This was neat. I got really pissed at the other burger stand though.
Fuck those jerks over at Filthy Burger. Seriously, fuck 'em. They think they can get more customers than me with fancy signs? Well... well, they might be right.
For Scientific American, Jen Christiansen tracks down where the iconic image on the cover of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures came from. Designer Peter Saville found the image, a stacked graph of successive radio signals from pulsar CP 1919, in a 1977 astronomy encyclopedia but it actually originated in a 1970 Ph.D. thesis.
By now I had also combed through early discovery articles in scientific journals and every book anthology on pulsars I could get my hands on to learn more about early pulsar visualizations. The more I learned, the more this descriptor in the 1971 Ostriker caption began to feel significant; "computer-generated illustration." The charts from Bell at Mullard were output in real time, using analogue plotting tools. A transition in technology from analogue to digital seemed to have been taking place between the discovery of pulsars in 1967 to the work being conducting at Arecibo in 1968 through the early 1970's. A cohort of doctoral students from Cornell University seemed to be embracing that shift, working on the cutting edge of digital analysis and pulsar data output. One PhD thesis title from that group in particular caught my attention, "Radio Observations of the Pulse Profiles and Dispersion Measures of Twelve Pulsars," by Harold D. Craft, Jr. (September 1970).
When a star gets old and fat, it explodes in a supernova, leaving a neutron star in its wake. Neutron stars are heavily magnetized and incredibly dense, approximately two times the mass of the Sun packed into an area the size of the borough of Queens. That's right around the density of an atomic nucleus, which isn't surprising given that neutron stars are mostly composed of neutrons. A teaspoon of neutron star would weigh billions of tons.
A pulsar is a neutron star that quickly rotates. As the star spins, electromagnetic beams are shot out of the magnetic poles, which sweep around in space like a lighthouse light. Pulsars can spin anywhere from once every few seconds to 700 times/second, with the surface speed approaching 1/4 of the speed of light. These successive waves of electromagnetic pulses, arriving every 1.34 seconds, are what's depicted in the stacked graph. Metaphorical meanings of its placement on the cover of a Joy Division record are left as an exercise to the reader.
Two official announcements 1) I will NOT be doing a Wes Anderson video essay. The market is saturated and I have nothing to add. 2) I do NOT take requests for video essay topics. Please stop flooding my inbox.
So since I’m not going to do one, here’s a bunch of Wes Anderson links.
Matt Zoller Seitz gets his own heading. He has written two books:
Someone edited the courtroom scene from A Few Good Men and took out all the dialogue, leaving just the reaction shots. It's surprisingly coherent and dramatic.
I think Duong has this one. Anyway, a plug for the wire cutter. Sister site of the sweet home. Two of the best review sites around.
This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a list of the best technology products to buy. Read the full article at TheWirecutter.com.
After listening to 48 of the market’s top-rated portable Bluetooth speakers and running the best ones through a demanding blind test with a panel of audio professionals, we recommend the $99 UE Mini Boom for most people. Despite being small, it plays louder and sounds fuller and more natural than most of its competitors—including many larger models.
In a lecture given in 1924, German mathematician David Hilbert introduced the idea of the paradox of the Grand Hotel, which might help you wrap your head around the concept of infinity. (Spoiler alert: it probably won't help...that's the paradox.) In his book One Two Three... Infinity, George Gamow describes Hilbert's paradox:
Let us imagine a hotel with a finite number of rooms, and assume that all the rooms are occupied. A new guest arrives and asks for a room. "Sorry," says the proprietor, "but all the rooms are occupied." Now let us imagine a hotel with an infinite number of rooms, and all the rooms are occupied. To this hotel, too, comes a new guest and asks for a room.
"But of course!" exclaims the proprietor, and he moves the person previously occupying room N1 into room N2, the person from room N2 into room N3, the person from room N3 into room N4, and so on.... And the new customer receives room N1, which became free as the result of these transpositions.
Let us imagine now a hotel with an infinite number of rooms, all taken up, and an infinite number of new guests who come in and ask for rooms.
"Certainly, gentlemen," says the proprietor, "just wait a minute."
He moves the occupant of N1 into N2, the occupant of N2 into N4, and occupant of N3 into N6, and so on, and so on...
Now all odd-numbered rooms became free and the infinite of new guests can easily be accommodated in them.
This TED video created by Jeff Dekofsky explains that there are similar strategies for finding space in such a hotel for infinite numbers of infinite groups of people and even infinite amounts of infinite numbers of infinite groups of people (and so on, and so on...) and is very much worth watching:
"It makes less sense than watching Upstream Color on mescaline."
