Assassin’s Creed Origins

Summary: Set in mysterious Ancient Egypt, Assassin’s Creed Origins is a new beginning. Experience a new way to fight while exploring the Great Pyramids and hidden tombs across the country of Ancient Egypt, and encounter many memorable storylines along your journey. And discover the origin story of the Assassin's Brotherhood.

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BET Awards 2017: Turning hits into movement

Jun 22, 2017

The 2017 BET Awards celebrate a year in which hip hop and R&B reached new heights of creative expression, impacting the musical and cultural landscape in ways their impressive view counts only begin to capture. Harnessing the power of the visual medium and YouTube's global reach, BET nominated artists like Bruno Mars, Solange, Migos and Rae Sremmurd did more than just top the charts -- they turned hits into movements.

Bruno Mars has existed in the upper echelons of pop since his tale-of-the-tape video for “Just The Way You Are” debuted in 2010, earning a healthy YouTube subscriber base and giving the Super Bowl halftime show a jolt from his electric live show not once, but twice. But it is the title track from his long-awaited third album 24K Magic that has arguably helped cement the crooner’s place among music’s international elite. Released a month before his album dropped, the track’s Cameron Duddy-directed video, which follows Mars and his entourage as they touch down in Las Vegas and revel in Sin City’s glitz and flash hit big immediately, earning over seven million plays on its first day. And from there things only grew, with the clip amassing over 728 million views in just eight month’s time.

This success is a product of both Mars’ and YouTube’s global reach, with the track reaching massive numbers in places as far flung as Quezon City (13.3 million), Bangkok (9.3 million), Mexico City (8.4 million), Santiago (7.8 million), New York City (7.7 million) and, fittingly, Las Vegas (2 million). All told, the song has eclipsed the million-view mark in over 75 countries, and the video is on pace to enter the exclusive Billion Views Club within months.

The buzz also provided a boost for the rest of Mars’ YouTube-available catalog; his channel has added over 4.5 million subscribers since last October, and the charmingly minimalist clip for the winkingly seductive “That’s What I Like” has been viewed more than 670 million times since its premiere in March. “24K Magic” clearly has high-rolling appeal that transcends cultural boundaries, resulting in an international movement paved with gold bricks.

While “24K Magic” revels in turning everything all the way up, Solange honored the power of steely-eyed resolve on A Seat at the Table, a stunning, exploratory statement on the African American experience that she released late last year. The twinkling, pensive "Cranes In The Sky" is a standout on an album full of them, a reflection on ways of working around crushing pain. Solange wrote “Cranes” years before Seat came together, but she felt it was appropriate to the album’s themes. “I remember thinking of [‘Cranes In The Sky’] as an analogy for my transition—this idea of building up, up, up that was going on in our country at the time, all of this excessive building, and not really dealing with what was in front of us. And we all know how that ended,” Solange told her sister, Beyoncé, in Interview earlier this year.

The “Cranes In The Sky” video, co-directed by Solange and her husband Alan Ferguson, collects images that are still yet resplendent, showing Solange as she stands alone and with other women amidst stark landscapes while dressed in clothing both simple and complex—white athletic wear, lavender dresses that seem to connect to one another as they billow in the wind, an eye-popping sheath of gold fringe, a candy-floss puffer made of memory foam. The clip, which has garnered over 26 million views since its release on Oct. 2, was shot in nine cities, including Solange’s hometown of Houston and current home, New Orleans. “All we can do as artists, and especially as songwriters, is write about what’s true to us,” Solange explained following her Grammy win for Best R&B Performance earlier this year. “And I think that the music that is out right now, and really connecting and thriving, reflects that.” The video’s unflinching hushedness brings Solange’s vision to life even more fully. [ ]

The past year has also been a monumental one for Atlanta’s hip hop collective Migos. While the trio has been burning up the internet since dropping their first mixtape in 2011, it was “Bad and Boujee,” the lead single from their second album Culture, that turned their online heat into true pop stardom. The opening lines of that Lil Uzi Vert-featuring track—including the triple internal rhyme “raindrop, drop top”—became fodder for viral-video makers all over the world, helping to drive interest in the months after the track’s release.

Fueled by both the creativity of their fans and their now iconic YouTube clip for the video, the song quickly became an unabashed cultural phenomenon. Donald Glover celebrated his series Atlanta winning Best Comedy Series at the Golden Globes with a shoutout to the group—”not for being on the show, but for making ‘Bad and Boujee.’ Like, that’s the best song ever," the rapper-director said, adding backstage that he thought Migos were “the Beatles of this generation.” By then Migos’ total daily views had reached the high 5 million range, and the Jan. 27 release of their second album Culture sent that number above 9 million and helped the song vault up the YouTube Global Chart. “Bad and Boujee” has been played more than 525 million times since its Halloween 2016 release, and that number will only grow.

