More than a decade after Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher dramatized the rise of Facebook with The Social Network, a new TV series will attempt to tell the story of the company’s more recent history. Per Deadline, production companies Anonymous Content and Wiip, best known for their work on Mr. Robot and Dickinson, are working on a show titled Doomsday Machine that will star two-time Emmy winner Claire Foy as COO Sheryl Sandberg.

Based in part on AnUgly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination, Deadline reports the series will cover everything from Facebook’s actions during the 2016 presidential election up to more recent revelations about its business. That includes recent reporting from The Wall Street Journal that showed Facebook has for years ran a program called XCheck, which has allowed high-profile users, including former President Donald Trump, to skirt its content moderation rules.

The timing of the announcement comes as Facebook faces increasing scrutiny from federal lawmakers. On Wednesday, whistleblower Frances Haugen told the Senate Commerce Committee Congress should regulate the social media giant. It also comes after the company went through an hours-long outage on October 4th that left people unable to access Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. In the aftermath of that event, there have been renewed calls from American lawmakers, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to break the company up into smaller entities.

YouTube is improving video accessibility for both viewers with sight issues and those beyond the English-speaking world. To start, the company is testing the option of adding multiple audio tracks to videos. This will help with international viewers, of course, but it should also enable descriptive audio for people with little to no vision. This arrives sometime in the "coming quarters," YouTube said.

Automatic captions should also be far more commonplace. YouTube now permits live automatic captions for any livestream in English, not just those with 1,000 or more subscribers. These live captions will be available for all 13 supported auto-captioning languages in the "coming months," according to the company. Auto-translated captions will also reach supported languages on Android and iOS later in 2021, so you won't have to turn to your PC to make sense of a video you don't understand.

An experiment later in 2021 will let you search transcripts on your phone, YouTube added. A previously promised subtitle editor is still on track to launch in the "coming months," giving creators the chance to delegate subtitle creation to someone they trust.

The upgrades make sense. YouTube is increasingly dependent on a global audience for views, particularly with the growth of livestreaming. These tweaks ensure more people can watch, even if a creator doesn't have the resources to add subtitles themselves.

Marvel Studios is reportedly developing a new Disney+ series that will see WandaVision’s Kathryn Hahn reprise her role as Agatha Harkness, according to Variety. If the project moves forward, Jac Schaeffer, the lead writer of WandaVision, is expected to return to write the new series. She’s also likely to produce the show. Other than the fact it’s supposed to be a dark comedy, plot details are limited at the moment.

Marvel Studios did not comment on the possibility of a WandaVision spinoff when Variety reached out to the subsidiary, but there’s a chance we could learn more about the project when Disney holds its first-ever Disney+ Day on November 12th. The company said the event would include a “look toward the future” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Either way, Marvel fans would likely welcome the chance to see Hahn in her own series. Agatha was one of the show’s more memorable characters, and Hahn even earned an Emmy nomination for the performance. The spinoff likely won't debut before sometime in 2022 at the earliest. Until then, there's Hawkeye, which will premiere on November 24th.   

YouTube scrapped its Rewind 2020 video due to COVID-19 and social unrest, but it's not coming back now that the turmoil is (partly) calming down. As Tubefilter first confirmed, YouTube is cancelling its year-end Rewind videos once and for all. The service insists it's not due to the blowback from Rewind 2018, however. Rather, YouTube is reportedly so large that it would be impractical to summarize the site with a yearly video.

The Google-owned brand will instead trust creators like MrBeast and Slayy Point to produce end-of-year videos, and promote them through social networks. You'll also see annual trend lists, awards shows and a currently mysterious "interactive experience."

Rewind debuted in 2010 and was popular for most of its history as a snapshot of the online zeitgeist. That all fell apart with Rewind 2018, however. Many felt the video both ignored major creators like Pewdiepie and had more than a few cringe-worthy moments (Will Smith's "oh, that's hot" haunts people to this day). When YouTube returned with Rewind 2019, it abdicated editorial control and let the statistics guide the content to the frustration of viewers. Even if YouTube is right about the site becoming too large for Rewind, the demand just isn't what it used to be — a revival might not have much of an impact.

