Quark's

There’s a pixelated drawing board for Lemmy now.

My own artistic skills are dubious, but with some help I could lay out the markers to start a Starfleet delta to stake out some Trek-positive space on the canvas.

Heyo! Just a heads up that jelloeater added startrek.website to his lemmy status monitor. This means that you (the admins) can add a badge to the sidebar to show your uptime the last 24 hours, if you want. Basically, it's free status monitoring.

Bay!

[![](https://lemmy-status.org/api/v1/endpoints/_startrek-website/uptimes/24h/badge.svg)](https://lemmy-status.org/endpoints/_startrek-website)

"Sources caution that this doesn’t mean there’s will immediately be a deal but it marks the first significant step toward progress since the writers strike began May 2."

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/985891

Seth MacFarlane donated $1 million to The Entertainment Community Fund to help provide financial assistance for industry workers during the strikes.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/2671212

This is an opportunity for any users, server admins, or interested third parties to ask anything they'd like to @nutomic@lemmy.ml and I about Lemmy. This includes its development and future, as well as wider issues relevant to the social media landscape today.

There seems to be no boundaries on Paramount’s willingness to bring back obscure legacy characters to help revive and promote its franchises. … And some of us were surprised to see Sybock referenced back in Strange New Worlds last season…

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/913689

We found the Zombie Kid a.k.a Jonathan! He still has an awesome face paint job and is here with the first review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: #MutantMayh...

More evidence that many working in the industry have been in precarious financial circumstances.

While the other production crew unions aren’t on strike, their members are still deeply affected by the shutdowns - in both the United States and Canada.

In June, the crew union contributed $2 million in funds to aid members experiencing financial distress amid the work stoppage. The union’s general executive board unanimously approved the contribution, which was divided up among the Motion Picture & Television Fund, The Entertainment Community Fund and the Actors Fund of Canada.

Release notes here.

This should decrease the variance we've been seeing in the impulse manifolds, bringing it back to within acceptable parameters. I'm told if any of you notice intrusive thoughts involving Intendant Kira Nerys you should report to sick bay immediately where they should be able to help you intensify them.

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/scifi/t/249163

The “Julia Child of science” makes science accessible through pop culture.

Editing to add: Dr Erin Macdonald is the science advisor for the Star Trek franchise among other ongoing roles.

cross-posted from: https://kbin.projectsegfau.lt/m/moviesandtv@lemmy.film/t/17503

With talent unable to do press and content pipelines at risk of running dry, executives at every major streamer are quietly debating the pros and cons of holding back completed series.

Edited to note Paramount+ reference:

Paramount+ has already wrapped production on its Frasier revival.

You may have noticed this message when sending a DM on StarTrek.website:

What does it mean that "sending private messages are not secure"?

Basically it means that DMs (unlike passwords) are not encrypted before being stored in our database. If I (or the server admin of the sever the person you're DMing) wanted to read DMs, it wouldn't be easy per-se, but it's far from impossible.

Are you reading DMs?

We are not digging through the database to read DMs (we don't care enough to put in the effort also its wrong) but we can't stop other Admins on other instances, and if law enforcement or someone got their hands on our server, there's nothing we could do to prevent your DMs from being accessible to them. Just FYI.

So what's element.io?

Element.io is a secure messaging service that uses the decentralized Matrix protocol. The Lemmy devs like it so much they put a spot in your profile page to make it easy to share your profile:

It's a neat service but has nothing to do with StarTrek.website or Lemmy. It's also far from the only secure messaging platform (Signal and Telegram are two popular ones that allow for it).

Hope that clears up some confusion, feel free to ask any questions!

Fascinating article, with numerous examples where significant characters make trivial residuals on hit shows with significant streaming runs.

It also has implications in terms of explaining why kids of people who work in the industry are working in the industry. If you’ve got parents in LA and NY and they can help support you, you’re more likely to hang in a business that’s not actually paying a living wage.

It gives a different lens on Mica Burton’s appearance in Picard season three as a recurring character for example.

Burton, the daughter of the "Star Trek" star LeVar Burton, tweeted about how little she got paid when she appeared in five episodes of "Star Trek: Picard" earlier this year.

In response to a thread regarding misconceptions about the union, Mica wrote: "Please read this thread. I said before, there is no way I could survive as a working actor if I didn't have my 100 other side hustles. Yes, I was on Star Trek. I also do not qualify for SAG health insurance and was paid almost the same fee my dad was paid for Roots back in 1977."

The markers of the strikes’ impacts are beginning to appear.

Syfy’s SurrealEstate may not have been on your radar, but it’s one of the first cable announcements pushing back a premiere date (from ‘summer’ to late October). It’s a quirky and fun show that deserves the profile of a peak fall run.

We’ve also seen announcements of Canadian network shows (e.g., Kids Ruin Everything) being picked up by CW and other US linear platforms as they try to fill their schedules. Much the same happened when COVID stopped production, and shows from Canada and elsewhere were given a chance to break into American markets.

One has to wonder whether this situation could backhandedly help Prodigy find a new home - or even get Paramount to revisit its decision. Why give up new and unused content when you can’t count on making more for a while?

Uggh. As somene who collects physical media this is devastating. Hoping other studios don't follow suit.

