After a long period of developer (and enthusiast) previews, Ubuntu 13.10 for smartphones, as well as desktops, is finally available as a stable release. The gesture-heavy, Linux-based mobile OS still doesn't have an official hardware home -- if you'll remember, Canonical's Indiegogo bid for the ...
9 hours ago
Scott Green / NBC
Juliette (Bitsie Tulloch, left) and Rosalee (Bree Turner) aren't standing idly by when "Grimm" returns next Friday.
The guys of NBC's fairy-tale crime drama "Grimm" usually find themselves at the center of most of the action, but the ladies aren't slouches either.
When the show returns on Oct. 25, Juliette (Bitsie Tulloch), Adalind (Claire Coffee) and Rosalee (Bree Turner) aren't going to be standing around and looking pretty, they're going to be right in the thick of things. After all, Nick (David Giuntoli) has been captured (and turned into a zombie), and it looks like Juliette and Rosalee will have to combine their strengths to help find him.
Meanwhile, Adalind, the former Hexenbiest, is still using her charm and her smarts to try to regain her powers.
A video called "The Ladies of Grimm" that NBC is sharing first with TODAY shows just how big a role the women will be playing in the new season.
"They're very self-assured, they know what they want," teases Coffee in the clip.
"I think you're going to see a lot more of that in season three," Tulloch adds of the female action. The actress also noted that Juliette is no damsel in distress. "It's been alluded to that she's kind of a bad ass!"
"It just presents women who are strong, women who are smart, and women who are taking action," Coffee says in the video as scenes of the ladies taking tough situations into their own hands roll by. "The women of 'Grimm' kick ass!"
"Grimm" season three premieres Oct. 25 at 9 p.m. on NBC.
Coming at us fast and loud with a small piece of a brand new song, Lady Gaga just released a section of "Do What U Want" featuring R. Kelly today (October 16).
Gaga also announced that she will be releasing the new song in full on Monday, October 21st as a promotional single off her upcoming album ARTPOP. She will release a second song on October 27th and a third song on November 4th.
Featured as the tune accompanying a "Beats" headphones commercial, the 27-year-old singer superstar's voice haunts the ad, hitting us with relaxed drumbeats and angelic vocals.
Stay linked to GossipCenter for the latest updates on Lady Gaga, her upcoming singles, and the release of her brand new album, ARTPOP!
NEW YORK (AP) — Thomas Pynchon, Jhumpa Lahiri and George Saunders were among the finalists Wednesday for the National Book Awards.
A month after releasing long-lists of 10 in each of the four competitive categories, the National Book Foundation announced the five remaining writers for fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people's literature.
Winners receive $10,000 and will be announced at a dinner ceremony in Manhattan on Nov. 20.
All five fiction nominees are well established, from Pynchon, whose "Bleeding Edge" is set in Manhattan around the time of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks; to Lahiri, whose "The Lowland" was a Booker finalist; to Saunders, whose "Tenth of December" was the rare short-story collection to make-best seller lists. The other finalists are Rachel Kushner, nominated for her highly praised "The Flamethrowers," and James McBride, known to millions for "The Color of Water" and a finalist for "The Good Lord Bird."
The nonfiction list features three books by New Yorker staff writers: Lawrence Wright's Scientology investigation "Going Clear"; George Packer's dire account of contemporary America, "The Unwinding"; and Jill Lepore's biography of Benjamin Franklin's sister, Jane Franklin, "The Book of Ages." Also nominated for nonfiction are Wendy Lower's "Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields" and Alan Taylor's "The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832."
For poetry, the finalists are Frank Bidart's "Metaphysical Dog," Lucie Brock-Broido's "Stay, Illusion," Adrian Matejka's "The Big Smoke," Matt Rasmussen's "Black Aperture" and Mary Szybist's "Incarnadine."
The young people's literature nominees are Kathi Appelt's "The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp," Cynthia Kadohata's "The Thing About Luck," Tom McNeal's "Far Far Away," Meg Rosoff's "Picture Me Gone" and Gene Luen Yang's "Boxers & Saints," a two-volume graphic novel.
Four of the fiction finalists were published by imprints of the recently merged Penguin Random House, which released 10 of the 20 nominees overall.
The long-lists were started this year as part of an effort to increase awareness of the awards and lead to more sales. New York publishers, several of whom are represented on the foundation's board, have complained that fiction nominees in recent years have been too obscure and have cited Britain's Man Booker Prize as a model. Besides establishing long-lists, the foundation has expanded the pool of judges, once exclusively fellow writers, to include journalists, booksellers and librarians.
The foundation would likely settle for the success of the National Book Award fiction winner from 2012, Louise Erdrich's "The Round House," which has sold more than 300,000 copies. Erdrich's publisher, HarperCollins, gave much of the credit to the award.
Honorary winners include Maya Angelou, whose medal will be presented by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, and E.L. Doctorow, who will be introduced by the publisher emeritus of The Nation and former National Book Award winner Victor Navasky.
The National Book Foundation, which presents the awards, is a nonprofit organization that sponsors numerous writing and educational events and programs.
She loves playing a doting aunt to her sister Kim Kardashian's daughter, and Khloe Kardashian shared a lovely photo of her beautiful niece’s hand via Instagram yesterday (October 15).
The “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” starlet posted the black and white image, featuring her own hand holding baby North West’s arm.
