Adidas Wilson's Blog, page 43
March 13, 2019
Marvel’s First Asian-Led Superhero Movie, ‘Shang-Chi,’ Finds Director
Marvel Studios has hired Destin Daniel Cretton to direct “Shang-Chi,” its first superhero movie with an Asian protagonist.
Cretton is currently directing “Just Mercy,” starring Brie Larson and Michael B. Jordan. Dave Callaham is writing the script that will ultimately modernize the Shang-Chi story and character arc.
The original Marvel Comics Shang-Chi features Shang, a half-Chinese, half-American superhero created by writer Steve Englehart and artist Jim Starlin. In the comics, Shang-Chi is a master of numerous unarmed and weaponry-based wushu styles, including the use of the gun, nunchaku, and jian. Shang-Chi first appeared in Special Marvel Edition #15 in 1973.
Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige is producing the film. Marvel’s Louis D’Esposito, Victoria Alonso, and Jonathan Schwartz are executive producers on the project.
Marvel recently released its first female-led movie, “Captain Marvel,” which has over-performed with more than $500 million in worldwide grosses in less than a week. It stars Larson, who collaborated with Cretton on 2013’s “Short Term 12” and 2017’s “The Glass Castle.”
In addition to Jordan and Larson, Cretton already has other ties to fellow filmmakers in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He previously worked with “Black Panther” director Ryan Coogler, with whom Cretton developed the television series “Scenes for Minors.”
Cretton is represented by WME. The news was first reported by Deadline Hollywood.
Facebook, Instagram Apps Suffer Hours-Long Worldwide Outages for Some Users
Apps for Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp were down for some users around the world for several hours Wednesday, with unidentified technical problems causing widespread disruptions.
Facebook took to Twitter to update users on the situation. The company acknowledged the problems in a tweet at 1:49 p.m. ET, saying, “We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps. We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.”
Facebook said in a follow-up Twitter post at 3:03 p.m. ET, “We’re focused on working to resolve the issue as soon as possible, but can confirm that the issue is not related to a DDoS attack.” That’s a reference to a distributed denial-of-service brute-force attack, in which networks are overloaded with bogus traffic designed to disrupt service.
Asked for additional info, a Facebook rep in an email sent just before 7 p.m. ET referred to the two tweets and declined further comment.
According to website DownDetector.com, user reports of problems accessing Facebook’s apps began to spike around noon ET on Wednesday (March 13) and had not been fully resolved more than four hours later. The issues for Facebook, Instagram and Facebook Messenger appear to be mostly affecting users in the U.S., the U.K. and Brazil, while many WhatsApp error reports have come from Mexico and South America as well as Europe, according to the site.
Outages for large internet platforms like Facebook or YouTube aren’t unusual, but in the past they have typically restored service within an hour or two.
According to performance-monitoring firm Netscout, the issue appeared to be related to an accidental Border Gateway Protocol “routing leak” from a European internet service provider to a major transit ISP; the BGP error then cascaded across other service providers and downstream customers of the transit ISP. Netscout did not identify the ISPs in question.
As Facebook’s outages dragged on, Twitter lit up with complaints and comments — and, of course, memes and jokes. “Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are down. But I hear MySpace is rocking right now,” actor George Takei snarked.
A Tax Cheat Sheet for Kindle eBook Self-Publishing
Before you make your eBook available to the public, make sure you have a tax identification number. If you have a Social Security number, you’re good to go. If you don’t live in the U.S., you’ll need either a:
Temporary tax number (TIN)Employer identification number (EIN)Individual taxpayer identification number (ITIN) from the IRS
Your country must also have a tax treaty with the U.S. If don’t get a Tax ID number, Amazon will withhold 30% of your eBook proceeds for U.S. taxes.
When It’s Time to File
Usually, Amazon won’t withhold any of your eBook’s earnings if you have a tax ID or Social Security number, so you’re personally responsible for paying what you owe to the IRS.
The IRS considers writers to be small business owners, so you report earnings on Schedule C. Take deductions from this income on Schedule C for expenses you incurred while writing your book.
Tax deductions reduce the amount of income on which you’ll owe taxes. For example, if your book earned $15,000 this year in royalties, but you spent $3,000 this year to produce it, you would only have to pay taxes on $12,000 of that income. For example:
$15,000 in royaltiesMinus $500 for Internet servicesMinus $500 in travel expensesMinus $2,000 in interview expenses$15,000 – $3,000 in expenses = $12,000 in book income
You may also have to pay self-employment tax on this income if you earned $400 or more after expenses.
If your eBook is a one-shot deal—in that you don’t intend to make a career out of writing—instead of using Schedule C, you can report any royalties earned on line 4 of Schedule E. Report your earnings this way, if your writing isn’t an ongoing small business.
