D G

Sometimes it takes a village to design a building (in this case a hotel), or at least three firms and when you see the Radisson Blu Riverside Hotel, you’ll see why. Doos Architects handled the hotel’s interiors while the hotel itself was designed by Reflex Architects. Stylt Trampoli took care of the restaurant, bar, lobby, and the terrace. It’s located in Lindholmen in Gothenburg, Sweden, situated in one of the fastest developing business districts in Sweden, making it the perfect locale for both business and leisure travelers.

The hotel is outfitted with 265 modern guest rooms and 10 suites, each with wallpaper in 20 different patterns and colors, giving each space a unique and eclectic feel. The furnishings definitely give it that boutique feel, as opposed to your typical chain hotel.

The suites are located such that they hang out over the water with 4-star views of Gothenburg and the harbor.

Doos paid careful attention to details, like choosing to use wood, iron, and copper throughout, which all have roots in the area. They also used a lot of neutral tones but spiced it up with touches of color.

The Cuckoo’s Nest is the concept restaurant located in the hotel that was developed by Stylt Trampoli. It’s filled with a diverse mix of traditional and modern pieces with a touch of whimsy thrown in for good measure.

The exterior is covered in tonal geometric panels and windows that create a really cool, eye-catching pattern.

Photos by Ingela Vagsund, unless otherwise noted.

Are you packed yet?

What: Radisson Blu Riverside Hotel
Where: Lindholmspiren 4 – 417 56 – Gothenburg, Sweden.
How much: Nightly rates from SEK 1032 (EUR 116).
Highlights: Centrally located and overlooks the harbor, urban and quirky decor
Design draw: A hotel with urban eclectic interiors making it feel more like a boutique hotel than a chain.
Book it: Call +46 (31) 383 40 00 or email info.riverside.gothenburg@radissonblu.com

Thanks Mike (from Spain)

 

[link] [113 comments]

Androrat

Androrat is an appropriately named remote access tool (or RAT) for Android. In case you're unfamiliar, RATs provide backdoor functionality to an operator, giving access to your system and private data. Androrat recently fell into the spotlight thanks to this Webroot blog post that highlights a user-friendly Android trojan maker. According to the post, Androrat is the default malicious package provided with this software.

Androrat was the project of four university students from France. According to their README, it was completed in one month. It has since been removed from the Github account on which it was hosted, and for privacy reasons these students will not be named here.

A law enforcement agency provided us with a zip file that appears to be a dump of the Github repository. It contained two compiled debug versions of the Androrat APK, the source code for these, and some class files. Additionally, it contained all of the source code for the server as well as its dependencies.

Building

To get the server running, I was able to simply drop all of the source files into an Eclipse project, add the dependencies, and fix up one import that didn't agree with my system. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy this was to get working.

Running

To test that everything was working I ran the server from Eclipse and simply loaded up the debug APK. The debug APK conveniently allows the user to set the server's IP and port. Here we can see the debug apk and the server program:

Functionality

Androrat covers the breadth of Android malware features. From the README:

    ### All the available functionalities are
    * Get contacts (and all theirs informations)
    * Get call logs
    * Get all messages
    * Location by GPS/Network
    * Monitoring received messages in live
    * Monitoring phone state in live (call received, call sent, call missed..)
    * Take a picture from the camera
    * Stream sound from microphone (or other sources..)
    * Streaming video (for activity based client only)
    * Do a toast
    * Send a text message
    * Give call
    * Open an URL in the default browser
    * Do vibrate the phone



After setting up a contact list, a few fake conversations, and a call log I went to test these out. A few of the functions gave errors, but most worked. As well, a few were not compatible with the Android emulator (for example, vibrate).

Communication

In the file inout/Protocol.java the request and response codes are listed. For requests the base number is 100, then a value ranging from 0 to 23 is added to it for the code. This is wrapped with the target channel (multiplexed) and arguments in CommandPacket. Then it is wrapped with other meta info in TransportPacket. The resulting packet data size for requests hovers around 21 bytes.