I don't keep ongoing pay subscriptions to streaming services. Not a judgment of those who do; just my personal preference. I've done one month of Disney+ at a deep discount (to see season one of The Mandalorian) and two months of Paramount+, both times in the past. With Lower Decks' upcoming 4th season and SNW's "Those Old Scientists," I've been thinking about subbing to Paramount+ again. However, with the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike, I've been wondering if not subscribing to Paramount+ would be in support of the strike.

From what I've found, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA are not currently calling for not subscribing to, or cancelling subscriptions to, streaming services.

Actor John Carroll Lynch on Twitter on July 18, 2023, quote of part of his video (he had previously called for cancelling streaming service subs):

https://twitter.com/MrJCLynch/status/1681324518806278144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

"I still think it's a good idea, but I've been informed by the union that they do not require that and they don't want that. I don't know why — something to do with the negotiations that I don't agree with, but I do follow the union recommendations, because that's what this is all about."

On Tumblr, author Neil Gaiman replied to a question about cancelling streaming service subscriptions to support the strike. July 12, 2023:

"The WGA has not called for anyone to boycott any of the streamers or to stop their streaming services yet. It's not "crossing the picket line" to watch something on a network that we are striking against. ("Crossing a picket line" is a very real, specific thing with a real meaning.)

I've seen it being discussed, but until the WGA calls for it, I don't suggest doing it."

https://www.tumblr.com/neil-gaiman/722696522150641664/hi-mr-gaiman-i-always-thought-if-i-were-to?source=share

Mr. Gaiman's Tumblr response also has a link to a June, 2023 L. A. Times column, "Column: Is it time to boycott Netflix? How streaming consumers could shape the strike" which I'm posting here because sometimes links to online pages are ephemeral.

So, okay Paramount+. You'll soon be getting some quatloos from me.

Barbie has been a summer juggernaut as a cinematic feature despite outrage from the right in the United States. Dean Obeidallah argues that conservative boycotts and backlash only have traction in specific niches where their adherents are the majority of the market.

One wonders if Paramount will take note as they strategically rebrand their streaming offerings. Unfortunately, it seems they’ve been headed in the other direction.

While Discovery led the way in representation across many diverse groups, some of us have been concerned that Picard season three pulled back to more traditional gender roles and an emphasis on white cis-male heroes. SNW has a large female main cast, but the OG female command officer Number One doesn’t seem to be getting much opportunity to show heroic leadership.

Thought this conversation might be less fraught over here at Quark’s.

FAST - Free Ad-Supported Television on demand - was just taking off globally as the post-pandemic economic slowdown drove down the total available advertising revenue. It’s still a major source of revenue for Paramount Global however, and only promises to grow as advertising demand recovers.

This article provides a good evidence-based overview of Paramount’s dominance in this end of the market. As Star Trek fans have good reasons to be concerned about the state of Paramount+, it’s good to have some solid data on PlutoTV (where many of the older shows are available free) and the bigger picture of where Paramount Global is being successful.

In a Stream Metrics study for IndieWire, the analysts identified an owner for 1,364 of the channels. Most owners are in the single digits, but one company holds more than 20 percent of the channels studied: Paramount Global.

If you’re Paramount/Pluto TV, you can take it to the next level. Paramount has so many channels in part because it has its own platform with Pluto TV, which was launched in 2013 and purchased by Paramount (then ViacomCBS) in 2019. That allows Paramount to launch as many channels as it likes, without the licensing costs, and count the ad dollars. It needs that reliable cash; core streaming service Paramount+, like so many others in the SVOD category, hemorrhages mountains of money.

I have tried all the android available apps now I think. All of them have problems with this instance it seems. Some error while trying to respond or upvote, others won't load content newer than days old or won't sign me in and shows as anonymous.

I have different account on another instance, have tried the same actions and steps in each app and this doesn't occur at all with that one.

Anyone experience any of this or have any ideas?

New federal legislation in Canada will enable taxes on very large corporations (Meta, Google) who benefit from advertising revenue without paying the news companies who create the content.

Meta has responded by excluding Canadian news sources from Facebook and more recently Instagram.

The federal public broadcaster CBC is letting people know how to ensure they still have access to its content.

N.B unsuccessfully attempted to crosspost from lemmy.ca

This article provides highlights from a fascinating podcast.

Here are a couple of extracts/examples.

I think this is extremely important, because when you think about why this was able to occur, which gets into the second part of this answer, cable was this beautiful, socialistic almost experiment, right? It was this idea that you wanted your competitors to perform extremely well. You wanted ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPN3 to perform really well, because that bled down to the lower average from demand, lower average from viewership, lower average from overall subscribers within the pay TV model. The more people that were taking in this $300 cable system, the less churn that you were seeing and the less you had to worry about each one of your single titles performing, because there was this security blanket of revenue coming in that was creating these extremely high profit margins.

I think the misconception that a lot of these legacy companies took was they looked at that and said, “Therefore, there is strong demand for our content as well on our own individual apps.” But they didn’t actually learn from the TV-everywhere, TV-anywhere situation, which was consumers don’t want a lot of apps. They want everything in one place, and they’re willing to pay for it. This was the beauty of pay TV. They didn’t necessarily want Bravo or they didn’t necessarily want ESPN, but they wanted enough of it that they were willing to say, “Yeah, OK, we’ll give you $200.”

A Canadian was one of the original innovators to create ActivityPub. Who knew?

Good to see a basic survey of the concept and history written for a mainstream audience.