firehose

Derek Lowe on open office designs:

Here's a useful rule: whenever someone tries to tell you that you don't understand about this new generation, because they're so totally different, which makes them act so totally differently than anyone older - you're being sold something. Marketers absolutely love to pretend that this is how the world works, as do many varieties of consultant, because it gives them a chance to sell their hot, happening expertise that you don't have, you see, because you're behind the times. Kids these days! You just have no idea.

I've heard similar arguments: "Young" people like open spaces because they grew up with social networks and headphones. It's generally made by people that either don't work in an open office space or benefit from forcing other people to work in an open office space. It's funny how the private study areas around college campuses still fill up around the time of finals. Why not just study wherever? Like in the middle of a subway platform. It's totally just like chatting on Facebook, bro.

Ranma 1/2: Chougi Rambuhen 

(Rumic Soft/Toho  - Super Famicom - 1994)

nakamorijuan:

らんま1/2 朱猫団的秘宝 (SFC)

shonilane:

thatfriendlyblackguy:

pussybow:

same shit, different decade. 😒

oh shit

But, folks wanna act like this is new…

korpsekobain:

don’t hurt BEES. they just want to pollinate flowers and make honey. hurt WASP’s. fuck them and their old money, big mansions, and country clubs

Why use rules?

Rules are one of the features that we are particularly proud of. Many users still don't know they even exist and the things they can do with them.

They let you create automated workflows that can relieve you from the task of manually filtering what you read.
For example you can set up a rule to automatically tag articles based on keywords in them. You can then just go to your tags and quickly see what's new in your favorite tags. Also those tagged articles will stay forever in your account, so you will be able to easily find them later.
Another example might be if you want to get notified by email for something you have big interest in. You can set up a rule to forward all matching articles to your email.

Send to Pocket, Evernote, Instapaper and Readability in actions

The background paintings on Scooby Doo were far and away the best thing on the show, as this 2007 post from Secret Fun Blog ably demonstrates. The mediocre dialog and plotting and indifferent animation were totally mismatched with this spooky masterpieces. Read the rest

Angelou heard of her own death in the early hours of the morning and, not surprisingly, found the whole episode very upsetting: "My little grandson, the younger of the two, telephoned, and weeping, [said] 'I want to talk to my Grandma! Grandma! Grandma!' I said, 'I'm fine, honey,' " she later said. "I have family in Europe and in Africa, and they have phoned me in tears, trying to find [out] am I all right, am I alive," Angelou told a local St Louis TV station. "I have family here, a family of friends here, all over the country, who called me, responding to an erroneous account that I was sick and maybe even dying in Los Angeles. I was anxious to come [back] to St Louis, but I wasn't dying even to come to St Louis," Angelou joked.

Gay Dads’ Brains Develop Just Like Those of Straight Parents, Study Finds:

A study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences sought to determine whether mothers’ brains became hyper-reactive to emotional cues, like hearing their child cry after birth, because of hormonal changes or parenting experience.

Researchers videotaped 89 new moms and dads taking care of their infants at home. They then measured parents’ brain activity in an MRI while the parents watched videos in which their children were not featured, followed by the footage shot in their home with their kids.

The 20 mothers in the study—all of whom were the primary caregivers—had heightened activity in the brain’s emotion-processing regions; the amygdala, a set of neurons that processes emotions, was five times more active than the baseline. The 21 heterosexual fathers had increased activity in their cognitive circuits, which helped them determine which of the baby’s body movements indicated the need for a new diaper and which ones signaled hunger.

The 48 gay fathers’ brain waves, on the other hand, responded similarly to both the heterosexual mom and dad. Their emotional circuits were as active as mothers’, and their cognitive circuits were as active as the fathers’. Researchers also found that the more time a gay father spent with the baby, the greater a connection there was between the emotional and cognitive structures.

Ruth Feldman, the study’s author and a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, wrote that changes in the amygdala occur in women due to pregnancy and childbirth hormones. Men’s brains, which are usually interpreting their child’s needs, only activate the emotion-processing amygdala when the mother isn’t around. For gay fathers, this means that their amygdala is working like a mother’s would all the time.

