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Accounting News Roundup: More on KPMG's Venture Fund; Miami Is the Capital of Tax Fraud; Dixon Has Another Big Problem | 11.12.13
Can’t KPMG Just Do Better Audits? [Bloomberg]
Jonathan Weil reacts to the news that KPMG is starting a venture fund: "This line from the Times article, quoting a senior KPMG partner named Simon Collins, caught my attention in particular: 'Mr. Collins said that it would be "very difficult" to provide audit services to the companies it invested in -- "but we can incubate them, we can advise them." ' Let’s get this much straight: 'Very difficult' is the wrong answer here. The correct response is that it should be impossible. Any first-year accounting student can tell you that auditors aren’t supposed to audit companies in which they have ownership stakes."
Angola Names Deloitte to Audit $5 Billion Sovereign Wealth Fund [Bloomberg]
The Luanda-based fund will help diversify the economy from oil, build commercial infrastructure and support socio-economic growth, Armando Manuel, finance minister and former head of the fund, said in the statement. Deloitte’s appointment “ensures accountability to the Angolan state and citizens,” he said.
Injuries to Players Raise Questions on Athlete I.P.O. Plan [DealBook]
LOL Fantex.
Standing Advisory Group Meeting [PCAOB]
Starts tomorrow at 1 pm.
Five Auditor Independence Issues PCAOB SAG Not Yet Addressing [Re:The Auditors]
And no plans to, either.
The hand-holding is getting embarrassing.
The harder the #CPAexam, the better the after party. When to schedule the celebration? Here's a timeline: http://t.co/JhjAGdckI0
— ThisWayToCPA (@ThisWayToCPA) November 12, 2013
Estate Planning for Sex Toys [TaxProf]
This could be an exciting conversation you get to have with Mom or Dad some time soon.
GASB Offers Accounting Toolkit for Pension Plans [AT]
Your sleeping aid for this evening.
Miami Replaces Tampa As IRS Tax Fraud Capital [TBT]
FYI.
Penis-Shaped Christian Science Church Doesn't Look That Much Like A Penis, Architect Claims [HP]
"We didn’t design it to be seen from above," Scott Shepherd told SaukValley.com last week. Local architect John McLane, who did not design the church, told the site he believes it's "a little bit of a stretch" to claim that the aerial view of the structure looks like a penis. [...] The church, which is located in the town of Dixon (indeed), was designed by an architect who McLane guesses "probably" designed it that way by accident, according to SaukValley.com. Shepherd noted that the shape makes sense for the needs of the church because it allows for ample natural light as well as space for a sanctuary.
GTA V Comes To PC And Mac... As A Screensaver
You might not be able to play Grand Theft Auto V on your computer yet, but you can at least enjoy hundreds of user-taken photos of GTA V and Grand Theft Auto V with Rockstar's official Snapmatc Screensaver.
Nintendo, Take My Money, Please
At the end of this month, Nintendo will be re-releasing a game. It's beautiful. An all-time classic. And it's...not a video game.
That Twitter thingy was almost Smssy
Twitter wasn't always Twitter. According to Nick Bilton's book about the birth and growth of the microblogging site, Hatching Twitter, it was once Twitch, once Smssy, and — worryingly — once Friendstalker. Bilton gained access to emails exchanged between Twitter's founders during the recently priced company's early days, and in a blog post, shows how their creation's logo could've looked.
Xi'an Famous Foods is Coming to the Upper West Side
[Photograph: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]
Chinese food on the Upper West Side is getting better and better, and it's all about the empire-building. First Sichuan favorite Legend expanded uptown, then RedFarm opened a second location. Now Xi'an Famous Foods is on the verge of opening up on 102nd and Broadway, an expansion they've been working on for some time now. Assuming all goes well with a DOH inspection, the planned opening date is December 7th.
