Adidas Wilson's Blog, page 59
November 8, 2017
Google reportedly wants to take on Amazon’s audiobook business
Amazon has long dominated the audiobook market online with Audible, which sells retail titles and also offers subscriptions to its service. Now, it looks like Google might be getting in on the game with the impending introduction of audiobooks in the Play Store.
Android Police noted in a teardown of the code of an upcoming version of the Google Play store app that there’s a new category called ‘audiobooks’. However, it remains to be seen whether Google will sell them in the Play store, or whether it will eventually build out a separate app to list and play these titles, as the code presently doesn’t include new screens for audiobook listings.
If it chooses to do so, Google will certainly have its work cut out for it battling Audible. The company, which Amazon acquired in 2008, has a massive library of more than 375,000 audiobooks and original spoken-word programs in its catalog, along with a robust app to play back these titles across Android and iOS devices, and Kindle ebook readers.
Audible recently added a new feature to let romance novel fans skip right to the sexy bits; it also expanded to include content in Chinese, and is slated to launch in India in the next few months. Meanwhile, Google Play is yet to roll out global support for Podcasts in its Play Music app (it’s only available on Android in the US and Canada at present), so it’s not nearly ready to support audiobooks in its current suite of services.
It’ll be interesting to see if the company can take on Amazon when it enters the audiobook arena, and if it spurs the growth of the spoken-word content market – podcasts have already seen steady growth in the past year, and audiobooks could follow suit.
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Uber works with NASA to get flying taxis ready by 2020
They say the best revenge is living well, and so in the midst of its ongoing and messy breakup with London, Uber has proven it’s doing just fine thank you very much by signing an agreement with NASA to develop software for its proposed flying taxi project, Elevate.
At a speech at the Web Summit in Lisbon, Uber’s head of product Jeff Holden revealed the company has signed a Space Act Agreement with NASA to create the air traffic control system that will manage its low-flying taxi fleet, which it aims to have in the air by 2020. The company also announced that a third test city, Los Angeles, has been added to the program, joining Dallas-Fort Worth and Dubai. According to Uber, its UberAIR service could compress a one and a half hour journey from LAX to the Staples Center during rush hour to under 30 minutes.
Uber released a slick video, seen above, alongside its announcement, illustrating just how it envisions the Elevate service being used. It closes with the line “closer than you think”. With NASA’s clout behind the project, the idea of a flying taxi service is not only closer, but a whole lot more credible, too.
Source:
https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/08/uber-works-with-nasa-to-get-flying-taxis-ready-for-2020/
November 7, 2017
Missing teen believed to be victim of sex trafficking
A missing Pennsylvania teen last seen in Queens may be the victim of sex trafficking, police sources said Tuesday.
Slusser’s tattoos
Corinna Slusser, a 19-year-old college student, was last seen at the Haven Motel on Woodhaven Boulevard in Rego Park on Sept. 20 — and cops now fear she’s trapped in a prostitution ring.
Slusser recently filed a complaint against a man known for pimping out women in New York City, police sources said.
The teenager was first reported missing in Pennsylvania but her family later found photos on Instagram tracing her to the Bronx, police sources said.
The NYPD, which released her photo Monday, is on the lookout for the teenager, who has been studying marketing at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, according to her Facebook page.
Corionna’s mom, Sabina Tuorto, posted a message on Facebook begging or her daughter’s safe return.
“My daughter was a great student , a cheerleader. She had many friends and lived her life as a normal teenager. I need her home and I cant bare anymore days like this,” she wrote on Oct. 10.
“I fear the worst but I pray for the best and her to return home. Waiting for an Angel to hear my prayer,” she wrote.
Slusser has blond hair and blue eyes and is 5 foot 6. She weighs approximately 140 pounds and large black flower tattoo in the middle of her chest, police said.
Anyone with information is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS [8477].
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Creed 2 Is Casting Ivan Drago’s Son
It looks like Ivan Drago will have a son in the forthcoming sequel Creed 2. The Rocky series has proven to be one of the most remarkably enduring in Hollywood. The original movie told the story of a small-time boxer given a chance to fight the world champion, and proving to himself he could go the distance. Star Sylvester Stallone was heavily involved with the creative path of the series, having written and directed most of the sequels. It seemed like the character’s journey had come to a natural conclusion with 2006’s Rocky Balboa until a spinoff movie focused on the son of his former rival Apollo Creed was announced.
Creed starred Michael B. Jordan in the title role, as a fighter trying to step out of the shadow of his late father and prove himself worthy, while Rocky helps train him. The movie was a big success, receiving great reviews and even pulling in a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Stallone at the Oscars. It didn’t take long for talk of a sequel to arrive, and it was only recently confirmed Stallone will once again step into the director’s chair.
