firehose

Screenshot by Gyazo

Freshman Rep. Trey Radel has been charged with possession of a controlled substance, according to documents from D.C. Superior Court.

OneMinuteGalactica has created “The Avengers trailer: Derp edition,” a recreation of The Avengers movie trailer made for Slacktory using footage from the film’s blooper reel. Previously, we wrote about OneMinuteGalactica’s “Star Wars trailer: Derp edition.”

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

Seven-and-a-half scores ago today, Abraham Lincoln made the world's first and only reference to "scores" as a unit of time in his delivery of the Gettysburg Address. To mark the occasion, we're taking a look back at how today's media would have covered Lincoln had it been around in olden times.

We knew it was coming and yesterday it officially arrived: Viber 4.0 is out on the desktop and it officially supports Linux...

George Zimmerman, who was acquitted in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, was arrested on a felony charge of assault after his girlfriend said he broke a glass table, pointed a shotgun at her face, and then locked her out of the house they share.

For the next few weeks it will be holiday season, and lots of us will be visiting with family. There will be good times, but a lot of us will have awkward moments with families who distrust or reject science. How do you deal with it when that happens?

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Tonight, the U.S. Air Force will catapult 29 satellites into Earth orbit from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Weather permitting, the record-setting launch of the ORS-3 mission will be visible from much of America's Eastern Seaboard. The 105-minute launch window will open at 7:30 p.m. ET.

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Seahack is a new online directory of participatory ocean exploration projects. The projects range from do-it-yourself science (OpenROV, an underwater robot) to crowdsourced data analysis (WhaleFM, a project analyzing the vocalizations of orcas and pilot whales). Seahack was developed by Ariel Waldman and Lisa Ballard. It is a follow-up to Spacehack, a similar directory for space research projects. We covered Spacehack back in 2008.

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

Actor-turned-director Keanu Reeves admits he would like to have reprised his film role as DC Comics' occult detective.

OVERLAND PARK, KS—Having reportedly developed an increased sense of satisfaction with her body image, career, relationship status, and overall identity in recent months, area woman Katie Baransky came remarkably close to forming a well-adjusted, pos...

APOPKA, FL—After his daughter was reportedly threatened, held at gunpoint, and shoved out of her home by her live-in boyfriend yesterday, the father of area woman Samantha Scheibe told reporters this is the first time he’s hearing anything abo...

CRESTON, IA—Apparently not caring about the 10-year-old’s health or safety at all, local parents Laura and David Turner heedlessly remembered again to drop off their son Jacob at football practice, sources confirmed Tuesday.

The words and phrases used in Lincoln's speech weighted by the frequency with which they appeared.

You know butt pose: It's when female characters on movie posters are posed juuuuust so, enabling the audience a view of both her chest and her derriere, while any male characters get to face the camera and be all action-y. Here are some Avengers-y examples (scroll down). And a more recent one from Divergent. Here's another. And another. And another. And another. Tauriel has no truck with that nonsense. Now strike a pose, Legolas! (via: SuperHeroHype) Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?

You can't parse [X]HTML with regex. Because HTML can't be parsed by regex. Regex is not a tool that can be used to correctly parse HTML. As I have answered in HTML-and-regex questions here so many times before, the use of regex will not allow you to consume HTML. Regular expressions are a tool that is insufficiently sophisticated to understand the constructs employed by HTML. HTML is not a regular language and hence cannot be parsed by regular expressions. Regex queries are not equipped to break down HTML into its meaningful parts. so many times but it is not getting to me. Even enhanced irregular regular expressions as used by Perl are not up to the task of parsing HTML. You will never make me crack. HTML is a language of sufficient complexity that it cannot be parsed by regular expressions. Even Jon Skeet cannot parse HTML using regular expressions. Every time you attempt to parse HTML with regular expressions, the unholy child weeps the blood of virgins, and Russian hackers pwn your webapp. Parsing HTML with regex summons tainted souls into the realm of the living. HTML and regex go together like love, marriage, and ritual infanticide. The cannot hold it is too late. The force of regex and HTML together in the same conceptual space will destroy your mind like so much watery putty. If you parse HTML with regex you are giving in to Them and their blasphemous ways which doom us all to inhuman toil for the One whose Name cannot be expressed in the Basic Multilingual Plane, he comes. HTML-plus-regexp will liquify the n​erves of the sentient whilst you observe, your psyche withering in the onslaught of horror. Rege̿̔̉x-based HTML parsers are the cancer that is killing StackOverflow it is too late it is too late we cannot be saved the trangession of a chi͡ld ensures regex will consume all living tissue (except for HTML which it cannot, as previously prophesied)

