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Twitter is letting some of its early testers view tweets from only their favorite users with a new "Fave People" timeline. The feature recently appeared in the alpha version of Twitter for Android, meaning it may be some time before it's packaged into the company's regular mobile app — and it could easily be scrapped before that happens. For now, TechCrunch has posted several screenshots of Fave People (including the one below).

Back in December, Twitter rolled out an Android update that included a new option to star / favorite other users. Once enabled, push notifications are delivered for every new tweet from favorited accounts. The Fave People timeline collects all of these preferred users in one place. It's basically an...

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Moisés Chiullan, writing for TechHive:

The experience of signing up for UltraViolet is completely unlike signing up for an AppleID or Amazon account.

First, you have to sign up for an UltraViolet account at UVVU.com, a logical, easy-to-remember (not really) acronym for a service that legally can’t live on an individual studio or recognized brand’s website.

Second, you need to sign up for an UltraViolet-backed service like Flixster, formerly owned by Fox and now owned by Veronica Mars distributor Warner Bros. When forced to use UltraViolet, I prefer Vudu, even though it’s owned by Walmart. Other options include CinemaNow (Best Buy) and Target Ticket (Target).

And possibly third, you may find that the service that you chose is “already linked to an UltraViolet account.” You may have signed up in the past and forgot about it, back when the service in question was owned by a different company or went by another name or identity. (Flixster, for example, snagged its first big wave of users as a Facebook app.) Or you might have tried to redeem a digital copy of a disc from a studio that doesn’t give you the option of redeeming via iTunes or Amazon.

What a mess. This turd of a system has no chance of long-term success with a process like this.

Christina Warren, on Twitter:

This whole Veronica Mars redemption BS really is a reminder that as much as I love the idea of UltraViolet, it has an awful implementation.

Ideas are nearly worthless; implementations mean everything.

Shameful.

In a potentially stunning new finding, astronomers say that they have seen evidence supporting a key element in the Big Bang theory: a hypothesized period of exponential expansion of the universe known as "inflation" — or, what one researcher calls, "the bang of the big bang." Inflation is believed to have happened in the early slivers of the second during which the universe began, and researchers now say that they have seen the first direct evidence of this expansion. "These results are not only a smoking gun for inflation," Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb says in a statement, "they also tell us when inflation took place and how powerful the process was."

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[Paulie Gee's by Daniel Krieger]

As a Pizza Week special, here, now, is a map of New York City's 25 most iconic pizzerias. These are the establishments that have shaped our collective understanding of New York City pizza. Some of these restaurants are very old, while others are new. The map spans all five boroughs and includes recommendations on what to order at each pizzeria. Here's a map of 25 places that every pizza lover should visit at least once, listed in alphabetical order:

Honorable mentions: Keste, NY Pizza Suprema, Prince Street Pizza, Best Pizza, Bleecker Street Pizza, Two Boots, Manetta's, Arturo's, Adrienne's Pizza Bar, Pete Zaaz, Milkflower, Coals, Fornino, Forcella, Speedy Romeo, Don Antonio, Williamsburg Pizza, and Juliana's.

Did we miss anything? Think any of these pizzerias aren't worthy of inclusion on this map? Please state your case in the comments.

Nate Silver first made a name for himself when he correctly predicted the outcome for 49 of the 50 states in the 2008 American presidential election. He parlayed that into a role as a blogger for the New York Times and, after beating every other pundit and prognosticator by a wide margin during the 2012 elections with a perfect 50 for 50 prediction, he got his own website funded by ESPN. Today that website, FiveThirtyEight.com, launched to the public with a focus on data journalism.

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These sleek hangers, designed by German-Latvian agency Flow Design, look like something's missing. Don't worry, though: they've simply swapped the hooks for magnets.

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Since 2008 Hungarian/German graphic designer David Szakaly has been churning out some of the most dizzying, hypnotic and wholly original gifs on the web under the name Davidope. His blend of twisting organic forms, flashes of black and white, and forays into pulsing technicolor shapes have inspired legions of others to experiment with the medium, many of whom have been featured here on Colossal. It’s hard to determine the scale of Szakaly’s influence online, but a simple Google image search for “animated gif” brings up dozens of his images that have been shared around Tumblr hundreds of thousands of times.

