Rexfeng

This stunning new design for an antenna tower outside the Turkish city of Çanakkale has just won an international competition, beating out such big-name firms as Snohetta, Fernando Romero, and Sou Fujimoto. Designed by IND and Powerhouse Company—who worked with structural engineers ABT to make sure it'd all work as planned—the antenna is a racetrack-like loop through the forest, sporting an outdoor pedestrian walkway and indoor public spaces at the tower's base.

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Filed under: Car Buying, BMW, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Dodge, Ford, Jeep, Land Rover, Lexus, Mitsubishi, Scion, Smart

Consumer Reports has announced its annual list of worst vehicles, a cringe-inducing contrast to its list of top vehicles. Ignominiously leading the way in 2014 is Chrysler, which has a staggering seven models listed.

Jeep nearly sweeps the small SUV segment by itself, with its Compass, Patriot and 2.4-liter version of the new Cherokee, while the only midsize sedans listed by CR were the Chrysler 200 and Dodge Avenger. The new Dodge Dart and the Dodge Journey round out CR's condemnation of Chrysler.

Ford is taking heat as well, with the Taurus, Edge and their counterparts from Lincoln all listed as the worst vehicles in their respective segments. Toyota doesn't fare much better, with its Lexus IS, Scion iQ and tC also making the list.

We do agree with CR on some of its listings, like the Smart ForTwo, Mitsubishi Lancer and Honda Crosstour. Some, though, are just baffling. In what way is a BMW 7 Series one of the worst luxury sedans on the market? We have the same question regarding the Lexus IS and the Land Rover Range Rover Evoque. CR also saved some guff at the ancient Volvo XC90, a vehicle that despite its age, remains a competent and very safe luxury crossover.

We've got the full list of losers courtesy of TheDetroitBureau.com classified by segment below. Have a look at our gallery of besmirched autos above, and then head into Comments and let us know which picks you agree with, disagree with and which models you think should be added to the list.

UPDATE: A Chrysler spokesperson told Autoblog that Consumer Reports' Dodge Dart findings were based on time spent with a 2013 model year vehicle. Chrysler is currently working with CR to have them re-test a 2014 model year Dart.

Continue reading Consumer Reports says these are the worst new cars of 2014

Consumer Reports says these are the worst new cars of 2014 originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 27 Feb 2014 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Even after the gold fever died down, gold itself was in the air in San Francisco—as long as you knew where to look. That place would be in the San Francisco Mint. In a majestic granite and sandstone building downtown, bullion was turned into gold coins—as well as lots and lots of gold dust.

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Filed under: SUV, Mercedes-Benz, Celebrities, Russia, Luxury

Russian medalists at the recently concluded Sochi Winter Olympics are being rewarded quite handsomely for their service to the Motherland. In addition to the $120,000 being handed out for each gold medal, the $76,000 being awarded for slivers and $52,000 given to bronze winners, now word has come out that each of Russia's medalists will be gifted a new Mercedes-Benz.

As with the prize amounts, the type of Mercedes offered was based on what sort of medal was won. Gold medalists got a new GL-Class, silver medalists were given an ML and bronze medalists were treated to a GLK. As prices for Mercedes are higher in Russia, the cheapest model, the GLK, was the equivalent of $59,500, according to The Moscow Times. The cars were handed out by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, pictured above with figure skating medalist Julia Lipnitskaia.

"I was a bit shocked at the car I was given," Anton Shipulin, a member of the gold-medal biathlon relay team, told RIA-Novosti. "Of course I knew what kind of model it would be, but I didn't totally believe it." For athletes not old enough to drive, like 15-year-old Lipnitskaia, their Mercedes will come complete with a driver.

In total, the Russian Olympians Foundation handed out 45 cars for the 13 golds, 11 silvers and 9 bronze medals won by Team Russia.

Russia gives its Olympic medalists new Mercedes originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 27 Feb 2014 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I just updated my utility belt.

Well, metaphorically speaking – every self-respecting geek has one.

