firehose

hawkinspeter writes "The Register is hosting an exclusive that Bruce Schneier will be leaving his position at BT as security futurologist. From the article: 'News of the parting of the ways reached El Reg via a leaked internal email. Our source suggested that Schneier was shown the door because of his recent comments about the NSA and GCHQ's mass surveillance activities.'"

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...is pure genius.

I hope the final print edition of the New York Times—which this longtime subscriber is not looking forward to—is just as good. Because why not go out in a blaze of completely delusional, gleefully counter-factual, giddily revisionist media history? Why the fuck not?

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It’s rare to come across a piece of art that really moves me. This odyssey of distortion does just that.

Unnerving, strangely touching and certainly one of the most spellbinding and hallucinatory 5 minutes of music video your ever likely to see. This is but a taster of Luke Wyatt’s ‘Sad Stonewash’ (a Video Mulch) a 40-minute sojourn into the abyss of VHS.

“Video Mulch” is Wyatt’s trademark form of extreme analogue Video Processing, created using a combo of outdated analogue and digital tools.

Wyatt describes the process as thus:

“I select a video to appropriate based on its mood resonance or compositional zing. My VCR gets beat up with a size 13 docksider until it makes errors and the VHS tape spits upon itself. While digitizing the video I induce the computer to make mistakes by not telling it the truth about the data it is ingesting. I isolate the mistakes I like best, outline them, and send them back to my VCR, resuming the docksider attack, repeating this process until things attain an anti-sheen, losing any crisp edge as if they had always belonged together. I then arrange the images in an order that must appear equally inevitable.”

Not only did Wyatt forge this astonishing visual experience he also scored the haunting, melancholic soundtrack. Refreshingly far-out and very raw I highly recommend checking out his Torn Hawk project, a link to a recent live set.

Though they should, of course, be seen in motion here’s a few frames to demonstrate just how rich this garbled alien tapestry is.

For more on Luke Wyatt visit either his website: lukewyatt.net or his youtube channel youtube.com/user/lukeriot.

To purchase a copy of the recently released Sad Stonewash DVD visit earcave.mybisi.com/product/valcrond002

Amazon recently released its best-selling books of 2013, and surprisingly, the top book was a self-help guide published by the pollsters at Gallup.

The retail giant has published its best-sellers from every year since 1995, and looking at each year’s top book is an interesting trip through pop culture history. Starting with the third Harry Potter book in 1998, every single installment of the series garnered the top spot the year it was published. If you go all the way back to 1995 and 1996, the best-selling books are about how to build websites, perhaps more a reflection of the people ordering books online at the time than their broader popularity.

2013

StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath (Published in 2007)

2012

Fifty Shades of Grey: Book One of the Fifty Shades Trilogy by E L James (2012)

2011

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (2011)

2010

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson (2010)

2009

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown (2009)

2008

A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle (2008)

2007

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling (2007)

2006

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… And Others Don’t by Jim Collins (2001)

2005

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling (2005)

2004

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (2003)

2003

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling (2003)

2002

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t by Jim Collins (2001)

2001

Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson (1998)

2000

Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire by J. K. Rowling (2000)

1999

Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling (1999)

1998

A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe (1998)

1997

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier (1997)

1996

Creating Killer Web Sites: The Art of Third-Generation Site Design by David Siegel (1996)

1995

How to Set Up and Maintain a World Wide Web Site by Lincoln D. Stein (1995)

This Friday President Obama nominated Vice Admiral Michelle Howard for her fourth star, meaning that, pending Senate approval, she will become the first female full admiral in US Navy history.

What exactly happened when the Cowboys quarterback threw the first of two fourth-quarter interceptions that led to a Packers win?

A fourth-quarter Tony Romo interception brings out the hoots and howls from all quarters of the internet. The "choker" narrative comes out, fans dig in their heels and the hot takes fly. Sorting out what actually happened is a little harder to do.

Green Bay pulled ahead after Sam Shields picked off Romo with 2:58 left in the game's final frame. It was second-and-six. Dallas was sitting on a 36-31 lead. So what happened? Why was Romo passing the ball instead of handing it off to the running back?

Jason Garrett offered up an explanation after the game.

