Rexfeng

This series of photos titled Géométrie de l’impossible (Impossible Geometry) from 21-year-old photographer Fanette Guilloud was created earlier this year in locations around Toulouse, Bordeaux and in the French Alps near Lyon. Guilloud employed a method of anamorphic projection similar to the work of Felice Varini to create the illusion of a painting superimposed on an image, when in fact there is no digital trickery whatsoever. The image is actually painted on numerous surfaces at varying depths and only appears like what you see here from a particular vantage point. (via Metafilter)

Digital artist Zach Dougherty (previously) is back with a new round if really strange animated gifs, placing his strange amorphous and glitchy objects against ordinary backdrops. Let’s file this under “I don’t know what it is but I like it.” (via Ignant)

From Serious Eats: New York

There's a reason wonton soup became one of the backbones of the Chinese-American restaurant menu. Beyond being simply delicious, it is a taste that crosses borders. It's clear, meat-based broth with pasta, meat, and perhaps a few vegetables; If you know chicken noodle soup, you know wonton soup. Long before the current high state of Chinese food awareness in New York arose, wonton soup allowed folks unfamiliar with Chinese cuisine to feel like they were being a bit adventurous while still finding comfort in familiar flavors and texture.

As a kid, a hot bowl of wonton soup was the start of every Chinese take out meal we had, and usually the best part, authenticity be damned. I loved how slippery and salty the skins would get, and how the little slick of fat on top of the bowl would cling to each wonton's folds. I loved the balance of meaty flavor with chives and cabbage in the broth, and the little bouncy nuggets of pork and shrimp hidden in the folded depths of each skin.

I don't know if I'm just looking at the wontons of my past through a slick of rose-tinted chicken fat, but It seems to me like the average quality of wonton soup has been steadily declining. Perhaps my taste as a kid was poor or perhaps wonton soup is really getting worse. Either way, it's been getting harder and harder to find a bowl that pleases.

The solution? Try every available version in Manhattan's chinatown until I find one that recaptures—nay, eclipses—those childhood memories. The best bowl of wonton soup in the city.

The Contenders

I quickly realized that even with limiting my options to Manhattan's Chinatown that tasting every single wonton soup available would be a tall task. I decided to limit myself to restaurants in which wonton soup features prominently on their menu. This narrowed down to options 23. They fell into certain categories of restaurants: Classic Chinese-American New York restaurants like Wo Hop and Big Wong, Fuzhou-style quick lunch counters with their teeny-tiny wontons, and noodle shops that serve wonton noodle soups.

There was a bit of overlap in these categories—for instance, some of the restaurants I'd call Chinese-American also served wonton noodle soups—but once I tasted all of the soups, the classification of where each belonged was pretty clear.

When plain wonton soup was available on the menu, that's generally what I ordered. In some cases, wonton noodle soup was the recommended or most popular menu option, in which case I ordered that. Here's what I tasted, in no particular order:

• East Corner WonTon
• New HK Wonton Garden
• Shu Jiao Fu Zhou Cuisine Restaurant Inc
• Prosperity Dumpling
• Vanessa's Dumpling House
• Tanxia Wang Fuzhou Cuisine
• Great NY Noodletown
• Big Wong Restaurant
• Nice Green Bo
• Tasty Dumpling
• Noodle Village
• Big Wing Wong Restaurant
• Joe's Shanghai Restaurant
• Wonton Garden
• Prosperity Dumpling
• Wo Hop
• C & L Dumpling House
• J.J. Noodle Restaurant
• Sheng Wang
• Old Sichuan Cuisine
• 69 Bayard St
• Hop Kee
• Bo Ky Restaurant

The Criteria

It's tough to do a completely fair side-by-side ranking of all the wonton soups available because there are so many distinct styles. There's the stuff they serve in barbecue shops flavored with bits of char siu. There's the teeny tiny dumplings in celery-flavored broth at the Fuzhou-style restaurants. There's the plump shrimp and pork dumplings in soup flavored with dried seafood and yellow chives at Hong Kong-style restaurants. So in addition to naming an overall winner, I also decided to pick a few of my favorites from among the other great bowls.

