Facebook trained a new chatbat with 1.5 billion examples of human exchanges from reddit, claiming it's able to demonstrate empathy, knowledge and personality. The BBC reports: The social media giant said 49% of people preferred interactions with the chatbot [named "Blender"], compared with another human. But experts say training the artificial intelligence (AI) using a platform such as Reddit has its drawbacks. Numerous issues arose during longer conversations. Blender would sometimes respond with offensive language, and at other times it would make up facts altogether. Researchers said they hoped further models would address some of these issues.

Facebook also compared Blender's performance with the latest version of Google's own chatbot, Meena. It showed people two sets of conversations, one made with Blender and the other with Meena. Conversations included a wide range of topics including movies, music and veganism. Facebook said that 67% of respondents thought Blender sounded more human than Meena. "We achieved this milestone through a new chatbot recipe that includes improved decoding techniques, novel blending of skills, and a model with 9.4 billion parameters, which is 3.6x more than the largest existing system. This is the first chatbot to blend a diverse set of conversational skills together in one system. Building a truly intelligent dialogue agent that can chat like a human remains one of the largest open challenges in AI today."

The Covid-19 pandemic has forced Disney to postpone the release of its biggest movies, including Mulan and Black Widow, but will those movies actually end up heading straight to a streaming or digital-on-demand platform if the coronavirus pandemic drags on even longer? From a report: Disney says it might consider sending some major movies straight to streaming on a "case-by-case" basis. On Tuesday, Disney held its Q2 2020 earnings call for investors, with CEO Bob Chapek, CFO Christine McCarthy, and executive chairman Bob Iger in attendance (remotely) to give statements and take questions. [...] In the Q&A section of the call, investors asked if Disney had considered a "premium streaming" release for its postponed movies, like Mulan, Black Widow, and The Eternals. With the pandemic forcing theaters to close and people to say at home, is Disney willing to forgo theaters and instead release movies on digital platforms, as some studios have (i.e.: Trolls World Tour)? CEO Bob Chapek said it's a maybe.

Star Wars Day "is getting a virtual convention," reports Movieweb. Reedpop, the organization behind New York Comic-Con and Star Wars Celebration have put the convention together... The two-day event is called An Online Revelry: May the 4th Be With You and Revenge of the 5th celebration. Star Wars fans can expect all kinds of activities to take part in, right from the comfort of their own homes. This is in addition to Disney+ launching their behind-the-scenes docuseries on The Mandalorian, along with The Rise of Skywalker streaming premiere.

An Online Revelry: May the 4th Be With You and Revenge of the 5th celebration will feature live-tweeting "movies and episodes of both Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels, as well as Q&A sessions and discussions with writers and voice actors associated with the franchise... The event will take place across the many social media accounts of Reedpop, including "New York Comic Con, C2E2, BookCon, Emerald City Comic Con, and Florida SuperCon, on both Twitter and Facebook."
And USA Today reports on some other homegrown celebrations: On Monday starting at 12:01 a.m. PT/3:01 ET, LA's "Star Wars" bar Scum and Villainy Cantina is presenting a 24-hour livestream on Twitch featuring director Kevin Smith, movie historian Leonard Maltin, "Rise of Skywalker" actor Greg Grunberg and more. And that same day, Hollywood trainer Eric Fleishman is hosting a live online themed, costumed workout (4 ET/1 PT, registration required) featuring guest Matt Lanter (who voices Anakin Skywalker in "Clone Wars") and a live performance by Echosmith.
Meanwhile, one Ohio news site even resurrected their image of a homegrown Star Wars board game they'd created in 2005 to celebrate the release of Star Wars III: Return of the Sith.

And CNET just published an article complaining about how much they hated The Rise of Skywalker.

Trolls World Tour won't be the last major-studio release to bypass movie theatres altogether. An anonymous reader quotes the Guardian: Universal gets a greater cut of revenue from digital services than at the box office, which means the film has made the same amount of profit in its first three weeks as the first Trolls film did during its entire five-month run in U.S. cinemas.... "Universal has cast the first stone," said Jeff Bock, an analyst at research firm Exhibitor Relations. "This is exactly what the theatrical exhibition world had always feared -- proof that bypassing theatres could be a viable model of distribution for studios.

