Discovered by Steven Spielberg at a bar mitzvah, according to IMDB, Alden recently showed up in the Cohen Brother’s latest movie, Hail Caesar, and had the male lead in the 2013 teenage witch thriller Beautiful Creatures.
He also auditioned for the lead in the Amazing Spiderman reboot but didn’t get the role. Deadline says Alden has the nerfherder role if all the negotiations pan out, and we’ll get the full backstory on Solo, Chewie, and the Falcon on May 25th, 2018.
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There’s been a lot of debate over the tactics of Apple Music as of late, and despite rumors of a large-scale re-do come WWDC in June, lots of Apple Music users are upset over Cupertino’s apparent habit of erasing music files from computers and devices, and forcing users to stream that content. Usually, this is transparent to the user. Until there’s no wifi. Or cell signal. And then suddenly, all that music you thought was in your phone… turns out to be vapor.
9-to-5 Mac is just one site that recently posted a long screed against this practice, which apparently also includes vaporizing or altering tracks imported into iTunes that may have come from non-commercial sources, such as a musician’s demo reel or even tracks from, say, a rare CD that Apple Music doesn’t quite recognize. The music either goes away completely, or is replaced by something similar – but hardly identical.
And God help you if you leave the Apple Music service completely, with some users claiming entire libraries of music they ripped from CD collections were wiped away. Now, in truth, it’s not just Apple Music that does this; similar complaints have been leveled at other music services as well for the same behavior. Look, we have a simple request: if we put that file in the music library, just leave it the hell alone. That’s all we ask.
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Turns out that there are uses for VR beyond gaming. Who knew? The smart folks at Oxford University say they’ve been successfully treating paranoia by having patients don a VR headset, and then putting them into virtual situations that trigger their paranoia. Situations like being in a crowded elevator, or riding a rush-hour subway train.
Results? Researchers say the outcomes have been “remarkable” following VR therapy sessions, with over half the patients reporting big reductions in their paranoia, and best of all, Oxford says that the results are helping the subjects in the real world as well. That’s especially good news as some of the subjects suffer from schizophrenia, and are having positive responses to the treatment.
The system Oxford uses now is similar to the HTC Vive in that subjects can move around, and they say they are working on moving the treatment to more modern kit like the Oculus Rift and phone-based headsets. We hope they continue to have success solving these very real psychological problems for their patients.