Lately I've been trying to minimize what I carry around even further. After having children I've come to appreciate the value of less stuff in my life. So here's my everyday carry in 2013:

Compared to my 2011 everyday carry, I have managed to reduce in size almost everything on it:

• Leatherman Style (smaller)
• Nite Ize S-Biner #0 size (smaller)
• iTP EOS AAA flashlight (smaller)
• USB flash drive (removed)

I have no idea why I was using a size #1 S-Biner for so long when the smaller size #0 model does the job just fine. And I gave up the USB flash drive altogether in favor of storing files on whatever smartphone I'm always carrying around with me anyway. (But if you need one, look at the USB 3.0 models, which are almost like little SSD drives in your pocket.)

I also flirted with the idea of dropping the standalone flashlight and relying on my smartphone camera flash as a flashlight, but in my testing smartphones make weak flashlights. It might replace one of those button battery style LEDs in an emergency, but it's not even close to what a decent AAA LED flashlight can do for actual nighttime navigation. It is interesting that LEDs haven't advanced much in the last few years on AAA flashlights. There are somewhat newer Cree XP-G2 models which I also experimented with, but I ended up preferring the minimalist, compact form factor of the iTP EOS. Don't forget the lithium AAA batteries to keep the weight down and runtime up, though!

The Leatherman Style is a fantastic new addition, because it keeps the core functions I used the most on the Leatherman Squirt and removes the extra stuff I didn't. Here's an expanded view of the other side.

So: scissors, knife, screwdriver. Hard to see, but detachable tweezers are also wedged in on the corner. That works for me. These are the functions I used the most on my Leatherman Squirt, by far. The Style is leaner, smaller, lighter … meaner.

(And there's also a nail file, on the other side of the screwdriver, but what is this obsession with nail files on multi-tools? Who are these people filing their nails all the damn time? I've never filed my nails once in my entire life! Can anyone mansplain this to me?)

I also purchased an updated Leatherman Squirt PS4, the one with the integrated scissors as well as the pliers. I'm showing it here fully expanded, next to my old red Squirt that didn't have the scissors.

The pliers are great, and probably the only reason to carry this slightly larger multitool if you need it. But I hardly ever did. The physical dimensions aren't terribly different, but the Squirt PS4 is 56.4 grams, versus the Style at 23.1 grams. Quite a weight savings.

(I would be remiss if I didn't point out that the Squirt and Style are only two of the literally dozens of great Leatherman utility tool choices, from pocket to multi-tool. I like the smallest ones in the model range for my minimalist EDC needs, but you might want more. Of particular note is the Style CS which adds an integrated clip and bottle opener, but bulks up to 41.1g)

So that's my updated utility belt in 2013. Less is more, folks.

But there is one more thing…

If you were worried that Haitz's Law wasn't working for us on these LED flashlights, have no fear. Because for $75, you can now own a compact, roughly AA-sized LED flashlight that produces an astonishing 850 lumens. (For context, the AAA flashlight pictured above produces around 90 lumens on its highest setting.)

I got this Fenix PD35 flashlight to play with, along with some rechargeable 18650 Li-ion batteries (think fatter AA, two CR123A batteries stacked on top of each other), and it is nuts. It's actually painful to look at when lit, and it gets pretty warm in your hands on the high and turbo settings. If you've ever dreamed of carrying a lightsaber, and I know you have, wielding this baby will make you realize that dream is closer today than ever before.

It's also a pretty nice flashlight. Just try to resist making lightsaber noises while using it.

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I've become a huge fan of touch computing. I believe that most things we think of as "computers" will be de-facto tablets, either in our pocket, in our hands, possibly even mounted on our wrists or forearms.

I can't wait for the iPad 5 this week (I'll be ordering three), and my Surface Pro 2 should arrive this week too. Because it is a blazingly fast, modern Intel machine, I like to use the Surface Pro to predict where tablet performance ought to be for everyone in 2 to 3 years. I think of it as an iPad 7.