In addition to the standard menu of noodles, pancakes, and spicy lamb face salad, the 17-seat restaurant will also sell spicy lamb dumplings, some of our favorite in the city.
If you're keeping count, this will be the fourth current XFF restaurant in Manhattan (the original Manhattan outpost, a shoebox off East Broadway, closed). There are also locations in Greenpoint and of course Flushing, including flagship restaurant Biang!. As for what's next on the horizon, would a JFK branch a la Shake Shack be too much to hope for?
Yeah, I'm free-thinking
In 1999, Sugata Mitra left a computer in a New Delhi slum and watched what the neighborhood kids would do with it. With no prior computer experience, they quickly figured out how to work it. In subsequent experiments, Mitra used computers and very little adult oversight (what we refer to as "education") to teach children all sorts of different things.
Over the years, Mitra got more ambitious. For a study published in 2010, he loaded a computer with molecular biology materials and set it up in Kalikuppam, a village in southern India. He selected a small group of 10- to 14-year-olds and told them there was some interesting stuff on the computer, and might they take a look? Then he applied his new pedagogical method: He said no more and left.
Over the next 75 days, the children worked out how to use the computer and began to learn. When Mitra returned, he administered a written test on molecular biology. The kids answered about one in four questions correctly. After another 75 days, with the encouragement of a friendly local, they were getting every other question right. "If you put a computer in front of children and remove all other adult restrictions, they will self-organize around it," Mitra says, "like bees around a flower."
It's tempting to conclude that the computer is the magical ingredient here: just add computers and children can learn anything. But if the story of Sergio Juárez Correa's fifth-grade class is any indication, the secret is the kids organizing themselves to learn.
Tags: education Sergio Juarez Correa Sugata MitraFor Juárez Correa it was simultaneously thrilling and a bit scary. In Finland, teachers underwent years of training to learn how to orchestrate this new style of learning; he was winging it. He began experimenting with different ways of posing open-ended questions on subjects ranging from the volume of cubes to multiplying fractions. "The volume of a square-based prism is the area of the base times the height. The volume of a square-based pyramid is that formula divided by three," he said one morning. "Why do you think that is?"
He walked around the room, saying little. It was fascinating to watch the kids approach the answer. They were working in teams and had models of various shapes to look at and play with. The team led by Usiel Lemus Aquino, a short boy with an ever-present hopeful expression, hit on the idea of drawing the different shapes-prisms and pyramids. By layering the drawings on top of each other, they began to divine the answer. Juárez Correa let the kids talk freely. It was a noisy, slightly chaotic environment-exactly the opposite of the sort of factory-friendly discipline that teachers were expected to impose. But within 20 minutes, they had come up with the answer.
"Three pyramids fit in one prism," Usiel observed, speaking for the group. "So the volume of a pyramid must be the volume of a prism divided by three."
Crazy plane landing on a mountain
When you read the title of this video, "Super Cub landing on windy mt. top", you're thinking, ok, there's a runway on the side of this mountain and it's gonna be a little dicey but not a big deal. But then the video starts and there's just a steep snowy mountain and no runway and it's uphill and you're like, WHAT JUST HAPPENED?
I looked up info on the plane and if you're going to land on the side of a mountain, the Super Cub is the plane for you. It can take off in as little as 200 feet, land in 300-400 feet, and has a stall speed of only 43 mph. The guy lands uphill and takes off downhill in this video and looks like he needed less than 100 feet in each case. (via ★mouser)
Tags: flying videoPlane lands/takes off in only 20 feet
I posted a video earlier today of a Super Cub airplane landing on the side of a mountain. Super Cubs are ideal for that undertaking because of their low stall speed and short take-off and landing distances. But I had no idea you could land and take off in one in the space of 20 feet.