"Like it or not, the floodgates have opened. This is just the beginning, and the longer it takes for theatres to open on a worldwide scale, we're going to see the premium-video-on-demand schedule become more and more populated."

That schedule is now filling up. Universal announced last week that Judd Apatow's new comedy The King of Staten Island would scrap its planned cinema release on 19 June and premiere on-demand instead. And Warner Bros is doing the same with Scoob!, the first full-length animated Scooby-Doo film, which was meant to hit cinemas on 15 May...

The straight-to-digital strategy is only considered to be viable for mid- and lower-budget films forecast to earn at most a few hundred million at the global box office.

stikves writes: Given the highly-successful video on demand release of the recent "Trolls World Tour" movie, and the future plans to sidestep theaters for some content from Universal, AMC has struck back by blanket banning of all their content. "As a result, [NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell] noted that as 'soon as theaters reopen, we expect to release movies on both formats,' meaning some movies would continue with theatrical releases while others would go directly to digital retailers or possibly land on NBCUniversal's new streaming service, Peacock," reports The Verge. "The move led to a lengthy statement from AMC Theatres chair-CEO Adam Aron, who claimed that Shell's comments were 'unacceptable.' 'It is disappointing to us, but Jeff's comments as to Universal's unilateral actions and intentions have left us with no choice,' Aron wrote. 'Therefore, effectively immediately AMC will no longer play any Universal movies in any of our theatres in the United States, Europe or the Middle East.'"

The group behind the Oscars is relaxing the rules for this year's movies because of the coronavirus shutdown, allowing films that premiered on streaming platforms to compete for the industry's most-coveted prizes. From a report: The change applies only to movies that had a previously planned theatrical release and only for the upcoming 93rd Academy Awards, scheduled for Feb. 28. The old rules will be back once theaters reopen, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences said Tuesday. Rule changes for Oscars are rare, and the guidelines for competing have been the source of controversy as streaming platforms such as Netflix pour billions of dollars into feature films and seek to compete for top Hollywood awards. Normally, movies must premiere in a theater in Los Angeles County and show for seven consecutive days, playing at least three times a day, to be considered for Oscars, including best picture.

Nearly 16 years ago, Slashdot's original co-founder CmdrTaco posted that liberal film-maker Michael Moore had won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival for a documentary about the Bush administration -- and noted later that Moore approved downloads of the film through networks like BitTorrent.

But now the 66-year-old filmmaker is offering free streaming on his YouTube channel for a 2019 film he'd backed called "Planet of the Humans." The film "reveals the heavy environmental impact of renewable energy and the problems with solar energy, wind energy and biogas, among other forms of power," writes Newsweek. "Instead, the documentary argues that the only way to save the planet is to stop the growth of the human population and reduce its consumption."

The film features appearances by everyone from Elon Musk and Al Gore to Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Koch Brothers. (And it includes music from many artists including Radiohead and King Crimson.) In its description on YouTube, the film's director Jeff Gibbs argues that no amount of batteries will save us. "This urgent, must-see movie, a full-frontal assault on our sacred cows, is guaranteed to generate anger, debate, and, hopefully, a willingness to see our survival in a new way — before it's too late.

Netflix beat its forecast for subscriber growth in the first quarter as consumers in many countries stayed at home due to the coronavirus pandemic and hunted for ways to entertain themselves. From a report: The streaming giant said Tuesday it added 15.8 million new paid subscribers [alternative source] around the world in the quarter, more than double the 7 million new subscribers it had predicted for the period. In the first quarter a year ago, Netflix added 9.6 million new subscribers globally. "Like other home entertainment services, we're seeing temporarily higher viewing and increased membership growth. In our case, this is offset by a sharply stronger US dollar, depressing our international revenue, resulting in revenue-as-forecast. We expect viewing to decline and membership growth to decelerate as home confinement ends, which we hope is soon," Netflix said in its letter to shareholders.

