firehose

25 years ago June 4th, Tiananmen Square

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Apple has taken the wraps off iOS 8, its newest mobile operating system, at its WWDC keynote. There were lots of new features added to iOS, but any observer familiar with Android saw quite a few things that seem... familiar. That's because many of Apple's announced upgrades were things the Android OS has boasted for years.

Typing suggestions

The iOS 8 Keyboard bar (left) looks just like Android.

Apple/Ron Amadeo

Apple added a little bar of suggestions to the top of the keyboard, which Android had (initially as an option) since the introduction of the on-screen keyboard in Android 1.5. While Android's keyboard just blindly does word pairs, iOS 8 seems to be able to intelligently offer suggestions in response to an "A" or "B" question. In the example, a friend asks about "dinner or a movie." Without typing anything, iOS offers "A movie," "Dinner," and "Not Sure." If this actually works reliably, it's a big step above the Android keyboard. Of course, we're just comparing this to the standard Google Keyboard available through Google Play. That's not the only typing solution on Android, which brings us to...

Third party keyboards

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Nothing like admitting your team is awful AND asking fans to wear an awfulness-related slogan.

The Houston Astros lost 106 games in 2011. They lost 107 games in 2012. They lost 111 games in 2014. They're on pace to lose *only* 95 this year, which buries them down in last place in the AL West, but it's progress!

This is called rebuilding, which is a process. A good fan of a team going through a rebuilding process accepts it -- better times are ahead, and you have to live through the suck now. But it does suck now.

And you might not want to buy shirts that say "process":

When you are a bad team, you sell shirts with this slogan on them pic.twitter.com/LyOUWZhpLE

— darren rovell (@darrenrovell) June 4, 2014

Yes, this is real:

These have apparently been around for a while, but it's the first we're seeing them. WHO WOULD WEAR THIS? It's not even, like, optimistic. It's the word "process," which is actively referring to the drudgery of crappy baseball.

We salute you, Astros fans. We hope you soon have opportunity to buy less depressing shirts. (And don't buy this one just to say you were a fan during the bad times. Please.)

Sandoval inadvertently took his struggles out on the media on Tuesday.

Giants third baseman Pablo Sandoval is on pace for the worst offensive season of his seven-year major league career, so it's not out of the question for him to be frustrated by his relatively poor start to 2014. Players taking their frustration out on reporters is nothing new (especially when it involves those who cover the Reds), but Sandoval took that to a whole new level on Tuesday.

per MLB.com

RIP my laptop. Sandoval foul hit it #reds pic.twitter.com/igNCCLeKMp

— Mark Sheldon (@m_sheldon) June 4, 2014

Bad Panda.

If Brian McCann were a highway patrolman in the Mushroom Kingdom ...Woo boy.

If you had gone back in time and told a high school version of myself that a plumber from Brooklyn named Luigi Mario would be 2014's greatest athlete, I'd probably have run away terrified. Time travelers are frightening. But say I'd been able to comprehend the brevity of the situation: I'd likely then have scolded you for not properly christening your device the 'Timulator'; that's non-canon.

All Mario nerdery aside, just about all of us lost countless hundreds; thousands; ten of thousands (I'm not embarrassed) of hours to various versions of Mario Kart over the last several decades. The latest iteration, Mario Kart 8, showcases far and away the greatest polygons-to-shade ratio in the history of the franchise, courtesy of a brazen make and model of Luigi that could make even Yasiel Puig blush.

Exhibit A:

But what if Luigi was ... well, a baby. That drives. Because Mario Kart reasons:

What is this I don't even:

(via)

If you still somehow had any doubts as to Luigi 2k14's bonafides:

Finally, it wouldn't be SB Nation if we didn't:

(H/T @matt_T)

Compactus as pantry. Bloody brilliant. By Melbourne based architecture practice multiplicity.

alex-v-hernandez:

gynocraticgrrl:

The struggle is real. Xena knows it.

Xena: Warrior Princess, S1E05 - The Path Not Taken

wormwoman

It’s becoming clear where I learned this from.

oldgamemags:

Vidiot April - May 1983 - Arcade Chic - The Fashion of the 80’s arcade?

Follow oldgamemags on Tumblr for more awesome scans from yesteryear!

A group of marketing researchers at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign decided to tackle the problem of gender bias by analyzing a peculiar statistical anomaly: hurricanes with female names tend to be more deadly than ones with male names. And that was only the first thing they did wrong.

