Geppettofedora

Sony announced that its DIY platformer sequel LittleBigPlanet 3 has a bundle of free goodies in store for pre-order buyers ahead of its November launch, including exclusive Sackboy plush dolls and a variety of retailer-specific in-game...

A YouTube commenter's story of racing the ghost car of his deceased father has been making laps around game and car blogs. Yahoo! Autos has the full tale, in which a boy's father dies when he's six and ten years later the boy boots up his dad's Xbox...

Just prior to the July 1997 launch of EA's classic labyrinth-building simulation Dungeon Keeper, a designer slipped a secret message into the game's executable code. That message remained secret until now. "I am writing this at 4AM on Keeper's last...

The Loudest Word in Rock and Roll

In the '70s, the choice to leave off the definitive became more clearly artistically significant. "With punk being a neo-traditional form, returning to the roots of rock 'n' roll, it explains again why we get 'the' names going, along with three-chord progressions and traditional band instrumentations. It shouldn't try and have pretentions more than that," Zimmer said. "It gets revived again with The Strokes and The Killers and The Hives." [...]

"There are 330 different bands that start with 'The B' out of 3,884 bands in my consideration set," Schnoebelen said. "The major takeaway is that [charting] bands that start with 'the' have a striking preference for the next letter to be: b, j, k, m, and z. Meanwhile, bands seem to avoid following the 'the' with a, e, i, p, t, and u.

"The easiest thing to explain is the dislike for vowels -- it's probably an avoidance of what linguists call a 'hiatus'," Schnoebelen continued. "That is, it's lousy to say 'The Eagles' (and a lot easier to pronounce it 'Theagles'). There are exceptions to these patterns, but right now these are the patterns that are popping out as most significant."

Previously, previously, previously.

Chess 2 is now available on Steam.

It's a new take on Chess with modern design sensibilities:

• 6 different armies
• Far fewer draws because of the new midline invasion rule
• Less about memorization, more about improvisation
• Dueling system adds a bit of mindgames and even more focus on knowing how valuable each piece really is

Uber whines about insurance rules that would level the playing field

What's this nefarious measure that could do such damage to the good people with their disruptive transportation platform? Actually, it's a pretty mild regulatory measure, AB 2293, that would require ride-sharing drivers to have exactly the same insurance as taxis in most cities, including San Francisco. And it would mandate that insurance be in effect as long as a driver is actively looking for fares.

It levels the playing field to make sure taxis and faux-cabs have the same insurance requirements -- and would prevent situations where neither the company nor its driver carries sufficient insurance to cover an incident like the death of Sophia Liu.

Lyft: "Uber scheduled, canceled 5,000 rides to hassle us"

CNN reports that people associated with car-on-demand service Uber have been attempting to sabotage an Uber competitor, Lyft, by ordering and canceling as many as 5,000 rides since October 2013. Lyft drivers have also complained that Uber employees will call them to take "short, low-profit rides largely devoted to luring them to work for Uber."

Lyft claims to have sussed out the fake requests using phone numbers used by "known Uber recruiters." Lyft claims that one Uber recruiter requested and canceled 300 rides from May 26 to June 10, and it said that recruiter's phone number was associated with 21 more accounts with 1,524 canceled rides between them.

(My understanding is that this is exactly in keeping with the Libertarian Dream, so everything's fine. The market works!)

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

The first time I had an energy drink, I was actually well out of college.  I actually stopped drinking caffeine during college because, well, I drank way too much of it =)  Soooo many Mountain Dew Code Red 2 liters were consumed.

–GAMING–

Ahhhh, I fell off the gaming wagon!  I wanna get back on!

 

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Holy crap, Lucy is the best movie I've seen this year!

This movie is a Singularitarian Limitless with a protagonist who isn't a moron.

Science fiction -- I am a fan. And if you've ever heard me sneer at a movie, I've probably said some variant of "bad science, worse fiction", because most self-professed "science fiction" movies and TV are actually fantasy with lasers.

In fantasy, the answer to the question of "why is this possible" is "because the plot demands it".

In science fiction, the answer to that question is "because that's the logical consequence of the 'what if' we proposed in the opening scene."

