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Here's a transcript of the Empire article:

Fear Has a Face

In a vacant office block on the west side of LaSalle Street in downtown Chicago - temporary production base of a movie that our press pass insists is called Rory's First Kiss, but everyone knows is really The Dark Knight - Empire is shown into a high-ceilinged, wood paneled room, the kind of place you;d imagine very important decisions were once taken by powerful, polyester-clad men back in the 1970's. we've ostensibly been invited here to observe director Christopher Nolan at work in the street outside and the building opposite via a live feed to a flatscreen TV, but the producers have arranged something else, too.

In a small, windowless side-room stand a pair of costumes. In one corner, hanging from a sturdy, metal frame, is the new-look Batsuit, all matte-black mesh and unyielding hard-plastic carapace, the first to allow the moody crime-fighter to actually turn his head. Impressive, But in the corner to it's left, draped simply over a headless mannequin, is something far more exciting. It's a tatty, threadbare get-up, a dark green waistcoat over a grey shirt, with a dark-green tie at the collar. Purple trousers hand below and a long, angular purple coat sits on top. The ensemble's completed by a pair of purple gloves and a silver fob chain dangling from the belt. It's part Vivienne Westwood, part Alexander McQueen, part thrift-shop grunge. And it's entirely The Joker.

Well of course, not literally entirely. Later, Heath Ledger, the man who fills the suit onscreen, joins Empire - sadly sans his ravaged, psycho-clown make-up. Ledger's ill-at-ease body language and propensity to mumble suggest a nervousness you might expect from someone tackling such an iconic role. But everybody else Empire's talked with that day, from Nolan himself to Michael Caine, who returns as Bruce Wayne's sardonic butler Alfred, describes Ledger as "fearless".

"Oh, I definitely feared it," Ledger tells Empire quietly, with a half-apologetic smile. "Although anything that makes me afraid I guess ecites me at the same time. I don't know if I was fearless, but i certainly had to put on a brave face and believe that I have something up my sleeve. Something different..."

Christopher Nolan made it quite clear after he'd completed Batman Begin that he had no intention of making a sequel. But then, while shooting his next movie, The Prestige, something surprising happened: Nolan found himself replaying Batman Begins' final dialogue exchange in his head, the moment when good copper (my note: that's British talk for a policeman) Jim Gordon (Garay Oldman) talks of a criminal with "a taste for the theatrics" and hands Batman (Christian Bale) a playing card adorned with the smile-snarl face of a Joker. And Nolan found himself wanting to make a sequel, if only to see the Joker done his way.

"The way Batman Begins ended was intended not so much as sequel bait," Nolan insists, "but to create a level of excitement at the end of the movie. Ultimately, the sequel happened because we got caught up in that process of imagining how you would see the Joker go through the prism of what we did in the first film."

And how is the Joker seen through that prism? "Indescribable, really, Not to sound evasive - it actually is quite difficult to explain, but all I can really say is Heath's not doing any particular thing, he's inhabiting the character in very much the way I'd hoped from a psychological perspective. He really created something that I think is going to be quite terrifying."

Throughout Empire's time noodling about on The Dark Knight's set, nobody seems confident enough to say precisely how The Joker will be portrayed on film. A 'prologue' sequence revealing something of the mysterious villain's origin (various versions of which have been presented over the years in the comic books) will be screened ahead of I Am Legend on its US release this month, and is likely to appear in the UK, too, come the latter film's January release. Even so, Ledger himself quips that, "I feel like I'll be assassinated if I tell you something wrong," so when asked how much we'll see in the film of the man who becomes The Joker, he merely says that, "Most of the villains in the Chris Nolan style of Batman films are normal people or once were normal people."

Still, Ledger's more happy to talk about how he became The Joker - and we're not just talking about an hour in make-up, "It's a combination of reading all the comic books I could that were relevant to the script and then just closing my eyes and meditating on it. i sat around in a hotel room in London for about a month, locked myself away, formed a little diary and experimented with voices - it was important to try to find a somewhat iconic voice and laugh. I ended up landing more in the realm of a psychopath - someone with very little to no conscience towards his acts. he's just an absolute sociopath, a cold-blooded, mass murdering clown, and Chris has given me free rein. Which is fun, because there are no real boundaries to what the Joker would say or do. Nothing intimidates him, and everything is a big joke."

"I think we all have that in us," Ledger muses, before attempting to describe the physicality of inhabiting his and Nolan's vision of The Joker: "It's kind of like eating raw meat. What that does to your mouth and your eyes, simple little visual things like that. I don't know - I guess the rest is just trusting your research."

