By Trey Mangum

The upcoming Starz series Now Apocalypse is like nothing you’ve seen on television. Created by revolutionary indie filmmaker Gregg Araki and executive produced by Steven Soderbergh, the show follows Ulysses (Avan Jogia), a millennial stoner “struggling to figure out his life in the surreal and bewildering city of Los Angeles.” The series also stars Kelli Berglund, Beau Mirchoff, Roxane Mesquida, Tyler Posey, and Jacob Artist, all in the thick of their own unapologetic “quests pursuing love, sex and fame.” True to Araki’s earlier work, there are also aliens.

For Jogia — formerly of Nickelodeon’s Victorious and ABC’s Twisted — the sex-positive new series gave him the chance to work with the “legend” Araki and tell an L.A. story from the perspective of a queer, brown “sexual explorer” like Ulysses.

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From left to right: Roxane Mesquida, Beau Mirchoff, Jogia, and Kelli Berglund in Now Apocalypse

MTV News sat down with Jogia shortly before the series’s premiere at Sundance Film Festival to talk about this end-of-the-world comedy, his journey in Hollywood, and when he thinks actual change is coming to come to the industry.

MTV News: What made you take on this project and how is it different than everything else that’s on television right now?

Avan Jogia: I’d done a lot of television. I’ve led like three shows. And that’s huge. I’m so happy to have done that. And then I was sort of like… I don’t think I wanted to do television. Unless it’s really, really standout, because it takes a lot of time and it’s a huge commitment, unlike a movie, where you just go in and get it done. So Gregg sent me the script and was like ‘I wrote this part for you,’ and he’s a legend. I had the utmost respect for his work up to this point anyway. We move really quickly, which I like.

Every single episode has some sort of effect on the next episode, which is rare for a half-hour comedy. [The show] tweaks the genre because you still have that situational comedy vibe where its four characters and you get to see them interact, but it also has this thrumming beat of what’s going on with these aliens. What is it? Is he crazy? Is his smoking too much pot? There’s very few half-hour comedies where you come in and you’re guessing what’s next. Our show is unique in that way.

MTV News: Tell us about the character of Ulysses and how important is it for you to portray a queer, brown character on television.

Jogia: He’s a sexual explorer, he’s a friendship explorer. I get a lot of characters who are really driven by a mission or they are super involved with what they’re going to accomplish and what they’re going to conquer. This character’s interesting in the way that he doesn’t have any of those drives. He has different drives and he’s looking for love in a world that increasingly doesn’t value love and everything becomes quick and disposable. He’s looking for something more and I love that about him and I think that’s something we share.

One of the greatest leaps that we have done moving forward in television and film is representation. I wouldn’t be here without the people who have come before me. Representation is really important. It’s a vital part of what’s being done right now.

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Tyler Posey and Jogia in Now Apocalypse

MTV News: What does the series have to say as far as making it as an aspiring creative in Hollywood?

Jogia: It’s funny because everyone’s first year in L.A. is really an interesting time. You’re consuming personalities so quickly and you’re jumping from friend group to friend group so quickly and everything’s changing. You just try to figure out who you are in this city, what you want out of it, and who you want to be.

MTV News: You starred in two teen shows, Victorious and Twisted. Is the transition to teen to young adult star difficult or tricky?

Jogia: I think a lot is made of that, you know what I mean? I have a unique experience because soon after Nickelodeon I did Twisted, then I went from that to indie movies that went to Sundance then to Tut. I follow the writing and I work on what I do. I feel like a lot of the time, we’re in an industry that is so much about public opinion and how well someone’s gonna do or how it fits in your brand. I have never given a fuck about brand outside of living ferociously as myself. There’s no part of my personality that wants to cater to what I think is going to be acceptable or logical for people. And that’s not me being like “fuck the system,” but I just find it easier to do the opposite.

If you work on your craft and be good in something, that something will change your perceived industry brand and then you’ll be a different actor. And in this day and age, there are shows being made with influencers. Not to say anything disparaging about that because, again, if they work on their craft, that’s fucking awesome. The multi-hyphenate thing is a real deal. Gone are the days of you do this one thing, that’s what you do, and you wait around for everybody, especially when you’re, like, young and brown and ambitious. We see the doors opening and the way that they are. And I’ve been at those doors for a decade.

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MTV News: Do you think representation in Hollywood is making progress or is there a lot of ground left to be covered?

Jogia: I think it’s going to happen a lot quicker than people think. I truly believe that. What’s interesting is the next set of films, the next type of film when people don’t have to make films based on their race… like your merit as an artist isn’t just what you wear in your face. Like, I can go make a movie about a 50-year-old straight white corporate guy and his divorce from his wife. I can make that film. I could write that film. That to me is when we’ve really blown the doors off. Change will come when creators of color are seen as such artists that their artistic merit goes beyond what they present as.