The APK gives an acknowledgment to requests received. The response message is packed into a custom packet via the following function call sequence (format: ClassName.function):
 
   ProcessCommand.process
-> Client.sendInformation 
-> Connection.sendData 
-> Mux.send 
-> TransportPacket.build

This packet includes the acknowledgement data, total length, data length, the channel (multiplexed), as well as a short and bool for following the packet sequence.

The response codes have a base of 200 and add a value ranging from 0 to 15 to that base. Data being sent is generally built into an array or hash table, then the response is written using ObjectOutputStream.writeObject() and placed into a custom packet. The packet includes the type that was packed. For example, when dumping an SMS to the server, the object type java.util.ArrayList will be included in the packet to indicate what has been written. The fields used in these structures prior to packing are very verbose. As an example, PhoneNumber, SimOperator, and IMEI are used when dumping device information to the server.

The information is sent over TCP with this custom protocol. The default server port is 9999, however, this is configurable.

Conclusion

Since the source code was public, this project provides a significant starting point for new Android malware authors. However, it does not contain any root exploits, it does not attempt to obfuscate the code or communication, and it has not been refined to a point that I would call reliable.

Igor Volsky / ThinkProgress:
7 Mind Blowing Moments From Zimmerman Juror B37′s First Interview  —  On Monday night, one of the jurors in the George Zimmerman trial offered shocking insight into how the group of six women reached its decision to acquit the defendant of all charges in the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Release Group: Feel-Free (P2P)
Release Name: Atlantic.Rim.2013.BRRip.XviD.Ac3.Feel-Free
Release Date: 15th July 2013
Filename: Atlantic.Rim.2013.BRRip.XviD.Ac3.Feel-Free
Source: Bluray
Size: 1.08 GB
Genre: Action | Sci-Fi
Video: XviD, 640×360 at 1411 kb/s
Audio: English, AC3 at 384kb/s
Subs: N/A
IMDB Rating: 2.5/10 from 165 users
RT Critics: No Reviews Yet…
Directed By: Jared Cohn
Starring: Joseph Brown, David Chokachi, Jared Cohn

Intelligent robots help the American army battle giant monsters from the ocean.

Homepage – Trailer – IMDB – RT – NFO- Search (TPB, Torrent, NZB)

DOWNLOAD (Uploaded) OR (RapidGator) OR (ExtaBit)

LEGO Sharknado! It sounds almost poetic, doesn't it? LEGO artist Iain Heath, known as Ochre Jelly, couldn't resist turning the SyFy monster/disaster movie into a LEGO work.

Amazingly, this model actually stands up on its own (although its a bit wobbly, being very top-heavy). If I have the time I may add more sharks, improve the lettering, and strengthen it up enough to display at BrickCon.

Link -via Geeks Are Sexy

It's time for another round of The Food Lab. Got a suggestion for an upcoming topic? Email Kenji here, and he'll do his best to answer your queries in a future post. Become a fan of The Food Lab on Facebook or follow it on Twitter for play-by-plays on future kitchen tests and recipe experiments.

[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

I can't say that I grew up eating cole slaw, nor was it love at first taste. My earliest experience with it was when the lady behind the bulletproof glass at the KFC on 125th street (this was back when there was bulletproof glass and KFCs everywhere in Harlem) mixed up my order and gave me a cup of their slaw instead of the mashed potatoes and gravy. She didn't seem like the kind of cashier who enjoyed confrontation, so I picked up my spork, bucked up, and dug into that mayo-doused cup.

Needless to say, I stayed away from the stuff for years following that harrowing experience. It scarred me enough to steer clear of not only slaw, but mayo altogether, for a good decade.

I didn't truly start loving cole slaw until I tasted the excellent version that Barbara Lynch makes at her B&G Oysters in Boston's South End. Rather than soupy or gloppy with excess mayonnaise, the slaw there is tangy and fresh, with just a hint of creaminess to bind it together.