Szakaly began experimenting with the vector animation program Macromedia Flash back in 1999 where he used the software to create presentations, banners, and other creatives for clients. It was nearly a decade later when he decided to dedicate more time to experimenting with motion graphics and found that Tumblr was a great platform to share his quirky gifs. While he still works in the corporate world on other digital projects, he has also found commercial success making animations for clients around the world. Though it’s his personal work that really stands out. If or when gifs end up on gallery walls, it will be hard to deny Szakaly’s role in getting them there.

As government financing of basic research has fallen off precipitously, philanthropists have stepped in, setting personal priorities and raising questions about science’s status as a public good.

In a post on its corporate blog, the company said it plans to list on an American stock market to become “a more global company.”

A pre-dawn earthquake rolled across the Los Angeles basin on Monday, rattling residents from the San Fernando Valley to Long Beach but causing no reported damage.

A German engineering company has programmed a dangling robot arm to learn movements and actions in the same way human babies do. The arm, which was designed to be as dexterous as an elephant's trunk, can be taught to reproduce certain positions on command through a process known as "goal babbling," in which the robot remembers small changes in the pressure of its pneumatic "muscles." New Scientist says this approach is similar to the way human babies learn to interact with the world through a process of trial and error.

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Tonx co-founder Tony Konecny:

The popularity of capsule coffee systems like K-Cups and Nespresso is a marketing marvel. GMCR estimates that around 13% of all U.S. households have one of their devices. But the real money comes from not from the razors but the blades. Ounce for ounce, consumers are generally paying anywhere from $35–60 a pound for the ground coffee inside these capsules. Lock-in is lucrative.

That’s an insane price for mass-produced quality coffee. The appeal of these machines escapes me — I wouldn’t want one even if the coffee prices were roughly in line with regular market prices. But at these prices it just seems nutty. Is it because they can brew just one cup at a time?

Update: Full disclosure: Tonx has been a recurring DF sponsor, but my interest here is in what people see in these pod brewers.

Tara Culp Ressler, writing for Think Progress:

Federal health officials have already been able to connect the dots here. Last fall, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a report warning that anti-vaccine beliefs have fueled a rise in measles cases. Researchers noted that 2013 saw the highest number of measles cases in nearly two decades, and 80 percent of those cases occurred among unvaccinated people — most of whom cited “philosophical differences” with the MMR vaccine.

Is this anti-vaccination movement just a U.S. thing, or is it spreading in other countries too?

Update: Reader responses make clear that this is not just a U.S. thing; it’s a problem in a slew of first-world countries today.

Mark Zuckerberg:

This is why I’ve been so confused and frustrated by the repeated reports of the behavior of the US government. When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we’re protecting you against criminals, not our own government.

The US government should be the champion for the internet, not a threat. They need to be much more transparent about what they’re doing, or otherwise people will believe the worst.

Exactly.

(Also, note the attribution: “Via Paper”. Did he write that whole thing on his iPhone?)

The action seeks to recover losses the rate manipulation caused to 10 banks that failed and were taken over by the agency.

An international group, not yet determined, will take over the task of assigning names and numbers for Internet addresses.

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A city in Florida could be abolished after state auditors discovered a myriad of accountability problems that suggest its small staff might have been taking advantage of government funds and resources. According to The New York Times, one of the most glaring and noted problems bringing the city of Hampton to attention was that it had turned a small stretch of highway that it annexed back in the mid-'90s into a speed trap, using it to hand out over 12,000 tickets between just 2011 and 2012. Though it holds just a quarter mile of federal highway, the city reportedly lowered the speed limit by 10 miles per hour — down to just 55 mph — from the stretch of road around it, and was easily able to ticket scores of drivers passing through.

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$500 million in debt the worst thing to happen to the chain since sliced bread.

The Denver Post reports that Quizno's has filed for bankruptcy, a move that is expected to ease a listed debt of $500 million by more than $400 million. Fans of the chain's "toasted" subs (and/or its beleaguered '00s-era spokes-creatures) will be pleased to know that there aren't expected to be any closings among the chain's 2,100 stores, which are mostly franchised. This isn't the first time Quizno's has gotten into trouble with mounting debt, unhappy franchisees, and poor sales, and earlier reports indicated that the fast-casual chain was negotiating a deal with creditors. Competitor Sbarro filed for a second bankruptcy this week, in a move that experts say is an indication that someone is really out to get all of the places you used to go after hitting the mall back when you were a teenager. [Denver Post, Related]

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Filed Under: the chain gang, bankruptcy, foot-longs, quizno's, sandwiches, subway

Valve just sent us this image, a more clear depiction of the latest Steam Controller prototype that they detailed back in January .

