firehose

Despite signing Derek Jeter to a new one-year deal, the New York Yankees are interested in soon-to-be free agent shortstop Stephen Drew, reports the Long Island Newsday.

Jeter will assuredly remain the starting shortstop with a $12 million contract, but t's hard to fault the Yankees for wanting more talented depth on their bench going into next season. The team was decimated by injuries throughout the 2013 season, and Jeter himself played just 17 games. He first missed action due to offseason surgery on his ankle, had repeated setbacks throughout the year, and will turn 40 next season.

In addition to Jeter, the Yankees were also missing presumed starters Mark Teixeira, Alex Rodriguez, and Curtis Granderson for most of the year, and backup first baseman and third baseman Kevin Youkilis played in just 28 games due to injury.

Drew, 30, played his most games since 2010 this year. Over 124 appearances for the Red Sox, Drew hit .253/.333/.443 with 13 home runs and solid defense at shortstop. He made $9.5 million on a one-year deal, but struggled throughout the playoffs. With Xander Bogaerts ready to take over at shortstop, he is unlikely to return to Boston.

The Yankees are also interested in re-signing defensive whiz Brendan Ryan, who was acquired from the Mariners late in 2013.

More from SB Nation MLB:

• World Series: Boston Strong | Getting used to Red Sox success

• Neyer: Let’s figure out the team of the century

• Ellsbury likely leaving Red Sox | 2013-14 free agent tracker

• How to fix the: Twins | Marlins | Astros

• Death of a Ballplayer: Wrongly convicted prospect spends 27 years in prison

Look out! There’s an app barreling toward your skull, and it’s going as fast as a car.

Sunspot AR 1875 erupted with an X.1-class flare on October 28th, 2013. Geomagnetic storms are expected to reach Earth by Oct. 30th. This is the third solar X-flare in 4 days.

Credit: NASA / SDO / Mash Mix: SPACE.com

Greg Clarke

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This is my review of a bag you probably will not buy, The Saddleback Classic Briefcase.¹ It's leather and metal, weighs 8 lbs and is $600.

The Saddleback Leather Company makes rugged and elegant bags, suitcases, and accessories that look as if they came right out of an Indiana Jones fan-fic. Their products incorporate high quality, thick leather and real steel rivets. It's something that could easily be handed down to the next generation of finicky nerds.

I opted for the "Large" bag since that's the smallest that will accommodate a 15" laptop. The small would be nice for a small laptop, but after using the large, I'm convinced it's the perfect size for me.² I imagine the XL could carry an iMac or your own minstrel. The Saddleback descriptions are worth a watch.

The incredible build quality is immediately obvious with the Classic Briefcase. Everywhere that a corner could be cut, more was added. The stitching is surprisingly thick and all of the areas that hold weight get double stitching. All of the rivets are pressed solid and all are doubled.

Leather

The second thing I noticed was the odor. It wasn't unpleasant, but this is real leather. It smells like a cowboy's ass. The odor dissipates after several weeks, but if you throw an apple in the bag for lunch, it will taste like a cowboy's ass six hours later. If that's your thing, then you should be clicking the buy button already.

While I consider the bag durable, it's not impervious. Like any fine leather, it can be marred. I don't treat my bag delicately. I throw it around and jam it in the corner at conferences. Consequently, there are fine scrapes (visible in the photo below). These are easy to buff out with a good leather conditioner. In fact, the best treatment I've used was also made specifically for Saddleback Leather.

The briefcase has two outer side pockets. They are large and do not close. They are perfect for holding keys but I wouldn't put anything too valuable in them.³

The the back pocket runs the full length of the bag and clenches documents tightly. Again, it does not close or latch. I actually prefer it this way. It's a perfect place for conference agendas and other things you need quick access to when deciding what speaker track will get you to the bar fastest.

There are a couple inner pockets. These also do not close. Unlike most synthetic-fiber bags, the pockets on the Saddleback bulge open. This makes it easy to access items in the pockets. The internal pockets tend to hold their contents well, as long as the bag is buckled tight.

The important thing to remember with the Saddleback briefcase is that it is not prone to tip over. This bag is proud. It stands firm and resists tips much better than most ballistic-fabric bags. That was my main motivation for switching to a big-boy bag. I tired of my bag flipping and toppling at the slightest provocation. The Saddleback bows to no man.

Because the bag stands vertical, the open pockets are less of a concern. The items I stuff in the pockets tend to stay there.

