"The only times I don’t do reviews are when we go on vacation — and usually when we go and do something it’s noodle-related. For my birthday my wife took me to Canada, we hit up Asian groceries there and brought back about 55 different noodle varieties, and those are great." — Prolific blogger Hans Lienesch has reviewed more than 1,100 kinds of instant ramen on his website, much to the chagrin of noodle soup companies, who fear he wields too much influence. [Quartz]
Some wry "disgruntled businessman" in England with way too much time on his hands wanted to draw attention to the fact that content on the travel and reviews hub TripAdvisor is for the most part unregulated, so he created Oscar's, a lovely sounding mom-and-pop Michelin-star-wannabe restaurant situated on an old "phantom class" boat moored in Brixham, England. It turns out that the restaurant's supposed location was actually just an alleyway filled with Dumpsters, and it was proven not to exist, the Daily Mail reports, after lots of would-be customers couldn't find it.
Too bad, because the place seemed to be on to something great: a high-caliber restaurant on a boat that served the freshest fish both simply and with flourishes of molecular gastronomy. Here's what some completely bogus customers were saying about the place:
• "[T]he poached bream was simply historic."
• "The big suprise [sic] here was what Colette and her staff does in the kitchen, something bordering on sorcery. "
• "The owners and staff seem to have a grand life, they dive for shellfish, handline and rod fish most summer days and in the evening they cook and eat it. "
• "'Is Oscar's as good? No not quite - but as has been mentioned already, there is an unbelievable quality about it."
• "Trying to book a table can be a nightmare, Fridays and Saturdays are booked well in to 2014."
Proprietors Colette and Alfredo, along with everything else about the place, turned out to be fiction. But user "Oscar Parrot" went to great lengths to make Oscar's seem real and even set up an e-mail address for reservations.
"There are many businesses that have had grudge reviews listed on TripAdvisor, mostly from a rival," he told the Daily Mail. "Many of these are so blatant, any person doing a short check would see the obvious. The chances were better then average that Oscar's could have sailed on for months."
The restaurant will live as part of a fake-restaurant row that includes the sophisticated Osteria L’Intrepido, the locavorish Brooklyn A.D.D. joint Fuds, and the only marginally satirical Guy's American Kitchen. In the meantime, TripAdvisor has taken the listing down.
Olympic gold medals are rare enough as it is, but the ones given out at the 22nd Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia will be rarer still: some will include a piece of the giant meteorite that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia one year prior. The special medals will only be handed out to winners on February 15th, to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the rock falling to earth. While the cities of Chelyabinsk and Sochi aren't exactly neighbors — Google Maps estimates a 34-hour drive — that doesn't seem to be the point. "We will hand out our medals to all the athletes who win gold on that day because both the meteorite strike and the Olympic Games are global events," said Alexei Betekhtin, Chelyabinsk minster of culture.
There are plenty of ways to open a nice bottle of wine, but they all involve the avoidable decision to finish the bottle (or risk the weird-tasting leftovers). We can do better than this, people. A new opener from Coravin aimed at connoisseurs lets you drink one glass at a time, by performing what amounts to a surgical procedure on your bottle.
The Simpsons has gone on longer than most ever really expected it would, with 24 seasons and a whopping 530 episodes under its belt. If that somehow isn't enough, it sounds like a new syndication deal will bring the show to cable for the first time in the near future — as first reported by TV Guide and later backed up by a Reuters report, Fox is shopping the rights to air The Simpsons in syndication for a whopping $1 billion. While the show has been in syndication for years, this would mark the first time cable stations will get a crack at one of the most famous shows of the last few decades.
According to TV Guide's sources, the cable network that lands this deal will have the right to show The Simpsons on any of its channels it...
Google Reader is long gone and while a handful of new alternatives have popped up over the last few months, one popular option is essentially closing up shop: The Old Reader. In a blog post, the team behind the RSS reading web app said that they are giving up development on the product because they're simply exhausted from building the product. As of Monday, the web app is no longer accepting new users. And in two weeks, The Old Reader will turn into a private site for those who've registered before March 13th. If you're an Old Reader user who signed up after March 13th, the time to pull your data and move over to another product is now — user data is available for export in OPML files.
