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"Did you do that, or did the car do that?" I first asked that of my self-driving Uber's "safety driver" when the car pulled out of the lane it was in to go around a pedestrian on the side of the road. I then asked it another half-dozen times througho...

Samsung's board has approved the sale of its printer operation to HP for $1.05 billion "to concentrate on its core business areas," it said in a press release. It plans to spin off the printer division into a separate company as of November 1st, then...

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover may have taken a little break earlier this summer, but the craft has been back at work and beamed some excellent images back to Earth late last week. Curiosity has been exploring the "Murray Buttes" region of Mount Sharp a...

The American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International, two of the highest-profile human rights organizations in the United States, are calling for President Obama to grant clemency to Edward Snowden. The "Pardon Snowden" campaign kicks off tod...

The Stingray has been a controversial tool that police departments and government agencies have used to track mobile phone locations and monitor the metadata they send to cell towers. Its maker Harris Corporation has repeatedly denied requests to exp...

Harvard created this really cool time-lapse video of bacteria mutating resistance to antibiotics. It is cool. It is scary. All that and a bag of chips. 

Just another reminder of what fights are ahead for humanity.

Tom Hiddleston got no screen space for his own acceptance speech. Hemsworth and Elba couldn't resist spicing up his speech.

UK responded to NSA director's 'collect it all' instruction by, well, collecting it all

IOCCO received reports of 1,199 known errors in 2015

USBKill.com publicly launches its "USB Killer 2.0" to show that most computing devices with USB ports are still vulnerable to power surge attacks. The company also made a "Test Shield" available, which allows device makers to test their devices safely.

The post eBooks are not declining as much as you might think appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

While Intel is busy revamping its laptop processors, AMD is focused on the desktop side of personal computing. The chip designer has started shipping its 7th-generation A-series processors in desktop PCs, starting with machines from HP and Lenovo. Th...

The team behind SingularDTV, a blockchain-based digital content distribution and management platform, is planning the launch of a decentralized system in which artists and digital content creators can build, monetize, protect and manage their creations using the blockchain technology.

Based on the Ethereum network and the ConsenSys venture production studio, SingularDTV relies on a tokenized ecosystem using a local cryptocurrency called SNGLS to help artists and creators benefit from transparent media production and distribution.

Essentially, the SingularDTV platform aims to construct a decentralized entertainment industry in which content creators have complete control over their creations and monetization methods. Its four core divisions — content creation & acquisition, documentary division, rights management platform and TVOD Brand/Portal — allow creators to display, distribute and produce films, television properties and music while protecting their copyrights in one single platform.

The SingularDTV team and its CEO Zach Lebeau believe that the platform will lead to the development of new monetization methods and will eliminate monopolistic distribution that inevitably lessens the profit of artists and filmmakers.

“It [the platform] will give artists control over setting usage policies for their created content and pay them instantaneously when their content is watched, rather than having to participate in the monopolistic and obfuscated distribution machine of the legacy entertainment industry that ends up eating away at their potential profits,” Lebeau told Bitcoin Magazine in an interview.

Joseph Lubin, CTO of SingularDTV, further emphasized that artists and filmmakers will be able to maximize their earnings by eliminating the presence of third-party institutions or mediators like Netflix and YouTube to manage and distribute their content. The platform is gearing towards a consumer-to-creator network in which consumers may access the creator’s works without accessing an external application.

Through the utilization of smart contracts, consumers will be able to make payments according to the indications of each smart contract of the creators.

“A consumer will be able to navigate and catalogue and find something to watch and click on an appropriate usage policy to pay the artist instantly and directly for the content that we’re receiving and using,” said Lubin.

Importance of Ethereum and Local Tokens

Before Ethereum was introduced to the digital currency industry, Lebeau and his team attempted to utilize the Bitcoin network and ecosystem to build the SingularDTV platform. However, Bitcoin’s lack of infrastructure made it difficult for developers to create applications using scalable frameworks.

The Ethereum network, which is primarily based on smart contracts, has since allowed the SingularDTV team to create a decentralized and scalable platform with which they can integrate various applications to handle various operations.

“The Ethereum blockchain represents the best possible potential to achieve the construction of a scalable decentralized entertainment industry. We believe the most innovative and progressive minds in blockchain tech are developing on Ethereum, which gives it long-term viability,” said Lebeau.

More importantly, the Ethereum platform has enabled the SingularDTV team to create a localized token called SNGLS that is programmed with “the terms and conditions of SingularDTV and its intellectual property,” rather than simply using ETH, which is just the gas that fuels the Ethereum blockchain.

“We’re entering into the 'Age of Tokenized Ecosystems',” said Lebeau. “This is the beginning of a next great tech boom where trillions of dollars worth of real world assets will be decentralized and placed onto the blockchain in the coming years.  SNGLS tokens are the decentralized representation of SingularDTV intellectual property — our film, TV and software projects. The tokens are the company and represent the CODE structure of SingularDTV.”  

