I’m not sure if they’re referring to Atari’s Lynx or Sega’s Game Gear, but it doesn’t matter – the Game Boy buried both of those competitors despite its pea green screen. The handheld innovator talked more about the system and gameplay philosophies in this 1997 interview, conducted months before Yokoi’s passing and translated recently by Shmuplations.
Yokoi also added, “When we were designing the Gameboy hardware, we took into consideration what kind of software was going to be made for it, and I think that approach resulted in a very efficient product. Hardware design isn’t about making the most powerful thing you can.”
WASHINGTON—Noting that it had already disrupted several natural communities in Kansas and Iowa, officials from the Bureau of Consumer Protection revealed Tuesday that Bonito’s, a highly invasive strain of casual dining restaurant, had recently been spotted in parts of eastern Nebraska. “Though native to certain Mid-Atlantic states, this rapidly multiplying franchise poses a grave threat to the existing diversity of budget-friendly family dining options throughout the central United States, and if left unchecked could have a lasting, adverse impact on local fast-food chains,” said BCP spokesperson Erica Wilcox, adding that the non-native lunch and dinner establishment could be identified by its large size, bright red-and-orange brand coloring, and its distinctive Tex-Mex spin on traditional American fare. “We are working hard to contain this outbreak to the affected area around exit 451 to ensure this culinary menace does not spread any further west to vulnerable locations such as Elkhorn ...
'once Jon Stewart departs The Daily Show, Hardwick will have the longest tenure of any of the network’s current late-night hosts. (If this were an episode of his show, he would now appear from nowhere and shout “POINTS” at you.)'
Comedy Central has renewed @midnight for a third season, guaranteeing another year of Chris Hardwick yelling and staring directly at the camera. Hardwick’s social media game show, which brings in a new lineup of comedians every episode, debuted on Comedy Central in the fall of 2013; once Jon Stewart departs The Daily Show, Hardwick will have the longest tenure of any of the network’s current late-night hosts. (If this were an episode of his show, he would now appear from nowhere and shout “POINTS” at you.)
“Creating a new franchise in late night is no small feat, and we couldn’t be more proud of Chris and the entire team for what they’ve accomplished,” Kent Alterman, Comedy Central’s president of content development and original programming, says. In a statement, the network also noted that @midnight reaches the youngest and most male audience of any late night ...
'Wisconsin state legislators are preparing to vote on a budget, and a controversial package of modifications has already passed the finance committee and will soon be up for a vote by the legislature. This new package of provisions has already drawn criticism for its inclusion of measures that would decimate the state’s open records laws, protect state politicians from media scrutiny, and gut the Wisconsin definition of “living wage.” But one additional measure is worth gaping at, perhaps above all others: section 56, which would take away workers’ right to a weekend—even a one day weekend.
56. One Day of Rest in Seven. Include the provisions of 2015 AB 118 to permit an employee to state in writing that he or she voluntarily chooses to work without one day of rest in seven. Specify the provision first apply to union contracts on the day the collective bargaining agreement expires, or is extended, modified, or renewed, whichever comes first. [Currently every factory or mercantile employer must allow each employee 24 hours of rest in every consecutive seven days, except for certain emergency circumstances. The requirement does not apply to janitors, security staff, bakeries, restaurants, hotels and certain dairy or agricultural plants]
We reached out to the Wisconsin AFL-CIO to see how the labor community felt about this potential new opportunity for workers to voluntarily work seven days a week, forever. They sent us this comment from Secretary-Treasurer Stephanie Bloomingdale: “In a blatant and shocking blow to the democratic process, Republicans took away the weekend in a late-night budget maneuver. All workers should have the right to a day of rest. It is a basic American ideal... The Wisconsin AFL-CIO calls for this budget item to be immediately removed.”'
So far I’ve marked up the 1985 and 1986 strips, or about 14 months total. That adds up to about 1300 separate lines for Calvin (I peeked, it’s 1,268 lines containing 10,832 words total), a few hundred for Hobbes, 100+ each for Calvin’s mom and dad, and on the order of dozens for the other recurring characters.
