firehose

As he built TechCrunch into a multi-million-dollar empire, Arrington became a one-man nexus of power in Silicon Valley. Now he’s denying accusations that he raped an ex-girlfriend and abused two other women. Welcome to the dark side of the Information Age.

tastefullyoffensive:

Best Pet Costumes of Halloween 2013 (Part 2) [submit]

Previously: Part 1, Best Kid Costumes, Best Adult Costumes

pizzzatime:

psychotic-erotic: Mitosis

3M VHB Heavy Duty Mounting Tape is a game-changer. Goodbye glue, screws, nails, rivets and studs. In the right application, it permanently bonds plastic, fiberglass, porcelain, glass, PVC, wood, cloth, concrete and just about any other material you’re likely to encounter.

Mounting a GPS unit on a car dash? Done. Need to secure a circuit board to a metal rack? No problem. Want to stick together tricky space-age materials, like Velcro to a Kydex knife sheath? Forget about exotic adhesives; use VHB tape (it stands for Very High Bond, by the way).

Don’t mistake this stuff for temporary mounting tape. It forms a PERMANENT bond, and trying to remove it will likely remove the finish on both bonded surfaces.

-- Douglas Cawley

[This is a Cool Tools Favorite from 2013]

3M VHB Heavy Duty Mounting Tape

Available from Amazon

Here's a zany little story from NBA.com's Casey Holdahl. Okay, so J.J. Abrams-- director of the new Star Trek movies, among many other things-- is a big fan of children's book author Mo Willems, so much so that he felt compelled to get in touch with him. One issue: "Mo Willems" sounds a lot like "Mo Williams", and through some miscommunication, Abrams ended up exchanging emails and phone calls with the Blazers guard instead of the the author of The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog! Abrams figured out his error after a bit of correspondence, but Williams only just realized-- via Holdahl-- who he'd been talking to the whole time. And now he's PSYCHED:

"I didn’t know he did the "Star Trek" movies!" said Williams of Abrams. "He need to put me in a movie! Shoot, I can act. I do it all the time."

"I think I’m going to reach out to him. JJ Abrams, let’s get together man. Let’s communicate, have a lunch, have a dinner, whatever. Maybe I could become a movie star."

Make it happen! You know how to get in touch!

An anonymous reader writes "For the second year in a row, the number of self-published ebooks with the word zombie in their title has doubled. The annual check is performed on Halloween in Amazon's Kindle Store, and this year discovers 8,052 ebooks (with titles like 'Jesus Camp Zombie Bloodbath' and 'Never Slow Dance with a Zombie...') — more than 12 times the number that appear in the Library of Congress. 71-year-old literary author Joyce Carol Oates — twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize — also named her 2009 novel about a serial killer 'Zombie (P.S.'", but most of the titles in the Kindle Store 'aren't as ambitious,' notes this article, which still applauds the self-published authors and their 'massive outpouring of new creativity, as people all around the globe start wondering what's going to happen in their own imaginary zombie scenarios...'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This is funny:

For more amusement, try labelling these subdivisions:

Or these:

[Courtesy of dalriata in the comments, an actual regions-of-France quiz is here. My score: a pitiful 72%.]

Exercise for the American reader: Russian Federal Subjects; Chinese Provinces; German Länder; Canadian Provinces; ….

Traversable Achronal Retrograde Domains In Spacetime is a new paper by Caltech/Memorial Gallifrey physicists Benjamin K. Tippett and David Tsang that attempts to describe the spacetime through which Doctor Who's Tardis travels; one that "goes forward and back in time, and left and right in space." It's a bit heavy going, so they've also published The Blue Box White Paper, a lay-friendly, 17 page summary for people with "no technical knowledge of Einstein's Theory of General Relativity." The discussion continues on Tippet's Tumblr.

A person travelling within the TARDIS would describe it as a room which is constantly accelerating forwards. Furthermore, any events which occur inside of the TARDIS bubble must satisfy Novikov’s self consistency condition11 .

A person outside the bubble would describe an entierly different scene (see Fig. 10). Due to its closed trajectory, there will be a time before the bubble (and its contents) exists. Abruptly, we would see a bubble appear and split into two, the two boxes moving away from one another. Initially, they will be moving at superluminal speeds, but they will decelerate to a stand-still. The pair of boxes will then begin accelerating towards one another until they exceed the speed of light, merge and disappear. Mysteriously, the contents of one bubble will be appear to evolve forwards in time, while the other will evolve backwards.

To illustrate how time is experienced inside and outside of the bubble, imagine that there are two people in our spacetime: Amy, who is travelling inside the bubble; and Barbara, who has been left behind. Suppose that the two women are holding large clocks, and that the walls of the bubble are transparent, so that the two women can see one another (See Fig. 11).

Traversable Achronal Retrograde Domains In Spacetime (Thanks, Ben!)