There is a very specific reason, though, why Ledger - who's never played a villain before - is considered a brave man to tackle this role. And, as with many things, nobody expresses that reason better than Michael Caine.

"If I put myself in a producer's shoes, I think: 'Wait a minute, we are making a movie about The Joker," the 74 year-old actor ruminates. "Now, we have had Jack Nicholson, who is one of the greatest Jokers and one of the greatest characters in this kind of movie. I have worked with Jack and I know him really well. You do not want to follow Jack into anything. Unless it's a nightclub."

For his part, Nolan has no reservations about 'following' Jack (somewhere other than a nightclub). "None at all, to be honest," he says, "And that was very important to us in deciding to make this film. I certainly knew that story-wise the character was going to be very different, and it was always going to require a fearless performance from someone not afraid to put forward his own interpretation."

"Heath Ledger stunned me," continues Caine. "Jack played the clown as sort of a benign nasty clown - like a wicked uncle. Heath plays him like an absolutely maniacal murderous psychopath. You have never seen anything like it in your life. He is very, very scary. i turn up every few months or so and do a couple of bits, then go back to London. i had to do this bit where Batman and I watch a video which The Joker sends to threaten us. So I'd never seen him, and then he came on the television in the first rehearsal and I completely forgot my lines. I flipped, because it was so stunning, it was quite amazing. Wait until you see it, it's incredible."

Fans of the comic book will realise that what we'll be seeing here is a version more of the original Joker - the pure, cold hearted sociopath version - and the recent portrayals. of him as a deeply insane man. Not the Clown Prince of Crime, the rather more harmless prankster-bank-robber of the 60's, the Cesar Rmoero version if you like, which the Jack-Joker ran with for Burton's Batman.

Indeed, the ratty costume which Empire was introduced to right at the beginning of out day provides some key clues to the contrast between Ledger's Joker and Nicholson's. "He's certainly not a dapper, dandy gentleman in this film," says costume designer Lindy Hemming, "Whatever is wrong with him, it means he doesn't care about himself at all, really. We were trying to make him sort of a... I don't want to say vagrant, but his look in this film has a much punkier feel. Anarchic feel. Scruffier, grungier, and therefore when you see him move, he's slightly twitchier or edgy." He doesn't even have 'clown' make-up, as such. "He's just somebody who exaggerates the scar on his mouth." adds Hemming.

"What the director has done," says Caine, "which is so clever, is that the Joker has left the make-up and just let it rot off. it is never renewed. He's got a big, wide mouth and it gradually almost looks like bad skin disease."

An antagonist is nothing without his protagonist, of course, and we should never forget that we wouldn't have The Joker if it weren't for Batman. Still, with Nicholson stealing Burton's movie away from the frowning Michael Keaton, you could forgive Christian Bale for worrying that Ledger would do the same to him.

"I'm not worried at all," says Bale. "That was exactly the problem I had with the other movies - after I had read Frank Miller's Batman: Year One and various other graphic novels, I looked at those films and said, 'Well how comes it's always been that Batman's the most boring character?' I've never found him to be intriguing at all. Whereas these graphic novels depicted him as really being by far the most fascinating character. So I feel like we gained that back with Batman Begins. Now we've made him a character of substance. I have no problem with him competing with someone else. And that's going to make better entertainment and a better movie, which is great."

Bale grin's "I don't mind if everybody tried to chew up the scenery!"

