firehose

maptitude1:

Here are more anagram maps from the Basement Geographer, these two of North and South America. I especially like “Silky Lactate” for Salt Lake City, and how Denver is on there despite not having an anagram.

Former NBA star Larry Bird has recently listed his custom home on the market for $4.8 million. The luxurious waterfront home is located in Naples, Florida.

darthcamaro writes "In March of this year, we saw the first ever 100 Gigabit DDoS attack, which was possible due to a DNS Reflection Amplification attack. Now word is out that a new 100 Gigabit attack has struck using raw bandwidth, without any DNS Reflection. 'The most outstanding thing about this attack is that it did not use any amplification, which means that they had 100 Gigabits of available bandwidth on their own,' Incapsula co-founder Marc Gaffan said. 'The attack lasted nine hours, and that type of bandwidth is not cheap or readily available.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ruminations on numbers in board game design:

http://pulsiphergamedesign.blogspot.com/2013/09/ruminations-about-magical-numbers-in.html

A love of craft beer culture has led an increasing number of homebrewers to daydream of quitting their desk jobs to take a shot at starting their own brewery. How hard can it be?

OkCupid, match.com and eHarmony promise the world, but are actually incentivised to keep you alone, furiously and miserably clicking through thousands of profiles in the hope of finding love.

More and more women are jumping outside their marriages in search of no-strings-attached sex. All it takes to find a willing partner? An Internet connection and an account on a site like AshleyMadison.com. One writer and monogamist went to meet the growing flock of lady Don Drapers.

_{America was not shut down properly. Would you like to start America in safe mode, with free healthcare and without guns? (Recommended)}

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EA has unveiled a new trailer for Madden 25 which focuses less on oversized bruisers smashing into one another, and more on the attractive aesthetics to be found in the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 incarnations of the game.

Madden 25 trailer showcases 'next generation of presentation' originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 01 Oct 2013 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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turtledetective:

serious side-eye to the people that delete your comments on posts and then put the exact same thing so it makes it look like they’re the clever ones

i know what you did

i can’t tell if you were trying to be ironic by taking my post and posting it as your own…or if you’re an idiot.

BBC News

Herman Wallace ordered released after 41 years in solitary BBC News A judge in the US state of Louisiana has overturned the murder conviction of a terminally-ill prisoner who has spent 41 years in solitary confinement. Judge Brian Jackson ruled Herman Wallace's 1974 conviction was unconstitutional and ordered him freed. Terminally ill Angola 3 member granted immediate release; state to appeal rulingNOLA.com Attorney: Dying 'Angola 3' inmate is released in LouisianaCNN Louisiana prisoner freed after 41 years in solitary, diagnosed with terminal cancerWashington Post The Atlantic all 145 news articles »

Efforts to create a national carbon market in the US to cut greenhouse gas emissions may be deader than bipartisanship in Washington. But California today took another step to globalize its cap-and-trade program by signing an agreement with the Canadian province of Quebec to integrate their two carbon markets as of January 2014.

The deal is another sign that any efforts to fight climate change are likely to be spearheaded by cities and states rather than nation-states, given the utter failure to reach a global consensus on how to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

California launched its carbon trading market in November 2012 to comply with a state law that requires greenhouse gas emissions to fall to 1990 levels by 2020. The market currently covers power plants, oil refineries and other industrial polluters that must reduce their carbon emissions by a set amount each year or buy credits from those that have exceeded their reduction quotas.

Every year the carbon vice tightens as the emissions limits fall and companies are forced to devise new ways to cut their greenhouse gas spew or purchase more and more credits. The idea is that eventually even those polluters that prefer to buy their way out of the cap will be forced to clean up their act to be competitive with less carbon-instensive rivals.

Quebec instituted a similar market to cut emissions 20% below 1990 levels by 2020. But with a population of just eight million it’s a rather tiny market. By joining 38 million Californians, Quebec hopes to give its industrial polluters more options to offset their emissions. For California, the transnational carbon market is just the first step in leapfrogging borders that have proven to be barriers to attacking global warming.

The California legislature authorized the governor to link the state’s carbon market to others. And in a 2012 report, the agency responsible for overseeing the cap-and-trade program recommended approving a regulation allowing California to integrate its market with Quebec’s.

“Climate change is a global problem that requires action by states, provinces, and nations,” stated the report. “The proposed regulation furthers California‘s effort to address climate change through coordinated sub-national efforts.”

It’s a trend embraced elsewhere. But as the recent election in Australia shows, politics can derail such good intentions. Australia was set to convert its carbon tax to a cap-and-trade program in July 2014 and then link that market to the European carbon market. In September, however, a conservative government took power in Australia, vowing to scuttle the carbon tax.

Have you got your tickets FOR BAHFEST yet?

Scurvy. We laugh now: “There’s a scurvy crew.” But it was a dreadful way to die; the body simply fell apart. The Arctic is still littered with victims… more»

I'd like to say thank you to Christie Sims, author of the "Dinosaur Beast Erotica" series. And I'm not being sarcastic. If werewolf erotica is a thing then it's just not fair for dinosaurs not to get their due. (Yes, I know Gryphons aren't dinosaurs. But this is a post about dinosaur erotica. Just let it go.) (via: Geekologie) Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?

Jay Porter owned a San Diego restaurant called The Linkery where tipping was not allowed; instead, a flat 18 percent service-charge is added to each bill, and that charge is divided among the servers, bus-people, and kitchen-staff. In a six-part series, Porter sets out the case for his experiment and reports on the result, covering the bad gender dynamics, motivation and microeconomics, and a comparison with a tip-friendly restaurant he also owns. It's a compelling tale about economic fairness versus locked-in dysfunctional conventions. He summarized his findings in an easily digested article for Slate.

