Month: July 2024

Apple TV+’s ‘Lady in the Lake,’ starring Natalie Portman, is a powerful, ambitious miniseries

CompuScoop Staff July 23, 2024 0

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="660"] Via: Apple TV+[/caption]

“Lady in the Lake” is a seven-episode thriller is based on the bestselling book by author Laura Lippman and features Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram as the series leads. The series revolves around the disappearance of a young girl that grips the city of Baltimore on Thanksgiving 1966, and the lives of two women converging on a fatal collision course. Maddie Schwartz (Portman) is a Jewish housewife seeking to shed a secret past and reinvent herself as an investigative journalist, and Cleo Johnson (Ingram) is a mother navigating the political underbelly of Black Baltimore while struggling to provide for her family. Their disparate lives seem parallel at first, but when Maddie becomes fixated on Cleo’s mystifying death, a chasm opens that puts everyone around them in danger. From visionary director Alma Har’el, “Lady in the Lake” emerges as a feverish noir thriller and an unexpected tale of the price women pay for their dreams.

From the moment in the first episode of the Apple TV+ miniseries “Lady in the Lake,” when a character dressed as a red and blue dancing mailbox urinates in an alley, clicks his heels, and skips away to rejoin the Baltimore Christmas Parade, it’s clear that the show has a sense of humor and point of view entirely its own.

I’ve seen all seven episodes and read Laura Lippman’s bestselling 2019 novel twice — and I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a literary adaptation that departs as dramatically from its source material as this one does.

The result is a work of art in its own right that is rich and layered, nuanced and complex.

$30,000 worth of counterfeit Apple products found in traffic stop, deputies say

CompuScoop Staff July 21, 2024 0

On July 16, 2024 Deputies assigned to the Florence County Sheriff’s Office Criminal Enforcement Unit (CEU) arrested Umberto Cardinale and charged him with Transportation and Distribution of Counterfeit Goods following a traffic stop for speeding on Interstate 95. According to Deputies, during the traffic stop Cardinale gave consent to search his vehicle which resulted in the discovery of approximately $30,000.00 in counterfeit Apple products which are trademark protected.

Under South Carolina law, Distribution of Counterfeit Goods (value $10,000.00 or more, but less than $50,000.00) is a felony punishable by a fine of up to $20,000.00 or imprisonment of up to 5 years, or both.

Cardinale is being held at the Florence County Detention Center while awaiting a bond hearing.

SUBJECT: Umberto Cardinale, age 37, of 444 Street, Hazelton, Pennsylvania was arrested on July 16, 2024 and charged with Transportation and Distribution of Counterfeit Goods (S.C. Code Ann. 39-15-1190(B)(1)). See FCSO Booking Website for additional information.

Via: Florence County Sheriff’s Office – South Carolina

Apple TV+ in talks to license more films from Hollywood studios

CompuScoop Staff July 20, 2024 0

The iPhone maker has spoken to several of the largest studios about acquiring more programming from their libraries to offer customers both in the US and abroad, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private negotiations.

While most other streaming services have offered customers a mix of splashy new series and deep libraries of old TV shows and movies, Apple has built its paid streaming service almost entirely around original productions. It has scored a few breakout hits, such as the soccer comedy Ted Lasso and the TV news drama The Morning Show, and this week received 72 Emmy nominations, the most in its history.

But the big hits have been few and far between and many of its original films, such this year’s spy action picture, Argylle, have been duds. Just 11% of US households use Apple TV+, compared with 55% for Netflix Inc., according to the research firm MoffettNathanson LLC.

Apple licensed about 50 movies from Hollywood studios earlier this year in the US, adding classics such as Mean Girls and Titanic. That experiment went well enough that Apple has gone back to many studios for more, either to license those titles internationally or to add more.

Windows “Blue Screen of Death” Strikes Worldwide

Dan Uff July 19, 2024 0

Early Friday, businesses, hospitals, and even TV networks got hit with a worldwide Windows Blue Screen of Death message, rendering the effected computer useless.

Worldwide. IT security consultant Troy Hunt called it “the largest IT outage in history,” saying, “basically what we were all worried about with Y2K, except it’s actually happened this time.”

George Kurtz, president and CEO of Crowdstrike, a modern antivirus platform, was quick to take responsibility for the issue, writing on X, (https://x.com/George_Kurtz/status/1814235001745027317) “CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”

The outage also effected NBC News, leading them to make a special announcement during their Today morning program.