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Birdman visits Flight Club LA for an episode of Sneaker Shopping. https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/birdman-buys-rack-of-yeezys-while-sneaker-shopping-at-flight-club-news.45978.htmlView the full article

Renée Zellweger is practically unrecognizable in her latest film role... but she does bear a striking resemblance to somebody else. SEE ALSO: Hear the Oscars' All-Time 'Best Original Songs' Pathé UK has released the first official photo from Judy, which stars Zellweger as silver screen legend Judy Garland. #JUDY starts principal photography in London today, starring Academy Award winner, Renée Zellweger as Judy Garland!#judygarland #reneezellweger #london #thetalkofthetown #jessiebuckley #finnwittrock #michaelgambon #rupertgoold #pathe #calamityfilms #bbcfilms #ingenious pic.twitter.com/VJAnMRuzKV — Judy (@JudyGarlandFilm) March 19, 2018 Read more... More about Movies, Judy Garland, Renee Zellweger, Judy, and EntertainmentView the full article

Love, better known as Diddy, opens up about past, present, and future. https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/love-aka-diddy-covers-gq-talks-biggie-black-excellence-and-more-news.45977.htmlView the full article

It premieres at Kings Theatre in Brooklyn with the production’s original pit band View the full article

Facebook is challenging Twitch and YouTube for video game live streaming supremacy with the release of its new Games SDK for PC. After testing Live streaming from games like Overwatch from developers like Blizzard since 2016, today Live broadcasting from PC games to the News Feed opens to all developers. And Facebook will let them reward fans who watch by providing in-game items or bonuses. For example, beneath the comments reel, users might see a promotion like “Watch Paladins streams for a chance to earn random loot to use in-game.” The potential for viral growth and sales could convince tons of game developers to bake in Facebook’s new SDK, while players could use the simple broadcasting feature to reach a big audience — though one not as dedicated to gaming as on other platforms. Viewers might choose to watch on Facebook because they get rewarded there. Facebook meanwhile benefits because game streams create compelling niche content that can drive long viewing sessions, helping Facebook monetize viewers in the moment with ads while locking them deeper into the platform long-term. Facebook is also hooking up developers with deeper analytics through custom “app events” that are now available on PC as well as web and mobile. Game developers can also integrate Facebook’s enhanced Friend Finder feature that lets them play with friends and now see “Key Player Stats” about other people they want to join up with to keep playing together. Developers who want access to the SDK can sign up here. Facebook got a late start in the game streaming world but has been rapidly developing features and signing deals to grow its viewer base and content catalogue. It inked a deal with esports league leader ESL last year, and just added streaming from tournaments of top games like Counter-Strike and DOTA. It’s brought Live streaming to Messenger games. Facebook also recently started testing a way for viewers to tip cash to their favorite streaming stars, and has even hired some of them for its games team. The question will be if a catch-all mainstream social network can succeed in such a niche content space. 800 million people play Facebook-connected games each month. But not everyone’s real-world friends care about video games or want to watch their buddies play, so broadcasts could fall flat if they don’t find the particular subset who love gaming. On networks like Twitch or corners of YouTube, people are there specifically to watch game stream. So Facebook will have to use rapid feature development, and it’s size and potential for audience growth to attracts streamers, viewers, and developers. Otherwise gamers might stay where they never feel embarrassed about their passion. View the full article

Vivica A. Fox says sex life with 50 Cent was PG-13 rated. https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/50-cent-reacts-to-vivica-a-foxs-claims-about-their-sex-life-news.45975.htmlView the full article

The follow-up to 2017’s Narkopop is out this spring View the full article

The talk show host is opening up about her health. https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/wendy-williams-details-how-graves-disease-diagnosis-has-changed-her-life-news.45974.htmlView the full article

This week, we examine the usage of the #grumeme in our everyday lives and learn once again that children's movies are the best source of memes. Subscribe for more memes! Read more... More about Watercooler, Movies, Memes, Internet, and Kids View the full article

According to 'The Daily Meal' dietician, Chelsey Amer, pizza just might be a more-balanced breakfast option than your morning bowl of Frosted Flakes. Read more... More about Mashable Video, Healthy Eating, Breakfast, Pizza, and VegetablesView the full article

