The coolest thing about Hobbs and Shaw aren’t the cars, it’s the the outfits
Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham star in Hobbs and Shaw. But so does the work of designer Errolson Hugh. [credit:
Universal Pictures ]
Have you been to see Hobbs and Shaw yet? It's the latest installment from the Fast and Furious franchise, a spinoff starring Vanessa Kirby, Jason Statham, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, and Idris Elba, and it's pretty darn good as far as mindless summer action flicks go. Now, I know what you're thinking: he only really likes it because it's got some cool cars. But here's a secret—I'm far more in love with the way everyone is dressed in the movie.
Much of the credit for that goes to Sarah Evelyn, the film's costume designer. But there's another influence at work in the wardrobe department, that of techwear luminary Errolson Hugh. Hugh has been called "your favorite designer's favorite designer," although more recently you might know him from having started that bottle cap challenge earlier this summer.
It's fair to say Hugh's attitude towards design, particularly with his label Acronym, is uncompromising. In fact, it reminds me a lot of Gordon Murray's approach to designing the McLaren F1. Like Murray, Hugh's work is heavy with the latest technology—it is called techwear after all. But instead of ultra lightweight composites (the McLaren F1 was the first production road car to be made completely from carbon fiber), it's cutting edge fabrics from companies like Schoeller, Gore, and Nextec.
On their face, this facts are simple: our planet's magnetic poles have traded places with some frequency over Earth's history. At points in the past, compass needles would point south instead of north. But look into the details of these transitions and things will get considerably more complicated. What exactly is it like during the times when the poles flip, for example? And what is it about the "geodynamo" of Earth's liquid iron outer core that causes this behavior?
Records of these transitions exist in several forms. Small bits of the mineral magnetite in sediment will tend to orient themselves with the Earth's magnetic field as they settle into place. Isotopes in ice cores can record changes in the magnetic field's ability to deflect away charged particles from space. And lavas—on land or the seafloor—contain magnetite crystals that are locked into place when the lava solidifies.
A new study led by the University of Wisconsin's Brad Singer uses the latest dating techniques to put together a timeline of the most-recent pole reversal (which occurred a little over 770,000 years ago) based on sequences of lava flows around the world.
Adaptation is a fitting tribute to book series by the late Alvin Schwarz.
Reading a book brings all manner of ghosts and monsters to life in Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark.
Monstrous creatures from terrifying tales come to life for a group of teens in Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark, the new horror film produced by Guillermo del Toro. The movie is based on a series of children's books from the 1980s by the late amateur folklorist Alvin Schwartz (he died in 1992), who drew upon common folklore and popular urban legends for his anthologies.
(Some spoilers below.)
Technically, Schwartz was a curator, collecting scary stories from all over and preserving those oral traditions on the page. Remember that classic campfire ditty, The worms crawl in the worms crawl out/the worms play pinochle on your snout? So did Schwartz. You'll also find variations on the killer with a hook for a hand who preys on couples necking in parked cars. So, too, the hapless babysitter who discovers the call is coming from inside the house, along with plenty of other frightening fare. It's all delivered in a breezy, conversational format, complete with tips on how to most effectively read the stories aloud to scare your friends. (The 2018 documentary Scary Stories delves more into Schwartz's source material.)
Robert Chang, a Stanford ophthalmologist, normally stays busy prescribing drops and performing eye surgery. But a few years ago, he decided to jump on a hot new trend in his field: artificial intelligence. Doctors like Chang often rely on eye imaging to track the development of conditions like glaucoma. With enough scans, he reasoned, he might find patterns that could help him better interpret test results.
That is, if he could get his hands on enough data. Chang embarked on a journey that’s familiar to many medical researchers looking to dabble in machine learning. He started with his own patients, but that wasn’t nearly enough, since training AI algorithms can require thousands or even millions of data points. He filled out grants and appealed to collaborators at other universities. He went to donor registries, where people voluntarily bring their data for researchers to use. But pretty soon he hit a wall. The data he needed was tied up in complicated rules for sharing data. “I was basically begging for data,” Chang says.
Chang thinks he might soon have a workaround to the data problem: patients. He’s working with Dawn Song, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley, to create a secure way for patients to share their data with researchers. It relies on a cloud computing network from Oasis Labs, founded by Song, and is designed so that researchers never see the data, even when it’s used to train AI. To encourage patients to participate, they’ll get paid when their data is used.
