Patvanhove

As a Dutch guy I just had to feature this Dutch LEGO kitchen creation by Victor van den Berg. It reminds me of paintings by Jan Steen, but then tidied up. In the Netherlands, we even have a saying about it. It’s called ‘A household like Jan Steen’s’, which means a really messy household. This however does not apply to Victor’s creation. It looks very sleek and well designed. We can spot a lot of Dutch interior trends from a distant past. Delfts blue tiling, elaborately carved wooden furniture and the tableware on display on wooden shelves throughout the entire house. It makes me reminisce about my sweet grandmother’s home and the smell of freshly baked pies.

The post Dutch kitchen design from a not yet forgotten time appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

A dark river seems to flow through this sky from the horizon toward

From The Brick Experiment Channel comes this test: "Let's see how Lego-compatible stainless steel axle deforms or breaks when high torque is applied. The test bench is made using only plastic Lego parts. Enjoy!"

Spoiler: the steel piece barely holds form at 5 Newton metres of torque, gives slowly at 9, and twists like warm candy at 15.

Bird Scooter really is the Uber of scooters: vastly overcapitalized, vastly overvalued, incapable of turning a profit...ever.

According to a report in The Information, Bird lost $100m in the first quarter of 2019 (the company denies this); and is now seeking an additional $300m in investment capital. (Xeni wrote about this on Thursday)

Bird's business model (such as it is) involves flooding cities with unlicensed, illegal, dangerous (really dangerous) electric scooters that block sidewalks and impede wheelchairs, strollers and pedestrian traffic. The scooters themselves are so flimsy that they are prone of wearing out before Bird can break even on their purchase price, which is why Bird does not pay to recover its impounded scooters from city property. Unfortunately for Bird, this means that people who want a cheap scooter can buy one for pennies on the dollar at a city auction and then cheaply swap in their own control unit (this fact is so distressing to Bird that they threatened to sue me in a failed attempt to censor my reporting on it).

There is no way this can ever be profitable, not even by paying starvation wages to the gig-economy workers who drive around and around, humping scooters back to their charging stations.

Bird has already raised $718,000,000 from investors. If The Information's report is true, the company has burned through most of that, which means that the auctioneers might soon be able to give you a stellar deal on a Xiaomi Mi Electric Scooter.

The Information also reported that Bird lost $100 million in the first quarter of 2019, with its revenue shrinking to $15 million during the same time period. That's left the company with about $100 million in cash despite the recent capital raises, according to the report.

A Bird spokesperson declined to comment, but said the $100 million loss, as reported by the Information, is incorrect. The company declined to share any additional financials concerning its burn rate.

One of the largest scooter companies that's taking over cities around the world reportedly lost $100 million in three months — and wants to raise even more money [Graham Rapier/Business Insider]

(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

(Image: Hackaday)

Space is the Place is a remixable Glitch app that generates a full-screen starfield with a "morph" control to make it more or less psychedelic: hold your clicker down and move it back and forth for fabulous results. There's something weird about the optical effects used, a video-era flare that's unusually appealing, like the early-1980s Doctor Who intro

It's both awesome and irksome, fun and fricative, that precious little psychic median from whence the only onward course is always just again. Read the rest