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    • Creative Sound Blaster AE-X PCIe review: your headphones will love it by Steven Parker If you have been reading Neowin for any length of time, you may remember that I reviewed the Sound Blaster Audigy FX Pro back in April. I found it to be an excellent budget sound card, even though it lacked support for formats such as DTS over the included SPDIF port. Anyway, Creative reached out to me again asking if I was interested in reviewing the Sound Blaster AE-X. It is a card mainly targeted at headphone wearers, which I'll get into a bit later. Before we get underway, here is a disclaimer: Creative Labs provided a free sample without any review pre-approval. Here are the full specs of it: Creative Sound Blaster AE-X Dimensions: 179 x 126 x 18 mm Weight: 263g / 9.28 oz Platform: PCI-e DAC: ESS ES9039Q2M Connectivity Options Side: Rear: 1 x HD Audio Front Panel Connector, 1 x ⅛“ Headphone port, 1 x RCA Line-out (Left) port, 1 x RCA Line-out (Right) port, 1 x Coaxial SPDIF-out port, 1 x ⅛“ Mic in/Line-in port, 1 x TOSLINK SPDIF-in port Surround: No DNR / SNR: THD+N: 0.0001% Dynamic Range 130 dB Recording Resolution: PCM up to 32-bit / 192kHz (Stereo) Direct Mode: Line Out (Stereo): PCM up to 32-bit  384 kHz Coaxial SPDIF Out: PCM up to 24-bit 192.0 kHz Headphone Amp: PCM up to 32-bit / 384kHz (Stereo) Native DSD: DSD64, DSD128, DSD256 Output Impedance: 1Ω, Supported Headphone Impedance: 8–600Ω, IEM: 0.5Vrms, Low: 1.5Vrms, Mid: 3Vrms, High: 6Vrms, Maximum output power: 350mW @ 32Ω (High), Maximum output voltage: 6Vrms (High) Front Panel Headphone Amp: PCM up to 32-bit / 192kHz (Stereo) Native DSD: DSD64, DSD128 Output Impedance: 10Ω, Supported Headphone Impedance: 32–300Ω, Maximum output power: 40mW @ 32Ω, Maximum output voltage: 1.9Vrms ASIO: ASIO 2.3 Total Harmonic Distortion: THD+N: 0.0006% Dynamic Range: 114 dB Scout Mode: Yes EMI shielding: No (but it passed all the FCC emission tests) Operating temperature: 0–45°C Input Power: 12V⎓0.5A Warranty: 1 Year (MSRP) Price: $179.99 / £169.99 The Sound Blaster AE-X was announced at the end of May, and it becomes clear that it is mainly for headphone wearers. I should also note that the card does not support DDL/DTS encoding technology, but it is said to support decoding through the coaxial SPDIF port. I was able to test this working with the classic Windows Sound properties, but I could not get a DTS (decode) signal through my Logitech Z906, it defaulted to 3D sound whenever I played DTS content through Plex or Emby. In addition, this card only supports two channels (stereo) over the speakers. The surround support is limited to the Headphone Amp, so before I get underway, what we have here is a card mostly intended for headphone use, especially with its SPDIF In (Toslink) port where you could connect another device like a console. So what about the highlights of this card? The AE-X is powered by the ESS SABRE DAC (ES9039Q2M), which is capable of a 130 dB dynamic range. In addition, it supports 32-bit/384 kHz playback for deeper detail and clarity. The headphone amplifier delivers up to 350 mW @ 32Ω, which admittedly far surpasses standard onboard audio, offering support for studio-grade headphones. DSD256 and ASIO 2.3 are also supported. What doesn't it have? No support for What-U-Hear, Super X-Fi, or the SmartComms Kit No EMI shielding, but it passed all the FCC emission tests (from the FAQ) I also want to make it clear that I am no audiophile. For me, it's purely subjective and it should just "work" out of the box. First impressions As I said in the introduction, I was a bit sad to see that the AE-X only supports stereo output, meaning it would not be on par with my ALC1220 over my speakers, as I mentioned it seems like this card is marketed toward headphone users. Since I am not an avid gamer that would rule me out as a potential customer, but I can still test its capabilities! The card arrived in a nice-looking box, as shown above. It's quite a bit larger than the Audify FX Pro that I reviewed back in April, and at first I thought the covering meant that it was EMI shielded, but it isn't as mentioned above in the highlights section. What's in the box: 1 x Sound Blaster AE-X PCIe card 1 x 3.5 mm CTIA TRRS to Dual TRS Headset Splitter Cable 1 x Quick Start Guide Aside from the Quick Start Guide, which someone at my age (I guess) needs a magnifying glass to read thanks to the tiny fonts, Creative Labs also has the manual online, which first requires you to prove that you're human in order to access it (so I can't direct link it). Anyway, the box is mostly made up of cardboard, and the only plastic in it is the anti-static bag for the card itself. Design Top Bottom The card itself looks pretty cool and actually wouldn't look out of place in an all-white build. There's only one connector, and for some reason it is awkwardly placed on the side (front-facing) that is for the front panel audio connector, which will let you use the headphones through the front PC audio jack. Since the front panel Headphone Amp has fewer capabilities than the rear headphone port, I decided not to use it. Rear of card PCI-e interface The rear of the card is completely open and is normally where you would find the front panel connector. The PCIe interface side is completely covered, which initially made me think it was EMI shielded. I/O panel Side (front-facing) with Front