F11 one more time to return to the regular windowed view of Chrome. Again, if you’re using a Chromebook, use the hollow rectangle key on the keyboard. https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content...Z89h0tEsQ7.png If for whatever reason the keypress doesn’t work—maybe you’ve remapped your function key—don’t worry. Move the mouse cursor to the center of the top of the screen until a circle with a white X appears. Click the icon to exit full-screen mode. https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content...oe86szjhVL.png If you want an approach that resembles reader view on many of the other browsers, you can enable Chrome’s experimental reading mode. It makes it easier to concentrate on articles by removing all the same elements as full-screen mode while it adds a few other formatting changes, increasing readability and focus.

Windows 10’s Storage Sense feature automatically runs when you’re low on disk space. It automatically deletes files more than 30 days old in your Recycle Bin, too. This was on by default on a PC running the May 2019 Update. This is a useful feature! If your computer is low on disk space, you probably want more. Windows will clear old files out of your Recycle Bin. You shouldn’t be storing files in your Recycle Bin, anyway. But, if you want to stop Windows from doing this automatically, you can. To find these options, head to Settings > System > Storage. You can press Windows+I to open the Settings window quickly. If you’d like to stop Storage Sense from doing anything automatically, you can flip the Storage Sense switch to “Off” here. To configure Storage Sense further, click “Configure Storage Sense or run it now.” https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content...YNwNyhQpwj.png The “Run Storage Sense” box lets you control when Windows 10 runs Storage Sense automatically. By default, it runs “During low free disk space.” You could also have it run every day, every week, or every month. https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content...jyRp3G4We_.png To stop Storage Sense from automatically deleting files in your Recycle Bin, click the “Delete files in my recycle bin if they have been there for over” box under Temporary Files and select “Never.” By default, Storage Sense will delete files that have been in your Recycle Bin for over 30 days. https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content...LhRw8f_W84.png The “Delete files in my Downloads folder if they have been there for over” box will let Storage Sense automatically delete files from your Downloads folder. This option was off by default on our PC, however.

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The Pirate Bay is a popular torrent site where people can download movies and other digital media content. It was launched in 2003, and despite the tough hurdles it faced through the years, it managed to survive and now on its 15th year in the business. What makes this longevity such an amazing feat is not the number of years that it stayed in the web but the fact that it was able to surpass all the legal battles and other instances when it brushed with the law. The site did not have a smooth run in its more than a decade of existence, but it managed to withstand difficult situations while all its rivals have all been eliminated already. As mentioned on Our Bitcoin News, a number of well-known torrent file-sharing sites have been taken down such as Limewire, Extra Torrents, and Kickass Torrents due to the rules on piracy. The Pirate Bay also went through the endless legal battles, had its founders jailed, raids, million dollar fines and dealing with demands to scrap the site but even with these hurdles, TPB remained alive, and it even grew with over 25 million users to this day. Be your own voice. Start your own newspaper now. The Pirate Bay was founded by Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, and Peter Sunde. They were the first people who ran the site and went through so much for piracy issues since the site has been sharing copyrighted movies and other media files. They were imprisoned for about a year and slapped with $3.5 million fine, but miraculously, the site just gets going despite the behind-the-scenes troubles. According to Mel Magazine, The Pirate Bay was able to continue for 15 years because even with the charges and allegations, the site was never caught red-handed in an offense that entails tougher punishments. Also, people still support TPB and used it even while it was struggling. Lastly, users do not have to spend for the files that they download, so it remained popular among people who want to have a copy of their favorite shows, movies, music albums, and more. The Pirate Bay is still very much active and time-tested, so people still patronize the site.

