We are thrilled to announce that we are rolling out Premium accounts for The Old Reader. Since taking over the application in August we’ve made tremendous strides to improve the dependability and speed of the application. We’ve also begun the process of building and releasing heavily requested features and have worked diligently on user support. We believe The Old Reader is now truly a world-class application!

Our next goal is to ensure the long term financial viability of The Old Reader. Hosting, development, and support are not inexpensive and while it’s never been our goal to get rich off of this application, long term sustainability and growth will require revenue. So we explored several models for generating revenues including a premium offering and advertising. In the end, we’d like to avoid advertising as we feel it’s too invasive and runs counter to our strong belief in the open web. So we started working on a premium offering that would allow 90% of our users to continue on with a free account that is largely unchanged from what they are using today.

What will you get with The Old Reader Premium?
- Full-text search
- Faster feed refresh times
- Up to 500 Subscriptions
- 6 months of post storage
- Instapaper and Readability integration
- Early access to new features

What will it cost?
The Old Reader Premium will cost $3/month or $30/year. However, for the next 2 weeks (or up to 5,000 accounts) we’ll be offering the service for $2/month or $20/year and we will lock you into that price for a minimum of the next 2 years. This is our way of saying thanks to our existing users and hopefully getting the Premium service off to a great start.

Do I have to upgrade?
No! 90% of our users can continue on for free just as they are today. However, users with more than 100 feeds will need to upgrade to premium. Otherwise, all functionality will remain available to free accounts. We also offer a 2 week trial period for the premium service and will even allow that trial period to get extended for those still interested in moving to Premium.

We hope you are as excited about TOR Premium as we are. It’s a great value for a service that we know our users will love. Thanks for continuing to support us and thanks for using The Old Reader!

Filed under: Motorsports, Celebrities

If you haven't been worrying about the fate of Michael Schumacher, perhaps now is the time to start. Doctors have spent the past two weeks attempting to bring the seven-time Formula One World Champion out of the coma he's been in since a December 29 skiing accident, but attempts to elicit responses to "deliberate stimuli" have been absent. Rather, Schumacher has only displayed reflex twitches.

The report comes from Germany's Bild-Zeitung, which was picked up by Fox Sports, so we'd like to stress that this is not an official update. Schumacher's medical and PR teams have been quiet since the initial announcement that doctors would begin easing the German's sedative levels.

According to the German publication, Schumacher's wife, Corinna, continues to spend her days at the driver's bedside, talking to him. Patients in Schumi's condition have been known to show improvements when being exposed to a continuous, familiar voice. As explained in previous posts, patients that remain in induced comas for too long may never wake up, or if they do, suffer from mental deficits and personality changes.

In other Schumacher-related news, it's been reported that newly retired team principal, Ross Brawn, has been by to visit the stricken F1 driver. Brawn was instrumental in Schumacher's rise to the top of the sport, as team principal for all seven of his championships.

As always, should new information on Schumacher's condition become available, we'll be sure to let you know.

Michael Schumacher not responding to stimuli originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 10 Feb 2014 13:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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[happyjar]

Were you starting to think, “RocketNews24 hasn’t been posting cat pictures recently”? We hear you! Here’s a cat that has been rated too cute for sanity. Are you ready to lose some marbles?

This Chinchilla cat has been knocking out cat lovers on Weibo (China’s homemade version of Twitter) with her inexplicable cuteness. Named Cheryl, or more lovingly known by her nickname Niu-niu, this beautiful feline’s large doll-like eyes and fluffy coat has melted the hearts of countless Chinese netizens who have commented that her pictures need to be rated for the irresistible cuteness.

▼ What’s the meaning of this? I thought we agreed that I’m the only one who wears pink.

▼ That was delicious! Another serving, please!

▼ Who are you? You look almost as cute as me.

▼ Is dinner ready?

▼ Where’s my food?!

▼ This human’s arm belongs to me!