Fellow Atlanta hip-hop act Rae Sremmurd also found themselves at the center of the cultural zeitgeist this past year, with their smash hit "Black Beatles" taking off at nearly the same time as Migos’ explosion. While the song’s hazy video repurposes Fab Four-related iconography so that it’s more 405-appropriate, the track rose to new levels when it became associated with the Mannequin Challenge, a viral-video stunt where large groups of people hold still so that they resemble clothing-store fixtures. The spaced-out feel of “Black Beatles” fit perfectly with the frozen-in-time visual accompaniment, and the track soon became the meme’s de facto soundtrack.

Its appeal was so widespread that original Beatle Paul McCartney got in on the act—a true testament to how the song’s infectious appeal resulted in a movement that transcended genres and generations. Rae Sremmurd staged their own version of the Mannequin Challenge on Nov. 3; the song hit No. 1 on the Hot 100 on Nov. 14, racking up 20.8 million YouTube streams over the course of that chart week. While interest in the Mannequin Challenge peaked in mid-November, the track hung on to the top spot through the end of 2016, inspiring an ever-growing number of people to strike a pose and switch on their phone’s camera.

Taken together, the successes of Bruno Mars, Solange, Migos, and Rae Sremmurd this year all show how a single song can spark a movement—whether it involves dancing on the Las Vegas Strip, honoring pain with beauty, reveling in the power of a simple rhyme scheme, or standing completely still. These four songs brought people together in unexpected and thrilling ways, allowing listeners to join in movements that stretched all around the world.

How The Chainsmokers made YouTube their playground

Apr 7, 2017

Anyone who has ever seen footage of The Chainsmokers in concert knows how dynamic they are: Running, leaping, and dodging pyrotechnics, they own every inch of the stage. But that’s nothing compared to their command of YouTube, where their music has arguably made its biggest impact.

The New York duo—whose debut, Memories… Do Not Open, arrives April 7—currently holds the world record for the most-viewed lyric video with “Closer,” which was the first lyric video to break one billion views (it’s at 1.38 billion views and counting). In March, they broke the record for the most single-day views of a lyric video with their Coldplay collaboration “Something Just Like This,” racking up over nine million views in 24 hours. (A little over a month later, that number has grown to over 170 million.) For the last two weeks of March, The Chainsmokers held the No. 2 overall position on the YouTube Music Charts, and they currently have five videos in the Top 100; as of this writing, their total views number nearly six billion. “We don’t really think about breaking records—it’s just something that’s been happening,” says Disruptor Records’ Adam Alpert, The Chainsmokers’ manager, chuckling. But their success is no fluke: Despite their low-key, happy-go-lucky on-screen personas, the duo’s Drew Taggart and Alex Pall take their video content strategy very seriously.

“One thing that we consciously decided long ago, when The Chainsmokers first formed, was that we wanted to deliver to the fans consistently and regularly, in every way possible,” Alpert says. As a result, The Chainsmokers have opened up the faucet on a steady stream of video content that includes traditional music videos, audio-only uploads, lyric clips, behind-the-scenes content, production tutorials, and pretty much anything else the duo and their team might dream up. “We’ve been very diligent about making sure there’s a video for every song, whether it’s a quote-unquote single or not,” Alpert says. “We’ve basically been putting out a song every month for the last two years, and we’ve done a video for virtually every one.”

One tactic that differentiates The Chainsmokers is their multi-pronged approach: It’s not uncommon for them to release an audio-only clip, then a lyric video, and finally a full official video, all for the same song. And when it comes to lyric videos, gone are the days when some scrolling text against a static background would suffice—The Chainsmokers’ lyric videos comprise 49.6% of all their views.

The lyric video for their single “Closer,” directed by their frequent collaborator Rory Kramer, is a fully scripted spot starring the Instagram celebrities (and real-life couple) Alyssa Lynch and Jordan Taylor Wright as the song’s passionate lovers; the lyric video for “Paris,” also directed by Kramer, stars Alexis Ren, an Instagram model with more than 8 million followers. The duo followed up each of those with traditional narrative videos for the respective songs: “Closer” features Taggart and featured singer Halsey as the song’s star-crossed lovers; the dreamlike “Paris” stars Victoria’s Secret model Martha Hunt (and saves plenty of screen time for Taggart and Pall). Every one of these, in other words, isn’t so much a video as an event, bringing major talent to the table, and putting a whole new spin on the song.