HBO Max, WarnerMedia's new streaming service combining HBO with Warner Bros. movies and Turner TV shows, will launch on May 27th, the company announced today. From a report: HBO Max's big selling point is being able to combine all of HBO's offerings on top of a slate of original titles that are exclusive to the app, classic Warner Bros. movies, and more. HBO Max will also be the exclusive home of Friends, which hasn't been streaming anywhere in the United States since it left Netflix on January 1st. (Although some of the service's exclusives, like the Friends reunion special, are facing delays following production issues caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic.) The streaming service offers more to watch than HBO Now and HBO Go, and WarnerMedia and AT&T are hoping people who use both services will switch over to Max, the company's new crown jewel. Existing HBO subscribers on AT&T (approximately 10 million) and HBO Now direct billing subscribers will get HBO Max for free, the company previously announced. Customers who subscribe to AT&T's premium video, mobile, and broadband packages will be offered bundles with HBO Max at no additional cost. At a cost of $14.99 a month, HBO Max is the priciest of the entries in the so-called streaming wars.

Movie ticketing company Fandango has agreed to buy Walmart's on-demand video streaming service, Vudu, for an undisclosed sum. From a report: The video service today reaches over 100 million living room devices across the U.S. including smart TVs, Blu-ray players, game consoles, and other over-the-top streaming devices, as well as Windows 10 and Mac computers, and iOS and Android mobile devices. To date, the Vudu app on mobile has been installed over 14.5 million times. As a part of the agreement, Vudu will continue to power Walmart's digital movie and TV store on Walmart.com. In addition, Walmart says Vudu customers will have uninterrupted access to their Vudu library. They'll also continue to be able to use their Walmart login as well as their Walmart wallet to make purchases on Vudu, the retailer notes.

There's a scene in the 1984 Tom Hanks movie Splash "showing a brief glimpse of a naked butt..." notes the Verge, "but people watching the movie on Disney Plus are greeted with an entirely different version of the scene."

And the Verge sees a larger issue: Disney used CGI hair to cover actress Daryl Hannah's body. A Disney representative confirmed to The Verge that a "few scenes" from Splash were "slighted edited to remove nudity," but they did not specify when the edits were made...

Splash has found itself in the middle of an ongoing debate over media being altered in digital spaces. It's a debate that's raged for decades; fans were upset when George Lucas edited A New Hope, making it so Greedo shot first instead of Han. People bemoaned Lucas and 20th Century Fox for not releasing the original version of the film anywhere, either. The only legal versions of A New Hope that exist for people to buy, download, or stream today feature Greedo shooting first. It wasn't just that Lucas and Fox replaced the original scene with a slightly altered one, but the original also wasn't available to purchase when reprints were made...

"As physical media gives way to streaming, large corporations have greater and greater control over what we can and cannot see," Slate's Isaac Butler wrote on the issue. "This gives them unprecedented power to disappear bothersome work.

"Whether we agree with a particular instance of memory-holing or not, this practice is deeply troubling, its history even more so."

A Nintendo Switch video game has been pulled off China's grey market e-commerce platforms, Reuters' checks show, after Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong used the game to protest against Beijing's rule of the Chinese territory. From a report: The game, "Animal Crossing: New Horizons," is a colorful social simulator in which players can decorate their own island and invite others to visit. It became an instant hit after its launch last month and has been used by many players to interact and simulate real-life scenarios while they are stuck at home because of measures to curb the coronavirus outbreak. Joshua Wong, a Hong Kong democracy activist, took his protests to the game last week and on Twitter posted a screenshot of his island decorated with a banner saying: "Free Hong Kong, revolution now." China has stringent rules on content from everything from video games to movies and music, censoring anything it believes violates core socialist values. Gaming companies must also seek licences for the games they want to publish.

An anonymous reader shares a story: Ahead of last November's launch of the Apple TV+ video streaming service, Apple seemed to be doing nearly everything it could to widen the base of early viewers -- it gave away a free year of service with any newly purchased iPhone, iPad, Mac, iPod, or Apple TV, then added free access to student Apple Music subscriptions, collectively guaranteeing itself millions of (unpaid) users. But that apparently wasn't enough: Starting today, the company will offer free access to seven complete TV+ series to almost any person with an Apple ID.

