Rexfeng

Another intriguing open source project for iOS from Facebook:

AsyncDisplayKit is an iOS framework that keeps even the most complex user interfaces smooth and responsive. It was originally built to make Facebook’s Paper possible, and goes hand-in-hand with pop’s physics-based animations — but it’s just as powerful with UIKit Dynamics and conventional app designs.

I truly love the design work Facebook’s iOS team is doing. In some ways it feels as though they’re out there ahead of everyone, even Apple itself.

Is the epic street food battle of 53rd street finally over?! We received a tip via Twitter earlier this week that the Imposter Cart was no longer on the SW corner of 53rd and 6th, and sure enough yesterday we discovered a brand new Famous Halal Guys cart in its place. This should end the [...]

The restaurant opened for a test run last night.

Beneath the neon tiger-striped mural on 3rd Avenue, Korilla BBQ's first brick and mortar location opened last night for a test run. The team plans to officially open sometime next week, so there may be other test runs in the next few days. Once open, founder Eddie Song tells Bedford + Bowery that he hopes to keep things seasonal. "We want to offer something healthy and delicious at the same time," he explains. The menu sounds pretty similar to what's available from the team's trucks: Korean BBQ-inspired rice bowls, burritos, and salads topped with things like spicy pork and tofu. Will that appeal to the St. Marks crowd more than its ill-fated predecessor's pizza bagels and mac salad melts? Probably, but only time will tell.

Determined to become part of the neighborhood, the team commissioned mural artist Terry Galmitz to cover the inside walls with scenes from the East Village, including miniature versions of McSorley's and Stage Restaurant. 23 3rd Avenue, East Village.

I wrote about the Luma Loop a few years ago, but now they’re back, with an even better camera sling. I’ve got one, and it really is a remarkable piece of kit. Every detail is considered. Just one, that’s probably my favorite — adjustability:

We adapted the Cinch’s slide adjusters; both front and back to let you lock your camera down instantly. On the move? A simple slide of the adjuster tightens the Loop down and raises the camera above your hip for maximum stability. Ready to take the shot? A quick pull is all it takes to free the camera for unrestricted motion.

Simple, easy, and useful. I go months at a time without taking my Canon 5D off my Luma Loop. Highly recommended.

A pickup truck converted into a mobile banana. Just ride in it!

Last year, the salt lick masquerading as a restaurant "run" by dude-bro Guy Fieri raked in an estimated $16 million. Congratulations, America! We've finally lifted Donkey Sauce to its rightful place among the city's many culinary achievers. Somewhere, Pete Wells weeps. [ more › ]

It’s new tablet week, apparently. Chris Welch, The Verge:

Nexus 9 is available in either black or white and comes in three configurations: 16GB for $399, 32GB for $479, and an LTE-enabled 32GB model for $599. Sadly, you can’t expand that storage through microSD, so we’d recommend opting for the 32GB SKU.

No “sadly” for not being able to swap the battery out? No “sadly” for not including Flash Player?

What started as a pizza-only takeout spot now serves breakfast and sandwiches.

Hipster pizza haven Roberta's new takeaway spot started dishing out an early morning breakfast last week. The bakers are offering everything bagels schmeared with cream cheese, plus parfaits, off-menu bialys, and an egg sandwich similar to the one on offer in the restaurant. Back in the days when Melissa Weller was baking for Roberta's, the restaurant was offering some standout bagels, but they disappeared when Weller left to work on her own project with the Torrisi boys. It's unclear if these newbies are made from the same recipe.

When breakfast joined, it seems that so did some garlic knots and pastrami, Italian and meatball sandwiches (at least, they weren't on the menu when the space opened). Pizza expert Adam Kuban tasted the garlic knots late last night and described them "somewhere between a pizza dough and croissant." They don’t appear on the menu online, but a phone call confirms their presence. Tried the new dishes? Send your thoughts to tips@eater.com.

And here's the full menu:

I'd argue that the best way to eat in Portland, Oregon is by visiting the city's many food carts. If you've ever doubted that street food could be serious food, these carts will convince you otherwise. Read More

Apple has made an unusual blunder ahead of its Thursday press event; the company has accidentally revealed both of its new iPads: the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3. An official user guide for iOS 8 in the iTunes Store has apparently had its screenshots updated ahead of schedule; both new iPads are pictured, and the images reveal each will have a Touch ID fingerprint sensor. Aside from the addition of Touch ID, it seems these latest iPads will look nearly identical to their predecessors. 9to5Mac first spotted the premature iPad screenshots. The full-resolution image is still sitting on Apple's servers.