Texas comes up just short in Norman
The Texas Longhorns missed out on an excellent opportunity to take out a ranked team on the road, losing a tough battle against the Oklahoma Sooners, 71-69. In a game that featured 6 ties and at least 20 lead changes, OU made the plays at the end to seal the game. It's a painful loss, as much for the missed opportunity as for what it does to Texas' conference record. 7-6 puts Texas in the thick of the conference and gives them a chance to finish as high as 3rd in the league, 6-7 makes things tougher in a schedule with no real gimmies left to play.
Objectively, this wasn't a bad game for Texas. They almost pulled off a significant upset; Pomeroy had OU with a 77% chance to win the game before the tip, and Texas hasn't won in Norman in awhile so a 2-point loss to a ranked team on the road isn't really that bad. It's not a season-killer to lose a game you were expected to lose, and there were a lot of positive to come out of the game.
As a fan, this loss suuucks. It was right there for Texas and they blew it. It may not have been a season-killer, but it could've been a season-defining win and instead is another loss to a rival. This one hurts. I ended the game cursing under my breath because I could taste the win. They had it, they effing had it. Arrrrgh.
Positives
Kendal Yancy was a revelation tonight. 14 points, 6 rebounds, 2 assists, and for the first time was able to strike a little fear in an opponent's heart from beyond the arc. When was the last time you saw an opponent guarding Yancy 35 feet from the rim? His defensive awareness was great as well, watching him recover to tip away a long outlet pass by OU was a pleasure. A+++ WOULD BUY FROM AGAIN.
Myles Turner was merciless against the Oklahoma guards, notching 6 blocks that seemed like 20. He scored 17 points & was 6/6 from the line, not to mention snagging 10 rebounds. He showed some fire on the court, barking after a couple of big buckets. By which I mean he was terrible and should totally come back next season because who needs money, fame, and an endless supply of interested porn stars? RIGHT? WHO'S WITH ME??
Texas started a 3-guard lineup, their first possession was a 4-out setup, and they played about 90% man defense. Those are 3 very large, very important changes to the team that are in their best interests, and I think it showed in how the team played most of the game. Having an opponent who decides to play man defense against Texas helped as well; this is a significantly better offensive unit playing against man-to-man defenses.
The defense held Buddy Hield to 4/16 from the floor and made OU's role players beat them. Which they did, unfortunately, but you can't really complain too much when it's Dinjiyl Walker(I totally spelled that without looking it up) that lights you up.
Texas tied a school record with 13 blocks, including rejections like this one from Prince Ibeh.
The Javan Felix Memorial(™) Mixed Bag Category
Demarcus Holland was good defensively, but pretty bad offensively. He made 2 3s which is nice, but he also had 4 turnovers including some...let's say questionable decisions driving the ball. The foul trouble was well-earned.
Jonathan Holmes' offensive night was abysmal(1/8 from the floor before nailing a meaningless 3 at the buzzer), but credit due to him for battling for rebounds(11) and still giving max effort going after loose balls & setting screens. He needs to get his head right, literally & metaphorically, but at least he's playing hard and trying to contribute wherever he can
Negatives
Jonathan Holmes was 2/9 from the floor, but he wasn't the worst on the floor. That honor goes to Isaiah Taylor who was 1/10 from the floor and his 5 assists were largely negated by 3 turnovers & a number of other questionable decisions. If I told you that Holmes & Taylor would combine to go 3/19 from the floor, how much would you guess Texas lost by? 12? 15? Taylor was not good tonight.
I don't understand how a team that managed to be so effective against West Virginia's aggressive press went so brain-dead against a simple backcourt trap. Both Taylor & Felix would see the trap coming and instead of turning on the jets, they'd back up and wait for it to close in. It makes less sense than watching Upstream Color on mescaline. Do Felix & Zay let burglars into their backyard and grill some steaks for the crooks while they load up the van with all their electronics? Let's move on before I start throwing things.
Yancy hit a 3 to put Texas up 62-58 with 4:15 left to go. From there, Texas went: missed jumper, 2 made free throws off an offensive rebound, turnover, foul resulting in 3-point play, missed 3, missed 3, 2 made free throws, foul, missed free throw, foul resulting in 2 made FTs, made 3. I don't think that fully encompasses just how frustrating their performance was. They threw away 34 minutes of solid basketball with 6 minutes of painful execution.