The researchers also tested levels of oxytocin, the bonding hormone, in all the parents and found no difference among the three groups. Feldman, an adjunct professor at Yale University, said this means all three groups are biologically ready for parenthood.

Ego Hunter is a short adventure for Eclipse Phase. Players take on the role of different forks of the same person who work together to track down their original (alpha) self, who has gone missing and is wanted for murder. They soon find the situation is even more complicated and dangerous than it seems.

“It’s fucking making them tons of money, but it’s taking away the heart of DC. The inspiration, the heroism. The part of the universe that hooked me as a child of four and kept me reading my entire life. Their target audience is the teenaged/young adult male who loves gore and mutilation and murder, the same audience who somehow thinks it’s okay to send rape threats to someone who criticized a fucking comic book cover for being shitty. They are actively targeting the audience who are acting like total fucking assholes. And it’s selling.

That’s the worst part. It’s selling. And all it cost was their soul.”

- Dayna Abel, What’s Good For Sales Is Not Good For Comics, reviewing DC’s Future’s End from Free Comic Book Day. (via osheamobile)

One of the things I've noticed about living in Japan is that the country's non-native speakers are fuck all at using the fucking f-word.

Good thing there's a new book that aims to correct that! As noted by Kotaku reader Chris Hill, Japan recently got a new English instruction book called How to Use Fuck (正しいFUCKの使い方 or Tadashii Fuck no Tsukaikata). The book gives examples and explanations so people in Japan can improve their f-bomb abilities.

[Pic: takesh_s]

[Pic: Chris Hill]

As noted by website Hayabusa.bz, the book even provides a detailed explanation of what the fucking word.

Besides teaching essential phrases like "What the fuck?" and "fucked up," the book also explains how to correctly use "shit," "damn," and "hell." Important stuff!

[Pic: tmynkym]

Which looks more enjoyable? The book that tells you how to say, "I brush my teeth" or the one that teaches, "fuck off." Fucking A, that's an easy choice.

This reminds me of English Words That Don't Appear on Tests, but with bad words. How to Use Fuck also comes with an audio CD, so people can practice their accents. You know, so as not to fuck up the pronunciation.

WORKS : 正しいFUCKの使い方 [Naijel Blog]

『正しいFUCKの使い方 -学校では教えてくれない、取扱注意のfuck、shit、damn、hell-』 [Hayabusa.bz]

"正しいFUCKの使い方" [Hidden Champion]

@Brian_Ashcraft I think you'll also appreciate knowing this exists. [@RaptureBurgers Thanks, Chris!]

To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft.

Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

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A little more than a week after Oregon's marriage ban was ruled unconstitutional, same-sex marriage opponents have launched another long-shot effort to halt ceremonies.

The National Organization for Marriage is asking US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy to stay the ruling, issued Monday, May 19, by US District Judge Michael McShane. A similar request was denied by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. According to the group's announcement, Justice Kennedy, who is assigned to the Ninth Circuit, could act on his own or ask the full Supreme Court to decide the matter. Or he could do nothing.

From the organization's announcement:

“We are asking Justice Kennedy and the U.S. Supreme Court to take the step of staying the decision of Judge McShane so that NOM can pursue its request to intervene in the case in order to mount a defense of the people’s vote for marriage,” said John Eastman, NOM’s chairman and Director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence at The Claremont Institute. “This case is an ugly spectacle of the state refusing to defend the sovereign act of its voters to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman and instead working jointly with the plaintiffs to redefine marriage.”

Oregon joins numerous other states in recent weeks where federal judges have overturned state laws defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and instead imposed same-sex marriage. In each of these cases, the court decision has been stayed by the trial judge or an appellate court. The U.S. Supreme Court itself ruled unanimously to stay a decision in Utah that invalidated their state marriage amendment.

“The Supreme Court has made it abundantly clear that it does not want a profound social change such as redefining marriage to be made by trial judges without the Supreme Court itself deciding the issue,” Eastman said. “In Oregon, not only do we have a single trial court judge imposing his own opinion and invalidating the votes of the overwhelming majority of Oregon voters, but the case involves the state Attorney General refusing to even mount a defense of the people’s decision. This should be very troubling to Justice Kennedy.”

