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Entertainment

Sink into 'Love, Death & Robots' and more things to do this weekend

Don’t know what to do this weekend? We’ve got you covered.

What to play, watch and read this weekend.

Our favorite picks for your weekend pleasure.

Image: A24; 11 bit studios; Getty Images

We could all use a bit of a break. This weekend we’re diving into Netflix’s beautifully animated sci-fi “Love, Death & Robots,” losing ourselves in surreal “Men” and loving Zelda-like Moonlighter.

Season 3 of beautifully animated ‘Love, Death & Robots’ is out now

The third season of Netflix’s sci-fi anthology series “Love, Death & Robots” debuted last week with a new collection of “Black Mirror”-esque thought experiments and beautifully animated narrative shorts. Like “The Animatrix” and more recent anthology series like Disney’s “Star Wars: Visions,” almost every episode brings a fresh cast of talent, from the animation studio and source material to the director and voice actors. This season even features longtime executive producer David Fincher taking the director helm for the first time, as well as some heavyweight voice-acting talent from the likes of Mackenzie Davis, Rosario Dawson and Dan Stevens.

Provocative ‘Men’ doesn’t disappoint

The newest film from “Ex Machina” and “Annihilation” director Alex Garland is as provocative as its title suggests. I saw “Men” knowing little to nothing about the experience other than that it draws influence from the surreal horror movement popularized by the work of Jordan Peele and Ari Aster and also reunited Garland with boundary-pushing arthouse production company A24. It did not disappoint. There’s nothing I could tell you now about what to expect from “Men,” especially its jaw-dropping final act. Just go see it. And then, like me, devour every piece of writing about it on the internet you can find.

Moonlighter is available for the first time on mobile

Netflix is getting more serious about gaming, and one of its more high-profile titles is Digital Sun’s Moonlighter, a unique, Zelda-inspired action RPG that has players playing shopkeeper during the day and looting intricate dungeons at night. The game was first released for Mac, PC and consoles in 2018, but as part of the exclusive partnership with Netflix, Moonlighter is now available for the first time on mobile and free for all subscribers of the streaming service. If you’ve toyed with Apple Arcade or enjoy more premium mobile gaming, Moonlighter is worth a shot. It’s available on iOS and Android.

Want a PS5? You might have to fight the bots.

Much has been written about the rise of retail bots and the role they’ve played in online commerce, from the PS5 shortage to the sneakerhead boom. But journalist Luke Winkie’s new report for The Verge takes a fresh angle by diving into the developer-side market for the alarmingly sleek software that facilitates widespread automated ecommerce, with a focus on the polished buying bot Dakoza. “This software lets [users] change their lives,” the bot’s creator said of enabling scalpers.

A version of this story also appeared in today’s Entertainment newsletter; subscribe here.

 Nick Statt

Nick Statt is Protocol's video game reporter. Prior to joining Protocol, he was news editor at The Verge covering the gaming industry, mobile apps and antitrust out of San Francisco, in addition to managing coverage of Silicon Valley tech giants and startups. He now resides in Rochester, New York, home of the garbage plate and, completely coincidentally, the World Video Game Hall of Fame. He can be reached at nstatt@protocol.com.

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Fintech

Judge Zia Faruqui is trying to teach you crypto, one ‘SNL’ reference at a time

His decisions on major cryptocurrency cases have quoted "The Big Lebowski," "SNL," and "Dr. Strangelove." That’s because he wants you — yes, you — to read them.

The ways Zia Faruqui (right) has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster.

Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

“Cryptocurrency and related software analytics tools are ‘The wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic.’”

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Enterprise

AWS CEO: The cloud isn’t just about technology

As AWS preps for its annual re:Invent conference, Adam Selipsky talks product strategy, support for hybrid environments, and the value of the cloud in uncertain economic times.

Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

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Donna Goodison

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Farewell from Protocol

Image: Protocol

We launched Protocol in February 2020 to cover the evolving power center of tech. It is with deep sadness that just under three years later, we are winding down the publication.

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Bennett Richardson

Bennett Richardson ( @bennettrich) is the president of Protocol. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, Bennett was executive director of global strategic partnerships at POLITICO, where he led strategic growth efforts including POLITICO's European expansion in Brussels and POLITICO's creative agency POLITICO Focus during his six years with the company. Prior to POLITICO, Bennett was co-founder and CMO of Hinge, the mobile dating company recently acquired by Match Group. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Bennett is originally from Portland, Maine, and received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University.

machine learning
Enterprise

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Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

On any given day, Lily AI runs hundreds of machine learning models using computer vision and natural language processing that are customized for its retail and ecommerce clients to make website product recommendations, forecast demand, and plan merchandising. But this spring when the company was in the market for a machine learning operations platform to manage its expanding model roster, it wasn’t easy to find a suitable off-the-shelf system that could handle such a large number of models in deployment while also meeting other criteria.

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Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.

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