“We recognize how long it takes to reach everybody,” says Alpert of the team’s extensive release strategy. “It’s a massive world, so you can’t expect to reach everybody with one video. You want people to have the opportunity to consume the audio on YouTube, and you want them to be able to learn the lyrics in a fun way, and you also want to provide them with a visual that speaks to the song itself. So we’ve tried to make as many things as possible for as many songs as possible.”

YouTube has been central to The Chainsmokers’ career from the beginning. The pair has been hosting the YouTube EDM15 radio show on SiriusXM for over two years, and their big breakthrough hit, 2014’s “#SELFIE,” was bolstered by a video cobbled together out of selfies submitted by fans and friends of the band, including snaps from Steve Aoki, Snoop Dogg, and even David Hasselhoff. Even before “#SELFIE” took off, though, The Chainsmokers were diligently building their personas on YouTube via a series of tongue-in-cheek videos like “Hard & Deep”—a comedy series with more than a little Anchorman in its DNA—and “Cloud Comments,” in which they gamely responded to negative feedback left for them on SoundCloud. “Early on, college kids would fall in love with their personalities," Alpert says. "They'd see a behind-the-scenes kind of video, and it’s like, ‘These guys are funny, we like these guys, let’s keep up with them.' Some people liked them before even becoming a fan of the music."

These days, their strategy for supplementary content is even more sophisticated. The flagship of their behind-the-scenes material is the “That Time” series, with dozens of episodes capturing everything from the excitement of their concerts to the gags and pratfalls of their downtime antics. “The fly-on-the-wall aspect came naturally,” says Alpert. “Letting the fans get to know Alex and Drew as individuals—their personalities, their humor, their trials and tribulations—has been a great way to connect, and not just be about the music.”

Musically, the “That Time” series also makes for a great way to get new, unreleased material in front of fans. Long before "Paris" had been officially released, fans could hear its refrain woven throughout the background of "That Time" clips. Alpert says, “We tease songs, we test songs, we tease remixes, and we’ve definitely seen responses, especially from the super-fans. Like, ‘What song is this? They posted something that we don’t know what it is, it’s gotta be one of their new songs!’ It gets people excited.”

Such direct-to-fan content can take many forms. Recently, The Chainsmokers produced an extensive behind-the-scenes look at the official “Paris” video; last September they recorded a jokey get-out-the-vote video encouraging their fans to register before the presidential election. Yet another ongoing feature is the duo’s series of production tutorials, in which they break down elements of their songs, like the drop in “Roses” or the guitar part from “Don’t Let Me Down.”

But perhaps the most important aspect of The Chainsmokers’ video strategy has been to document their growth as artists. EDM has evolved rapidly over the past half-decade, and as The Chainsmokers have gone from wisecracking DJs to some of pop’s biggest hitmakers, they’ve stayed one step ahead of the game the whole way—and YouTube has played an important role in capturing their journey. “How they’ve crossed over into the quote-unquote pop world is by just not caring what other people are doing, and really not trying to follow any rules,” Alpert says. “That can be seen in the videos they put out. It’s just been about letting the fans watch along the way. Whether that’s The Chainsmokers’ comedy or ‘That Time’ or the lyric videos or the official music videos, they’re bringing them along for the ride.”

Max Steel Official Full Movie 2016

The adventures of teenager Max McGrath and his alien companion, Steel, who must harness and combine their tremendous new powers to evolve into the turbo-charged superhero Max Steel.

Ebay scam money back

                  Do Your Shopping on Amazon!

One of my friends brought this story to my attention when he checked out Craigslist to purchase a car.

The First e-mail

From: “emma4jefferson@msn.com”
First of all I want to thank you for your interest for my 2003 Toyota Tacoma Double Cab SR5,automatic transmission,silver.

Only 89,500 miles,beautiful condition in and out. Paint shines ,zero dings/dents,no accident.

Non-smoker,always garaged and covered.

It comes with all the documents needed for registration and clear title.

I sell it at this price($2,740.00 ) because I have been divorced recently and i don’t have driver license.

Now the truck is in my property and as a woman i don’t need it. This truck is in excellent working conditions, no scratches, flaws or any kind of damage, slightly used in 100% working and looking conditions and comes with a clear title.

From the beginning you have to know that for the payment I request only secure pay, I prefer the payment to be done using eBay services.

We will use a safe payment method because I am affiliated at eBay and I have a purchase protection account for $20,000.00

The final price that I want for this truck is $2,740.00 including shipping and handling.
If you are interested in buying it please provide me your full name and address so I can initiate the deal through eBay.