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, a reboot of the movie series, will hit theaters on November 24th, and Sony Pictures has provided a taste of what's in store with the first trailer. Writer and director Johannes Roberts (47 Meters Down) indicated earlier this year that he was taking things back to the franchise's horror roots and the trailer offers some positive signs that he's achieved his goal.

The film is based on the first two games in the classic series and it's a complete reset following the six (6) Paul W.S. Anderson movies. In case there was any ambiguity about Roberts starting over, the trailer's opening voiceover puts that firmly to bed. "Every story has a beginning," one character, perhaps Claire Redfield, says. "Discover the origin of evil."

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is set in 1998, and we see the first game's creepy mansion as well as some of the city where the sequel takes place. The trailer hits a lot of the right beats and it includes some memorable moments from the games. There's a nod to the opening scene of Resident Evil 2, in which an infected truck driver plows his tanker into Raccoon City. Despite a couple of iffy CGI shots, there's some solid creature design too, including zombie dogs and even a licker. Add in some jump scares, and it's a promising first look.

If you're craving more Resident Evil until the movie arrives, you can check out a virtual-reality version of Resident Evil 4 on Oculus Quest 2 later this month. Elsewhere, a live-action show based on the franchise is coming to Netflix. The delayed multiplayer game Resident Evil Re:Verse will arrive next year, and Capcom is working on DLC for Resident Evil Village.

You don't have to be a Kanye fan (or buy a gadget) to remix a new album. MusicTechnotes that Courtney Barnett has shared a free, web-based stem mixer that lets you chop up three singles from the Australian rocker's upcoming Things Take Time, Take Time. You can isolate or highlight elements like percussion and guitars, and there's even a simple loop generator with start and end points. You aren't about to produce a drum-and-bass mix of "Before You Gotta Go," but you might get closer than you think.

This is a promo for the album, of course, and it's notable that you can't (officially) save your compositions. This might teach you a thing or two about layering in music, though. And it's free — you won't need more than your computer and some headphones to experiment with Barnett's tracks. Don't be surprised if other artists follow suit, even if they're unlikely to pull a Nine Inch Nails and release the raw track files.

The following contains minor spoilers for season two, episode nine of ‘Star Trek: Lower Decks.’

Throughout the history of Star Trek, it’s generally accepted that a member of Starfleet will spend about three years as an ensign, the lowest officer rank in the fleet. It’s the position given to new Starfleet Academy graduates, and the status of the four protagonists on Lower Decks. However, as the show wraps up its second season and prepares for a third, it does bring the character’s status as “lowly ensigns” into doubt. This week’s episode touches on, though doesn’t solve, the problem by exploring the universal concept of a “lower decker.”

In “wej Duj” (the first full Klingon language episode title in the entire franchise), the USS Cerritos is in transit between missions, giving the crew some much-needed downtime. Mariner, Rutherford and Tendi use their day off to spend some personal time with senior officers, which sends the bridge-crew-friendless Boimler into a panic since he notes that this will give them an edge when it comes to getting promoted. He spends most of the episode trying and failing to get buddy-buddy with various officers. If this all feels like C-plot level shenanigans, well, it is. But as a result the show takes its biggest leap yet to fill out its narrative in this episode.

CBS

“wej Duj” is Klingon for “three ships,” and we get to see the crew of the Klingon vessel Che’Ta, where a very ambitious Boimler-esque Klingon is trying to get in good with the current captain of his ship. Old school fans will remember that authority on Klingon ships is assigned by force, with an officer assuming command by killing the previous captain. This young Klingon isn’t quite that ambitious, but he’s perfectly happy to walk the captain’s pet targ if it helps him become first officer.

The episode also shows us the happenings on a nearby Vulcan craft called Sh’Vhal, where a lower decker named T’Lin there has been messing with the sensors and as a result, notices some strange readings in the area that she takes to the captain to investigate. The captain agrees to the search, but he also reprimands her for undertaking such unnecessary adjustments to the ship.

