firehose

On paper, New York is the perfect place for a high-speed fiber network: it's rich, densely packed, and riddled with old conduits that could be used to house the new infrastructure. But according to a new report in Crain's, efforts to lay new fiber have been stymied by politics and business concerns. The fiber would have to be laid in a maze of underground tunnels and ducts, maintained by a Verizon subsidiary called Empire City Subway (or ECS). Until ECS cleans up the mess of tunnels under the city, laying more fiber is effectively impossible — and by all indications, the company is in no hurry.

Part of the problem is simple cost: it's expensive to clear out the tunnels, and it's unclear how much return ECS would see on their investment. But Verizon also has an incentive to keep the underground tunnels messy. As long as there's no room for more fiber, the company will be the only game in town. It's led advocates like Susan Crawford to call for the city to step in, mandating a subterranean clean-up from ECS and opening the door for new fiber businesses in New York. It's an appealing idea, but it won't happen until someone steps in to break the stalemate.

Skype has been an essential tool in the production of podcasts and newscasts for years, and today Microsoft has announced a professional-grade version of the app designed specifically for the media industry. It's called Skype TX and is intended to be used in studio environments; you won't be using this to record a podcast in your bedroom. Skype TX is described as an "easy-to-use hardware and software combination that allows Skype video calls from anywhere in the world to be seamlessly integrated into any production." It plays nice with industry standards by outputting calls in full-frame HD-SDI formats.

Crucially, Skype TX also offers an experience that's free of the notifications, alerts, and other pop-ups that can cause interruptions on regular old Skype. Microsoft plans to have experts on hand for advice or assistance should you need it, another sign that Skype TX won't come cheap. Unfortunately we don't yet know how much it will be, as Microsoft hasn't revealed pricing or availability. But the company has posted a new website that teases how Skype TX can help producers take their broadcast to the next level.

The early ’90s were spoiled for choice when it came to comic book adaptations. Not only was Batman: The Animated Series on the air, but X-Men led Marvel’s push to get on the small screen, diving right into the often convoluted continuity of everyone’s favorite mutants, luring in a generation of fans, and paving the way for cartoons to follow. That’s why we’ve set out to review every single episode of the ’90s X-Men animated series. This week, the Juggernaut returns and spends the entire episode in bed, much like I wish I was doing.

Previously, on X-Men:

In our last episode, Cyclops finally figured out that Corsair was his dad after a sequence of events that basically involved a flashing neon sign reading “UR DAD” pointing at Corsair, who was flipping through an album of pictures showing him getting married to Cyclops’s mom while drinking from a coffee cup that said WORLD’S GREATEST DAD (OF CYCLOPS). Carefully considering the evidence, Cyclops decided that this whole paternity situation required a little more investigation to be sure.

To that end, I encouraged readers to think up other puzzlers that Detective Cyclops could take a crack at, and you folks cooked up a pretty robust case file for him. Here are a few highlights from The Scott Summers Mysteries:

“Detective Cyclops in: Who Is This Strange Woman I’ve Woken Up Next To Who Looks Strangely Like Jean And Is In Jean’s Spot On The Bed But Is Not Wearing Jean’s Clothes???” — Joshua Daniel

“Detective Cyclops in: Who’s This Guy In This Window Looks Like Me And Has My Visor And Is Mimicking All My Movements? Clone, Morph or long lost twin brother???” — Joshua Daniel

“Detective Cyclops is hired by fellow X-Man Wolverine to discover why his check was never delivered.” — Tim Siltala

“Detective Cyclops in: How does the Professor always get me the most thoughtful birthday gifts? WHAT IS HIS SECRET TO KNOWING WHAT I WANT FOR MY BIRTHDAY??” — Mike Christensen

“EnCyclopPedia Brown and the Case of the Disappearing People When I Close My Eyes.” — Randy Lee Potts

I think my favorite thing about all of these is that in the Marvel Universe, there is a genuinely sinister and convoluted explanation for all of these. Kind of like how Cyclops thought his dad was dead because he was in an airplane that crashed into a mountain in Alaska, only to find out later that he was abducted by aliens and became a space pirate. Things are complicated in that dude’s life, man. Maybe I’m a little too hard on him.