It's expected that Apple will improve the performance of each iPad with the help of an updated chipset, likely the iPhone 6's A8 or a...

Continue reading…

It's not a cart, it's not a truck, it's not a restaurant. But it's where you'll find some of the best Tijuana-style carne asada tacos in LA.

In Spanish, the word llantera can mean a couple of things: 1) a tire shop. 2) a fit of weeping. It just so happens that there's magical place that encapsulates both of these definitions quite well. At about 6 p.m., in the parking lot of a used tire place on Avalon Blvd. in South Central with a hand-painted sign advertising "Llantas Usadas El Jarocho," when dusk begins to settle on the city and commuters are heading home, the beat up Chevys and Buicks that crowd the lot during the day file out, one by one.

Some of the best damned tacos you've ever had. You might even be moved to tears.

A handful of people in aprons appear, dragging out tables, folding chairs, a couple of coolers, and firing up a grill. And then they start serving some of the best damned tacos you've ever had. You might even be moved to tears.

At the tire shop taqueria, they serve Tijuana-style carne asada tacos. What does this mean, exactly? Carne asada is puro norteño -- a predominantly northern tradition (Baja, Sonora, Sinaloa) that requires steak be roasted or grilled (asar means "to grill"), usually over mesquite. Those dried out cardboard bits you eat from that no-name truck on the east side at 2 a.m.? Passable drunk food when you drown it in lime juice and green sauce, but prepared on a gas grill and therefore not really carne asada. If that sounds a little pedantic: they also taste pretty bad.

Back to the tacos. Beef is seasoned and marinated, then grilled on mesquite charcoal: at a high enough temperature to get that nice char, but not too long so as to dry the meat out. Interestingly, many taqueros in TJ come from Puebla, which is close to Mexico City, in the southern-central part of the country. Go figure. But this explains why you might see the word "poblano" attached to dozens of taco places in the city.

The taquero finely dices the meat. About three feet to the left, a nice young woman is pressing fresh tortillas using a machine that looks like a small manual juicer. In four seconds, the meat is deftly thrown into the tortilla, sprinkled with onion and cilantro, a smear of salsa roja, and the finishing touch, a dollop of thin, creamy guacamole. Each taco is wrapped into a cone shape inside of a small piece of paper.

Load up on some radishes and limes, have a seat at the large communal table, and enjoy. The tender, juicy, well-seasoned steak is complemented by its unassuming tortilla, a vessel of fresh, thinly pressed masa. The salsa roja provides a kick, and the guacamole acts as a nice, neutral counterpunch. In addition to the carne asada, outstanding chorizo, chicken, and beef cheek (cabeza) are also available. The chorizo is a real stand-out; spicy and salty, tasting deeply of smoke and red pepper.

Crispy on the outside, hot and gooey on the inside.

Tacos are $1.50. Quesadillas run around $5 (They added everything up at the end and I lost track of the itemization. But a meal here is not gonna break the bank.) and are absolutely gargantuan. An tortilla that's four or five times that of the taco is loaded with meat, onion, cilantro, salsa, and a generous fistful of cheese. It's grilled and then folded back on itself and presented to you: crispy on the outside, hot and gooey on the inside.

Vampiros are another interesting menu item -- open-faced tacos that are served on tortillas that are left on the grill until crunchy. Why the name vampiro, which means vampire (or vampire bat)? Perhaps it's the way the tortilla slowly buckles as it's left on the hot grill, slowly warping into something ugly and sinister? For the record, I would love to make a steak/stake pun at this point, but I shall resist. Just know that I'm thinking it.

The "tire shop taqueria" has, like many itinerant taco places in LA, irregular hours. Our best guess is that it is open Thursday-Monday, 6 p.m. - 11 p.m. Closed Tuesday and Wednesday. It is located in parking lot of the El Jarocho tire shop, 4069 S. Avalon Blvd. in Los Angeles

· All Dining on a Dime Coverage [~ELA~]

Well, this is a bit unlike Apple -- the company appears to have accidentally spilled the beans about the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3, which are expected to be announced tomorrow. Representations of both devices showed up in a screenshot of the iPad...

Just days after a report that Apple would stop selling Bose products in its retail stores, the company is now said to be doing the same thing with health tracking devices from Fitbit. Citing sources, Recode says the company's entire line of products will "soon" be disappearing from Apple's stores, adding that it's unclear whether other fitness trackers will experience the same fate. Apple's keeping mum on the change, though did not deny it.

