Albener Pessoa

A great big thankyou to everyone who helped make GaymerX happen. Please come by tomorrow where I'll be signing at 3! And come by anyway to have a good time.

What an amazing time at GaymerX.

A couple of things. First off, ‘Close but no WiFi’ is something my cousin Nab said once, and it got me thinking about other sayings. Secondly, yes, some of these don’t quite make sense if you think about them too long—some are just meant to be funny. Also, ‘Don’t bite the hand…’ came to mind when thinking of the Google RSS debacle, and for some strange reason when I look at ‘Never judge an app by its icon’, I think of Marco Arment’s Bugshot (I know the story behind it, so in the words of Marco “Don’t email me.”). Also, normally with a post like this I’d ask for y’all’s ideas on other ones, but I plan on doing another set, so I don’t want to cheat by seeing some other great ones. ;) Thanks for reading this whole thing.

“One of the biggest lies in the history of this country,” according to Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, is the claim that the so-called “war on drugs” disproportionately targets African-Americans. But it’s not a lie at all, according to statistics collected by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Black people are nearly four times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession as white people, as the above chart demonstrates. This is despite the fact that black and white Americans smoke cannabis at roughly the same rate.

How marijuana arrests disproportionately affect black people

In a dramatic about-face on a key internet issue yesterday, Google told the FCC that the network neutrality rules Google once championed don't give citizens the right to run servers on their home broadband connections, and that the Google Fiber network is perfectly within its rights to prohibit customers from attaching the legal devices of their choice to its network.

The actor who played Darth Vader receives regular letters from Lucasfilm regretfully informing him that there are no profits to share because, at least on paper, 80% of all Hollywood movies lose money.

Read The Blog Post Here »

malindalo:

tastefullyoffensive:

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Sometimes I just need to look at this and LMAO.

Dedicated to Grace! Hope you have a happy birthday tomorrow!

Here’s more Godzilla.

Haters gonna hate =)

Dilbert readers - Please visit Dilbert.com to read this feature. Due to changes with our feeds, we are now making this RSS feed a link to Dilbert.com.

More goals.

More acting.

A loaf of bread made in the first century AD, which was discovered at Pompeii, preserved for centuries in the volcanic ashes of Mount Vesuvius. The markings visible on the top are made from a Roman bread stamp, which bakeries were required to use in order to mark the source of the loaves, and to prevent fraud. (via Ridiculously Interesting)

(sigh) I’ve seen these before, but this one’s particularly beautiful.

A report out this morning alleges that working conditions at three Chinese factories operated by Pegatron, a Taiwanese manufacturer of Apple products, violate both Apple’s standards and China’s labor laws. China Labor Watch (CLW), a New-York based non-profit, sent undercover investigators to work at three factories in and around Shanghai. Between them, the three sites employ some 70,000 people. The investigators found (pdf) a panoply of illegal and unethical practices, including:

• Work hours in excess of Apple’s 60-hours-per-week standard
• Coercive conditions to discourage workers from refusing overtime or taking days off
• Restricted or non-existent breaks to drink water or use the bathroom
• Discriminatory hiring conditions such as age limits and height restrictions
• Docking of pay for minor rule violations, such as not waiting in line to get food in the cafeteria

Pegatron CEO Jason Cheng promised to investigate the allegations and to “take immediate actions to correct any violations to Chinese labor laws and our own code of conduct.” Apple disputed the findings in a statement issued to the Wall Street Journal. The company said it had conducted more than 15 audits at Pegatron factories since 2007, the most recent of which found employees working 46-hour weeks. It did however acknowledge that some workers’ personal ID cards were being held by labor brokers “as they helped set up bank accounts for those employees” and put an end to the practice.

Reports of grim worker conditions at Chinese factories producing electronics are nothing new, but Apple has had a tough time getting its suppliers to clean up their acts. Apple’s chief supplier, Hon Hai (better known as Foxconn), doubled its minimum wage in 2010 and promised to do so again last year after a spate of worker suicides.

Meanwhile, Pegatron has increasingly come under the spotlight as Apple gives it more orders to reduce the iPhone maker’s company’s reliance on Hon Hai. Apart from mobile devices and Macs for Apple, Pegatron also makes products for several companies, including Dell, Microsoft and HP. However, CLW’s investigators were all assigned to Apple lines, including one on the “cheap” iPhone expected to debut this fall.

Though a much smaller company, Pegatron has been winning Apple contracts by offering aggressively low prices. That shows in its margins. In the last quarter of 2012, Hon Hai’s operating margin stood at 3.7%. In contrast, Pegatron’s margins were a razor-thin 0.3%, nudging up to 0.8% by the end of March.

My pals Bill and Jeff have a new kickstarter, and if it ever hits 20k, I'll be drawing a little bonus strip!

O papa foi informado que enquanto está no Brasil ocorre um evento chamado de Lingerie Day em que pessoas postam suas fotos na internet usando, obviamente, lingerie. Ele aproveitou uma missa para se dizer contra o evento, contra a exposição do corpo da mulher e contra o uso de lingeries sensuais. Segundo o papa, Jesus nunca precisou usar uma lingerie para ser amado e que ele próprio também nunca fez uso deste tipo de produto.

O que mais assustou o sumo pontífice foi a incrível quantidade de jovens que participam deste evento mesmo com todo o frio que assola o Brasil. Segundo o Vaticano, este frio é um sinal de Deus de que o evento é ruim. O papa declarou que passou toda a noite e madrugada de ontem na internet abrindo fotos do evento e rezando individualmente para que cada uma das meninas seja perdoada do pecado que está cometendo.

Archive

INVISIBLE SPHERE.

The sphere contains 215 monitors and 215 cameras.   Each camera is opposite to the monitor it feeds.  The sphere constantly recreates its surroundings on its monitors from every conceivable angle at all times.  The sphere is reflection of media’s attempt to remain revealing as it grows in power and becomes increasingly omni present.    

Muitas são chamadas como os fundadores, mas a história registra também formas inusitadas de denominar uma empresa

COOKIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

• The new NSA center in Utah is 15 times the size of MetLife Stadium, home to the New York Giants and Jets, and 7 times bigger than the Pentagon. (more) 

• Spy blimps can stay aloft for almost 3 weeks. (more) And, they are coming to Washington, DC (more) (video)

• 1,600 intelligence gatherers working at the Rivanna Station along with NGIC— DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), NGA (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the frequently-in-the news National Security Agency (NSA)— call them the "crown jewels" of the Department of Defense intelligence. (more)
 
• The S&P 500 SPDR (SPY, A) is the oldest and best-known exchange-traded fund. (more) (oops, wrong spy)
 
• Authorities in eastern Turkey have cleared a small bird detained on suspicions of spying for Israel. (more)

• North Korea to put captured US spy ship on display. (more) 

• The real danger the NSA poses can be found here.

Nana! Nana! Batman! Via @awwclub

tastefullyoffensive:

Tall cat vs. a pile of cat [via]

MAS