Rexfeng

Luxottica Group, owner of brands like Ray-Ban, Oakley and manager of retail chains like LensCrafters and Sunglass Hut, will design, produce and sell frames for Google Glass, the wearable computer.

The payment settles a lawsuit arising out of troubled mortgage-backed securities the bank cobbled together and sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the run-up to the financial crisis.

Smorgasburg is adding 20 new vendors when it moves back outdoors on April 5. Among those newcomers are Fanny Moy (LA-style mariscos), Gather (sandwich and salads), Martha (General Tso's fried chicken), and Dun-Well Doughnuts (vegan doughnuts). [Zagat]

For her Uncomfortable Project, Katerina Kamprani redesigned useful objects; they're still technically functional but are a pain in the ass to use. Like this key:

Or this awkward broom:

Tags: art   design   Katerina Kamprani

For those of you unable to drop $200 on the extravagant LEGO Simpsons house released earlier this year, The LEGO Group is rolling out its first ever licensed minifigure series in May, just in time for a special LEGO episode of The Simpsons.

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I always thought Blizzard devs were mostly metalheads, but it seems that's not the case anymore. With Reaper of Souls, they've added a rather special item called 'Halcyon's Ascent', which has electronic dance music artist Deadmau5 written all over it.

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Rolling, rolling, rolling.

After learning yesterday that Mexican chef Enrique Olvera will open a small-batch Brooklyn tortilleria to supply his forthcoming restaurant, Cosme, Alex Stupak tweeted, "Strangely I'm doing the same thing on St. Marks and A," referring to his third Empellón restaurant, which he told Grub Street last year would "be built around" fresh corn tortillas, not flour — a place "that processes masa first, and then you better use it in just about everything."

With all this masa talk, it's pretty fair to say that city chefs are beginning to approach tortillas in the same way they embraced fresh pasta around 30 years ago. Several high-profile converts have recently begun treating masa with newfound respect: Otto's Tacos already processes masa in-house, and Danny Bowien swears by the the in-house corn nixtamalization process he's developed at Mission Cantina.

Alex Stupak Plans to Jump into the Tortilla-Making Game [Eater]

Read more posts by Clint Rainey

Filed Under: let's get nixtamal, alex stupak, cosme, danny bowien, empellon, enrique olvera, everything'scoming up masa, masa, mission cantina, otto's tacos

In remote areas of Vietnam where there are no bridges across rivers, people are loaded into plastic bags and swum across by men strong enough to brave the current.

(via quora)

Tags: video   Vietnam

Taste the difference.

For all the high-caliber coffee shops that assert an undying devotion to fair-trade beans and espresso machines that cost more than a car, there's surprisingly little talk of another essential ingredient: milk. It's an odd thing to overlook, considering how large a role it plays in coffee culture. As Blue Bottle's James Freeman recently told Grub, "How coffee tastes is directly related to how the milk tastes," but he also noted that milk is one of his biggest expenses. Fortunately, more and more shops around the nation are turning to small-scale, high-quality dairies as well as testing out serious non-dairy milk alternatives: La Colombe recently introduced hemp milk, Joe Coffee just added almond milk, and Intelligentsia plans to unveil new varieties soon. Learn which American coffee shops take milk seriously, straight ahead.

1. The Shop: Blue Bottle (New York, San Francisco, Oakland)
The Milk: San Francisco and Oakland: St. Benoît's organic, low-pasteurized, pasture-raised Jersey cow's milk; Clover Stornetta Farms's 3.5-percent-fat milk; New York: Battenkill Valley Creamery's farm-fresh milk.
Freeman's willing to splurge on high-class offerings: On the West Coast, he brings in milk from Jersey-based, single-source farm St. Benoît, as well as Clover out of nearby Petaluma, California. His New York shops all use milk from Battenkill Valley Creamery (based in Salem, New York.). Freeman's toying with the idea of producing his own almond milk, too.

2. The Shop: Jack's Stir Brew (New York)
The Milk: Hudson Valley Fresh's rich, 3.9-percent-fat milk.
Cows at upstate dairy Hudson Valley Fresh are fed a diet of healthy grains and hay to produce clean, fresh milk that enhances Jack's signature stir-brewing method. This milk also happens to be certified Kosher.

3. The Shop: Cafe Pedlar (Brooklyn)
The Milk: Ithaca Milk's non-homogenized Jersey cow's milk.
The same company that makes the popular buffalo yogurt offers two different types of milk: sweet, creamy, non-homogenized Jersey cow's milk, and homogenized Holstein cow's milk. Cafe Pedlar offers Ithaca's whole and skim varieties of the former.

