Rexfeng

Filed under: Coupe, Performance, Subaru, Toyota

Hallelujah friends, hallelujah. One of the highest voices in Subaru's parent company, Fuji Heavy Industries, has just said that the boxer-obsessed automaker will release a second generation of the lovable BRZ.

Yasuyuki Yoshinaga, president of FHI, has summarily shot down assertions made by Tetsuya Tada, the chief engineer for the Toyota GT86. In a recent interview with an Australian publication, Tada claimed that Subaru had not decided whether it would be involved in the followup effort to the rear-drive coupe, and even speculated that the Toyota could team with BMW for a second-gen car, instead.

"If I were to be told that, I'd pass out. It's not going to be just one generation," Yoshinaga-san told Automotive News.

Despite this claim, even Yoshinaga confirmed that in order for the BRZ to be viable, his company needs Toyota. Should Toyota make the move to BMW as part of its joint-venture agreement, though, it'd cast some major doubts on the likelihood of a second-gen BRZ ever seeing the light of day.

Subaru BRZ to get second generation, says exec originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 08 Jul 2014 11:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Comments

Sometimes you want to get from A to B as quickly as possible—but what if you want to savor the journey? Well, Yahoo has been working on an algorithm that can plot the most beautiful route, for those days when time is less of a concern.

Read more...

Rats.

An employee at the law firm Stroock tells Gothamist that there was most definitely an entire rat inside that Chop't wrap yesterday and that he "heard [his] co-worker scream," then phone a doctor for advice about getting a rabies vaccination. "[Chop't founder Tony Shure] called and apologized profusely to my co-worker. He expressed that it must have been a disgruntled employee," the employee says. The damning pics tweeted by two employees were deleted from Twitter, he explains, because the victim "[does] not want to think about it or discuss it any more." [Gothamist, Related]

Read more posts by Clint Rainey

Filed Under: bad wrap, chop't salad, rodents

 Google Maps just released a small, useful update for its Maps desktop product (via TNW). On the web, you can now right-click on any map and select “Measure Distance” to start charting a path and adding points, with Google offering up distances for each of the segments you create. It’s a handy way to find out approximately how far you’ll be travelling for a backwoods hike… Read More

This is a reel from Mackevision, showing the visual effects they did for season 4 of Game of Thrones. I wasn't expecting all the boats to be fake.

This reel does a better job than most in showing the process and how all the different elements fit together. Also interesting to see how much the digital greebles make everything seem way more realistic.

Tags: Game of Thrones   TV   video

Available today online and in-stores Friday, Build-A-Bear Workshop's take on Nickelodeon's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is going to cost me at least $140. Considering the alternatives, I think it's worth it.

Read more...

Jermarcus Brady of Gino's Restaurant was prepping some eggplants on Monday when he cut one open and found a message, it seems, spelled out by a formation of seeds inside the vegetable. "When you sliced into it, the pattern showed from the seeds that were forming in the inside the letters G-O-D as God," Brady tells the local news station. "I couldn't think of anything. I just had to tell somebody to come look at it." Of course, at the risk of seeming profane, there another way of reading this.

If we just take Brady's image ...

... And invert it, it kind of looks like an entirely different word.

Which could mean only one thing, really.

Everyone's favorite 1990s pastime involving cardboard discs is returning! Pogs are coming back! This is going to be the best summer ever!

Of course, the seeds could be spelling out "BOG," too, in which case we have no idea what's going on.

Baton Rouge restaurant employee finds 'GOD' in sliced eggplant [WAFB]

Read more posts by Hugh Merwin

Filed Under: signs, baton rouge, god eggplant, jermarcus brady

Just like the odd eBay storefront that popped up last year , a new site called Factory Outlet eBay Store is selling refurbished Apple products and, despite the lack of any official Apple branding, is almost definitely the result of a partnership between Apple and eBay. And it's selling Apple Certified Refurbished iPhones for cheap.

Read more...

The floating necropolis of Naxxramas is coming to Hearthstone, complete with five wings that will open on a weekly basis, in the following order: Arachnid Quarter, Plague Quarter, Military Quarter, Construct Quarter and Frostwyrm Lair. The Arachnid...

