Metronews

What price are you willing to pay to protect your personal information online? How much power should massive corporations like Google and Facebook be allowed to have over the flow of information in a free society? Where is the line between tech companies legitimately attempting to monetize their services through targeted advertising and outright predatory invasions of personal privacy? These are the questions raised by the brilliant new documentary, which had its Washington D.C. premiere this past Wednesday, “The Creepy Line.” The film’s title comes from an infamous utterance of Eric Schmitt, the former CEO of Google, during a panel discussion on privacy, during which he smugly stated the following: “There’s what I call the ‘creepy line,’ and the Google policy about a lot of these things is to get right up to the creepy line but not cross it.” It’s not exactly a reassuring statement, especially since the only thing Schmitt went on to mention that would obviously cross this “creep...

In light of the scandals again roiling the Roman Catholic Church, many are understandably asking why they should remain Catholic. Some, such as Damon Linker, have simply announced that they will not. Others are answering in a way that, at any other time, might seem rather surprising to Catholics and Protestants alike. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, for example, George Weigel explains that he and his fellow Catholics attend Mass “to hear what we believe to be the Word of God in Scripture and to enter into what we believe to be communion with God because of Jesus Christ.” He emphasizes “the basis of Catholic faith, which is trust in Jesus Christ.” Only Jesus Christ, he reminds his readers, has “the words of eternal life.” Princeton University’s Robert George sounded the same note even more emphatically. “Our faith is in Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ alone,” he wrote. “The subject and object of our faith,” he continued, “is Jesus Christ—and him alone. It is Christ and him alone...

The film atop the box office last weekend, “The Predator,” has many dubious distinctions. Its $24 million opening weekend is the lowest ever for a movie opening on 4,000 screens. Both critics and users on RottenTomatoes dub it rotten, and its MetaCritic score is a C+, which is something of a death’s kiss from audiences. Finally, compared to the amazing original from 1987, it’s utterly mediocre. Still, I went and saw it, and I found enough to like to recommend it to fans of action movies. The sequel explores the hidden ideas of the original, which confronted America’s elite warriors, the Homeric heroes that populate the special forces, with an alien hunter who has no human restraints. He flays people alive and makes trophies of skeletons and skulls. Nowadays, we like to use words like bad-ss, but really, the predator is a warning about the death cult that lies at the far end of the tendency to glorify violence. In the original, as I’ve detailed in one of my podcasts , director John Mc...

This is the 29th in a series of “Battlestar Galactica” recaps. This year marks the 15th anniversary of the franchise. Read the last piece, “Revisiting Battlestar Galactica: ‘Crossroads (Parts 1 And 2)’”  here . Spoilers ahead . The opening episodes of Season Four begin in Season Three’s climactic space battle. However, the true drama arises from conflicts of faith and vision within the human and Cylon camps. Starbuck’s seeming return from the dead challenges not only Pres. Roslin’s prophetic vision of the path to Earth, but also Adm. Adama’s atheism. Baltar similarly seems to finally convert from atheism to monotheism in a possible case of faking it until you make it. Meanwhile, the emergence of the near-Final Four among Galactica’s crew is detected by the Cylon Raiders. Cylons are programmed to avoid thinking of the Final Five – a tenet which already caused the boxing of the Threes after D’Anna sought their identities at the Temple of Five. Increasingly, the Cylons cannot sto...

some U.S. officials and analysts say Pyongyang has yet to take concrete measures to show it is prepared to give up a nuclear arsenal that threatens the United States.

A federal judge on Monday ordered Endangered Species Act protections restored to grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone National Park, halting plans for the first licensed trophy hunts of the region's grizzlies in more than 40 years.

Michael Avenatti has been one of Donald Trump's worst nightmares for months. Now, he appears on the verge of taking down the president's SCOTUS nominee.