This isn’t Millard first foray into weird Markov chain-based projects–Garkov is a similar project from several years ago that uses Garfield as a base.
Have your toothbrush ready to go every morning with toothpaste in place using Arduino. via instructables
Life is accelerating toward a breakneck pace, and time is more valuable than ever. If you’re like me and would like to squeeze every extra second out of every day, why not build a machine, a marvelous, magical machine, to automate a piece of it? The Morning Routine Machine can do just that! At the push of (several) buttons, the MRM can automatically load the perfect dollop of toothpaste onto your preferred toothbrush at a set time. Impossible you say? Nay! Follow along and I’ll show you how I built it!
"US District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, who oversaw the trial, has simply never entered a final judgment. He has also given no indication of when he might issue such a judgment, which Newegg needs in order to file an appeal."
Online retailer Newegg has developed a reputation for taking on so-called "patent trolls," even when that means going through lengthy litigation and unpredictable jury trials.
The company's last patent trial concluded in November 2013, when Newegg faced off against a patent troll called TQP Development. TQP used US Patent No. 5,412,730 to make a vast claim to basic Internet encryption technologies, saying that anyone using the common combination of SSL and the RC5 encryption algorithm was infringing. By the time of the trial with Newegg, TQP had sued more than 120 companies and earned $45 million in settlement payments.
At trial, a jury ordered Newegg to pay $2.3 million to TQP. But the verdict against Newegg didn't end the case—and not because it's stuck in a grinding appeals process. In fact, the case never even advanced to an appeal at all. US District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, who oversaw the trial, has simply never entered a final judgment. He has also given no indication of when he might issue such a judgment, which Newegg needs in order to file an appeal.
A report by the folks over at Unseen64 has uncovered a string of failures at Nintendo Software Technology—a US-based studio responsible for games like Metroid Prime Hunters and Mario vs. Donkey Kong—with ex-developers claiming that cultural differences with the Japanese management team lead to the failure of the Wii-exclusive game Project H.A.M.M.E.R.
Project H.A.M.M.E.R. was originally pitched as a "core" game for the Wii, and featured a cybernetic protagonist with a giant hammer that could be swung into enemies using the motion controls of a Wii controller. According to the report, development on the game began in secret in 2003 with a team of around 12 people. By the time it was unveiled at E3 2006, the game was supposedly already "75 percent complete."
However, following E3 2006, the game disappeared, with Nintendo saying that it had "shifted its focus," rather than confirming an outright cancellation. Ex-members of the NST studio told Unseen64 that high-level Nintendo executives were not happy with the quality of the game, a sentiment matched by the studio itself. The two parties differed on how to fix the game: Nintendo of Japan wanted to overhaul the environments, and NST wanted to overhaul the gameplay.
"man with iPhone" indistinguishable from "Florida man"
Ah, we knew this day would come, when video of this incident would surface on YouTube. (Updated July 8, 2015).
A man attending a performance of the Broadway play Hand to God decided that he needed a little more juice on his iPhone—just before the play started. So, because any outlet is fair game when your battery icon is flashing red, he climbed up onto the stage and plugged his phone into a prop wall with a prop outlet and walked away. Of course, the outlet—like the wall—was fake.
According to the New York Post, the crew had to stop the pre-show music and make an announcement to the audience that that sort of thing isn't allowed. One audience member copped to “loudly heckling the idiot” when the ushers removed the phone and asked him to take it back.
It's unclear whether the act was done on a dare or whether it was in earnest. Attendees speaking to the website Broadway Adjacent say that when the ushers gave the man his phone, the man asked, “Well, where can I charge it?”—a statement brazen and absurd enough to suggest that the man was performing his own one-man play.
'XUL and XBL are going away ... As for what will replace XUL and XBL, the jury is still out.'
Firefox is about to undergo some dramatic changes, according to Mozilla. Most notably, it sounds like future versions of Firefox will focus on firefoxesque features, such as Private Browsing Mode, and features that are unpolished or otherwise not very useful will be stripped out of the browser entirely. Furthermore, it looks like Mozilla is finally getting serious about moving Firefox away from XUL and XBL, though it isn't clear if they will be replaced with open Web technologies (HTML, CSS, JS) or native UI.