Since that day, I've come to enjoy cole slaw in all its various regional forms, from the bright yellow mustardy stuff I first tasted at my cousin's Tennessee wedding to the vinegary chopped slaws I had in Eastern North Carolina. Slaw and I may have met rather late in life, but we're more than just friends these days—we're in a full blown relationship, and it's high time that I properly acknowledge it on this site.

For the sake of simplicity, today we're going to be dealing solely with my first true love, cream slaw, but we may well come back to address other varieties in the future.

As with many good stories, this one starts with cabbage.

Cabbage Casting

Green cabbage

Cabbage comes in three main varieties:

• Green cabbage is the cheapest and most common. It has large smooth leaves, a fairly compact head, and distinct aromas of sulfur that can turn rather pungent when cooked. This is a fine choice for slaw.
• Red cabbage has the same smoothness and general shape as green leaf cabbage with a slightly crunchier texture and a more assertive peppery flavor. Some people like red cabbage slaw; I personally find it too crunchy, and reserve it mostly for pickling. When working with red cabbage, make sure to use stainless cookware in order to prevent the cabbage from discoloring to a disturbing dirty blue color.
• Savoy cabbage is the most delicate in flavor of the three. It has thinner, wrinkled leaves, and a very tight and compact head. For this reason, even a small head of savoy cabbage will expand to a large volume once the leaves are slivered and separated.

This is not my first time around the block with cabbage, but as with slaw itself, cabbage and I have invested in a fairly long-term relationship with each other, which means that every once in a while we have to sit down like full-grown brassicas, have some serious head-to-head* discussions, and come up with a new set of boundaries and goals by which to define our relationship.

*head-to-head, get it? >_

All this is to say that while at one point I thought I enjoyed the delicate, non-sulfurous flavor of savoy cabbage in my slaw, after some more serious side-by-side testing, I found that the crunch and assertiveness of green cabbage was actually the way to go.

The Purge

Speaking of crunch management, this brings us to the first order of business: purging the cabbage.

See, unlike a normal salad in which tender greens are tossed with a dressing mere moments before serving, so that the leaves stay bright, fresh, and crunchy, cole slaw requires a pre-treatment. Don't believe me? Try it out for yourself: just dress up some shredded cabbage and see what happens. But I'm warning you, it's not pretty.

First, it ends up far too crunchy, with tough, raw-tasting shreds of cabbage. Second, it ends up expelling way too much liquid. Add enough dressing to flavor it properly, and you end up with cole slaw soup:

See? I told you, not pretty.

What we need is a way to tenderize it while allowing it to maintain some of its crunch, simultaneously achieving a depth of flavor without drowning it in dressing. How do we accomplish this?

There are two steps in the process. First is in the cutting. While in some regions of the country, chopped slaws are common, what we're going for today is a fine shred. For great slaw, you want to go pretty darn thin—I like to pull out my Benriner mandoline for the task (though to be honest, I'm the kind of guy who likes to pull out the mandoline whenever the urge strikes. In this case, it happens to be an appropriate urge. This is not always the case).

What's the goal of this shredding? Well, first, it shortens tough fibrous sections of the cabbage along one axis, making it more tender to the bite. More importantly, it allows us to accomplish the second step in Project Tenderize: it exposes more cells to the moisture-sucking effects of salt.

You can imagine your cabbage slices as a series of teeny, tiny water balloons. When the cabbage is fresh, the balloons are all filled with water, causing them to stretch out and stay stiff. Your goal is to release a bit of this water, so that the cabbage will soften up a bit. Salt achieves this goal through the process of osmosis—the tendency of water to travel across a permeable membrane from the region of lowest solute concentrate to highest. That's a lot of big words, but culinarily speaking, all it really means is that water has a tendency to move from a less salty place (in this case inside the cabbage) to a more salty place (outside the cabbage).*

*This, by the way, is true of all sorts of foods, not just cabbage! Think: salt-cured meats like bacon or prosciutto, or preserved items like naturally fermented pickles, sauerkraut, and preserved lemons. Fresh meats behave a bit differently—see here for the truth about brining.

