Rexfeng

Don't worry, everybody does it. And look at it this way: at least it means the delivery guy never gets an unwelcome surprise. [Doghouse Diaries]

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Romain Dillet, writing for AOL/TechCrunch:

Recently, Google acquired Nest, and TechCrunch has learned that Google has big plans for the team behind the connected device company. […]

Moreover, Fadell managed to attract great Apple engineers when he started working on Nest. They wanted to follow Fadell’s plans and were good engineers. And that’s exactly what Google was looking for when it acquired Nest. When it comes to budget, Google is willing to let the Nest team use as many resources as it needs. In other words, the company is getting serious about consumer hardware, and Motorola was just a false start.

That’s what I thought, right from the start. The key is Tony Fadell’s ambition and track record. He’s not looking to make Google thermostats; he’s looking to change the world.

Google selling Motorola to Lenovo isn’t a sign that Google isn’t interested in Apple-style hardware/software product development — it’s a sign that they’ve found a much better way to do it in Nest.

Perhaps you knew that Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, based his characters on his own family members: Homer, Marge, Lisa, and Maggie Groening. Perhaps you even knew that his father, Homer, flew a B-17 bomber over Europe, worked as an advertising executive, and made many of his own films. What you probably didn't know is that Matt would cite one such early work as the inspiration for parodying his own relatives: a made-up story about Matt and Lisa having a bizarre animal adventure, which his father Homer turned into a movie.

This is that film. Produced in 1964 — when Matt was 10 years old — "The Story" follows Matt and Lisa strolling around Portland, Oregon's Washington Park and Zoo, set to an audio recording of Lisa telling...

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I never really understood complimentary colors, which makes sense, because I did horribly on that section of Color. It's an incredibly simple game that will drive you mad trying to get a perfect score.

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Amazon today said it's "considering" raising the price of its $79 per year Prime service to customers in the US by another $20 to $40. The possible increase — which has not been finalized — was announced during the company's fourth quarter earnings call with analysts, and due to higher costs of shipping goods, Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak said.

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It's hard to argue the fact that Lego is one of the greatest toys of all time, but who says the plastic building blocks have to only be used as toys? The creators of these wonderful Togetherfarm Blocks—made from recycled food-grade plastic—are intended for use as planters and garden boxes in any shape or size you can imagine.

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Crytek, developer of Ryse and shooters traditionally incorporating the word "Cry" in the title have launched pre-registration for The Collectables, its first free-to-play mobile action game incorporating CryEngine tech. Anyone want a special pre-reg goodie code?

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Reports say that Microsoft is considering Satya Nadella to step in as the company's new CEO after a months-long search. He has been near the top of the list of expected candidates to take Steve Ballmer's role, and now Bloomberg and other outlets report that he is likely the next to take the job. Microsoft spokesperson Frank Shaw declined to confirm or deny the reports, telling The Verge, "We are not commenting." Bloomberg's sources note that the decision has yet to be finalized, but he has "emerged as one of the stronger candidates" over the past few weeks. Dina Bass, the lead reporter on the Bloomberg article, says in a tweet: "Microsoft's board is preparing to name Satya Nadella CEO, sources tell us."

In addition, the report says that...

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This image—found by Erika Engelhaupt—shows the best places to hide in case of a nuclear blast, part of a recent government guide about what to do in case of a nuclear detonation. It's scary to see that the US is still actively considering this risk.

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There's been quite a bit of debate recently about the Southern states' inability to handle what (at least to the North) might barely even qualify as a light dusting. Now, Reddit user atrubetskoy has taken the opportunity to create a fantastic map detailing just how much snow it typically takes to keep kids home.

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A new kind of advertising — personalized and based on physical location — will greet fans in Times Square and MetLife Stadium, where the Super Bowl will be played this weekend.

Nintendo’s president vowed Thursday to stick to the company’s old ways and refused to resign or cut product prices.

Banks have begun selling bonds backed by foreclosed homes turned into rentals in the United States, bringing calls for Congress to look into the deals.