In an e-mail to the firefox-dev mailing list, Dave Camp, Firefox's director of engineering, has outlined what he calls the Three Pillars of the new Firefox: Uncompromised Quality, Best Of The Web, and Uniquely Firefox. Let's take them in order.
Uncompromised Quality will aim to strip out Firefox's half-baked ideas, or to carry them through to completion so that they're "polished, functional, and a joy to use." This program is internally dubbed "Great or Dead"—as in, if the Firefox devs can't make a feature great, it should be killed off. Camp says in the email that Electrolysis (e10s)—Firefox's massively overdue implementation of per-tab processes—is one of the first features that needs to be focused on, "to get the kind of snappy experience we need to make Firefox feel great."
"Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna. He was not prosecuted and instead was transferred to Staten Island, ultimately losing 10 vacation days."
Five Occupy Wall Street protesters who were cordoned off and pepper sprayed by a New York Police Department commander during the early stages of the movement have settled their civil rights cases this week. Video of the 2011 incident at Zuccotti Park (above) in lower Manhattan went viral, and it helped spark nationwide interest in the Occupy protests.
The officer shown in the video was Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna. He was not prosecuted and instead was transferred to Staten Island, ultimately losing 10 vacation days.
Do you have a drink-serving robotic contraption whose powers of automated intoxication must be shared with the world? Have you created a pulsing, apocalyptic juggernaut of booze and steel?
Can it go the distance? Do you think your cocktail robot has a chance at winning the title of Best Robot Bartender?
We at DNA Lounge cordially invite you to bring your cocktail robot to our fine establishment for a night of Robot Happy Hour — and to enter the second annual Cocktail Robotics Grand Challenge.
We supply the booze and you bring a robot bartender with whom you’ll wow, delight, and intoxicate attendees — and our panel of celebrity judges.
"My reaction? Come on, guys, make it cooler. Just building something huge and sticking guns on it. It's... Super American. ... I want to punch them to scrap and knock them down to do it."
Are you the sort of person who says to themselves "Self, 2015 is all well and good with 3D printers and smartphones, but it's not really the future until we get giant fighting mechs?" Well, if you are, good news! The MegaBots giant fighting mech that we saw at Maker Faire a few months ago is going to fight its Japanese rival for robot* supremacy.
MegaBots throws down the gauntlet at its Japanese rivals.
At the end of June, MegaBots challenged Suidobashi Heavy Industries to a titanic duel of the titans via YouTube (above). This past weekend, Suidobashi Heavy Industries accepted (below).
Suidobashi Heavy Industries boss Kogoro Kurata accepts MegaBots' challenge.
The MegaBots Mk II has a weight advantage going into the fight, tipping the scales at ~12,000lbs (5,400kg), and it's packing more firepower, with paintball cannons that fire 3lb (1.4kg) paintballs at high speed. By contrast Kuratas—the Japanese mech—is lighter (8,800lbs/4,000kg) and will require a more suitable load-out for the battle. It's currently equipped with BB-firing Gatling guns, which may have trouble denting the Mk II's armor.
AT&T is promising to offer cheaper Internet service to poor people if it's allowed to buy DirecTV. This is similar to a promise that helped Comcast gain government approval of its 2011 acquisition of NBCUniversal.
Qualifying residents in areas where AT&T's top speeds are below 5Mbps (that's not a typo) will be offered DSL service of "up to 1.5Mbps, where available" for $10 a month, AT&T said in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission last week. It'll be $5 a month for the first year before rising to $10 for the next three years. AT&T is proposing a four-year commitment in total.
In areas where AT&T's top speeds are higher, the company said it "will offer a broadband wireline DSL service at speeds up to 5Mbps to households in AT&T’s wireline footprint for $10 per month for the first 12 months of service (rising to $20 per month for the remainder of the term of the commitment)."
Hacking Team asked its customers to shut down operations, but according to one of the leaked files, as part of Hacking Team's "crisis procedure," it could have killed their operations remotely. The company, in fact, has "a backdoor" into every customer's software, giving it ability to suspend it or shut it down -- something that even customers aren't told about.
