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denis villeneuve’s dreams of ‘dune’ reach the big screen

It was the eyes that drew Denis Villeneuve to “Dune.” Long before he’d decided to become a filmmaker, he was just a teenager browsing a bookstore when he spotted the cover of Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel. But it wasn’t a hard sell for the biology obsessed 14-year-old who had already learned that science fiction was a way to dream on a grand scale. Then he read it and was mesmerized by the poetic, atmospheric story of a young man’s heroic journey that dealt with religion, politics, destiny, heritage, the environment, colonialism and giant space worms. “It became an obsession,”Villeneuve, 54, said. And it was just the beginning of a decade-spanning dream that is finally coming to fruition as his own version of “Dune” makes its way to North American theaters. Villeneuve is not the…

walgreens begins testing drone delivery in texas

Walgreens will begin flying packages by drone to residents in a pair of Texas cities in partnership with Google’s drone-making affiliate, Wing. The companies said they will begin testing the service next week in the city of Frisco and neighboring Little Elm, two fast-growing communities north of Dallas where road traffic is “probably the biggest complaint we get,” said Frisco Mayor Jeff Cheney. “Every delivery made by drone is taking a delivery vehicle off our roads,” Cheney said. It will be Wing’s first commercial expansion in the U.S. after years testing the concept in a Virginia town and parts of Australia and Finland. The drone company is a subsidiary of Google’s corporate parent, Alphabet. “We’ve gradually moved into denser and denser environments,” said Jonathan Bass, Wing’s head of marketing and communications. Rivals including Amazon,…

facebook plans to hire 10,000 in europe to build ‘metaverse’

Facebook said it plans to hire 10,000 workers in the European Union over the next five years to work on a new computing platform that promises to connect people virtually but could raise concerns about privacy and the social platform gaining more control over people’s online lives. The company said in a blog post that those high-skilled workers will help build“the metaverse,”a futuristic notion for connecting online that uses augmented and virtual reality. Facebook executives have been touting the metaverse as the next big thing after the mobile internet, though their track record is spotty on predicting future trends. Expectations that CEO Mark Zuckerberg made four years ago of taking virtual vacations with faraway loved ones via a headset or using a smartphone camera to improve an apartment virtually have not materialized…

company behind tether ‘token’ fined $41m by us regulators

The company behind a digital token called Tether has agreed to pay $41 million to settle charges that it misled investors by claiming the token was fully backed at all times by U.S. dollars and other fiat currencies. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said it charged Tether Holdings Limited with making untrue or misleading statements and omissions in relation to its claims. Specifically, the U.S. regulator found that since launching the token in 2014, Tether Holdings represented that its was a “stablecoin” with its value pegged to fiat currency, including U.S. dollars and euros. A stablecoin is a digital currency backed by real-world assets such as national currencies or other commodities. Unlike Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, stablecoins are designed to not fluctuate wildly in value. However, the CFTC determined that at least from…

macbooks the most powerful pro lineup ever created

After what feels like a lifetime of waiting, Apple has finally unveiled its next-generation MacBook Pro line-up, bringing the power of M1 and stepping it up a gear. The new M1 Pro and M1 Max chips bring Apple’s vision for a world beyond Intel to life, no doubt sparking the interest of creatives around the world. Apple has finally put the Pro back into the MacBook. MINDBLOWING CAPABILITIES There has been much speculation about the new MacBook Pro range, and though Apple took a little longer to give its 14-inch and 16-inch models the same love as the Mac mini and iPad Pro, the wait has undoubtedly been worth it. Rather than putting the standard M1 chip into the new Pro range, Apple has taken things to a whole new level, revolutionizing…

bitcoin-mining power plant raises ire of environmentalists

An obstacle to large-scale bitcoin mining is finding enough cheap energy to run the huge, power-gobbling computer arrays that create and transact cryptocurrency. One mining operation in central New York came up with a novel solution that has alarmed environmentalists. It uses its own power plant. Greenidge Generation runs a once-mothballed plant near the shore of Seneca Lake in the Finger Lakes region to produce about 44 megawatts to run 15,300 computer servers, plus additional electricity it sends into the state’s power grid. The megawatts dedicated to Bitcoin might be enough electricity to power more than 35,000 homes. Proponents call it a competitive way to mine increasingly popular cryptocurrencies, without putting a drain on the existing power grid. Environmentalists see the plant as a climate threat. They fear a wave of resurrected fossil-fuel plants…