Story details for Creed 2 have yet to be confirmed, but its known that Dolph Lundgren will return as Ivan Drago – who killed Apollo Creed in the ring during Rocky IV. Now MMA fighter Sage Northcutt has revealed in a new interview with The MMA Hour (via UPROXX) that he’s auditioned to play Drago’s son in the movie. It’s not hard to see why producers would be attracted to Northcutt for the role since he’s a dead ringer for young Ivan Drago. Northcutt had this to say about the film.
“The new Creed 2 movie is coming out so I was actually going to audition for that. Got a little audition tape so hopefully that goes through. That would be pretty neat. Being Ivan Drago’s son in the movie? That would be pretty fun.”
Fans of the series were excited about Lundgren’s return as one of the franchise’s most iconic villains, with some believing young Creed would be fighting Ivan Drago himself in some kind of grudge match. If Drago’s son is in the movie, the more likely scenario will be Creed fighting his son instead, which should add a very personal element on both sides.
Creed did a lot to soothe doubts fans might have had about the Rocky series switching focus to a new lead character, and with Stallone in the director’s chair there’s every reason to believe Creed 2 will be a worthy follow-up to the previous film.
Source:
https://screenrant.com/creed-2-drago-son-cast-actor-sage-northcutt/
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The X-Men And Fantastic Four Could Join The MCU As Disney Looks To Buy Fox
As far as big screen crossovers go, there are two that will probably never happen. The first is between Marvel and DC, for obvious reasons, and the other is one between the X-Men and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Despite the fact that the mutants did originate at the House of Ideas, Marvel Studios owns all the characters within the MCU, while Fox holds the cinematic rights to Wolvie and the gang. As such, a crossover just isn’t possible, as the two studios don’t seem to be very keen on working together.
However, it looks as if we may not have to wait for Fox and Marvel to hop into the same bed in order to see all these characters cross paths on the silver screen, as CNBC is reporting that Disney, who owns Marvel, is now looking to buy Fox. If they end up doing so, they’ll then own the rights to the X-Men and presumably, can easily include them in the MCU without any sort of issues rising up due to rights.
Of course, it wouldn’t only be the aforementioned mutants who get a chance to interact with Iron Man, Hulk and the rest of the gang, as the Fantastic Four, Deadpool and many others would be included here, too, and would also be able to find a spot within the Marvel Cinematic Universe without any issue. In short, Disney would own all of Fox’s characters and could use them as they see fit.
Nothing has been finalized as of yet, but from what we understand, Fox isn’t able to compete anymore due to the rise of streaming companies like Netflix and Amazon. As such, they’re now looking to sell, and Disney might just be the one to purchase them.
Granted, the Mouse House wouldn’t take hold of everything, as CNBC says:
Disney could not own two broadcast networks and would therefore not buy the Fox broadcast network. It would not buy Fox’s sports programming assets in the belief that combining them with ESPN could be seen as anti-competitive from an antitrust standpoint and it would not buy the Fox News or Business channel. Disney would also not purchase Fox’s local broadcasting affiliates, according to people familiar with the negotiations.
Still, none of this is relevant to characters like the X-Men and Fantastic Four and should a deal place here, we might just see that one, big cohesive Marvel Cinematic Universe that we’ve always dreamed of.
Source:
http://wegotthiscovered.com/movies/x-men-join-mcu-disney-looks-buy-fox/#gallery-8
November 6, 2017
Amazon wants to turn Lord of the Rings into the next Game of Thrones
Amazon Studios has been looking for a way to duplicate HBO’s success with Game of Thrones, and the company may have found a solution: adapting J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings into a TV series. Variety reports that the company is currently in talks with Warner Bros. Television and the late author’s estate, and while discussions are said to be in “very early stages,” it is clearly a high priority, with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos himself involved in the negotiations.
Amazon isn’t the only looking into the rights, according to Deadline, which reports that the Tolkien Estate is looking to sell the television rights to the iconic fantasy series to the tune of $200-250 million, and has approached Netflix and HBO as well. There appears to be some strings attached: the rights might not encompass all of the characters in the story. HBO has reportedly passed on the project.
Amazon Studios has unexpectedly found itself in the midst of a transition. Earlier this year, Bezos reportedly got involved with the creative direction of the studio, tasking the group with finding high-profile dramas like the hit HBO series that could have a broad, global appeal. Then last month, Amazon Studios executive Roy Price resigned in the wake of sexual harassment allegations, a move that led to additional resignations and a reshuffling of the studio’s executive ranks.
