Linked List: January 13, 2023

Friday, 13 January 2023

AI-Generated Stills From a Movie That Doesn’t Exist: Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1976 Version of ‘Tron’ 

The New York Times has a jaw-dropping feature from Frank Pavich and Johnny Darrell:

I was recently shown some frames from a film that I had never heard of: Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1976 version of Tron. The sets were incredible. The actors, unfamiliar to me, looked fantastic in their roles. The costumes and lighting worked together perfectly. The images glowed with an extravagant and psychedelic sensibility that felt distinctly Jodorowskian.

However, Mr. Jodorowsky, the visionary Chilean filmmaker, never tried to make Tron. I’m not even sure he knows what “Tron” is. And Disney’s original Tron was released in 1982. So what 1970s film were these gorgeous stills from? Who were these neon-suited actors? And how did I — the director of the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, having spent two and a half years interviewing and working with Alejandro to tell the story of his famously unfinished film — not know about this?

The truth is that these weren’t stills from a long-lost movie. They weren’t photos at all. These evocative, well-composed and tonally immaculate images were generated in seconds with the magic of artificial intelligence.

It’s staggering how beautiful these stills are, and so evocative of what this imaginary film should look and feel like. You can practically hear them, they’re so sensual. The animation of stills atop the feature even feels like a trailer for the movie. Look at this on the biggest display you can.

The downside to this is that it has created in me a strong desire to see a movie that can never exist.

The Trio of Apps That Will Replace iTunes for Windows: Apple Music, Apple TV, and Apple Devices 

Andrew Cunningham, writing for Ars Technica:

Today, as part of a new Windows 11 preview build for Windows Insiders, Microsoft has announced that previews of new Apple Music, Apple TV, and Apple Devices apps are available in the Microsoft Store for download.

The Apple Music and Apple TV apps handle iTunes’ music and video functionality, just as they do on macOS, and provide access to the Apple Music and Apple TV+ subscription services. The Apple Devices app is what you’ll use to make local device backups, perform emergency software updates, sync local media, and the other things you can do with an iDevice that’s plugged into your PC (in macOS, similar functionality was added to the Finder, rather than being broken out into its own app).

Kinda sad that an app as legendary as iTunes is living out its last days as a Windows exclusive.

Meanwhile, Over at Twitter, They’re Giving Away Ads 

Suzanne Vranica and Patience Haggin, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (News+ and Archive links):

Twitter Inc. is offering advertisers a new incentive in an attempt to woo brands back to the social-media platform, which has seen its ad business deteriorate following Elon Musk‘s $44 billion takeover.

The tech company is dangling free ad space by offering to match advertisers’ ad spending up to $250,000, according to emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The full $500,000 in advertising must run by Feb. 28, the emails said.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer company.

Saks Unveils Plan for Casino Atop Its Flagship Manhattan Store 

Lisa Fickenscher, reporting for The New York Post:

Saks Fifth Avenue finally tipped its hand, confirming plans to bid for a casino license on the top floors of its flagship store on Fifth Avenue. [...]

The renderings show stylishly dressed guests, seated at roulette tables, posh bars and upholstered chairs, clinking cocktails. They enter the building via a separate entrance on a red carpet that extends out onto the sidewalk and opens into a vast lobby area with multiple chandeliers and plush decorative rugs.

The casino would take up three floors, starting on the ninth, where servers will be dressed in black tie and hand out champagne flutes to gamblers, Richard Baker, executive chairman and chief executive of HBC, the Toronto-based company that owns Saks told The Post. [...]

The stylish Saks casino would be similar to the one featured in the James Bond movie “Casino Royale,” according to Baker. “In Monte Carlo they have fancy casinos so why not in Manhattan,” Baker said. “Why should Manhattan have another slobby casino. … We need spectacular.”

What a grand idea. I love a nice casino but most casinos are anything but nice.

The End May Be Nigh for Third-Party Twitter Clients 

Last night around 11pm ET, Tweetbot and Twitterrific stopped working, with authentication errors. They’re still down, as are other popular clients. Twitter has said nothing, either publicly or in communications to the affected developers, so your guess is as good as mine whether this is an unintended outage from Twitter’s skeleton crew staff or a strategic decision to pull the plug on third-party clients. Last night I’d have bet — a small amount — that it was an unintentional outage. Today I’d bet the other way, that this is the end. If so, this is probably the end of my regular usage of Twitter. Twitter’s official client has been terrible ever since it was anything other than a rebranded version of Tweetie. The first-party experience has gotten worse in recent weeks during the Musk era — both in their iOS app and on their convoluted website.

(Twitterrific for Mac is still functioning, though — at least as I write this. Unlike Tweetbot, Twitterrific uses different app IDs for iOS and Mac, and whatever is going on, it seems to have affected only the most popular third-party apps.)

Update: The Iconfactory has a blog post up. No news yet, but it’s worth checking out just for the chef’s kiss custom illustration. A picture says a thousand words and this one sums up the whole situation, no matter how it turns out.

Also: What a load of bullshit it is that Twitter no longer has a comms team. Apparently that’s how Musk runs all his companies, but it’s just childish.