Al Jourgensen may prefer to forget that he once cultivated an English accent and created this underground club hit, but on this day, we happily remember. Above, a fan video cut up from horror films.

Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

A federal appeals court on Thursday blocked a judge's ruling that found the New York Police Department's stop-and-frisk policy was discriminatory and took the unusual step of removing her from the case, saying interviews she gave during the trial called her impartiality into question. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said the rulings by U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin will be stayed pending the outcome of an appeal by the city.

Borsalino - Fall is the perfect time to consider a hat such as this beautiful green felt Borsalino. The medium sized brim and muted colors are ideal for Autumn and Winter months. Photo at Cable Car Clothiers, San Francisco. 

"Cock your hat - angles are attitudes"
Frank Sinatra 

McDonald’s has high hopes that the coffee it farms out at drive-thru windows can thrive in your home.

McDonald’s and Kraft Foods are planning to test McCafe-branded coffee at grocery and retail stores across the US starting in 2014, Reuters reports. The companies intend to sell three coffee products in stores next year: packages of whole coffee beans, packages of ground coffee beans, and McCafe “single-cups,” much like the K-cups made popular by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. Kraft will be in charge of marketing and distributing McDonald’s new coffee offerings.

The company has been working tirelessly to popularize its budding McCafe brand. It recently moved to use the logo on hot drinks and small carry-out bags for baked items as a means of boosting awareness of the brand. Its in-store coffee sales have already been risen sharply in recent years. Some analysts think the company’s coffee play masks slowdowns in its core business of burgers and fries. With coffee consumption is soaring in the US, it’s a fairly intuitive move.

The move into packaged coffee in grocery stores, however, is slightly riskier. The packaged coffee market has bloomed into a near $6 billion dollar business in the US. But home-brewed coffee is a departure from the fast food playbook of competitors like Burger King and Wendy’s, which have yet to branch into branded home products. The move puts McDonald’s more in line with the strategies of coffee mavens like Dunkin’ Donuts’ and Starbucks—presumably at a more competitive price.

That said, this isn’t the first challenge to Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts by McDonald’s, which has long been battling the food chains for breakfast supremacy. Starbucks, which once exclusively sold coffee, has moved into all kinds of food and drink, including breakfast sandwiches, oatmeal and ready-made snacks. For its part, McDonald’s, which once sold coffee as an afterthought, has transitioned into the market for fancier coffee offerings like mochas and lattes. McDonald’s has gone so far as to announce plans for a coffee-focused chain with as many as 150 outlets called McCafe in India, a thriving market for Starbucks.

McDonald’s has a decent shot at luring away stalwart Starbucks customers; coffee drinkers are reputed to be rather fickle about their allegiances.

President Obama’s top aides secretly considered replacing Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. with Hillary Rodham Clinton on the 2012 ticket, undertaking extensive focus-group sessions and polling in late 2011 when Mr. Obama’s re-election outlook appeared uncertain.

Sometimes in my daydreams I have hair that I can run my fingers through, I wear strapless dresses, I’m really good at driving a stick shift car, I have Sissy Spacek eyelids, and Sigourney Weaver narrates my life. Maybe also there’s an early 90′s Jagged Little Pill soundtrack running though my daydreams… but in a totally zen kinda way.  I mean…

Daydreams are all well and good.  But really, what’s the point daydreaming about different eyelids when there is a stack of freshly made baked doughnuts staring you in the face.  Right?

I think I warned you about my new-found baked doughnut enthusiasm.  A few weeks ago I made these Brown Butter Doughnuts with Chocolate Glaze, and they felt like just about the best thing EVER.  I’m chasing that first baked doughnut high, this time with apples and cinnamon.  Join me!

Oh my goodness… let’s just make these doughnuts!  Into the mixing bowl goes flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Easy cake beginnings!

Sugar and spices, too!

Brown butter and grated apples are the heart and soul of these doughnuts.   Brown butter adds a nutty richness.  Apples add the perfect sweet seasonal flavor.  Such a happy pair!

Freshly grated nutmeg is my very favorite fall spice.

If you do one thing for me this Fall… just one, pretty please… I want you to grate your own nutmeg, fresh to-order.  All you need is a microplane and whole nutmeg.  It’s a game changer.

The browned butter is whisked together with an egg and buttermilk.  The wet ingredients meet the dry ingredients.  Simple as that.

Stir in the apples and POW.. well almost.  We’re so close to doughnuts!

Good instincts!  We’ve got them.

I was a bit over-enthusiastic and filled the baking pan a bit too much.  My doughnut centers betray me.

It’s cool.  Nothing a little Brown Butter Glaze and sweet tooth can’t fix!

A sweet Brown Butter Schmear.  Few things are better.

Imagine a little spice cake.  Shape that little cake into a doughnut. Add sweet apples.  Go heavy on the ground cinnamon and fresh nutmeg.  Drench the whole thing in Brown Butter Glaze.  This is that!