"There was one guy out there who kept yelling my wife's name." https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/rory-mcilroy-wants-pga-tour-to-limit-alcohol-sales-news.45973.htmlView the full article

Action cameras are a gadget that mostly cater to a person’s wish to see themselves in a certain way: Most people aren’t skiing off mountains or cliff diving most of the time, but they aspire to. The issue with most action cameras, though, is that even when you actually do something cool, you still have to shoot the right angle to capture the moment, which is itself a skill. That’s the beauty of Rylo, a tiny 360 camera that minimizes the skill required and makes it easy to get the shots you want. Rylo is compact enough to have roughly the footprint of a GoPro, but with dual lenses for 4K, 360-degree video capture. It has a removable battery pack good for an hour of continuous video recording, and a micro USB port for charging. In the box, you’ll get either a micro USB to Lightning, or micro USB to micro USB and USB C cables, depending on whether you pick up the Android or the iOS version, and you handle all editing on the mobile device you already have with you always. The device itself feels solid, and has stood up to a lot of travel and various conditions over the course of my usage. The anodized aluminum exterior can take some lumps, and the OLED screen on the device provides just enough info when you’re shooting, without overwhelming. There’s no viewfinder, but the point of the Rylo is that you don’t need one – it’s capturing a full 360-degree image all the time, and you position your shot after the fact in editing. Rylo includes a 16GB microSD card in the box, too, but you can use up to 256GB versions for more storage. A single button on top controls both power functions and recording, and the simplicity is nice when you’re in the moment and just want to start shooting without worrying about settings. The basic functionality of Rylo is more than most people will need out of a device like this: Using the app, you can select out an HD, flat frame of video to export, and easily trim the length plus make adjustments to picture, including basic edits like highlights, color and contrast. Rylo’s built-in stabilization keeps things surprisingly smooth, even when you’re driving very fast along a bumpy road with what amounts to nearly race-tuned tires and suspension. Then, if you want to get really fancy, you can do things like add motion to your clips, including being able to make dead-simple smooth pans from one focus point to another. The end result looks like you’re using a gimbal or other stabilized film camera, but all the equipment you need is the Rylo itself, plus any mount, including the handle/tripod mount that comes in the box, or anything that works with a GoPro. You can even set a specific follow point, allowing you to track a specific object or person throughout the clip. This works well, though sometimes it’ll lose track of the person or thing if there’s low light or the thing it’s following gets blocked. The app will let you know it’s lost its target, however, and in practice it works well enough to create good-looking videos for things like bicycling and riding ATVs, for instance. Other companies are trying to do similar things with their own hardware, including GoPro with the Fusion and Insta360 with its Insta360 One. But Rylo’s solution has the advantage of being dead simple to use, with easily portable hardware that’s durable and compatible with existing GoPro mount accessories. The included micro USB to Lightning cable isn’t easily replaced, except for from Rylo itself, and it’s also small and easy to lose, so that’s my main complaint when it comes to the system as a whole. In the end, the Rylo does what it’s designed to do: Takes the sting out of creating cool action clips and compelling short movies for people working mostly from their mobile devices. It’s not as flexible for pros looking for a way to integrate more interesting camera angles into their desktop workflow because of how tied content captured on the Rylo is to the Rylo app itself, but it seems clearly designed for a consumer enthusiast market anyway. At $499, the Rylo isn’t all that much more expensive than the GoPro Hero 6. It’s still a significant investment, and the image quality isn’t up to the 4K video output by the GoPro, but for users who just want to make cool videos to share among friends using social tools, Rylo’s ease of use and incredibly low bar in terms of filming expertise required is hard to beat. View the full article