Unfortunately, Khloe’s shot didn’t include North’s face, but it seems she’s staying stylish in a snazzy striped onesie.
Earlier in the week, the E! reality television star uploaded a shot of Kendall Jenner’s hands wrapped in boxing bandages, along with the caption, "My boxing buddy @KendallJenner and I went HAM,” followed by, “Can't move my arms after that boxing class w/ @KendadllJenner. Love/hate this feeling! We accomplished something. Our faces were SOOO red. LOL."
Photo by Jim Urquhart/Reuters
After a torrent of bad news, the digital currency Bitcoin has survived to fight another day. According to one economist, the next battle is likely to be with the government.
Bitcoin is an open-source, decentralized, digital currency, whose production is designed to simulate the mining of a commodity, like gold. Mining bitcoins is, obviously, a bit different: Bitcoin clients, which anyone can run, race to solve cryptographic puzzles. Those that reach certain milestones first receive the new bitcoins with ever decreasing frequency, in order to keep an influx of users from changing the number of bitcoins in existence too quickly (and ultimately to stop production of bitcoins altogether). The new bitcoins are then added to the network, and validated by all other Bitcoin users.
The currency was around as a tech curio for years, the enigmatic original designer “Satoshi Nakamoto” (no one knows who this is), but when its price increased 200-fold—well, people noticed. But many forecast that Bitcoin was doomed to failure.
Bitcoin’s brightest day so far may well have been Oct. 1. That day, years after Bitcoin’s inaugural buzz, Reuters reported that venture capitalists “show[ed] no sign of shying away from investing in startups related to Bitcoin.” Was stability finally looming for the tumultuous currency, which had bounced from less than $1 per bitcoin in 2011 to $266 this year?
The next day, the Department of Justice arrested Ross Ulbricht and shut down Silk Road, the anomalous black market accessible only through the Deep Web. In doing so, law enforcement performed the largest Bitcoin seizure in history: 26,000 bitcoins worth approximately $3.6 million from Silk Road users. Their eyes are still set on a bigger prize: the nearly 600,000 bitcoins that Ulbricht allegedly collected as commission for running the bazaar. Because the government has been unable to crack Ulbricht’s private key, a necessary step in accessing his digital wallet, acquisition of that jackpot has proved more difficult. Those 600,000 would be worth, today, about $85 million. They also account for about 5 percent of all Bitcoins in existence today.
Silk Road was one of the most critical support beams for Bitcoin. In March 7,000 of 10,000 items on Silk Road were drugs. After the news, the value of a bitcoin plummeted from $145 to under $110. And the claims of the currency’s demise reignited.
But the currency has stood strong, and jumped back to more than $130 the day after Ulbricht’s arrest. As of today, it’s back at about $140. The market’s resilience bolstered an optimistic, underdog outlook about the news, which viewed the arrest as a necessary step toward legitimacy. After all, Silk Road’s reputation for illegal activity—from drugs to guns—made it an easy target for Bitcoin critics. (Silk Road’s seizure will not be the last, either: The success of both Bitcoin and Silk Road has already inspired competitors.)
So what about our economist’s warning about trouble with governments? Simon Johnson, a professor of entrepreneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, expects “big political backlash.” The seemingly inevitable collision stems from the novelty of a currency over which no government has tight control.
While Bitcoin has survived the exorcism of what was arguably its largest devil—that is to say, its largest political liability—others remain, which means if the Department of Justice does decide to throw another punch, it won’t have a hard time finding a weak spot. One venture capital firm says online gambling accounts for almost half of all Bitcoin transactions. Also vulnerable are the exchanges that manage Bitcoin transactions and currency conversions. These exchanges have repeatedly walked into finance-law hornets’ nests.
Lobbyists will almost certainly play a role: Entire industries are threatened by Bitcoin. At a modest scale, Bitcoin provides an evolutionary step away from credit cards, which charge fees for each transfer (either to the consumer and/or the seller). Even services like PayPal remain dependent on the credit card industry, while Bitcoin transactions never go through a credit card agency and incur no (or small) fees. If it reached a larger scale, Bitcoin could rival banks, which also reap huge profits from money transfers and can wield enormous lobbying campaigns. In the long term, were Bitcoin to become a viable rival currency, it would have severe consequences for the basic monetary policies of Western economies—and the finance industry they empower.
And that’s all without any new law specifically targeted at Bitcoin.
Bitcoin stakeholders have been meeting with regulators to try to figure out exactly what existing laws actually apply to this new currency. Its use in a Ponzi scheme forced the Securities and Exchange Commission’s hand earlier this year. The agency argued that bitcoins were money, and in August, a court agreed. It means Bitcoin is one important step toward being considered a viable currency. It also means the nascent Bitcoin industry must comply with a host of laws that not long ago it had a reputation for flouting.
While regulators are likely to promulgate new rules without much fanfare, some lawmakers have also drawn lines in the sand. Bitcoin supporters should keep their eyes on at least one politician, Sen. Chuck Schumer, who called Bitcoin a form of money laundering way back in 2011.
Bitcoin may be un- or underarmed in a political fight: Without a centralized power source, it’s unlikely that Bitcoin will be able to marshal the political might of the industries it is disrupting.
This article arises from Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, the New America Foundation, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, visit the Future Tense blog and the Future Tense home page. You can also follow us on Twitter.