To make matters worse, every copy of Hacking Team's Galileo software is watermarked, according to the source, which means Hacking Team, and now everyone with access to this data dump, can find out who operates it and who they're targeting with it.
It's one thing to have dissatisfied customers. It's another to have dissatisfied customers with death squads. I don't think the company is going to survive this.
Here's the question: could he not find green paint? If you are going to go all out and shave your head/dye your beard, at least make sure you paint your head something close to the right color.
Of course, I'm making these judgments with a full head of hair and nowhere near the dedication to anything that this guy has shown here. Good work, tennis fan man.
"We will build aesthetic strategies to describe what is often thought to be indescribable by entering the realm of non-linguistic thought. To begin, we will engagingly abstract up and down three iconic cocktails then we will taste our way through the major creative linkage strategies best exemplified in others. Ultimately we will explore a system of sketches to build an Italian style amaro then finish by applying aesthetic principles to decoding the most complex of all culinary artifacts, vermouth. The workshop will be peppered with the ideas of Hans Hoffman, Wassily Kandinsky, and Leonard Koren. Connections between modern culinary and great traditions like abstract expression will be revealed and the creation of food & beverage artifacts will be seen as the new painting."
Stephen Shellenberger, writer of the Bostonapothecary blog, will be giving a 5-week class on Culinary Aestheticism this fall at the SMFA in Boston. You can find it in the fall course catalog.
I wish I could go, so you go instead.
Shellenberger sat down with himself to write this interview about the class.
So how did the class come to be?
The woman who runs the program is a restaurant regular and also an abstract painter. In the past, we had talked about painters like Wassily Kandinsky & Hans Hoffman and my art world hero, Leonard Koren. She really liked my take on art in relation to culinary, so I was invited to give a workshop.
The course is called culinary aestheticism, I remember seeing posts on those topics at the Bostonapothecary blog over the years.
Yeah, aesthetics is the realm of sensation so I'll be introducing people to language to tease apart and talk about the aesthetic details of cocktails. Rather than borrow from the world of say, wine, I'll show that it fits really well to borrow from the world of painters. A lot of the language relates to how we perceive space and neuroscience is slowly revealing that we render flavor spatially in the mind.
But its a workshop right, so that's hands on?
sMFA is an art school, but the course is 21+ and I've got permission to make drinks. I'll be making them, people will be making them, and we will certainly engage in any sensations we are talking about, especially when we start comparing drinks to paintings. The hands on highlight is on the fourth class where we all construct and blend an abstract expressionistic amaro using blending stocks I've constructed. The amaro exercise is cool. I'll also show how we can construct our final amaro from a series of simplified sketches just like many painters make sketches before they ever put paint to canvas.
You're also covering some classics?
Yeah, I'll look at Daiquiris, Martinis, and Manhattans, holding them up in a new light. What would a painter like Kandisky, so deep into abstraction, see in a Daiquiri? Were the very first mixologists like Kandisky? They weren't saturated with influences like we are now. So that is what we're going to get into.
More and more beverage programs are starting to resemble fine art to me. Immediately I think of the Aviary, the Artesian, and 69 Colbrooke Row. Does the workshop relate to that notion?
Absolutely. The workshop gives a foundation, a sort of culinary theory or as I apply it, cocktail theory, which supports and encourages the work of those bars. It may also show that when when people are learning scholarly theory, its easier to do it with cocktail in hand than without. I'd like to think those bars you mentioned and other bar tenders with strong arts backgrounds like Matthew Bax would say Yes!Yes!Yes! to the course.
You're best known for exploring food science, but in the course description you mention "beverage artifacts will be seen as the new painting", say something about that?
I've often seen the science I've used as making paint. Back in the day if you wanted a new color bad enough, you needed to know chemistry and make your own paint. In regards to the modernist cocktail scene, people like to speak of our centrifuges and rotovaps, but those tools are really just about making our own paint to give you a beautiful aesthetic experience.
The official course description is below.