Wonton soups were based on the following parameters:

• Overall: Was this a satisfying bowl of soup? Did it taste like it was made with care in a real kitchen using real ingredients, or is it on this menu as an afterthought? Would I want to hunker down on a cold night with only this bowl to keep me company?
• The Wontons: First and foremost, a wonton wrapper needs to be tender and thin enough that it has a pleasantly slippery chew without a hint of doughiness. Some styles are thicker or thinner than others, but doughy is never a good thing. The fillings need to be flavorful and moist, and if there are whole shrimp present, they should be crunchy and pop in your mouth with briny flavor.
• The Broth: A balance of meat or ocean flavors need to form the backbone, balanced by good use of vegetables and aromatics. The broths should be rich enough that they'd make a satisfying bowl of soup on their own—a bit of fat floating across the surface goes a long way in adding flavor and body. And proper seasoning levels can go without saying.

The Results

In this taste test, I was more surprised by the losers than by the winners. I went into this project thinking that even worst wonton soup would be a soup worth eating. After all, I grew up with an indiscriminate love for the stuff whether I ordered it at our favorite restaurants in Chinatown (anyone remember Sun Lok Kee down Mott or the original Phoenix Garden under the Elizabeth Street arcade before it burned down in a wok fire?) or one of the crummy take out joints that every captive audience Vermont ski town had in the '80s. I was wrong.

Some restaurants, like the classic Wo Hop, had wontons with skins that tasted like they were cut out of raw lasagna dough and a broth that tasted of leftover roast pork. Others, like Great NY Noodle Town had slippery, metallic broths and shrimp that were so past their prime that ammonia was the only noticeable aromatic. Truth be told, there are plenty of poor wonton soups in this town.

That said, there were some excellent ones as well. Here's what I liked.

The Best Overall: Noodle Village

This is hands down the best wonton soup you'll find in Chinatown, if not the whole city.

The Broth: Clean and thin in texture, but deeply flavored with dried flounder and yellow chives, giving it a slight ocean-y aroma that compounds its savoriness.

The Wontons: They may be sparse in number, but they're the biggest and juiciest of the lot with plenty of bouncy pork and shrimp that pop with a great crunch in your mouth.

At $5.50 for the bowl, this was the most expensive of the soups I tasted, and worth every extra penny.

Best Wonton Noodle Soup: 102 Noodle Town

Also known as Big Wing Wong (not to be confused with our Chinese-American-style runner up Big Wong), the fresh wonton noodles with wontons ($5) is what to order here.

The Broth: A clear, meat-based broth with plenty of scallions and cilantro, giving it a fresh, clean flavor.

The Wontons: Slippery skins and a sweet, juicy filling make these fun to eat. There are no whole shrimp here, but small chunks of shrimp folded into the filling. The noodles are also stand out—chewy and easily slurpable with a resilient texture.

Best Wonton Noodle Soup Runner-Up: HK Wonton Garden

At $4.50, this generous bowl of noodles and wontons is a great deal, if a little thin on flavor.

The Broth: Very mild in flavor with a little too much salt (perhaps to cover up some basic flaws). It could use more meat and a bit more vegetation. A touch of Chinese cabbage would go a long way.

The Wontons: What the soup lacks in flavor, the wontons make up. Nice, firm shrimp, very thin skins, and a sweet, porky flavor.

Best Fuzhou Style: Shu Jiao Fuzhou

Rather than a half dozen large wontons, Fuzhou-style wonton soups feature dozens and dozens of wispy, translucent, baby wontons in a clear, celery and scallion-flavored broth. For $2, Shu Jiaou Fuzhou's soup has the highest deliciousness to cost ratio in this lineup.

The Broth: Meaty and rich with a nice slick of flavorful fat running across its surface and plenty of celery, cabbage, and scallion flavor to balance it out. It's well seasoned—I'd drink the broth alone and be happy on a cold fall night.

The Wontons: Though they're still small and wispy, the pork dumplings at Shu Jiaou have the same robust sweet pork flavor as their larger, plumper cousins. For me, these things are comfort food at its best. Think tortellini soup, Chinese-style.

Best Fuzhou Style Runner Up: Tanxia Fuzhou

Tanxia Fuzhou is a block away and offers the same amount of soup at the same price ($2) as Shu Jiao Fuzhou, and to be honest, it was a tough call. Both restaurants have redeeming qualities, but Shu Jiao's superior broth pushed it to the top in the end.

The Broth: Slightly underseasoned and a little thin, but a decent amount of celery and scallion flavor and shimmering fat on top.

The Wontons: The thinnest and lightest wontons I tasted. If you love that feeling of their skins dissolving on your tongue (I do), then these are the wontons for you, despite their slightly bland fillings.