Whether you use Schedule C or Schedule E, the resulting calculation is then transferred to Form 1040. If you completed Schedule C, it goes on line 12. If you completed Schedule E, use line 17.
A Loss Can Offset Other Income
If, after completing Schedule C, you realize that you spent more this year producing your book than it has earned, you have a business loss. You can deduct this loss from other sources of income—such as other work—reducing the amount you must pay taxes on.
You may have to prove to the IRS that your writing is a business, not a hobby. Your writing may be considered a business by the IRS if you:
Treat your writing like a business, because you expect to make money from itActively pursue deals with other publishersKeep meticulous records regarding what you spent and what you earned, including receipts for expenses and royalty statements
Kindle Singles Are Treated the Same as Kindle Direct Publishing eBooks
If you publish a Kindle Single, the same tax rules apply. The only difference is that under Amazon rules, Singles are shorter—no more than 30,000 words—and they must sell for $4.99 or less.
Remember, with TurboTax, we’ll fill in the right tax forms for you to get you your maximum tax refund.
March 12, 2019
FORMER NASA CHIEF SCIENTIST: HUMANS COULD BE ON MARS IN FIVE YEARS
NASA’s current goal is to put humans on Mars sometime in the 2030s.
But according to Ellen Stofan, former chief scientist of NASA, the agency could reach that milestone much sooner.
“We could go in five if we really tried,” she claimed in a recent interview — but that doesn’t mean she thinks NASA should accelerate its timeline.
Stofan made her assertion during an interview on Vox’s “Today, Explained” podcastpublished on Monday. In it, she noted that the accelerated timeline would be possible if the U.S. “spent the money” to make it happen.
Her comments come less than two months after former White House aide Cliff Sims’ claim that Trump offered NASA an unlimited budget in 2017 if the agency could make it to Mars before his first term as president ended in 2020.
Then-acting NASA administrator Robert Lightfoot Jr. reportedly told Trump that wouldn’t be possible — and while Stofan thinks the U.S. could put humans on Mars by 2024, she doesn’t think that should be the nation’s goal.
“Is that a good investment or is it better to do it in 10, 15, 20 years and spend the money at a more moderate pace which fits in with the U.S. federal budget?” she asked. “That’s the path that we’re on and the path I think we should be on.”
As for why we need to put humans on Mars in the first place, Stofan told “Today, Explained” that most of our study of Mars so far has been about “following the water,” but we’re now approaching the point where we need humans to pick up where our rovers and spacecraft have left off.
“Now we’re really looking for signs of ancient life,” Stofan said, “and as we do that more and more, we’re going to need really smart, really flexible, really creative things on the surface to really break open a lot of rocks and find those ancient fossils. And I would argue that creative flexible thing is a person.”
How Universal Basic Income Could Be Affordable, Andrew Yang Explains
Some presidential candidates fear the loss of traditional values, others the loss of freedoms, but 2020 presidential hopeful Andrew Yang’s fear is automation.
“New technologies – robots, software, artificial intelligence – have already destroyed more than 4 million US jobs, and in the next 5-10 years, they will eliminate millions more,” reads Yang’s website. Yang believes that in order to protect the economy from increased automation and thereby increased unemployment, the country should move to implement a universal basic income (UBI) policy where citizens receive a regular stipend.
One of the biggest questions surrounding such a policy; how would the program be paid for? In an interview this past Friday, Yang explained how such a system might actually be cheaper to run than many people believe.
Crunching The Numbers
Although giving every American $1,000 a month would cost approximately $3.9 trillion at the onset, Yang suggests the true cost isn’t as straight forward. There are many factors involved in determining the cost of a UBI system including determining who would be a beneficiary, who would be a net contributor, and how much the state would save through a more efficient bureaucracy, according to University of Oxford wage labor researcher Elizaveta Fouksman. Some estimations place costs around $539 billion per year, less than the $988 billion spent on Social Security last year.
“It gets much, much cheaper, very, very quickly, and the reason it does is that about half of Americans are already receiving government income support in some fashion,” Yang told CBS News. Yang’s plan would call for every American to received $1,000 in basic income each month. Those already receiving that amount in welfare and government-sponsored programs would have the option to choose between one program or the other, thereby reducing the welfare budget.
Yang’s plan would also call for a value-added tax, a tax paid by the purchasers in a supply chain, not the end consumer. Yang also claims UBI would add $2.5 trillion in economic growth and 4.6 million jobs, which in turn would lead to up to $600 billion added revenue, citing statistics from the Roosevelt Institute.