New! Culinary Aestheticism Stephen Shellenberger Mondays 7:00 pm–9:00 pm Five Weeks (October 19–November 16) CRX 1027-N1 Non-Credit / Tuition: $375
This is a hands-on course about aesthetics through the lens of the culinary arts, particularly beverage. We will build aesthetic strategies to describe what is often thought to be indescribable by entering the realm of non-linguistic thought. To begin, we will engagingly abstract up and down three iconic cocktails then we will taste our way through the major creative linkage strategies best exemplified in others. Ultimately we will explore a system of sketches to build an Italian style amaro then finish by applying aesthetic principles to decoding the most complex of all culinary artifacts, vermouth. The workshop will be peppered with the ideas of Hans Hoffman, Wassily Kandinsky, and Leonard Koren. Connections between modern culinary and great traditions like abstract expression will be revealed and the creation of food & beverage artifacts will be seen as the new painting.
"The case where the wisdom-of-the-crowd effects work well is where each person brings their own observation and knowledge, however imperfect and idiosyncratic. When you don’t have that independence and everyone sees the history of other people’s opinions, you can get big biases in the outcome."
Where can you devour an elk burger smothered in melted cheese and onion rings? Which diner has the greasiest loaded potato skins?
It’s no secret that many of us turn to crowdsourced sites to gather information and weigh options. Quantcast estimates that Yelp’s traffic—combining desktop and mobile visitors—is in the realm of 5,270,925 unique monthly users. We’re trying to find the experience that gels with our specific cravings, however niche. But are we actually learning anything from this “collective intelligence?”
Turns out, we’re suckers. In a study published in Science, researchers found that reviewers are easily manipulated by “social influence bias,” a feedback loop in which positive reviews beget more positive reviews. Another study, this one by Harvard Business School professor Michael Luca, corroborated these findings, concluding that restaurant reviews are influenced by ones preceding them—sometimes bumping up Yelp-style evaluations by as much as half a star.
This mushrooming doesn’t occur with negative write-ups, though—vitriolic reviews tend to be tempered by other, more neutral or enthusiastic ratings. The Science authors write, “Whereas positive social influence accumulates, creating a tendency toward ratings bubbles, negative social influence is neutralized by crowd correction.” They call for more thoughtful analysis of the factors at play in our decision making, so that we’re not just a horde of Internet-weary sheeple:
Future research that further explores the mechanisms driving individual and aggregate ratings—especially in in vivo social environments—will be essential to our ability to interpret collective judgment accurately and to avoid social influence bias in collective intelligence.
An Italian newspaper recently pointed out how easy it is to manipulate crowdsourced rankings on TripAdvisor. (GongTo/Shutterstock.com)
The Italian newspaper Italia a Tavola recently proved how necessary that enhanced insight is. Staffers scammed the ratings system by creating a profile for a fake restaurant in Moniga del Garda then posting 10 glowing ratings (under different usernames) over the course of a month, Jezebel reported. Within weeks, La Scaletta had the highest TripAdvisor ratings in town—despite the fact that it didn’t exist.
Why were people so quick to take the reviews at face value? “Stories that come from other people [are viewed as] much more believable than information from companies, because our working assumption is that [individuals] don't have an ulterior motive,” says Sarah G. Moore, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Alberta. Additionally, given a lack of identifying information, we assume that reviewers are similar to ourselves, found a study published in the Journal of Marketing Research. This presumption of similarity makes reviews seem relevant and trustworthy to readers, Moore adds.
Moore also says that vivid storytelling draws readers in. “Individual anecdotes of delicious desserts or snails in salads are very memorable and concrete—like urban legends compared to reading the telephone book,” she says. Even if a reader suspects that a review may not be entirely honest, “we're not vigilant about that,” Moore notes. “We're caught up in the story, and trying to figure out if we too would like or hate this restaurant if we went there.”
Though TripAdvisor fired back with an assertion that it has procedures in place to detect and weed out duplicitous posts, Jezebel notes that Italian authorities slapped the site with a €500,000 fine last year for failing to implement sufficient safeguards against trolling or misleading content.