If finding the next Game of Thrones is the goal, it’s hard to imagine a property more suited to the task then Tolkien’s series. The Lord of the Rings tells the story of Frodo Baggins, a young Hobbit who is tasked with destroying an artifact called the One Ring in the hopes of saving the world of Middle-earth. The books have been adapted multiple times over the years, with the most commercially — and critically — successful adaptation coming in the form of Peter Jackson’s film trilogy. (Jackson’s films adapting The Hobbit were markedly less successful.)
While the adaptation is far from certain — the deal hasn’t even been closed yet — this is the kind of project that could bring Amazon Studios a significant amount of attention, and draw in viewers across the world. While Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu have all made huge strides as original content creators, Amazon has yet to score with a far-reaching, cultural conversation piece the way that Netflix has with something like Stranger Things.
While The Lord of the Rings would certainly check all the Game of Thrones boxes when it comes to fantasy and adventure, it is also worth noting that the books aren’t really known for being filled with the kind of sex-and-violence antics that HBO’s show has become synonymous with. On the other hand, Rings has one huge advantage: the books are actually finished.
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Jordan Peele Is Rebooting The Twilight Zone
You are about to enter another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination. A dimension where HOLY SHIT, JORDAN PEELE IS REBOOTING THE TWILIGHT ZONE.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Peele’s aptly named Monkeypaw Productions will produce a new version of The Twilight Zone, with Marco Ramirez of Netflix’s The Defenders tapped as showrunner. The new Twilight Zone is bound for the subscription service CBS All-Access, so if a Good Wife spinoff or a new Star Trek weren’t enough to turn your head, this might be the tipping point.
It’s hard to imagine someone better equipped to reboot The Twilight Zone than Jordan Peele. In conjunction with the release of Get Out earlier this year, Peele programmed a series of classic “social thrillers” like Night of the Living Dead and Rosemary’s Baby, and he’s clearly passionate about using genre stories to explore a wide range of social and political issues. Now, he’ll be able to program new, twisty stories with pointed social messages every week. Sign us the hell up.
Source:
https://www.gq.com/story/jordan-peele-twilight-zone
African-American Reporter Takes Stand After Body-Shaming
A woman’s comments that an African-American female news reporter in Dallas “looks ridiculous” in her clothes has sparked outrage on social media.
Wednesday morning, a woman on Facebook posted a photo of WFAA Channel 8 News traffic reporter Demetria Obilor wearing a red dress, criticizing the way she looked in her dress. The post has since been taken down.
“She’s a 16/18 woman in a size 6 dress and looks ridiculous,” the post said. The woman also said she would stop watching the news channel.
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Obilor, 26, has been a traffic reporter at the station for two weeks. She was previously a traffic reporter at KLAS-TV in Las Vegas. She said she wasn’t made aware of the post until Friday when someone posted a screenshot of the post on Twitter.
“I’m not a 16/18, but even if I was, for you to try to call out my size like that to hurt me or discriminate against me, I’m not for that,” she told NBC News.
Having been in the business almost four years, she said she isn’t hurt by the comments and has thick skin.
“When you get older and you’re in the news people warn you that, ‘Hey, you’re going to be under a harsh lens. People are going to critique you, people are going to say mean things about you,'” she said.
This isn’t the first time Obilor has been attacked over her looks. Over the summer, while a traffic reporter in Las Vegas, she shared a screenshot of an email from a viewer who said her natural hairstyle must be hard to clean and “smell bad.”
Here’s one of the racist, hateful emails I’ve received for rocking my natural hair on TV. pic.twitter.com/oA8L6gYCyw
— Demetria Obilor (@DemetriaObilor) May 25, 2017
Obilor isn’t alone. Rhonda Lee, a former meteorologist in Louisiana was fired for responding to a viewer who said her natural hairstyle didn’t “look good on TV.”
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Obilor, whose mother is white and father is Nigerian, said some people must accept that we now live in a time where styles and body types once rarely seen in media are now being embraced.
“Black people on TV; there’s nothing wrong with that,” she said. “Naturally, curly hair — I don’t care if a black woman wants to wear her hair straight or in braids, you don’t get to say what’s professional and what’s not professional based on your white standard of beauty.”
Obilor said her news colleagues have been supportive of her. NBC News reached out to WFAA Channel 8 News but has not received a response.
She has also received support on social media, with people thanking her and telling her she is beautiful. Chance The Rapper retweeted a post about Obilor that has been liked over 100,000 times.
Source:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/african-american-reporter-takes-stand-after-body-shaming-n817621
November 3, 2017
The movie ‘Hidden Figures’ can teach us how to keep jobs in an AI future
This weekend, I finally watched “Hidden Figures.” I took my 9-year-old daughter with me to witness how instrumental women of color were to the success of several NASA missions — something that historically has been associated with white male achievement. If you have not seen it yet, I highly recommend it. The acting is superb, and the story offers so much education, both on race relations and women in the workplace.
