Zencyde

This is photographer Bela Borsodi's cover for VLP's album Terrain. It's a single image of very carefully positioned objects seen at a very specific angle. Below, see a revealing photo and "making of" video.

Here's a great video pondering the objective reality of mathematics, and running down all the different schools of thought on where mathematical truth comes from -- does it exist outside of systems of codification by intelligent beings, as an eternal part of the universe; or is it something that we invent through codification?

Is Math a Feature of the Universe or a Feature of Human Creation? | Idea Channel | PBS (Thanks, Dad!)

Pid'jin had almost won at the game of love, but he misunderstood which game he was playing. It's an age-old story.

Link -via Daily of the Day

I could eat a whole plateful of Noami Robinson's banana cream-filled banana split eclairs. You can read her recipe at the link. There's actual banana in there, so think of this as one of your daily servings of fruit.

Link -via Tasteologie

Make Magazine profiled the incomparable steampunk maker Jake von Slatt; he's got all kinds of great stuff to relate:

Two past mistakes you’ve learned the most from:

1. Propane is very flammable and eyebrows are important to the appearance of your face.

2. A school bus is very heavy and asphalt cannot be relied on to support it when jacking.

Bonus: Stay out of the plane of rotation. I lost the tip of my right pinky finger to the lift-fan of a hovercraft when I was 16.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Things About Jake von Slatt

There are a lot of gadgets you should see and use in person before you buy, including phones, headphones, and even laptops. Televisions are probably not among them, though.

In most stores, televisions are set up in showrooms with a viewing experience that bears almost zero resemblance to how you'll actually watch it. Retail stores are brightly lit, stack several monitors at ridiculous viewing angles, and are hooked up to mirror one video on dozens of displays. Your home theater set up will probably not have any of these things in common with the store. You may even find that stores can set up certain TVs to look better than others. One CNET TV reviewer found that these tricks could've fooled even him:

In perhaps the best example I can think of for the futility of in-store evaluation, a TV I knew to be good, placed knee-level in a narrow corridor, looked noisy and overall terrible. I'd reviewed the thing and even I wouldn't buy it if all I'd seen was its in-store performance. Conversely, a TV I knew to be highly mediocre, was given center stage, its backlight cranked all the way up, giving it the appearance of being special.

The one caveat to this is that if a store has taken the effort to create a moderately-lit space at roughly ground-level, or even built a special mock living room to give you a more realistic look at a screen. However, keep in mind that every retail store is going to try to pitch certain sets based on what's best for their bottom line and you can't always trust your in-store perception. Always be sure to do extra research online before making a big purchase like this. Check out MakeUseOf for more tips on how to shop for a television set.

Building A Home Theater System? Do It Right! 10 Crucial Mistakes To Avoid | MakeUseOf

Photo by Danny Choo.

Sony SmartWatch was officially announced back in April last year, although we don’t know whether it was a great hit or not, but it seems Sony received a good response as it looks like they are planning to launch a successor to it. Their recent activity on their Sony Xperia twitter account hints that they might reveal the new SmartWatch at the Mobile Asia Expo 2013. As the tweets says “One in three smartphone users want smart wrist wear”, with #itstime and #MAE2013 hash-tags, that clearly tells us that Sony got something up their sleeves for the mega event.

Even I wouldn’t mind wearing one. Anyway, what do you think? Are you looking forward to the new version of the Sony SmartWatch. Tell us about it in the comment box below.

via: Xperia Blog 

 

The post Sony hints on a new version of the Sony SmartWatch appeared first on AndroidGuys.

In a public statement, Alan Chambers, the president of Exodus Ministries, apologized for his group's practice of offering cruel "gay cure" camps.

I am sorry for the pain and hurt that many of you have experienced. I am sorry some of you spent years working through the shame and guilt when your attractions didn’t change. I am sorry we promoted sexual orientation change efforts and reparative theories about sexual orientation that stigmatized parents.

I am sorry I didn’t stand up to people publicly “on my side” who called you names like sodomite — or worse. I am sorry that I, knowing some of you so well, failed to share publicly that the gay and lesbian people I know were every bit as capable of being amazing parents as the straight people that I know. I am sorry that when I celebrated a person coming to Christ and surrendering their sexuality to Him, I callously celebrated the end of relationships that broke your heart. I am sorry I have communicated that you and your families are less than me and mine.

More than anything, I am sorry that so many have interpreted this religious rejection by Christians as God’s rejection. I am profoundly sorry that many have walked away from their faith and that some have chosen to end their lives.

