firehose

Ukraine, in focus

Martin Luther King Jr. was added to Westminster Abbey in 1998

Evidence!

It's been a terrible, no good, very bad MLK Day for the Knicks, who are getting blown out at home by their crosstown rivals from Brooklyn. This pretty much sums it up.

Say, Melo, how about signing on for five more years this summer?

(GIF via CBS Sports' Matt Moore).

thefrogman:

By JJ Harrison [website | tumblr | twitter]

This suit of armor is sure not just to protect your body but also to intimidate your opponents, pairing its hardened leather pieces with that creepy Joker's grin.

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PlayStation 4 early adopters are experiencing a widespread data corruption error resulting in lost progress and unplayable games, according to frequent reports in a 34-page PlayStation Forum thread. Joystiq reader "Jim" wrote in to report the loss ...

The Painted Dice Company is a new company that’s making custom painted dice. Have a new die you’d like? They can help you out. Source From them to you: A brand new company set up to design and manufacturer custom dice. This company has been created after the founder Mike Herrington wanted to use more [...]

Location: Toronto, Ontario
URL: http://www.mastergamesintl.com/

• HTML, CSS
• JavaScript & jQuery
• Design Skills (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc)
• Responsive and Mobile First Design

• Drupal Theming, Module Development, and Architecture
• PHP
• Git
• SASS

To apply: Email your resume or portfolio to hr@tentonhammer.com with the subject “Front-End Developer”.

San Francisco Chronicle

BREAKING: Shooting was failed murder-suicide KRNV My News 4 CARSON CITY, Nev. (MyNews4.com & KRNV) -- The Carson Tahoe Regional Medical Center shooting was a failed murder-suicide attempt, according to a police report obtained by News 4. The police report says that the suspect, 88-year-old William Dresser, ... Police: Elderly man shoots wife at Nev. hospitalRapid City Journal all 260 news articles »

A flood of cheap heroin has thrust Vermont, land of green hills and sweet vistas, into an addiction crisis, a grave threat to younger residents and to a way of life.

The ColorHug has been one of the more successful OpenHardware projects of recent times. The ColorHug is an open-source display colorimeter for calibrating LCD panels for accurate displays. This open-source hardware was designed by GNOME's Richard Hughes and obviously features first-rate linux support. He's now working on a new ColorHug+ device...

The Patriots coach called Welker's hit "one of the worst plays I've ever seen."

New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick is none too pleased about a hit by Denver Broncos wide receiver Wes Welker that knocked cornerback Aqib Talib out of the AFC Championship on Sunday. Belichick referred to the hit as "one of the worst plays I've ever seen" and alleged that Welker intentionally targeted Talib, according to Mike Reiss of ESPN NFL Nation.

"It was a deliberate play by the receiver to take out Aqib," a perturbed Belichick said during a Monday morning press conference the day after the Broncos knocked the Patriots out of the playoffs. "No attempt to get open."

The play in question came during the second quarter of the Broncos' 26-16 win. While running a crossing pattern over the middle of the field, Welker barreled into Talib, who was coming from the opposite direction while covering Demaryius Thomas.

Intentional or not, the hit acted as a pick that freed Thomas, though Peyton Manning's pass bounced off his chest for an incompletion. No flag was called on the play.

"It was one of those plays where it's kind of a rough play and I was trying to get him to go over the top," Welker said after the game. "It wasn't a deal where I was trying to hit him or anything like that. I hope he's OK."

Talib was not OK, at least for the remainder of the game. The Patriots' top cover man left with an injury and did not return. Denver took full advantage of the Pro Bowler's absence, passing for 400 yards and feeding Thomas, who was shadowed by Talib prior to his exit, with seven catches for 134 yards and a touchdown.

"I'll let the league handle the discipline on that play, whatever they decide," a frustrated Belichick said.

More from SB Nation NFL

• SB Nation's 2014 NFL playoff coverage and brackets

• Broncos advance to Super Bowl behind Peyton Manning | Full coverage

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• Tom Brady’s facepalm says it all

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achronicmasturbator:

I’m going to get an education, mother

NBC has renewed Parks & Recreation for a seventh season during its executive session at the Television Critics Association winter press tour. The relevant quote, from network president Robert Greenblatt: “I'm going to go out on a limb: Parks & Rec is going to have a seventh season.” Since Greenblatt renewed it in the spur of the moment, thanks to one of his capricious whims, there’s not yet news on how many episodes that will entail or if it will be the show’s final season (as many have speculated). But you’ll almost certainly get at least 13 more episodes of Leslie Knope and company in the 2014-15 season, and probably more. Could Greenblatt go back on a statement made in the spur of the moment at a TCA executive session? Sure. But he probably doesn’t want to seem like the kind of dick who would do that.