I saw a handful of tweets from writers and fans talking about this being the final straw for Barnes. I'm on record as to my thoughts on the subject - and to be clear, I haven't seen anything yet to change my mind - but I don't think tonight is the example to hold up. There were actually a lot of positive signs in this game, and their level of play is on the rise. This is not a team that's thrown in the towel or stuck in the mud; they're figuring some things out and are started to rediscover their potential. Whether they figure it out in time or not, we'll see; whether they play well enough to keep Barnes off the hot seat for another year, we'll see. What I do know is I was locked into the game tonight on a level I haven't been in awhile, and I'm seeing some changes that have my curiosity piqued. It may end up being too little, too late, and if so we'll have a good handle on what's going to happen to this team and this staff. In the mean time, Texas needs to focus on their next opponent: Iowa State in Austin on Saturday, 1pm Central on ESPN2.
Hello. Here are all the ways I could have died today:
— Wake up, roll out of bed, conk head on nightstand, die.
— Wake up, roll out on other side of bed, conk head on other nightstand, die.
— Wake up, begin coughing up blood, never stop. Die.
— Get out of bed, do this massive morning stretch where all my ligaments are torn from my body and my left brachiocephalic vein completely disconnects from my heart. Not sure what the brachiocephalic vein does? Well, it’s important because I just died.
— While walking to the bathroom, think to self, “It’d be awful if I had a heart attack and died right now.” Then that happens and I die.
— During walk to bathroom, accidentally step on exposed nail, begin bleeding. Convince myself it’s not that much blood. Know in the back of my mind that I’ve never seen this much blood in my entire life. Pass out, die.
— Swallow toothbrush.
— During shower, momentarily lose balance on slippery bathtub floor but miraculously stop self from falling, feel sense of relief, say to self, “Seth, you really dodged a bullet there,” immediately slip again, snap neck on shower ledge, die.
—During shower, drink a ton of water, die.
— During shower, water pressure suddenly becomes extremely high. Torso gets blown clean off.
— During shower, Tiny Man emerges from toilet bowl, hops into shower with me, and says with the friendliest of smiles, “Hey ya, pal, I’m Tiny Man, how are ya?!?” I have a heart attack and die.
This thing with Tiny Man could have gone one of two ways, and in both circumstances I die. Here is the other way it could have gone down with Tiny Man.
Tiny Man emerges from toilet bowl, hops into shower, and introduces himself. We have a pretty good time in the shower, laughing, talking, splashing, etc. And then Tiny Man suddenly growls, flashes his very sharp teeth, jumps into my mouth, and bursts through my stomach. I die. But, because the whole thing proved more taxing on Tiny Man’s body than he originally thought, Tiny Man also dies.
Here are more ways I could have died today:
— Following shower, reach for towel, something really bad happens, I die. (couldn’t think of anything for this one)
— Exit apartment, begin patting my pockets to see if I remembered my wallet and keys. I don’t feel them so I begin patting harder and harder. I pat myself to death.
— Step outside, wave hello to my neighbor, take out a gun and blow my brains out.
— While crossing the street, get run over by everything imaginable.
— Get into massive car accident on way to work that severs my spinal chord in half and also kills an inner city youth. Hey, they can’t all be fun.
— Get to work, eat 6,000 croissants. Die of that.
— During morning staff meeting, make humorous throat-slitting gesture at coworker, forget that my thumbnail is notoriously sharp, die.
— In attempt to pull a pretty great office prank, suffocate while stuck inside copy machine.
— While sitting at desk, have aneurism, die.
— While sitting at desk, have embolism, die.
— While sitting at desk, have, um, deep vein thrombosis? That’s a thing, right? Well it better be because I die from it.
— While walking back to my cubicle, trip and fall head first into an axe. Why was an axe there? Why was I walking back to a cubicle? Why was I in an office? I’ve been unemployed for a decade.
— On my way home from the job I don’t have I take a dip in the LaBrea Tar Pit. Oh, I live in L.A. by the way. And this is beside the point, but I’m a billionaire because I was once the best brain surgeon in the world. I haven’t been employed in a decade because I retired from being a brain surgeon because of all the money I made doing brain surgery. But like I said, this is just some background information that adds nothing. I die from swimming in the LaBrea Tar Pit, though. That’s what’s important here. Let’s get to the next death thing.
— Something with carbon monoxide? Sure!
— I park my car in front of my house in Los Angeles. I get out of my car (duh), and then my neighbor accidentally crashes into me, pinning my body against a steel girder. The police arrive. They say the only thing keeping me alive — and my body in tact — is the car that has pinned me against the steel girder. I ask if this how Mel Gibson’s wife died in Signs. They don’t remember, but I know that it’s definitely how she died. The question is: If I was so sure this was how Mel Gibson’s wife died in Signs, why did I even ask? To show that I knew a detail from Signs? What was I trying to prove and who was I trying to impress? Anyway, I die.