What I want to focus on is possibly something the director and the cast never imagined could matter. I do — not because it is the most important aspect but simply because it is very relevant to the tech transition we are experiencing right now.
All the talk surrounding artificial intelligence is as much about the technology itself as it is about the impact its adoption will have on different aspects of our lives. Business models in the automotive industry, insurance business, public transportation, search and advertising, as well as more personal consequences, such as human-to-human interaction, sources of knowledge and education. Change will not come overnight, but we had better be prepared, because it will come.
New tech requires new skills
Change came in 1962 for the segregated West Area Computer Division of Langley Research Center in Virginia, where the three women who are the main protagonists of the story worked. Mathematician Katherine Goble and de facto supervisor Dorothy Vaughan are both directly affected by new tech rolling into the facility in the form of the IBM 7090.
If you are not familiar with the IBM 7090 (I was not before this weekend), it was the third member of the IBM 700/7000 series of computers designed for large-scale scientific and technological applications. In layman’s terms, the 7090 would be able to perform in a blink of an eye all the calculations that took the computer division hours. Dorothy understood the threat and, armed with her wit and a book on programming languages, was able to help program the IBM 7090, taught her team to do the same, shifted their skills and saved their jobs.
I realize that part of this story might be for the benefit of the screenplay, and that the world is much more complicated. However, I do think that what is at the core is very relevant: The creation of new skill sets.
Although AI has the potential to affect not only manual jobs that can be automated but also, theoretically, jobs that require learning and decision making, the immediate threat is certainly on the former.
We focus a lot, and rightly so, on the job loss AI will cause, but we have not yet started to focus on teaching new skills so such losses can be limited. As I said, AI will not magically appear overnight, but we would be fools to think we have plenty of time to create the skills our “augmented” world will require, from new programming languages to new branches of law and insurance, Q&A testing and more. Empowering people with new skills will be key not only to having a job but also to keeping our income at pace with the higher cost these new worlds will entail. Providing a framework for education is a political responsibility as well as a corporate one.
Who will we trust?
The IBM 7090 replaces Katherine when it comes to checking calculations, but just as Friendship 7 is ready to launch, some discrepancies arise in the electronic calculations for the capsule’s recovery coordinates. Astronaut John Glenn asks the director of the Space Task Group to have Katherine recheck the numbers. When Katherine confirms the coordinates, Glenn thanks the director saying: “You know, you cannot trust something you cannot look in the eyes.”
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November 2, 2017
Amazon Just Bought 3 Cryptocurrency Web Addresses and Nobody Knows Why
What, if anything, is Amazon planning to do in the cryptocurrency space? That’s the question after the cloud and retail giant was spotted registering three web domains relating to the field this week.
As first reported by Domain Name Wire, on Tuesday Amazon’s legal department secured the following web addresses: amazonethereum.com, amazoncryptocurrency.com, and amazoncryptocurrencies.com.
The company already has amazonbitcoin.com, but that registration took place in 2013—the address now automatically forwards to Amazon’s main site, whereas the more recently-registered domains don’t serve up anything yet.
After Domain Name Wire broke the news of Amazon’s latest registrations on Wednesday, some guy called Byron Wiebe also registered amazonripple.com, which forwards to the website for the Ripple cryptocurrency.
It is highly possible that Amazon amzn only registered its cryptocurrency-related domains in order to stop other people registering them in this way, which potentially infringes on the company’s trademark.
As CNBC pointed out, Amazon Pay vice president Patrick Gauthier said only last month that the company has no plans to accept payments in virtual currency, due to a lack of demand. That’s entirely plausible, especially as bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, is currently more lucrative as a speculative asset than as a tool for actually paying for stuff.
But how about that Ethereum-related domain? The second-biggest cryptocurrency is not appreciating in value like bitcoin is, and its underlying blockchain mechanism also has more uses, being touted as a repository for self-executing “smart contracts” and other tools for technical decentralization.
Joseph Lubin, one of Ethereum’s co-founders, said just last week that such tools could be used to build a decentralized competitor to Amazon, made up of “many different actors with different roles.”
But that’s more about blockchain technology than cryptocurrencies. Maybe Amazon’s move has something to do with mining cryptocurrencies in its cloud? As recent analyses have shown, cryptocurrency mining is a scarily energy-intensive activity, so perhaps the company has figured out some clever way to mine smarter.
This is just spitballing, though. Really, at this point only Amazon knows why it registered those domains, and—we have asked—it’s not telling.
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