Urgent.News

the world's headlines, one feed

Tech

Review: Spider-Man: Brand New Day reminds us that superhero movies can be good

It's as much about grounded characters and well-timed emotional beats as CGI-filled action extravaganzas.

Review: Spider-Man: Brand New Day reminds us that superhero movies can be good

In recent years, genuine enjoyment of superhero films has been scarce. Most often, these movies are merely average or even dull, with The Eternals and 2024's Deadpool & Wolverine being the rare exceptions. However, Spider-Man: Brand New Day emerges as a standout, reaffirming that superhero movies can be genuinely excellent. Tom Holland's portrayal of the web-slinger serves as a reminder that these films can be as much about well-developed characters and emotional depth as they are about extravagant action sequences.

Featuring plenty of thrilling stunts, Brand New Day ultimately shines due to its focus on grounded humanity, making it a refreshing addition to the genre.

Written by urgent.news from Ars Technica's reporting — not their text. Machine-written; read the original for the full account.

Also reported by 1 other outlet

Read the original at arstechnica.com →

More in Tech

Can You Trust a Model’s Stated Reasoning?

A chain of thought looks like an explanation, and that resemblance is doing a lot of unearned work. The published tests ask a narrower and more answerable question: if you change what actually drove…

  • Chain of thought can be correct yet unfaithful to actual reasoning.
  • Biased training data can alter model predictions independently of explanation.
  • Faithfulness varies by task and isn't guaranteed by model scaling.

Faceted Search and Filters That Don’t Return Zero Results

A faceted interface makes a promise: every filter you can click leads somewhere. Breaking that promise is the single most common way a good search engine feels broken, and it happens for a reason that…

  • Faceted search interfaces aim to lead users to relevant results based on filter selections.
  • Disabling zero-result facets and offering user actions restores search usability.

Confidence Scores in Structured Extraction

Adding confidence: number to a schema is the most popular non-solution in extraction. You will get a number. It will be 0.95.

  • Confidence scores remain static at 0.95, regardless of correctness
  • Clustering around 0.9, 0.95, and 0.99 indicates style capture, not belief
  • Moving confidence field's position alters numbers, showing lack of true belief

Pattern: Extract, Then Reason

“Read this invoice and tell me whether to approve it” is two tasks pretending to be one. The model reads badly and reasons badly at the same time, in a single opaque step, and when the answer is wrong there is nothing to inspect. Splitting it produces an artefact in the middle, and the artefact is most of the benefit.

  • Splitting tasks into extraction and decision-making stages improves observability and debugging
  • Extraction stage produces structured output with spans for verification
  • Split approach allows independent testing and improvement of each stage