The letter goes on to reiterate the group's opposition to gay sex, but to hint that they would support marriage equality nevertheless.

“Ex-gay” Christian group to LGBT people: We’re sorry [Katie McDonough/Salon]

The Art of Manliness has reprinted "37 Conversation Rules for Gentlemen" from a 1875 book entitled, A Gentleman’s Guide to Etiquette by Cecil B. Hartley. The rules are still valid!

33. When asking questions about persons who are not known to you, in a drawing-room, avoid using adjectives; or you may enquire of a mother, “Who is that awkward, ugly girl?” and be answered, “Sir, that is my daughter.”

37 Conversation Rules for Gentlemen

Samsung has just officially announced one of their most interesting tablets yet. It’s named the Samsung ATIV Q, and it runs Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean and Windows. It’s a 13.3 inch touchscreen device with a resolution they’re calling qHD+, or 3200 x 1800. Users will be able to switch between Windows 8 and Android 4.2 [...]

Photo: Rajanish Kakade/AP

144 years after the invention of electric telegraphy, the last telegram service in the world will shut down. This technology is still used in India, where about 5,000 telegrams are sent down the wires daily. But on July 14, it will...stop.

The BSNL board, after dilly-dallying for two years, decided to shut down the service as it was no longer commercially viable. 

"We were incurring losses of over $23 million a year because SMS and smartphones have rendered this service redundant," Shamim Akhtar, general manager of BSNL's telegraph services, told the Monitor. 

What do you think the last telegram should say?

Link -via Marginal Revolution

“Lorem Ipsum? That sounds like a made-up word for made-up words.”

Two doctors have written a really fascinating analysis of the history and economics of health insurance that will make our current U.S. system seem even more ridonculous than it already did.

Dorothy Baker-Flugence of Baytown, Texas and two of her children were in her van when a carjacker appeared in the backseat. He threatened them with a knife. Mrs. Baker-Flugence said, "You messed with the wrong witch*" and went into action:

"She got the knife," Flugence said. "She got a cut that goes across her chest. She grabbed the knife and he bit her hand."

Police say the woman ran her van intentionally off the road trying to disorient the attacker. She was hoping that a 911 dispatcher would hear what was going on, and find a way to sent help. But when she saw a telephone pole, she sped up and targeted it, feeling it was a risk she had to take.

"I thought, 'If you swerve and hit the pole, he's not wearing a seatbelt, he'll go through the windshield or at least hit his head, and you can stop him. You can do something to make sure that he doesn't hurt your kids,'" Dorothy Baker-Flugence said. "That's all I was thinking of really, was just to get him away from my kids."

Police add that Baker-Flugence punched the man in the face and when she stopped, he jumped out of the vehicle. That's when she reportedly turned the tables and ran over him.

That's the way we do it in Texas.

Link -via Gawker | Image: KTRK

*She probably used a different word.

Spocko sez, "In this commercial for a cell phone screen protector product, a quadcopter flies up to some fruit, sodas and a cell phones and shoots them with a remote controlled handgun. The company, Clearplex, has many videos of it's screen protector products being shot at, so this one is a natural, although creepy, extension of that series. The video is edited so it's hard to know how accurate the quad-copter is, but consider how apparently easy creating this one was,what's the next step?"

Drone vs Phone: Samsung Galaxy S IV - GunDrone (Thanks, Spocko)

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 15, 2013 is:

gymkhana • \jim-KAH-nuh\  • noun
1 a : a meet featuring sports contests or athletic skills: as b : competitive games on horseback c : a festival featuring gymnastics and athletic showmanship and often including pageantry d : a timed contest for automobiles featuring a series of events designed to test driving skill

Examples:
"The Lower Clarence Pony Club attended the first gymkhana of the season at Casino Pony Club grounds last weekend." — From an article by Patrick Allen in the Clarence Valley Daily Examiner (New South Wales, Australia), May 6, 2013

"The gymkhana competitor and stunt driver Ken Block is expected to drive the Pirelli Formula One test car at Monza, the historic Italian racetrack, in August." — From a post on the New York Times' Wheels blog, June 16, 2011

Did you know?
Both the word "gymkhana" and the event it describes originated in 19th-century India. The word is probably an alteration of the Hindi "gedkhana," which describes a ball- playing area similar to a racket ball court, with the first syllable influenced by our word "gymnasium." The first gymkhanas were displays of athletics and equestrian skill, and while those are still common, the 20th century introduced a new kind of gymkhana, designed to show off car handling. These newer gymkhanas are often held in parking lots, where contestants race over tight, twisting courses marked with cones or pylons.

