Entertainment
2000s Space Movie Led By Star Trek's Best Engineer, Has Been Erased From Existence
By Joshua Tyler
| Published
In 2009, with time running out for the Sci-Fi Channel, which was soon to change its name to SyFy so it could run less science fiction, they threw one final Hail Mary in the form of a made-for-TV space movie called Star Runners. To make it work, they plucked the best cast member out of Star Trek: Enterprise and made him their lead. Then they botched everything else.
Star Runners starts out with old-school pulp lettering in the credits and an outer space chase sequence. That seems sci-fi enough, doesn’t it? Former Trek helmsman Connor Trinneer stars as Tycho, and Heroes’ best-buddy James Kyson Lee is Lei Chen, a pair of transport pilots or “star runners” with an illegal shipment to slip past the feds.
At first, despite the cheaply constructed sets around them, the duo’s chemistry works. They’re going for a Han Solo/Chewbacca dynamic here, with our heroes as smugglers shaking patrols and cracking wise at one another.
It doesn’t last, and Star Runners never quite works. Trinneer and Lee soon devolve into playing their characters as if they’ve just taken a heavy dose of sleeping pills, despite the fact that the script seems to be trying, even if it’s not succeeding.
Unfortunately, Tycho and Chen are soon captured and blackmailed by the government into picking up a mysterious shipment and dragging it back to them. The bad acting in Star Runners continues as they hop in their ship and jump into hyperspace using special effects taken straight out of the original Star Wars.
That’s not a complaint, mind you; some of the outer space effects in Star Runners have a great, retro feel, and when they don’t feel like an homage to something else, they turn into a straight ripoff of the more recent Battlestar Galactica, which isn’t really such a bad thing. The outer space effects nearly work, but before they cost them too much money, everyone ends up on the ground.
Tycho and Chen get the package. It’s a girl with amnesia, and they immediately dress her to look exactly like Alice in Resident Evil. It’s the same outfit, in a slightly different color, but it’s obvious that the costuming department has read the script and realized that we’re headed for a Resident Evil ripoff.
Or maybe it’s more of a Resident Evil, Pitch Black ripoff since it happens on an alien planet and we’re fighting head-decapitating spiders instead of the undead. Either way, as soon as our mystery girl gets dressed, it’s off to find an excuse to strand them all on a dangerous planet.
The problem here is that Star Runners eventually ends up where every bad Sci-Fi Channel project from that era does: fighting badly rendered CGI monsters. Once upon a time, when you didn’t have the budget necessary to make your sci-fi flick happen, you’d throw in an alien in a bikini or something to distract your audience from the bad matte paintings and cardboard control panels.
By 2009, we were long past the age of movies like Species. Those space babes had been replaced by computer-generated monsters.
So after the most PG strip club scene in the universe, Star Runners skips past the idea of bikini babes and instead hides its puritanical inefficiencies behind half-assed CGI spiders. When it comes to those spiders, it’s quantity over quality.
The working theory here seems to be that the quality of the CGI monsters doesn’t matter as long as there are a lot of them. Having just sat through Star Runners for two hours, built almost entirely on this assumption, I’m pretty sure the opposite is true.
Star Runners was the last gasp of a different era, but also a prime example of what killed it. The Sci-Fi Channel died, partly because it leaned into low-effort movies like this one rather than the edgier content that made it relevant in the first place.
Today, Star Runners has been all but erased from existence. It’s not available on legal streaming anywhere, and good luck finding a DVD. Only a very few exist, and none of them are for sale on Amazon. Some are old copies of the official DVD; most are probably burned copies taken from someone’s grandpa’s DVR recording.
Maybe erasing Star Runners from existence is for the best. We’re all better off remembering Connor Trinneer’s career high point as Enterprise’s affable Trip Tucker.
Entertainment
Samsung Wide Fold design revealed in leaked images
Samsung‘s upcoming foldable phones have been revealed in a leak again, but this leak is different, because it comes directly from Samsung.
Android Authority dug through Samsung’s new One UI 9 software and discovered images of Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8, as well as the entirely new foldable phone which will probably be called Samsung Wide Fold.
Don’t expect photographs; the images are just simple graphics, but they do tell us a lot about these new phones. In particular, the Samsung Wide Fold looks significantly wider than the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8, which looks really skinny in comparison.
That’s a large cover display.
Credit: Samsung/Android Authority
The images also reveal that the Galaxy Z Fold 8 will have a triple rear camera, while the Wide Fold will only have a dual camera on the back.
Hello, skinny.
Credit: Samsung/Android Authority
The designs are in line with previous leaks, renders, and mockups, including the dummy units that surfaced in late April.