Apple's video strategy has continued to stand in stark contrast to Disney's, though both companies launched paid streaming services last year. Disney+ offers a mere seven-day free trial before charging $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year for access to a large catalog of new original and historic Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and National Geographic content, plus The Simpsons. This week, Disney+ surpassed 50 million subscribers across only a dozen countries, and it has recently rewarded quarantined fans by providing early access to its latest animated films, including Frozen II and Onward.

Netflix is strengthening parental controls, offering more tools to limit what kids can watch on the world's most popular paid streaming service. From a report: Parents can now filter out titles they deem inappropriate and protect individual profiles with a PIN so kids can't use them, the company said Tuesday. These changes take effect for customers in all 190 countries where the streaming service is available.

The Y Combinator company Flexport is a San Francisco-based freight-forwarding and customs brokerage company. (Its investors include Google Ventures and Peter Thiel's Founders Fund.) But on March 23rd Flexport announced they were now re-focusing all their resources to get critical supplies to frontline responders combating COVID-19.

They've joined a team that announced on Friday announced "we're shipping full cargo planes filled with PPE to protect frontline responders," citing a partnership with Atlas Air and United Airlines. Atlas Air delivered a dedicated charter plane for this mission on Thursday, April 2nd. Originating in Shanghai, the plane contained over 143,000 pounds of PPE for medical systems in California, including approximately:

- 4,500,000 medical masks
- 116,000 disposable medical protection coveralls
- 121,300 surgical gowns

For this volume of goods, significant capacity is needed on a plane. However, global travel has plunged because of the outbreak, meaning that passenger planes which used to carry cargo are grounded, and the air market capacity is extremely limited. And hospitals, who in normal situations aren't importing their own goods, can't arrange cargo on a plane on their own...

Crews from United Airlines volunteered to help, arriving at SFO [San Francisco International Airport] at 6AM to unload and unpack the plane. The cargo was then put on a truck and delivered directly to hospitals that will distribute the PPE across the state based on need...

Up next, we're moving cargo to New York and will share updates next week. Please continue to help us spread the word to support the response efforts.
They're raising money on GoFundMe, and this "Frontline Responders Fund" has so far raised over $6 million from 15,800 donors. Their page notes that on Thursday former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger "personally helped us deliver a trucking shipment from MedShare with 49,000 donated masks to a hospital in Los Angeles, California."

Their page also notes donations have funded the trucking of goods across America from nonprofits, including:

• All Hands and All Hearts Smart Response, who delivered over 43,000 units of gloves, gowns, face masks, goggles, and hand sanitizer to emergency rooms and hospitals in New York City and Southern California.
• Donate PPE, who delivered over 3,750 N95 respirator masks to hospitals in Brooklyn, NY yesterday

One of their supporters is actor Clark Gregg, who plays agent Coulson in five Marvel movies and the TV series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. He records personalized video greetings for fans through a web site called Cameo, and through Wednesday he donated 100% of the money earned to the Frontline Responders Fund.

Disney+ has arrived in India through Hotstar, a popular on-demand video streamer the giant conglomerate picked up as part of the Fox deal. From a report: To court users in India, the largest open entertainment market in Asia, Disney is charging users 1,499 Indian rupees (about $19.5) for a year, the most affordable plan in any of the more than a dozen markets where Disney+ is currently available. Subscribers of the revamped streaming service, now called Disney+ Hotstar, will get access to Disney Originals in English as well as several local languages, live sporting events, dozens of TV channels, and thousands of movies and shows, including some sourced from HBO, Showtime, ABC and Fox that maintain syndication partnerships with the Indian streaming service. It also maintains partnership with Hooq -- at least for now. Unlike Disney+'s offering in the U.S. and other markets, in India, the service does not support 4K and streams content at nearly a tenth of their bitrate.

Yesterday, Apple said it would stop taking a cut of some sales for "qualifying" streaming video services on iPhones and other Apple devices, including Amazon's Prime Video. Reuters reports: To make purchases inside apps on its App Store, Apple requires the use of its own payment systems and takes a commission of between 15% and 30% before passing on the rest to the third-party app developer. Many of Apple's rivals in streaming music and video, such as Netflix and Spotify, avoid paying those commissions by asking users to sign up with a credit card outside the App Store. That leaves those rivals' apps serving as log-in screens for existing customers.