CPU-Z is one of those ageless, priceless apps that PC users covet so much it's among the first thing they install. It tells you almost everything you need to know about the silicon powering your computer, and it's now available for Android.

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

It looks like a gourmet dessert made by a professional, but it's actually really simple. The entire thing consists of ice cream sandwiches separated by layers of peanut butter and jelly and covered with Cool Whip. You're supposed to store it in a freezer for a while after you're done preparing it, but I doubt the cake will survive that long if I'm around.

Link -via Foodbeast

At The Price Hike, Bloomberg News food critic Ryan Sutton writes about Sushi Yasuda, a high-end restaurant in New York which recently eliminated tipping. You cannot tip your waiters, but you can eat there (assuming you can afford the bill!) knowing that your wait staff receive a living wage, and benefits including paid sick days and vacation days.

The whining of the turbines in the 3D printed pneumatic rotary tool might make your teeth hurt. When [Axodus] tipped us off about it he mentioned it sounded like a 747 taking off. But we hear a dentist’s drill when watching the demo video.

[Richard Macfarlane] published his design if you want to try building one for yourself. But you will need to do some machining in addition to printing the enclosure and the pair of turbines. The shaft of the tool needs to fit the bearings precisely. It accepts a center blue spacer with a red turbine on either side. This assembly is encapsulated in the two-part threaded blue body which has a flange to friction fit with the shop vacuum hose. The business end of the machined shaft was designed and threaded to accept the collet from a Dremel or similar rotary tool.

We wonder how much work it would be to re-engineer this to act as a PCB drill press?

 

Filed under: 3d Printer hacks, tool hacks

An anonymous reader writes "Apple has always been extremely anti jailbreaking, but it might now have a good reason to plug up the exploits. As Hardware 2.0 argues, Apple's new iOS 7 Activation Lock anti-theft mechanism which renders stolen handsets useless (even after wiping) unless the owner's Apple ID is entered relies on having a secure, locked-down OS. Are the days of jailbreaking iOS coming to a close?" I can see a whole new variety of phone-based ransom-ware based on this capability, too.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "While the tech media has gone wild the past few days with the reports of the NSA tracking Verizon cell usage and creating the PRISM system to peer into our online lives, a new study by Pew Research suggests that most U.S. citizens think it's okay. 62 percent of Americans say losing some personal privacy is acceptable as long as its used to fight terrorism, and 56 percent are okay with the NSA tracking phone calls. Online tracking is fair less popular however, with only 45 percent approving of the practice. The data also shows that the youth are far more opposed to curtailing privacy to fight terror, which could mean trouble for politicians planning to continue these programs in the coming years."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

So, you really like that new fancy layered background for Apple’s iOS, do you? I mean, what’s not to adore? You can move your phone to make it look like there’s space between your wallpaper and the icons.  Super new and innovative right? Hardly.  You can get that look for your Android device today and it’s only gonna cost you $1.60 in the process.

It’s like magic distilled from squeezed rainbow unicorn ponies sandwiched between glass and metal. – – Gizmodo on the parallax effect

Called 3D Image Live Wallpaper, it’s actually been around quite a while and has racked up a rather impressive number of downloads – especially for a paid live wallpaper. With this app you can set any image you want as your background and then give the illusion that there are layers on the desktop experience.

 

We’ve played with it a few times in the past and have come to appreciate the minor updates along the way. You can pick and choose how sensitive things are, what degree of movement happens, and more.

See how it works on Android…

Indeed, this one works on Android 2.3 and above so pretty much everyone out there.

The post Get the “iOS Parallax Effect” wallpaper for your Android NOW appeared first on AndroidGuys.

Today, after plenty of self-deprecating jokes about virtual cows, Apple unveiled a sweeping overhaul of the mobile software by Jony Ive. After months of speculation and weeks of rumor-mongering, we finally have our answer: the future of iOS is, actually, is rife with dimensionality and texture. Which is a good thing.

The predicted rebirth of Susan Kare’s original black-and-white OS design, it ain’t. Actually, let's just ban using the term "flat" altogether for this post. The iOS 7 we met today was full of what Jony Ive called “new types of depth.” Alongside a poppy, neon-and-pastel color scheme, the icons, apps, and homescreen of iOS 7 are full of layering and dimensionality. There are also entirely new types of animation: from a screen that uses the accelerometer to adjust in parallax, to beautiful new animated weather icons.

Sure, Jony Ive has gotten rid of many of the richly detailed skeuomorphic elements that were originally designed to help first-time users get to know iOS. But he’s also introduced all sorts of interesting new complexities. For anyone expecting a Windows 8 look alike—you can rest easy. Let’s take a closer look.