My main complaint with the Surface Pro is the incredibly lackluster battery life. Granted, this is a classic Intel x86 box we're talking about, not some efficient ARM system-on-a-chip designed to run on a tiny battery. Still, I was hopeful that the first Surface Pro with Haswell inside would produce giant gains in battery life as Intel promised. Then I saw this graph:

So WiFi web browsing battery life, arguably the most common user activity there is on a computer these days, goes from 4.7 hours on the Surface Pro to 6.7 hours on the Surface Pro 2, a 42% increase. That's a decent increase, I suppose, but I was hoping for something more like 8 hours, something closer to doubling of battery life – to bring the Surface Pro in line with other tablets.

Nearly 7 whole hours of WiFi web browsing for a real computer in tablet form factor … that's not bad, right? Let's see how the 2013 MacBook Air does, which spec-wise is about as close as we can get to the Surface Pro 2. The screen is somewhat lower resolution and not touch capable, of course, but under the hood, the i5-4200u CPU and LPDDR3 RAM are nearly the same. It's a real computer, too, using the latest Intel technology.

The Surface Pro 2 has a 42 Wh battery, which puts it closer to the 11 inch Air in capacity. Still, over 11 hours of battery life browsing the web on WiFi? That means the Air is somehow producing nearly two times the battery efficiency of the best hardware and software combination Microsoft can muster, for what I consider to be the most common usage pattern on a computer today. That's shocking. Scandalous, even.

UPDATE: Turns out the Surface 2 Pro was shipped with bad firmware. Once updated, the WiFi adapter enters lower idle power states and this helps a lot, going from 6.6 hours of browsing time to 8.3 hours, a 25% improvement! That puts it much more in line with the rest of the field, at least, even if it doesn't achieve Mac like runtime.

It's not exactly news that Windows historically doesn't do as well as OS X on battery life. Way back in 2009, AnandTech tested a MacBook Pro with multiple operating systems:

2009 15-inch MacBook Pro (73WHr battery)	OS X 10.5.7	Windows Vista x64 SP1	Windows 7 RC1
Wireless Web Browsing (No Flash) Battery Life	8.13 hours	6.02 hours	5.48 hours

That's fine, I knew about this discrepancy, but here's what really bothers me:

1. The Windows light usage battery life situation has not improved at all since 2009. If anything the disparity between OS X and Windows light usage battery life has gotten worse.
   
   
2. Microsoft positions Windows 8 as an operating system that's great for tablets, which are designed for casual web browsing and light app use – but how can that possibly be true when Windows idle power management is so much worse than the competition's desktop operating system in OS X – much less their tablet and phone operating system, iOS?

(It's true that Bay Trail, Intel's new lower power CPU from the Atom family, achieves 8.6 hours of WiFi web browsing. That's solidly in the middle of the tablet pack for battery life. But all the evidence tells me that the very same hardware would do a lot better in OS X, or even iOS. At least Intel has finally produced something that's reasonably competitive with the latest ARM chips.)

Perhaps most damning of all, if you take the latest and greatest 13" MacBook Air, and install Windows 8 on it, guess what happens to battery life?

One of the best things about the standard 2013 MacBook Air 13" is that it has record-breaking battery life of 14 hrs 25 min (with the screen brightness at 100 cd/m², headphones plugged in and the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and keyboard backlighting turned off). Under Windows 8 the results are more mixed [..] in the same conditions it lasts only 7 hrs 40 min. That's still very high—it's better than the Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A's 6 hours and the Samsung Series 7 Ultra's 5 hours—but it's only half the astronomical 14 hours + that the 13" MacBook Air is capable of.

Instead of the 26% less battery life in Windows that Anand measured in 2009, we're now seeing 50% less battery life. This is an enormous gap between Windows and OS X in what is arguably the most common form of computer usage today, basic WiFi web browsing. That's shameful. Embarrassing, even.

I had a brief Twitter conversation with Anand Shimpi of Anandtech about this, and he was as perplexed as I was. Nobody could explain the technical basis for this vast difference in idle power management on the same hardware. None of the PC vendors he spoke to could justify it, or produce a Windows box that managed similar battery life to OS X. And that battery life gap is worse today – even when using Microsoft's own hardware, designed in Microsoft's labs, running Microsoft's latest operating system released this week. Microsoft can no longer hand wave this vast difference away based on vague references to "poorly optimized third party drivers".