Continue reading…

In 2014, it’s easy to think of Captain America as a bit of a tough sell. He’s a figure of an earlier time, and bringing him into the modern age has always meant a dance between sly retcons and outright hokeyness. He’s also a pain in the ass, sticking up for abstract ideas of justice and liberty when a lot of other heroes are content to just blow up the bad guy and move on. And then there’s that name: When the first Cap movie debuted in South Korea, it bore the unassuming title The First Avenger. After 60 years of military bases, having "America" in your hero's name had become a marketing liability.

Continue reading…

Security professionals Luke Janke and Jay Davis recently showed off a $150 safe cracker that they built from a custom Arduino, 3D-printed components, and salvaged electronics like a step motor formerly utilized in stage lighting. According to The Register, the device can be affixed on top of a combination lock and then used to stage "brute force" attacks. This techniques involves autodialing as many different combinations as possible until the lock is breached.

It reportedly takes less than four days for the duo's invention to break through a lock, a marked improvement over its initial time of 14 days. If the contraption is pre-loaded with default combinations, however, it will be able to accomplish the same job in minutes. "A lot of...

Continue reading…

Michael Tsai has a nice roundup of additional commentary on Mac developers’ increasing frustrations with the Mac App Store. The one that gets me, and which seems under-remarked-upon, is how Apple’s own apps in the App Store are exempt from sandbox restrictions. Third-party apps are never on equal footing with Apple’s, but with sandboxing, it’s almost absurd.

The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the worker, who had cared for a Liberian patient and contracted the disease, should not have been allowed on a commercial airline.

Sometimes, you just need to quickly grab some free Wi-Fi while you're walking through town. You probably know that nearby coffee shops offer Wi-Fi, but tons of retailers and restaurants offer it too—you just need to know where to look.

Read more...

 HBO is finally getting its online streaming game on, after Chairman and CEO Richard Plepler announced that the broadcaster will launch a standalone streaming service next year. “That is a large and growing opportunity that should no longer be left untapped. It is time to remove all barriers to those who want HBO,” Plepler told a Time Warner investor meeting today. Plepler… Read More

Yesterday, Madison Square Park bid adieu to Shake Shack (temporarily!) while the restaurant undergoes some tweaks like an expanded kitchen—more room for 'Shrooms is a-ok by us! Now, we're taking a peek back at the chainlet's origins, courtesy of Gothamist's very own meteorologist Joe Schumacher, who unearthed a copy of the original menu when the first Shake Shack opened in 2004. Remember when a hamburger was only $3.10? [ more › ]

The age-old question for many Pokémon fans has always been: Bulbasaur, Charmander, or Squirtle? Everyone has an opinion on this, and we’ve even used science to answer the question of who the best starter is. Still, the debate is far from settled.

Read more...

Lean in, siren.

The green Starbucks cup logo and check boxes are so unexceptionally mundane these days that you might as well be staring at a blank canvas. That's probably how Soo Min Kim, a self-described "paper cup artist" in Seoul who's exhibited roomfuls of hanging cup mobiles, saw it a few years ago when he started morphing Sirens by the hundreds into Thomas the Tank Engines, PSYs, Colonel Sanders clones, Beatles album covers, Lego minifigures, anime characters, cat burglars, superheroes, and too many other things to count.

He's filmed the process, which begins with an unadorned cup — a tall, generally, by the looks of it — that he paints white except for the Siren, before doodling on a new scene in green marker. They've gotten so elaborate that several now sport light bulbs and giants cutouts, basically little 3-D Siren dioramas.

Here's a sampling from the Kim oeuvre posted to his blog and Facebook page:

[Official blog, Facebook, RocketNews24]

Read more posts by Clint Rainey

Filed Under: food art, coffee cup art, soo min kim, starbucks

A gourmet shaved ice place in Little Tokyo replacing Ikemen Downtown to open soon.

A dessert shop named Cold Rush, specializing in shaved ice, will debut this October in Little Tokyo. What was once Ikemen Ramen, the space is newly remodeled and ready to open its doors. No word on the exact opening date; however, everything looks to be complete. Even though summer has come to an end, Japanese-style shaved ice (kakigori) is always a refreshing dessert alternative. Interested in working there? Apply here.