Das erste Gerät mit Huaweis eigenem Betriebssystem ist ein Fernseher. Der Smart-TV mit Harmony OS wird von der Huawei-Tochter Honor auf den Markt gebracht. (Smart-TV, Heimkino)
Das erste Gerät mit Huaweis eigenem Betriebssystem ist ein Fernseher. Der Smart-TV mit Harmony OS wird von der Huawei-Tochter Honor auf den Markt gebracht. (Smart-TV, Heimkino)
Sonos wird diesen Monat einen neuen smarten Lautsprecher vorstellen. Erste Details dazu sind vorher bekanntgeworden. Das neue Modell wird einen Akku haben, eine automatische Trueplay-Einmessung und es wird der erste Sonos-Lautsprecher mit Bluetooth-Zus…
Sonos wird diesen Monat einen neuen smarten Lautsprecher vorstellen. Erste Details dazu sind vorher bekanntgeworden. Das neue Modell wird einen Akku haben, eine automatische Trueplay-Einmessung und es wird der erste Sonos-Lautsprecher mit Bluetooth-Zuspielung sein. (Sonos, Sound-Hardware)
Bei Foxconn bauen Schüler unter illegalen Bedingungen Echo-Lautsprecher für Amazon zusammen. Die als Praktikanten angestellten Schüler werden zum Leisten von Überstunden und zu Nachtarbeit genötigt – beides ist gesetzlich untersagt. (Echo, Amazon)
Bei Foxconn bauen Schüler unter illegalen Bedingungen Echo-Lautsprecher für Amazon zusammen. Die als Praktikanten angestellten Schüler werden zum Leisten von Überstunden und zu Nachtarbeit genötigt - beides ist gesetzlich untersagt. (Echo, Amazon)
Top Italian football league Serie A has launched a brand new campaign with its CEO claiming that cinema, TV and football will be “destroyed” by piracy. Directly underneath, however, Serie A is carrying adverts for 1XBET, the Russia-based gambling outfit that has its branding plastered over dozens of cam-recorded pirated movies. 1XBET is an official presenting partner of Serie A.
There can be little doubt that the wide availability of unlicensed streaming portals and IPTV services is causing grave concern among football leagues all over Europe.
The Premier League has been particularly vocal about this growing form of piracy and has taken matters to the UK High Court, obtaining blocking orders which enable it to take action in real-time, with the help of Internet service providers.
With the new season about to start this month, Italy’s top-tier football league Serie A has launched an anti-piracy campaign of its own, declaring that “Piracy Kills Football” alongside the hashtag #STOPIRACY which it hopes fans will spread across social media.
“The Serie A League is at the forefront of addressing the scourge of piracy, we must defend football against this criminal attack and make it clear to those who use illegal decoders that they are committing a real crime,” says Serie A president Gaetano Miccichè.
“The problem is global and damages football at all levels. We are strengthening the tools to identify and counter acts of piracy in real-time, but it is essential for us to create a system together with the help of the Government and the telecoms operators.”
Piracy Kills Football (Image credit: Serie A)
However, it’s the comments of Serie A CEO Luigi De Siervo that serve to raise a wry smile when viewed from a wider angle to encompass all kinds of video piracy and a Serie A sponsorship deal in particular.
“Piracy is a criminal phenomenon, implemented by people who do not realize the seriousness of what they are doing,” the CEO writes. “Continuing will end up destroying the content creation industry, the cinema, TV, print media, but also and above all football, the quintessential premium product.”
Citing the potential destruction of the cinema is an interesting choice.
Readers may recall our recent article which detailed the activities of Russia-based gambling company, 1XBET. In a nutshell, the majority of CAM-copies of movies (those filmed in cinemas and released online during their theatrical release), currently contain lots of advertising and promo codes for 1XBET.
Pirate releases with 1XBET branding
According to SportBusiness Sponsorship, 1XBET is actually an official presenting partner for Serie A and as a result, its ads can be found almost everywhere on Serie A’s site. It even has its own ‘Player Profile’ page where the betting company is the star of the show. But there’s more.
“The three-year deal will run until 2021, making 1XBet the league’s International Presenting Partner, covering Europe, Africa, the Middle East, North Africa and the Americas,” the publication notes.
“As part of the deal, 1XBet will be featured in all match graphics, idents and virtual goal mat advertising in all live Serie A broadcasts.”