4. The Shop: Victory Garden (New York)
The Milk: Housemade mastic- and cardamom-infused goat's milk.
This West Village ice-cream shop actually has excellent coffee: It mixes Irving Farm's house blend with lightly sweetened mastic- and cardamom-infused goat's milk, which owner Sophia Brittan sources from Side Hill Acres in Candor, New York.

5. The Shop: Stumptown (New York, Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles)
The Milks: New York: Hudson Valley Fresh; Portland and Seattle: Sunshine Dairy; Los Angeles: Rockview Farms.
Stumptown's purveyors vary across the country — which is a good thing, because it means everything is local. Sunshine Dairy is a Portland-based company that uses a cold-bowl separation process, which means that milk's only heated at the pasteurization stage. Family-owned Rockview Farms, based in Downey, California, is one of the only dairies in California to own its own cows and process, package, and distribute milk. All Stumptown outposts offer both whole and skim varieties, as well as Pacific's Barista Series almond and soy milks.

6. The Shop: Joe Coffee (New York and Philadelphia)
The Milk: Guida's Dairy's hormone-, pesticide- and antibiotic-free milk.
Besides Connecticut-based purveyor Guida's, the Rubinsteins also provide the option of Organic Valley milk. They've offered Pacific's Barista Series soy milk for a while, and in the beginning of March, they introduced Pacific's almond milk.

7. The Shop: La Colombe (New York and Philadelphia)
The Milks: Organic Valley's ultra-pasteurized, homogenized, pasture-raised milk; Pacific's hemp milk.
All the shops carry Organic Valley milk (whole, skim, and half-and-half): As it turns out, the grocery-store favorite sources from farms all across the country. Up until recently, La Colombe had a strict policy of no non-dairy alternatives, but the owners just introduced a nutty hemp milk.

8. The Shop: Little Collins (New York)
The Milk: Battenkill.
Battenkill — which prides itself on getting the milk from the cows into bottles in less than eight hours — is a popular choice in the city: This new-ish Australian-style coffee shop in midtown offers the whole and 2-percent-fat varieties, and Sweetleaf uses it, too.

9. The Shop: The Marlton Espresso Bar (New York)
The Milks: Battenkill; housemade almond milk.
There's a stylish new coffee bar tucked into the hotel on West 8th Street, with Ferndell Coffee Company beans, Battenkill dairy offerings, and, impressively, housemade almond milk.

10. The Shop: Intelligentsia (Los Angeles, New York, Chicago)
The Milks: New York: Battenkill's special barista milk; Los Angeles: Strauss Family Creamery's organic, non-homogenized, cream-top milk; Chicago: Kilgus Farmstead's 5-percent-fat milk.
No matter which Intelligentsia outpost you're at, you won't ever find skim milk — just whole and 2 percent. Cows at Strauss, based in Marin County, eat the distinctly sweet grasses that grow in the Tomales Bay region, which creates a rich flavor of milk. Even richer is the Kilgus milk in Chicago: all 5-ounce coffee drinks and smaller come with 5-percent-fat milk. Soy milk's available, but the company's developing better non-dairy alternatives.

11. The Shop: Go Get Em Tiger (Los Angeles)
The Milks: Housemade nut milk; Strauss's dairy milks.
At their new-ish coffee shop in Windsor Square, Kyle Glanville and Charles Babinski offer whole milk from Strauss, as well as housemade almond-macadamia milk, which they sweeten with dates.

12. The Shop: Sqirl (Los Angeles)
The Milks: Housemade almond milk; Strauss's dairy milks.
Jessica Koslow's laid-back Silver Lake café makes its own almond milk using nuts from Santa Barbara-based Fat Uncle Farms. It's smooth, slightly sweet, and pretty much perfect inside coffee — a rare feat for almond milk. Straus's barista whole milk is available, too.

13. The Shop: Cognoscenti Coffee (Los Angeles and Culver City)
The Milks: Califia Farms' almond milk; Strauss's dairy milks.
Cognoscenti's almond milk, which comes from California-based Califia Farms, is made from whole blanched (not roasted) almonds. Last year, Califia struck a deal with Whole Foods, so you can find the almond milk in stores nationwide. For dairy offerings, Straus is again the brand of choice.

14. The Shop: Ritual Coffee (San Francisco)
The Milk: Clover Organic Farms' fresh-pasteurized, antibiotic-free milk.
Clover Organic Farms, an offshoot of Clover Stornetta Farms, has won awards for the way it humanely produces dairy products. It's a popular California dairy: Other shops that use it include in Sightglass, Handsome, Verve, and Linea Caffe.