Yesterday, Uber announced it was slashing prices for its cheaper UberX cars. And today, the company has agreed to limit their insane surge pricing during "emergencies and natural disasters." One day the yellow cab will be but a memory, and humans will shuttle from one location to another at the whim of our Transformer-like UberLords. [ more › ]

Pete Wells is taking a break from restaurant reviews until next week, but today he pens an essay for the Times on the effects of Instagram (and other digital photography) on restaurant dining. He declares the rise of "camera cuisine," which "like any genre of cooking...varies widely in quality, but in its purest form it is both exquisitely photogenic and peculiarly bland and lifeless." [NYT]

Let us know when these machines can make cool designs in the beer foam.

What appears to be the turducken of hot dogs — a foot-long frank stuffed in a brat wrapped in bacon — makes its debut at next week's All-Star Game in Minnesota, but the real technological advancement here seems to be Draftserv, a pay-by-the-ounce self-serve beer machine. Drinkers brandish ID up front and buy a preloaded $10, $20, or $50 card, then go scan it at the beer machine, which has Bud and Bud Light, at 38 cents an ounce, and Shock Top Lemon Shandy and Goose Island 312 Urban Pale Ale for 40 per. If fans only "want half of a cup," the concessionaire explains, "that's all they will pay for." The machine will also cut you off, too, however, if you try to surpass its built-in 48-ounces-every-15-minutes limit. [ESPN]

Read more posts by Clint Rainey

Filed Under: beer me, all-star game, baseball, draftserv, minnesota twins, mlb, news you can booze, target field

When Hurricane Arthur made landfall on the North Carolina coast last weekend, it was the strongest hurricane to strike the United States since Hurricane Ike hit Texas in 2008. The storm was downright impressive visually, and these gifs document the latent beauty of nature's power.

Read more...

A petition with tens of thousands of signatures. Protestors in the streets. Fiery op-eds. All this public unrest in Tokyo isn't over an election or divisive political issue. It's about the design of the city's 2020 Olympic Stadium. And the people are winning.

Read more...

It's a scene that will be familiar to many: after hours of dancing, synchronized teeth grinding, and hugs, your new best friend disappears into the night, never to be seen again. At Belgium's Tommorowland music festival, a new wristband may make such predicaments a thing of the past. Tommorowland's organizers have transformed the traditional festival wristband, which acts as a festival-goers ticket, into a modern-day Facebook friendship bracelet.

On receiving the wristband in the mail, users are invited to register it online and link their Facebook account. Then, at the festival, revelers are encouraged to make connections by simultaneously pressing a heart button on the wristband. Rather than automatically making a friend, the...

Continue reading…

Movie critics didn't think too much of Michael Bay's Transformers: Age of Extinction, but that didn't stop it from becoming an international success. The Hollywood Reporter writes that the movie has earned $222.74 million in China, bypassing James Cameron's Avatar by a little over five million dollars to become the top-grossing movie ever in the country.

Much of Transformers: Age of Extinction's success can be attributed to intelligent marketing. On top of casting regional stars Li BingBing and Han Geng in supporting roles, Paramount Pictures also ran a reality TV show to select four extra Chinese actors for the movie. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Age of Extinction is also rife with familiar imagery, ranging from "Chinese milk...

Continue reading…

The digital picture frame is a gadget that hasn’t reached its full potential. Most are chintzy devices that can do little more than project endless slideshows and a visual aesthetic that would feel at home in the SkyMall catalog. What’s worse, many still require you to hassle with USB cords and SD cards to feed them images. Today a startup called Electric Objects is setting out to change that. It’s taken the basic concept of the digital picture frame and reimagined it as something bigger and more ambitious, a smart, internet-connected screen that was built as a platform for showcasing great art.

Continue reading…

From a mostly pointless Daisuke Wakabayashi piece on Tim Cook in today’s WSJ:

Mr. Cook has pledged that Apple will enter a new product category later this year. People familiar with the company’s plans say that Apple is working on a smartwatch with advanced sensors to track a user’s fitness and health. Apple is expected to introduce the new device, as well as a larger iPhone, in the fall, these people said.

One challenge facing Mr. Cook is what Wall Street calls the law of large numbers: even a successful new product may barely move the needle for Apple, which generated $171 billion in revenue in the fiscal year ended last September. A flop could underscore that Apple’s product heydays are tied to the late Mr. Jobs. […]

Mr. Jobs’s repudiations bruised feelings while making sure the company stayed focused on a few projects. Under Mr. Cook, current and former employees say Apple may be spreading itself too thin, pursuing too many ideas and compromising the “laser focus” that Mr. Jobs used to create the iMac, iPhone and iPad.