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This was yesterday.

There were already seven people in line at 4:15 a.m. on Monday, two hours before the city's first Dunkin' Donuts was scheduled to open inside the Embassy Suites San Diego Bay-Downtown. The store is one of 149 more set to colonize the largely Dunkin-free West Coast during the next few years, and despite the fact that the grand opening incentive coffee giveaway ended with the 101st customer sometime after 8 a.m., customers kept queuing up. "They have so many doughnut flavors," one newscaster gushed, as the camera panned through the crowd. "I honestly don't know where to begin."

U-T San Diego even posted a half-serious, mostly tongue-in-cheek guide to surviving the line at the Dunkin', which isn't even open 24 hours a day and is instead some kind of 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. operation. The area is already home to several esteemed doughnut shops, so presumably the enthusiastic response to the chain is one part because of its novelty and another owing to East Coast expat fans. In any case, the allure of 64-ounce coffees and turkey sausage breakfast sandwiches is apparently strong enough that there were lines out the door through yesterday. It probably won't be so bad when there's one on practically every corner.

Line's how long at new San Diego Dunkin' Donuts? [U-T San Diego]

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Filed Under: lines, doughtnuts, dunkin' donuts, long lines, san diego, the chain gang

In the wake of tragedy, Uber today announced policy changes that will expand insurance coverage for its drivers in the event they're involved in an accident. Uber will now cover drivers so long as they're logged into the company's smartphone app and available to accept a ride — even if there's no passenger in the car when an accident occurs. This liability coverage kicks in only if a driver's personal insurance fails to cover an incident and provides up to $100,000 in bodily injury coverage and $25,000 in property damage.

"Uber is taking this step to eliminate any ambiguity while the insurance industry and state governments update policies and regulations for the new world of ridesharing transportation," the company wrote in a blog...

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A 20-year-old Los Angeles man has been arrested after he allegedly threatened to shoot someone walking down the street in exchange for 100 retweets on Twitter, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. The Los Angeles Times reports that the man, Dakkari Dijon McAnuff, posted a photo on Twitter showing a rifle pointed out at the street with the caption "100 [retweets] and I'll shoot someone walking."

After being alerted to the photo, police tracked McAnuff down at his home in downtown LA and arrested him on suspicion of making criminal threats. An air rifle was found at the home, the Times reports. McAnuff's Twitter account has been deleted.

The incident is only the latest example of posts on social media leading to offline...

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New radar evidence has increased the possibility that foul play was involved in the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, according to a report from Reuters. The publication cites two sources close to the investigation as saying military radar-tracking evidence suggests the plane was deliberately flown northwest towards the Indian Andaman Islands.

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While Titanfall might be one of the Xbox One's most popular games this year, Respawn said the game wasn't originally in production for the console at all. In an interview with Eurogamer, lead engineer Richard Baker explained that Titanfall was...

Epic, feature-length cover story for Businessweek:

In testimony before Congress, Target has said that it was only after the U.S. Department of Justice notified the retailer about the breach in mid-December that company investigators went back to figure out what happened. What it hasn’t publicly revealed: Poring over computer logs, Target found FireEye’s alerts from Nov. 30 and more from Dec. 2, when hackers installed yet another version of the malware. Not only should those alarms have been impossible to miss, they went off early enough that the hackers hadn’t begun transmitting the stolen card data out of Target’s network. Had the company’s security team responded when it was supposed to, the theft that has since engulfed Target, touched as many as one in three American consumers, and led to an international manhunt for the hackers never would have happened at all.

It occurs to me that a similar breach is surely one of the biggest risks facing Apple today. Nobody has been trusted with more credit card numbers than Apple, and there’s no company whose shortcomings garner more press attention.

I've got a soft spot for Photoshopped architecture photos, so Zacharie Gaudrillot-Roy's Façades series is right up my alley. Gaudrillot-Roy removes the volume of buildings until they're left with just their façades.

(via colossal)

Tags: architecture   Zacharie Gaudrillot-Roy