Best Chinese-American Style: New Green Bo

New Green Bo (formerly known as Nice Green Bo) is ostensibly a Shanghainese restuarant, and its soup dumplings and other dough-based steamed and fried snacks speak to that. However, their wonton soup is Chinese-American all the way, and like other similar restaurants in Chinatown, the servings at New Green Bo are larger. Eight over-stuffed wontons in a wide bowl of broth for only $4.75. It's easily enough to make a satisfying meal out of.

The Broth: Excuse me sir, but do you like chicken? This broth tastes like its made with straight up boiled chicken bones with some salt and perhaps a dash of white pepper and MSG added for flavor. Not much vegetation or aromatics going on in here. Still, it's satisfyingly rich and fatty.

The Wontons: Plump pork and cabbage filling wrapped up tortellini-style in pleasantly thin and tender skins. Of this style of soup we tasted, it was the only one that didn't have doughy wontons, making it the clear victor.

Best Chinese-American Style Runner Up: Big Wong

Again, our classification system is a little iffy considering that Big Wong serves noodles in their wonton soup, but if you walk in, it's about as classic Chinese-American as it gets. At $5.25 for five wontons and some noodles, it's not the best deal around.

The Broth: I liked the balance of pork and chicken flavor in this broth, with a bit of a roasted element going on. Plenty of salt makes you wonder what they're trying to cover up, but I found nothing offensive and polished my bowl clean over lunch.

The Wontons: The sweet, crunchy shrimp are the best part of these wontons. The dough is ever so slightly chewy and a little too thick. They also use a heavy hand with the sugar.

There's nothing like homemade.

Of course if you want the best wonton soup, there's only one way to achieve it: Make it yourself at home. Check out our recipe here!

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.

Still hungry? Follow SE:NY on Twitter and Facebook.

From a recent story in Want China Times, “Two Percent of China’s Public Consumes One-Third of World’s Luxury Goods”:

According to China’s official population clock, there are an estimated 1,359,025,970 people in China as of Sept. 26, with just 2% of that number — some 27,180,519 people — consuming one third of the world’s luxury items. The 2% are the backbone of the global luxury goods sales and the target of hundreds of international brand names, the Chinese-language Money Week magazine reports.

Although the huge majority of China’s population is unable to purchase luxury items, as the country’s economy grows so will its market, the magazine said.

When the iPhone 5C came out last month and was not “low cost”, many took it as a sign that Apple was somehow ignoring China. I would say it’s just the opposite: they’re skating to where the puck is heading, not where it is, and positioning their products to thrive as China’s upper class grows.

From Apple’s perspective, there’s no such thing as an “emerging market”. There are certainly cultural differences between consumers in different countries, but the bottom line is that there are people who can afford iPhones and iPads, and people who can’t. The class of people who can afford Apple products is growing faster in China than it is anywhere else.

There’s nothing unique to Apple about this, except, perhaps, the size of the opportunity. Chinese consumers are buying disproportionate quantities of luxury products across the board. Red Obsession, an excellent new documentary film about the French wine industry (available on iTunes; I recommend it highly), documents the rise of China as the number one market for the best (read: most expensive) French wines.

Apple’s hirings of Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts (to head Apple’s online and retail stores) and former Yves Saint Laurent CEO Paul Deneve (“special projects”) fit right into this dynamic.¹ Apple’s path to success in China (and much of the rest of the world) is not to lower itself and compete purely on price against low-cost commodity Android devices. It is the opposite: to further separate its products, in terms of branding and quality, from its competition. The sweet spot for Apple in China is the same as it is in the U.S. and elsewhere: attainable, affordable, casual luxury.

What if sending money was as simple as sending an email?

That’s the premise of Square Cash, launching today for all debit card users in the US, using any email service. To use Square Cash, all you do is compose an email to a friend, type the amount you way to pay in the subject title, and cc cash@square.com. If it’s your first time using the service, you’re directed to Square’s website where you type in your debit card number — and you’re done. There are no accounts to create, apps to download, friends to add, surcharges to pay, or bank account numbers to look up.

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Bruce Bartlett, domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and as a Treasury official under George H. W. Bush (well known left-wing radicals both):

This week, according to the Treasury Department, it will exhaust its “extraordinary” measures to avoid hitting a hard debt ceiling. It is not known precisely the date at which it will lack the cash to pay interest on the national debt, but on the day that happens, the United States will be in default.

The Obama administration and those on Wall Street have long thought that such a prospect was so horrifying that it would necessarily lead to resolution of the current budget impasse. What I don’t think they understand is that there has been a movement under way for some years among right-wing economists and activists not merely to default on the debt, but even to repudiate it.