Apparently, Niu-niu’s owner also owns another cat, but even she admits that she is biased towards Niu-niu as she is simply too adorable!

▼ Meet Rocky!

▼ But really, can we blame her? Just look at this cute ball of fluff!

▼ My deepest apologies for being too cute.

Source: Zhaizhai News
Images: Weibo

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Origin: Warning: This cat is so cute it could affect your sanity!【Photos】
Copyright© RocketNews24 / SOCIO CORPORATION. All rights reserved.

There’s something so innocent about animals. That’s why it’s extra funny when they fail. Take the featured GIF at the top here for example. That little kitty just wanted to get into that super fun-looking box. He was probably going to pretend he was in a tree or whatever cats think about during the day. Instead, he was catapulted through the air and slammed to the floor by that box of wonder while his two dog friends blink uncontrollably.

You won’t find GIFs of annoying girls who think they’re Beyonce or dumb people doing equally dumb things. No, only missed jumps and badly timed leaps dominate this adorably cringeworthy compilation of some of Japan’s favorite fail GIFs featuring animals. Enjoy!

▼ We know the poor kitty fell, but he’s just so cute. We can’t stop watching.

▼ What was he trying to accomplish there?

▼ So close.

▼ All he wanted was to get off the couch. Jerks.

▼ We’d call this one a fail, but it’s just so darn cute, we’re gonna go with “success” for this one.

▼ There are no words. Just LOL.

▼ All he wanted was a hug…

▼ That’s not quite the right way to limbo.

▼ 10 points for the jump. 0 for the landing.

▼ Zeros across the board for this one…

Ok folks, let’s take a vote here. Which of the following animals take the gold for worst jump?

▼ Number 1

▼ Number 2

▼ Number 3

Yep, definitely number 3.

▼ What cruel zookeeper set up that rickety old diving board, anyway?

▼ This gives us an idea for a super fun slide.

▼▲ Aww, these guys are twinsies.

▼ He thinks he actually made it in the end.

▼ That’s one way to burry your head in the sand…

▼ You’ll get him next time!

▼ We want this guy at our next party.

▼ Baby squirrel, just…just go home.

▼ These baby puppies haven’t quite mastered the art of stepping down.

▼ Aw, c’mon guys! Let me in!

The best part about this GIF compilation is that it’ll be around to cheer you up on Monday. Hope you all have a great weekend!

Source: Hamusoku

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• Cute sleepy animals captivate Japan, teach us some new vocabulary at the same time!【GIF Gallery】

Origin: 25 of Japan’s favorite animal fail GIFs
Copyright© RocketNews24 / SOCIO CORPORATION. All rights reserved.

[poorlydrawnlines]

Ze Frank explains “15 Things That Inevitably Happen When You Work in an Office” in this funny video by BuzzFeed. At some point you’ll hear one of your coworkers pooping, and you may even witness them fail to wash their hands.

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

Mr. Josh Totman showed you guys the behind the scenes video of the Attack on Titan commercial! Pretty cool, right? Judging by that video, and this one, I can tell the film is going to be amazing! I'm really, really excited for it. 

Well here is the full video, released yesterday! So what you saw in the other video, has all been put together in this wonderful Subaru commercial. Despite the fact it's about the car, it's still really awesome to watch. Especially when watching the behind the scenes video first. I always love watching production footage and getting hyped up. When the finalized project is released, it's such a good feeling! Don't you think?

Check out the behind the scenes video here, and let me know how excited you are for the Attack on Titan film below! You already know how excited Josh and I are. 

Read more...

With the right hardware setup, you may no longer need to sit in front of your gaming machine. With a PlayStation Vita, you can play PS4 anywhere in your house. With an Nvidia Shield, you can do the same with a Windows gaming PC. But what if you don't want to buy a multiple-hundred dollar handheld game system to play Tomb Raider in bed? Valve is building a game streaming solution right into its free Steam game platform, so you can sling games from your beefy desktop PC to laptops as thin as a MacBook Air. Late last week, Valve invited a host of new users into the Steam In-Home Streaming beta, and we made it in. Read on for our first impressions.

