Gautam Narula on how you can improve your chess game rapidly.
Tags: chess games Gautam NarulaThe tl;dr of this training plan is, play a lot, analyze your games, and primarily study tactics. Your knowledge of openings, endgame, middlegame, etc. will come from analyzing your games and going over grandmaster games. Only study one of those specific topics if it is clear you are specifically losing because of that topic.
Ina Fried:
The carrier stores are still the dominant place for Americans to get their new cellphones, but two other retailers — Apple and Best Buy — have emerged as significant channels.
Apple, of course, sells only iPhones, but accounts for about 11 percent of retail phone sales, according to a survey from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. Best Buy, which sells phones from all major carriers and all the big operating systems, accounts for 13 percent of sales.
Want to follow Bud Light on Twitter to see hundreds of pictures of carefully arranged beer bottles? Then you'll need to convince the microblogging service that you're over the legal drinking age in your home country. As outlined on its blog, Twitter has now introduced an age-screening system that it says will help alcohol brands "safely grow their of-age network."
Users of Twitter.com and its iOS and Android apps trying to follow specific brands — the first partners include Jim Beam, Knob Creek, and Bacardi — will receive a direct message that directs them to an age gate and gives them 24 hours to provide the relevant information. As they fill in their birthdays, Twitter cross-checks them against national drinking age limits, and...
Valve's official Steam Machine prototype isn't cheap, but it won't be the only Steam-powered video game console available come 2014. This morning, iBuyPower revealed a prototype of its own upcoming Steam Machine, which will go on sale for just $499 next year. For the price of an Xbox One, the computer will offer a multicore AMD CPU and a discrete AMD Radeon R9 270 graphics card — that's a $180 GPU all by itself — and come with Valve's Steam Controller as part of the package deal.
Vlambeer Clone Tycoon turns indie dev's real problem into a game originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 25 Nov 2013 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
The monarchs are late. Usually by the 1st of November, the forests of central Mexico are swarming with them. Last year, they came in record low numbers, only 60 million. This year? A week late and only 3 million. And this happening to insects across the spectrum.
Tags: biologyA big part of it is the way the United States farms. As the price of corn has soared in recent years, driven by federal subsidies for biofuels, farmers have expanded their fields. That has meant plowing every scrap of earth that can grow a corn plant, including millions of acres of land once reserved in a federal program for conservation purposes.
Another major cause is farming with Roundup, a herbicide that kills virtually all plants except crops that are genetically modified to survive it.
As a result, millions of acres of native plants, especially milkweed, an important source of nectar for many species, and vital for monarch butterfly larvae, have been wiped out. One study showed that Iowa has lost almost 60 percent of its milkweed, and another found 90 percent was gone. "The agricultural landscape has been sterilized," said Dr. Brower.
Great news for French-fry lovers who don't like waiting for things: A company called iDriveThrough has figured out a way to link credit cards with users' E-ZPass tags, which can then be used to pay for fast food in drive-through lanes. Five Wendy's on Staten Island are now equipped with E-ZPass checkouts, where the charge goes straight to the linked card and drive-through customers can skip the payment window altogether. It also includes the dubious benefits of collecting "rewards points" for future discounts and the inestimable value of not having to look a real person in the face while you're making your seventh trip to Wendy's in three days. [Staten Island Advance, NYP]
Read more posts by Belle Cushing
Filed Under: faster food, e-zpass, staten island, wendy's
    
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An entire country will soon be wiped off the map because of rising seas caused by climate change. Kiribati, an island nation in the Pacific Ocean, will start to disappear around 2030, according to a feature by Bloomberg Businessweek. President Anote Tong is faced with the difficult task of trying to attract aid and investment to his nation of 33 islands, while also lobbying other nations to begin accepting his population of 103,000 as climate refugees. He is asking large industrial nations like the United States to do more to control the rising tides. "They have to pay attention," he says. "We're a frontline country. We're the canary in the coal mine, it's true. I have to get them to pay attention."