Lebeau added that the details of the CODE structure were developed in partnership with ConsenSys and Swiss law firm MME, among the architects of the Ethereum Foundation, with assistance from legal innovator Luka Muller, who is at the forefront of the legal/tax structure for tokenized ecosystems.

The post SingularDTV: A Decentralized “Netflix” on Ethereum appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Following reports of some Samsung Galaxy Note7 units exploding during charging, there have been rumors that the South Korean company is mulling recalling units that have already been sold. Now, the tech giant has issued an official statement on the matter. "In response to questions on Galaxy Note7, we are conducting a thorough inspection with our partners," Samsung said. "We will share the findings as soon as possible. Samsung is fully committed to providing the highest quality products to our consumers." While the statement does not reflect what steps Samsung is planning to address...

Remember the days before the Moto Z launched, when a mysterious camera MotoMod was leaked along with a handful of other snap-on accessories? Remember when the Z and Z Force launched, and that camera was nowhere in sight? Well, the wait is (almost) ov...

Ahead of Gotham's return next month, Fox has revealed the official title and a new poster for Season 3.

As seen on the poster, which comes courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter, Gotham's third season is titled Mad City.

Gotham: Season 3 poster, via THR

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The European Commission has ruled that Apple was given up to €13 billion ($14.5/£11.1 billion) in an illegal sweetheart tax deal with the Irish government. The amount of money involved here dwarfs the EU antitrust penalties handed out to G...

I had decided on a nice evening to myself. I bought a semi-expensive steak from one of the supermarket shelves that’s harder to reach. I spent more than £5 on wine. Between turning the potatoes and warming a skillet, I would casually check the results of the fermenting internet conspiracy I had been monitoring all day. I went home. At 1am, I watched a Discord chat community of thousands tear itself apart in search of prime numbers, base64 sequences and datamoshed imagery. It was fantastic.

Sombra is Overwatch's supposed 23rd character, and has been the subject of an Alternate Reality Game (or ARG) since the game's release. By this point, she's something like the Godot of Overwatch - a figure one talks about, speculates on, even loves in absentia, but never sees. Months of cryptic, miniature hints about the character – who, depending on which crackpot screed you’re reading, is an invisible stealth melee user, a teenage hacker, a rogue AI, or all of the above – have slowly splintered the dam holding back an absolute torrent of internet froth. Yesterday, it broke, and I was happily washed away amidst it.

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We're getting better at predicting when a patient might come out of a coma, but helping them recover is another matter. Even after a patient wakes up, the effects of being in a persistent unconscious state can result in severe brain injury. Recovery...

Marvel's new female Iron Man, Riri Williams now has her own alias to go by - Ironheart.

Revealed by writer Brian Michael Bendis to Wired, Ironheart will gain her name within the pages of the first issue of the relaunched invincible Iron Man.

“Iron Woman seemed old fashioned to some,” Bendis explains in a discussion about the new name. “Iron Maiden looked like a legal nightmare. And Ironheart, coined by Joe Quesada, after I told him my planned story for Riri, speaks not only to the soul of the character but to the Iron Man franchise as a whole.

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Yes, many Lord of the Rings fans (including this writer) may be obsessive collectors, but the latest movie collection that Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema are releasing this far takes things into the realm of the truly crazy. The just-announced "Mid...

When Motorola and Lenovo unveiled the Moto Z, they unveiled a host of MotoMods... except for one. Where was that camera add-on we'd seen in leaks? Apparently, it's still coming -- and it might be more than you were expecting. Moto G3 has come across...

One of the benefits of being an Amazon Prime member is unlimited cloud storage for photos, as well as 5GB of space for other file types. If you own any of the retailer's Fire devices, too, you get unlimited storage for photos taken with that product,...

Back in May, Opera launched a free unlimited VPN app for iOS, and today the same thing has finally become available for Android devices. You can find it in the Google Play Store. It's simply called Opera Free VPN, and unlike the Norwegian company's other VPN app, Opera Max, this one doesn't compress your traffic or anything like that. It's just a standard VPN app, but free and with unlimited traffic - no subscription needed. It does have a couple of twists, though. First off, it comes with a Wi-Fi test tool that will tell you how secure the wireless network you are currently connected...