How do you avoid getting duped? Christopher Chabris, an associate psychology professor at Union College, explained to the Boston Globe:
The case where the wisdom-of-the-crowd effects work well is where each person brings their own observation and knowledge, however imperfect and idiosyncratic. When you don’t have that independence and everyone sees the history of other people’s opinions, you can get big biases in the outcome.
There are plenty of real-world ramifications of this digital ranking system, from a black market for soliciting paid positive reviews to court cases evaluating the legality of potentially defamatory—and perhaps fraudulent—reviews published under a pseudonym. Some proprietors have even accused crowdsourced review sites of burying positive evaluations and shaking down business owners to buy ads in exchange for promoting the glowing reviews, CBC News reports.
Misleading reviews aren’t as egregious as shady or coercive business practices—but try remembering that when you arrive somewhere hungry for a pizza, only to discover that the restaurant doesn’t serve up anything at all.
The Army has already discharged 80,000 troops. The next 40,000 will be harder, especially for the communities that depend on them.
The Iraq war was good for the economy of Jefferson County, N.Y. Perhaps too good.
science side of Tumblr explain why the ride home always takes less time
The ride home takes less time because you already have memories of the locations you passed on the way there. When you take in a new memory your brains “slows down” to process it and write as much information as possible. When you’ve already experienced something it doesn’t have as much to remember.
wait so is time essentially an illusion??
Yes.
yeah im sorry i dont need this right now it’s 10pm i’m procrastinating studying for a final and i just need you to stop there for a sec if that’s okay with you
What color is Pluto? If you search for the dwarf planet on Google, the overwhelming majority of images suggest that it's a sort of steely blue or gray color. But now, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is closing in on it, and new, non-crappy images are revealing something completely different. It's red.
"If you enjoyed the USWNT's World Cup-winning efforts, then you need to watch them play friendlies, and should also do all you can to support the NWSL. This team is as good as it is because the United States has a strong women's league, and that league can get stronger with your help and support."
Just because the World Cup is over doesn't mean you have to stop watching these amazing women.
The last month has seen some thrilling football played during the Women's World Cup, and the level of support being shown for the triumphant, title-winning United States women's national team is at an all-time high. Just because the final is over, though, doesn't mean that you can't watch some of the best female athletes around do their thing, because this is just the beginning.
With Olympic qualifying coming up quickly for the women's national teams -- the USWNT will be playing their qualifiers between January 21-31 in 2016 -- the U.S. will be playing plenty of friendlies between now and then to prepare. They've already announced two friendly dates against Costa Rica.
The first will be on the August 16 at 1:30 ET and will be played at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh. The second comes three days later at Finley Stadium in Chattanooga, Tenn. at 6:30. Both matches will be televised -- the first on Fox Sports 1, and the second on ESPN2. Expect announcements of more games to come shortly.
Of course, there's also club play, and every single member of the USWNT play in the National Women's Soccer League in the U.S. The relatively young league is stocked with incredible talent from around the world, and each team has U.S. national team stars doing amazing things.
Want to watch Hope Solo, Megan Rapinoe and potentially Abby Wambach play? Tune in to the Seattle Reign. Are Tobin Heath and Alex Morgan your favorites? You're in luck, because both play for the Portland Thorns.
If you want to watch the elite U.S. defense do their thing, you'll have to divide your time between four teams, but it'll be well worth the effort. Julie Johnston plies her trade with the Chicago Red Stars, Becky Sauerbrunn with FC Kansas City, Ali Krieger with the Washington Spirit and Meghan Klingenberg with the Houston Dash.
What about the biggest hero of the tournament? Golden Ball winner Carli Lloyd scored the crucial hat trick in the first 16 minutes of the final against Japan, and she and Morgan Brian help Klingenberg turn the Dash into a major contender in the NWSL.
If you enjoyed the USWNT's World Cup-winning efforts, then you need to watch them play friendlies, and should also do all you can to support the NWSL. This team is as good as it is because the United States has a strong women's league, and that league can get stronger with your help and support.
Go cheer for these women at the club level, and in four years you might be cheering for them in the World Cup final once more.
Super Opinionated.