LinkedIn this morning is rolling out a new feature for job searchers that allows them to better leverage their network of connections when looking for a new job. The company is introducing “Ask for a Referral,” which places a button next to the jobs where you know people who work at the company advertising open positions. You can then send your connections a message through LinkedIn, asking them to recommend you for the job in question. As with many things, getting a job – or at least getting that interview – is about who you know. Referrals greatly help job seekers get a call back compared to an application sent on its own, LinkedIn says. If fact, you’re four times more likely to hear back from a recruiter at the company if you’ve been referred, and nearly half of recruiters say that referrals are the leading source of quality hires. To get started, LinkedIn has made it easier for you to see just those jobs where you know someone who works at the company. On the desktop, you can click on the new job search filter to look for those jobs “in your network.” This can be combined with other filters, like location, industry, and more, to help you narrow down the positions you may want to apply for. You can then tap the “Ask for a referral” button at the top of the job listing, and choose the person you want to reach out to. LinkedIn will prompt you to write a message, offering pre-populated text that you can personalize to your inquiry. The company recommends you remind them of how you know each other, or what you have in common, like going to the same school, before explaining why you’re interested and think you’d be a good fit. The recipient can then choose to follow up on your message by referring you to the job through whatever methods their company supports. The business networking platform has rolled out a number of new features focused on jobs and hiring in recent months, including a Career Advice program to help users find mentors who can help them figure out how to take their next steps; new data analytics tools for recruiters; and even a resumé-building assistant in Microsoft Word that’s powered by LinkedIn data. While LinkedIn has largely cornered the market on professional networking, Facebook recently took steps to challenge LinkedIn with the expansion of its Jobs dashboard to 40 more countries worldwide. While many of its jobs are more entry-level, blue-collar, or low-skilled, it could move more heavily into professional jobs in the future, and leverage its own network of connections along the way, if it chose. That potential threat to LinkedIn’s business, which earned Microsoft over a billion in revenue in Q4 2017, shouldn’t be overlooked. LinkedIn will need to find a number of ways to cater to job seekers and recruiters alike through tools and services that help the right people get connected to the right jobs. The new Ask for a Referral feature is live now across LinkedIn. View the full article

Pinterest is looking to continue to increase its portfolio of ads, though sometimes that can take a little while to see the light of day — and that includes a new-ish tool called Shopping Ads that’s slowly getting opened to more developers. Getting new ad formats is important for a smaller company looking to build out an advertising business, as it has to show potential advertisers it can offer an array of tools to play with as they experiment with that service. The company said today that it’s expanding those shopping ad tools to hundreds of additional advertisers after launching a pilot program last year as it looks to continue to ramp up that tool. Pinterest has to be able to convince marketers that it should be a mainstay advertising purchase alongside Facebook and Google, which are able to routinely show returns in value for their advertising spend. Shopping ads automatically create promoted pins from an existing product feed for a retailer. That means it’s basically one less thing for retailers to worry about as they add more and more content to the service. Most of Pinterest’s content online is business content as users share products they might be interested in one day buying or already own. As Pinterest gets more and more data on this, they’ll have a better handle on what ads work best, and hope that businesses will hand off the process in full to something more automated. Pinterest hopes to capture that routine user behavior of planning what they want to do next, whether that’s an outfit to wear that day or some kind of major event or purchase down the line. Getting a hold of those users in the moment they might be interested in a new product is key to the company’s pitch to advertisers. You can more or less consider this a continued test as the company starts to slowly give the tool to the advertisers it works with before it becomes generally available. If it works, it could probably end up down the line in the hands of all advertisers, which could help for small- to medium-sized businesses without a lot of experience build out their early marketing campaigns. View the full article

Big Sean and Jhené Aiko are feeling the love. https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/jhen-aiko-and-big-sean-all-smiles-at-aikos-30th-birthday-news.45968.htmlView the full article

The Louisiana rapper allegedly attacked his girlfriend in a hotel last month View the full article

If you can't function without Alexa by your side, then why not bring her wherever you go? Amazon Tap lets you do just that, and you can get on for only $100 today. SEE ALSO: UK Deals: Amazon Easter Sale The average portable bluetooth speaker can't do what an Amazon Tap can do. You've got Alexa's hands-free streaming music, news updates, and pizza-ordering capabilities with you for up to 9 hours of continuous playback. Just tap the microphone and ask Alexa to take care of the rest. It's normally listed at $130, but you can save 23% today and get one for $100. Image: Amazon Get an Amazon Tap for 23% off See Details Read more... More about Amazon, Amazon Alexa, Alexa, Amazon Tap, and Bluetooth Speakers View the full article