Apple is clearly doing a great job here. Kudos. If you want a device that delivers maximum battery life for light web browsing, there's no question that you should get something with an Apple logo on it. I just wish somebody could explain to me and Anand why Windows is so awful at managing idle power. We're at a loss to understand why Windows' terrible – and worsening! – idle battery life performance isn't the source of far more industry outrage.

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This stunning image shows the launch of the Japanese H-IIA rocket as it carries the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory into space. The rocket thundered into the sky at 1:37 p.m. EST on Thursday February 27th and this image was, unsurprisingly , captured by NASA photographer Bill Ingalls.

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Filed under: Convertible, Performance, Etc., Nissan, Design/Style, Luxury

Newport Convertible Engineering, the Southern California company that can't keep its top on, has revealed on its website that it is now producing three different droptop versions of the Nissan GT-R Convertible. It's just another page in its work with high-end offerings like the new Range Rover and the Jaguar XJ. NCE owner Al Zadeh tells Autoblog that the superfast speedster came about during a trip to Abu Dhabi, when clients of his that collectively owned ten GT-Rs said they wanted him to engineer a convertible. They didn't want to see pictures, though, "They wanted to touch it and see it," he said.

So he built a convertible with a traditional, unadorned soft tonneau cover (the white one in our gallery) and another with hard tonneau cover fitted with roll hoops and a low-rise dual cowl (the blue one). When the clients saw it, "They said they wanted something more glamorous," Zadeh said. So he came up with the black version above with a hard tonneau cover and can't-miss-it cowling that, frankly, looks pretty good to us in that color and with those wheels.

Clients satisfied, the order books have opened for other GT-R owners around the world. The most restrained version runs $29,500 to build, the other two retail for $49,000, and all of them require a donor GT-R and eight weeks to finish. With facilities in SoCal, Europe and the Middle East, you won't even have to send your Godzilla too far away if this is the look you've decided it just has to have.

Nissan GT-R convertible offered in three flavors from NCE originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 28 Feb 2014 14:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Stefano Maggiolo made a map of how much the time zones of the world vary from solar time. The darker the color, the more the deviation.

Looking for other regions of the world having the same peculiarity of Spain, I edited a world map from Wikipedia to show the difference between solar and standard time. It turns out, there are many places where the sun rises and sets late in the day, like in Spain, but not a lot where it is very early (highlighted in red and green in the map, respectively). Most of Russia is heavily red, but mostly in zones with very scarce population; the exception is St. Petersburg, with a discrepancy of two hours, but the effect on time is mitigated by the high latitude. The most extreme example of Spain-like time is western China: the difference reaches three hours against solar time. For example, today the sun rises there at 10:15 and sets at 19:45, and solar noon is at 15:01.

Something to note: China is about as big across as the continental United States and has only one huge time zone. (via slate)

Tags: China   maps   Stefano Maggiolo   time

From A Hamburger Today

[Photograph: Sam Gangwer, Orange County Register staff photographer]

Attention In-N-Out fans: a 100-square foot replica of the very first In-N-Out burger stand recently opened in Baldwin Park, CA.

Complete with details like an antique Coldspot refrigerator, vintage fryers, and two-way speakers in the drive-through lane (which, at the time, were revolutionary), it's an exact double of the original stand, built 66 years ago by founders Harry and Esther Snyder. There's no food, though. The building is intended as a showpiece.

The location of the replica stand, less than a mile from the In-N-Out Burger Company Store at I-10 and Francisquito Avenue, is close to the site of the original stand, built in 1948. It was demolished years ago when Interstate 10 was built.

For a closer look (and more photos) check out Nancy Luna's article on the Orange County Register.

Want to drop by and see a slice of history for yourself? The stand is open Thursday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

About the author: Erin Jackson is a food writer and photographer who is obsessed with discovering the best eats in San Diego. You can find all of her discoveries on her San Diego food blog EJeats.com. On Twitter, she's @ErinJax

Love hamburgers? Then you'll Like AHT on Facebook! And go follow us on Twitter while you're at it!