Momentum from the previous quarter continued into the holiday period, which grew at a 3.2 percent annual rate, as the economy shrugged off the effects of the government shutdown and debt standoff.

From Serious Eats: New York

[Photographs: Andrew Coe]

A bakery's business depends on its oven capacity. One small oven might be just enough to fill its shelves, while more ovens lead to a more ambitious business plan. We know Bien Cuit from its Smith Street store, where the ovens in back fill the space with a warm and toasty aroma—and great loaves. But owners Zachary Golper and Kate Wheatcroft also have a big baking facility down in the Sunset Park industrial zone. There, they're crafting great baked goods for coffee shops, sandwich stores, and some of the city's best high-end restaurants.

To my bread-centric tastes, too few restaurants pay real attention to their bread baskets. (Bring back Vandaag, with Nathan Berg's amazing breads!) For most chefs, it's enough to offer a few pro forma French rolls, grissini, and flatbreads. However, if they really want to integrate their bread baskets into their menus—and don't have their own ovens like Boulud and Bouley—then they turn to bakeries like Bien Cuit to produce their own bespoke bread creations.

"This is my background," says Golper, "taking a chef's cuisine and matching the flavors and textures of the dishes to bread that would be appropriate for the food."

Before he came to New York, he oversaw the ovens at Philadelphia's Le Bec-Fin. Since Bien Cuit opened, he's made bread baskets for restaurants like Aldea, Corton, Rouge Tomate, and Gramercy Tavern. Working closely with Gramercy's Chef Michael Anthony, he developed that restaurant's current offering, a Chive Pain Au Lait. Unlike Bien Cuit's more rustic retail offerings, this is a round and delicate puffball of a roll that stimulates the tastebuds more than it fills the stomach. It's suffused with a rich chive flavor that blends seamlessly with the roll's soft texture. A few grains of sea salt punctuate the top. For a Gramercy Tavern autumn harvest dinner, Zach invented a "Must & Mash" roll made from bourbon sour mash, grape must, and corn flour. (Note to Bien Cuit: let us mere mortals purchase these rolls for our home bread baskets!)

Bien Cuit also produces a more conventional roster of rolls that it sells to dozens of restaurants around the city. This includes the 'wichcraft ciabatta roll, which manages to be uniformly-sized but still crisp and well-flavored (unlike so many pale and sponge-like industrial ciabattas). It also makes the pastries sold at a number of the Joe the Art of Coffee stores. My favorite is Pineapple Whole Wheat Muffin ($2.50), made from chunks of roasted pineapple that provide a delicious, slightly sweet and rich counterpoint to the moist whole wheat dough.

About the author: Andrew Coe is the only reporter covering the city's bread beat.

From Serious Eats: New York

[Photographs: Robyn Lee]

Rarely have I looked at an ice cream sundae and thought, "you know, what I really want is three of these at once served on top of a pie with a heap of cookie dough chunks and hot fudge sauce." But the good people at Ample Hills did. Meet the Trough, an ice cream sundae that should be eaten by no fewer than 10 people, lest you take a fall from the deadliest sugar crash New York has ever known.

In the grand tradition of "kitchen sink"-style, let's-put-every-ingredient-we-can-in-one-bucket sundaes (see: the Vermonster), the Trough ($51.45) begins with a full pie. It's called "malty salty pudding pie," a gooey, very sweet chess pie in the Momofuku crack pie strain.

On top goes eight scoops of ice cream (your choice of flavors), whipped cream, homemade hot fudge and caramel sauces, chunks of cookie dough, a salty-sweet snack mix called "munchies," (pretzels and saltine cookies, mainly), sprinkles, and a small gummy cow in place of the traditional cherry, which laughs at your feeble attempts to conquer this scoop shop goliath.

It's comically sweet, because of course it is, because this is an eight-scoop sundae served on top of a pie and really you shouldn't expect anything else. It's also a hell of a lot of fun, pretty much designed for parties and large crowds of the worryingly daring. And when priced out per person, it's just over $5 each. That's assuming ten people; we tried with six and fell victim to the Trough's melty might like so many Jawas against a jiggling Jabba the Hutt.