---

Pairing is a piece of cake

The first, most striking thing about Steam In-Home Streaming is how little setup it requires. You don't even need to be in front of both computers to pair them together. As long as both computers are signed into your Steam account and connected to the same network, you'll automatically have access to any game or program in either computer's Steam library. That means you can stream Windows games to a Mac or Linux machine, and Valve is planning to add support for the reverse, too. If you've got a copy of a game that works on both operating systems, you can pick whether to stream it or run it locally, or even start installing it on the remote computer. You can even launch some non-Steam apps, like Adobe Photoshop and Media Player Classic, if you add them to Steam. They don't properly display their menu bars, though.

While some Steam games don't stream right now, those that do launch seem to launch quickly and more reliably than they do on the Nvidia Shield. Streaming quality, however, is harder to measure. Even in this beta state, there's no question that Steam In-Home can technically deliver the clearest, crispest images we've seen from a streaming solution yet, one that are practically indistinguishable from how they look on an actual gaming PC. The problem is that actually getting that quality depends on a complex array of factors.

With a relatively powerful gaming PC (Core i5-2500K, 16GB RAM, GeForce GTX 660 Ti) hooked up to a pricy $200 802.11ac router over Gigabit Ethernet, and streaming to a 2013 MacBook Air during a Friday commute hour, things were predictably superb. As of the beta, Steam's streaming solution lets you set the bandwidth and screen resolution yourself — unlike Sony or Nvidia — and with a huge 15 megabits per second stream, plenty of overhead, and little interference, games like Devil May Cry looked and felt fantastic from a few rooms away. Nidhogg, a lightning-fast swordfighting game, actually felt playable.

Devil May Cry streaming via a cheaper wireless router. Red and blue spikes indicate poor performance.

Again, though, that's the optimal scenario, and trying the same games with a cheaper 802.11n router or during peak hours made things far more difficult. Where Nvidia and Sony automatically degrade the image quality when bandwidth drops, Steam drops the framerate, and games begin to stutter. You can fix a lot of the quality issues yourself by playing with Steam's bandwidth and resolution settings, but it's a bit of work, whereas Nvidia has a dedicated piece of software that automatically optimizes settings for a playble streaming experience. We also had a few games that seemed to stutter even at lower quality settings, like Tomb Raider, which streams quite smoothly to the Shield by contrast.

Between the problem games and the need for more user-friendly configuration, Valve has plenty of work ahead, but we don't expect that work to stop. In-Home Streaming is a key part of Valve's Steam Machines strategy, because the Linux-based SteamOS boxes won't natively run Windows games. With streaming, Valve's Linux-based video game systems can still play games for Windows so long as you have a Windows gaming box on the same network. But even if you just plan to prop up a laptop in bed, Steam In-Home Streaming already feels like it could be a killer feature. You can't beat free.

So how do the Japanese pass the time when they aren’t cloning themselves, creating ridiculous inventions, dreaming up quirky mascots, taking gym classes hosted by poodle dogs, watching candy coated pop stars or wearing panties on over their faces?

That’s right! They’re lining up to be willing contestants on some of the mind-boggling TV game shows you’ve ever witnessed.

Now we ‘could’ try and attempt to describe what is taking place in the following collection of GIFs from numerous Japanese game shows, but really they defy explanation. Literally anything and everything happens, with no disturbing corner of the writers imaginations left unturned.

There’s the famous saying that “One man’s trash is another mans treasure” or in the case of cheap Japanese entertainment, one man’s hellish challenge is another man’s gleeful celebration.

Prepare yourself for the weird, the bizarre and a whole lot of W.T.F. Do let us know which numbers you love the most.

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ENJOYED IT? SHARE IT!