As an added convenience, I've add the the Tom Bihn Freudian Slip as an insert. This light insert adds several pockets, pen holders and zipper enclosures. Importantly, the Freudian Slip fits snuggley in the Saddleback. In fact, the fit is so tight, it feels like part of the bag. It stays in place perfectly and adds some extra padding to boot. This is where I put my iPad. I also stash several pens and markers, along with some nice 3x5 cards.

This is the point in the review that we get serious. If you like leather, then this might be the best bag you ever buy. If you don't, then move along. I happen to prefer a good leather bag over the best synthetic bag.

Steel

The Saddleback is part leather and part steel. Every facet of the bag contains a steel D-ring. I'm not sure why it was designed with so many D-rings, but even Mad Max would find this steampunk design a bit excessive. If you want to clip something to this bag, you will be in no shortage of places to explore.

The D-Rings aren't cheap. They are thick and solid. They do not deform when strained. The real use of all of this steel is to make the bag into what you need it to be. If you want to strap a tripod to it, you can. If you want to carry a small donkey strapped to your back, then this bag can do it.

The Saddleback is a shoulder bag. It can convert to a backpack with some minor changes, but I would rather set it on fire and put it out with urine than to wear it as a backpack.

I've found the rings and belt-style latches to be useful. I clip keys and flashlights to the bag. The belt latches hold strong and are very substantial. In an era of quick-clip plastic latches, it feels good to buckle a bag and know that almost nothing will break the latch.

Sweat

8lbs. This bag is 8lbs.

Think about that before buying it. The MacBook Pro is 4.5lbs. Carrying the Saddleback is like carrying a small calf on your shoulder. I'm a big guy. I stand over six feet and weigh over 17 stone. This bag still feels heavy. And it smells like cowboy ass.

I've carried this bag to two conferences. The first one gave me a stiff neck. The second made me feel like a Viking. The weight is considerable in modern standards, but I carried a Dell Inspiron to Poland and back. This bag feels fine now. It feels better than "fine." It feels like you give a shit about what you carry.

This bag will rightfully increase your swagger. Because of its girth and weight, you stand straight and stout. Maybe it's the smell of cowboy ass or the jangling steel but this bag feels important. It feels like you are the accessory and the bag is the one entering the room.

Conclusion

I like the Saddleback. It's the best made bag I've ever owned. I feel inadequate when I carry it. This bag is not for everyone. It is very expensive and will add effort to every journey. Its job is not to relieve you of your burden. Its job is to remind you why you bear it.

This is not a "first bag" or a something you take on interviews. This is the bag you buy when you are planning a 401K or thinking about how in the hell you will pay for your kid's college. This is the bag you finish with, not the bag you start with.

The Saddleback Briefcase feels like an article out of time. This is how they made furniture and luggage in the 1800's. The Saddleback represents the mythology of American manufacturing but you need to be up to the standard. You don't choose the Saddleback, it chooses you.

Quick, I need help reacting to something.

High taxes and a generous welfare state are no barrier to Nordic riches.

Wyra is Princess of the Star Kingdom and a magical girl (although really, she could do without the embarrassing transformation bit). She and her trusty Battle Dog must travel the kingdom, defending it from the forces of the kind of evil Necromancer in a series of silly adventures.

Read more...

David Herrmann, the open-source Linux graphics developer of fame for working to kill CONFIG_VT via work on numerous projects and many other open-source contributions, has started a new open-source project. Herrmann's latest initiative is OpenWFD, an open-source implementation of the WiFi Display Standard / Miracast...

engine - Biomotor Unitron (Yumekobo - Neo Geo Pocket Color - 1999)

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Achewood hasn’t missed a week since August 9th. Even more exciting, Onstad is resurrecting his creative work in a new format: an animated TV show. "I hope every cartoonist aspires to animation," Onstad tells The Verge in an email. "I've wanted to do animation since the first day I started drawing. The wealth of tools and control you have, from timing to voice to music … it's like comparing a dog in manacles to MacGyver locked in a Home Depot." ... "For a decade and more, every waking hour of my life involved Achewood, trying to make Achewood great, trying to repeatedly find that elusive twist or beat or turn of phrase that defined it, to raise the bar I felt I'd set, every goddamned day," Onstad says. "It was insanely stressful. It was backbreaking, and income was always uncertain, and barely adequate at the best of times. It destroyed my marriage, my health, and what might have been some kind of security had I chosen a standard career." The Portland-based writer seems to have emerged from whatever darkness took him away from the comic for so long. He is now writing a food column for a local alt-weekly, working on music projects, and "developing food and beverage products." He wants to write a book, eventually, and also plans to start taking art commissions. Is he worried about burning out again? "No. I've rearranged my life and my philosophies appropriately," he says.