So do consider ordering the Trough if you have a crowd, but take care with your ice cream selection. Go for flavors that pair well, and try ordering two scoops of four flavors rather than one scoop of eight—more isn't better in this case. Simplicity also works to your favor—scoops like vanilla, chocolate, and coffee hold their own better than Ample Hills's whackier ice creams.

But that's enough talking. Here's the Trough in all its gory glory. It begins with a pie.

Then one scoop.

And eventually eight, along with some whipped cream.

Hot fudge and caramel sauce (both excellent) come after.

Then cookie dough from the chunk bucket.

The finished sundae gets an inedible fence, as if that could contain it. (Note: the Trough usually has sprinkles, but ours were omitted accidentally.)

Stare into the Trough and it stares back into you.

Dig in fast while your spirits are still strong.

Don't hold back!

About here is where we cried uncle.

Until we got our second wind.

About the author: Max Falkowitz is the New York editor and ice cream maker in residence at Serious Eats. You can follow him on Twitter at @maxfalkowitz.

In the newest installment of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Jerry Seinfeld and Tina Fey stopped by Dominique Ansel Bakery to eat tons of pastries — including a Cronut^®, of course. (Ansel arrives near the 12:20 mark.) "Are there going to be chains of Cronut stores?" asks Tina, before deciding that Ansel's instead going to "take a 70-week vacation and never make it again," because he's French.

Read more posts by Sierra Tishgart

Filed Under: video feed, comedians in cars getting coffee, cronuts, dominique ansel

The next time you're looking to order in online, you might want to head to Foursquare instead of Seamless. That's because you can now find out which restaurants near you accept orders from Seamless or Grubhub straight from Foursquare's mobile and web apps. If you're not a Foursquare user it might not sound like a significant change, but with the update the check-in service could become the primary way to find out where to order delivery.

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From Serious Eats: New York

[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

With Super Bo... game day just around the corner and winter in full swing, NOW is the time to pile into a warm, cozy bar or taco shack with your friends, gather around the table, down a few soul-nurturing brews, and dig into a plate of nachos, that most communal of communal dishes. I mean, seriously: can you name a single dish more fun-to-share than a plate of nachos?

Not only are they delicious (when made right, and we'll get to that), but they practically create their own conversation. Everybody has an opinion on how chunky the guacamole should be. We all have feelings about whether chili or beans make a better topping. Who hasn't considered whether or not they'd ever prefer a fresh jalapeño to a pickled one, and who hasn't considered de-friending a friend who dares to express a preference for fresh over pickled? And then there's the ever-raging debate of cheese sauce vs. melted cheese, a subject you might actually consider not broaching in mixed company (I know from experience that it can end in all kinds of messiness).

Anybody who sells a plate of nachos in New York must have asked themselves these same questions, and I'm in the business of getting answers. For the past few weeks, I've been on a hunt to find out who has the hottest, meltiest, cheesiest, most shareable plate of 'chos in the city.

The Criteria

I tasted and judged all nachos according to the following criteria. The weighting for each category was sliding: how the nachs worked together as a whole was more important than the sum of the individual components. Still, there were some standards to live up to.

• Quality of Chips. The chips in a pile of nachos go through more abuse than a blitzed quarterback. It doesn't matter to me if the chips are thick and crunchy or thin and crisp, but for top marks, they must taste fresh and stand up to the assault of gooey and moist toppings to the last chip. Extra points if they're fried in-house.
• Quality of Toppings. Topping choices can vary, but each should be best in class. Is your guacamole fresh, bright, and well seasoned? Does your chili have a nice balance of heat and meatiness? Are your beans creamy and intact?
• Balance of Toppings. There also needs to be a good balance between toppings overall, combining fresh crisp vegetables, hot chilies, bright pickled jalapeños or salsa, creamy and cooling sour cream, and rich guacamole or chili. Without brightness and textural contrast, nachos quickly become heavy and stodgy.
• Cheese: Sauce or Fresh? This matter has proved to provide some intense debate at the bar. Shredded cheese has the advantage of gooey stretchiness but can turn greasy and congeal-y if you let the nachos sit too long (some folks look at this as a feature, not a bug). Cheese sauce, on the other hand, stays creamy and dip-able to the last chip, but doesn't have any of the stretchiness that regular cheese has. And be careful: some of the nachos we tried had béchamel-style cheese sauces that tasted like they'd be more at home on a plate of fettucini alfredo. Cheese sauce has got to be glossy, smooth, and tangy (sort of like this).