في حادثة تعد هي الأولى في تاريخ عالم الكلاب نطق كلب يدعى “بليز” عمره 11 شهرا ليعبر عن رفضه القاطع والشديد لصاحبه عن الذهاب لبيته المخصص لنومه وذلك بكلمة NO بالإنجليزية. فكلما حدثه صاحبه ليذهب إلى بيته، يرفض الكلب “بليز” ويلوي رقبته ويرفض أن يقوم من مكانه معلنا رفضه الكامل بإصدار كلمة “NO” وقد كررها الكلب عدة مرات وبمنتهى القوة.

المصدر: البيان

There are rumblings out of Klei Entertainment about their slick-looking spy game. Specifically, that the game once known as Incognita but is now being called Invisible Inc. is making progress, entering alpha phase. Klei rumblings, unlike volcanic rumblings, are the best kind of rumblings, because the studio always turns out inventive titles that explore new territory and bring to light new types of play. To my point, Invisible Inc. looks to scratch the itch for the stealth game, the heist game, that turned-based strategy game, and the classic cyberpunk PC game. I have no clue how to classify this beautiful centaur, so watch the trailer and tell me what you think.

People love celebrities. Even if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool, “I hate TV,” mountain-living recluse, we bet there’s at least one or two famous people you know–or maybe even care–about. For the rest of us who are addicted to TV news, Internet news, and carrier pigeon news, we’d likely be able to recognize any number of celebrities from the last dozen years without even having to use a single Google image search…but would you be able to recognize those celebs and famous folks in their “before fame” period? When these photos popped up on a Japanese website, we were surprised by how many of these famous folks we couldn’t identify, so we decided we had to share them with our readers.

Some of these are pretty tricky and some of them are immediately obvious. Let’s see how many of these people you can identify, but no cheating!

▲Princess Di…looked surprisingly normal.

▲Pope Francis…was pretty handsome as a young man!

▲Elvis Presley…could have been a baby model.

▲Pablo Picasso…art skills and good looks??

▲Richard Nixon…was actually kind of hunky. This is confusing…

▲Nelson Mandela…will not be taking any of your crap!

▲Milla Jovovich…was clearly born knowing how to take glamor shots.

▲Muhammad Ali…this is probably the last time he ever looked shy in front of a camera.

▲Marilyn Monroe…wasn’t really a blonde?!

▲Leonardo DiCaprio…we really hope he’s posing on a boat here…

▲Kurt Cobain…should have stuck with comics!

▲Keanu Reeves…looks exactly the same today. He really is a Highlander!

▲Jodie Foster…really needs to buy more clothes!

▲JFK…kind of looked like Alfred E. Neuman.

▲Michelle Obama…had some kick-ass hair!

▲Janis Joplin…cleaned up nice!

▲Hugo Chavez…could stare down a tank.

▲Dustin Hoffman…actually hasn’t changed much, has he?

▲Gary Oldman…before his role as a psychopathic murderer.

▲Fidel Castro…should have been a model!

▲Ewan McGregor…really needed a haircut.

▲Elizabeth Taylor…was sexy and she knew it!

▲Robert De Niro…was not sexy. But he clearly didn’t care!

▲Robert Downey Jr….looked like a prick as a kid.
But we bet the girls loved him even then.

▲Vladimir Putin…is thinking about throwing his teachers in jail.

▲Leo Tolstoy…knew how to take one hell of a photo!

▲Joseph Stalin…easily mistaken for your local barista.

▲Queen Elizabeth…probably insisted on being prom queen every year.

▲Albert Einstein…possibly thinking about playing dice.

▲Al Capone…holding in a fart.

▲Albert Camus…in a moment of rare non-absurdity.

▲Bonny and Clyde…ahhh, young love and murder!

▲Bob Marley (center)…was twice as handsome as anyone has any right to be.

▲Theodore Roosevelt…coolest president ever? Probably.

▲Édith Piaf…we can see why France loves her so much.