Never seen a plane do that before...well aside from tiny model planes. What an incredible power-to-weight ratio that plane must have. You can seriously land these things anywhere, almost like a helicopter. Wanna go fly fishing? Just set it down on the banks of a stream:
Or on a gravel bar in a river:
These planes are referred to as STOL (short takeoff and landing) aircraft; here's some detail on how they work. (via @alper)
Tags: flying videoCall of Duty: Ghostbusters tests ricochet kills, antisocial dogs, more
With every new Call of Duty release, the internet spawns dozens of myths about things found in the game that may or may not actually exist. Helpfully, the Call of Duty: Ghostbusters are here to help.The clip you see above owes a heavy debt to the Discovery Channel's Mythbusters. The premise here is the same: Present demonstrators with a seemingly implausible in-game situation, test said situation, then report on the findings.
As a result of this rigorous testing - which, granted, could have been faked for unknown reasons - we now know a number of new things. For instance, guard dogs will attack one another if there are no heavily-armed people nearby to maul. Even better, though, is a sequence at the 2:00 mark, where our demonstrators test the idea that a sniper could kill a person by bouncing a shot off of one of the game's riot shields. Conceptually, that's as awesome as it is silly, but as the video demonstrates, it totally works.
This clip is the first episode of Call of Duty: Ghostbusters, so expect more such efforts until the community grows tired of having their fanciful notions crushed by cold, hard facts.
Call of Duty: Ghostbusters tests ricochet kills, antisocial dogs, more originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 11 Nov 2013 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Chinatown Restaurants Don’t Really Care About B and C Grades
C isn't for Chinatown
Compared with stats citywide, more restaurants in Chinatown receive less-than-stellar health-department-inspection grades, Crain's reports. And in a neighborhood with approximately 300 establishments and a large population of residents below the poverty line who rely on healthy businesses, it's a toss-up over what's generally more detrimental to restaurant owners, the time and energy it takes to score an A grade, or coping with the massive fines that accompany all those B- and C-level scores. Things have gotten so bad that the Chinatown Business Improvement District has offered a free workshop for proprietors looking to improve their hygienic standing, but the real question seems to be, will the outreach make a big enough difference?
Crain's reports that part of the problem appears to be the way dirty restaurants with cluttered kitchens are perceived by neighbors. "If the kitchen is very clean, it means the restaurant is slow," one restaurant manager says, adding that "customers know that no one is perfect."
Much of a restaurant's clientele is apparently even somewhat forgiving when greeted with B- and C-grade placards in front windows — even though Bloomberg himself would prefer that you turn and run. While fines can reach up to $10,000 a year for a C-rated eatery, owners cite confusion over inspection protocols and rules that seem arbitrary. "It's not worth it to fight sometimes," says one.
As a result, the City Council's planned inspection reforms may hit at just the right moment. But at the end of the day, the grade-shaming approach — where news of a bad score is carried over the airwaves of social media and is otherwise amplified on blogs — just may not be as effective in Chinatown as it is in the rest of the city. "Most restaurants are afraid of bad Yelp reviews or Twitter posts," a consultant tells Crain's. "But social media is not generally relevant in those communities."
Chinatown restaurants get bad grades [Crain's]
Related: Bloomberg Speaks Out Against Chefs ‘Bitching’ Over Letter Grades
Related: City Council Approves Changes to Restaurant-Inspection System
Read more posts by Belle Cushing
Filed Under: letter grades, chinatown, doh, health department, inspections
    
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DeliveryWire: Han Dynasty Now Delivers to Anywhere Below 60th Street
[Photo by Robert Sietsema]
The city's hottest Philly import, Han Dynasty, just launched delivery. Now, through the same curated, all-over delivery service that Mission Chinese Food signed on to not long ago, it's possible to get those dry pepper chicken wings and dan dan noodles anywhere in Manhattan below 60th Street.
While Mission Chinese Food is no longer an option at the moment, some of the other restaurants in Caviar's delivery lineup include Maharlika, Katz's and Corner Bistro, with Yerba Buena and Taquitoria on the way.
