Adidas Wilson's Blog, page 114
July 17, 2017
Walmart apologizes after offering weaving net in ‘n—-r brown’
Walmart is apologizing after selling a product in the color “n—-r brown.”
A weaving net for hair extensions offered on the big box store’s site was removed by Monday afternoon after Twitter users noticed the slur.
“Hey @Walmart what are you doing,” Kwani Lunis asked about the listing for a Jagazi Natural’s Full Cap Weaving Net.
The n-word was featured both in the headline for the product as well as a description about it that praised its “characteristic and chic design.”
“We are very sorry and appalled that this third party seller listed their item with this description on our online marketplace,” Walmart said in a statement Monday.
“It is a clear violation of our policy and has been removed, and we are investigating the seller to determine how this could have happened.”
[image error]
But beyond offering a product tainted with racism, Walmart also was offering the weaving net through a fake vendor, according to the owner of Jagazi Naturals.
Chizo Onuh, a 39-year-old based in London, told the Daily News that she had just got back from dropping her kids off at school when she began receiving emails blaming her for the n-word weaving net.
“Considering the fact that I’m a black woman from Nigeria, what really pains me is that I get these emails from other black people who are in pain because of that word,” she said.
Onuh told the News that there is “nothing I can do about it” and that her brand,a nonsense name she made up herself, has previously been copied by others on eCommerce platforms such as Amazon and wish.com to sell similar products.
She said that she does not believe her product had ever been used with a racial slur before.
Source:
Avengers: Infinity War footage shows Thanos throwing a planet
It’s the end of the world that Marvel Studios has been building for a decade.
Or, at least, it could be.
Cosmic death-dealer Thanos shattered Disney’s D23 Expo on Saturday as it concluded with the first footage from Avengers: Infinity War. The video wasn’t released publicly, but here’s a rundown of what fans saw in the hall …
The villain, played by Josh Brolin, has been teased since the post-credits scene of the first Avengers movie in 2012, and next May that threat will be fulfilled.
“Almost every single hero we’ve ever introduced is going to be in that film. Why you ask?” Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige teased the crowd as the presentation began.
Feige introduced the actor inhabiting that cosmic character. “Thanos bows to no man,” the producer said.
Asked what it was like to play the towering, purple skin tyrant, Brolin said simply: “Powerful.”
“We’ve been shooting all year, we wrapped the half-way mark on the movie,” Feige said. “Late last night a bunch of people got on a plane in Atlanta so they could be here.”
He introduced Vision actor Paul Bettany, Scarlet Witch’s Elizabeth Olsen, Drax’s Dave Bautista, War Machine’s Don Cheadle, Mantis’ Pom Klementieff, Falcon’s Anthony Mackie, Nebula’s Karen Gillan, and The Winter Soldier’s Sebastian Stan.
“There’s someone who didn’t arrive on an airplane, he used one of those cool, sparky portals … ladies and gentleman, Doctor Strange,” Feige said, introducing Benedict Cumberbatch.
“The only thing that could make me geek out any more is if Spider-Man swung in here,” Feige said, as Tom Holland came onstage. He then introduced Chadwick Boseman, saying, “What we don’t have out here is a king – the king of Wakanda: Black Panther.”
“We also have a Hulk – ladies and gentleman, Mark Ruffalo,” Feige said. “And you brought a friend from work, didn’t you? The Mighty Thor – Chris Hemsworth!”
Finally, the actor Feige described as “the man who started it all, Robert Downey Jr.!”
“It’s hard to believe we figured all of this out shooting at Stan’s Donuts for Iron Man 2,” the actor joked.
Downey then cut to the chase, nudging Feige to show a clip. “Come on, come on, let’s see it!”
He introduced Infinity War director Joe Russo, who spoke on behalf of his brother and co-director, Anthony, “who stayed behind to mind the store.”
“Think of all the stories Marvel has told with these characters,” Russo said, showing flashback footage of the studio’s past decade.