In presser, Jason Garrett throws Tony Romo under the bus: "It was a run call that he threw the ball on." #Cowboyscalamity

— Sean Jensen (@seankjensen) December 16, 2013

Garrett on Romo's first INT: "I think he'll be the first one to tell you he probably should have run the ball in that situation."

— gregg rosenthal (@greggrosenthal) December 16, 2013

It's unusual to hear a head coach offer such a candid assessment of what should have happened on the play. But it fits with what went down. Dallas had called a packaged play on that. Romo made the decision on the fly to throw the ball instead of giving it to his running back.

Let's stop it there for a moment. A packaged play isn't the same as calling a list of audibles at the line. Instead, it's a way of giving a quarterback several options of what to do on the fly, based on what a defense is giving them. What's made it so much more exciting in today's game, as Chris Brown explains, is that it includes both running and passing options for an offense.

Romo INT actually a packaged play: Was a called running play but Romo decided to throw, but then didn't pull trigger on slant. Watch OL

— Smart Football (@smartfootball) December 16, 2013

Here's that play:

The Cowboys have a running back lined up in the backfield, directly behind him. The offensive line blocks for a runner.

I'll let Brown explain the next part:

In other words was Romo's option to hand off or try to throw slant backside. He chose slant but didn't throw it, then scramble and bad ball

— Smart Football (@smartfootball) December 16, 2013

So instead of taking one of the two options on that play, options that are packaged into it, he tries to move the ball himself and make a throw on the run. Take another look at it from a wider angle:

That's Clay Matthews who comes it to hit Romo. The freelancing quarterback swirls around to make the throw, but his man his covered. Green Bay makes the pick.

The other offensive players on the field don't change what they're doing. They don't have to. That's the beauty of the packaged play, and that's where Romo got into trouble.

At that point, Romo's best bet was to to hang onto the ball and run or throw it away. It was only second-and-six. But he channeled his inner gunslinger instead.

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• Breaking Madden: Tony Gonzalez, cranky old man of destruction

An anonymous reader writes "Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto could be a group from Europe which has a strong footing in the financial sector. From the article: 'Josh Zerlan, the Chief Operating Officer of Butterfly Labs and a person familiar with the Bitcoin network, has said it is highly likely that Nakamoto could be a group of people working the financial sector. Speaking to IBTimes UK on the sidelines of a Global Bitcoin Conference in Bangalore, India, Zerlan said: "One of the prevailing theories, I think has credibility, is that it was some group of people from financial sector that created this. They released it and stepped back and let it go. So, Satoshi Nakamoto is a group of people, I think, is a reasonable possibility."'"

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St. Bruno’s Cure - Bon Appétit:

• 

  43

  Shares
• 1 ounce gin
• 1 ounce yellow Chartreuse liqueur
• 2 dashes Angostura bitters
• 4 ounces apple cider
• 1 ounce fresh lemon juice
• ½ ounce honey
• 6 black peppercorns
• 1 apple slice

tastefullyoffensive:

[philipparice]

heyfunniest:

omfg

Over the weekend, the American donut chain Krispy Kreme opened its first store in Delhi, selling its traditional offerings of coffee and glazed donuts. There’s one big difference though: the sticky, doughy “Original Glazed” donuts have been revamped with an eggless recipe in an effort to cater to India’s many vegetarian diners.

Krispy Kreme isn’t the first to customize their fare for Indian palettes—a sign of how important the Indian market has become to international fast food companies. McDonald’s doesn’t sell beef or pork at its restaurants in India, and also offers eggless mayonnaise. Pizza Hut offers plenty of veggie offerings on its pizza.

Krispy Kreme’s store in Delhi is its first venture in northern India, under a partnership with Bedrock Food Company, which also operates the US sandwich chain Subway there. Under another franchise deal, Krispy Kreme opened its donut shops in Bangalore earlier this year.

India’s fast food market, as we’ve noted before, is expected to reach 70 billion rupees ($1.1 billion), or double its current size, over the next three years. Because most international chains are already competing in China’s fast-food scene and developed markets are fairly saturated, India’s may be the last frontier for greasy burgers and donuts.