This migration of water (and the subsequent softening of cabbage) is dependent on how much salt is added: the more salt you add, the more water it will draw out. To demonstrate this, I salted four 100 gram batches of shredded cabbage with 1/4 teaspoon, 1/2 teaspoon, 1 teaspoon, and 1 tablespoon of salt, respectively, which corresponds to concentrations of 1%, 2%, 4%, and 12%. Each batch of cabbage was left to drain for 30 minutes before being lightly squeezed to remove excess moisture.

The level of moisture reduction isn't directly proportional to the amount of salt added, but cabbage with a 12% salt purge still loses more than three times as much moisture as cabbage with 1%.

And what about flavor? For frame of reference, the saltiest sausage you are likely to eat has between 2 and 3% salt by weight. With our cabbage, on the other hand, even the cabbage salted at 4% didn't taste particularly salty—most of the excess salt gets removed along with the purged liquid (12% salt did prove too salty to be palatable). As far as balance of flavor and texture goes, the 2% batch was the way to go. At least for now.

On to the next question...

About Time

So we know that some amount of purging is necessary if you want your cabbage to hit that magic crunchy-but-tender spot, and our initial testing has shown that the amount of salt that you purge with can directly affect the amount of liquid drawn and the final texture of the cabbage. But what about timing? How long is the ideal purging time? Existing recipes run the gamut from no pre-salting, to salting for up to three whole hours in advance. We tested it out by salting shredded cabbage with 4% salt by weight and letting it sit in a bowl before draining in a colander and pressing out excess free moisture.

Here's what we found:

Salting Time	Moisture Loss (% Weight)
5 minutes	14%
15 minutes	17%
30 minutes	17%
1 hour	19%
3 hours	19%

Well would you look at that? Turns out that after 15 minutes of salting, you've pretty much drawn out all of the moisture you're ever going to. Heck, after even 5 minutes of salting, you've got most of it done. That's good news for those of us who like to get things done as quickly as possible (and bad news if you're the type who likes to catch an episode or two of Good Eats while you wait for your cabbage to purge. You'll just have to get your Alton dose later).

In our taste test, it turns out that most folks prefer the texture of the minimally-purged cabbage—a quick, five minute purge came out as the clear winner, with anything over 15 minutes being judged as slightly too soft.

This presented a problem: given that we were going with the 2% of salt we'd settled on earlier, a 5 minute purge time produced the best texture, but longer purge times produced cabbage with a deeper, more concentrated flavor.

Was there a way to hit both goals at once?

Well, knowing that the amount of liquid lost (and therefore the level of flavor concentration) is related to the amount of salt used in the initial purge, what if rather than using just 2% salt for my purge, I went back and re-visited the 12% version? Only this time, purging for only 5 minutes in order to rapidly concentrate the cabbage before rinsing off the excess salt in cold water to immediately halt the process once the ideal level of tenderness was reached?

The method worked. Sort of. While the cabbage flavor was concentrated enough that I could get away with a reasonable amount of dressing, the cabbage was coming out too salty, despite a thorough rinse, and it was still slightly too beat up by the time we were done with it.

Food Lab Assistant Extraordinaire Luke Davin suggested that perhaps the textural issues were not arising due to purging problems, but because of the mechanical action of squeezing excess moisture out of the cabbage.

For our next test, I also replaced some of the salt in the initial purge with sugar—another osmosis-inducing solute that could serve to balance out flavor. This time, immediately after rinsing, we spread the slaw mixture out onto a bed of paper towels and dried it gently by hand.

A-ha! Those two elements unlocked the key to the puzzle. We now had cabbage that was perfect for slaw: concentrated in flavor with a good balance of salt and sugar built right in, tender but still vibrant and crunchy. Not only that, but we got our cabbage ready-to-dress in record time!

See the squeezed-dry cabbage on the left and the toweled-try cabbage on the right?