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An anonymous reader writes "Computer science professor Daniel Lemire explains why spreadsheets shouldn't be used for important work, especially where dedicated software could do a better job. His post comes in response to evaluations of a new economics tome by Thomas Piketty, a book that is likely to be influential for years to come. Lemire writes, 'Unfortunately, like too many people, Piketty used spreadsheets instead of writing sane software. On the plus side, he published his code on the negative side, it appears that Piketty's code contains mistakes, fudging and other problems. ... Simply put, spreadsheets are good for quick and dirty work, but they are not designed for serious and reliable work. ... Spreadsheets make code review difficult. The code is hidden away in dozens if not hundreds of little cells If you are not reviewing your code carefully and if you make it difficult for others to review it, how do expect it to be reliable?'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Arthur Chu's historic streak has long since been left in the dust.

This has been a big year for Jeopardy. Before the epic Battle of the Decades, Arthur Chu captivated everyone just a couple months back with his dominant, strategy-heavy 11-game run. It felt like everyone everywhere was talking about that streak.

Despite SEVENTEEN straight wins and almost $400,000, Julia Collins hasn't gotten the same attention, so I guess this is me just dropping in to say YO JULIA COLLINS IS CRUSHING FOOLS PAY ATTENTION. Perhaps Collins hasn't made as much news because she's neither as entertainingly impertinent nor as scheming as Chu was, but she's already blown by him in terms of historic winnings.

This is how things looked at the end of Monday night's Double Jeopardy:

Jeanne wanted out of there so badly she figured she'd better just lose money. And here's Julia feeling good after making an unnecessary but correct wager/answer in Final Jeopardy:

17 days. $372,700. She's comfortably in third all-time in non-tournament winnings and consecutive wins and rapidly approaching Dave Madden for second place. If she keeps it up, only the monumental benchmark that is Ken Jennings' 74-win streak will stand in her way. Oh, and she had her shot called years ago:

Found: 8th grade yearbook predictions! @JeopardyJulia & I are both on track. pic.twitter.com/IEkdZUEMNK

— Stephanie Meyers (@theRightSteph) May 26, 2014

...and then some.

Julia Collins forever.

popular shared this story from FAIL Blog.

---

djempirical

nice recap of his range in the notes here: http://youtu.be/GEwo6ktitcY

Last week, we published a list of the best singers as ranked in order of their respective octave ranges. Amid a list of powerhouse vocalists like Adele, Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, Alicia Keys, and more, one Axl Rose reigned supreme with a mighty range of five octaves. However, if you thought it a little odd that the title of “greatest living singer” went to this guy, you aren’t alone; VVN Music went ahead and dug a little deeper into other singers’ ranges. As it turns out, Rose may want to wait to order those new business cards.

For their purposes, VVN expanded on the original criteria established by Concert Hotels, which drew its sample from Rolling Stones’ list of the 100 Greatest Singers, the nominees for this year’s Billboard Music Awards, and those singers who’d been analyzed by The Range Place. Because of that somewhat strict criteria, a rather sizable chunk of singers were originally excluded.

So, now who stands atop the mountain of crooners and songbirds? That distinction goes to Mike Patton, who has a doubly impressive range of six octaves. (Again, for comparison, world record holder Tim Storms has a range of 10 octaves.) Surely, Rose must still rank fairly high according to VVN’s revised list, right? He’s actually slipped to number four, behind Avant-garder singer Diamanda Galás and Mr. David Lee Roth. While Rose, Galás , and Roth each have a range of five octaves, both Galás and Roth have ranges that are just a few notes higher.

In fact, if you count those extra notes on top of the singer’s base octave range, it helps re-shuffle a majority of the list. Here’s some other interesting tidbits gleaned from the revised list:

– The remainder of the new top 10 features Paul McCartney, Roger Waters, Mariah Carey, Phil Anselmo, German singer Nina Hagen, and Devin Townsend. In fact, Waters, Anselmo, and Townsend weren’t anywhere on the original list. Nor was the new King of the Sing, Patton.