— Get home from work, forget to disarm apartment before entering front door, the whole place explodes.
— Heat up warm milk before I go to bed. I die because it’s pathetic for a man to do this. Also, I didn’t heat up warm milk. I hung myself.
— Turn on bedside reading light, get very hungry, and then proceed to eat my book, my sheets, my lamp, and my bed. Death.
— While slowly falling asleep, realize I haven’t watered my plant in the last seven decades. Oh, I’m also 97 years old. I die of natural causes.
Damn I have a Samsung. I don't use any of the apps though.
People with smart TVs from Samsung have been complaining that the electronics maker is inserting Pepsi ads during the playback of their own, locally stored movies.
“Every movie I play, 20-30 minutes in it plays the Pepsi ad, no audio but crisp clear ad. It has happened on 6 movies today,” one reddit user wrote. The user was posting on a subreddit for Plex, a third-party app on Samsung smart TVs that lets you play movies on your TV that are stored on your computer or on a Network Attached Storage device. Several other redditors reported the same experience.
Candy Crush Saga may have reached peak popularity, with quarterly spending declining over the past eighteen months, but that hasn't stopped the sweet-swapping puzzle game from raking in the cash. Candy Crush Saga players still spent over $1.3 billion on the game in 2014 alone, according to The Guardian, with dollars being used towards in-app purchases such as extra lives, extra moves, color bombs, lollipop hammers and gold bars.
Candy Crush Saga continues to be the third-highest grossing app in the United States, closely trailed by Candy Crush Soda Saga at sixth overall. The game has gained a cult-like following since launching on the App Store in June 2013, following in the footsteps of other smash-hit games such as Infinity Blade and Angry Birds. The game was most lucrative when it pulled in $551 million during the third quarter of 2013.
The latest financial numbers from King, the developer of the game, reveal that Candy Crush Saga represented 45% of spending on the company's games during the final quarter of 2014, the first quarter in a long time that the iconic title did not make up the majority of its revenue. King has been working to diversify its gaming portfolio so that it relies less on Candy Crush Saga to remain profitable. The company had 356 million monthly unique users playing its games last quarter.
Super Mario World has a crazy glitch where players can warp to the end of the game without actually playing through it. Normally, this glitch might be impossible for all but the most hardcore of players —but with practice, it's something you can do, too.
People need to learn a computer language, but not instead of a foreign language.
Two Washington state legislators have recently introduced a bill that would allow computer science class (e.g., programming) to effectively count as a foreign language requirement for the purposes of in-state college admissions. On Wednesday, the bill was presented before the Washington State House of Representatives Committee on Higher Education.
House Bill 1445 would amend current state law, which only recognizes “any natural language” that is “formally studied... including a Native American language, American Sign Language, Latin, or ancient Greek.”
This isn’t the first time that such a bill has been attempted: in fact, Kentucky legislators have introduced a similar provision this year, too.
England is obvious. So too Japan, and China, and Egypt. But there have been a lot of Civilization games featuring a lot of Civilizations, so let's take a look at a map (made by sirprizes) showing every nation that has made it into the series and those who, sadly, have not.
I have this modem. It's officially supported by Time Warner.
Every modem rental fee you pay to your ISP is padding for their bottom line, and a total rip-off for you . Fortunately, you can buy your own modem for a relatively small upfront cost, and knock a few bucks off your monthly bill.
First comment "That one dude had 21 points scored on him by a literal baby."
On Jan. 13, 2014, a person with the Twitter handle @BeatinOff2Night—his current handle is @ChickenColeman2—tweeted a three-panel shot of him and a kid playing what appeared to be NBA 2K14. The game was evidently one-sided, but the caption was the best part:
What if you buy the self driving car, but when you're at work or asleep, your car is out earning money?
Uber:
Uber and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) are announcing today a
strategic partnership that includes the creation of the Uber
Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh, near the CMU campus.
The center will focus on the development of key long-term
technologies that advance Uber’s mission of bringing safe,
reliable transportation to everyone, everywhere.
Self-driving cars are coming — it feels like an inevitability. And it makes sense that Uber would want to be at the leading edge of that revolution. But it’s a little weird that it puts Uber in a position of tacitly acknowledging that the company is looking forward to replacing all of its human drivers. Their pitch to drivers is, more or less, Come drive for us while you still can.
I've been close to buying one of these for a while. Not sure what I would do with it though, just so cheap.