Filed under: Coupe, Performance, Geneva Motor Show, Specialty, Koenigsegg

Koenigsegg is celebrating its 20th birthday this year, and for the occasion, the Swedish specialists are taking the hypercar to the next level with its new Agera One:1 at the 2014 Geneva Motor Show. In fact, it claims that, because it is the first production car with a one megawatt of power (1,341 horsepower), and a power-to-weight ratio of one-to-one (kilogram to horsepower), it goes beyond super or hyper and is actually the "world's first megacar."

This road-bound rocketship is powered by twin-turbocharged, 5.0-liter V8 with the previously mentioned 1,341 hp and 1,011 pound-feet of torque. A seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox and electronically-controled differential makes sure all that grunt gets to the wheels. It is equipped with seemingly science-fiction features like variable geometry turbos in custom, 3D-printed housings and a 3D-printed titanium exhaust. While Koenigsegg claims top speed was not a factor when creating the One:1, it says that it has a simulated top speed of around 440 kilometers per hour (273 miles per hour), which would make it the world's fastest production vehicle. However, the One:1 can never hold the Guinness world record for top speed because only six will be built, all of which it says are already spoken for.

Instead of speed, Koenigsegg says that the One:1 is meant to be a "track focused car." The Swedes claim 2 Gs of cornering capability on road-legal tires, thanks to up to 1,345 pounds of downforce at 160 mph from an active rear wing and independent, active left and right front flaps. In addition to those aids, the ride height, dampers and spring rates all adjust with the car's speed. The chassis can predict the road ahead using GPS, and drivers can even study telemetry later with a 3G connection sending the car's data to an iPhone app.

The One:1 seems to be the next automotive quantum leap on par with the Bugatti Veyron. However, no one outside of Koenigsegg has actually driven it yet. It will be very interesting to see if real life stands up to what the megacar claims on paper. Scroll down to read the press release about the brand's spectacular 20th birthday present, and make sure to check out the high-res gallery, which includes a full spec sheet and great detail on the One:1's aerodynamics package.

Continue reading Koenigsegg Agera One:1 is here, all 1,360 hp and 273 mph of it

Koenigsegg Agera One:1 is here, all 1,360 hp and 273 mph of it originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 28 Feb 2014 13:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tiffany Bridge, on Dropbox’s new terms of service:

Allow me to summarize what it means when a company wants to handle all disputes in arbitration:

No matter what they do (delete your data, privacy breach, overcharging, whatever), you don’t get to sue. Instead, THEY get to choose the arbitrator according to whatever criteria they want, and thus any dispute is decided by someone they’re paying.

Also, you can’t join a class-action suit against them. Which sounds like no big deal, but when a company takes advantage of a bunch of people all in the same small way (incorrectly assessing a service charge, for example), class action is how companies are made to clean up their act en masse, instead of waiting for thousands of people to call them up and demand their $20 back or whatever.

I’m not a lawyer, but it seems clear to me that opting out is in your best interests. I did.

Marco Arment:

The argument that we don’t want “such a dysfunctional government” regulating broadband is weak: “the government” isn’t one big coordinated bogeyman that can’t be trusted with anything. That’s just rhetoric that politicians use to avoid regulation so corporations can make more money at the expense of the citizens or environment. In practice, governmental regulation works so well in most cases that it’s taken for granted and too boring for most people to even think about.

Consider the FCC’s 2011 decision to block AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile — T-Mobile is universally hailed today as shaking up the entire U.S. mobile industry to the benefit of consumers.

Daisuke Nakazawa, smoking something on the sidewalk.

Along with his three prep chefs, Sushi Nakazawa's acclaimed namesake chef Daisuke Nakazawa knows (more or less) what to expect every day. WSJ. takes a look at a typical day for the 35-year-old, who commutes to the West Village from Englewood, New Jersey, where he lives with his wife and four children. Nakazawa knows if his tamago pan is up to temp just by holding it up to his face, can tell how he's going to break down a 400-pound bluefin tuna into fatty and lean bits just buy looking at it, and has gotten his afternoon prep routine down pat enough that he's able to take the time every day to get a cup of coffee from Milk & Cookies Bakery. That, and the fact that he seems to wear his "I ♥ N.Y." T-shirt under his chef's jacket quite a lot, is really kind of sweet. [WSJ., Earlier]

Read more posts by Hugh Merwin

Filed Under: other magazines, daisuke nakazawa, sushi nakazawa

The U.S. government is considering whether to again take the extraordinary step of authorizing the killing of an American citizen, now living in Pakistan.