– Several acts have fallen further down on the list. That includes Marvin Gaye slipping from the top 10 to the top 30; Steven Tyler landing out of the top five and into the top 20; James Brown tumbling from #6 to the top 25; Freddie Mercury falling to the 35th spot; and Justin Bieber, who previously ranked in the bottom 10, has been pushed off the list entirely.

– Other notable additions include: Jon Bon Jovi and Deftones’ Chino Moreno in the top 12, each with a range of four actives and 2-1/2 notes; Serj Tankian in the top 20 with a range of four octaves and one note; Maynard James Keenan reaching the top 30 with a range of four octaves; Nick Cave in the top 40 with a range of three octaves and 5-1/2 notes; and Karen O landing securely in the top 50 with a range of three octaves and 4-1/2 notes.

– Several A-list singers even share the same rage (three octaves and four notes): Damon Albarn, Beyoncé, Kate Bush, Chris Cornell, Geddy Lee, Michael Jackson, and Cedric Bixler-Zavala.

– Somehow, Michael Bolton and Eminem have the same exact vocal range of three octaves and two notes.

– Let this sink in: John Lydon, a.k.a. Johnny Rotten, has the same exact range as Dolly Parton and Robin Gibb.

– In news you didn’t see coming, Captain Beefheart (with four octaves) has a greater range than Lorde, Whitney Houston, Adele, Alicia Keys, and Katy Perry.

Head over to VVN Music for the entire list, which also includes John Lennon, Elvis Presley, Rihanna, Dave Gahan, Bruno Mars, Ray Charles, and many, many more. Below, enjoy a few samples from the top five.

Original Source

Mac, an 18-year old cougar at Big Cat Rescue gets chatty with a camera man, sounding remarkably like a raspy voice man saying “wow” over and over again.

ABC News (blog)

Hackers Use 'Find My iPhone' App to Lock, Hold Devices for Ransom ABC News (blog) Some iPhone and iPad users in Australia had a rude awakening this morning when they discovered their devices had been locked and held for ransom by a mysterious hacker going by the name “Oleg Pliss.” The people impacted by the breach reported via ... and more »

theonion:

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

Next week at WWDC, we’re likely to hear a familiar response to many requests: “File a bug.”

I’ve had countless Apple employees tell me over the years that filing bug reports is the most effective way to get actual bugs fixed and “vote” for new API features. (It’s also the only way that most people have.)

I’ve filed 15 bugs since 2009. Of those:

• 8 have been marked as duplicates. All but two of the “origin” bugs remain open, despite two actually being fixed. Another two very different feature requests were marked as duplicates of the same origin, and since I can’t see the title of the origin, I have no way to know if either was a mischaracterization.
• 6 have never received any kind of response and remain open.
• 1 had Apple request a sample project, which I provided, then got no further response (and is still open).

I’m not an anomaly. From Fix Radar or GTFO:

We file radars and we’re lucky to hear back about them. The majority of radars are either left untouched or marked as duplicates of other radars we cannot see. We may get a request for more information from engineering, but sometimes it is for irrelevant information or information already given in the original report. All this makes us feel like our radars make little difference. And this is important as our time is valuable.

From our point of view, there’s little reason to file bugs. Filing a good bug report takes a lot of testing and time, and it seems like Apple just disregards most of them. Of the few that get any response at all, it’s almost always a useless response or the obvious result of a careless engineer trying to clear out the bug backlog with as little work as possible.

With these results, what reason do we have to spend any time filing bugs?

Apple’s employees present a nice story: Apple cares! File a report! It matters! And I believe that those individuals truly believe that. The system works by the time it gets to them. And in the aggregate, they do need our bug reports.

But actions speak louder than words, and Apple’s actions tell a different story to the vast majority of developers who actually bother filing bugs.

Their abysmal communication and responsiveness, with most of the responses indicating carelessness or apathy, tells each individual developer, “Don’t bother filing that. Nothing will happen. It’s a waste of your time. We don’t care.”

To reduce the stress of getting kids ready for summer camp, parents in New York City are reportedly paying professional organizing companies up to $250 per hour to pack their children’s bags with high-quality sheets, fancy soaps, and other supplies.

Wait, what? Is this a real thing?

I had no idea.