Turntable.fm will shut down next month after nearly two years of operation. Turntable says that the decision to shut down its social music service was a tough one, but that it wants to begin focusing all of its efforts on Turntable Live, a new site that invites artists to stream live concerts to fans. Though Turntable.fm seemed to have some cult following, it appears music licensing costs finally became too much to handle. "The cost of running a music service has been too expensive, and we can't outpace it with our efforts to monetize it and cut costs," Turntable writes.
The service's final day of operation will be December 2nd, when Turntable promises to throw one final party. "If we also want to give Turntable Live a real shot, we need to fully focus on it," Turntable writes. So far, it's happy with the response. The streaming shows — all of which are hosted from Turntable's SoHo studio — try to recreate the live concert experience, straight down to asking fans to buy tickets ahead of time. Eleven shows have been run so far, with the last one bringing in $670 from 170 total viewers. While recreating the feel of a concert may be an exciting goal, Turntable.fm's users will likely be upset over losing the charm of being a digital DJ.
The internet's resident meteorologist Eric Holthaus (who incidentally has given up flying because of climate change) warns that a major storm could be on its way to the East Coast in time for Thanksgiving and Hanukkah (which overlap this year and then not again until the year 79811).
Technically, the storm is a nor'easter but is looking more like a tropical storm in the computer models:
At this point, the most likely scenario would be cold, wind-driven rain in the big coastal US cities, with up to a foot of snow stretching from inland New England as far south as the Carolinas. The cold would stick around after the storm exits, with high temperatures in the 20s and wind chills possibly in the single digits as far south as New Jersey on Black Friday.
According to this afternoon's iteration of the Euro model (a meteorological model that famously predicted superstorm Sandy's rare left hook into New Jersey six days out), at the storm's peak, wind gusts on Cape Cod could approach hurricane force.
We're still a ways out, so things might change, but travel safely next week, folks. (via @marcprecipice)
Tags: Eric Holthaus global warming travel weather
British transplant Pret a Manger has found success with office drones seeking a reasonably fresh, somewhat "artisan"-style sandwich to cure their lunchtime hunger pangs. Now another European chainlet, 100 Montaditos, lands on our shores, bringing a different kind of sandwich into the mix. Taking name and inspiration from the Spanish tapa montados—meaning to "ride"—the restaurant offers a selection of (you guessed it!) 100 teeny sandwiches stuffed with a dizzying array of fillings from Serrano ham to grilled chicken to Manchego cheese. [ more › ]
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Christopher Fiock came to a rest. For more than four hours he and a team had mapped the Presidio of San Francisco, the former army post that is now a national park. With every step they took, the team captured panoramas that would soon let the world explore the Presidio without leaving their computers. At a vista overlooking the South Bay, Fiock demonstrated the device that had made it all possible: the Trekker, the powerful if awkward device that recently concluded its first year as one of the technological engines of Google’s six-year-old Street View program. "The Trekker is a mobile image-capture platform," Fiock says. "We took some of the same technology from the Street View cam and made it portable — ultra portable."
Greece Santorini
Taupo, Waikato, NZ
New Zealand
Muriwai, Auckland, NZ
Motuoapa, Waikato, NZ
If I had to spend the rest of my life trapped inside a photograph, there’s a good chance I might flip through a stack of photographs by Andrew Smith (previously) to make a selection. Smith shoots mostly in locations around his home in New Zealand where he captures breathtaking oceanside landscapes both in and out of water. Smith photographs almost exclusively with a Nikon D800 and then processes his images in Adobe Lightroom, something he documents in detail on his Before and After Lightroom Blog. These are some of my favorite shots from the last year or so, but you can see hundreds of additional photos by Smith over on Flickr.
Comcast may be interested in merging with Time Warner Cable. The two sides aren't in active discussions, according to CNBC, but Comcast is reportedly seeking advice on potential antitrust concerns and other regulatory obstacles that could pop up if the company decides to pursue a fellow cable provider. CNBC also says that if Time Warner Cable moves forward with a sale, Comcast would be its preferred buyer. According to "people familiar with the matter," Comcast has been considering merging with TWC for quite some time, but only now is looking for guidance on what hurdles the companies could face if a deal is reached.