New puzzle game Puyo Puyo Tetris doesn't only turn Tetris blocks into anime characters. It also turns them into gummies.

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The best chess player in history, 23-year-old Norwegian Magnus Carlsen, has released an iOS app where you can play simulated games against Carlsen at various stages of his career, from age 5 up to the present. The Telegraph has the details.

Anyone who wants to find out more about his playing style can do so with Mr Carlsen's new app, which allows users to play him at the different levels he has achieved since the age of five.

The app is built on hundreds of thousands of different positions from Mr Carlsen's games, be they classical, rapid or blitz, to determine what moves he would make at those ages.

The aim is to promote chess among as many people as possible to make the sport more popular and accessible.

"The good thing is that you can play me at any age. At age five, anyone has a chance to beat me," Mr Carlsen said.

So what is it like for Mr Carlsen to play against his younger self?

"He is really tricky," the champion said. "Even Magnus at 11 years old was a very gifted tactician. A while ago I played as a test Magnus [aged] 14. I outplayed him at some point positionally. And just boom, boom, he tricked me tactically.

"But he makes mistakes as well, so I just have to be patient."

(via mr)

Tags: chess   games   iPhone apps   Magnus Carlsen

Gaming peripheral maker Razer has added a new feature to its GameBooster software suite that allows users to store their PC game saves in the cloud, according to IGN. While still in beta, Razer's Save Game Manager supports "over 2,000 existing PC...

The budget deficit dropped to $680 billion in the 2013 fiscal year, from about $1.1 trillion the year before, largely aided by a rise in tax revenue.

Pharrell Williams and Daft Punk sometimes make music together. They put on funny headgear, and make some of the catchiest songs on the planet. But "Gust of Wind," from Pharrell's upcoming album G I R L, might be the best thing they've ever done.

It's certainly the most likely to incite a sexy dance party.

Continue reading…

John Cage's composition "4'33"" famously includes not a second of sound — at least, not from any of its performers. The piece is meant to draw attention to the sounds happening all around you, and a new app from the John Cage Trust will let you experience the rich ambient sounds being made across the globe. Released for iOS earlier this month, the 4'33" app allows you to explore a map and listen to the composition as it's been recorded by users of the app worldwide. There are already dozens of performances uploaded, with most spread throughout the US, Europe, and Japan. You can record and share your own composition too if you want to give the world an impression of what a short few minutes sound like from where you're sitting.

Continue reading…

What little is known of the condition of the most successful Grand Prix racing driver in history is not encouraging for his prospects of recovery.

Dan Rayburn, in a Comcast/Netflix piece for Streaming Media Blog:

In a little known, but public fact, anyone who is on Comcast and using Apple TV to stream Netflix wasn’t having quality problems. The reason for this is that Netflix is using Level 3 and Limelight to stream their content specifically to the Apple TV device. What this shows is that Netflix is the one that decides and controls how they get their content to each device and whether they do it via their own servers or a third party. Netflix decides which third party CDNs to use and when Netflix uses their own CDN, they decide whom to buy transit from, with what capacity, in what locations and how many connections they buy, from the transit provider. Netflix is the one in control of this, not Comcast or any ISP.

Interesting; I live in Kabletown and watch almost all my Netflix via Apple TV, so this explains why I never encountered a problem.

It's about three times bigger than the Spice Girls' "Spice World."

Those amused by the never-ending aisles of cheese and grissini and barrel-aged vinegar at Eataly will no doubt want to sit down now and avoid choking on their strozzapreti: The slow-food mega-grocer is planning a $54.9 million theme park called Fico Eataly World, which, at its planned 20-acre site in the municipality of Bologna, will be larger than a dozen or more Eatalys put together.