An Ambient, Environment-Sensitive UI

The big focus on today’s unveiling was the apparent simplicity of the apps and icons. But for all the simplicity, the most telling element of the new UI is its complex adaptability to external environmental conditions.

The biggest—and perhaps most elegant—element of the new system is its responsivity. For example, iOS 7 uses the accelerometer to adapt the screen in parallax, achieving those new sorts of depth Ive mentioned. And using the phone’s light meter, it seems that the new icons and background adapt to the lighting to improve readability automatically—a bit like the previous iOS' ability to adapt screen brightness to environmental conditions.

Another nice responsive detail? The text and line color of the control panel change according to the color of your home screen image. And, finally, the time and weather seem to appear accurately on the app icons. Goodbye to the endless sunny-and-72-degree days.

Layering and Depth

The details of the icons and apps are certainly simpler than they are today. But the visual ecology they exist within is far more complex. How? Well, first of all, icons and text aren’t siloed into individual icon buttons or bars. Very often, Ive’s Helvetica Neue Ultra Light type appears directly on the screen. That seems like it’d be simpler—but it’s actually a bigger graphical challenge to orient users to text that's floating in space, rather than text anchored by buttons.

The screen itself was presented as a dense layering of image effects, too. In an exploded axonometric view, we saw a crisp clear background serve as a foundation for a middle layer—the apps—topped off with an elegant blurred panel that serves as a background for the control center. We can glean something about the future of iOS in the use of layers. Rather than treating the homescreen and apps as unique, 3D spaces, iOS 7 uses layering to provide context, instead. It's a bit like Google Now, in a way. Rather than treating the UI as an architectural metaphor, it's treated as a series of layers, or cards.

The Typeface

Say hello the Helvetica Neue Ultra Light, a slimmer variant of iOS' standard Helvetica Neue. Neue was designed nearly three decades after the original Helvetica. It was redesigned because its early translation into pixels left much to be desired—for example, the italicized version was hastily slanted from the original, and the kerning and widths were irregular and disorganized.

So, in 1983, Linotype commissioned an update for the digital age. The width system was standardized, the curves were redrawn and cleaned up, and even things like punctuation were rejiggered for digital viewing. In a way, Helvetica Neue, and its variant Ultra Light, was one of the first classic typefaces of the computerized era. As a typeface for iOS, it couldn’t make more sense: seen on the sparse banner for today’s conference, the light iteration of Neue looks elegant and clean.

But the increased use of Ultra Light is something of a risk. In many contexts, Ultra Light becomes unreadable—and without the frame and background that all iOS text once lay against, it runs the risk of becoming meek and fragile. It’s certainly beautiful on blurred backgrounds—but if users decide to use a louder, crisper background, it could become problematic.

The Stock Apps

The new icons, just as we imagined, have lost much of of the reflectivity and depth of the old. The figures themselves have been given an update too: a rainbow-hued palette, and black-and-white backgrounds, make for a lovely little set of icons. There's also a set of wire-frame-esque icons that appear on the blurred, layered background of the lock screen.

Like the new typeface, the icons seem to borrow a bit from a golden age of signage and typography design: the 1930s (and later, the 1970s), when an Austrian designer named Gerd Arntz and his partner, Otto Neurath, developed a visual language of pictograms called Isotype. Their language was intended to transcend traditional language barriers using typographic symbols.

What does this have to do with the iOS 7 icons? Well, the original iOS icons borrowed their rounded edges and simple icons from pictograms—a heritage that's been muddied by increasingly realistic details. By eschewing real-world visual cues for simpler icons, Apple is returning to its roots in pictograms and Isotype. In a way, we can understand this as Ive integrating a rich history of pictogram design into Apple’s design language.

If Cook and Ive had unveiled a super-simple, black-and-white iOS 7 today, this would be a simpler story. But rather than simplify, they've surgically removed outdated colors and details and replaced them with a series of new, complex UI cues. There are certainly some visual similarities with Android, and the solutions are similar to Windows Phone. But given the usage stats and customer loyalty that Tim Cook quoted in his introduction, the problems and solutions of iOS are unique. Rather than overhaul the system, they're attempting to carefully introduce what amounts to a new kind of visual slang—if the original iOS was built for a 45-year-old newbie, iOS 7 looks like it was designed for a tween. It's more grown-up in terms of functionality, but younger in terms of form.