Some good layering on the nachos at The Commodore: if there are toppings left smeared on the plate instead of dry chips, you're doing well.

• Layering. Don't you hate when the chips at the bottom of the pile come up completely empty? Nachos should be assembled with the cheese and select other ingredients layered throughout.
• Temperature. The chips need to come out hot, and more importantly, need to stay hot as you eat. This means preheated platters or plates and rapid delivery to the table. It's amazing the number of nachos I tried that were nothing more than lukewarm chips with pumped-out cheese sauce.
• Volume. Nachos shouldn't be dainty. I want a big, messy pile that lasts and lasts.

The Best Restaurant Nachos

These are nachos served in a restaurant setting. Great for sharing with friends over happy hour, but not places where you can catch the game.

Winner: Carnitas Nachos From Taqueria Diana

Carnitas Tacos from Taquería Diana

This relative newcomer opened by homesick Californian Matthew La Rue serves their nachos in a giant metal tray, which allows not only for more overall mass, but better topping distribution to boot: every one of the freshly-fried chips gets some form of topping or another. And with some nachos, there is a winner in the toppings category. Not so here. Their tender-crisp carnitas, refried beans, fresh guacamole, and melty Jack cheese are all worthy of fighting over.

The whole mess comes topped with a big drizzle of Mexican crema, pickled jalepños and carrots, and a hot salsa verde. Bonus: want a little more flavor on your chips? Those bottomless squeeze bottles of salsa roja, salsa verde, and a hot habanero salsa are only an arm's reach away.

The Best Restaurant Nachos Runners Up

Runner Up #1: Coppelia

Coppelia

The all-day Cuban diner on 14th street takes a non-traditional approach to nacho layering: At the bottom of the plate you'll find a deep pool of fresh and gooey muenster cheese sauce along with some of their excellent Cuban black beans. Piled on top of that are thick-cut chips layered with semi-melted muenster and gouda cheese, pickled jalapeños, crema, and guacamole, along with crisp-edged frizzled chunks of roasted short rib.

It'll take you a few bites to expose the pool of cheese sauce underneath, but once you do, the dipping begins and won't end until the whole platter is cleared.

Runner Up #2: Calexico

Calexico

Calexico answers the eternal question of cheese vs. cheese sauce in the best way possible: they use both. Tangy cheese sauce and crema are ladled over chips already covered with melty, stretchy cheese along with some fresh sweet corn, black beans, cilantro, pico de gallo, pickled jalapeños, and a scoop of guacamole. It's the true cheese-lover's nacho.

Runner Up #3: El Toro Blanco

El Toro Blanco's happy hour nachos

The nachos are only available from 3 to 7 p.m. on weeknights, but man, are they worth it. If these were on-the-menu-all-the-time nachos, they may well have come in on the very top. Thick, crunchy chips layered with pinto beans, a cheddar cheese sauce, melted Oaxaca cheese, and crumbled queso fresco, along with crema, pico de gallo, and pickled jalapeños. Take it over the top for $1 more by adding a meat of your choice (you want the chorizo). Nachos and a glass of wine or a beer on a weeknight for just about $10 pre-tip? That's not a bad deal.

The Best Bar Nachos

These are nachos to be consumed while drinking beer, watching the game, and generally having a raucous time.