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Samsung’s Wide Fold is widely (no pun intended) expected to clash with Apple’s rumored, upcoming foldable iPhone, which will likely have a similar, wide design. This design might make the phone feel a little clunkier in the hand, but should pay off when you unfold it, as you’ll get something akin to a small tablet.
As for the Galaxy Z Fold 8, it looks more or less unchanged compared to its predecessor, the Galaxy Z Fold 7.
The rumored specs for the Samsung Wide Fold include a dual, 200/50-megapixel camera, a 10-megapixel selfie camera, a 5.4-inch cover display, a 7.6-inch foldable display, a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, and 12/16GB of RAM.
The Galaxy Z Fold 8 will probably have similar specs as the Z Fold 7, but it should get a larger, 5,000mAh battery, as well as 45W charging.
Samsung is likely to unveil its new foldable phones in July.
Entertainment
Parents on Instagram, Facebook: Expect a big message from Meta
Amid the second phase of a high-profile child safety trial in New Mexico, Meta is announcing new measures designed to ensure teens on its platforms are subject to age-related protections.
Meta announced in a blog post Tuesday that parents in the U.S. on two of its social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, will receive a notification with details about how to check and confirm their teens’ ages on the company’s apps.
All users that Meta has identified as a parent, not just adults who supervise a Teen Account, will receive the notification. The notification will include a link to a blog post Meta published a year ago on how to talk to teens about the importance of providing their correct age.
Meta hopes to raise parent awareness of age confirmation on Instagram and Facebook.
Credit: Meta
Meta also announced that age-detection technology will roll out to 27 countries in the European Union and Brazil. Additionally, the technology will apply to U.S. Facebook users for the first time.
In April 2025, Meta began using AI to identify teen users who listed an adult age in their account. The technology re-assigns those users to Meta’s Teen Account product, which the company says has more stringent safety protections.
In the fall, independent experts who tested Teen Accounts published a report alleging that the product doesn’t work as advertised. Among their findings, the researchers documented instances in which the guardrails failed to prevent inappropriate contact with strangers.
EU says Meta hasn’t done enough to prevent minors under 13 from using Instagram and Facebook
On Tuesday, Meta said that its AI technology would begin to analyze user profiles for “contextual clues” of their age, simplify the process for reporting suspected underage accounts, and strengthen its ability to stop underage users from opening new accounts.
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Meta noted in its blog post that it believes lawmakers should require app stores to verify user age and provide that information to apps and developers.
Meta back on trial
Meta lost the first phase of the New Mexico trial in March when a jury found the company liable for misleading consumers about the safety of its platforms and endangering children. The suit was filed by the state’s attorney general.
Meta has been ordered to pay the maximum penalties for each violation of New Mexico’s consumer protection laws, amounting to $375 million. The company has said it plans to appeal the decision.
In the bench trial, New Mexico’s Department of Justice is seeking injunctive relief requiring Meta to pay additional damages of $3.75 billion and implement specific changes to protect children.
The proposed policies include effective age verification, blocking children under 13, limits on end-to-end messaging encryption for minors, and permanent bans for adult users who engage in or facilitate child exploitation.
Last week, Meta threatened to shut its platforms down in New Mexico in response to the state’s demands.
“Many of the requests are technologically or practically infeasible and would essentially force Meta to build entirely separate apps for use only in New Mexico,” the company said in its court filing, according to The Guardian. “Therefore, granting onerous relief could compel Meta to entirely withdraw Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp from the state as the only feasible means of compliance.”
In court on Monday, Meta’s counsel Alex Parkinson reiterated that stance, arguing that granting the state’s injunctive relief in full would “genuinely make it untenable to continue offering Meta’s products” in New Mexico.
State Attorney General Raul Torrez said that Meta is putting advertising revenue and profit ahead of the “safety of children.”
“We know Meta has the ability to make these changes,” Torrez said in a statement. “This is not about technological capability.”
Entertainment
Jimmy Kimmel breaks down 1 hour of Trumps unhinged Truth Social feed
To illustrate just how truly bizarre a place the president’s Truth Social feed is, Jimmy Kimmel spent a couple of minutes breaking down what Trump posted between 11pm and midnight last Friday.
“At 11:13 he posted a thinly veiled, but definitely racist note about House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, followed two minutes later with a warning to Iran that said ‘I have all the cards’, holding a bunch of Uno cards — which is a game you win by having no cards,” says Kimmel in the clip above. “This is what happens when you don’t play with your children.”
Summarising the president’s posting habits, Kimmel goes on to reference a recent Daily Beast article that claimed Trump could only have gotten a full night’s sleep five days in April, based on his feed.
“Last month he posted an average of 18 times a day,” says Kimmel. “If you had a relative who was posting 18 times a day, you’d be worried about him, right?”
Samsung Wide Fold design revealed in leaked images
Pistons complete comeback from 3-1 hole, vanquish Magic in Game 7