Just playin’, he sucks.

So you remember how the Juggernaut has been on this show a couple of times, and how it’s never really ended all that well for him? Like how the first time he showed up he got knocked out like a chump by Colossus, who wasn’t even on the team? And then when he showed up again and tried to kidnap Lilandra but got punched across an actual ocean by Gladiator? Well, I hope you enjoyed those, because this week’s episode by writer Julianne Klemm and producer/director Larry Houston spends 22 minutes asking you to believe that the Juggernaut is a going concern. It’s the show that dares to wonder what would happen if a jock was actually a nerd!

Said nerd has been saddled with the unfortunate name of “Eugene Torbit Witterspan,” which as far as stereotypical nerd names go is only slightly above calling a dude Poindexter Nerdlinger. But, you know, this episode is also about a dude’s evil brother who wants to kill him who is literally named Cain, so it’s probably not a great idea to throw stones. Anyway, Einstein McDorkbag over here has traveled to the Far East on an archaeological expedition that seems to involve busting through the floor of a temple with a pickaxe and then pelvic thrusting at it for a little while, so… not exactly Henry Jones Jr. over here, I guess.

The object of all this thrusting: A tablet that reveals the secret to obtaining the legendary power of the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak, which, I feel I should point out, are neither crimson nor are they actually what I would call bands. They are, however, the source of power for the Juggernaut, as manifested by a sort of brownish orange helmet and some muscles.

This might leave you all wondering what the Juggernaut himself is up to, and the answer is amazing. Apparently this dude has spent the last 15 episodes straight walking across the bottom of the ocean from Ireland to New York CIty, hell bent and waterlogged on getting revenge on Professor X. Now, keep in mind that Professor X is not actually the dude who punched him across an ocean. That is not the amazing part.

The amazing part is that Juggernaut gets a friendly smile from a seal…

…punches a shark in the face…

And then drives off in a little tiny taxi cab.

This is, without question, my favorite sequence of events that has happened on this show. Seriously, I was willing to write this whole thing off after the absolute mess of the Dark Phoenix Saga, but it suddenly turned delightful on me.

And it doesn’t stop there, either. When Professor X gets the news that his musclebound half-brother is on his way to slap him right out of his flying yellow chair, he flips out and tries to get all the X-Men to come rescue him. Unfortunately, that proves to be difficult, because nobody’s wearing their communicator belt. Jubilee’s busy swimming and in the second most amazing shot of this episode — and really, it’s only a first-person view of a shark getting its jaw jacked that pushes this one down — we find GAMBIT CHANGING THE SPARK PLUGS ON A BROKEN DOWN SCHOOLBUS.

So many mind-boggling things about this. First off, that dude is in full costume. Like, imagine you are a teacher or someone else that is in charge of a group of small children and your bus breaks down while driving through a forest, and the first person who stops and offers to help out is wearing that. A skintight black and hot pink ensemble with actual metal knight boots and a crazy head sock that you just know he has a weird ponytail stuffed down into, and as he gets off his motorcycle, he takes off his trenchcoat — of course — AND HIS BELT. How is this scene not Gambit being slammed facefirst into the hood of the bus by every cop in Westchester?

Second, CHECK OUT THAT DUDE’S POSE! Back straight! one leg cocked! There is no way he is not looking back over his shoulder at Miss Jorts and soon as he replaces the spark plugs and asking if anyt’in else be gettin’ a motor runnin’, cher. You can hear “Cherry Pie” playing if you look at this picture long enough. Lord knows I have.

Anyway, with the X-Men’s most underage and sketchy members indisposed, Juggernaut stomps across the lawn, right past the hidden machine guns (folks when are we going to have the conversation about how this is a school with multiple automated gun emplacements in the front yard), bashing through the wall and sending Xavier scurrying for the Danger Room. And again, we have a pretty cool moment, where he conjures up various foes for the Juggernaut to fight, including the Hulk:

It’s not enough to stop him, though, and the Juggernaut smashes through all the robots and the Beast, who is apparently the only X-Man to not take off his belt at every opportunity. He eventually makes it all the way to Charles, scooping him up and getting ready to thrash the heck out of him.