I will wait your answer very soon.
Emma Jefferson
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Editor’s note: It’s rather obvious this person doesn’t speak English as a first language according to their writing style. Red flag? Perhaps. Also, it’s my experience that when people have stories about why they’re getting rid of something in such good condition at a dirt-cheap price, they’re usually full of shit.

Author’s note: We asked to test drive the vehicle and for the VIN to run CARFAX.

The Second e-mail

From: “emmajeffercson@msn.com”

Author’s note: (notice, different email address)

I’m sorry to disappoint you but the car is already at the shipping company in Orlando, Florida sealed and ready for the shipping.

I have a contract with eBay so this deal must go through them.

I’m very busy with my job and I’m getting off the town so I can’t meet in person with you so this is the reason why I chose to sell my car over the internet.

According with the eBay you have 5 days from the time you receive the car to inspect it and decide if you want to keep it or not.

If you want to buy it please email me your full name and address for shipping so I can initiate the transaction through eBay.

After that they will contact you for all necessary information about this transaction
(terms,buyer protection,payment instructions,invoice,etc.)
Thank you
VIN Number: 5TEHN72NX3Z166407
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Editor’s note: Again, the broken English. And “according with the eBay” strikes me as odd.

Author’s note: We ran CARFAX and the vehicle does indeed exist.
We asked for the title and registration and for her eBay username.

The Third e-mail

From: “emmajeffercson@msn.com”
Glad we can do business. I’ll start the registration process with Ebay and you will receive the information you need from them shortly, via email.
VIN Number: 5TEHN72NX3Z166407

The Invoice

The Listing

Price and Shipping Info

The Fourth e-mail

Author’s note: Received this email from “motors@contact-ebay-live.com”, reply-to “motors@ebaycheckout-inc.com”

Case ID: 65B4T137L3W13
Dear Customer,
Please tell me if you have received the invoice for payment. Once we receive the fax from you that will include the payment details as explained above, we will instruct the seller to start the shipping process. We will hold the payment until you send us your confirmation that you are satisfied with the product you received. As soon as we receive your confirmation we will release the payment to the seller. You will receive further details regarding the shipping process (courier information, tracking method, expected delivery date) after the payment confirmation.

*NOTE It may occur that your e-mail doesn’t support HTML language and that is why you haven’t received the invoice from us. Please check your bulk/junk/spam/ messages, the invoice may have ended there because of the ever increasing filters of the e-mails nowdays.
Sincerely,
Michael Kennell
eBay Safe Harbor
Customer Specialist

The Red Flags

Obviously, the broken English (at least for me) was a huge red flag. The second was the sob story regarding why the truck was selling for so cheap.

Secondly, the seller claimed the truck was on her property, but stated later that it was moved to a warehouse.

The final red flag was that payment was required through Western Union.

For the invoice and final e-mail, the messages were forwarded to spoof@ebay.com. eBay confirmed that both e-mails were in fact fraudulent.

Lessons Learned

Be careful. If you receive any official correspondence, be sure to check the “from” and “reply-to” headers in your email.

If you are unsure of the e-mail, send the e-mail to the business’s anti-fraud division. In eBay’s case, it is spoof@ebay.com.

Automotive

Real Money Saving Tips

6 Reasons The Rich Stay Rich

If you’re trying to make more money, studying the rich is a great place to start.

Some wealthy people were born into money, while others worked their way to the top. However they got there, many have figured out how to stay rich.

Learning how to make millions is one thing, but mastering the art of keeping that fortune intact is a different task. Many people get rich, only to blow through their earnings in a matter of years.

Whether you have come into money or are still figuring out how to get rich, keep reading to learn more about how the rich stay rich.

1. They avoid get-rich-quick schemes

One common misconception is that the wealthy constantly look to get richer more quickly through engaging in activities such as picking stocks, said Laurie Samay, a New York-based certified financial planner and client service and portfolio manager at Palisades Hudson Financial Group. “In reality, the wealthy are typically more interested in preserving their wealth,” she said.

Rather than taking a risk on volatile get-rich-quick schemes, Samay said the wealthy take a slow-and-steady approach to investing, and they focus on diversification. She recommended investing across several asset classes to gradually build wealth.

“Many academic studies have concluded that the mix of stocks and bonds in a portfolio has the greatest influence on performance — even more so than transaction costs and security selection,” Samay said. “Like the rich, your portfolio should be adequately diversified across asset classes.”

Samay said being diversified might include exposure to:

• Different types of bonds
• Large-cap equities
• Small-cap equities
• International equities

You can further diversify by investing in specialty asset classes, such as natural resources and real estate equities, Samay said.