· All Coverage of Han Dynasty [~ENY~]
Journalists reportedly banned from Instagramming 2014 Winter Olympics
Authorities for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia are reportedly drawing a line in the sand between professional photographers and casual Instagrammers. According to Russian news outlets, journalists who use their phones, tablets, or pocket cameras to capture the Winter Games will be summarily stripped of their credentials and lose their professional accreditation.
Vasily Konov, head of Russia's state-run R-Sport news agency, reportedly delivered the stringent decision on Friday in a training seminar for print journalists preparing for the Games, which are set to begin on February 7th. According to Svoboda.org, while normal spectators are permitted to photograph the Olympics on their phones to their hearts' content, journalists...
Amazon offers buy 2, get 1 sale on PS4 games starting tomorrow
Amazon's deal is activated with the promotion code GR8TNESS at checkout. Featured offerings include console-exclusive games like Knack and Killzone: Shadow Fall, along with upgraded ports of current-gen hits like Battlefield 4, Call of Duty: Ghosts, and Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag. A full list of eligible games is after the break below.
Continue reading Amazon offers buy 2, get 1 sale on PS4 games starting tomorrow
Amazon offers buy 2, get 1 sale on PS4 games starting tomorrow originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 11 Nov 2013 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Fastest bow in the west
Archer Lars Andersen can shoot 10 arrows in less than 5 seconds, without sacrificing power or accuracy. Andersen learned his technique by studying ancient archery practices...the key is holding the extra arrows in the hand and instinctive shooting.
(via @psillin)
Tags: archery Lars Andersen sports videoPinkberry Co-founder Convicted of Beating Homeless Man
Justice is soft-served.
A jury in L.A. County Superior Court found the popular frozen-yogurt chain's co-founder Young Lee guilty of assaulting a homeless man in West Hollywood in 2011. Young Lee, a 49-year-old former kickboxer, was apparently so enraged after Daniel Bolding approached his rented Range Rover and displayed a tattoo of stick figures having sex in the summer of 2011 that he later returned to the West Hollywood scene with another man to confront the panhandler. The fro-yo entrepreneur allegedly chased Bolding through the streets, forced him to kneel and apologize, then beat him with a tire iron anyway. During the trial, witnesses called Lee, who helped found the Pinkberry chain in 2005 but left five years later, a "threat to the community." He now faces up to seven years in prison. [LAT, Earlier, Earlier]
Read more posts by Hugh Merwin
Filed Under: fro-no, crime scenes, pinkberry, young lee
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How skydiving, surfing, and kittens have made GoPro the best-selling camera on the planet
The GoPro is now the world's best-selling camera according to the NPD Group and GoPro's internal sales data. The waterproof, mountable device can shoot video and stills, and has rapidly become the go-to tool for adrenaline sports fans, allowing point-of-view footage by affixing a GoPro to an opportune body part.
Watch These Crazy Animations of How Three Cities Commute
New York City mostly rides transit, Los Angeles loves its cars, and San Francisco has a dedicated population of bike commuters. UC Berkeley planning Ph.D. student Fletcher Foti recently built a brilliant data visualization that brings these facts to life by animating commuting patterns for the Bay Area, L.A., and NYC.
5 Retrofuturistic Designs That Helped J Mays Reshape the Automobile
Ford Motor Company announced this week that top designer J Mays is retiring. In his 33-year career and 16-year tenure at Ford, Mays ushered in the era of retrofuturistic styling that other car companies scrambled to follow. Here, we look back at five of his vehicles that steered the shape of automotive design.
Hearthstone coming to iOS, Android in 2014, beta launching next month
Those interested in the game's beta can sign up for consideration right now. Hearthstone was initially in development for the PC and Mac.
Hearthstone coming to iOS, Android in 2014, beta launching next month originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 10 Nov 2013 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Blizzard's Heroes Of The Storm Looks Spectacular
During the opening ceremonies of BlizzCon 2013, Blizzard showed off the latest gameplay footage for the all-star MOBA they are calling Blizzard: The Game, Heroes of the Storm.