There may be room for growth especially when it comes to coffee and donuts in India. Coffee consumption in India is an average of about 100 grams per person a year (paywall), compared with 4.5 kilograms among Americans. Other pastry and coffee operations like Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts have started expanding in the country last year. McDonald’s plans to open 150 of its coffee outfits, McCafes, in the country over the next three to five years. The only problem is that it will be hard to make the pastries a go-to staple in people’s fast-food diets. “Doughnuts remain a once-in-a-while category in India,” Harminder Sahni of retail consultancy Wazir Advisors told India’s Economic Times.

maid-en-china:

The first part of the cloud tutorial is finally here :D You can view the full version on my dA. Part 2 will be posted after I get back from SacAnime.

Here’s the free download to the Photoshop brushes.

I hope this will be helpful to you guys! Have fun painting!

 

_____________

-Full view of sample cloud paintings

-Gif of the tutorial work progress (best viewd in Firefox)

jamietheignorantamerican:

WHY DOES NO ONE TALK ABOUT THE QUETZALCOATLUS?!

I MEAN, JESUS F. CHRIST.

PTERODACTYLS AIN’T SHIT NEXT TO THESE MOTHER FUCKERS. QUETZALCOATLUS FUCKING ATE BABY DINOSAURS FOR BRUNCH.

LITTLE-FOOT, NOOOO!!!

JUST IMAGINE SOMETHING AS TALL AS A MOTHER FUCKING GIRAFFE

SOARING THROUGH THE SKIES AT 80 MILES PER HOUR, AND THEN SWOOPING DOWN AND FUCKING EATING YOUR FACE OFF. 

FUCKING QUETZALCOATLUS

This week, it came out that Saturday Night Live has been quietly auditioning black female comedians recently in response to the criticisms about the lack of diversity in the new cast. Lorne Michaels confirmed that the show is indeed planning on hiring at least one new castmember in January.

Minecraft will launch on PS3 on December 17 (tomorrow) in North America, a PlayStation Blog post revealed. The developer in charge of the port, 4J Studios, announced in November that the PS3 version of the game would arrive ahead of next-gen ...

Amazon released its best-selling books of 2013, and the number one spot did not go to Dan Brown or Sheryl Sandberg or God. No, the book that sold more copies than any other on Amazon this year was written by a man named Tom Rath, a senior scientist at Gallup, the US consultancy known for its public opinion polling.

The book, StrengthsFinder 2.0, is intended to help people identify things they are good at. It’s based primarily around a questionnaire developed by Gallup to pinpoint the strengths of whomever fills it out. But the book also offers some tips for how to put those strengths to use, particularly in the workplace.

StrengthsFinder 2.0 has been among Amazons top 10 best-selling books since it was released in 2007, but this is the first year that it has topped the list.

While StrengthsFinder 2.0 is probably not the most gripping 183 pages of 2013, its success makes a lot of sense. It’s a book that is both about self-assessment and career improvement—a mash-up of things like the Myers-Briggs personality test and Steven Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. On top of that inherent appeal, the Gallup name lends it an air of authority.

How to Live Without Irony http://ift.tt/SC39ja #pocket

MarketWatch

Sprint Working on a Bid for T-Mobile US Wall Street Journal Sprint Corp. is working toward a possible bid for rival T-Mobile US Inc., people familiar with the matter said, setting the stage for a giant telecom merger that if permitted by regulators would leave the U.S. wireless market dominated by three big companies. T-Mobile jumps on report Sprint preparing takeoverUSA TODAY 6 Reasons Sprint Shouldn't Buy T-MobilePC Magazine Sprint mulling bid for T-Mobile: reportReuters ReadWrite -TmoNews -Mashable all 62 news articles »

We find this repeatedly, in comics, sadly. I am talking about the big two here.

But the stuff that people have the biggest fan outcry for, when the companies actually publish it, often receives very little consumer support.

I’m just curious here, not judging anyone and I’m not thinking of any particular book.

But if you ask for more diverse casts, or more female leads, or more lgbtq characters, or more poc characters, or more ‘fun’ and less ‘dark’ books, or more books with obscure characters…I ask you to look at your pull lists.

Do you actually BUY those books when they do come out?

If so, which ones?

If not, why not?

caterpillarsend:

Commission for me by Ravenno. Inspired by this post.

Misty Knight, Vixen, Virtue, Skyboarder, Rocket, and Storm.

Oh, my god, this is adorable and awesome.

I want this book so bad. 

ALL CAPS

Watchmen Photo Manips [tumblr]