But! Remember Dweeb Mathbook from before, the guy who was planning to steal the power of the Juggernaut? Well, he does, right before all the thrashing starts. All of the Juggernaut’s strength — and, weirdly, his clothes — leave him, causing the whole Danger Room to collapse right on top of his big stupid head.

Now, most of the X-Men consider this to be a free win and plan to leave him buried while they go have a cup of coffee and compare notes to see who has the worst dad, but Professor X is stil hung up on this whole business where Juggernaut’s his brother, so he insists that they dig him up and provide him with free health care. Thanks, Obama. Unfortunately (or not, depending), there’s a problem: Without the resilliency of his mystical Juggernaut powers, Cain Marko won’t be recovering. Which, you know, is pretty weird since this show’s prohibition about blood and death means that he just looks like a regular dude in a dumb green jumpsuit.

Either way, X still wants to restore his powers, and tries to bring him out of his coma by going into his brain and poking at his memories. This seems like a dubious plan, but to be fair, I am neither a doctor nor a telepath, so I’m kind of out of my element in judging the efficacy of this treatment. In my defense, it does jack to wake him up, but we do get a glimpse of the character’s troubled childhood, where young Juggernaut (Youngernaut) tells young Professor X (Education Major X) that since he’s his step-brother, he’s going to literally step on him all the time:

Like, with his foot.

This is brilliant.

With that not working, X decides to just go ahead and send Cyclps and Wolverine out to see if they can find the new Juggernaut (Juggernew) and figure out how to give his powers back to Cain. Predictably, Cyclops whines about it, and while he does have a point, you’d think that a guy who just reconnected with his long-lost, presumed-dead father last week would have a little more sympathy for the bonds of family, no matter how strained. But, you know. Cyclops.

So, what has Glasses Geeksworthy been up to while all this is going on? In one of the show’s increasingly delightful turns, he has accidentally smashed up his own apartment and car, smiling all the while, and is now using his newfound body mass to dress like a twelve foot-tall John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever so he can pick up chicks.

Literally, in some cases.

So, just to be clear on this, Donkus Sliderule over here traveled across the entire world chasing down leads on some mythological archaeology and cast an actual magic spell so he could get into a dance club and flirt. Dude. You could just go to the gym.

It doesn’t really work out that well, either. It seems women who are in the mood for a night down at the dance club aren’t actually that into it it when some hill giant shows up and tears the façade off with his bare hands. It’s when Cyclops and Wolverine show up, though, that this entire sequence gets straight up magical. First, Wolverine dramatically pops his claws and ask him if he needs any “pointers” on chatting up ladies, and then Cyclops — Scott F**king Summers — affects the smarmiest possible voice and drawls out “Women like guys to be themselves!”

So for all of you who have wondered, now you know.

Cyclops’s advice falls on deaf ears, however, and Dopey Magicthegathering chucks them into the bar and then hits the floor for some dancing, during which he casually backhands Wolverine across the room:

Eventually, Cyclops just sighs and eye-beams the Ruby of Cyttorak out of his pocket, and the X-Men beat feat back to Westchester. As for the Juggernerd, he makes one last attempt to stop them by jumping at the plane, only to overshoot and crash through the roof of the nearby “Banzai Film” studio, where they are filming the latest episode of Power Rangers:

Guys… are we sure that I didn’t go back in time and write this episode? It’s fantastic.

There are some more flashbacks about how Professor X’s stepdad wanted his mom’s money and also hated both of his kids in equal measure, which is significantly less interesting than the Juggernerd pounding on a dude dressed like Godzilla, so I have no idea why we’re even watching it. Even Professor X seems to be frustrated at the whole thing, actually saying “I thought I was over this!” at one point.