CBS

The entire episode could have been played as a “slice of life,” with the three plot lines never intersecting and it still would have been a fairly successful installment of the series. This isn’t our first look at the internal life of a Klingon ship, but it is our first look at a Vulcan crew, and playing those distinct societies against Starfleet culture is a great bit of world building. Star Trek has never been good about showing life outside Starfleet, only lightly touching on the grander world in more recent shows like Picard and Prodigy. And even those still have tenuous Starfleet connections. Lower Decks has relished showing us the larger universe that the characters exist in, and here we now get that same sense of expansion without the Starfleet worldview intruding.

That doesn’t mean the storylines stand apart, far from it. All three ships and their plot lines come together in the end, not only pulling the episode into one cohesive narrative, but also continuing — and starting to resolve — a plot line that has lingered since the end of season one, namely the Pakleds. We finally find out why they suddenly became a huge threat in the Alpha Quadrant, thanks to a series of machinations reminiscent of storylines on The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. Not everything is revolved by the end, presumably leading into a big finale next week. It’s fair to say that seasons one and two basically comprise one full story arc, with season three possibly presenting a fresh slate.

CBS

And it’s just in time, too. Each season has represented a year on the Cerritos. Next season will mark three years on the Cerritos for Boimler, Tendi and Rutherford, placing them in line for a promotion. And unlike Mariner’s purposeful self-sabotage, her friends have all shown themselves to be competent, trustworthy officers. There’s no reason they shouldn’t be promoted — and technically Brad Boimler already was at the end of last season, having only been demoted and sent back to the Cerritos because of a transporter accident on the USS Titan.

While it’s unlikely (though not impossible) that the characters will get promoted in the season finale, it will have to happen some time next year for the show to maintain its verisimilitude in Star Trek canon. The Cerritos doesn’t have the luxury of being trapped in the Delta Quadrant as an excuse to keep its ensign an ensign (poor Harry Kim). But there’s hope, given what happens to our Klingon and Vulcan lower deckers by the end of “wej Duj.” Those outcomes, alongside the episode wrapping on Brad giving sage advice to a young crewman, seem to hint that the show is comfortable with letting our protagonists move on when it’s time.

This post contains spoilers for the season finale of Marvel's 'What If…?'

All season there were hints that What If…? was going to be more than just an anthology show. The fact that it debuted week to week, instead of dropping all at once like Star Wars Visions. The Watcher’s repeated insistence that he must not interfere, an assertion begging to be tested. Stephen Strange noticed the Watcher’s presence. And then Ultron becomes aware of not just the Watcher, but of the entire multiverse, setting the stage for this week’s finale. It’s like a “greatest hits” of the series so far, with room for future adventures.

After last episode’s altercation, the Watcher knows he cannot handle Infinity Ultron by himself, instead enlisting the help of the heroes we’ve met over the entire season, including Captain Carter, T’Challa Starlord and Party Thor. The one exception is a Gamora who appears to have been working with Tony Stark, pulled into the group with little explanation, making me wonder if I had missed an episode. (Though the Watcher’s dismissal of Tony was pretty funny.)

Where other episodes have had to rush through their premises, showing us how those particular realities differed from the main Marvel Cinematic Universe, the finale has eight prior episodes to lean on for background so it got straight to the action. What we got was a tight, zippy episode that’s sure to be a crowd-pleaser, with lots of fun banter between the characters. And it certainly helped that a few were played by their original live-action actors, most notably Benedict Cumberbatch and Hayley Atwell.

However, even this episode left some loose ends and a lot of doors open, with Arnim Zola and Killmonger locked in eternal battle, Black Widow finding a new team and Captain Carter discovering her lost-long love still alive. These all feel ripe for sequels that this show appears more than willing to deliver.