15. The Shop: Houndstooth Coffee (Austin)
The Milk: Mill King Milk's low-temperature pasteurized, non-homogenized milk.
Brothers Sean and Paul Henry stay true to their Texan roots by using Mill King Milk, a family-run business in Waco where the cows ("handpicked" Holsteins, Brown Swiss, and Jerseys) are grass-fed as much as possible.

16. The Shop: Little Goat Bread (Chicago)
The Milk: LaClare Farms' non-homogenized goat's milk; Prairie Farms ' dairy milk.
Stephanie Izard's coffee shop, which is adjacent to Little Goat Diner, offers next-level goat's milk sourced from LaClare Farms in Wisconsin. Wholesome dairy milk from family-owned Prairie Farms in Carlinville, I.L., Almond Breeze vanilla-almond milk, and Sunrich soy milk are also available.

17. The Shop: Heart (Portland)
The Milks: Sunshine Dairy's natural, rBST-free milk; Pixie Retreat's hazelnut milk.
For his nonfat and whole milks, Finland native Wille Yli-Luoma turns to Portland-based Sunshine Dairy. (Coava Brew Bar, Courier Coffee, and Ristretto Roasters all use Sunshine Dairy, too.) Yli-Luoma also offers Oregon hazelnut milk from local company Pixie Retreat: It's made with Oregon hazelnuts, vanilla bean, dates, and a dash of Himalayan pink salt.

18. The Shop: Ultimo Coffee (Philadelphia)
The Milk: Maplehofe Dairy's pasteurized, homogenized Holstein cow's milk.
This Philadelphia-based coffee company sources cow's milk (skim, whole, and half-and-half) from nearby Maplehofe Dairy in Lancaster County. The owners describe it as "sweet, sweet milk."

19. The Shop: Barista Parlor (Nashville)
The Milk: Hatcher Family Dairy's non-homogenized, farm-fresh milk.
This multi-roaster shop serves whole and skim milk from a family that's been in the farming business since 1851 in College Grove, Tennessee. You can even get to know the cows!

20. The Shop: Sump Coffee (Saint Louis)
The Milk: Ozark Mountain Creamery's antibiotic-free, vat-pasteurized milk.
Owner Scott Carey sources whole milk (and only whole milk) from Ozark Mountain Creamery in Mountain Grove, Missouri. It's a small, local, family-owned company that favors a low-temperature vat-pasteurization process and sells milk in classy glass bottles.

21. The Shop: Artifact Coffee (Baltimore)
The Milk: Trickling Springs Creamery's organic milk.
This spin-off of Woodberry Kitchen gets its milk from Trickling Springs Creamery in Chambersburg, P.A., a darling little dairy that only opened in 2001 (so, compared to the others, it's new-ish).

22. The Shop: Counter Culture HQ (Durham)
The Milk: Maple View Farm's hormone- and antibiotic-free milk, with added vitamin D.
Counter Culture training centers around the nation all use different milks sourced from local dairies — like Sparkman's Cream Valley's milk in Atlanta and Battenkill in New York. But in Durham, where the company is based, Maple View Farm in Hillsborough, North Carolina is the dairy of choice.

23. The Shop: Old City Java (Knoxville, Tennessee)
The Milk: Cruze Dairy Farm's cream-top milk.
The oldest coffee shop in the city serves milk from local purveyor Cruze Dairy Farm (also in Knoxville) with its homemade strawberry-Nutella "Pop-Tarts" and Counter Culture coffee. You can find the milk at farmer's markets around the Knoxville area — and definitely take a look at the charming, retro website.

Read more posts by Sierra Tishgart

Filed Under: grub guides, austin, brooklyn, chicago, coffee, coffee shops, los angeles, new york, philadelphia, san francisco

The talented Mr. Keller.

The venerable French Laundry turns 20 years old this summer, Per Se is now 10, and amidst these double-digit anniversaries, Thomas Keller hints there are even more projects in the pipeline. The fine-dining chef and restaurateur tells Vegas Seven he's been working on a New York City restaurant that is part of a "historic project." No further details are available, but Keller recently morphed Bouchon Bakery in the Time Warner Center into Bouchon Bakery & Café, adding dinner service to the mix. [Vegas Seven via Eater]

Read more posts by Hugh Merwin

Filed Under: expansions, bouchon bakery, per se, thomas keller

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the primary conspirator in the Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people, slipped through airport security because his name was misspelled in a database, according to a new Congressional report.