In an emailed statement, Apple said that for "qualifying premium video entertainment apps such as Prime Video, Altice One, and Canal+, customers have the option to buy or rent movies and TV shows using the payment method tied to their existing video subscription." Apple also said the services will function better with Apple devices and apps, for example by letting users ask its voice assistant, Siri, to find shows on the third-party services. Last March, Spotify filed a complaint with EU antitrust regulators against Apple, saying the iPhone maker unfairly limits rivals to its own Apple Music streaming service. Spotify also raised the issue with the U.S. Justice Department and the House Judiciary Committee, "both of which have antitrust probes pending regarding Apple," notes Reuters.

An anonymous reader writes: We keep seeing stories about how providers are slowing down their streaming speed to reduce bandwidth usage during this period when many are being asked to stay at home... But it seems that many are totally ignoring a very obvious way to reduce usage significantly, and that is by disabling autoplay on their web sites and in their apps.

To give an example, a couple of days ago I was watching a show on Hulu, and either I was more sleepy than I thought or the show was more boring than I had expected (probably some combination of both), but I drifted off to sleep. Two hours later I awoke and realize that Hulu had streamed two additional episodes that no one was watching. I searched in vain for a way to disable autoplay of the next episode, but if there is some way to do it I could not find it.

What I wonder is how many people even want autoplay? I believe Netflix finally gave their users a way to disable it, but they need to affirmatively do so via a setting somewhere. But many other platforms give their users no option to disable autoplay. That is also true of many individual apps that can be used on a Roku or similar device. If conserving bandwidth is really that important, then my contention is that autoplaying of the next episode should be something you need to opt in for, not something enabled by default that either cannot be disabled or that forces the user to search for a setting to disable.
"Firefox will disable autoplay," writes long-time Slashdot user bobs666 (adding "That's it use Firefox.") And there are ways to disable autoplay in the user settings on Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, and Amazon Prime.

But wouldn't it make more sense to disable autoplay by default -- at least for the duration of this unusual instance of peak worldwide demand?

I'd be interested in hearing from Slashdot's readers. Do you use autoplay -- or have you disabled it? And do you think streaming companies should turn it off by default?

China's film regulators have slammed the breaks on their plans to gradually reopen the country's cinemas. From a report: Over 600 movie theaters across China were given the green light to reopen their doors over the past week, but Beijing's Film Bureau put out a notice late Friday ordering all theaters to go back into shutdown. No official explanation for the sudden reversal was provided. Industry insiders instantly began speculating that the government was worried about a potential second wave of coronavirus infections. The decision comes as a shock given the signals authorities had been sending as recently as a day ago. On Thursday, Shanghai's municipal government announced that 205 of the city's movie theaters had received permission to resume business on Saturday.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The impacts of telecommuting, shelter-in-place laws and home quarantines resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak are starting to impact broadband speeds across a number of U.S. cities, a new report has found. According to broadband analysis site BroadbandNow, 88 out of the top 200 most populous U.S. cities analyzed have now experienced some form of network degradation over the past week, compared with the 10 weeks prior, as more people are going online to work from home, video chat and stream movies and TV to keep themselves entertained. In a small handful of cities over the past week, there have even been significant degradations with download speeds dropping more than 40%, compared with the 10 weeks prior. It's not necessarily the areas hit hardest by the spread of the novel coronavirus that are experiencing the worst problems.

Cities including LA, Chicago, Brooklyn and San Francisco have seen little or no disruption in download speeds, the report claims. Seattle is also holding up well. But New York City, now considered the epicenter of the virus in the U.S., saw download speeds drop by 24% last week, compared to the previous 10-week range. That said, NYC home network connections, which have a median speed of nearly 52 Mbps, are managing. The good news is that in the majority of markets, network speeds are holding up. But of the 88 out of 200 cities that saw declines, more than two dozen saw dips of either 20% below range or more, the data indicates. The three cities seeing network degradations over 40% include: Austin, TX (-44%), Winston Salem, NC (-41%), and Oxnard, CA (-42%). San Jose, CA was nearing this range, with a drop of 38%.