Amazingly clever new app by Frank Krueger. “Calculator” just doesn’t do the concept justice — think Soulver crossed with Markdown crossed with an interactive shell. No explanation will do it justice, you need to look at the examples to get it. The iOS and Mac versions can even share documents via iCloud.
Every year for the past half decade, some of the world's best soldiers have descended on King Abdullah II Special Operations Training Center (KASOTC) in Jordan to compete in the Warrior Competition. Branded "the Olympics of counterterrorism" by its organizers, 32 teams from 18 countries — including the US, China, Canada, France, Iraq, and Switzerland — spend four days raiding buildings, shooting targets, liberating hostages, and storming hijacked jets, fighting to win a competition hosted on land donated by the King of Jordan and paid for by a US Defense program. While the event is free for anyone that can get there, The New York Times reports that the Warrior Competition also serves as a marketing event, as sponsors show off their...
The world has changed in countless ways since Buckminster Fuller invented the Dymaxion map in 1943. Wars have come and gone, populations have changed, and entire generations have passed. But Bucky's map endures, thanks to its endless adaptability—and to prove it, the Buckminster Fuller Institute recently invited the public to help reinvent the map for 2013. Today, we get a glimpse at the best entries.
Published in 1927 in a publication called The Motion Picture Industry as a Basis for Bond Financing, this map shows what locations in California look like other places from around the world.
The gold leaf flickering like a high-end beacon atop pristine squares of amberjack at Urasawa, which is thought to be L.A.'s most expensive restaurant, may be 24-karat, but what good is all that luster when the prep cook is coughing up a storm in the back room and has been told he isn't allowed to use the men's room because it's "for customers only"? The New York Times delves into the alleged wage theft and abusive labor practices at Hiroyuki Urasawa's Rodeo Drive sushi spot, which made headlines in March after longtime employee Heriberto Zamora accused the restaurant of firing him after he complained of flulike symptoms. Three other employees are now suing Urasawa, which may routinely score top honors on critics' best-of lists, but all the caviar and Tsukiji-fresh fish in the world don't mean a thing if the cooks are forced to pee in the janitorial sinks. [NYT, Earlier, Related]
In an attempt to overshadow the news of its Twitter breakdown this weekend, Chipotle has announced the expanded testing of a new "Sofritas" burrito filling, with "shredded tofu braised with chipotle chilis, roasted poblanos, and a blend of aromatic spices." The company is introducing organic, non-GMO tofu across the West Coast throughout July, and then will consider serving it across the country this fall. One blogger describes a Sofritas burrito as looking "wet and squishy" and tasting "overwhelmingly salty" and "peppery and spicy," but it doesn't seem like Chipotle will have a problem if it's a flop: The company's shares jumped 8.5 percent yesterday. [Earlier, Businessweek, YumSugar, NYP]
With Transformers 4, Fast & Furious 7 and Need for Speed bringing hundreds of millions of dollars of carnage to the Summer of 2014 - and Getaway coming next month - we should probably start learning our car-stunt grammar. We can start with this behind-the-scenes video of a car rollover stunt that provides more that ten minutes of detailed info on each part of the process.
The star - after stunt driver Tom Harper and that Crown Vic - is the air ram that takes just 1.1 seconds to propel and retract a giant 'foot' onto the ground to get the car flipping. It is apparently Harper's own design and supplants the cannon system that launches a projectile in order to launch the car. You can watch Harper and crew explain it all in the video below.
by Casey Chan on LEGO, shared by Casey Chan to Gizmodo
One of the most painful feelings in the entire world is when you accidentally step onto a Lego brick with your bare foot. AGH the shooting needle of plastic is a horrific reminder of how much of a weakling your feet are. No worries though. For true Lego fanatics, they can turn to Lego brick house slippers.
Saving offline maps in Google Maps 2.0 is a sneaky 'easter egg' type feature that'll make Google Maps on iOS even better. You won't need to rely on a data connection, you'll get your maps faster and it'll make things work better. So how do you save offline maps on the iOS version of Google Maps?
I'm in scenarios all the time in which primitive, exotic-looking me -- six-foot-two, 300 pounds, uncivilized Afro, for starters -- finds himself in places where people who look like me aren't normally found. I mean, what can I do? I have to be somewhere on Earth, correct? In the beginning -- let's say 2002, when the gates of "Hey, Ahmir, would you like to come to [swanky elitist place]?" opened -- I'd say "no," mostly because it's been hammered in my DNA to not "rock the boat," which means not making "certain people" feel uncomfortable.