But Comcast may have some competition: The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Charter Communications is also...
American companies usually go to Asia to do their manufacturing, but this time it's the other way around. Foxconn, the Taipei-based electronics manufacturer that builds Apple's iPhone, is planning to invest $40 million to build robots in Pennsylvania.
Foxconn will spend $30 million over the next two years building a high-tech manufacturing facility in Harrisburg, PA, as well as $10 million on research at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University, Bloomberg News reports. Foxconn already has a plant in Harrisburg that employs about 30 people, but the new facility will employ another 500.
The Medic from Team Fortress 2 recently got some nifty new items as part of Valve's Two Cities update, shown off in a pretty cool official animated short.
Brits, cap off Super Mario 3D World with plumberific Wii U bundle originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 21 Nov 2013 23:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Three of the top four US wireless companies — AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile — have agreed to stop billing American customers for the spam texts that millions of people have been tricked into receiving and sending out in recent years. The move, which could take a few days or weeks to go into effect, was announced Thursday afternoon by the Attorney General for Vermont, William Sorrell, who worked with the attorneys general from 44 other states to coordinate the anti-spam initiative. "We are pleased that AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile have decided to stop the flow of money from the pockets of ordinary people to the bank accounts of scam artists," Sorrell said. "We’re hopeful the other carriers will soon follow their lead."
In an attempt to entice more people to travel on its airline, British Airways has created a couple of digital billboards to promote its 'Magic of Flying' campaign where footage of children pointing at actual planes flying overhead is displayed. The only problem is that's actually a little creepy.
Seattle's popular Top Pot Doughnuts, which has been rapidly growing from institution to empire in recent years, is planning a New York expansion. Co-founder Mark Klebeck tells Zagat he's working on a franchise deal to open 10 to 20 Top Pots here, starting in 2014. [Zagat]
The address of newly opened Otto's Tacos, 141 Second Avenue, has been so many things over the last few years — including a hamburger joint called Good Guys, which died in its infancy, a Subway, a Burritoville, and part of a Max Brenner — it's almost impossible to keep track. The rent is undoubtedly stratospheric and here's hoping the new place, which specializes in small tacos with a choice of five fillings, can make a go of it via the current trend of restaurant micro-focusing.
Taquitoria, which are really flautas. In an inspired piece of culinary theater, Otto's has made a small and shiny tortilla-making machine the center of attention. This mini-factory has a turntable upon which balls of masa dough are placed, then squished, into five-inch diameter tortillas. For purposes of comparison, a regular white-corn tortilla like the kind made in factories in Bushwick are six inches in diameter. Lest you think that's not a big difference, note that, by the principles of geometry, a six-inch tacos has 44 percent more surface area than a five-inch one.
[Masa fries]
On the other hand, though Otto's tortillas are smaller, they're also thicker and the masa dough more coarsely textured, making these tortillas more filling than slicker ones with a greater diameter. And the dough placed on the Otto's turntable for squishing will expand in your stomach like a sponge. This is most effectively shown in Otto's novel masa fries ($3), bent tongue depressors of crunchy and corny fried masa furnished with a spicy mayo dipping sauce. They're great, but you're going to need a friend to finish them.
[Shrimp taco]
Dressed with chopped onion and cilantro, the taquitos feature a choice of carne asada, carnitas, chicken, mushroom, and shrimp, priced around $3 apiece. The shrimp totally kicks ass, puddled with a serrano cream sauce that's so good, I'd put it on pancakes. The other fillings are fine, though they struggle with the strong-tasting masa for flavor supremacy.
[Mushroom taco]
The fillings are worked-over enough that you can't really discern much of a distinction between chicken, pork, and beef, though vegetarians are likely to be very pleased with the mushroom version.