Automation Marches On
Whether or not UBI is the route we humans decide to take in reacting to automation, now is the time to be having such conversations. In 2018 North America put more robots to work than ever before and that trend isn’t likely to change. As self-driving vehicles continue to develop they will begin to automate millions of driver jobs.
“All you need is self-driving cars to destabilize society,” Yang told the New York Times. “That one innovation,” he continued, “will be enough to create riots in the street. And we’re about to do the same thing to retail workers, call center workers, fast-food workers, insurance companies, accounting firms.”
March 1, 2019
The Williams brothers say they are “forever in business” with Drake
The Williams brothers began taking meetings with several major labels, including Universal, with the help of industry veteran Wendy Day. When Universal’s mid-level executives made a lowball offer to buy half their company, Slim and Birdman got up to leave. Then Doug Morris, Universal’s chief at the time, walked in with his colleague Mel Lewinter. “I wouldn’t sell my company either,” Slim remembers Morris saying. They struck a deal promising an advance of $30 million. In return, Universal would receive a 7% distribution fee but no ownership. The company also got to count Cash Money as part of its empire in market share calculations (with the help of acts like Drake, Universal is now bigger than its two closest rivals combined).
“I was pleasantly surprised at how favorable the deal was for Cash Money,” Day recalls. “[Mel] explained to me that the volume of music that Cash Money would put into the Universal pipeline was what gave them tremendous value to Universal: market share.”
Despite that kind of success, many of Cash Money’s early acts left the label after complaining they’d been cheated out of royalties. Mannie Fresh departed over such claims in 2005 (he did not reply for a request for comment), while Lil Wayne spent much of the last five years suing Cash Money over money issues amid the specter of . He finally left the label as a multimillion-dollar 2018 settlement cleared the way for the release of his latest album, Tha Carter V (a representative declined to make him available for an interview).
Cash Money’s founders deny any nefarious activity and argue that the contractual conflicts stem from the fact that many of their artists aren’t familiar with the music business when they arrive. “Contracts haven’t been done, producer agreements haven’t been done, samples haven’t been cleared,” Brown says. “Ninety percent of the time, it’s not that we owe them money. It’s that other people worked to get paid that they didn’t know had to get paid.”
To streamline future payments, Brown says Cash Money has upped the distribution fee it pays to Universal by a few points in exchange for having the record giant handle all back-office matters. A spokesperson for Cash Money also points out that artists including Mannie Fresh and Juvenile have returned for collaborations.
Meanwhile, Drake’s status remains something of a mystery. On his 2018 album Scorpion, he declared himself “out of the deal” after fulfilling his contractual obligations; Cash Money’s spokesperson says he’s scheduled for one more. Neither Drake nor Universal would comment on his status. The Williams brothers say they are “forever in business” with Drake, but won’t get more specific.
They’re likely alluding to the fact that they’ve got a significant interest in his back catalog, as they do with Lil Wayne, Minaj and the other acts that have broken out with Cash Money over the years. Even if none of those performers release another album under the label, their music should add double-digit millions to its bottom line for years to come—and serve as a recruiting tool for new musicians.
“Rappers still clamor to sign to Cash Money, regardless of their business reputation and regardless of the fallout with many of the original artists,” says Day, who says she had to sue Cash Money to get her fee two decades ago. “Would I ever do business with them again? Hell no. But their history and impact can’t be denied. They’re brilliant.”A
s Slim’s car rolls through Miami, following closely behind Birdman, a song about Maybachs blasts through the sound system. It’s by Jacquees, the crown prince of Cash Money, who is waiting at the studio minutes later when they arrive. The 24-year-old Atlanta native signed with label in 2014 and, along with acts such as Caskey and Blueface, represents the future of the label. “Birdman called me on the phone,” Jacquees remembers. “My eyes watered up.”
Upon arriving, Birdman starts dispensing advice to Jacquees, fresh off a big performance where he was admittedly a bit nervous going in. (Birdman’s philosophy for live shows: “Have no fear . . . you just gotta go out there and face it.”) Just as Motown brought along the Miracles, then the Temptations, the Supremes, and then the Jackson 5, Cash Money is grooming Jacquees to be one of its next big acts—a move that’s giving him more confidence. The singer recently declared himself this generation’s King of R&B, much to the chagrin of many observers; indeed, Jacquees doesn’t even have a Billboard Top 40 single. But he does possess a pair of powerful believers in the Williams brothers, who know from experience that talent often takes years to fully blossom.
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Is ‘The Matrix’ Real?
Do we live in a simulation? Twenty years ago, the Wachowskis burst upon the scene with The Matrix, a sci-fi action flick with a philosophical heart. The movie proposes an answer to the basic question of the simulation hypothesis: that our world is a counterfeit reality running on a massive computer. The film also gives us a glimpse into a future where such a simulation can actually exist. Is our world, then, a simulation?