The footage dovetailed nearly seamlessly into the new footage from Infinity War. The video hasn’t been released – and won’t be – but here’s a description of what went down:
The Guardians of the Galaxy emerge from lightspeed in a field of asteroids and red gas. Something large was once in this sector of space – a planet, maybe? Now it is gone.
“Okay, Guardians, don’t forget this might be dangerous, so let’s put on our mean faces,” Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord tells his compadres.
Out of nowhere, a creature thuds against their windshield. It’s Hemsworth’s Thor. Unconscious. Beaten to hell. “Wipe it! Wipe it! Get it off!” Rocket Raccoon shouts.
The Guardians bring the stranger in, and Mantis revives him. “Who the hell are you guys?” Thor asks the motley crew.
From there, it’s rapid-fire imagery. We see Tom Hiddleston’s Loki offering the Tesseract up as a gift — presumably to Thanos, with whom he has been aligned since that first Avengers film.
There’s also a shot of Tom Holland’s Spidey-sense tingling as the hair on his arms rises while he reads on a school bus – then he’s in the gold-laced suit that Stark offered him at the end of Homecoming.
Iron Man, Captain America, Black Panther, and Doctor Strange strike defensive poses in another montage of introductions. Then Thanos emerges from a smoky portal as Brolin’s voice-over purrs: “Fun really isn’t something one considers when balancing the universe. But this … does put a smile on my face,” the space-tyrant says.
“I know what it’s like to lose, to fight so desperately with all your life, but to fail just the same,” Thanos goes on, as we see a tearful Spider-Man apologizing.
“Run from it,” Thanos says. “But destiny still arrives.”
We see that the villain already has two stones in the Infinity Gauntlet, which offer him phenomenal powers even without the others. (The two stones went by quick, but it appeared to be the blue Tesseract, or Space Stone, from the first Captain America, and the purple Power Stone, which was the orb from the original Guardians of the Galaxy.)
We see him on the surface of a blighted world, drawing a moon or another planet into the atmosphere of the realm where he is battling the Avengers, ripping chunks of it free as they streak toward the battle like cannon fire.
It’s definitely the end of that world.
Source:
‘Avengers: Infinity War’ footage shows Thanos throwing a planet
10 Steps To Self-Publishing Your Book
So you’ve decided you have a great idea for a book, but you’re not sure where to start. Perhaps you’re considering self-publishing, and want to have a thorough understanding of each part of the process. Ten simple steps can ensure you make the right decisions when it comes to writing, editing, designing, publishing, and promoting your book!
1. Do Your Research
Even before completing a rough draft of your manuscript, research and understand the market for your book. First, take a close look at your idea. What genre is your book, fiction or non-fiction? Gain an understanding of the market for your genre, and for your subgenre (mystery, self-help, sci-fi, fantasy, etc.) Look into current trends in these subgenres, so you can avoid flooding a saturated market, trying instead to fill a need that is underserved yet in demand. Figure out what existing books are similar to yours, and what makes your book different.
2. Complete a Rough Draft
Next, you will need to complete a rough draft or your manuscript, a process that can take months or even years for some authors. This calls for hard work and discipline; this part of the process weeds out many would-be authors. Even if it’s only a few hours a week, try to create a writing schedule and stick to it.
This is also a good opportunity to seek out advice from experienced readers. Ask questions, and make sure you’re living up to your own goals for your book. You may find advice online about how to write for a particular genre. Try not to get hung up on details, though – finish your manuscript, even if it’s not perfect. It will be much easier to figure out what to fix from here.
3. Find an Editor
Find an experienced, professional copy and content editor with whom you have good working chemistry. This is essential to making sure you receive useful criticism you can take into account. A good editor will ensure your book is free of grammatical errors and plot holes, and in the case of non-fiction, that your content is factual. Remember, though – even the best editor can’t make fundamentally poor writing good. This is your job as an author.