In other words, these right-wingers aren’t using the threat of debt default to undo the Affordable Care Act — they’re using the threat of undoing the Affordable Care Act (which they know/hope Democrats will not agree to) to get what they really want: putting the United States of America into default.

Good news, all you lovers of kung pao pastrami: Danny Bowien's Mission Chinese Food will now bring food right to your doorstep. The delivery zone is for the most part limited to a swath below East Houston Street on the LES, but also includes a bit of the East Village and a sliver of Chinatown. [Danny Bowien/Twitter, Related]

Read more posts by Hugh Merwin

Filed Under: planned service changes, danny bowien, delivery, mission chinese food

Twitter is rolling out an option to ease the use of direct messages. Traditionally, Twitter has allowed users who follow each other to send direct messages back and forth, or for users to send direct messages to accounts that follow them. A new setting, that appears to have been rolling out over the past week, allows Twitter users to receive direct messages from any follower. "If you check this option, any Twitter user that follows you will be able to send you a DM, regardless of whether you decide to follow them back," says a note before the option is turned on.

While the new option is fairly minor, it’s likely designed to allow brands and businesses to receive private messages from their followers. Twitter has partnered with a...

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Convinced that your long-healed pelvic fracture aches right before a big thunderstorm? It might not be in your head: once largely dismissed as a myth, the idea that aching joints can forecast changing weather is now gaining traction among some scientists.

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Huge companies like Apple, Amazon, and Google have come under fire in recent months for their practice of keeping large portions of their profits overseas in countries that are more tax-friendly — Apple alone has a $100 billion overseas cash hoard that isn't subject to US taxes. As noted during Tim Cook's testimony to the US Senate this spring, the UK, and Ireland in particular, have been particularly tax-friendly to Apple. The Ireland-based Apple Operations International (AOI) is a holding company that pays no income taxes in the US and a very low tax rate in Ireland — but that's something that could change before long.

Ireland's Department of Finance just released a report (PDF) detailing the country's international tax...

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When the next entry in the Mass Effect franchise inevitably arrives, it will feature a brand new story unrelated to Commander Shepard and his or her crew of sexually promiscuous extraterrestrials.

Mac Walters, lead writer for the franchise, was asked by Complex where BioWare plans to take the series' plot now that it's been revealed that Commander Shepard is no longer leading things. "... the idea is that we have agreed to tell a story that doesn't relate necessarily to any of the Shepard events at all, whatsoever," replied Walters. "But throughout it all, one of the key things is that it has to be Mass Effect. It can't just feel like a spin-off. It has to feel like a Mass Effect game at its heart, at its core."

"Just without the Shepard character or the Shepard-specific companions," added Walters.

The writer was then asked for his opinion on fan backlash toward the ending of Mass Effect 3, a response that gave Walters and his colleagues at BioWare a greater appreciation for just how much people care about the pixelated people he writes. "I think that's one of the things we really underestimated, which was how much ownership people would take over a character that they could do that," said Walters. "You know, you've been given free choice to make all these decisions with this character, with the fates of millions of people, and then, you don't get to choose your own fate."

"I'm not saying that our decision was wrong or right," said Walters. "I think we just underestimated the impact that would have on certain players."

Next Mass Effect abandons Shepard, but won't 'feel like a spin-off' originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 15 Oct 2013 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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To herald the near-completion of the third and final phase of Madison Square Garden's $1 billion renovation, the arena has released a handful of sneak-peek photos of the redesign's most mysterious aspect: two "first of their kind" sky bridges that hang from the Garden's ceiling. The two bridges can seat 430 fans high above the arena for select events, including Phish's four night run at the end of December. [ more › ]

Crytek's multiplayer shooter Warface will go live to the public on October 21. The PC game went through a couple of closed beta periods, and the final one commenced in August. Players can sign up for the game ahead of time on its official site.

Warface is expected to pave the way for Crytek's free-to-play ambitions, as CEO Cevat Yerli said in February that the developer and GFace service provider plans to go fully free-to-play within five years. To help its cause, the developer is bringing Warface to Xbox 360 in early 2014, where online play will require a paid Xbox Live Gold subscription. Crytek also opened an Istanbul studio in January to support its free-to-play mission.