Without giving too many spoilers, this movie is really solid. But I have some script notes...

Basically everything that Morgan Freeman's character says makes me want to punch myself in the face. The whole "10% of your brain" thing has been discredited for decades, and if you hear someone trot it out then they're probably the kind of person who gets their evidence from I Fucking Love Science or other sources of GIF factoids about astrology woo energy.

But! He's just some schmuck in a movie! Not a reliable narrator. I can tolerate him as some character who's just wrong about what's happening. That's fine. But seriously though, throw me a bone? I think that whoever actually wrote the first draft of this thing was of My People, and really, if Lucy had hung a goddamned lantern on it, and thrown out even a single line like, "It's pheromones, nanties, and designer retroviruses, ok? You wouldn't understand" it would have... really pulled that room together.

But in any script, the ending is where it's your game to lose. And about 15 minutes from the end, I kept saying to myself, "Do the 2001 ending, do the 2001 ending."

I'll just say that I found the ending satisfying -- as satisfying as in Her.

Also, stylistically speaking -- 10 minutes in, I turned to my friend and asked, "Wait, is this a Luc Besson movie?" Because I had forgotten that it's a Luc Besson movie. But yeah, it hits those signature notes.

Here is a comic about crap.

Also, feel free to check out my Society6 store – they’re running a FREE shipping promotion all week! As always, just let me know if there’s a specific comic you’d like to see available as a print purchase there.

Six researchers (including Julia Lawall of the Coccinelle project) have just released a paper [PDF] (abstract) that looks at the faults in the 2.6 kernel. "In August 2011, Linux entered its third decade. Ten years before, Chou et al. published a study of faults found by applying a static analyzer to Linux versions 1.0 through 2.4.1. A major result of their work was that the drivers directory contained up to 7 times more of certain kinds of faults than other directories. This result inspired numerous efforts on improving the reliability of driver code. Today, Linux is used in a wider range of environments, provides a wider range of services, and has adopted a new development and release model. What has been the impact of these changes on code quality? To answer this question, we have transported Chou et al.'s experiments to all versions of Linux 2.6; released between 2003 and 2011. We find that Linux has more than doubled in size during this period, but the number of faults per line of code has been decreasing. Moreover, the fault rate of drivers is now below that of other directories, such as arch. These results can guide further development and research efforts for the decade to come. To allow updating these results as Linux evolves, we define our experimental protocol and make our checkers available." (Thanks to Asger Alstrup Palm.)

Date: July 9, 2014

Location: Global

Tags:

So that "pivoted" about as expected.

Million Fishes Art Collective sat at the corner of 23rd and Bryant for nearly a decade, reportedly paying over $5,000 a month in rent for a space deep within gang territory. The 10,000 square foot collective housed dozens of artists and was routinely open to the public for shows.

But soon the neighborhood became trendy among techies and the gang violence subsided. And in the fall of 2012, Million Fishes' landlord booted them from the space with the hopes of attracting a monied startup to the space. [...]

Squandering nearly $400,000 a year in venture capital just to be in a hip neighborhood proved to be a terrible investment for Bloodhound. Despite TechCrunch's glowing coverage and claims that their growth strategy was "working like a charm," the app didn't pan out. In a blog post authored on Valentine's Day this year, the company announced it was killing off conference app and 'pivoting' to a business card-scanning program.

Now it seems the startup has burned through its cash. According to a lawsuit filed in the San Francisco Superior Court last month, Bloodhound has become a deadbeat -- not paying their hefty rent since May.

When emailed for comment, Bloodhound co-founder Anthony Krumeich simply stated "We moved out of the office. No longer fit our needs." However court documents indicate Bloodhound has gone AWOL and abandoned their office. The landlord's attorney has not been able to issue the company or its founders a summons. Now court documents are prominently taped to Bloodhound's former front door. [...]

It's rarely a case of flailing businesses finally succumbing to their inevitable death -- it's often a story of sustainable small businesses being axed in favor of startups with speculative wealth. But the consequence of startups pushing up rents to unsustainable levels is that it ends up gutting the very culture that made these "hip" communities interesting in the first place.