I mean, that is a crazy way to live. Seriously, imagine a life in which you think of other people's safety and comfort first, before your own. You're programmed and taught that from the gate. It's like the opposite of entitlement.
Reading about this case and the reaction to it has been a series of gut punches this week.
The LFA Works that produced the Lexus LFA hasn't had too much to do since the 500th example of the V10 supercar left the plant on December 15, 2012. So what are a bunch of carbon fiber experts meant to do with their time when they have some of the world's most advanced CFRP machinery but no engine to wrap it with? Why, make a bicycle, of course - and not just any bicycle, but the kind that costs one million Japanese yen ($10,000 US) and of which only 100 will be made.
Only they didn't really "make" it - the carbon fiber frame was sourced from Takumi, in Taiwan. On the face of it that's a shame, but it makes sense; when you've got a company like McLaren assisting bike manufacturer Specialized produce a road bike, it's clear that 'pushies' have got so advanced that a company can't just hop in and mold a $10K bike in six months. Beyond that frame it's got a Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 group with electronic shifters, and it weighs 15 pounds.
However, the Lexus crafstmen did polish each frame for three hours, and the bike is said to embody the "principles and philosophy" of the supercar, while the brochure for the bike says it represents "a new chapter in Lexus history." That chapter is still all about rarity, though, since there's only one bike headed for Canada and two for the US.
It's not uncommon to find playthroughs where a player decides to go through an entire game of Pokemon with something silly, like Bidoof. But Magikarp, a fish Pokemon that's largely taken as the most useless Pokemon ever? That's a whole other level of insanity. Still, it can be done.
This (sometimes sped-up) video shows Meikachuchu going through most gym leaders and the entire Elite Four on either Pokemon Fire Red or Pokemon Leaf Green—all with a singular Magikarp. The Elite Four are basically the closest Pokemon has to final bosses.
Some matches here aren't so bad; Magikarp is leveled such that it can tank through some threats. But there are some moments in here where you think, wow, that battle looks painful and tedious—is playing through with just one Magikarp worth it?
But then you get to the end, and this happens:
And you're just like yes. Yes it was.
Naturally this undertaking required a lot of items, but even so, there were a lot of close, nerve-wracking moments. Like having to use struggle to go up against a ghost-type, because Magikarp, in all of its complete usefulness, only has three moves: splash, tackle and flail. All normal types, which don't affect ghosts! Thankfully, the move struggle has no typing, but having to resort to it is still ridic.
So, kudos, Meikachuchu. Your Magikarp run-through is amazing.
Pretty much anyone who walks into a bar or diner in a group is scanning for a booth. It's just nicer to eat five plates of cheese fries in your own space. And the architects at Australian firm Techne clearly agree because they used concrete pipes to create seating spaces in the redesigned bar at Melbourne's Prahran Hotel. Finally some privacy.
The large pipes allow the structure of the building to simultaneously provide internal spaces, perfect for individual tables. As part of a design overhaul, the hotel demolished its previous extension from the 1970s and replaced it with two-stories-worth of concrete pipes, seventeen in all. The design lets in a lot of light and a central courtyard creates flow to outside spaces. Concrete pipes sound like a kind of oppressive leisure environment at first, but between the wood panelling, leather banquettes and gently sloped walls the ambience is probably pretty great. [My Modern Met]
Night Stroll is a lovely animated short by Tao Tajima. Various light figures are seen interacting with locations around Tokyo, I can’t begin to guess how this was all planned, shot and animated and there is almost no information about it online, but it’s remarkable nonetheless. (via be con in riot)
You didn't realize tomorrow is National French Fry Day, did you? How come you always forget the yearly nationwide celebration of fried potato sticks, but a major corporation like Frito-Lay preps ahead of time, rolling out a brand-new Ruffles product to coincide with the holiday?
Oh don't give me that commercial holiday bullshit. Tomorrow is an earnest celebration of the fried potato, and all Frito-Lay wants to do is praise them like it should, with the release of Ruffles Crispy Fries, the *reads press release* "first-ever fry-shaped snacks sliced from real potatoes."
I researched it, and that claim is actually true. Most traditional fry-shaped snacks that aren't actually French fries are actually shaped from potato-heavy dough. They are to the French fry what the Chicken McNugget is to common decency — an abomination.