The answer ...

Superstar artist Francis Manapul joins "Batwoman" #27 along with regular creators Marc Andreyko & Jeremy Haun as the new Black Spider strikes!

Convene magazine is the magazine of the Professional Convention Management Association, i.e., the people who actually organize and run conventions, and its December 2013 issue had a long piece on why harassment policies are a good and intelligent thing to have (pdf link). I’m quoted in it quite a bit, but the article also features quotes and comments for several professional convention runners, as well as lawyers, discussing liability, setting and managing expectations, and what conventions and conferences can do and can’t do with regard to attendee behavior. For the folks who are interested in this particular topic, it’s well worth the read.

(As noted above, the link is to a pdf of the magazine, and note that the article is bisected by an insert on another topic entirely; just keep turning pages.)

Among other things, the article answers, rather more comprehensively than I could, this hand-wringer from Michael Kelley in Publishers Weekly, concerning the ALA posting a statement of appropriate conduct for attendees of its conferences, starting with Kelley’s sensationally leading opening sentence and going on from there.

I will say, as someone who was ultimately responsible for a small convention for three years (and who was incredibly fortunate to have seasoned convention runners at the tiller to ensure things ran smoothly as possible), that when I see people thumping about on how harassment policies are a threat to free speech, I see them as naïve at best and disingenuous at worst. Leaving aside (yet again) that conferences and conventions are almost always private events by private companies in private spaces, and that each of these private entities is able to set its own policies and expectations, in the best traditions of free enterprise, the sort of person who conflates “free speech” issues with a convention or conference rightly deciding to set attendee expectations as regards reasonable behavior and limiting its own legal liability should an attendee decide to do something stupid, is someone whose understanding of any of those concepts is simplistic or at the very least blinkered to the point of uselessness.

Tangentially related to all this is the ruckus that went down this weekend regard in the Chi-Fi Convention, in which the organizers cancelled the event, claiming the hotel was unwelcoming and that it disapproved of the convention’s harassment policy. The hotel replied rather strongly to the assertion, flatly calling the claims “false”; subsequent investigation suggests that at the very least lots of details were elided, regarding Chi-Fi’s initial statement.

There’s a lot I don’t know about the details of the Chi-Fi ruckus, so I’m going to offer what follows here as a general comment, not tied to any specific convention or hotel, regarding harassment policies. And it is:

If a convention wants to have a harassment policy and the hotel hosting it disapproves of the convention having such a policy, it’s possible that the hotel is staffed by assholes. However, if a convention decides to publicly and falsely (or at least so incompletely as to effectively falsely) claim that a hotel did not support its desire to have a harassment policy as a way to deflect attention from the convention’s other organizational issues, then it’s not the hotel staff who are being assholes.

A harassment policy should not be used as a shield to deflect attention or legitimate questions with regard to the organization of a convention. Aside from any other problematic issue with such a maneuver, doing so has the potential to make it harder for other conventions who wish to implement harassment policies to do so, or for other conventions to work with hotels at all — now hosting hotels may be concerned that such a policy might be used as cudgel, i.e., “if we don’t get our way, we’ll use the harassment policy to drop the Internet on your head.” The short-term (and very temporary) ass-covering for one convention has long-term implications for every other convention.

So let’s hope that never actually happens.

Land grant of Atlantic and Pacific R.R. (1883)

Map of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad Company showing right-of-way and lands in New Mexico and Arizona, from 1883. Atlantic and Pacific R.R. Date: 1883 Author: Atlantic and Pacific Railroad Company. Dwnld: Full Size (7.9mb) Print Availability: See our Prints Page for more details pff This map isn't part of any series, but we have other railroad maps that you might want to check out. A cadastral map, in two...

the BIG Map Blog - Interesting maps, historical maps, BIG maps.

Games Workshop has a lot changes in the works since their stock drop the other day. Masterminis.net gives us some more insight into what they’ve announced. Source From the article: Following the recent announcement of their half-year shareholder report, we reported about the dramatic loss of 24% of Games Workshop’s market value. Sources from within [...]

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I don’t think there’s anyone here at Pi Towers who doesn’t use Steam for PC gaming, and we were all watching the various Steam Machines that got trotted out at this year’s CES with great interest. There was one $500 Steam Machine from iBuyPower which pleased and surprised us by appearing to have a Raspberry Pi jammed into the bottom of the case. (Word of God here is that they’re using it as a temporary measure while in development to control the LEDs around the edges of the box, but we like to imagine that they’re using if for other, super-seekrit stuff.)

