Month: October 2018

The second season of American Gods, the Starz adaption of Neil Gaiman's 2001 novel, has been plagued for months by production turmoil, including the recent sidelining of its replacement show runner. So there's been some skepticism among fans of the series that season 2 could live up to the darkly haunting tone of the well-received first season. Now we have our first teaser trailer, and honestly, it looks quite promising, even we mostly just get tantalizing glimpses of the returning cast.

(Mild spoilers for season 1 below)

The central character in American Gods is Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle), a recently released convict whose wife, Laura (Emily Browning) is killed in a car crash the day he is supposed to be coming home. Numb with grief, he falls in with the mysterious Mr. Wednesday (Ian McShane) and becomes his bodyguard. But Mr. Wednesday is not who he seems. He's actually the ancient Norse god, Odin, seeking to rally all the remaining Old Gods, who are slowly dying off from peoples' lack of belief. Their mission: beat back the encroaching influence of all the New Gods so they can survive.

Enlarge / Max Dickstein stands with other supporters of Ross Ulbricht, the alleged creator and operator of the Silk Road underground market, in front of a Manhattan federal court house on the first day of jury selection for his trial on January 13, 2015 in New York City. (credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

An Irishman who went by the online moniker "Libertas" on the now-defunct drug website Silk Road pleaded guilty on Friday to drug trafficking charges.

According to federal prosecutors in New York, Gary Davis served as a paid moderator and later administrator for Silk Road for several months in 2013.

Silk Road’s founder Ross Ulbricht, who was convicted at a 2015 trial, is currently serving a double life sentence. On June 28, 2018, the Supreme Court declined to hear Ulbricht’s appeal.

Enlarge / The first officially released image from The Mandalorian. (credit: Lucasfilm)

The first details have been revealed about Lucasfilm's live-action Star Wars TV series.

We previously knew only that it was coming, that writer/director Jon Favreau (Iron Man, The Jungle Book, Swingers) would executive produce, and that it would eventually air on Disney's coming streaming video service. This week we learned the title—The Mandalorian—and Jon Favreau has posted the first image, shown above, to Instagram. Some set photos showing a Tatooine-like desert planet had leaked before, but this is the first officially released image.

Favreau also shared some details about the setting and subject of the series on Instagram. Here's what he posted:

Enlarge / An employee arranges a display of Vizio Inc. high-definition televisions at a Best Buy Inc. store in Paramus, New Jersey, U.S., on Friday, Nov. 25, 2016. (credit: Mark Kauzlarich/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Lawyers representing Vizio TV owners have asked a federal judge in Orange County, California to sign off on a proposed class-action settlement with the company for $17 million, for an affected class of 16 million people, who must opt-in to get any money. Vizio also agrees to delete all data that it collected.

Notice of the lawsuit will be shown directly on the Vizio Smart TVs, three separate times, as well as through paper mailings.

When it’s all said and done, new court filings submitted on Thursday say each of those 16 million people will get a payout of somewhere between $13 and $31. By contrast, their lawyers will collectively earn a maximum payout of $5.6 million in fees.

Enlarge / FCC Chairman Ajit Pai speaks during an FCC oversight hearing held by the Senate Commerce Committee on Thursday, August 16, 2018. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

US Sen. John Thune (R-SD) yesterday blasted the Federal Communications Commission, saying it has failed to prevent budget cuts in funding for rural broadband.

"It has been more than a year since Chairman [Ajit] Pai" and fellow commissioners appeared before the Senate Commerce Committee "and committed to conducting a thorough economic analysis of the impact of USF [Universal Service Fund] funding cuts on broadband deployment in rural areas before allowing any further reduction," Thune said.

But Pai's FCC has failed to keep that promise, Thune said while delivering a statement at a hearing on rural broadband. Thune, the Commerce Committee chairman, continued:

Enlarge / Fitbit's Alta HR, a fitness wristband with continuous heart rate (credit: Getty | Dave Kotinsky)

San Jose, California police have charged 90-year-old Anthony (Tony) Vincent Aiello in the gruesome death of his 67-year-old stepdaughter last week after obtaining dramatic health data recorded by her Fitbit Alta HR device.

The stepdaughter, Karen Navarra, was found dead in her house on Thursday September, 13 from multiple deep and instantly incapacitating skull wounds likely inflicted using a small hatchet or axe, according to a police report and autopsy. Her Fitbit data indicated the exact moments those wounds occurred, with her heart rate dramatically spiking then crashing to nothing. The timing of that plummet led to Aiello's arrest.

A co-worker made the initial discovery of Navarra’s murder while checking in on her after she didn’t show up for her job as a pharmacy technician at the Regional Medical Center, where she had worked for 45 years. Police arriving on the scene reported that they found Navarra slouched in a chair at her dining room table, covered in blood, and surrounded by blood-splattered surfaces and curtains.