Cold Rush
123 Astronaut E S Onizuka St
Ste 108
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Last year Razor revealed a compact go-kart-like creation called the Crazy Cart featuring a single steerable wheel allowing riders to perform astonishing drifts and turns. Unfortunately it was designed for kids and had a weight limit of just 140 pounds. This made a lot of adults sad, but since Razor wants to put a smile on everyone's face, it's created a grown-up version called the Crazy Cart XL. Just take our money already.

Read more...

It sounds like a plot out of a Gattaca-like dystopian movie: giant corporations that pay for the women on their workforces to freeze their reproductive eggs, allowing them to spend more of their most fertile years at the office, delaying having children until later. Yet that's exactly what two of Silicon Valley's largest companies are doing in real life in an apparent bid to recruit more women talent, a laudable goal. Facebook and Apple will both cover the costs of egg-freezing procedures up to $20,000 for individual employees, according to NBC News. Facebook's employees were able to participate in the policy as of this year, while Apple's policy won't be available until early 2015, according to the report.

Continue reading…

After deciding to shut down its print magazine and lay off most of its online staff, IDG is hitting pause on its annual gathering where big products like the first iPhone were once unveiled. Of course that stopped when Apple pulled out of its regular attendance of the show and began holding its own events in 2009. However, the Macworld Expo lived on as an event for third-party Apple companies and the Apple community to get together each year.

Continue reading…

From Jimmy John’s comes another example of how employers are extracting more value from their entry-level workers, at a growing human cost.

"I have a service and I'm hungry."

Graphic designer Lauren Hom started noticing that many handsome restaurants overlooked a detail that, in her mind, was critical: the hand-writing on their chalkboard signs. "I noticed that it's common for a restaurant to have a menu board that's written by, like, a hung-over hostess," she says. "And it's totally not a diss on anyone's handwriting, but I thought, I could do that and make it look kick-ass!" So the 23-year-old freelance illustrator came up with a simple arrangement: She will stop by your restaurant to hand-letter a pretty sign — in exchange for a taste of the foods that she writes on the board. "I'm just really hungry!" she says. "And I just thought, I have a service and I'm hungry and maybe this can work out." Hom only started the project (Will Letter for Lunch) in April — passing out flyers to local restaurants near her home in Crown Heights — and the pay-it-forward idea has quickly gained traction.

"Actually, the first flyer I ever passed out was a 'yes,'" she says. "It was this little organic, hippie café called Mountain Café, and I wrote their sandwich board." Hom is currently working on her sixth project in Clinton Hill — and some places, like Docklands, have requested that she hand-write their entire menus. "I go in, I letter, and then everything I write, I get to eat," she explains. "It's a complete fair barter. So if I write the entire menu, sometimes I'll have to go back multiple times and bring friends to feast. It's amazing!"

But regardless of how big Will Letter for Lunch grows, Hom has no plans to start charging for her work, even though it takes her about an hour to complete something as small as a sandwich board. "I feel like it almost taints the fun of it if there's money involved," she says. "And I have a very steady freelance career, so everything's fine. And the truth is, free food tastes better, too." (It's also great exposure for her paid illustration and typography work, for which she charges $100 per hour.)

Hom's ultimate goal is to hand-letter a menu for a sushi restaurant, but for now, she focuses mostly on reaching out to casual cafés. "My mom always told me you eat with your eyes first, and so she always made sure all of our food looked nice," she says. "But then I realized, where typography comes into the picture, is that you eat with your eyes before you even see your food. If you're looking at a menu and the food's written out nicely, you're going to want to eat more. It's totally weird, but it's true!"

There's a wholesome quality — though, perhaps, a naïveté — to Hom's work, and above all, she says she actually just wants to make new friends (and, of course, eat well). "I've lived in New York for about five and a half years, and I've explored a lot of the city, but I just thought that this would be a fun way to meet more people — especially because I'm interested in food and the restaurant industry. Anyone who opens a restaurant is fascinating to me, because you have to be pretty passionate about it to do it. And there are so many great places to eat in New York. If you're not eating well in New York, I don't know what you're doing. Like, move to Cleveland."

Read more posts by Sierra Tishgart

Filed Under: design, lauren hom, new york, nourish kitchen + table, restaurant news, will letter for lunch

Because there's no better time to drop fresh Pokémon news than minutes after a major preview embargo lifts , The Pokémon Company gives us "Soar" a new ability that allows players of Pokémon Omega Ruby and Pokémon Alpha Sapphire the ability to fly through the air on the backs of Mega Latias and Latios.

Read more...

Comments