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This machine makes droning water from thin air. via CNN

Water. A vital nutrient, yet one that is inaccessible to many worldwide.
The World Health Organization reports that 780 million people don’t have access to clean water, and 3.4 million die each year due to water-borne diseases. But an Israeli company thinks it can play a part in alleviating the crisis by producing drinking water from thin air.
Water-Gen has developed an Atmospheric Water-Generation Units using its “GENius” heat exchanger to chill air and condense water vapor.
“The clean air enters our GENius heat exchanger system where it is dehumidified, the water is removed from the air and collected in a collection tank inside the unit,” says co-CEO Arye Kohavi.
“From there the water is passed through an extensive water filtration system which cleans it from possible chemical and microbiological contaminations,” he explains. “The clean purified water is stored in an internal water tank which is kept continuously preserved to keep it at high quality over time.”

Capturing atmospheric humidity isn’t a ground-breaking invention in itself — other companies already sell atmospheric water generators for commercial and domestic use — but Water-Gen says it has made its water generator more energy efficient than others by using the cooled air created by the unit to chill incoming air.
“Several companies tried to extract water from the air,” says Kohavi. “It looks simple, because air conditioning is extracting water from air. But the issue is to do it very efficiently, to produce as much water as you can per kilowatt of power consumed.”
He adds: “When you’re very, very efficient, it brings us to the point that it is a real solution. Water from air became actually a solution for drinking water.”
The system produces 250-800 liters (65-210 gallons) of potable water a day depending on temperature and humidity conditions and Kohavi says it uses two cents’ worth of electricity to produce a liter of water.

Developed primarily for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Water-Gen says it has already sold units to militaries in seven countries, but Kohavi is keen to stress that the general population can also benefit from the technology.
He explains: “We believe that the products can be sold to developing countries in different civilian applications. For example in India, [drinking] water for homes is not available and will also be rare in the future. The Atmospheric Water-Generation Unit can be built as a residential unit and serve as a perfect water supply solution for homes in India.”
Kohavi says Water-Gen’s units can produce a liter of water for 1.5 Rupees, as opposed to 15 Rupees for a liter of bottled water.

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basedheisenberg:

Neo-Nazis get their shit pushed in by native american grandmothers, who then capture their flag, take selfies with it, and then burn it.

Neo Nazi status: Wrekt.

At least according to this very unscientific ESPN poll!

BOOM, @SPURS NATION pic.twitter.com/eeoqXL6jAT

— Kaitee Daley (@daleysports) June 3, 2014

Before you scoff, remember this Internet information checklist:

(1) Nothing on the Internet matters unless it is displayed on a map.
(2) This information is displayed on a map.

That's right. Ignore it at your own peril.

PirateBox is a DIY device made by artist and designer David Darts that creates offline wireless networks featuring message boards and media sharing. The device consists of a USB flash drive, a small battery, and a TP-Link router with some custom software installed. PirateBox 1.0 recently launched with updated features like a browser-based file sharing system. A version of the PirateBox software is also available for Android devices.

PirateBox solves a technical/social problem by providing people in the same physical space with an easy way to anonymously communicate and exchange files. This obviously has larger cultural and political implications and thus the PirateBox also serves as an artistic provocation.

PirateBox on NYC 2.0

photos via PirateBox

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

Fire up that loud, Mr. Sulu! Another round of shots! The defiant “Turn Down for What” by DJ Snake and Lil Jon is a song which has seized the collective imagination of the Internet in the past few months and has already been used as appropriate musical accompaniment to boating mishaps and heroically reckless driving. And now the song has found perhaps its highest calling in a supercut which shows the cast of Star Trek (both the original series and The Next Generation) flopping around on the bridge of the Enterprise like untethered crash test dummies as they pretend that their ship has either hit something or been hit by something. When coupled with the vigorous shaking of the camera, this bit of crude pantomime does suggest that the vessel has indeed been violently jolted. It’s a corny but effective gimmick every Trek fan knows well, but these familiar ...

In this wonderful mashup by Hidden Track TV, The Muppets perform the classic Bob Marley song, “Iron Lion Zion” with a very irie Fozzie Bear on lead vocals.

via Tastefully Offensive

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spacetwinks:

this flyer just goes straight in saying shit like “old motherfuckers miss rocky and bullwinkle so make them hand over their coin purses with this” and i love it

feministbatwoman:

thebicker:

takeherbacktowonderland:

lareinaana:

boyexemplified:

acid-anarchism:

BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON: To say the actor is a woman makes subjective impressions superordinate to biological fact.

CHICAGO SUN TIMES BEING TRANSPHOBIC AS FUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

what a craven little shit

this is singularly transmisogynistic. he goes after Laverne and Chelsea, belittles the seriousness of invasive cis people and their obsession with genetalia, and continually misgenders both like they’re the goddamn arbiter of truth. Kevin Williamson is a sack of shit with a short career ahead.

I just called the Sun Times.

1-888-848-4637

Say “something else”, and then talk to the nice people in customer service. Tell them that this article was hate speech, that you demand a retraction and full apology by the Sun Times, and that you will be making sure that your social media contacts will know (if they leave it up) that the Sun Times republishes unabashed anti-trans hate speech.