▲Pope John Paul II…shaving with the birds and the bees.

▲Sharon Stone…the shirt does not lie.

▲Paul McCartney…pretending to be Elvis?

▲Barack Obama…proving that, actually, yes, smoking does make you look cool.

▲Charlie Chaplin…being awesome!

▲Bill Murray…thinking about how much money he’ll have in a few years.

▲Bill and Hilary Clinton…probably not entirely sober.

▲George W. Bush…trying to figure out where he is.

▲Nicholas Cage…Not really!

So, how many of these famous folks did you recognize in their youth? While some of these photos are already pretty well-known, we have to admit that a lot of them really caught us by surprise! It’s pretty interesting to see how a single photo can completely change your image of a person.

Are there any surprising pictures of famous people that we missed? Be sure to share them below!

Source and Images: Digital DJ Network Japan

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Origin: Who the heck is that? 44 surprising photos of famous people in their youth!
Copyright© RocketNews24 / SOCIO CORPORATION. All rights reserved.

There’s a new trailer for Dark Souls 2—which is coming sometime in early March, depending on which continent you hail from—and that can only mean one thing: deadly twenty-foot-tall sentries with patina trampling on disfigured human-centipedes. There’s also some old woman wheezing about curses and bats flapping against a castle in the backdrop, and after watching I’m totally psyched for the pain. 

That is to say it’s one of the few dark-fantasy games to nail sword-and-sorcery in an artful and original way. Of course this is nothing new for From Software, who made the two previous beautiful Souls games, and before that, three King’s Field games, which were beautifully grim but a lot less fun. While they start at square one with a knight and a sword, everything about them—from the deeply buried lore to that freakish goat head who cackles at you to feed it gems to the concept of losing souls twice removed—goes against the grain. Watch and see.

immersus:

Every airline flight in the world over 24 hours.

There’s insanity and then there’s insanity, and this qualifies as the “and then there’s insanity” variety. A speed-runner on YouTube has hacked Super Mario World so that Mario’s noggin takes a metaphysical leap to a game of Pong, where it is batted around between two wood platforms. Next, it moonlights as the front-end of the snake in Snake. My reaction was tickled amusement, followed by terrible confusion, following by the realization that I may have just witnessed the most awesome glitch known to man. See if yours is the same.

What the blazes just happened? We thought it was a glitch, then a hack, and though we’re not 100% certain, we know think it's a glitch/hack, judging from the talk in the comments section. It sounds like Masterjun3 has used tool-assisted speed-running techniques to hack the game, reprogramming it while simultaneously playing! This was done by entering outrageous button combinations with the assistance of a computer, which gets a tad technical. This will not, in other words, work on your old Super Nintendo. But that shouldn't stop you from training. 

Here’s one way Google could make sense of all the hype around the “connected home.”

Google just announced that it’s snapping up Nest, maker of smart thermostat and smoke detectors, for $3.2 billion in cash. Nest has raised around $80 million from investors including Shasta Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and Google Ventures.

Most recently, Nest was rumored to be raising a massive round of about $150 million, which would have valued it around $2 billion. From the looks of it, Google likely decided to go for broke and buy Nest outright rather than participate in another round.

Nest has been one of the most interesting startups to launch over the past few years. It’s run by Tony Fadell, who notably spearheaded development of the iPod at Apple, and it’s one of the few connected home gadget makers to have found a modicum of success.

Nest launched in 2011 with the Nest Learning Thermostat, a connected thermostat that learns your habits and helps you save energy. It followed that up with the Nest Protect smoke and carbon monoxide alarm, which can communicate with the Nest thermostat to form a very basic network of home appliances.

“Nest’s founders, Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers, have built a tremendous team that we are excited to welcome into the Google family,” said Google CEO Larry Page in a statement. “They’re already delivering amazing products you can buy right now — thermostats that save energy and smoke/CO alarms that can help keep your family safe. We are excited to bring great experiences to more homes in more countries and fulfill their dreams!”