The Russian intelligence agency warned US authorities twice that Tsarnaev was a radical Islamist and potentially dangerous. As a result, Tsarnaev was entered into two US government databases: the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment and the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS), an interagency border inspection database.

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The World Trade Organization today ruled that China's restrictions on rare earth exports are in violation of international trade law. For years, the country has maintained a stranglehold on the worldwide supply of rare earth elements— crucial to the manufacturing of smartphones, TVs, and a wide array of other electronics. China provides over 90 percent of the world's rare earth shipments and has driven up prices by imposing costly tariffs and export quotas. China has long insisted these measures are necessary to conserve its natural resources and lessen the environmental damage that results from mining rare earths.

But critics maintain that China has built a monopoly around rare earths and used its influence to create an unfair...

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Professional line-sitter Robert Samuel talks to Racked NY about queuing up for Cronuts: "I have two or three uber rich clients. One that lives in Palm Beach and another that lives on Park Avenue. One wants Cronuts a lot [for] whenever friends come to visit from out of town. The other end of the spectrum is people who don't have time and want to get a head start on the line." [Racked NY]

Following yesterday's reveal of Advance Wars, we now know the other Game Boy Advance games coming to the Wii U Virtual Console in North America and Europe next month, as well as Japan. They each cost $8 with the exceptions of WarioWare Inc: Mega...

Never mind the fact this is a fan project. Human Revolution is a Deus Ex short film that's easily on par with anything we would have expected from, say, a commercial TV network.

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Marvel today announced that it plans on bringing all the versions of Spider-Man that ever existed together in a mega-event series that sounds almost too crazy to be true. Spider-Verse, penned by popular writer Dan Slott, will pit Peter Parkers from throughout history, all his allies that ever donned a Spider costume, and even his counterparts from across the Marvel multiverse against a single enemy that's out to absorb their power for some unknown end. "The scope of this event is so big, the word 'epic' just doesn't do it justice," Spider-Man editor Nick Lowe said in a press release.

Details are currently thin — Slott could only tell The Verge that it's "SUPER-Crazy!" — but, judging from the image released with the announcement,...

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Construction of what will one day be the tallest building in the world finally has a start date. According to UK-based architecture magazine Building Design, architects will break ground for Saudi Arabia's Kingdom Tower on April 27th.

The Kingdom Tower, which will reportedly stand at a height of a little more than a kilometer, has been in development for years. The project made major headlines in 2011 when outlets stated that the tower would be an incredible mile high, but designers balked at that early proposal. According to BD Online, architects expect the building to take a full 63 months to complete. When it's finished, it will beat out China's 838-meter tall Changsha Sky City, which will wrest the title from the Burj Khalifa when...

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Google is testing a very different way of showing promotional emails. In a new experimental view, marketing emails don't look like emails at all; instead, they're big, bold ads with large images. The new view follows Google's controversial move to collect marketing emails and place them in a separate tab in Gmail, away from your personal messages and social network updates. With the experimental view enabled, these emails now show as an endless stream of images rather than a set of ten subject lines.

As part of the new view, Google is offering marketers a way to signal in their messages which image and content to highlight. If senders do nothing, Google will take its best guess at what to show in the grid view. It's notable that this...

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Kate Ascher, author of the great The Works: Anatomy of a City, has a new book out about transportation. The Way to Go explores how global transportation works, from how car engines work to the ocean routes travelled by huge cargo ships. Slate has an excerpt.

Focusing on the machines that underpin our lives, Ascher's The Way to Go also introduces the systems that keep those machines in business -- the emergency communication networks that connect ships at sea, the automated tolling mechanisms that maintain the flow of highway traffic, the air control network that keeps planes from colliding in the sky. Equally fascinating are the technologies behind these complex systems: baggage tag readers that make sure people's bags go where they need to; automated streetlights that adjust their timing based on traffic flow; GPS devices that pinpoint where we are on earth at any second. Together these technologies move more people farther, faster, and more cheaply than at any other time in history.

Ordered. The kids are going to love this one...it's like a more grown-up version of Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks and Things That Go.

Tags: books   Cars and Trucks and Things That Go   cities   Kate Ascher   Richard Scarry   The Way to Go

Facebook plans to purchase Oculus VR, maker of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, for $2 billion. The deal is comprised of $400 million in cash and 23.1 million shares of Facebook stock. Facebook announced its surprise purchase via a blog post. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also revealed Facebook's reasons for the deal. "Oculus's mission is to enable you to experience the impossible. Their technology opens up the possibility of completely new kinds of experiences," Zuckerberg says. "Immersive gaming will be the first, and Oculus already has big plans here that won't be changing and we hope to accelerate."