4. Complete a Final Draft
This is your chance to aim for perfection. Take into account your feedback from readers, fact checkers, content reviewers, and your editor, to create the best possible final draft from your rough manuscript. This may take several passes of reviews and corrections.
5. Assemble a Team
Don’t expect yourself to do everything when it comes to publishing your book. We don’t expect cooks to also be farmers, servers, and managers, and the same principle applies here. No single person can be expected to excel at specialized fields like editing, design and layout, illustrations, rights management for images and text, and marketing, in addition to being an author. You will want to find experienced professionals in each of these areas as you move toward publishing your book.
6. Gather Professional Reviews
Strong reviews are a key to selling your book. They will appear on your back cover, and on retailer’s websites. Find relevant reviewers through organizations that match the genre of your book, and through your own professional and personal connections.
Remember, asking someone to review your book benefits them too. It provides an opportunity for publicity, and to establish themselves as an authority on the genre.
7. Design a Compelling Cover
This goes a long way towards getting readers to pick up your book. Find a professional designer with experience. This how your book will be introduced to potential readers, so it’s best not to skimp on the quality here. On average, potential readers will give your book seven seconds to capture their attention. A dynamic cover that communicates what kind of content your book offers is the best way to win over these readers quickly.
8. Going to Retail
This means actually publishing a finalized product for customers to buy. This where you will decide beween using a traditional publisher and self-publishing your book. Where major publishers were once the only option, 35 percent of authors today choose to self-publish. While this means more control, and often better royalties, it is easy to overlook aspect such as design and distribution. A quality self-publishing service can make sure these aspects get the attention they need and deserve.
Choose the right files for the output – high resolution print files, or properly formatted ePub for electronic publishing. Consider publishing in audiobook format.
9. Promotion, Marketing and Distribution
Once your book is on the market, you will need to make sure it sells. When it comes to distribution, you want your book available from as many retailers as possible. Many booksellers will not sell a book unless it can be ordered from a major distributor. Today this includes players such as Amazon, Google, and Apple, in addition to traditional retailers.
With your book in the distribution network, it is still up to you to market and promote your book. Consider hiring a public relations firm to promote you as an author, and not just your book. Create a compelling “book blurb” – a product description for retailer’s product pages. Look into print advertising for your target market. Consider hiring an online marketing specialist.
10. Don’t Give Up!
Publishing a book the right way can be a long and in-depth process. Keep your eyes on the prize and don’t give up!
Just like any long and multifaceted process, the key is to take it one step at a time. Don’t be afraid to ask others, both professionals and friends and family, for help with certain steps. And when you run into trouble, try to remember why you wanted to publish your book in the first place!
Source:
A South African startup is using bitcoin to turn digital pirates against each other
The scholarly environs of the New Media research lab at Stellenbosch University in South Africa gave rise to a diabolically clever plan to deal with video piracy in 2015: Lure pirates with bitcoin to find out the source of the contraband material.
That project has become the basis for a startup called Custos. Its Privateer product helps movie studios and book publishers detect the source of leaked copies of upcoming movies or ebooks using a bitcoin bounty. Custos embeds imperceptible bitcoin private keys in the digital files, with different keys for different advance copies of a movie or ebook. A private key is essentially the password that lets someone claim the bitcoin held at a particular address.
At the same time, Custos makes a piece of free software that screens movie files for these private keys and markets the screener to content pirates. Pirates now have an incentive to check pirated movie files in case they contain a key. If a key is detected, the pirate can claim the bitcoin bounty—usually between $5 and $10—and is free to keep it. But once a bounty is claimed, Custos is alerted, and can begin the process of figuring out the origin of the leak.
“Whether you call it a post-capital economy or a new peer-to-peer economy, it’s magical,” says G-J van Rooyen, a Custos co-founder and formerly an associate professor at Stellenbosch University. “We can employ a community of anonymous individuals, doing things that have tangible value … for all the excitement about the blockchain, there’s a heck of a lot you can do with traditional cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.”