In 2019, state and local governments are expected to spend $107.6 billion on technology. The size of this figure reflects a growth in revenue streams to support new investments, according to the Center for Digital Government.* But IT costs are growing too, along with the need for cybersecurity and updating legacy systems. More importantly, expensive new technologies promise to improve how governments deliver services, and some agencies, especially smaller municipalities, are struggling to afford them. In turn, many state and local governments have shown a growing willingness to split this burden. Shared-service agreements between public agencies today are commonplace, and the idea of consolidating EMS or fire departments is familiar to city councils across the country. For new and evolving IT services, however, the concept can be a little more novel, and has taken many forms. Depending on how they’re defined, agreements for shared IT services have been around since governments and law enforcement agencies were using mainframe technologies in the 1960s. Today, with computer systems and telecommunications infrastructure in virtually every office of government, these agreements touch everything from consulting and cybersecurity services to shared radio systems, fiber and software. The terms of shared IT service agreements vary widely, but the benefits are fairly consistent: improved access to new technologies and expertise, shared costs, and better deals on bulk equipment and contracts. In talking to more than half a dozen offices across the U.S., Government Technology found some of the most visible examples of shared IT service agreements fall into three categories. INDIVIDUAL INTERLOCAL AGREEMENTS You have to start somewhere. For small to mid-sized city, county or school agencies considering shared IT services, especially without an urban tech hub nearby, one place to start is a short-term, individual interlocal agreement. These typically involve a small city or agency receiving services from a more-equipped one of equal or greater size nearby. When municipalities initiate these contracts, they usually depend on proximity for logistical reasons and the elimination of redundant services, with cost savings passed to the taxpayer. One such agreement, past its halfway point, exists between the cities of Tyler and Whitehouse, Texas. Initiated in October 2018, the agreement stipulates that Tyler, a city of roughly 105,000 people, will administer end-to-end IT services for Whitehouse, a city of 8,000 people about 10 miles away. It’s a one-year, $75,000 contract, with the option to renew. Services administered by Tyler employees include everything from installing software upgrades to troubleshooting, data backups, system administration and network monitoring. Whitehouse City Manager Aaron Smith said the agreement made sense because of proximity, Tyler’s staffing level and the changing landscape of IT. He’d seen firsthand the expectations of digital government outpace the budgets and capabilities of small towns, and he knew Whitehouse’s single in-house IT person, prior to the contract with Tyler, was no longer sufficient. “We have a smaller budget,” Smith said. “In my opinion, the time of having one individual in total control of your IT is past. I don’t think that’s appropriate anymore. To protect that information and protect the system, you need to have backup. For us, that would mean literally doubling our IT budget.” Although Whitehouse no longer has an in-house IT person, Smith said requests for service or repairs from Tyler haven’t been a problem, and he estimated that Whitehouse would spend $40,000 more per year for the same level of service if they were providing those services themselves. For Tyler, the prospect of shared IT services started 18 years ago with an agreement with Smith County, which they managed for five years before it was undone by “politics,” according to Tyler CIO Benny Yazdanpanahi. Three years ago, Tyler also started offering basic IT consulting to the nearby city of Jacksonville. This experience gave Yazdanpanahi the confidence to reach out to Whitehouse for a full-blown, end-to-end service agreement. For Whitehouse, he said, the benefits were many and obvious: a dozen IT staff instead of one, stronger and cloud-enabled infrastructure, no need to contract outside consultants, and the ability to borrow, share or inherit better equipment instead of buying new. For Tyler, the agreement’s short-term benefits include cost-splitting alongside greater purchasing and negotiating power of a combined entity, which reduces the need to raise taxes to buy new technology. “If I need to hire someone to manage something that is using the revenue that I bring in, then I can add additional staff without putting a burden on our general fund for the city,” Yazdanpanahi said. “That becomes a win-win situation for both of us.” In the long term, Yazdanpanahi said cooperation and building bridges are the way of the future for local government, not just IT. He said Tyler’s water utility department is starting talks with Whitehouse, too, and he’s working on a marketing brochure to reach out to other cities if the Whitehouse contract is a success. For these agreements to work, Yazdanpanahi had two recommendations. “No. 1, you have to have a good team that has a good understanding of the infrastructure,” he said. “Secondly, the infrastructure needs to be bulletproof. We have redundancy and continuity throughout the city, so if I want to become the cloud for an organization … I can house those things without them just being a single-point failure.” THE HUB-AND-SPOKE MODEL With multiple agreements in the works, Tyler could become the center of a hub-and-spoke model. This generally entails a region’s most-equipped city, with a data center, advanced infrastructure and trained staff, becoming the IT provider for many smaller government agencies around it. Most often this means interlocal agreements between cities, counties or school districts sharing fiber, radio networks or emergency services. Hampton, Va., which has been sharing a public safety radio system with more than 12 public entities since 2011, is collaborating with surrounding communities to build out broadband connectivity and installing a fiber connection with nearby Newport News, Va. Lee’s Summit, Mo., is the latest addition to the Metropolitan Area Regional Radio System (MARRS), a system of interconnected digital emergency service radios across the Kansas City metro area. Shawnee, Kan., has laid over 25 miles of fiber since 2006, allowing it to share technology with nearby De Soto school district, Johnson County and the cities of Overland Park and Lenexa, and to operate nearly 700 traffic signals across the region. In central California, an ever-expanding e-gov initiative from 2003 has linked the city of Fresno, Fresno County, the city of Clovis and other nearby schools and agencies in a fiber-sharing agreement that also involves information and data sharing. A vision statement from 2002 proposed five critical factors for success: strong and sustained leadership, solid budgeting support, accountability of management and staff in making changes, well-defined organizational priorities, and execution in