Eventually, Cyclops and Wolverine bring the Ruby of Cyttorak back to the mansion, and they rub it on Cain enough that he eventually turns back into the Juggernaut, re-stealing his powers from Eugene, with both brothers agreeing that this has changed nothing and we’re right back to the status quo, except that the Juggernaut finally does the smart thing and chucks that damn ruby into space so nobody can ever mess with it again.

Discussion Question: Eugene Torbit Witterspan does not have very grand plans for the Ruby of Cyttorak. Seriously, dude just wants a date, and possibly to get the most out of a suit he mistakenly ordered eighteen sizes too big. But what if this was just the beginning? What other mystical Marvel Universe artifacts could he put to mundane uses? Throw some suggestions in the comments below!

Next Week: Nightcrawler finally shows up in “Nightcrawler!” And look, we’ve been getting these dumb literal episode titles ofr a while now, but trust me: The one after that is THE BEST.

Read More of The X-Men Animated Series Episode Guide

By Brendan Caldwell on April 7th, 2014 at 5:00 pm.

I don’t know what to tell you. My first few days in the Elder Scrolls Online universe have left me feeling very fed up. It was always going to be a tough job for Bethesda to recreate the awe and adventure of their single-player fantasy games for a mass(ively multiplayer) audience. But there was a hope that, actually, everything might turn out all right for fans. I’m sorry to say that, based on my 21 hours or so of questing, that hope should be laid to rest. You could say that 21 hours is short enough in MMO terms to be called a ‘gut reaction’. I suppose could have approached the game more scientifically, but to do that I would have had to measure my progress in ‘sighs per hour.’

It isn’t all bad.

There is a faithfulness to the world of the franchise that is very admirable, especially in terms of lore, but also in some of the game’s presentation. Simple things like the way you chat to NPCs and the ethical choices that appear during conversation will remind you that you are very much in Elder Scrolls territory. Not to mention some of the overlay, like the compass showing you where nearby places can be discovered. All the usual suspects are there – Khajit, Argonian, Norwegians – and all playable. The tension and interplay between the races seems to have been scaled down, at least judging from the questlines I followed, but the old traditions raise their heads: skooma as an addiction, Daedric Princes acting as tricksters, etc. But what you’re looking for in an Elder Scrolls game isn’t necessarily what you are looking for in an MMO. In an MMO you want solid, fun combat, interesting group questing mechanics and an enigmatic world to uncover. Is that what you get in TESO? I’m afraid the short answer is: no.

First, the world. The world map as shown here portrays an expansive continent, containing all of the other Elder Scrolls games combined.

It is a wonderfully attractive prospect. Of course, this being an MMO, your journey through the world has to be ‘gated’ in some way. By and large, MMO design is all about guiding the player in non-obvious ways down the path of least level resistance, especially in the early game. You send your players off on quests that will uncover bits of the world as they go, making their way steadily through the land, picking up storylines and fighting battles suited to their level. TESO follows this genre rule very obediently. And it is smart enough to place Wayshrines along these ‘paths’ that allow players to fast-travel between any previously discovered Wayshrine. Back and forth you go from your hometown to the frontier, selling your loot and repairing your armour, picking up quest along the way.

This all seemed very sensible to me at first, as far as game design goes. Until I realised that it’s the direct opposite to the opening hours of any modern Elder Scrolls single-player game, all of which give you a brief tutorial before summarily throwing you out into the world to do whatever the hell you want. To go wherever the hell you want. No such luck in the online cousin. The map of Tamriel is huge – but you cannot go wherever you want right from the start. My time has so far been confined to a series of increasingly large islands. There is a connecting ferry to the mainland, but it takes reaching level 12 (somewhere around the 20-hour mark) to be shown where this is. It is a frustrating reversal of what makes the single-player games so wonderful.

Maybe this is simply a problem of expectation and genre confusion. This is an MMO after all. One can have a massive world in this genre and leave some things off-limits, right? In fact, that’s how you encourage people to play on – to coax them onward through quest after quest, especially in the early hours. You let them know there is a huge world out there but you must earn your way out there.