Date(s): July 12, 2014

Address: Chubby Bunny Farm, Undermountain Rd. & Cobble Rd., Falls Village, CT 06031.

Details:

Family-friendly tour to see the fields at peak of the farm's production, meet the cows, chickens and pigs, and learn about sustainable agriculture from one of the local farming families, the Hayhursts.

Date(s): July 12-13, 2014

Address: Downtown., 1 School St., Bethel, CT 06801.

Details:

Street fair with local artisans, crafts, and vendors with live music and entertainment, and children's Arena. Shop-Dine-Play experience Bethel.

Date(s): July 11-13, 2014

Address: EMPOWER Leadership Sports and Adventure Center, 2011 South Main St., Middletown, CT 06457.

Details:

Zip line under the moonlight and stars.

Date(s): July 6-Aug. 31, 2014

Address: Stamford Museum & Nature Center, 39 Scofieldtown Rd., Stamford, CT 06903.

Details:

Stop by for a chance to meet one of the Overbrook Nature Center or Heckscher Farm animals up close.

Date(s): July 17-20, 2014

Address: Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center, 110 Pequot Trail, Mashantucket, CT 06339.

Details:

Learn about different dances while watching dancers in colorful regalia. Visit Native artists as they demonstrate and sell works of art. Native cuisine available for purchase.

Date(s): July 11-26, 2014

Address: Gallery 53, 53 Colony St., Meriden, CT 06450.

Details:

A show of painting and sculptures that depict garden scenes and art that can be found in gardens. Opening reception, July 11, from 5 p.m.-8 p.m.

Date(s): July 1-31, 2014

Address: Geary Gallery, 576 Boston Post Road, Darien, CT 06820.

Details:

The Geary Gallery of Darien proudly presents the oil paintings of North Carolina painter, Jon Houglum.

 

Here is a comic! It proves that it is never too late to ask.

Fuck Amazon. Fuck them right in their Cloud.

It's bad enough that, previously, Amazon wouldn't just give me a .zip of my MP3 album purchases, but made me dick around with their crappy "Amazon MP3 Downloader" intermediary app (which seemed to need to update itself twice a week, because come on, you couldn't be expected to ever actually get something that complicated right, right?)

It's bad enough that a few months ago, they started interposing three more clicks with every download -- "Are you SURE you don't want to install Amazon Cloud Player?" and completely ignoring me every time I said "No".

But now they seem to have discontinued even that, and now the only way to download MP3s is to go through a bunch of additional clicks in this new bullshit "Amazon Music" app that seems to be trying to replicate all of iTunes. And buried somewhere in there is "Export".

So that's going to work out really well for them.

It's almost enough to make me start buying music from Apple instead. (Ha ha, I kid, I kid, nothing would ever make me sink that low.)

Hooray for user-hostile lock-in! Why don't you just figure out a way to have a tiny hammer pop out of my screen and hit me in the face every time I try to give you money!

Previously.

How did I end up seeing four Singularity movies in a row? Normally I'd say "bad decision-making", but three of them were actually good:

The Machine: Military reconstructive prosthetics lead to accidental hive-minding. Very pretty, nice effects. Naked robot fu.

Her: Siri is a really great girlfriend, until she ascends. People are remarkably supportive of someone dating their phone (that's how you know it's science fiction). It's way better than I expected it to be.

Transcendence: This was complete bullshit. Fuck this movie.

The Congress: Lawyers ruin everything, including the Singularity, which looks exactly like Toontown. This movie is bizarre and absolutely fantastic. It never occurred to me that Chuck Jones might be the architect of our drug-addled post-physical existence. That whole "lawyers ruin everything" thing was a given, though.

Previously.

The internet is a lot like the Cave of Secrets from Disney's Aladdin. There's a ton of hidden treasure in there, and who can say where it all came from? Such is the case with One Tap Quest, a simple browser game coded in HTML5 that's been making the...

Upcoming RPG Shiness by French studio Ynnis Interactive is pretty. Absurdly pretty. Like, pretty to the point that we just wrote a poem we'd like to share. Ahem. "Shiness: Shall we compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more colorful and possessing...

Get your  interview on!

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Here is another comic with a great parenting tip!

Thoughts deeper than deep-dish pizza.