Professionally filmed video footage of METALLICA performing its new song "Hardwired" live for the first time Saturday night (August 20) during the band's headlining concert at the U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota can be seen below. "Hardwired" is taken from METALLICA's tenth studio album, "Hardwired...To Self-Destruct", which will be released on November 18 via Blackened Recordings. The long-awaited follow-up to 2008's "Death Magnetic" consists of two discs, containing a dozen songs and nearly 80 minutes of music. METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich told Fox 9 that the band played "Hardwired" "all in the same room" for the first time this past Monday, August 15 in preparation for the Minneapolis concert. He said: "This is as fresh off the assembly line as rock and roll gets." The drummer talked to Rolling Stone about the creation of "Hardwired". He said: "That's actually the last song we wrote for the record. We started this album by throwing different ideas around. The shape of it, as a collection of songs, didn't come into focus until we were deep into it. At that point, the songs were getting tighter, shorter and leaner." He continued: "A couple of months ago, we were sitting there taking stock of the record and thought maybe we should write one more fast, little crazy song, and that became 'Hardwired'. It just kind of happened. I think James [Hetfield, METALLICA frontman] and I wrote and recorded it in less than a week, which, for us, is basically a nanosecond." "Hardwired...To Self-Destruct" was produced by Greg Fidelman with Hetfield and Ulrich. The band recorded the disc at its own studio and is still putting the finishing touches on the LP. According to Ulrich, METALLICA wrote most of the songs for "Hardwired...To Self-Destruct" in the fall of 2014 and the spring of 2015. The band's initial goal with the new record was "to continue where we left off," the drummer said. "Since 'Death Magnetic', we've been on a roll: We did the Lou Reed stuff, a Ronnie Dio-RAINBOW medley, a DEEP PURPLE cover and obviously the ['Through The Never'] movie took two years. Greg Fidelman has been working with us full time since then. We haven't had time to sit down and asses what we're doing. So it wasn't until farther into the process that we took stock of what we were doing and asked what we were trying to say with the album. That's when things came more into shape and became more coherent. But we didn't work with a mission statement." Asked about his previous comment that the songs on "Hardwired" would sound "less frenetic" than those on "Death Magnetic", Ulrich explained: "Most of the songs are simpler. We introduce a mood and we stick to it, rather than songs we've done where one riff happens and we go over here and then over there and becomes a journey through all these different soundscapes. The songs are more linear. And by 'less frenetic,' I mean there are certainly less starts and stops in the songs. It cruises along a little bit more than the last record." "Hardwired...To Self-Destruct" will be issued on double CD, vinyl and digital download. A deluxe version will feature a bonus disc containing the riffs that formed the origins of the album along with "The Lords Of Summer", which the band debuted on tour a couple of years ago.

KORN's Ryan Valdez-directed video for the song "Insane" can be seen below. The track is taken from the band's upcoming album, "The Serenity Of Suffering", which will be released on October 21. The follow-up to 2013's "The Paradigm Shift" was helmed by Grammy Award-winning producer Nick Raskulinecz, who has previously worked with FOO FIGHTERS, DEFTONES, MASTODON and RUSH, among others. The CD features a guest appearance by SLIPKNOT frontman Corey Taylor on the song "A Different World". "The Serenity Of Suffering" marks the band's return to Roadrunner, which previously released 2010's "Korn III - Remember Who You Are" and 2011's "The Path Of Totality". "The Serenity Of Suffering" track listing: 01. Insane 02. Rotting In Vain 03. Black Is The Soul 04. The Hating 05. A Different World (feat. Corey Taylor) 06. Take Me 07. Everything Falls Apart 08. Die Yet Another Night 09. When You're Not There 10. Next In Line 11. Please Come For Me The official video for the song "Rotting In Vain", which stars actor Tommy Flanagan ("Sons Of Anarchy", "Gladiator"), can be seen below. The clip, which taps into the dark underbelly of a bizarre world, was lensed by famed rock video director Dean Karr. The cover art for "The Serenity Of Suffering" was created by acclaimed artist Ron English. It depicts a teenage KORN fan at a dystopian acid-nightmare funfair who is clutching a disembowelled and skeletal version of the doll who adorned 1999's "Issues". KORN frontman Jonathan Davis told Rolling Stone about the track: "'Rotting In Vain' was written about being in that black place, being in situations that I don't like in life — be it relationships, or feeling when you're stuck and you're just being abused or you don't like where you're at, and you just sit there and rot. It takes you years and years to figure out how to claw your way out. That's where 'Rotting In Vain' came from. I'm just sitting there, fucking dying and letting it happen for years and years and not helping myself to get out of that place. That's the vibe that inspired the song." "The Serenity Of Suffering" marks the second KORN album since the return of guitarist Brian "Head" Welch, who said, "This is a record to me that the intensity of KORN is back, and the live energy. Raw energy is there." KORN's co-headlining tour with ROB ZOMBIE, "Return Of The Dreads", kicked off on July 19 in Englewood, Colorado. That trek winds down on September 3 in Bristow, Virginia. KORN will also hit the road this fall with co-headliners BREAKING BENJAMIN for the "Nocturnal Underground Tour", which will kick off on September 24 in Fargo, North Dakota and run through late October.

Local residents and business owners have been left fuming after a fleet of expensive supercars were left to block a Birmingham street. Cars were left abandoned in the middle of the road while...

Public perception of electric vehicles (EVs) is improving all the time, but they still only make up a tiny percentage of new car sales. In fact, less than three per cent of new car sales in July...

This gorgeous, humungous beast is the Vision Mercedes-Maybach 6. It's a concept car built to wow the crowds at this year's Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance in California. And wow...