[image error]
One rotten apple
Van Rooyen says the most financially damaging form of pirated material is a movie that’s leaked between the final cut and its cinematic release. Tens of thousands of advance copies of a film are sent to festival judges and movie reviewers during this period. Custos uses the bitcoin bounties to try and figure out which of these parties leaked their copy. “You just need a single rotten apple in that group,” he says.
Van Rooyen claims once a leaked copy containing a bounty hits the dark web, it takes just five minutes on average for the bounty to be claimed and Custos and its client to be alerted. On social networks it takes 42 seconds; and offline, like if a movie is copied or shared on a DVD or USB drive, it’s 28 minutes.
Embedding rewards for pirates within the contraband files themselves is the sort of model that would have been difficult, if not impossible, to enact without a cryptocurrency like bitcoin. Its pseudonymity means pirates don’t expose themselves when they claim a bounty. Bitcoin’s decentralized, market-based ethos cleverly aligns the interests of multiple parties who are usually at odds—in this case, the the content owners and pirates.
Creating this sort of overlap in interests could give Custos an edge over established digital rights management technologies, says George Howard, a professor of management at Berklee College of Music. Howard notes that DRM mechanisms are too blunt: they punish customers in favour of rights holders even when no illicit activity is going on by making it difficult to legitimately share content, or other by imposing other restrictions on customers.
“As evidenced by the ongoing rampant piracy of works, no DRM has proven to be terribly effective,” Howard says. “What [companies like Custos] are trying to do is add an incentive or game-mechanic layer, to shift the burden of DRM from rights holders to the community at large.”
Source:
A South African startup is using bitcoin to turn digital pirates against each other
Walt Disney World is finally going to get a ride that people have been going crazy for in Shanghai since last year
Disney fans lost it Saturday when Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Chairman Bob Chapek announced that the “TRON” ride in Shanghai Disneyland is going to come to Disney World.
The nearly 7,000-person crowd at the Parks and Resorts presentation at D23 Expo erupted in an enormous amount of applause and cheers at the announcement, and it’s not difficult to see why if you’re familiar with the attraction.
The TRON Lightcycle Power Run is an indoor and outdoor coaster ride that places guests on their own “Tron” light cycles and is supposed to make attendees feel like they’re traveling through the popular movie’s virtual reality grid. The seats look similar to sitting on a motorcycle.
Guests are seated in rows of two on bicycle-like seats. SoCal Attractions 360
The ride is reported to be the fastest Disney coaster, reaching up to about 60 mph.
Here’s how the ride looks before you’re abut to take off. SoCal Attractions 360
The ride opened in Shanghai in June 2016 and fans have posted plenty of videos of their experiences on the coaster to YouTube. This point-of-view video alone has over seven million views.
Source:
http://www.businessinsider.com/tron-ride-disney-world-2017-7
The ‘Game of Thrones’ next episode’s preview teased a beloved character
Sunday’s premiere episode of “Game of Thrones” season seven started with a vicious, victorious scene for Arya Stark that left fans cheering. But it was the preview of what’s to come for Arya on next week’s episode that really sent fans into a tizzy.
In the preview for season seven, episode two, Arya appears to be confronted by a wolf that many fans are hoping is her former direwolf, Nymeria. And they lost their minds:
Nymeria and Arya reunion next week!#GameofThrones #GoTAtlantic #GoTS7pic.twitter.com/MfAepRkfWL
— Jon Snow (@JonNightsWatch) July 17, 2017
NYMERIA #ATimeForWolves #GameOfThrones pic.twitter.com/nCUbLwEzAW
— Night’s King (@WightsKing) July 17, 2017
THAT NYMERIA ON THE TRAILER!!!!!!!!! #GameOfTrones pic.twitter.com/KqodbsGdJU
— Nanda Fiore (@Nanda_SC) July 17, 2017
On the next #GameOfThrones, the wolves return. Or, rather, one wolf does.
Welcome back, Queen Nymeria. pic.twitter.com/umRgwvdug7
— Ros (@GameOverRos) July 17, 2017
#GameofThrones next week-
Did anyone else see #Nymeria?