Ive, in his introduction, hinted at the difference between simplicity and purity thusly: "Design isn't just the way something looks. It's the whole thing, the way something actually works, on so many different levels. Ultimately, of course, design defines so much of our experience. I think there's a profound and enduring beauty in simplicity, in clarity, in efficiency. It's about bringing order to complexity." Order isn't always simple—in fact, it usually tends to be pretty complicated.

A good cup of tea is a wonderful thing, but if you don't have a hot water tap or a kettle nearby, you may be tempted to toss your mug in the microwave to get some hot water. That may not be a great idea, according to Slate—microwave ovens inevitably lead to less than ideal tea water.

Our friends at Lifehacker Australia shared this tip with us, and the Slate article source says that microwave ovens will produce water that may be too hot in some places and too cool in others, making for an overall less enjoyable cup of tea. Slate says that this is part of the nature of microwave radiation, and that microwaving tea will result in pockets of water that are warmer than others. That's not entirely true—after all, microwave wavelengths are about 4-inches, so unless you have a really huge teacup, you're probably getting pretty even heating, especially if you remember to put it on the edge of the carousel.

The real problem—one that Slate glosses over—with using the microwave to heat water for tea is that you have absolutely no temperature control when you use it. We've talked about the perfect times and temperatures for steeping tea before, and how to make a great cup before, and when you use a microwave you get none of the control that really makes a good cup great, and you end up with water that's too hot or cold for the tea you're brewing. Is it fine in a pinch or when you have no other options? Sure—just make sure to bring the water up to temp in the microwave, then stir and let it calm down before brewing so you get the right temperature for your tea. Then again, Slate also suggests using a rolling boil to make tea, so your mileage may vary.

Food Explainer: Why Does Microwaving Water Result in Such Lousy Tea? | Slate via Lifehacker Australia

Photo by chumsdock.

This mustacioed puppy has been an internet celebrity ever since his adorable mug made its way onto Reddit a few month's ago. More recently, the little chum's owner came forward with a more recent photo. Even if you're one of the many people who think ear cropping is inhumane and/or stupid looking (count me amongst those against the practice), there's no denying that the fantastic mustache on this pooch has kept him looking quite dapper.

Link Via Buzzfeed

(Video Link)

Grant Thompson calls his technique "waterbending." He uses it to instantly turn water into ice. The trick is to pour liquid water that is nearly--but not quite--crystallized onto ice. Contact with the ice triggers a visually stunning reaction.

-via Daily of the Day

On Engadget, Richard Lawler paraphrases a NYT theory on how the companies identified as participating in the NSA's PRISM program are able to deny participation without technically lying; this is followed up with a quote from Google's chief legal officer denying this theory:

So why the quick denials about something the companies listed (including AOL, parent company of Engadget) may actually have ties to? Because FISA requests are by their nature secret, the report claims employees that deal with the requests can't discuss the details, even with their fellow employees. Notably, although companies must by law respond to the requests, they're not legally obligated to make it easy, and the article points out Twitter as a company that has declined to participate. Because of that, even if PRISM is more a streamlining of bureaucratic processes than a government backdoor into your Candy Crush Saga level, the semantic differences of company denials may not sit well with users, much less citizens voting for the officials who oversee the programs.

Update: Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond has chimed in once again via a post on Google+, denying (again) that the government has any access to Google servers. That includes directly, through a back door, or any kind of "drop box" as the Times report mentions had been discussed. Meanwhile, CNET has an alternate source who corroborates the company's claims of no direct access, describing the system as a "formalized legal process."

NYT explains how tech companies allow PRISM, yet deny 'direct server access' happened (update)

Dear Google users—

You may be aware of press reports alleging that Internet companies have joined a secret U.S. government program called PRISM to give the National Security Agency direct access to our servers. As Google’s CEO and Chief Legal Officer, we wanted you to have the facts.

First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a “back door” to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.

Second, we provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process. Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users’ data are false, period. Until this week’s reports, we had never heard of the broad type of order that Verizon received—an order that appears to have required them to hand over millions of users’ call records. We were very surprised to learn that such broad orders exist. Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users’ Internet activity on such a scale is completely false.

Finally, this episode confirms what we have long believed—there needs to be a more transparent approach. Google has worked hard, within the confines of the current laws, to be open about the data requests we receive. We post this information on our Transparency Report whenever possible. We were the first company to do this. And, of course, we understand that the U.S. and other governments need to take action to protect their citizens’ safety—including sometimes by using surveillance. But the level of secrecy around the current legal procedures undermines the freedoms we all cherish.

Posted by Larry Page, CEO and David Drummond, Chief Legal Officer