Last year Apple desperately needed new products and Tim Cook was failing as CEO because Apple wasn’t delivering them. Now that they seem poised to deliver new products, Cook is “spreading the company too thin” and even a successful product won’t affect the bottom line so why even bother, right?

Look for that refrain to be repeated; it seems to be the new Apple narrative.

This is what it looks like when cupcakes cry.

Despite the persistence of its cheery, sprinkle-topped cupcake repertoire, forays into the realm of gluten-free baking, and an ambitious plan to bring Cronut knockoffs into wholesale stores like BJ's Club, Crumbs announced late yesterday that it is closing its 65 stores. A Crumbs representative says it's evaluating "limited remaining options," which the AP says include filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation.

The announcement comes a week after NASDAQ suspended trading and de-listed the company. Shares of the company's stock had tumbled from a high of $13, when the company went public in 2011, to less than 30 cents a share. Workers were notified of the abrupt closure yesterday; the AP estimates the company's demise affects 165 full-time employees and 655 part-time employees.

Cupcake shop Crumbs shuttering all its stores [AP]
Related: Crumbs Bake Shop’s Cronut Knockoffs Headed to BJ’s Wholesale Clubs

Read more posts by Hugh Merwin

Filed Under: frosted over, cronuts, crumbs, crumbs bake shops, cupcakes, the chain gang

Purported iPhone 6 component leak shows incredible scratch resistance and durability.

Update, 8 July 2014: Question that occurred to me about this today: This certainly looks like an iPhone component (if it’s not, it’s a preposterously elaborate hoax) — but how do we know this is sapphire, not Gorilla Glass? Gorilla Glass is scratch resistant and surprisingly flexible too (see 0:22 in this video).

Threes! is available for free at Starbucks for a little while longer, maybe today and tomorrow, and it's worth grabbing. Since there are plenty of free clones like it - for example 2048 - here's the opportunity to get the premium press original at no...

These potato skins will last ... FOREVER.

TGI Fridays today launches a brazen summer-only promotion called Endless Appetizers. Pay $10, choose one appetizer, and brace yourself — because it "never stops coming." The lineup includes items like "loaded" potato skins, spinach dip, boneless chicken wings, and other transmogrified versions of once-recognizable foods, and the real perk, it seems, is that guests who deign to share their fried cheese and vegetable things essentially have nothing to fear. "They will not be bawled out. There will be no policing or hand-slapping," says Fridays' chief marketing officer Brian Gies, the idea being that there comes a point in every restaurant customer's meal when even the most ravenous guest has to admit they're downed one too many pan-seared pot stickers. [USAT]

Read more posts by Clint Rainey

Filed Under: the chain gang, appetizers, endless appetizers, tgi fridays

Despite shifting to digital, pushing 3D, and raising ticket prices, the movie industry hasn't seen much growth in the last decade. According to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), last year's box office only rose 1 percent as compared to 2012, and theaters face tough competition from the likes of Netflix. To get moviegoers to fill more seats, AMC Entertainment is spending $600 million over the next five years to outfit 1,800 of its 5,000 auditoriums with La-Z-Boy-style recliners. And the strategy is already working.

The Wall Street Journal reports that AMC is renovating theaters in struggling markets as a means of getting people to come back to the movies. The renovations themselves are costly, running between $350,000 and...

Continue reading…

Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Around the world, nearly every asset class is expensive by historical standards.

Parking signs can be some of the most confusing things on the planet. But New York City-based designer Nikki Sylianteng is on a quest to change that, with a new style of sign which finally makes sense.

Read more...

Hong Kong's metro puts others to shame: It's one of the most profitable subways in the world. It's on time 99.9 percent of the time. It's always improving—and it's controlled by some very clever artificial intelligence.

Read more...

The digital currency Dogecoin and the Reddit community surrounding it are famous for their generosity and lighthearted nature, but The Daily Dot reports that the two may be turning into something quite different. In a long report on the progress of Dogecoin, the Dot notes that trading and value are on the decline. And beyond that, it finds that there appears to be a questionable currency exchange at the center of a growing distrust among the Dogecoin community. Head over to the article for details on how the exchange Moolah has managed to both bring new attention to Dogecoin and contribute to its community's decline.

Continue reading…