The rest of the process was a relative cakewalk.*

*NB: subsequent testing showed that for large batches, the paper towel-averse can also use a salad spinner to gently spin their cabbage to dryness after the initial purge-and-rinse stage.

The Other Players

Dressed cabbage is the only truly essential player for real cole slaw, but a few judiciously chosen additions never hurt nobody. For my slaw, I go with a simple mix of thinly sliced red onions, a touch of chopped parsley, and some grated carrots.

The only thing to bear in mind is making sure to hold the carrot at the proper angle when grating:

The photo on the right is the is the wrong way to do it, while the photo on the left is the right way, and here's why:

See the nice long strands you get by holding your carrot at a bias? That's what we're going for here. Long carrot strands.

Getting Dressed

As far as dressing goes, mayo is a given, as is a good amount of cider vinegar. I fiddled with a number of ratios until I landed on 3 to 1, mayo to vinegar. A touch of dijon mustard brings a bit more heat and vinegar to the table. The goal is just enough to step on your toes a bit, not a big punch to the gut.

Other than that, it's plain white sugar to balance out the salt and vinegar (I also tested agave nectar, brown sugar, and honey—none save the honey made any kind of detectable difference), and a ton of black pepper.

Ok, not a ton. But a lot. I may or may not have over-peppered several batches of cole slaw at the office during testing phases, but in any case, believe me: you want to use more than you think is a reasonable amount. Cabbage and pepper are very good friends.

Because our cabbage is already so flavorful with its salt and sugar cure, and its got a relatively low moisture content from our careful drying, you can get away with using a very minimal amount of dressing, giving it intense, concentrated flavor without turning it into a soupy mess.

Oh cole slaw, I never knew ya'!

About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.

Get the Recipe!

A 35-year-old Israeli man was taken to the hospital Friday after suffering a snake bite on his penis.

The unidentified man told paramedics that he had gone to the bathroom at his parents’ home in the town of Nofit and was sitting on the toilet when he noticed a “sharp burning sensation on his penis.” The man looked down and saw a small snake in the toilet and “ran from the room in horror” to call paramedics. He was taken to Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, first to the trauma unit, and then to the toxins unit to make sure no infection developed.

Fortunately for the man, a blood test found that the snake was not venomous.

“There is undoubtedly bite marks on the area in question, but it seems the snake is not poisonous,” said a representative from the hospital. “The man is currently undergoing a number of tests and as soon as we have the results he will be able to go home.”

A paramedic said the man’s tests came back fine and that he seemed to be in good enough spirits to joke about the incident.

According to the Times of Israel, most of the 40 or so species of snakes indigenous to Israel are not poisonous. The most common poisonous snakes are local vipers, Vipera palaestinae, which grow to an average length of 36 inches and are mainly nocturnal.

Last month, a 53-year-old man died after being bitten on the hand by a poisonous snake near Hokok Beach on the Sea of Galilee. The man was found unconscious and paramedics tried to resuscitate him to no avail. Two days prior to that man’s death, a 28-year-old man was rushed to the hospital in serious condition after being bitten by a viper. He was treated and sent home two days later.

Snake Hiding In Toilet Bites Man’s Penis is a post from: The Inquisitr

Do you leave your phone on the kitchen table a lot? If you do, then you’ll be pleased to know that it won’t just be sitting there idly, thanks to a collaboration between DuPont Building Innovations and the Power Matters Alliance.

They’ve come up with a surface that can charge smartphones and other devices wirelessly. They basically took Powermat’s wireless charging technology and embedded that within Corian solid surfaces. The latter is basically a synthetic, granite alternative that’s often used for countertops.

This new technology isn’t just for kitchen counters. The surface can also be installed on nightstands and coffee tables. The DuPont-PMA team up is especially exciting. Who knows? We might soon see countertop chargers installed in public spaces soon.

