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Entertainment

'Never Have I Ever' is back for season 3, and more weekend recs

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

'Never Have I Ever' is back for season 3, and more weekend recs
Image: Netflix; FitXR; Knopf

This week is all about magic: “Light & Magic” on Disney+ takes us behind the scenes of Disney’s special effects unit; “The Swimmers” reminds us how magical life can be; and “Never Have I Ever,” Mindy Kaling’s Netflix comedy, invokes the magic of “Gilmore Girls,” but for Gen Z.

‘Never Have I Ever’

Mindy Kaling’s Netflix comedy “Never Have I Ever” is a bit like this Generation Z’s “Gilmore Girls”: It’s witty, sweet and acutely aware of what it means to grow up as a teenager today — which also means it’s more raunchy and a lot less white than Lorelai and Rory’s sheltered small-town world. The third season premieres on Netflix today, and if the critics are to be believed, it’s going to be brilliant.

A peek behind Disney’s magic

You won’t find any hard-hitting investigative journalism in “Light & Magic,” a six-part documentary about Disney’s special effects unit — Industrial Light & Magic — produced by Disney for Disney’s very own streaming service. Still, if you’re a “Star Wars” fan, VFX geek or even just interested in how some of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters have been made, this is a great oral history about the most influential gang of movie magic wizards. Plus, watching the entire show gives you a great idea of how far Hollywood has come, all the way from the miniature models built for the first “Star Wars” to the virtual production sets of “The Mandalorian.”

Don’t give up on ‘The Swimmers’

Julie Otsuka’s “The Swimmers” is one of those novels that seems to be about nothing in particular, as it casually talks about the lives of a group of swimming pool attendees who have little in common but their shared love for laps. Then it zooms in on one of those swimmers and suddenly becomes about everything: life, aging, memories and the fragility of it all. I almost gave up on this book a few dozen pages in because it seemed too inconsequential, but I’m so glad I stuck with it. Because just like doing all those laps you set out to swim, it’s ultimately immensely rewarding.

FitXR is all fun and games — and exercise

Formerly known as BoxVR, FitXR has been a popular fitness app on the Quest for some time. Boxing is still a key part of the app’s workout regimen, but players can now also opt for dance or high-intensity interval training to get their blood pumping. This week, FitXR introduced a mobile companion app that helps you track and follow through on your workout goals, find new classes and even review detailed stats about past workouts. If that sounds like serious business, don’t worry: The VR workouts themselves are immersive and fun enough to make breaking a sweat feel like a game.

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

Janko Roettgers

Janko Roettgers (Twitter, Mastodon) used to be a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.

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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.’”

That’s not a quote from "The Big Lebowski" — at least, not directly. It’s a quote from a Washington, D.C., district court memorandum opinion on the role cryptocurrency analytics tools can play in government investigations. The author is Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.

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Veronica Irwin

Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

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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

AWS is gearing up for re:Invent, its annual cloud computing conference where announcements this year are expected to focus on its end-to-end data strategy and delivering new industry-specific services.

It will be the second re:Invent with CEO Adam Selipsky as leader of the industry’s largest cloud provider after his return last year to AWS from data visualization company Tableau Software.

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Donna Goodison

Donna Goodison (@dgoodison) is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers. She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. Based in Massachusetts, she also has worked as a Boston Globe freelancer, business reporter at the Boston Business Journal and real estate reporter at Banker & Tradesman after toiling at weekly newspapers.

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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.

As of today, we will not publish any more stories. All of our newsletters, apart from our flagship, Source Code, will no longer be sent. Source Code will be published and sent for the next few weeks, but it will also close down in December.

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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

Why large enterprises struggle to find suitable platforms for MLops

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, and as larger enterprises go from deploying hundreds of models to thousands and even millions of models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

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.

Some MLops platforms are not well-suited for maintaining even more than 10 machine learning models when it comes to keeping track of data, navigating their user interfaces, or reporting capabilities, Matthew Nokleby, machine learning manager for Lily AI’s product intelligence team, told Protocol earlier this year. “The duct tape starts to show,” he said.

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Kate Kaye

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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