I just hate the rules. Forget hierarchy. I hate the rules of people who say you can only tell these kinds of stories. We have to support with our dollars and we need to adjust with the times and stop putting films in a position to fail. If you want [a project] to resonate with young people, you need to get it to young people. They don’t come to you? Then you get it to them. Don’t resist the change. You think Roma loses artistic value because you have to scroll past an Adam Sandler movie to get to it? Fuck you. The more you don’t concentrate on getting good, quality media to young people, the more they’re just going to devour things that are not good. The media landscape is changing drastically, and we’ve got to get more younger voices making decisions. I always just laugh because every teen show I’ve ever been a part of it, it’s all like 40- to 60-year-old men who are writing about 18-year-old girls. If you want it to resonate with young people, hire young people. If you want to resonate with brown people, hire brown people.

Now Apocalypse premieres March 10 on Starz.

Ten years later, Foursquare is still making a case for location-sharing tech.

The company known for popularizing the digital check-in at SXSW a decade ago now is showing off a new, experimental feature that takes advantage of all of the company’s location data. It’s called Hypertrending, and it’s launching now in Foursquare’s apps for SXSW attendees in Austin (you have to shake your phone to access the feature).

Hypertrending is essentially a real-time heat map that lets you see where people are at any given moment. It’s all anonymized, so you can’t see the location of any one individual, but the idea is to give users a window into where the masses are — something that could be useful for the thousands of people who descend on Austin for SXSW.

“Hypertrending is a top-down view of all the places and phones that Foursquare knows about in Austin,” Foursquare founder and former CEO Dennis Crowley writes in a blog post. 

“The ‘Map’ view gives you a real-time look at how people are spread throughout the city – each dot represents a different place, the size of each dot corresponds to the number of people at each place, and each color represents a different type of place. If you see it on the map, you’re seeing it live.”

All this location data in’t just based off Foursquare’s own apps, by the way. It’s also pulling in data from all the third-party apps that use Foursquare’s software platform in their services, like TouchTunes, which relies on Foursquare data for its own location-based features. Data from these apps enables Foursquare to get an up-to-the-minute read on where people are at any given time, Crowley says. 

If you think the idea of real-time location sharing is, well, kind of creepy, you’re not alone. Crowley says the company is well aware that Hypertrending is “provocative.” He notes that potentially “sensitive” locations, like residences, are excluded from Hypertrending. 

“We’re aware that Hypertrending walks a fine line between being ‘creepy’ and ‘cool,’” he writes. “That’s why we decided to make the Hypertrending demo available only in Austin, only during SXSW, and we currently have no plans to launch it to a larger audience after SXSW.”  

Instead, he says the company is showing off Hypertrending now in order to show what might be possible in the future. “Our hope is that the demo piques the interest of developers and entrepreneurs and inspires them to build things we can’t even imagine using our tools, technology, and data platform.”

Google is urging Chrome users to update the web browser right away to patch a zero-day vulnerability that is being actively exploited.

In a Tuesday tweet, Google Chrome Security and Desktop Engineering Lead Justin Schuh said users should install the latest version of the browser—72.0.3626.121—right away.

“Seriously, update your Chrome installs… like right this minute,” he wrote.

Google started rolling out the patch for Chrome on Windows, Mac, and Linux on Friday. This week, Google revealed that the update corrects a “high” severity flaw—CVE-2019-5786—that has been under attack by cybercriminals.

“Google is aware of reports that an exploit for CVE-2019-5786 exists in the wild,” the web giant said.

A member of Google’s Threat Analysis Group first reported the bug on Feb. 27. At this point, details of the vulnerability are scant, as Google said it’s restricting access to bug details until a majority of users have installed the update.

As ZDNet notes, the vulnerability is “a memory management error in Google Chrome’s FileReader—a web API included in all major browsers that lets web apps read the contents of files stored on the user’s computer.” The bug may allow for the execution of malicious code.

For the most part, Chrome updates are automatic, meaning you don’t have to do much beyond opening and closing the browser window. It can take a few days to a full week for everyone to be automatically updated to the latest version, however. In this case, you should manually trigger the update to ensure that you’re on the latest version as soon as possible.

This article originally published at PCMag
here

Twitter would now like its users to get specific when reporting tweets containing personal information.

In a tweet on Thursday, Twitter unveiled a new process for users when flagging tweets that contain details like a user’s home address, phone number, or email.

Twitter walked its users through the process in a GIF. Upon discovering a tweet with their personal information, a user would tap “Report Tweet” as they would have previously done. After designating the post as “abusive or harmful” and including “private information,” the user will be presented with a list of options detailing the different types of information. Users will be able to check off as many of the options that apply. 

The type of personal information Twitter specifically asks about includes: contact information (e.g, phone number, email address), home address or physical location (e.g, GPS coordinates), financial account information, a government-issued ID or ID number, and an “other” option.

SEE ALSO: Twitter says it will publish ‘case studies’ on banned accounts

Twitter has been rolling out several updates in order to improve overall health and safety on the site as of late.

Just this month, Twitter began testing a sort of moderation feature that allows users to hide certain replies to their tweet. The company also said it would start publishing public case studies on certain high-profile accounts that get banned.

In February, the microblogging platform banned third-party tools that facilitated spammy activity on its service. It also started to publicly mark tweets that violated its terms of service — a sort of public shaming — last year.

According to Twitter, this new reporting process will make it easier to flag tweets containing personal information. The company did not divulge whether the new process could result in expedited reviews or actions taken against certain accounts or tweets being reported.