Continue reading Crysis dev's free-to-play shooter opens to the public on October 21

Crysis dev's free-to-play shooter opens to the public on October 21 originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 15 Oct 2013 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pixar showed a trailer for its first ever TV special back in August. Now The Wall Street Journal has a new clip of the Halloween-themed feature in action. Toy Story OF TERROR! is a 22 minute mini-movie that tracks a bagful of the Toy Story toys as they're carted to Grandma's house. En route, they're forced through a decidedly spooky gauntlet as car trouble forces the group into a shady motel. The Wall Street Journal's clip picks up with thespian hedgehog Mr. Pricklepants forecasting horror movie-style doom.

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It's been just over a year since the nail-biter of a day when Felix Baumgartner jumped out of a shimmering weather balloon 127,852 feet in the air and reached a top speed of Mach 1.25. And now you can watch it from his point of view—and several others. Fair warning: it's still nerve-wracking. It feels like he's going to miss Earth. [Red Bull Stratos]

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Video cameras have traditionally been used to document the world in a pretty straightforward manner. But they've become so small, and so versatile, that you can do some incredible things with them. Like the crazy world

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Challenge: Read the section on the fingerprint scanner and try not to laugh.

There's a new way that advertisers could track you around the web, and you might be surprised about where the tracking data would come from: your device's accelerometer. According to SFGate, security researcher Hristo Bojinov has discovered a way to distinguish individual devices simply by looking at data their accelerometers provide to webpages. Because accelerometers work imperfectly, they all display a unique result when idle — that result, Bojinov says, is enough to track a device around the web.

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The Sky Room bills itself as New York's highest luxury rooftop bar, offering a spectacular view of the city along with pricey cocktails. But it can be tricky for most tourists to find. "We're a five-minute walk from Times Square, but most visitors don't walk down this way, and even when they do, they don't look up and realize we're here," says David Feit, the Sky Room's marketing director. "With Foursquare, we're able to reach people nearby who are looking for something unique to do. And most importantly, since its based on check-ins, we only pay for reaching customers who actually walk through the door."

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The high price of commonly used medications for conditions like asthma contributes heavily to health care costs and certainly causes more widespread anguish.

The wars of the future may be fought not over gold or oil, but instead over a resource far more mundane: water.

In a study published this week, researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany warned that climate change will put further strain on the world's water sources, as warming temperatures and changing precipitation patterns expose more regions to drought and shortages. More than a billion people currently live in areas where water is scarce, and experts say climate change and anticipated population growth could jeopardize supplies for at least half a billion more.

The paper, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, found that an average global temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius...

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Here's a problem no New Yorker will likely ever have again, or has ever had prior to this moment: late restauranteur Steven Greenberg's 60 imported palm trees have become to big for their Big Apple space. He brought them from Florida in 2006, and ever since they've been living atop 230 Fifth's rooftop bar every summer (in winters, they're brought back down to the Florida sun). [ more › ]

Don't do it.

The same Japanese fast-food chain that introduced scary milk shakes and the ramen burger — the one where noodles stand in for the patty, not the next-generation version — has seemingly now outdone itself with the "With Everything Burger," an $11 behemoth built on solid cheeseburger foundation, then layered with a bonus beef patty, a fried shrimp patty, a boneless rib slab, fried egg, more cheese, pickles, lettuce, cabbage, and three kinds of sauces to add some much-needed white noise, or maybe mouthfeel, who knows? It weighs in at 1,449 calories, but how scary is it in real life?

Okay, so, this looks like it's going to be intense.

全部のせバーガー pic.twitter.com/BaiMd0QSBy

— プルツー (@mopi_mopi2) October 10, 2013

Oh, wait, maybe it's not so bad.

ロッテリアの全部のせバーガーだと…… pic.twitter.com/hdFhtyI8GX

— せら (@seramix_) October 11, 2013

Okay. It actually seems manageable.

ロッテリアの全部のせバーガー！ pic.twitter.com/0eO0yggFCa

— Johee (@Ktmr323) October 11, 2013

Never mind, false alarm. It seems the "With Everything Burger" isn't even the chain's most calorific burger-thing. That honor seemingly goes to Lotteria's "Exquisite Cheese Burger," a semi-limited-edition towering inferno of cheese goo and five beef patties. We'll hold out for that one.

Okay, This Japanese Fast Food Chain Has Gone Mad [Kotaku]
Earlier: Japanese Burger Chain Releases Limited-Edition Ramen Burger Because It Can

Read more posts by Hugh Merwin

Filed Under: one with everything, lotteria, ramen burger, shrimp tree burger, the chain gang

In-N-Out's not-so-secret animal-style burger.