Forget Twitter, Royal Mail or Chrysler. The most significant IPO of 2013, at least for those working in service industries, is arguably a much smaller one that took place in Australia on Nov. 15. Even though the company raised just $15 million on the Australian Stock Exchange, it would be hard to name a more direct play on the globalization of high-skilled labor.

Sydney-based Freelancer.com taps into the “cloud labor” revolution—the cloud-accelerated outsourcing boom that gives companies access to higher-end workers virtually from around the world. Proponents have praised the trend for helping resolve to labor shortages in the technology sector (whether these shortages exist is debatable); detractors say it’s driving down wages and threatening living standards in the developed world. 

Freelancer—which has lower revenues than US competitors like Elance and oDesk but more users (over nine million of them)—makes its money from advertising, memberships and commissions both from the small businesses and startups (mainly in the developed world) that post work on its site, and from the workers (generally in emerging markets) who take the jobs. Its revenue has nearly quadrupled over the past three years to an expected $A18.4 million ($17.3  million) this year.

Unlike companies like TaskRabbit, a much-hyped temp work site in the US, most of the work on Freelancer is relatively high-skill, including website design, software development, mobile applications, computing, writing, accounting and legal. India, where just 11% of the population has access to the internet, already provides the site with its biggest source of traffic (22%), according to web traffic measurement company Alexa.com.

Penetrating cheaper labor markets like India’s pays off for Freelancer’s business customers. According to the company’s IPO prospectus, the average value of a project on the site is less than $200. A crude search for projects with an average value of $200 lasting a week or less and with an average hourly rate of between $0 and $4 returned more than 2,000 entries.

But there may also be a market for Freelancer in developed countries like the US, where cheaper freelance work (without the usual salaried benefits) abounds amid a sluggish full-time job market. Already, the US hosts the biggest share of the corporate and freelance customers for rival Elance.

Sony has hired management consulting firm Bain & Company to identify $100 million in cuts, Bloomberg reported. The cuts would reportedly include job losses, though how the cuts to the company's costs would divide out among its entertainment divisions is unknown.

The report follows a second quarter loss reported by Sony of ¥19.3 billion ($197 million). As of its late October financial report, the company said it expects to ship 15 million PS3 and PS4 systems combined, with SCEA boss Jack Tretton recently projecting three million PS4 consoles sold by year's end. Sony did manage to sell one million PS4 units in the system's first 24 hours on shelves; Whether that factors in to the reported job losses remains to be seen.

Report: Sony seeking $100 million in cuts, includes job losses originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 19 Nov 2013 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Upending the fairy-tale formula, directors Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee craft Disney's best animated film in years with the surprising, beautiful "Frozen."

If you're an OPB/NPR type, you are probably already familiar with Destination DIY, the radio show/podcast that covers all sorts of different stories about people's adventures in making things. The show, hosted by Julie Sabatier, is trying to up their game in the coming year, contributing shorter but more consistent monthly audio content along with supplementary info on a new website. "While Destination DIY airs on stations around the country, we are an independent show and not affiliated with any radio station. Our funding comes primarily from our listeners": so reads the—you guessed it—indiegogo page where they are raising money to put their plan into action. They have 16 days to reach their $20,000 goal, with so far just over $5,600 raised. If you're a fan and want to see them take this next evolutionary step, your donations could get you everything from a t-shirt to a (real) tattoo. If you watch their campaign video, make sure to stick with it until the very end, which is my favorite part (involves the second appearance of a cat in a top hat):

In related news, tomorrow is the next Makin’ It with Destination DIY project night/listening party (7-9 pm at ADX), where all are invited to take a break from crafting alone in your basement in favor of a group setting with free pizza, beer, advice, and a DJ. Sabatier is also a storyteller at Friday's Back Fence PDX (topic: "Recipe for Disaster"), so no complaining about a lack of opportunities to connect with Destination DIY this week, mmmkay?