And then, over the weekend, DaveSpice pointed me at this thread on the Raspberry Pi forums. It made me think of iBuyPower’s Steam Machine, only with all the bits that aren’t a Raspberry Pi removed.

What Dave had found was a discussion about something called Limelight, newly ported by one of irtimmer, one of our forum members. Limelight is an open-source Java client which allows you to stream games from your home PC (as long as you have an Nvidia GTX 600 or 700 Series graphics card and enough bandwidth on your home network) to the Raspberry Pi that’s attached to your television. (You do have a Raspberry Pi attached to your television, right?) And it’s not just Steam games: any content can be streamed. Right now, only mouse and keyboard are supported, but there’s work being done to support other controllers too. So now you can play PC content from the machine upstairs in the study on that great big flatscreen monolith in the corner of your living room, from the comfort of your own sofa.

In the first-impressions video below from leCauchemarXY on YouTube, the screen on the left is displaying content streamed by the Pi. You’ll notice that there is some lag: enough that I wouldn’t be totally happy playing certain FPS games against certain people (or some RTS games like Starcraft, especially if I was playing Pete S, who is terrifying in charge of Zerglings). Your network may vary.

So what you have here is (kinda sorta) a Raspberry Pi that’s acting as a $35 Steam Machine. We’re going to be experimenting with Limelight here at Pi Towers when we’re finished with January’s education conferences and workshops, seeing how it performs in Cambridge, streaming over a fast network from DaveSpice’s gaming PC back home in London. We’ll let you know how it goes.

Limelight is available to download from irtimmer’s GitHub, where you’ll also find complete instructions on installing and using it. Please tell us how you get on in the comments!

Last season, the Superdome's lights suddenly shut off -- right in the middle of the Super Bowl. No matter the reason, it was a poor decision to turn them off, and the NFL should think carefully before doing the same this year.

Last year, 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh led his team against the Ravens and their head coach, head coach John Harbaugh. It really was truly a family affair. In the third quarter, however, this family affair ran family afoul: the lights in the Superdome shut off. Right in the middle of the game.

Why did they decide to turn off the lights in the middle of the game? And why did they have to do so during one of the biggest and most-watched NFL games of the entire season? You, the reader, cannot answer these questions (except for in the comments section, which I never read), so I will fight for you and serve as your voice.

Together, we must deliver a message to the NFL: Don't do this again. Don't turn off the lights right in the middle of the Super Bowl. Here are three reasons why:

1. It provides a poor fan experience.

Whether your favorite player in the Super Bowl is Tarvaris Jackson, Russell Wilson, Derrick Coleman, Marshawn Lynch, Christine Michael, Robert Turbin, Spencer Ware, Michael Robinson, Doug Baldwin, Percy Harvin, Jermaine Kearse, Ricardo Lockett, Sidney Rice, Golden Tate, Bryan Walters, Kellen Davis, Anthony McCoy, Zach Miller, Luke Willson, Max Unger, James Carpenter, Lemuel Jeanpierre, Paul McQuistan, J.R. Sweezy, Alvin Bailey, Alvin Bailey, Michael Bowie, Breno Giacomini, Caylin Hauptmann, Russell Okung, Cliff Avril, Michael Bennett, Kenneth Boatribght, Red Bryant, Chris Clemons, Bruce Irvin, Benson Mayowa, Greg Scruggs, Jordan Hill, Tony McDaniel, Clinton McDonald, Brandon Mebane, Jesse Williams, Heath Farwell, Mike Morgan, O'Brien Schofield, Malcolm Smith, Bobby Wagner, K.J. Wright, Brandon Browner, Chandler Fenner, Jeremy Lane, Byron Maxwell, DeShawn Shead, Richard Sherman, Tharold Simon, Walter Thurmond, Kam Chancellor, Jeron Johnson, Chris Maragos, Earl Thomas, Steven Hauschka, Jon Ryan, Clint Gresham, Zac Dysert, Peyton Manning, Brock Osweiler, C.J. Anderson, Montee Ball, Ronnie Hillman, Knowshon Moreno, Andre Caldwell, Eric Decker, Trindon Holliday, Deymarius Thomas, Wes Welker, Joel Dreessen, Virgil Green, Jacob Tamme, Adlai Stevenson V, Julius Thomas, Dan Koppen, Manny Ramirez, Steve Vallos, Zane Beadles, Chris Kuper, Louis Vasquez, Ryan Clady, Chris Clark, Orlando Franklin, Winston Justice, Vinston Painter, Robert Ayers, Malik Jackson, Shaun Phillips, Quanterus Smith, Derek Wolf, Sione Fua, Terrance Knighton, Mitch Unrein, Kevin Vickerson, Sylvester Williams, Jeremy Mincey, Stewart Bradley, Nate Irving, Steven Johnson, Paris Lenon, Brandon Marshall, Lerentee McCray, Von Miller, Danny Trevathan, Wesley Woodyard, Champ Bailey, Tony Carter, Marquice Cole, Chris Harris, Quentin Jammer, Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie, Kayvon Webster, Mike Adams, Omar Bolden, David Bruton, Quinton Carter, Michael Huff, Duke Ihenacho, Rahim Moore, Matt Prater, Britton Colquitt, or Aaron Brewer, if they decide to turn off the lights in the middle of the Super Bowl again, it won't matter. You will not even be able to see your favorite player.