Marvel Studios

It raises the question of what What If…? actually is. The show was originally presented as an anthology — which is still one of the tags it’s given on Disney+. Traditionally an anthology is a collection of stories or essays by different authors, but as early as The Twilight Zone television has defined an anthology as a program with new characters and scenarios every episode, regardless of whether the writers are the same. Even now, while every episode of Black Mirror is written by Charlie Brooker, you’ll still see it described as a science fiction anthology.

The episodes of What If…? are written by a variety of people including showrunner A.C. Bradley, but that’s par for the course with any television program, even the serialized ones. But its anthology nature was due to the fact that even if they were similar to characters we already knew and loved from the live-action productions, the characters were still different people. This is actually alluded to in the finale, when Gamora’s machine fails to destroy the Infinity Stones because it was only built to crush the gems in her universe, not in all realities.

Marvel Studios

But ultimately, even if it’s different universes, it’s one multiverse and thus, one continuity. To watch this finale you would have needed to see every episode of the series this season, instead of cherry-picking only the episodes you were interested in. I know a few people who were only watching the concepts that intrigued them, but in the end they’ll have to watch every episode in order to make sense of certain plot points. While the show has been careful not to intrude into the main MCU and becoming “required” viewing in that expanding behemoth, it’s still building an essential canon of its own.

It’s still rather up in the air over what part What If…? is meant to play. Having many of the actors reprise their roles from the films was a way to tie it into the larger universe, while the change in medium from live-action to animation set it apart from not just the films, but series like WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Being billed as an anthology gave it license to do a lot less long-term character building than those two programs as well. 

Marvel Studios

However, in practice it feels a lot like Loki, which completely changed how we saw the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe — it even downplayed the Infinity Stones at several points! Taking major threats of the MCU and greeting them with a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ says that even What If….? isn’t all that interested in retreading old stories and is ready to move on with the rest of the Marvel properties. It may be inessential canon, but it still wants to keep up with the main event. And that’s not how an anthology is supposed to work.

Sebastian Bernard, the lead developer and designer for hit indie game Dead Cells, has created a new game that will have you fighting fires, solving mysteries and saving cats. Yes, you'll play a firefighter in Bernard's new 2D action-adventure game entitled Nuclear Blaze — one who gets air-dropped into a secret military facility that went up in flames for unknown reasons. 

In the complex, you'll have to use your firehose wisely to deal with the wildfire spreading uncontrollably throughout each section. You'll also have to deal with backdrafts, exploding walls and complex sprinkler systems. But you won't just be trying to put out a blazing inferno in the game: You also have to rescue survivors (cats included) and investigate every nook and cranny to find hidden secrets that would help you figure out the site's true nature, as well as solve the mystery behind the fire.

Bernard developed Nuclear Blaze under his own company called Deepnight Games. In the developer's website, Bernard described himself as a "former associate" of Motion Twin, which was the studio behind Dead Cells. He also said that he wanted to create a game his 3-year-old could play, which is why the title has a "Kid mode" with simpler level designs, rules and gameplay. 

Nuclear Blaze will be available for download on Steam on October 18th. You can watch a short trailer below to get an idea of how you'll be fighting fires and solving mysteries as a 2D firefighter.

Before you jump into a feisty Twitter thread about Sora being the last Super Smash Bros. Ultimate character, you may eventually see a warning about the potentially heated conversation. Today, the company said it's testing a "Heads Up" feature on iOS and Android that'll serve as a helpful PSA. (Twitter said it was in the works a few weeks ago.) On top of the intensity warning, there's also a screen that highlights a few golden rules of online conversations: remember there's a person on the other side; focus on facts; and consider the value of different opinions, which could help strengthen your perspective. 

Similar to Birdwatch, Twitter's community-driven push to fight misinformation with informed context, the Heads Up feature is an attempt at empowering the company's users. It's tough to prevent toxic conversations entirely, and this is one way to opt out of a potentially contentious argument. (Life is too short to argue with some gaming fandoms, after all.) Of course, this isn't a replacement for tools that can actually help people avoid harassment, like its new Safety Mode.