Zuckerberg says that Facebook will "focus on helping Oculus build out their product and develop partnerships to support more...

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Red and blue will spar again on Wii U, because Advance Wars is getting a Virtual Console re-release in Europe on April 3. It'l be one of the first Game Boy Advance games on Wii U in the region, but we don't yet know if it'll be one of the first in...

Facebook has acquired Oculus VR, the company building the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, for $2 billion. Oculus will keep its headquarters in Irvine, California. "We are excited to work with Mark and the Facebook team to deliver the very best...

Gordon Kelly, writing for Forbes:

If you want to stay safe on Android there’s the solution: stick to buying apps on the Play Store and every one in 1000 apps you buy may have had malware for a brief period.

Good news.

Strangely F-Secure didn’t reveal figures for Amazon’s Apps for Android store, but other third party Android stores didn’t fare so well. Mumayi, AnZhi, Baidu, eoeMarket and liqucn were found to have 6%, 5%, 8%, 7% and 8% malware penetration respectively and an appalling 33% of apps were infected in Android159. Repacked or faked games were the big target and since it isn’t difficult to taint an app with malware the message is simple: steer clear of third party app stores that don’t have the resources to effectively scan and police their libraries.

Open always wins.

Winter is coming.

Those chilly winds blowing in off the Hudson, particularly the gusts littered with rainbow sprinkles and maraschino stems, are actually not an indication of yet another cold front, but in fact, the very first signs it's almost time for Dairy Queen to open its ambitious, 2,500-square-foot store at 54 West 14th Street, near Union Square. There's going to be seating for 100 and more soft-serve than you can shake a stick at, not to mention the entire Orange Julius array and the chain's 5-Buck Lunch, which is exactly what it sounds like. New York City already has one Dairy Queen, but it's in the St. George Terminal of the Staten Island Ferry. The 14th Street DQ Grill & Chill will not only be the chain's first location Manhattan, but also its first ever two-story location. It'll open in "mid-to-late May," Blizzards and all. [MarketWatch, Earlier]

Read more posts by Hugh Merwin

Filed Under: coming soon, dairy queen, the chain gang

Following charges from the SLA related to "interlocking interests," Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich will close the wine store at Eataly for six months, and they will pay the state $500,000 in fines. Crain's reports that the restaurateurs reached a settlement with the state today, and as a part of the deal, Lidia Bastianich will also be removed from the Eataly liquor license. The Bastianich family has been in the wine making business for several years now, and it seems that the SLA took issue with the fact that they were both wine producers and retailers. The closing date of the wine store will be determined by the state.

News about the charges against Batali and Co. first surfaced last week. After taking a close look at the SLA documents and chatting with a wine lawyer, Eater editor Levi Dalton wrote: "Whether or not the Eataly wine shop will close for six months in the future may be decided on March 25, but it is unlikely that the result will be a license suspension for any of the restaurants associated with Mario Batali or Joe Bastianich." After today's ruling, it looks like the liquor licenses of the Batali/Bastinich restaurants are safe for now.
· Eataly Wine Store to Close in Liquor-License Dispute [Crain's]
· A Full Explanation of Batali & Bastianich's SLA Issues [~ENY~]
[Krieger]

In honor of tonight's launch of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, the fine folks at Carbot Animation have delivered their own interpretation of the expansion's dark, doom-filled opening cinematic. It's so good.

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Harrison Krix is a guy who we normally post about for his props work, recreating famous video game weapons, but this piece is a little different.

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THE CLOCK IS TICKING, BAUER. On April 1, Netflix is removing 24 from their instant streaming services. That means you have just one week to catch up on the high-octane show before it comes back for a 12-episode limited run in May.

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Edge:

But crucially – at least for the people who have seen iOS platforms become integral parts of their gaming lives – it feels like the potential we saw in Apple’s devices to become a disruptive force has dissipated. Where we once saw a promising new marketplace of fresh ideas, unrestricted creativity, and daring new ways to play, the App Store of 2014 is swamped with cash-guzzling junk, shameless knockoffs and predictable sequels. Games worth discovering still exist, but they mostly dwell on the fringes and in the shadows, while endless horror stories suggest that paid-for games are simply no longer profitable and are dying out. What happened to the iOS gaming revolution?

The case centered on whether the associates of Bernard L. Madoff knowingly misled auditors and investors. They face decades in prison, although the judge will be able to use her discretion in sentencing.