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In 2012, artist Scott Campbell created The Great Showdowns, his first art book in a series filled with drawings of epic clashes between movie characters. Scott has recently released the second art book of his series, Great Showdowns: The Return. Both of his stylized art books are available to purchase online from Titan Books and Amazon (The Great Showdowns and Great Showdowns: The Return). You can view more of Scott’s ongoing movie character drawings on his GREAT SHOWDOWNS blog.

Han vs the green fellow. Chief Brody vs the very large shark. John McClane vs broken glass, and many, many more… Scott Campbell’s acclaimed ‘Great Showdowns’ series, showing strangely good-natured confrontations between his favorite movie characters, finally gets the book collection fans have been demanding!

Whether it’s Ripley vs the Alien Queen or Spinal Tap vs an undersized model of Stonehenge, these memorable moments of melee deserve to be celebrated. Behold, The Great Showdowns.

“Hey, you guys!” – The Goonies (1985)

“EE-va?” – WALL-E (2008)

“Let us not stand on ceremony, Mr. Wayne.” – The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

“Wait a minute. Luigi, dogs can’t talk!” – Lady and the Tramp (1955)

images via GREAT SHOWDOWNS and Titan Books

CrazyFunnyStuff has created a compilation video of tiny puppies learning to howl. They’re so squeaky and cute it almost hurts.

via Tastefully Offensive

Googlyify is a tool that allows you to add googly eyes to animated GIFs. After entering the URL of the GIF you’d like to enhance, you can add googly eyes into each frame of the GIF.

GIFs via Googlyify

via Waxy.org Links

Oh, we're all just so over zombies. We've seen so many TV shows and movies about zombies, we think we've learned everything there is to know about them—BUT WE'RE WRONG. In the following clip from Family Feud, the question is "Name something you know about zombies"... and while your answer may have automatically been "eats brains," "shambles," "flesh decomposes," your knowledge is only skin deep compared to this contestant, who is CLEARLY America's #1 and foremost authority on everything "zombie." WATCH.

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SOMEONE STILL LOVES YOU BORIS YELTSIN, ARMY NAVY
(Doug Fir, 830 E Burnside) Read our article on Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin.

BILL CALLAHAN, MICK TURNER
(Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie) Bill Callahan, who recorded 13 LPs under the moniker Smog before reverting to his own name, could very well be the most aberrant singer/songwriter to emerge from the '90s, a decade already characterized by unusual, exceptional indie folkies. He's also an extremely polarizing entity—Callahan's monotonous, practically tuneless drawl (he makes Mark Kozelek sound like Frankie Valli) is an extremely inaccessible affect, one that unfortunately prevents some listeners from cutting to the deeply emotional, melancholy fiber of Callahan's songs. His latest, Dream River, is as consistently evocative and elegant as his very best. MORGAN TROPER Also see My, What a Busy Week!

STEVE AOKI, BORGORE, WAKA FLOCKA FLAME, KEYS N KRATES, KRYOMAN
(Roseland, 8 NW 6th) Before Electric Daisy Festival became a tween stomping ground, and before EDM became a blanket pejorative—before Skrillex, let's say—Steve Aoki built the loudest underground rave scene of the 21st century. Aoki's Dim Mak label stands as testament to music production as brand empire (perhaps not unlike the way his father, Rocky Aoki, started the Benihana restaurant chain). Aoki emerged from the LA suburbs to stand in the vanguard of globalized electronic dance music; joining his carnival of mischief at the Roseland tonight is Waka Flocka Flame, the rap game's most ebullient wordsmith. A protegé of Gucci Mane, Flocka goes hard in the paint as probably the most socially conscious lyricist among the trap-inflected new illuminati. WYATT SCHAFFNER

THOMAS DOLBY: THE INVISIBLE LIGHTHOUSE
(Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta) After writing and producing some of the most beautiful pop of the 1980s (his own The Flat Earth, Prefab Sprout's Two Wheels Good) and touring the world as an electronic-music guru, Thomas Dolby returns to the stage with an ambitious new multimedia work. Described as "part film, part concert, part transmedia event," The Invisible Lighthouse features Dolby performing a live narration and musical score in front of the titular film, which was shot and edited by Dolby, and evocatively chronicles an island lighthouse in Britain. Additional drama will be supplied by foley artist/musician/sound designer Blake Leyh. DAVID SCHMADER

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