Ughhhh this is from the National Review, a right-wing site. Unsurprising that the Sun-Times ran it. (Lifelong Tribune fan here.)

Please report this piece of transphobic dreck.

WHAT THE FUCK

When companies tweak their designs, it often seems like little more than changing the drapes—or, literally, moving a few pixels around. But sometimes small changes reorient the user experience or quietly herald a shift in corporate strategy. So what to make of Twitter’s May 30 announcement that it was switching its main typeface from Neue Helvetica to Gotham?

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​Gotham on the left, Helvetica on the right.Screenshots from Twitter

At first glance, Twitter’s typeface choice seems strictly practical in nature. Gotham’s roomier, more relaxed design makes it more comfortable than Helvetica to read on phones and tablets. (Contrary to Apple’s risible announcement yesterday that its upcoming OS X Yosemite will use Helvetica to improve legibility, the typeface it isn’t easy to read on small screens.) Gotham is also familiar, having been used for everything from Saturday Night Live’s opening credits to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. And for a “non-system” font—meaning, a font that’s not prepackaged in a given operating system—Gotham offers a decent ability to be rendered consistently among various platforms.

But not all platforms. In fact, maybe more interesting than what Twitter’s new type selection accomplishes is what it leaves out. Namely, most of the scripts used in the countries where it’s growing the fastest.

A big drawback to Gotham is that it lacks character sets for Arabic, Cyrillic, Indic, and other major non-Latin writing systems, says Stephen Coles, a typographer and the author of The Anatomy of Type. That’s despite the fact that these are increasingly popular on Twitter.

Take Arabic, for instance. Since Gotham hasn’t developed an extension for the script, people tweeting in Arabic will see a default system font called Geeza. Here’s a look at the difference (with the English set in Gotham and the Arabic in Geeza):

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Gotham’s spacious sans-serif design clashes with Geeza’s calligraphic style.Screenshot by Stephen Coles

To typographic experts like Coles, the visual clash between Gotham and Geeza is jarring.

“The fallback for Arabic is a traditional calligraphic style, while Gotham is a very clean sans serif,” Coles told Quartz in an e-mail. “There are differing schools of thought on how to marry Arabic with Latin type designs (how much should you stiffen the Arabic to match the Latin?), but these two faces at least are certainly at odds with each other.”

The clash is equally apparent with Cyrillic. Following the current fad for extra-thin typefaces, Twitter chose a light version of Gotham. The default for Cyrillic, Lucida Grande, is much more muscular in comparison:

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Screenshot by Stephen Coles

It’s not that there aren’t other options. Coles says that Twitter could have chosen another contemporary, screen-friendly typeface that also provides non-Latin character support. Frutiger, for example, offers harmonious versions of Arabic, Cyrillic, and Indic. So does Fedra. (Better type support for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean is still a long way away.) Both Frutiger and Fedra also have the benefit of being less overexposed than Gotham, which has become nearly as ubiquitous as Helvetica in its heyday.

Of course, grating typography isn’t the biggest deal in the world. But if it’s worth making the interface better for some Twitter users, why ignore the rest? Its selection of Gotham seems to suggest that Twitter isn’t directing attention and resources toward the users who make up the fastest-growing segment of its business. The message that sends could be trouble in the long term, no matter how pretty the face you put on it.

Commissioner Steve Novick has confirmed rumors flying through city hall yesterday and first put into print last night by the Oregonian: The residential part of his and Mayor Charlie Hales' proposed street maintenance and safety fee is on hold "indefinitely."

Novick's comments came during a spot on Jefferson Smith's "Thank You Democracy" radio program on Xray.fm. On Monday, Novick had insisted, when I asked, that the residential fee was "steady as she goes" toward a promised vote this Wednesday.

Novick, who started Monday by tweaking Commissioner Nick Fish with a Casablanca reference, clammed up later in the day, refusing to answer more questions about the timeline potentially changing after word began leaking out about discussions in city hall leaning that way. Those hints took on new vigor after Fish, a staunch opponent of just having a council vote on the street fee, made his own Casablanca joke on Twitter—suggesting he and Novick had reached an ending as mutually agreeable as the one in the movie.

Sources say Commissioner Amanda Fritz, the swing vote on the fee, was involved in discussions over the delay.

Novick has yet to return a call this morning asking for more information about his decision and the implications for his plan. Hales' spokesman also has yet to acknowledge several messages seeking comment, first left yesterday morning and again this morning.

Citizens, businesses, and lobbyists took turns over five and a half hours last week complaining at a hearing about both the mechanics of the proposed fee—up to $12 for families every month and thousands a year for businesses, raising up to $50 million—as much as an approval process that saw several late amendments and a rush to a council vote this month.