Winner: The Commodore

The Commodore

The Cadillac Nachos at the Williamsburg hipster dive The Commodore live up to the name. Their sheer massiveness is the first thing you'll notice as the Super Aggro Crag-sized tower makes its way across the room. With the combined power of three salsas (red, green, and a spicy creamy version), crema, and the tastiest cheese sauce I tried, this pile of finger-licking fat and carbs is capable of Captain Planet-level degrees of awesomeness, giving you rich, hot, and tangy flavors in each bite.

Don't let the crisp radishes and shower of cilantro and scallions on top fool you: these nachos are all business.

Best Bar Nachos Runner Up: Phebe's Tavern & Grill

Phebe's Tavern & Grill

The archetypical bar nacho. There's nothing fancy or over-the-top here, just a good solid base of chips, melted yellow and white cheddar cheese, and the Three Scoops of the nacho world: salsa, guacamole, and sour cream. A handful of pickled jalapeños finishes off the plate. Because of the compartmentalized nature of the toppings, this is a plate of nachos that invites competition: you better get in there and start scoopin' guac before your buddy does.

Best Fancy-Pants Nachos

These are nachos that are cheffed up beyond your standard bar or taqueria fare. This doesn't necessarily make them better, but they're a good change from the norm.

Winner: Draught 55

Draught 55 has the kind of Irish pub menu that makes you think, "this dish sounds delicious. I think this dish and my stomach would get along nicely if they were to meet," over and over again. The nachos are not an exception. They come served on a hot sizzle platter with the edges of the chips tinged toasty brown—a good sign they've been in the oven long enough to melt every layer of cheese within.

The star topping is a ground beef chili made with Rogue Brewery's Chipotle Ale, and it's balanced with pickled banana peppers in place of jalapeños, a charred corn salsa, sliced avocado, and crema.

Best Fancy-Pants Nachos Runner Up: River Styx

You don't expect to see nachos on the menu at River Styx, a very Brooklyn restaurant with a farm-to-table vibe and a fully bearded kitchen staff, nor do you expect those nachos to come doused in a cheese sauce made with heavy cream and American cheese, but there they are, and they're damn good too. Perhaps this is what irony has become these days.

The nachos may ask more questions than they answer: what's up with the handful of radishes? Do chives have any business being on a plate of nachos? How do they get that shredded pork so moist and tender? Am I really supposed to eat this massive forest of cilantro stems? But luckily, they taste so good that they'll make you realize some questions are simply better left unasked.

About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.

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The art of camouflage is more than throwing paint at a soldier, and it's not one-size-fits-all. That's a lesson the US military has learned to its chagrin, as it phases out what was supposedly going to be a "Universal Camouflage Pattern" which cost a reported $5 billion to develop. Now, Gizmodo explains — with the help of camouflage designer Guy Cramer — why that pattern failed, given how the human eye works and given the history of the medium. Revelations include that the Army failed to include any black color in the design, which can make the camo appear flat against 3D surfaces, and that the scale of the digital pattern can trigger an optical effect that makes soldiers easier to spot at a distance. You can read the full story at...

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Michael de la Merced, writing for NYT Dealbook:

When Google bought Motorola, the hardware maker had about $3 billion in cash on hand and nearly $1 billion in tax credits. So that brings the original deal’s price down to about $8.5 billion.

Then, Google sold Motorola’s set-top box business to Arris for nearly $2.4 billion. That lowers the price down to roughly $6.1 billion.

Now, Google is selling Motorola Mobility — primarily the handset business, along with a few patents — for $2.9 billion. So we’re at about $3.2 billion.

I’m with him so far, but when he takes Google’s claims that Motorola’s patents (which Google will retain rights to) are worth $5.5 billion, because that’s what Google claims they’re worth, that’s where he loses me. Motorola’s patents have lost in court every time they’ve taken them to court. E.g. the chart on this post from The Verge.

Update: De la Merced doesn’t take into account that under Google, Motorola lost money every single quarter — several billion dollars in total.