Three years after the launch of the first Raspberry Pi, second generation hardware will go on sale today for the same $35 price while offering a lot more power.
The nonprofit Raspberry Pi Foundation has sold 4.5 million of the small computers. "It's a few more than we expected," Raspberry Pi creator Eben Upton told Ars.
The new "Raspberry Pi 2" has roughly the same form factor as the $35 Model B+ from July 2014, which changed the appearance by doubling the number of USB ports to four, adding more GPIO pins, and replacing the SD card slot with a MicroSD one.
The Dissolve picks the 50 best films of the current decade. Picks 50-26, and picks 25-1. Boyhood, The Social Network, Under the Skin, and Inside Llewyn Davis all rank high. (via @khoi)
One of the many pleasures of Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive” (2011) is that the shots feel both tightly composed and weirdly unpredictable. Even though most of the images follow a simple quadrant system, Refn puts plenty of subtle touches within the frame. Let’s take a look.
A flock of starlings is called a murmuration, an apt word because the flocks move like a rumor pulsing through a crowded room. This is a particularly beautiful murmuration observed in Utrecht, The Netherlands.
So many great lines in here. Could have done without the gratuitous McConaughey shots, but honestly if the chest pounding from Wolf of Wallstreet becomes a thing, wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.
Texas defensive coordinator Vance Bedford is the primary narrator as he discusses the ethos of the Texas program under head coach Charlie Strong to make the case for why recruits should come play college football in Austin.
Google just announced that Google Fiber will be coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, and Raleigh-Durham, with the gigabit Internet service hitting 18 cities across those four metro areas.
That brings the total number of Google Fiber metro areas to seven, including previously announced locations Kansas City; Provo, Utah; and Austin, Texas. Another five are still being considered; Google promised updates on Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, and San Jose later this year.
"Bringing Google Fiber to these cities is a long-term investment. We’ve been working closely with city leaders over the past year on a joint planning process to get their communities ready for Google Fiber—and now the really hard work begins," Google Fiber VP Dennis Kish wrote today. "Our next step is to work with cities to create a detailed map of where we can put our thousands of miles of fiber, using existing infrastructure such as utility poles and underground conduit, and making sure to avoid things like gas and water lines. Then a team of surveyors and engineers will hit the streets to fill in missing details. Once we’re done designing the network (which we expect to wrap up in a few months), we’ll start construction."
This is exciting. I noticed that it doesn't seem to be able to layer appropriately. For example, the presenters finger and arm were covered up by a panel that was supposed to be pinned to the wall. Still hopeful.
For the second time in as many months, I feel like I've taken a step into the world of science fiction—and for the second time in as many months, it's Microsoft who put me there.
After locking away all my recording instruments and switching to the almost prehistoric pen and paper, I had a tantalizingly brief experience of Microsoft's HoloLens system, a headset that creates a fusion of virtual images and the real world. While production HoloLens systems will be self-contained and cord-free, the developer units we used had a large compute unit worn on a neck strap and an umbilical cord for power. Production hardware will automatically measure the interpupillary distance and calibrate itself accordingly; the dev kits need this to be measured manually and punched in. The dev kits were also heavy, unwieldy, fragile, and didn't really fit on or around my glasses, making them uncomfortable to boot.
But even with this clumsy hardware, the experience was nothing short of magical.
The wild recruitment of the disruptive defensive tackle has taken another major turn.
Two days of rumors surrounding Gladewater defensive tackle Daylon Mack have finally resulted in some actual news -- the consensus five-star prospect will arrive in Austin on Friday for an official visit with the Texas Longhorns, according to multiple reports.
The 6'0, 330-pounder 2015 Under Armour All-American was supposed to take an official visit to see the Auburn Tigers, but ended up cancelling those plans.
The positive news comes less than two weeks after Mack apparently dropped the Longhorns in favor of the Tigers when he decided not to visit Austin and trip to Auburn instead.
Now the pendulum has swung back in favor of head coach Charlie Strong and his staff. Mack's relationship with Texas early enrollee linebacker Malik Jefferson probably helped the Horn secure the first trip to Texas for Mack in some time.
And it appears that it was not insignificant that Mack followed defensive coordinator Vance Bedford early in the week.
With five-star running back Soso Jamabo already on campus and the looming potential of five-star quarterback Kyler Murray flipping from the Aggies and bringing four-star wide receiver DaMarkus Lodge with him, there could be some major potential Longhorns recruiting momentum building with only a few days remaining until prospects put pen to paper on National Signing Day.
Texas has long been striving to get Mack on campus in an effort to showcase the program and remind him why he had such an affinity for the program in his younger years.