If you really are fine with a Super Bowl without lights, well, be my guest. Don't even bother to tune in. Just watch this three-hour GIF.

I hope you had fun. Speaking only for myself, I'd rather catch all the action, rather than go through the chore of actually reading about it later. It's monotonous enough for me to have to read the stuff I write as I'm writing it; I'm certainly not going to sit through someone else's words. Lots of folks spend all day going, "hmm, well I think, hmmmmmmmm," while drumming their fingers, and they have the good sense not to drum them on a keyboard and waste everyone else's time.

Keep in mind that Americans aren't the only folks who will be tuning in. The Super Bowl has become a truly international affair. In fact, if you add up all the viewers from America and the rest of the world combined, as many as one million people will be watching. An unlit Super Bowl would cast the most unflattering light upon our sport and our country -- figuratively -- because there would be no light at all.

2. Turning off the lights won't save very much money.

According to the blog Energy Electricity, the electric bill for Super Bowl XLV -- which was held in Dallas -- probably totaled about $7,500. Just for good measure, let's be generous and suppose that this year's Super Bowl will generate a $10,000 bill from the power company.

That is nothing. That is a drop in the bucket.

The Big Game is Big Business for the NFL and advertisers alike. I feel very strongly that this is true, and have for quite some time. Considering the revenue generated by advertising, merchandising, and ticket sales, the NFL could be looking at a pay day as large as $1 million.

It's well-documented that humans have difficulty conceptualizing numbers that large, so think of it a different way: the revenue in the above chart is exactly 100 times greater than the power bill.

I understand that we live in a capitalist society, and that the NFL, like any other corporation, is ultimately in pursuit of money. But last year, their decision to shut off the lights didn't save them any money at all in the long run. And those who fail to learn from the past deserve neither liberty nor safety. (Benjamin Franklin.)

3. Folks could get hurt.

There are only two situations in which darkness is appropriate: sleeping, and having sex with your friends. I can't imagine attempting to play a sport as dependent upon vision as football. Just ask Jim "Eyes" Brown and Joe "Seeing Things" Montana what their careers would have been like had their respective fields of play lacked proper lighting. Those weren't their nicknames; I was simply having a laugh.

So NFL, if you want to stay in the dark, that's your prerogative.

But remember, fans: if they do decide to turn off the lights in the middle of the Super Bowl again, they cannot take away our terrific and fun videos. Here is one, though there are probably dozens.

ARTICLE WRITTEN
BY JON

Miami Ad School graduates Mimi Chan and Utsavi Jhaveri have started #NoShittyPhotos, a movement that aims to stamp out bad tourist photos of well-known landmarks. The duo visited the “most popular touristy” spots in New York City and San Francisco and spray painted the sidewalk at the best spot to stand and take photos.

video and image via Mimi Chan

via Fast Company Co.Create

To celebrate David Lynch’s birthday, here's your guide to the real-life Twin Peaks, Lynch's groundbreaking, mind-bending, life-altering cult hit. If you find yourself lost in a trans-dimensional vortex in the Pacific Northwest, don't miss these iconic Twin Peaks filming locations.

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Mashable has created a map showing what each state wants according to Google Autocomplete. New York apparently wants “your guns,” California wants “to serve a warning with fries,” and a whole lot of states want to secede. The map was inspired by another Google-generated map created by Tumblr user Gaysquib.

image via Mashable

It all started innocently enough. Hasbro, who owns the Transformers license, held a fan-build bot poll in 2013 in anticipation of Transformer’s 30th anniversary in 2014. The final chosen bot got a 4 book comic run and its own toy, all chosen by the fans for the fans. Thus was Windblade born, but with just one problem… Windblade is a female bot.

The Wellcome Library has released over 100,000 historical medical, science, and art images, and they are gorgeous, strange, and a little macabre.

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