For some of us, a couple of inches of snow makes for a lovely summer day. But for others who aren't used to the white stuff, it can wreak havoc on motorways and cause endless headaches. No matter what the emergency it's good to be prepared, and for the price of a small car, you can get everything you'd possibly need in one fell swoop with Wolfram's survival cabinet.

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HTC has recently become quite proactive about trying to keep its flagship phone running the latest version of Android — the company pledged to roll out KitKat 4.4 to every HTC One in North America, regardless of carrier, by the end of January. With the month nearly out, the president of HTC Americas Jason Mackenzie has admitted his company is going to miss its self-imposed deadline. "We are currently in the certification phase across all of our carrier partners in North America, and they share our enthusiasm for getting this software in your hands," Mackenzie writes. "That said, the software development process does not always follow a linear path and we know today that we will miss our self-imposed target." Fortunately, the...

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You could have a normal snowball fight. Or...you could go all out and dress up like Team Fortress characters and then frolic in the snow.

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During Titanfall's recent closed alpha playtest, developer Respawn Entertainment instituted several changes at the server-side level. As a result, Titanfall changed, yet players were never locked out of the game during these periods. In a post on ...

If point-and-shoot cameras have a future it's all about zoom, and Olympus just innovated the super long super zooms with a badly needed addition we didn't even know they needed: A red dot zoom like a sniper rifle. That sounds horrible and murderous, but it's really just good for killing photos.

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Google is selling Motorola Mobility to Lenovo, giving the Chinese smartphone manufacturer a major presence in the US market. Lenovo will buy Motorola for $2.91 billion in a mixture of cash and stock. Google will retain ownership of the vast majority of Motorola's patents, while 2,000 patents and a license on the remaining patents will go to Lenovo. At the deal's closing, Lenovo will pay Google $660 million in cash and $750 million in stock, while the remaining $1.5 billion will be paid out over three years.

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In a thread about the newly visible supernova in the M82 galaxy, MetaFilter user Ivan Fyodorovich offered up this plain-English explanation of what happens when a star dies and goes supernova. It's a great read.

It will take it just 6 months to burn up its oxygen. Again, when there's not enough oxygen being fused to generate energy to balance the pressure of gravitational contraction, the star begins to shrink, almost doubling the temperature, tripling the density, and causing the silicon (which was produced by the oxygen fusion) to begin fusing, in its own complicated sequence involving the alpha process, with the end result of nickel-56 (which radioactively decays into cobalt-56 and iron-56). This, as before, balances against the gravitational pressure and returns the star to equilibrium.

And now it will take merely 1 day to burn up its silicon. Finally, when there's not enough silicon being fused to generate energy to balance the pressure of gravitational contraction, the star begins to shrink.

This time, however, the core of the star is mostly nickel and iron, and they cannot ordinarily be fused into heavier elements, so as the star shrinks and the temperature and density increase, there is no nuclear fusion ignition of the nickel and iron to counteract the contraction. Here the limit of pressure and density is the electron degeneracy pressure, which is the resistance of electrons being forced to occupy the same energy states, which they can't.

(via @mathowie)

Tags: astronomy   physics   science

In a short video from The Atlantic, science writer Philip Ball explains why Isaac Newton picked ROYGBIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet) for the colors of the spectrum and not 3 or 6 or even 16 other possible colors.

Newton was the first to demonstrate through his famous prism experiments that color is intrinsic to light. As part of those experiments, he also divvied up the spectrum in his own idiosyncratic way, giving us ROYGBIV. Why indigo? Why violet? We don't really know why Newton decided there were two distinct types of purple, but we do know he thought there should be seven fundamental colors.

Ball is the author of Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color, which looks pretty interesting. His mention in the video of the changing perception of color throughout history reminds me of my favorite segment of Radiolab, which covers that very topic.

Tags: color   Philip Ball   physics   science   video

PlayStation and PS2 backward compatibility may soon be coming to the PlayStation 4, a source close to Sony told Eurogamer this week. Notably, the source stated that backward-compatible PSOne and PS2 games would be stored locally on PlayStation 4 ...