Well, maybe. It just feels so restricted. There may be a huge world out there, yes. But the in-game map does not make it feel like it. If you are in a town, the map will give you a small, enclosed view of where you are. You can select another map to check out other destinations. But nothing on these other maps is labelled or hinted at. There is just a chunk of world, criss-crossed with uniformly pale roads and peppered with samey circular ruins, none of which have any real intrigue about them. If the game wanted to create a sense of adventurous exploration, it fails the moment it does not give you the desire to tramp off in the direction of a mysteriously-named cove, or a creepy-looking swamp. Or even just into the distance. As my cohort and reviewer-in-arms, Phill, pointed out to me as we played, there is so much gamefog clouding the environment that you begin to feel trapped in whatever township or fortress you are currently occupying, even if you are free to leave at any time. It is not much to ask of a series famed for its exploration to erect a visible, reachable mountain in the distance, or a vast forest, or an eerie, dried-up riverbed. Something (anything!) to peer at and say: That looks cool, let’s go there. Just about the only maps I did enjoy in the game were the treasure maps.

However, one big map does not an MMO make. Combat is important too. I have said in a previous hands-on that the developers have gone down the WoW route rather than the Elder Scrolls route as regards the brawling. New players will have to choose a weapon in which to specialise very early, as the ability to swap weapons with a button press is restricted to those beyond level 15. I played as a ranged character for most of my time and, though the bow felt powerful and useful as a weapon, it was irritating that I could not swap it for a dagger in the heat of battle. For example, whenever an enemy came close. Teamwork meant that my pal could take the heat off me as the tank but – beyond some buffing, dodging and basic counter-attacks – I found the combat to be a soulless barrage of button-tapping. A kind of dispassionate finger-twitch you develop in an effort to make enemy health bars drop faster. Despite the attempt to make the combat more physical (for example, with liberal use of area of effect attacks and blockable power strikes) you quickly revert to the standard brainlessness of cycling through the number keys until you find the combination of attacks that kills things fastest. I actually started to avoid fights, not because the enemies were too powerful or too numerous. Simply because it was so tedious. In a game were large chunks of your XP is supposed to come from slashing up millions of enemy mobs, this is not a good sign.

I could say it doesn’t matter too much. That the quests do not all involve fighting. There are many which are simply about intrigue and politicking. You can make up your XP by completing these. I could say this. But it would be a misleading piece of advice. The quests themselves are just as dull. Even in Elder Scrolls terms (a series not exactly famed for its abundance of personable characters), the stories told here are mind-numbing. When they are not as dull as old boots they are clichéd and full of ‘twists’. The person you are looking for has been mysteriously murdered. The family member you are saving from the fire/baddies/curse is the one responsible for the fire/baddies/curse in the first place. On and on these plots reappear, seemingly without end. There are only so many times you can end up in a jail cell before you begin to gnash your teeth with as much madness as an actual prisoner. This (along with the deeply uninspired puzzle elements often included) makes a lot of the missions just as shallow as any fetch quest. The whole experience is drier than a bowl of un-milked muesli.

Not so long ago I was sceptical about Wildstar and all its WoWish compulsions. I was put off by how standard it seemed. But now I can see that at least Wildstar tries to have a little fun, with its bouncey jumping, daft dialogue and floating islands full of player housing. TESO does have moments of light relief (one feline in the Khajit homelands keeps a caged Labrador, showing it off as a wild beast) but they are too few to truly relieve the drudgery of Yet Another Town Under Attack From Daedra.

The game’s best moments come when you pass through a town you have saved from some disaster a few quests ago and witness it being rebuilt now the threat is gone. And a lot has been done to avoid any quests about killing rats. (I stumbled across one. But I quickly refused, turned and walked away. It is very possible there was a ‘twist’ here. Maybe the rats were being released by the quest-givers rival? It is possible. But I was not going to take any chances). For all the other quests there is so little compunction to carry on with them, even in terms of levelling your shield ability or upgrading your armour. Likewise, much has been made of the skill tree and how it focuses not only on spells and skills but also on weapons, how it can branch out into different specialisations. But a closer inspection will reveal nothing special about this arrangement. You get skill points, you unlock skills, you add them to the task bar. None of my skills were especially interesting as a sneaky bowman. I could go invisible for 2.5 seconds with one of them. That was good.