incremental steps that can be tested and fixed. Fresno CIO Bryon Horn would add collaboration and relationships to that list, since parties must be able to work together, especially when crossing political boundaries for council approvals or other legal hurdles. He also said a shared-service agreement should benefit all involved. “We had the fiber, we had an opportunity, we needed to share information between the city and the county and the city of Clovis, so for us there was a need for information sharing,” he said. “But I’m not going to manufacture a sharing opportunity if it’s going to be too costly or I don’t need to do it. We’ve got to watch taxpayer dollars. For us it’s all about making sure we’re good stewards.” One of the largest shared IT hubs is in Oakland County, Mich. The county provides e-commerce services to about 100 public entities across the state and is in the process of adding its first out-of-state partner, Vigo County, Ind. “We saw mid-size to small governments not being able to take advantage of larger technologies, because the private sector saw no profit margin in these smaller communities and counties,” said Oakland County CIO Phil Bertolini. “Since we were already sharing internal to Oakland County, we thought we could broaden that base and provide that service for other governments that just weren’t able to get that on their own, or it wasn’t profitable for a company to provide that for those governments.” Bertolini said the county customizes interlocal agreements which are browsable on g2gmarket.com, a free marketplace exclusively for governments where they can find copies of contracts, GIS strategic plans and social media policies. He said the program is nonprofit, all cost-recovery through usage fees. Bertolini estimated g2gmarket.com transacts about $70 million a year, supported by a staff of eight. With so many partners, Oakland County can buy bigger contracts with tech companies that don’t work with small to mid-sized governments. He described it as a three-way win: “There’s a win for the large government, us, because of the volume of transactions and the ability to manage costs; the small government gets a win because they get to use bigger technology and don’t have to worry about a company dropping them because there’s not enough profit; and the third win is for the private-sector partners we have in our G2G marketplace,” he said. “A lot of the contracts we use to run these technologies are also available for the other governments to buy off of.” STATE GOVERNMENT AUTHORITIES In some states, legislation has created a public cooperative or other organization to accommodate basic IT services where needed. Such is the case with Digital Towpath, a government entity and shared service in New York formed in 1998 by an intermunicipal agreement. Project Director Jeanne Brown said Digital Towpath hosts a private community cloud with a suite of basic Web-based services, such as a website contact management system, an email system, electronic records management and a code enforcement actions tracking program. The cooperative has 161 participating agencies, mostly small towns with an average population of 3,000 and villages of less than 1,000. Digital Towpath is supervised by a nine-person executive board, elected by co-op members, which oversees four contractors and two technical support staff. It is also a member of MS-ISAC (Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center), a federally backed cybersecurity resource. “There are two different ways to design a shared service in this state, and most of them are a larger entity that has excess capacity, and they share that with smaller entities that are related to them in some way,” Brown said. “What’s different about Digital Towpath is, it’s statewide and there is no larger entity. Every municipality has equal standing within the group. They each have one vote at the annual meeting where the big decisions are made.” Brown said the cooperative is mostly funded by state grants and an $850 annual membership fee, supporting an annual budget of less than $200,000. For an operation that size to sustain itself, she recommended two things: a clear agreement describing how it will be run, who will make decisions and what members are responsible for; and active participation at the organizational level by all stakeholders. “They’re not customers, they’re members of the cooperative, and those that wanted to be treated as customers have kind of dropped off over the years,” she said. Another statewide model is Colorado’s SIPA (Statewide Internet Portal Authority), a self-funded technology authority created by statute in 2004 to give state and local government agencies, special districts, K-12 districts and public universities support, security and tools to put more information and services online. SIPA is the oversight organization for the free Colorado.gov portal and employs about 50 people in the state between SIPA and its portal integrator, Colorado Interactive, which is a subsidy of NIC Inc. Spokeswoman Jamie Desrosier said besides its free portal services, Colorado SIPA was also created as a procurement entity for the state, contracting with vendors to deliver competitive contracts to members so they wouldn’t have to put out RFPs for services. She said SIPA works with about 500 different entities across Colorado, the smaller of which use SIPA primarily for their free websites and payment processing. SIPA’s Sales and Marketing Manager Beth Justice called the authority a unique model for IT services, because unlike models where the administration of these services is wrapped inside government and paid for by tax money, SIPA is not. The shift toward electronic service delivery may be inexorable, but who pays for it is the problem everyone must solve. “Legislation has to be in place for this to work, and I think the hurdle is, is it OK to add a 75-cent transaction fee or whatever that amount is, and pass that fee on to your constituents?” she said. “We have very few entities to absorb that fee, but that is what pays for those things.”

_Zedd-and-Katy-Perry-attend-the-2019-iHeartRadio-Music-Awards-billboard-1548.jpg Frazer Harrison/Getty Images Zedd and Katy Perry attend the 2019 iHeartRadio Music Awards which broadcasted live on FOX at Microsoft Theater on March 14, 2019 in Los Angeles. Katy Perry has a new song called "Never Really Over" on the way, as she announced on Instagram, but she's not the only one on the song's promo train. Zedd just tweeted the name of the song to his fans as well. Could he be the producer behind its beat? The collaborators were first spotted together in August of 2018. Clips of the pair working in the studio were included in Zedd's Australian tour recap video. The first official fruit of that labor came in the form of Zedd's obsessive love song "365." The producer even brought the singer out on stage with him at Coachella weekend 1 to perform "365" live. Maybe there was more to those sessions, or more sessions where those came from. addd.jpg Whatever the case, we don't have to wait long to find out. "Never Really Over" is due out Friday, May 31. Stay tuned for more details, and check Zedd and Perry's posts below. #NeverReallyOver — Zedd (@Zedd) May 29, 2019