GOAL….sponsored by 1XBET
Bizarrely, given the coverage that 1XBET has received in relation to piracy and CAM copies of movies, its ads are also running on the very same page as Serie A’s anti-piracy campaign, right across the bottom of the screen and under the comments claiming that piracy is destroying cinema.
We’ve embedded some of the Serie A page below, so the context is clear in respect of the anti-piracy language (particularly that involving the cinema) and the positioning of the 1XBET advertising.
“1XBET is a gambling company originating from Russia that uses cam copies to advertise itself internationally,” Dmitry Tyunkin, Deputy Director of Anti-Piracy and Brand Protection at cyber-security firm Group-IB, previously told TorrentFreak.
As noted earlier, there’s no overwhelming evidence available to the general public that 1XBET itself is driving camming ‘sponsorship’ directly, even though the prevalence of the branding and advertising in pirate movie releases tends to suggest otherwise. Maybe pirates have taken it upon themselves to advertise the company in releases just for kicks., who knows.
Having said all that, Serie A doesn’t appear to consider any of this a problem, even when the same advertising appears on the same page as their very own anti-piracy campaign. Strange times indeed.
Finally, Serie A team Juventus promoted the campaign on Twitter. See for yourself how it went down with fans. Many cited much bigger issues as responsible for the impending death of football, not least (but not limited to) the extortionate prices fans are expected to pay to watch matches.
From streaming’s meteoric rise to Fox’s surprise plunge, read about this and more in our roundup for the week ending August 11, 2019
Continue reading …
From streaming's meteoric rise to Fox's surprise plunge, read about this and more in our roundup for the week ending August 11, 2019
After filing more than 1,000 lawsuits against alleged BitTorrent pirates in the first half of this year, Strike 3 Holdings is the most active copyright litigant in the United States. Together with fellow adult entertainment company Malibu Media, the company is responsible for nearly all cases filed against alleged file-sharers in the US.
While most piracy activity has shifted to streaming in recent years, US courts are still overloaded with BitTorrent related lawsuits.
This phenomenon, often dubbed as copyright trolling, started roughly a decade ago and remains ongoing.
The process is fairly simple. Rightsholders file complaints against “John Does,” who are initially only known by an IP-address. They then request a subpoena to obtain the subscriber details from the associated ISP, which are then used to request a settlement.
This ‘revenue’ model has been widely criticized and increasingly courts have become more reserved as well. Last year, there was an important Appeals Court ruling which clarified that rightsholders need “something more” than an IP-address alone, to make their case.
Nonetheless, the traditional boilerplate complaints are far from over. This week we decided to take a look at the number of file-sharing lawsuits filed in the first half of 2019. This showed that one company has been particularly active.
The adult entertainment production company Strike 3 Holdings, which distributes its adult videos via the Blacked, Tushy, and Vixen websites, takes the crown. In the first six months of this year, it filed 1,071 complaints. That’s up from last year when it filed 976 new cases in the same period.
Strike 3 filings
The second most litigious rightsholder is Malibu Media, another adult entertainment outfit. The company, known for its X-Art brand, has been an established player in US courts for a few years. During the first half of 2019 it filed 337 new cases, which is down from 681 last year.
Aside from the two adult companies, there were also some regular movie companies active. Hunter Killer Productions, for example, filed 25 cases, Bodyguard Productions was good for 16, and LHF Productions added three new complaints.
All filers have been active in previous years as well, so there aren’t any surprises on that front.
While there have been slightly fewer cases than in the first half of 2018, this year has already surpassed the total number of piracy lawsuits that were filed in 2017, which were little over 1,000. Whether last year’s record high of more than 3,300 new cases will be broken, has yet to be seen.
Das erste Gerät mit Huaweis eigenem Betriebssystem ist ein Fernseher. Der Smart-TV mit Harmony OS wird von der Huawei-Tochter Honor auf den Markt gebracht. (
Sonos wird diesen Monat einen neuen smarten Lautsprecher vorstellen. Erste Details dazu sind vorher bekanntgeworden. Das neue Modell wird einen Akku haben, eine automatische Trueplay-Einmessung und es wird der erste Sonos-Lautsprecher mit Bluetooth-Zuspielung sein. (
Bei Foxconn bauen Schüler unter illegalen Bedingungen Echo-Lautsprecher für Amazon zusammen. Die als Praktikanten angestellten Schüler werden zum Leisten von Überstunden und zu Nachtarbeit genötigt - beides ist gesetzlich untersagt. (
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