PvP seems more promising. When you reach level ten you can disappear to Cyrodil to fight in the Alliance Wars (if you can find the option buried within the horribly confusing GUI). The three alliances – Aldmeri, Ebonheart and Daggerfall – are fighting for control of castles, forts, lumber mills and mines across a large map. I was lucky enough to witness a very scattered siege of one of the Aldmeri Dominion’s holdings. From my place on the battlements, I could see possibly 50+ players duking it out in the fields below the walls, while more of Our Lads were firing fireball after fireball from ballista and trebuchet down on the enemy. It was certainly the most excited I got during the whole playthrough. Then I got my bow out and realised that, at level ten, I did not have the range to fire at someone from this height, even if they were standing right below me.

Likewise, I had very little success in the subsequent counterattack on our foes fortress, for which I brought along my own ballista (this went sadly unused after I succumbed to the far-flung arrows from more experienced players). Likewise my sneaky jaunt behind enemy lines to discover some lesser-guarded castle ended in death by magic. The basic premise of the PvP area is that all Alliances are fighting over Elder Scrolls, which they capture from enemy strongholds and bring back to their homelands. These Scrolls grant boosts to all players in the alliance. For instance, our (only) Scroll in the Dominion gave us a delicious health boost, making us that little bit tougher. Of course, our main rival, the Daggerfall Covenant, had four Scrolls, granting them God-knows-what and making them the most feared hordes on the board. Whenever this happens the theory is that the other two Alliances will gang up and push back. This scrappy triumvirate is a very neat idea in terms of balancing the war, even if it is difficult to notice in the short term.

A scouting mission saw me going even deeper into enemy turf to make a report on a distant lumber mill – and I genuinely enjoyed this solo endeavour, sprinting through covered forests and avoiding the roads and castles. But when I completed the quest 45 minutes later I was frustrated by another one of TESOs greater flaws: its unholy stinginess. The amount of gold you receive in missions, or loot from the bodies of your enemies, is infinitesimally disappointing. In spite of that, it is only fair to say that I felt most adventurous in TESO when I was a nameless grunt in some grander military campaign, rather than being the Chosen One in greater Tamriel, along with five million others. Even though I am told this war of sieges is basically identical to the player battles of Guild Wars 2.

Back in the outer regions you can carry on playing without the threat of others but it won’t be long until you stumble across a bug of some description, including game-breakers. Vital objects in the world will become unusable, or simply disappear, meaning you have to log out and log back in again to reinstate them. Enemies will run at you swords ablaze, swing twice, scurry back to their patrol position, regen all their health and continue whatever box-lifting animation they were ensconced in before you attacked. This is not some spell they use. They just seem to forget you exist, mid-fight.

All in all, I cannot honestly recommend it. Even with the pitched, wavering skirmishes of PvP, I don’t really know who this game is for. It certainly doesn’t feel like it’s for Elder Scrolls fans. And MMO lovers will easily get their fix from more light-hearted alternatives. Alternatives, I should point out, which will not cost them £40 upfront, followed by a further £8.99 a month in subscription fees. My short playthrough was an excursion into drab and humourless world, full of people and things I really couldn’t bring myself to care about. It is obvious the quests have tried their best not to repeat the cardinal sins of other MMOs. But in doing so they only commit other, equally damning sins. Hackneyed dialogue, poor characterisation, a superficial sense of ‘threat’, and bugs. At its best The Elder Scrolls Online looks like a faithful addition to the lore. At its worst it is a derivative and uninventive anachronism. To me, it played sometimes like a Gameloft game. I actually feel nasty saying that. But I really don’t know what else to tell you.