panel connector On the outer rear bracket side we have the TOSLINK SPDIF in, Coaxial SPDIF out, RCA line out (Right), RCA line out (Left), Headphone out, and Mic/Line in ports. On the front facing portion of the card itself is the F-panel connector. Usage Test System Our test system consists of the following: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D Gigabyte X870E AORUS MASTER (BIOS F12) Corsair RM1000x (2024) Thermal Grizzly Kyronaut (33x33x0,2mm) 2x 32GB Kingston Fury Beast RGB DDR5 6000MT/s CL36-38-38-80 T-Force Z540 2TB (PCIe Gen5) NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition (NVIDIA) Creative Sound Blaster AE-X Windows 11 25H2 Pro I installed the card into the Gigabyte X870E AORUS MASTER which includes the RealTek ALC1220 onboard audio. For our subjective listening tests, I used the Coaxial SPDIF port to my Logitech Z906 speakers. For headphone tests I used the OneOdio Studio Max 2 Wireless DJ Headphones that I reviewed last month. After installing the audio driver, I installed Creative Nexus, which is a relatively new app designed for the latest Sound Blaster cards. Then I discovered the AE-X needed both a driver update from 1.00.15.0001 to 1.01.09.000 and a firmware update from 1.00.06.0000 to 1.00.06.0002, then I was set to go. It should be noted that the card did not work without the driver (not Plug and Play). As you can see above, you can manage the firmware, driver, and inputs via Advanced Settings on the Device tab. By default Nexus enabled "Direct Mode". Upon clicking on Acoustic Engine, the Equalizer can be enabled and set to four different presets, which are: Gaming Music Movies Footsteps Enhancer There's also a dedicated Scout Mode for gamers. I mainly used Tidal and Spotify in the past week to listen to some of my Liked Songs (which now total over 700) in Shuffle mode; there were no pops or interference that I could hear. I also found a 5.1 Surround Music playlist on Tidal that sounded really great over Studio Max 2 headphones. When I reviewed the Audigy FX Pro, I went out and purchased a Logitech Z906 set second-hand for €100 specifically to use with the card, but in this instance all I could get on the AE-X was the 3D output of surround sound through Coaxial SPDIF and although it still sounded great, it isn't quite as good as DTS Interactive via my onboard Realtek ALC1220. Conclusion So what have I learned? The AE-X lacks multi-channel support for 5.1/7.1 setups and drops support for modern surround technologies like Dolby or DTS, functioning strictly as a stereo output device. So to really benefit, you will need Studio-grade headphones to "hear" the benefits of this card. With that being said, I can imagine it will appeal to gamers who are switching between console and PC. By utilizing the SPDIF in port, you could just plug your headphones into the AE-X (front or rear port) and then switch between PC and Console without having to move the headphones to a different port. As I said in the Sound Blaster Audigy review, the EQ in the Creative Nexus app offers safe presets, which allows a user to further tweak the lows, mids, and highs for a personal listening experience. Of course it all depends on the headphones you hook up to it. Speaking of headphones, I kind of wish I had higher-quality Studio-grade headphones to really test this card with; I'm not usually wearing headphones in my day to day duties. The only time I will wear them is if I want to listen to music very late at night and I don't want to disturb my neighbors, so my rating (verdict) is based on this fact. Someone with a PC/Console setup and wears headphone religiously to game, and consume media will benefit much more than I from the high-quality Headphone Amps that are included in the AE-X. Once again, I do feel like Creative could have gone the extra mile to support the S/PDIF port a bit more. Why include it if you're not supporting the main popular digital formats? It seems like the decision was more of a legacy-based one, offering uncompressed 2-channel PCM audio, for users with high-fidelity audio systems and external DACs. Maybe I will be lucky enough to review a card that truly includes all these features in the future. I am sure readers with far more knowledge on audio systems than me will correct me in the comments below. I'll just say I am happy to learn what I don't know! Where to buy The Sound Blaster AE-X is available to purchase now in preorder for $179.99 on the U.S. Creative website, or for £169.99 on the Creative UK website and will start shipping to customers from June 25.
    • $80 or 90%, anything else would be financial suicide one way or another.
    • Or... just use Bitwarden. Free, and has on-prem option as well. Works both on desktop and mobile, wherever you are. The age of local password files is over.
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    • I actually got to use one of those so called "backup codes" once. It was for a customer, I choose the backup code option, and by the grace of god, they actually hade them printed out. Imagine my surprise, when after using the backup code, Google then told use we had to enter a code they just sent to the gmail address we currently did not have access to. I was not amused, Google backup codes should be the end all get out of jail free card, because you had to have access to the account to even get them.
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