2. They make retirement savings a priority

Among the wealthy, saving for retirement is typically a priority because they want to maintain their current lifestyle — at least to a certain extent — during their golden years, Samay said. “This principle is just as important for the average Jane or Joe,” she said. “Although it’s tempting to focus on improving your current financial situation, it’s never wise to ignore your future finances.”

Retirement might be decades in your future, but Samay said your best chance of having a financially secure and comfortable retirement is to start putting money aside today. She recommended taking advantage of any employer-sponsored retirement plans available to you.

“In a 401k arrangement, your employer will typically match all or a portion of the contributions you make to the plan, giving you more bang for your buck,” Samay said. If your employer doesn’t offer a retirement plan or you would like to make additional investments, consider contributing to an individual retirement account or a Roth IRA.

“Although you might not be able to max out your contributions today, the sooner you start, the less you’ll have to save in the long run, due to market gains and compounding,” Samay said.

3. They keep taxes in mind

Wealthy people are thoughtful about keeping their fortunes.Brian Ach / Stringer / Getty Images

The wealthy are subject to the highest tax brackets, so they often go out of their way to reduce their tax bill wherever and whenever possible, Samay said. “One of the ways they accomplish this objective in their investment portfolio is through asset location, or the distribution of investments across taxable, tax-deferred and tax-free accounts,” she said.

You might not have millions of dollars to work with, but you still can plan your investments to keep taxes to a minimum. Savvy investing keeps more hard-earned money in your pocket.

Samay recommended holding income-producing securities in tax-deferred and/or tax-free accounts, where taxation on the income can be deferred or avoided entirely. Growth investments that pay little to no dividends and tax-efficient fixed-income securities should be held in taxable accounts, she said.

“If your portfolio is largely invested in mutual funds, asset location is especially important,” Samay said. “Mutual funds are required to distribute 90 percent of taxable income earned each fiscal year. If held in taxable accounts, these distributions become taxable.”

Creating a well-balanced portfolio takes time and effort, but it can really pay off. Learn the differences among various investment vehicles, and the benefits of storing money wisely. For example, some mutual funds — such as index funds — have little portfolio turnover and distribute only a small amount of capital gains annually. They can be held in taxable accounts, Samay said.

By contrast, she suggested holding actively managed mutual funds — which have much greater portfolio turnover, and thus larger gains to distribute — in tax-deferred and/or tax-free accounts. “This should help you invest in a more tax-efficient manner,” she said.

4. They build multiple sources of income

You already know living paycheck-to-paycheck isn’t the way to get rich, but simply relying on one stream of income also won’t cut it. If you unexpectedly lose your job, it might only take a few months to burn through emergency savings. The rich are well-aware of this fact, and take steps to protect themselves.

“When you are not dependent on one source of income, you will not be as devastated when something bad happens,” said Adam Torres, a Los Angeles-based certified financial planner and CEO of both Century City Wealth Management and media, technology and entertainment company Mr. Century City. “Yes, bad things happen to rich people also. But having money come in while they are weathering the storm helps.”

Mimic the rich by searching for additional streams of income. From starting a side business to investing in dividend-paying stocks, there are plenty of ways to bring in money through additional channels.

5. They leverage debt to their advantage

Rich people keep learning about managing their money.Miles Willis / Stringer / Getty Images

On the surface, being 100 percent debt-free seems like the obvious way to get rich. But it’s not always that simple. The wealthy understand the difference between the kind of debt that weighs you down and the type that builds a fortune.

For example, the rich focus on using leverage by getting things such as mortgages, Torres said. A mortgage allows you to own a property that you hope will grow in value. “This is done with only putting a small amount of money down for your down payment,” Torres said. “Using leverage to obtain assets like homes and other investments gives the rich a better chance at staying rich.”

For example, purchasing a home in an up-and-coming neighborhood for a nominal price increases your monthly expenses in the short-term. However, a few years down the road, you should be able to sell the home for a large return, which will seriously pad your bank account.

6. They create robust financial plans

Rich people know the importance of hiring the right financial pros. “The rich hire financial advisers and CPAs,” Torres said. “They understand that the cost of hiring and working with professionals far outweighs the cost of ignorance. It takes a team to build wealth. But more importantly, it takes a team to grow and preserve it.”

If you don’t have a lot of cash in the bank, you probably think hiring a financial adviser or CPA is a waste of funds. But these professionals can help you map out a plan to make more money, allowing you to create a comfortable future for your family.

Most fee-only managers charge approximately 1 to 2 percent of the funds they’re managing, according to a CNN Money report. You also might be able to find one who will charge by the hour, which typically ranges from $100 to $400. Even if you can only afford to meet with a financial expert on a quarterly or annual basis at first, it can be money well-spent.