What Ruffles has done is slice potatoes into fries and — I don't know, really. Perhaps they are dehydrated somehow? They're the sort of French fries the astronauts would eat?
Whatever the end result is crispy potato strips that, without touching them, can easily be mistaken for real French fries.
A quick glance at the ingredients on the back of the plain variety bag indicates that they contain potatoes, vegetable oil and salt — that's all. The cheese variety has about 30 more ingredients and 20 more calories a bag, so if you're looking for a healthy snack YOU SHOULD NOT BE BUYING CRISPS.
The back of a bag of Ruffles Crispy Fries suggests the product is the answer to an age-old conundrum — potato chips or fries? Long have snackologists po...fries. Every damn time, fries. Chips are wonderful if you're in the mood for them, but the only way they'd win that fight is if they slipped between your teeth and sliced open your gums.
But the marketing angle is sound. These taste and feel like the halfway point between chips and fries. Pop a handful in your mouth and suck on the for a few moments, and it's pretty much as if you'd just stuffed your gob with pre-chewed French fries. Or French fries you yourself chewed, if that makes you feel better.
I have prepared a short video featuring the product.
You're welcome.
Oh, and the bag suggests microwaving them for 30 seconds if you prefer your fries hot.Another excellent suggestion from bag. Bag never steers you wrong.
While I appreciate Frito-Lay's earnest attempt to honor the French fry, I have to say that these Crispy Fries are no substitute for the real thing. If anything they just make me crave the real thing, smothered in gravy and melted cheese.
At least Frito-Lay took the extra effort to work up a visual tribute to this product's inspiration — an obvious work of love, and not marketing. Take that, you skeptics.
Snacktaku is Kotaku's take on the wild and wonderful world of eating things, but not eating meals. Eating meals is for those with too much time on their hands. Past critiques can be found at the Snacktaku review archive.
My eyes are telling me that this is 3D art. My brain is telling me that these are 3D drawings. My entire being believes that this is crafted in 3D. But nope. These drawings are actually 2D with clever shading and angles to make us believe they're in 3D. I still can't believe it.
Italian artist Alessandro Diddi, the man behind the anamorphic drawings, said that he wanted his "drawings to put across the message that the eye can trick the mind and make you believe that there are dimensions that are not really there." He succeeded. See his magnificent work here. [Alessandro Diddi via Daily Mail via My Modern Met]
Back in October, I wrote a post about the race to win the Igor I. Sikorsky Human Powered Helicopter Competition. To win the $250,000 Sikorsky prize, a human-powered helicopter must fly for 60 seconds, reach a momentary altitude of 3 meters, and stay within a 10 meter square. Last month, after 33 years of collective human effort, someone finally won the prize:
Reichert knew that the challenge was to keep supplying enough power through his legs to keep the craft from descending too quickly. On two previous flights in which he'd flirted with the three-meter mark, Reichert had descended too abruptly and fallen afoul of a phenomenon called vortex ring state, in which a helicopter essentially gets sucked down by its own downwash. Both times Atlas had been wrecked. This time, Reichert spent the balance of the flight easing the craft down gently to the ground. "You're so focused on having the body do a very precise thing," he told Pop Mech. "If you lay off the power even a little bit, or make any sharp control movement, you can crash."
Viscera Cleanup Detail points out a longstanding social implication buried within some of our favorite shooters: Who cleans up the blood, guts and flesh left behind by our violent rampages through facilities invaded by hostile aliens? In this game, it's you.
Viscera Cleanup Detail is a first-person space-based janitor simulator, starring you as a rubber-gloved person tasked with cleaning up the remnants of an epic battle, including chunks of meat, pools of blood and bullet shells. It comes out of a 10-day game jam from developer Runestorm, and it's available in alpha for PC right now.
"It was a long and horrific battle as the survivor dueled with all manner of horrific life-forms and alien mutations, but our hero won out in the end and destroyed the alien menace!" Runestorm writes. "Humanity was saved! Unfortunately, the alien infestation and the heroic efforts of the courageous survivors have left rather a mess thoughout the facility. As the janitor, it is your duty to get this place cleaned up."
Viscera Cleanup Detail hopes it can clear away a spot on Steam Greenlight.