Before that hearing, Novick and Hales confirmed plans to cleave off the nonresidential portion of the fee, pushing that off until November to refine it. Then, during the hearing, Novick and Hales announced plans to phase the fee in over three years. Fritz modified that plan with her own amendment calling for fees of $6, then $9, and up to $12, with proportionate two-thirds discounts for low-income families.

Novick and Hales said they were pushing so hard for a June vote out of concern whatever was approved would be referred to the ballot by lobbyists and others, a promise repeated at the hearing by Paul Romain, hired hand for the Oregon Petroleum Association, the group that killed the city's last stab in 2008. Novick and Hales said going early would get the fee in front of voters during this November's higher-turnout general election.

Fish and Commissioner Dan Saltzman, and several people who testified, suggested commissioners, in that case, should just refer the fee to the ballot themselves—and tamp down fluoride-style anger over the process.

Whether that might happen still remains to be seen. Presumably we'll see some statement soon on what's next.

UPDATE 10:50 AM: That statement has arrived, and it clarifies, as expected, what's next. A vote on both sides of the fee will come in November, the same time a vote had been set on the nonresidential fee. That plan, ironically, is similar to what Fish proposed at the end of last week's council hearing—except it still indicates Hales and Novick won't call for sending the fee to voters.

The council will still vote this Wednesday on sending voters a charter amendment, this November, that would bind the city's use of the revenue raised by the fee. More public forums will be held. And "work groups" will be convened to talk about two issues: how to ease the burden on small businesses, and how to better extend discounts on all utility payments to all low-income customers. The fee would still take effect July 1, 2015.

”The last street free proposal in 2008 was derailed by a lobbyist filing a referendum petition,” said Commissioner Novick. “This one has been temporarily delayed due to concerns voiced by small business owners and low-income people and advocates. We are in a hurry to get to work, but if we’re going to be delayed, it’s for the right reasons.”

“Think of this as a track race,” Hales said. “We haven’t moved the finish line, which is July 2015. But we’re moving the starting blocks. We heard from the community: We are taking our time to hear a more robust debate on the details of this fee. But we have not wavered in our resolve. It is our intention to finally address our deteriorating streets.”

The full statement is here (pdf).

Update 12:43 PM: Fritz's hand really was important in shaping this delay. She tells me she now firmly agrees with Novick and Hales that a referral to voters would be a bad idea—but she made it equally clear that the angst and sadness that had been pouring into city hall meant more time was needed to work out details and ease concerns and fears.

"I'm now convinced a referral by the council is not in the best interest of finding a good solution," she says. "I am very happy we're spending more time getting to a proposal that if it is referred, by voters, will be a lot better."

She gave two reasons for her decision. The first is the complexity of the eventual proposal—and a concern that nuance and flexibility aren't a part of what happens at the ballot box. A referendum, she says, is "just yes or no," compared to a council discussion in which a "yes, but what if" vote that improves a proposal is possible. She also cited the arts tax. That was approved by voters and council shied away from improvements, like making the thing more progressive, because they worried about changing the will of the voters.

Fritz also floated her strong preference converting the residential street fee into a tax—so that it can be less regressive.

"I'd like to see that on the table," she says.

Novick, meanwhile, has posted a lengthy piece on his blog discussing the delay—and the relative benefits of surging toward a June 4 deadline—"focus," especially—even if that deadline had to slip to get the proposal in better shape. The post addresses his obvious crankiness with Fish over his concerns, especially involving low-income residents, but says a good idea may have emerged to address them: using the city's arts tax exemption to extend discounts to more low-income utility customers, across all utility bureaus.

But crankiness doesn't solve problems. It makes sense to delay a vote while we search for a way to make low income discounts fully accessible to people in multifamily housing. The difference between the proposed fully-phased in 'regular' multifamily fee of $7.05 per month and the proposed discounted fee of $4.93 per month is only $2.12 per month, but every dollar matters for someone living paycheck to paycheck.

And, although I'm not sure yet if it will work, I came up with an idea late Sunday night that I'm rather excited about. The City’s existing process with the arts tax allows people who are living below the poverty line send in some paperwork and get an exemption. Maybe we could use that process to provide rebates on water, sewer and transportation fees. You would send in your arts tax exemption form and get a check equal to the annual total of the utility fee discounts you're entitled to. I've asked Thomas Lannom in Revenue to think about whether we can make this idea work.

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National treasure John "Pink Flamingos" Waters just published Carsick, a book about his adventures hitchhiking from Baltimore to San Francisco (readers will remember that he got picked up by an indie band on the road). The Baltimore Sun interview with him about the book is a mix of heartwarming tales about how good Americans are to weirdo hitchhikers, depressing ruminations on why he won't be making any more movies anytime soon (Hollywood only wants $300M "tentpole movies" with a lot of explosions), and hilarity from the road. This looks like a hell of a book. Read the rest

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