Bologna’s Centro Agroalimentare has put up more than 86,000 square feet of land toward the project, which the Wall Street Journal reports will contain "restaurants, grocery stores, food labs and an aquarium," not to mention what we imagine will be Extra Virgin Olive Oil Slip 'N' Slides, rock-climbing arenas with heirloom salumi ropes, and a ride that simulates the journey through a food mill as seen from the perspective of a San Marzano tomato seed.

The attraction has a planned opening date of November 1, 2015, which isn't soon enough. The chief executive of the fund-management company backing the project says Eataly World should be generating the equivalent of $118 million in revenue by 2019, which means we can definitely expect to have Eataly-branded spumoni water-skiing in Tampa by 2025.

Italian Fund Plans 'Disneyland of Food' [Wall Street Journal]

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Filed Under: eataly world, eataly, eataly theme park, malls and markets, theme park

The Yawhg tells a randomized story every time you (and your friends) sit down to play, a story that begins with the evil Yawhg coming to ransack your town and ends in more than 50 different ways for each character. It's a choose-your-own-adventure...

Not long after 39-year-old Joby Ogwyn summits Mount Everest this May, he's going to strap on a wingsuit and jump right off it. He will fall for ten minutes traveling at speeds of up to 150 mph before he reaches his final destination at Everest base camp — unless he miscalculates and hits a rock face, or a rogue wind gust blows him into China. Fortunately, Ogwyn is bringing his passport.

Continue reading…

For the first time in its 20 year history, Chipotle is making a big change to its menu — by adding tofu. After a year-long testing period, the Mexican fast food chain will roll out Sofritas, the official name for the shredded organic tofu braised with poblanos, chipotle chiles, and spices, in its restaurants nationwide.

The decision wasn't made lightly — Chipotle's culinary manager Nate Appleman told Fast Company that they focused on making a product that tasted better than most other tofu out there, and preparing it with the best ingredients. The company partnered with soy producer Hodo Soy and worked with them to make their organic, GMO-free, soy-based protein into a tasty taco filling. Over the course of the year, Appleman...

Continue reading…

Sundar Pichai, speaking at Mobile World Congress:

We cannot guarantee that Android is designed to be safe, the format was designed to give more freedom. When people talk about 90% of malware for Android, they must of course take into account the fact that it is the most popular operating system in the world. If I had a company dedicated to malware, I would also be addressing my attacks on Android.

The old Windows line of defense: Android is so popular of course it has all the malware. For some reason, though, that’s the only sort of software where Android leads iOS in third-party developer support.

(Also: Android doesn’t account for 90 percent of mobile malware. It’s 98 percent. Update: According to this report from Kapersky Lab, “A total of 99.9% of new mobile threat detections target the Android platform.”)

Update: More context on Pichai’s remarks, including several statements in which he claims, apparently with a straight face, that Android is in fact “far more secure”.

That's a wrap.

The fast-casual chain uses tofu made by the Oakland-based Hodo Soy Beanery for its vegan "Sofritas" option, which makes its official debut at Chipotle locations in New York and Boston on March 3. Sofritas can be deployed in bowls, burritos, and tacos, and are described as "organic shredded tofu braised with chipotle chilies, roasted poblano peppers and a blend of aromatic spices." The chain launched the option at three Bay Area Chipotles last March as a test market, then expanded throughout the West Coast and other markets last summer. The tofu is GMO-free, and the best news for vegans (and perhaps others) is that Chipotle says it's made Sofritas a permanent addition to the menu. [Earlier]

Read more posts by Hugh Merwin

Filed Under: the chain gang, california, chipotle, food news, sofritas, tofu, vegan

Sure, you can spend all kinds of time improving your Cup of Noodles by adding sauces, soft-cooked eggs, or add-on meats, but the British celebrity chef has a brilliant alternative approach, which he posted on Facebook last night. It's got a little highbrow-lowbrow thing going on.

Basically, the way to vastly improve any 80-cent instant ramen cup is to add an $80 spoonful of sturgeon roe. After the noodles are cooked, of course. You know, à la minute.

Come to think of it, an instant ramen bar appointed with self-serve caviar stations might make a really great restaurant concept. Especially if the cocktails were decent.

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Filed Under: beluga, cup noodles, gordon ramsay, hacks, instant ramen, ramen hacks