__________________

« Broforce Explodes Onto Steam Early Access |

Coffee Stain Studios, Goat Simulator, My first really solid pun.

eglads:

can’t stop drawing rude foxes

stickers and shirts on [redbubble]

These foxes = me

All sorts of covers of the Game Of Thrones song have been recorded, from 8-bit takes on the epic score to an annoyingly reedy bagpipe version. Now—because Game Of Thrones wasn’t painful enough to watch—there’s a smooth jazz version. The extremely laid-back track comes courtesy of Postmodern Jukebox, and features incredibly popular saxophonist Dave Koz on the brass woodwind. While the cover definitely has that “dental chair” vibe, it’s actually also surprisingly soothing. It could be just the thing that stressed out Sansa Stark needs after the brutal murder of almost her entire family. [via Laughing Squid]

Source

The compute module contains the guts of a Raspberry Pi (the BCM2835 processor and 512Mbyte of RAM) as well as a 4Gbyte eMMC Flash device (which is the equivalent of the SD card in the Pi). This is all integrated on to a small 67.6x30mm board which fits into a standard DDR2 SODIMM connector (the same type of connector as used for laptop memory*). The Flash memory is connected directly to the processor on the board, but the remaining processor interfaces are available to the user via the connector pins. You get the full flexibility of the BCM2835 SoC (which means that many more GPIOs and interfaces are available as compared to the Raspberry Pi), and designing the module into a custom system should be relatively straightforward as we’ve put all the tricky bits onto the module itself.

So what you are seeing here is a Raspberry Pi shrunk down to fit on a SODIMM with onboard memory, whose connectors you can customise for your own needs.

The Compute Module is primarily designed for those who are going to create their own PCB. However, we are also launching something called the Compute Module IO Board to help designers get started.

Empty IO Board on the left: Compute Module snapped into place on the right.

The Compute Module IO Board is a simple, open-source breakout board that you can plug a Compute Module into. It provides the necessary power to the module, and gives you the ability to program the module’s Flash memory, access the processor interfaces in a slightly more friendly fashion (pin headers and flexi connectors, much like the Pi) and provides the necessary HDMI and USB connectors so that you have an entire system that can boot Raspbian (or the OS of your choice). This board provides both a starting template for those who want to design with the Compute Module, and a quick way to start experimenting with the hardware and building and testing a system before going to the expense of fabricating a custom board.

rare-basement:

vintagenola:

nedhepburn:

touchmeordont:

kohenari:

Last month, when Glenn Ford was released from prison for a crime he didn’t commit, the state of Louisiana “gave him a $20 debit card for his troubles.” That, plus the four cents he had left in his prison account, was all he had.

How do you build up the material accumulations of a lifetime overnight? How do you do it with no money? Where do you even begin?

Ford’s friend John Thompson had a clever idea: Do what millions of Americans do when they are hoping that other people will buy them a whole bunch of stuff. Build an Amazon registry.

The Amazon Wish List is here.

Read the whole piece here.

Just bought this dude something off his wishlist. You should too.

Do this. 

The man lives in New Orleans. Help him out if you can.

from the looks of it, he needs rouses and boost mobile gift cards the most. that’s the grocery store and phone company. he doesn’t have very many of either. help the man out!

Uber will begin testing a new service in Manhattan tomorrow, but the new service isn't designed to get you around: instead, it's launching a courier service called Uber Rush, which will let you hire a bike messenger to pick up your items and bring them to another location in the city, reports Vox. The service will reportedly only operate in Manhattan to start, and couriers won't be able to travel north of 110th Street — no higher than top of Central Park. Bloomberg Businessweek reports that rates begin at $15 for a trip and can go as high as $30, depending on how far the courier has to go. Surge pricing won't be used, at least for now.

Though Uber has dabbled in a number of eclectic professions for promotions and holidays, a courier service will be the first distinctly different core service that it offers, with all of its other products being different takes on taxi services. Uber Rush will only be a pilot program, so it's possible that it won't roll out further if it doesn't succeed. It's also fairly basic for now — only allowing customers to have products picked up from them, and not purchased for them as similar courier services do. Uber tells Bloomberg that it's been seeing people hire cabs just to ferry their items around the city though, so perhaps Uber is simply responding to untapped demand.