Matthew Panzarino got some responses from J.D. Power that really don’t explain much. Apparently, we’re not supposed to do math on the values in that 5-dot chart:

First off, the “power circle” chart that’s being widely circulated is simply a visual tool, and not representative of the actual scores given to the brands evaluated in its survey.

Given that there’s no way that the “power circle” chart can be accurate if Samsung “won”, J.D. Power had to say this. But what they’re really admitting, at best, is that they published an extremely inaccurate and misleading chart under the guise of survey results. For a market-research firm, this is a sleazy Fox News move indicating either extreme negligence or malice.

[J.D. Power spokesman Kirk Parsons] said that the differential between the price category scores of the iPad and the score of the Samsung tablets that were included in the survey was large enough to “more than offset” the score in the other four categories. …

Many comparable Apple and Samsung models are priced identically or very closely. To overcome losing in every other category, Samsung would need to have a huge price advantage across their entire tablet line.

And if price is worth enough to overcome large deficiencies in every other category, why didn’t Amazon win?

Parsons declined to share the exact price ranges of the tablets included in the study. Of note: Apple also scored the same two power circles on the first study earlier this year, which it aced, and which applied the same metrics and questions.

Interesting. Same scores, different conclusion.

The more likely story is that J.D. Power tweaked the survey’s scope to get the result they wanted to publish. By restricting the survey to certain models, price ranges, and survey respondents, and then denying that their published comparison chart has any mathematical relation to the scores, they can justify almost any manufacturer “winning”.

Why might they want to say that Samsung’s tablets are better than Apple’s?

Samsung spends a ton of money on marketing — far more than Apple — and frequently employs unethical marketing techniques. Apple isn’t known to play ball very well with the enterprise analyst or market-research rackets, which often implicitly require companies to pay for their high-end services in order for them to recommend the companies’ products. And publishing a conclusion like this gets J.D. Power a lot of attention in a market that the internet is constantly making less relevant.

With even their apparently arbitrary chart denying their conclusion and the numbers not making much sense, it’s at best a desperate stretch. They’re not even good at this game.

J.D. Power is as credible as Consumer Reports now.

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The concept and creation of the first cards used for catalogs occurred in France around 1789. “The Constituent Assembly confiscated books and manuscripts and were brought to literary depots at several locations in Paris. The staff at each depot was to record on cards the basic particulars about each item held. These cards were then bound up in bundles and sent to the Paris Bureau de Bibliographie.” (Jackson 1974, 275) Because of wartime shortages, confiscated playing cards were used to record the information. Playing cards were larger and instead of having a pattern or a picture, were blank on the back. “The title page was to be transcribed on the card and the author’s surname underlined for the filing word. If there was no author, a keyword in the title was to be underlined. A collation was added that was to include number of volumes, size, a statement of illustration, the material of which the book was made, the kind of type, any missing pages, and a description of the binding if it was outstanding in any way. (This elaborate collation was partly for the purpose of identifying valuable books that the government might offer for sale in order to increase government revenue.) After the cards were filled in and put in order by underlined filing word, they were to be strung together by running a needle and thread through the lower left hand corners to keep them in order.” (Hopkins 1992, 378)

tag:

tag is a command line tool to manipulate tags on Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks files, and to query for files with those tags. tag can use the file system’s built-in metadata search functionality to rapidly find all files that have been tagged with a given set of tags.

If you’re not familiar, Hell House is a Christian alternative to the standard haunted house. Instead of Freddy Krueger, these costumed evangelists scare the holy Jesus into you—literally.

A nationwide shortage of a key ingredient used in lethal injections has led some states to experiment with new, untested drug cocktails for executing death row inmates. Are these iffy drug combinations really any better than the guillotine?

A lovely postmortem of producing a simple custom dice game (no kickstarter!), including the incredible admission that he went through $5,000+ of production and released a finished game for 2-4 players _but only ever playtesting the game with one other person_. (Spoiler: He still breaks a profit within a month, then sells the game and website.)

Nadya Tolokonnikova’s relatives have had no contact with the jailed punk rocker for 10 days.

If the court sided with Rettig, he demanded his client no longer be referred to as “the Defendant,” but instead be called “Mister,” “the Citizen Accused” or “that innocent man” — since all defendants are presumed innocent until a judge or jury finds them guilty. As for himself, clearly “lawyer” or “defense attorney” wouldn’t do him, well, justice. “Rather, counsel for the Citizen Accused should be referred to primarily as the ‘Defender of the Innocent.’ … Alternatively, counsel would also accept the designation ‘Guardian of the Realm,’ ” Justice wrote.