Hearthstone, Blizzard's online trading card game, will get an iPhone and Android port next year, Bli
Hearthstone, Blizzard's online trading card game, will get an iPhone and Android port next year, Blizzard just announced. The open beta for the game starts next month.
Bloomberg News Is Said to Curb Articles That Might Anger China
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Freshness Burger Invents a Wrapper That Acts as a Privacy Shield
[Photographs: Freshness Burger]
Who amongst us, at one time or another, hasn't wished that a particularly large or sloppy burger could come with a privacy shield? That's exactly what Japanese burger shop Freshness Burger has done with their "Liberation Wrapper", a burger holding device that allows women to tear into the shop's largest item (the "classic burger") with abandon, while maintaining the appearance of "ochobo"—a small and modest mouth.
Before the debut of the new burger wrapper, the classic burger was the least-ordered item by women. With the invention of the wrapper, sales have increased a reported 213% compared to the previous month, according to this video which explains the liberation wrapper and features depictions of happy female customers getting all up in their burger's business.
Without getting too deep into the gender politics of the invention (or how the image of the closed mouth printed on the wrapper looks a bit creepy), I have to say... this really isn't a bad idea. I'd take it even further, and provide customers with burger isolation booths, so that they could eat as messily as they want while pounding the table, praising the burger gods, or letting loose a profanity-laced exaltation of their burger without fear of judgment. I don't know about you, but that's what I'm looking for in a burger-eating experience.
[via: Foodbeast]
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!
YouTube co-founder wonders 'why the fuck' comments require a Google+ account
YouTube may have overhauled its much-maligned comments this week, but the service's co-founder is just not feeling it. Jawed Karim, one of YouTube's original creators, took to the comments for the first time in eight years and asked, "Why the fuck do I need a Google+ account to comment on a video?"
While it's unclear whether or not his account was hacked to make the comment, the user writing as Karim does appear to be voicing the confusion users might feel when the rollout is complete. Google's plan to fix the YouTube comment system was a tacit admission that it has the worst comments in the world. Instead of listing the usual offensive barbs that YouTube comments are known for, the new system will privilege the most "relevant"...
BioWare offers coy tease of next Mass Effect
There are five teaser images in total, though gameplay designer Manveer Heir noted on Twitter that there are "10 other pics on the internet from BioWare devs." The images show developers working on the next game's character and location designs as well as omni tool equipment. It's hard to glean anything worthwhile out of the images other than a reminder that another Mass Effect game is definitely in development and we should all be excited for that.
BioWare offers coy tease of next Mass Effect originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 08 Nov 2013 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
White House Puts Price on Government Shutdown
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Max Gentlemen, extreme manners hat-stacking sim, gets funded
At its core, Max Gentlemen is an arcade-style game about Victorian-era gentlemen seeing who can stack their hats the highest. Players must stack hats while avoiding obstacles across different venues, including the bar room brawl seen above. The original pitch video also reveals a stage coach level.
Max Gentlemen will be a free download on iOS, Android, Ouya, PC, Mac and Linux. The game will feature several different modes, levels, hats, gentlemen and hat-stacking duels against other human players through cross-platform multiplayer. In addition to receiving the game, all Kickstarter backers get a fan-game from Brine Software called Boxing Simulator 1898.
Max Gentlemen, extreme manners hat-stacking sim, gets funded originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 07 Nov 2013 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Amazing video reveals what it's like to be able to see The Matrix
Math, it's so boring. Said everyone anytime anyone ever asked them to do basic arithmetic. But it doesn't have to be! Yann Pineill & Nicolas Lefaucheux of Parachutes.tv has dispelled the notion that math is boring by making it look beautiful. Yes, beautiful. And a little bit like seeing The Matrix.