 You need a baked doughnut pan.  Just saying.

 

now photoshop cc is ULTRA laggy with the brush. i'm running it on a brand-new, highest-end MBP, os x mavericks. very weak sauce, adobe. i went back to photoshop cs6 and it runs like a champ!

Rats have pretty well overrun the globe, but there’s one exception: Alberta, Canada, which has waged a successful war against the critters for 50 years. Owning rats is forbidden to Alberta residents; they can be kept only by zoos and research institutions. The province maintains a rat control zone 600 kilometers long along its eastern border, staffed by eight professionals, and any rats they find are poisoned, gassed, or shot.

“Alberta is the only province with rat-free status, and we take this very seriously,” Verlyn Olson, minister of agriculture and rural development, said in an August statement. “We have lived without the menace of rats since 1950, when our control program began.”

But it’s a constant battle. In 2003 pest specialist John B. Bourne told National Geographic that he worries the wily creatures will hitch a ride to the interior aboard a truck or train. “They are so adaptive, so intelligent, so successful and physically capable … that it would not surprise me if they show up in a place where you’d least expect a rat to show up. I have the greatest respect for this rodent’s resourcefulness, and [its] capabilities scare the hell out of me.”

Toronto Police have recovered the video that appears to show Mayor Rob For smoking crack cocaine, Toronto police Chief Bill Blair said Thursday. “The video files depict images that are consistent with what has previously been reported” in the media, Blair said at a news conference on the heels of a release of documents used by police to obtain search warrants during their summer investigation. “I have no reason to resign,” Ford said at a raucous 2:30 p.m. press conference despite calls from several councillors for him to step down.

The Washington Post reported that the NSA is eavesdropping on the Google and Yahoo private networks -- the code name for the program is MUSCULAR. I may write more about this later, but I have some initial comments:

• It's a measure of how far off the rails the NSA has gone that it's taking its Cold War–era eavesdropping tactics -- surreptitiously eavesdropping on foreign networks -- and applying them to US corporations. It's skirting US law by targeting the portion of these corporate networks outside the US. It's the same sort of legal argument the NSA used to justify collecting address books and buddy lists worldwide.

• Although the Washington Post article specifically talks about Google and Yahoo, you have to assume that all the other major -- and many of the minor -- cloud services are compromised this same way. That means Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Badoo, Dropbox, and on and on and on.

• It is well worth re-reading all the government denials about bulk collection and direct access after PRISM was exposed. It seems that it's impossible to get the truth out of the NSA. Its carefully worded denials always seem to hide what's really going on.

• In light of this, PRISM is really just insurance: a way for the NSA to get legal cover for information it already has. My guess is that the NSA collects the vast majority of its data surreptitiously, using programs such as these. Then, when it has to share the information with the FBI or other organizations, it gets it again through a more public program like PRISM.

• What this really shows is how robust the surveillance state is, and how hard it will be to craft laws reining in the NSA. All the bills being discussed so far only address portions of the problem: specific programs or specific legal justifications. But the NSA's surveillance infrastructure is much more robust than that. It has many ways into our data, and all sorts of tricks to get around the law. Note this quote from yesterday's story:

  John Schindler, a former NSA chief analyst and frequent defender who teaches at the Naval War College, said it is obvious why the agency would prefer to avoid restrictions where it can.

  "Look, NSA has platoons of lawyers, and their entire job is figuring out how to stay within the law and maximize collection by exploiting every loophole," he said. "It's fair to say the rules are less restrictive under Executive Order 12333 than they are under FISA," the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

  No surprise, really. But it illustrates how difficult meaningful reform will be. I wrote this in September:

  It's time to start cleaning up this mess. We need a special prosecutor, one not tied to the military, the corporations complicit in these programs, or the current political leadership, whether Democrat or Republican. This prosecutor needs free rein to go through the NSA's files and discover the full extent of what the agency is doing, as well as enough technical staff who have the capability to understand it. He needs the power to subpoena government officials and take their sworn testimony. He needs the ability to bring criminal indictments where appropriate. And, of course, he needs the requisite security clearance to see it all.

  We also need something like South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where both government and corporate employees can come forward and tell their stories about NSA eavesdropping without fear of reprisal.

  Without this, crafting reform legislation will be impossible.

• Finally, we need more encryption on the Internet. We have made surveillance too cheap, not just for the NSA but for all nation-state adversaries. We need to make it expensive again.

Read 26 remaining paragraphs | Comments

The Atlantic Wire has posted a series of graphs comparing the popularity of various brands of Halloween candy between 2008 and 2012. The data is based on how many times each candy is mentioned on Twitter during the period immediately after Halloween. The Atlantic Wire reports that popularity on Twitter is, not surprisingly, closely tied to sales—top sellers Reese’s and Snickers lead the way. They also looked at which candies were most popular over the two weeks following Halloween, during which M&M’s and lollipops surge in popularity.

image via The Atlantic Wire