This is the second bombing in Texas' capital this month. https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/austin-bombings-leave-two-injured-near-sxsw-festivals-end-news.45971.htmlView the full article

Logic details how you can't "stand out and fit in" at the same time in a new interview. https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/logic-says-hes-still-a-hip-hop-outsider-news.45972.htmlView the full article

Migos and Drake release the '70s-inspired video for "Walk It Talk It." View the full article

On March 24, people across the country will march in the streets to demand an end to mass shootings—and now, they have a soundtrack. Broadway heavyweights Lin-Manuel Miranda and Ben Platt have joined forces Monday to release "Found/Tonight," with all proceeds going towards March for Our Lives initiative. SEE ALSO: Lin-Manuel Miranda, James Corden, and other big names show their support during the National School Walkout "Found/Tonight," arranged by the legendary Alex Lacamoire, is a mashup of Hamilton's "The Story of Tonight" and Dear Evan Hansen's "You Will Be Found." It's streaming on all platforms today. Read more... More about Lin Manuel Miranda, Ben Platt, March For Our Lives, Culture, and CelebritiesView the full article

Last week, Donald Trump's Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, had a rough time on 60 Minutes. Facing basic questions about the issues her government role is focused on, DeVos responded with a series of awkward fumbles and "did she really just say that??" self-owns. It was perfectly primed for a searing Saturday Night Live treatment, and the sketch comedy series delivered, compliments of Kate McKinnon. Appearing on the show's regular Weekend Update news segment, McKinnon revived her DeVos impression to clarify all the things she said on 60 Minutes. You can probably figure out how things unfolded from there. Read more... More about Entertainment, Tv, Saturday Night Live, Kate Mckinnon, and Betsy Devos View the full article