The American obsession with "secret" off-menu fast-food items is crippling the nation. Right about the time you learn that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny aren't real, you realize that you can believe in elusive foods like McDonald's McGangBang, Fatburger's Hypocrite, Jamba Juice's Sourpatch Kid, and Chipotle's Quesarito. They're all absolutely ridiculous, which is what makes MAD Magazine's parody so entertaining. Are McDonald's Chicken McFlurry (reduced-fat vanilla soft-serve with McNuggets swirled in, with caramel and barbecue sauces on top), Taco Bell's Saucedilla (six hot-sauce packets folded into a tortilla), and KFC's Mass Grave (chicken carcass by-products buried in mashed potatoes) real or fake? Dare you to attempt to order those off-menu items and find out. [Food Beast]

Read more posts by Sierra Tishgart

Filed Under: the chain gang, fast food, secret menu items, spoofs

Valve is hosting a developer conference dubbed "Steam Dev Days" in Seattle, Washington, from January 15 to January 16.

Valve promises a "relaxed, off the record environment" where developers can attend lectures from industry veterans and participate in round-table discussions. "Off the record" means there will be no press at the event, but hey, there's free wi-fi. The Steam Team will be on-hand, along with SteamOS, prototype Steam Machines and the Steam Controller.

Valve is emailing registration codes to developers, and there is an attendance fee of $95 per person. The specific schedule, speakers and sessions will pop up here closer to Steam Dev Days.

Steam Dev Days offers an 'off the record' developer conference in January originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 10 Oct 2013 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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[Rendering courtesy Dattner Architects / Bernheimer Architecture]
The newly-chosen architects for the last undeveloped property in the Downtown Brooklyn-BAM Cultural District just released a set of renderings for the project, and they include plans for this 2,700-square-foot Craft restaurant. Judging by the font in the image, it looks like it could be a 'Wichcraft rather than a Craft proper, but only time will tell. Either way, this will be Tom Colicchio's first venture into Brooklyn.

Construction on the new development, which will go up on Lafayette Avenue between Rockwell and Ashland Places, is slated to start mid 2015.
UPDATE: A rep sends word that this will indeed be a 'Wichcraft, not one of the other Craft restaurants. She also confirms what owner Jeffrey Zurofsky tells Grub Street: this is just an early proposal, but "there's nothing firmed up ... there's no lease."
· Developer Chosen For The Final DoBro Cultural District Site [Curbed NY]
· All Coverage of Tom Colicchio [~ENY~]

Paul Thurrott, regarding what’s heard about Windows Phone 8.1:

No more Back button. Aping the iPhone navigation model, Microsoft will apparently remove the Back button from the Windows Phone hardware specification with 8.1. The Back button just doesn’t make sense, I was told: Users navigate away from an app by pressing the Start button and then open a new app, just like they do on iPhone. And the “back stack” is ill-understood by users: Most don’t realize what they’re doing when they repeatedly hit the Back button.

Yours truly on hardware back buttons, last year:

When it does exactly what you expect, the system-wide Back button is convenient. But when it doesn’t, it’s maddening.

HTML5-based recreation of MacPaint, by Martin Braun. Well done.

(Via Dave Mark.)

John Paczkowski:

The fifth-generation iPad is expected to feature a thinner, lighter design akin to the iPad mini’s, and an improved camera. It will run Apple’s new 64-bit A7 chip. The second-generation iPad mini will be upgraded with a retina display and also see the A7 incorporated into its innards. It’s not clear whether Apple’s new iPads will feature the Touch ID fingerprint sensor that recently debuted on the iPhone 5s, though that has been rumored.

The date seemed rather obvious, given that it coincides with last year’s announcement schedule. Apple is a company of patterns; if they held separate iPhone and iPad events on Tuesdays 11 September and 23 October last year, then held an iPhone event on Tuesday 10 September this year, it was pretty obvious Tuesday 22 October would be the date for the iPad event this year. And given that they haven’t refreshed the iPad lineup since last year’s event, it was even more unlikely that there would be no iPad event.

Interesting to me is Paczkowski’s reporting that the iPad Mini is going retina and getting the A7. The current Mini is running the A5, so if Paczkowski is right, the Mini is going to skip an entire generation. I know nothing about Apple’s plans for the Mini this year, but simply as an observer, I find that unusual.

At the Singapore Grand Prix two weekends ago, Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel won by an unbelievable 32 second margin over his closest rival. Seriously, it's unbelievable. Now F1 experts believe that Red Bull Racing's F1 engineers may have invented a new kind of traction control that links the car's hybrid engine to its suspension — but no one knows for sure. The whole world is stumped.

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