[Chips and guac]
As mentioned earlier, there are masa fries, plus chips with a choice of two salsas, chips and guac, rice and beans, and churros with a dulce de leche dipping sauce as potential sides/desserts. The guac was rudimentary, just avocado, onions, cilantro, and a bit of lime juice (it could use a bigger squirt and a little more salt) with freshly fried chips not made from the homemade tortillas, which is good, rendering the chips crunchier than they'd be otherwise.
[Churros]
Love the churros, which are shorties, delivered warm, three to an order. Drinks are relatively expensive, and include Mexican Coke in a bottle ($2.75). I might gripe about the price, but renting this storefront so close to St. Marks on a major thoroughfare must have required a giant cash outlay. Good luck, Otto's Tacos!
· All Posts by Sietsema [~ENY~]
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Buses tend tend to look like, well, buses. Not this one. It looks like a futuristic spacecraft. No wonder it's called "Star Fighter."
Pinterest is introducing new "place pins" to help users organize their travel. At an event in San Francisco tonight, the company demonstrated the new feature, which adds geographical data to new and existing pins and visualizes them on a map. Someone planning a trip to wine country, for example, can add in place information automatically when pinning from Airbnb, OpenTable, Foursquare, TripAdvisor, and other partners. Pinterest is also adding a "send board" feature to easily email boards to other people to help with organizing trips.
People already pin 1.5 million places to Pinterest per day
Any existing pin can be updated with a place with a couple of taps on the web or in the company's mobile apps. The update works both on the web...
Adobe is expanding its photography deal that bundles Photoshop CC, Lightroom 5, Behance membership, and 20GB of cloud storage to everyone. Introduced in September, the offer is an attempt to persuade more photographers to switch over to Adobe's new subscription model. However, that deal was only available for owners of Photoshop CS3 and above, meaning people that pirated the software — a major reason for Adobe's strategy — weren't able to sign up. That stipulation has now been temporarily lifted, giving Adobe's discount a far broader appeal.
It's worth remembering that you're not actually purchasing Photoshop CC or Lightroom 5 by signing up for Adobe's plan. Instead, you're agreeing to a yearly license and paying for it on a monthly...
But first you have to buy a $10 Whopper Combo, and you have to prove you've eaten the first Whopper in its entirety. You also have a 30-minute window to eat as many Whoppers as you can stomach (they'll time you). The promotion is only running until December 1 at a few stores, and between the hours of 2 p.m. and 11 p.m. at that, so, er, go for it! [Rocket News via Foodbeast, Related]
Read more posts by Hugh Merwin
Filed Under: terms and conditions, all you can eat, burger king, burger king japan, japan
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Continue reading Amazon outlines Black Friday deals, including $34 for GTA 5
Amazon outlines Black Friday deals, including $34 for GTA 5 originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 21 Nov 2013 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
This whole thing makes Microsoft look bad, not Google.
Who would actually buy any of this stuff?
Update: A few readers report that this “Scroogled” cack is actually popular with… Google employees. And the coffee mug is sold out.
Time for another big TF2 update, Valve kicking off something called "Two Cities". There's new maps, new weapons, new achievements.
Your body clock alarm is just as accurate as the one on your phone: your body naturally takes note of what time you want to wake up and wakes you up.
There's evidence you can will yourself to wake on time, too. Sleep scientists at Germany's University of Lubeck asked 15 volunteers to sleep in their lab for three nights. One night, the group was told they'd be woken at 6 a.m., while on other nights the group was told they'd be woken at 9 a.m..
But the researchers lied-they woke the volunteers at 6 a.m anyway. And the results were startling. The days when sleepers were told they'd wake up early, their stress hormones increased at 4:30 a.m., as if they were anticipating an early morning. When the sleepers were told they'd wake up at 9 a.m., their stress hormones didn't increase -- and they woke up groggier. "Our bodies, in other words, note the time we hope to begin our day and gradually prepare us for consciousness," writes Jeff Howe at Psychology Today.
(via digg)
Tags: science sleep time