What would make #AryaStark more badass? HER DIREWOLF!#thenorthremembers#GOTs7pic.twitter.com/uE6rWxPDGx
— A Girl Has No Name (@lorislifehacks) July 17, 2017
Fans haven’t seen Arya with her direwolf since season one when Arya forced Nymeria to run away because she feared for her direwolf’s life after she attacked Prince Joffrey. It was a heartbreaking scene that didn’t bode well for the Starks or Arya on their way to King’s Landing.
HBO
HBO
Though that’s the last we saw of the direwolf on the show (so far), in the books, it appears as though Arya has “wolf dreams” where she is able to warg into Nymeria’s body, just like what her brother Bran could do with his direwolf Summer. It’s implied from those dreams, as well as in tales across Westeros, that a ravenous wolf pack is terrorizing the Riverlands, helmed by a great huge she-wolf — we assume this to be Nymeria.
HBO
Obviously, fans are hoping Nymeria on next week’s episode will also have a badass wolf pack. And they have reason to be excited. Time Magazine hinted at the presence of multiple wolves on the “Game of Thrones” season seven set.
“During my visit, wolves described in the script as ‘skinny and mangy’ showed up to the shoot looking fluffy and lustrous,” Time reporter Daniel D’Addario wrote in a feature.
HBO
Seeing Nymeria would mean a lot to direwolf fans. The only other living direwolf on the show is Ghost — Jon Snow’s albino companion — after Bran’s direwolf, Summer, was killed by wights at the end of season six.
Source:
http://www.businessinsider.com/game-of-thrones-preview-arya-with-nymeria-2017-7
Apple aims to get an iPad in the hands of every hospital patient
Apple has made great strides in health in the last few years and if it gets its way, there will be an iPad in the hands of every hospital patient.
It’s already started with a smattering of hospitals around the U.S. including Jacobs Medical Center at UC San Diego, MetroSouth Medical Center in Chicago and about a year ago at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles.
Earlier this week, I went down to L.A. to take a tour of Cedars-Sinai‘s pilot program allowing patients direct access to their vitals, care team and educational tools through iPads.
Doctors are already adept at using mobile devices and many have been using iPads in their practices for a number of years now, but allowing patient’s access to their own information is still a novel idea in the medical world. Cedars has been somewhat ahead of the curve with the creation of its EHR software My CS-Link, which allows patients to look up their information online, including notes from their doctor.
However, without the iPad, doctors and nurses have to follow a paper trail and then write up duplicate information on a white board often found on the back wall in the patient’s room. Mistakes can happen and, as Cedars-Sinai doctor Shaun Miller told me, the staff often run out of room to write, leading to confusion or a lack of information for the patient.
[image error]
Cedars uses Epic’s MyChart software to record vitals and other info on roughly 50 iPads in its heart failure unit where patients often have to stay for an extended period of time. One patient, 32-year-old Awad Lsallum, traveled all the way from Saudi Arabia in hopes of receiving a new heart. To be honest Lsallum did not seem that impressed with the device. He’d already been at Cedars for a total of 40 days and said he gave the iPad back after a while. But he did say it was “comforting” to have the iPad so he “knows what’s going on.”
The program also benefits the care team. Michelle Williams, a registered nurse at Cedars told TechCrunch the program made it easier for nurses. The nursing staff often get stuck with duplicate work requiring both educating patients on care and checking to see if they have all the necessary information. However, the program offers educational videos on the iPad and a handy way for patients to see all their information at the same time.
In another section of the hospital, new parents are utilizing unmodified iPads to FaceTime with their newborns who may be sick or premature. These babies need to be kept isolated from the outside world and the germs that come with it so new parents aren’t usually able to see their baby for a few days after they are born. But, with what the nurses refer to as BabyTime (FaceTime for babies), parents can interact virtually with their little one while they wait.
Source:
Apple aims to get an iPad in the hands of every hospital patient