[via designboom via Bit Rebels]

Are you messin’ with me? Why I otter…

Fave Frame:

Discovered over on Tastefully Offensive

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Naughtiness, Otters, Pups, Unusual Animals

“People will kill you over time, and how they’ll kill you is with tiny, harmless phrases, like: ‘be realistic.’”

- Dylan Moran

(306): woke up with empty beer can still duct taped into my fists and the word "dove" written on the back of my neck.

Whether you’re one yourself and need help explaining to others how you feel or you have friends who aren’t as outgoing as you, this cute, simple comic can help relationships grow and mend!

[via I Waste So Much Time]

(716): Sushi was just eaten off my naked body. I feel like I can die in peace now.

Via Facebook

What happened to Gargamel all those years ago that makes him hate the Smurfs so much? And why are the Smurfs such insufferable pricks to this genuinely funny man and his creepy CG-faced cat? All of these questions will be answered in Smurfs 3: The Beginning of the End.

Read more...

[link] [39 comments]

Hip-Hop taught me about Yusef Hawkins. If the music didn’t, there’s a solid chance that I wouldn’t be speaking his name right now.

See, aside from JET magazine and whatever rap ‘zines were out at the time, Hawkins’ 1989 death wasn’t heavily publicized outside of the New York area. The case involved a 16-year-old Black kid being attacked and killed while walking in the wrong neighborhood (Bensonhurst) at the wrong time and being the wrong race for the area.

But artists brought the Yusef Hawkins story to me and so many other young teens through the speakers using music as the medium. Public Enemy (“Welcome To The Terrordome”), Chubb Rock (“Treat Em Right”) and Kool G. Rap and DJ Polo (“Erase Racism”) all generated songs that referenced Hawkins heavily, causing me to do my own digging to learn more of his story.

When Public Enemy released Fear Of A Black Planet in 1989, they were at their peak popularity. Coming out with “Welcome To The Terrordome” as a lead single seems improbable and ill-advised now but that was the climate then. Kool G. Rap and Polo brought along their Juice Crew cohorts Biz Markie and Big Daddy Kane for their song and video, which got heavy rotation on Rap City. Chubb Rock’s cut was a club and party staple, yet while we were dancing the MC was in our ears reminding us “In your hearts and minds never forget Yusef Hawkins.”

The way I learned about Yusef’s death follows the same pattern for how I came to learn about Emmett Till, Natasha Harlins, the ’89 “Greekfest” riots at Virginia Beach and a host of other racially-charged incidents. Most of these incidents didn’t make the national newspapers or only got a blurb in school history text. But in rap, they were widely referenced and noticed.

Fast-forward to rap music in the year 2013 and rappers double as characters, not teachers. The genre’s chart-toppers don’t engage in educating through their music. The closest we’ve come is the Wayne vs. Till estate battle that brought the murdered Mississippi teens name into new, unfamiliar circles. So far, Saturday’s verdict in the George Zimmerman trial has elicited a lot of tweets and Instagram blackouts, but not much more. To be honest, that fact that we haven’t received any direct messages from top artists is embarrassing. What’s 140-characters sent in a fleeting way compared to four minutes and some seconds spent on a record that could go so much further?

I guess all is not lost because we have a few artists trying as Young Jeezy, Wyclef, Pharoah Monche, Raheem DeVaughn and 3D Na’tee all released tracks centering around the Martin-Zimmerman tragedy. I’m not sure of the lasting effect any of the songs will have, especially after noticing one Soundcloud user asked “common jeezy this aint you, wherres dat trap shit at [sic]“. As much as we bemoan artists to take a stand and be vocal, the listening audience has to be open and receptive.

Still, I applaud each artist’s decision to say something versus the hundreds of others who spent time tweeting before going back to the business of rapping about their latest material and sexual conquests. I just wish these few weren’t standing here on center stage without their peers – particularly the marquee ones – surrounding them and a captive audience listening to every word.

Previously — On Trayvon Martin, The George Zimmerman Verdict & What It’s Like To Feel Hopeless In America

Photo — Getty