Fortunately for us, current technology doesn’t quite live up to that of the film’s artificial intelligence (AI) machine antagonists. It’s highly unlikely we’re in the Matrix.
Assuming we’re not being used as living batteries controlled by spider-like AI machines while we dream our “real” lives, we can still note how many technological advances have happened since the movie’s release in 1999. The film is ostensibly a parable about the danger of artificial intelligence, sure, but it also introduces science fictional technologies we’ve caught up with in the present day.
Virtual Reality
VR is much more realistic these days than in the late ’90s, thanks in great part to advances in computing power. Today, you can buy off-the shelf headsets that will plug into your PC or gaming console and immerse you in a 360 degree environment. You can battle dragons in full 3D with Skyrim VR, hang out with cartoon characters from animated show Rick and Morty, and tromp around the wasteland in Fallout 4 VR.
In addition to VR, there’s mixed and augmented reality, where the virtual and the real world blend. Microsoft has Hololens, Google had Glass, and Magic Leap has released their hotly-anticipated first try. Millions of players took to the very real streets in search of very un-real pocket-sized monsters with Pokémon Go.
In other words, we’re becoming much more comfortable with the virtual invading our analog world, as was predicted in The Matrix.
Artificial Intelligence
The central bad guys in the Warner Bros movie are machines, artificial intelligence run wild. What felt like wild speculation in 1999 has possibly become a bit closer to the truth. Not only do we have artificial intelligence in our smartphones, but millions of folks all over the world have invited it into their homes in the form of smart speakers like Apple’s HomePod, Amazon’s Echo line of smart things, and Google’s Home series of devices.
We may not be under physical threat from hordes of intelligent machines, but we do give up plenty of our privacy to have the convenience of a smart speaker. And, like silicon before it, AI is only going to continue to become more sophisticated. Google’s Assistant can already handle phone calls for you, and surely labs around the world continue to learn how to make AI much smarter. It might not be too far-fetched to be afraid of what AI could become.
Communication and Telephony
It’s hard to watch an older movie like The Matrix and not see technology like CRT computer monitors, “dumb” cell phones, and landlines as hopelessly outdated. These days, we all use laptops, watch massive flat screen smart TVs, and carry rectangular glass supercomputers around in our pockets.
In The Matrix, Neo and his band of reality hackers used Nokia cellphones to communicate between the “real” world and the simulation itself. They needed hard-wired land line phones to move between the realities, not to mention massive needles inserted into jacks in their heads. There was precious little of the nascent World Wide Web in the film (and thank goodness for that; the cheesiness of early internet predictions might’ve overwhelmed the story they were telling).
Today, most of us have a smartphone allowing us to connect with anyone in the world in real time, thanks to satellite and internet technologies. We interact via voice and text no matter what device we’re on, and the landline is fast becoming a relic of the past. If nothing else, The Matrix of today would have to find a new conceit to move its characters back and forth between realities.
Drones
The swimming squid-like machine monsters in the film are scary because of the way they look, as well as their capabilities for mayhem. No one wants to be chased by a multi-limbed harbinger of death, whether it’s human or blue whale-sized.
In our own modern world, we may not have vicious predator drones out for our blood, but we do have drones. Rolling drones to deliver our groceries, flying drones to deliver Amazon packages, and military drones that drop bombs. On second thought, perhaps we’re much closer to The Matrix than we realize.
Everything Is Code
Caution: 20 year-old spoilers. At the end of The Matrix, Neo finds his power by realizing everything is made of code. He can hack it, control it, and see things in machine language. That’s not too far off from where we are now: even our refrigerators are smart. Everything is controlled by computers and the code powering them. Even further, the Internet of Things has proven we’ve infused code into our homes in ways both subtle and obvious.
Where would we be without our smart ovens, the app-centric economy, or our robot pets? Maybe in a world like The Matrix?
The Power of Prediction
It’s unlikely we’re being harvested by killer robots for our electricity-producing bodies (though we’re not ruling it out). Still, science fiction has always had the power of prediction: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein explored the medical uses of various body parts long before we learned how to transplant organs to save and prolong our own lives. Early science fiction author Robert Heinlein famously invented tele-robotics in his short story, “Waldo.” We now call such devices “waldos.” Star Trek used cell phone-shaped communicators while commanding computers with their voices, both things we take for granted these days.
The point isn’t The Matrix got it all right, of course, but many of our modern technologies owe a debt to the 20-year-old imaginings of the Wachowskis and their groundbreaking film.