Facebook is using us. It is actively giving away our information. It is creating an echo chamber in the name of connection. It surfaces the divisive and destroys the real reason we began using social media in the first place – human connection. It is a cancer. I’ve begun the slow process of weaning myself off of the platform by methodically running a script that will delete my old content. And there’s a lot. There are likes and shares. There are long posts I wrote to impress my friends. There are thousands of WordPress notifications that tell the world what I’m doing. In fact, I would wager I use Facebook more to broadcast my ego than interact with real humans. And I suspect that most of us are in a similar situation. There is a method to my madness. I like Facebook Messenger and I like that Facebook is now a glorified version of OAuth. It’s a useful tool when it is stripped of its power. However, when it is larded with my personal details it is a weapon and a liability. Think about it: any posts older than about a week are fodder for bots and bad actors. Posts from 2016? 2017? Why keep them? No one will read them, no one cares about them. Those “You and Joe have known each other for five years” auto-posts are fun but does anyone care? Ultimately you’ve created the largest dossier on yourself and you’ve done it freely, even gleefully. This dossier reflects your likes, your dislikes, your feelings, and political leanings. It includes clear pictures of your face from all angles, images of your pets and family, and details your travels. You are giving the world unfettered access to your life. It’s wonderful to imagine that this data will be used by a potential suitor who will fall in love with your street style. It’s wonderful to imagine you will scroll through Facebook at 80 and marvel at how you looked at the turn of the century. It’s wonderful to imagine that Facebook is a place to share ideas, dreams, and hopes, a human-to-human connection engine that gives more than it takes. None of that will happen. Facebook is a data collection service for those who want to sell you products. It is the definitive channel to target you based on age, sex, geographic location, political leanings, interests, and marital status. It’s an advertiser’s dream and it is wildly expensive in terms of privacy lost and cash spent to steal that privacy. It is the perfect tool for marketers, a user-generated paradise that is now run by devils. Will you delete Facebook? Probably not. Will I? I’m working on it. I’ve already been deleting old tweets after realizing that border police and potential employers may use what I write publicly against me. I’m clearing out old social media accounts and, as I mentioned before, deleting old Facebook posts, thus ensuring that I will no longer be a target for companies like Cambridge Analytica. But we love our social media, don’t we? The power it affords. The feeling of connection. In the absence of human interaction we cling to whatever dark simulacrum is available. In the absence of the Town Square we talk to ourselves. In the absence of love and understanding we join the slow riot of online indifference. When Travis Kalanick led his ride-sharing company down the dark path to paranoia, bro culture, and classist rantings we reacted by deleting the app. We didn’t want to do business with that particular brand of company. Yet we sit idly by while Facebook sells us out and its management pummels and destroys all competition. I wish it didn’t have to be this way. There is plenty of good in these platforms but the dangers far outweigh the benefits. Try to recall the last time you were thankful for social media. I can. It happened twice. First, it happened when I posted on my “wall” a eulogy for my father who died in January. The outpouring of support was heartening in a dark time. It was wonderful to see friends and acquaintances tell me their own stories, thereby taking the sting out of my own. But months later that good feeling is gone, replaced by ads for fancy shoes and political rants. Out of the Facebook swamp sometimes surfaces a pearl. But it sinks just as quickly. One more sad example: I found out, accidentally, that my friend’s wife died. It appeared on my feed as if placed there by some divine hand and I was thankful it surfaced. It beat out videos of Mister Rogers saying inspiring things and goofy pictures of Trump. It beat out ads and rants and questions about the best sushi restaurant in Scranton. The stark announcement left me crying and breathless. There it was in black and blue, splashed across her page: she was gone. There was the smiling photo of her two little children and there was the outpouring of grief under these once innocuous photos. Gone, it said. She was gone. I found out from her wall where her memorial service would be held and I finally reached back out to my old friend to try to comfort him in his grief. Facebook, in those two instances, worked. But Facebook isn’t the only thing that can give us that feeling of connectedness. We’ve had it for centuries. Facebook simply replaced the tools we once used to tell the world of our joys and sorrows and it replaced them with cheap knock-offs that make us less connected, not more. Decades ago, on one coal-fogged winter morning in Krakow, Poland where I was living, I passed Kościół św. Wojciecha with its collection of nekrologi – necrologies – posted on a board in front of the church. There you saw the names of the dead – and sometimes the names of the newly born – and it was there you discovered what was happening in your little corner of the world. The church wasn’t far from the central square – the Rynek – and I walked there thinking about the endless parade of humanity that had walked across those cobbles, stopping for a moment in their hustle at the church yard to see who had died. I stood in the crisp air, flanked by centuries old brickwork, and imagined who once populated this place. This was the place you met your friends and your future partners. It was there you celebrated your successes and mourned your failures. It was there, among other humans, you told the world the story of your life, but told it slant. You witnessed kindnesses and cruelties, you built a world entire based on the happenings in a few square miles. No more. Or, at least, those places are no longer available to most of us. We’ve moved past the superstitions and mythologies of the past. Tools like Facebook were designed to connect us to the world, giving us an almost angelic view of daily happenstance. We replaced the churchyard with the “timeline.” But our efforts failed. We are still as closed, still full of superstition, as we were a hundred years ago. We traded a market square for the Internet but all of the closed-mindedness and cynicism came with it. We still disparage the outsider, we still rant against invisible enemies, and we still keep our friends close and fear what lies beyond our door. Only now we have the whole world on which to reflect our terror. It doesn’t have to be this way. Maybe some day we’ll get the tools we need to interact with the world. Maybe they’re already here and we just don’t want to use them. Until we find them, however, it’s probably better for us to delete the ones we use today. View the full article

Upsets galore in Round 2 of the NCAA Tournament. https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/unc-cincinnati-xavier-basketball-all-upset-in-second-round-news.45970.htmlView the full article

Well, at least one of the the people in the video below is having a fun time. SEE ALSO: How Walt Disney World's new virtual reality rides ruined my vacation On Friday, Florida State University student Megan Connolly shared footage of herself on a fairly terrifying-looking theme park ride. The moment my soul left my body.pic.twitter.com/xHJNLLI8bp — Megan Connolly (@MeganConnolly4) March 16, 2018 Here's the video, in all its glory: It's hard to say what's more entertaining: Connelly's reaction, or her friend's reaction to her reaction. To be fair, it does sounds like a pretty intense ride. What was that? — Motor City FC (@MotorCFC) March 17, 2018 Read more... More about Theme Park, Culture, and Web CultureView the full article