Nest says it will continue to operate under CEO Fadell’s leadership.

“Google will help us fully realize our vision of the conscious home and allow us to change the world faster than we ever could if we continued to go it alone,” Fadell wrote in a blog post today. “We’ve had great momentum, but this is a rocket ship.”

For Google, Nest could serve as its gateway into the connected home, the notion that all of our appliances and gadgets will soon communicate with one another. That’s a concept that we’ve seen breathlessly promoted at CES and other big tech events over the past few years, but Nest remains one of the few companies to deliver on its promises.

Pre-empting privacy concerns, Nest co-founder and EVP of engineering Matt Rogers noted in a blog post that Nest customer data will be limited to “providing and improving Nest’s products and services.” While that could always change down the line, for now there’s a clear wall between Nest’s customer data and Google.

Google has talked about plans for its own connected home platform, Android @Home, over the past few years, though details about it remain unknown and a release date is still nowhere to be found.

The Nest acquisition also seems to fit in well alongside Google’s recent moves to snap up several major robotics companies. If anything, Google is now positioning itself to be the centerpiece of all of your future technology interactions. Imagine waking up to a perfectly warmed house, thanks to your Nest; being driven to work in a car using Google’s self-driving technology and Android dashboard; and getting home just as your Google robot has finished walking the dog.

I’m not saying all of Google’s bets on the future will pan out, but at least it isn’t afraid to try.

(And, yes, if you’re the paranoid sort, Google is the real-world equivalent to Terminator’s Skynet. Be afraid. Be very afraid.)

kevictini:

johnlocklives:

notnoisetoy:

Why is life so hard?

i laughed so hard that I had woken my mum. she said i am crazy

but the third gif omg i almost died!!!

the guy in the second gif still tries to get popcorn after his drink fell omg

Will, check these out! LMAO!

LAS VEGAS — When you hire blockbuster director Michael Bay, you can expect a few things: gratuitous explosions, obligatory T&A — and sometimes, both in the same scene.

But when Samsung hired him to promote its new curved 4K TVs at its 2014 International CES press conference today, the company probably didn’t expect him to catch a bit of stage fright and run off.

Bay, the director of classic action films like The Rock and not-so-classic moneymakers like the Transformers series, seemed flustered when he came onstage with Samsung EVP Joe Stinziano. At first, Bay said he was having an issue with the teleprompter. But after attempting to “wing it” in vain, he simply walked off.

The room fell a bit silent after Bay left, with many likely wondering if Bay was putting on some sort of act. But when it became clear he actually left, things got a bit awkward. To his credit, Stinziano rebounded and finished off his segment alone.

Ultimately, this fiasco shows the potential dangers of roping in celebrity representatives, especially when they clearly don’t know anything about your products. But it’s still a win for Samsung: People will remember this far longer now, compared to if things had gone off without a hitch.

Bay published his reaction to the event on his blog:

Wow! I just embarrassed myself at CES – I was about to speak for Samsung for this awesome Curved 105-inch UHD TV. I rarely lend my name to any products, but this one is just stellar. I got so excited to talk, that I skipped over the Exec VP’s intro line and then the teleprompter got lost. Then the prompter went up and down – then I walked off. I guess live shows aren’t my thing.

It might not be as wacky as the virtual world of sports glitches, but it's certainly just as facepalm and chuckle-worthy.

Read more...

Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru no haka)

When the Wind Blows

Watership Down

Felidae

Barefoot Gen (Hadashi no Gen)

The Plague Dogs

Fantastic Planet

Did you know that the ice cream emoji is just the poop emoji re-purposed?

In honor of the Emoji Art Show in New York City, creative agency 5Loom created a timeline of emoji development that points out this and other pivotal moments in emoji history.

Check it out:

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Origin: You’ll be surprised to learn the history of the ice cream emoji
Copyright© RocketNews24 / SOCIO CORPORATION. All rights reserved.