Probably the most common reaction to our service-charge-no-tips policy, from people outside the service industry, was along the lines of, if there’s no tipping, then how will the servers be motivated to do a good job?

When you step back and think about this for a second, it’s actually kind of hilarious. The person asking this question would have a full-time job as a software developer, or lawyer, or journalist, or doctor, always working to a pay rate that was negotiated ahead of time. We would never suggest that a code jockey or surgeon would be motivated to do better work by the thought that their clients, if pleased with the service, might toss in a few extra dollars.

And yet, we restaurant-goers (and I include myself in this, in the days before I worked in restaurants) are not hesitant to suggest that, unlike all other working Americans, restaurant servers are a class of simpletons who require a drip of money every few minutes to keep them on task. By perpetuating the idea that servers, and servers alone, won’t perform without the threat of pay withheld, we dehumanize our neighbors and peers who work taking care of us. I think this helps us not feel bad when we sometimes treat them badly. It’s the Stanford Prison Experiment meets Yelp.

Meanwhile, restaurant workers know what’s up. People who worked in the restaurant industry wouldn’t ask us this question — what will motivate servers to do a good job? Because, inside the restaurant, we know that while the customers think their tips allow them to control the server, in fact the control is illusory. The story of the server being motivated by the customer’s power to tip, is instead a fiction created to make the customer feel important.

This was one of the first things I learned as a restauranteur.

Observations From A Tipless Restaurant: Part 1, , part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6

What Happens When You Abolish Tipping [Jay Porter/Slate]

(via Kottke)

Fertilize your pea shooters and gather as much sun as possible: Plants Vs Zombies is making the jump to a strategy boardgame in Risk: Plants Vs Zombies.

Those familiar with Risk should quickly feel at home in the Plants Vs Zombies iteration of the game. Instead of human armies capturing countries of various sizes, Risk: Plants Vs Zombies pits ravenous corpses against deadly anthropomorphic plants.

"This completely customized take on two-player Risk offers a double-sided gameboard and three head-to-head ways to play: Tower Defense, Mission Objective, or Total Domination," states PopCap's official description. "With a detailed map of the original town of Brainsborough on one side and the familiar Plants vs. Zombies backyard from the video game on the other, players opt to be plants or zombies and then pick their battlefield. Fighting for their very survival, players engage in skirmishes, battle for three different victory conditions, and play the classic Risk game mode, vying to take over the whole board."

Risk: Plants Vs Zombies has been approved for players age 10 and up. It features a $30 price tag, and is currently available on the Plants Vs Zombies online store.

Shambling undead invade your gaming table in Risk: Plants vs Zombies originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 01 Oct 2013 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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hodad

The town paved our road today and now I can’t hear approaching cars when I check the mailbox.

Original Source

"How to Destroy Everything" is a fairly comprehensive argument for destroying everything.

That if games are art, or if games are culture, or if games are communities -- then we must recognize how art fractures, how culture is in tension with itself, and how communities constantly collapse and re-form into new ones. "Destroying everything" is about celebrating change and diversity and resilience, with the confidence that together we have the power to make something better in the future.

One of the more common instances of bullshit gamer presser-preview snake-oil-speak, alongside "day 1 purchase" and "immersive" and "cinematic," invokes the idea of "our young evolving medium." Whose medium is it? Why, it is We, the Gamers' Medium!!!! But does this Dorito-flavored ruin of Ozymandias -- does this "gamers" even realize what it whispers to itself, about evolving mediums?

At the core of evolution is sex, sex, and sex. Vulnerability! Energy! Trust! Passion! Grunting, feeling, throbbing, moaning... yes... yes... YESSSSSSSS!

I'm pretty sure the "Ludic Century" is already over.

As tired of soul-deadeningly long award telecasts as the rest of us, YouTube is entering the arena and keeping it to the point. Airing November 3, the 90-minute YouTube Music Awards will feature performances from Eminem, Arcade Fire, and Lady Gaga as well as still-unannounced acts who'll "provide taped performances from cities as far-flung as Seoul and Moscow, YouTube's way of emphasizing the global nature of its audience," writes USA Today. The live show will be taped at New York's Pier 36. "Instead of bands performing to an audience on a stage, we're going to have a warehouse with all these different sets and try to make live music videos throughout the night," says Spike Jonze, who's playing creative director for the event. "The idea is let's get a bunch of interesting artists together and have a night that's all about making things."

Jonze also told Billboard he's interested in facilitating collaborations. Maybe we should start envisioning Eminem on a jumbo set modeled after the "Berzerk" video, with Lady Gaga mean-mugging in Rick Rubin's stead? "Neither Jonze nor YouTube would tip their hand," Billboard says, "about how they plan to make their awards show more engaging than, say, the Grammys." Or, say, the Billboard Awards. In-the-moment viewership won't be a big deal, though; in a world where VMA performances are trimmed and uploaded by the time the telebox has aired the next Geico ad, YouTube's going to have the replayability game on lock. "In general, 90 percent of all views for live events happen after the event itself," Danielle Tiedt, YouTube's vice-president of marketing, tells Billboard. "The live event is a way to get people talking. Afterwards, it gets shared and shared." Especially if the YouTube Music Awards don't stick to TV-level censorship and Marshall/Stefani/those crazy Arcadian Canadians do something shocking and tweetable.

Jason Schwartzman will host the event. The half-dozen award categories will be announced October 17 and winners all chosen by fan votes. The Grammys will last three more years, thank everyone for a good run, then sit down in their PJs to watch 2016’s 15-minute YouTube Music Awards broadcast like the rest of us.

Original Source

WASHINGTON—Following Tuesday’s government shutdown, which furloughed the jobs of all federal employees not considered to perform essential government functions, National Gallery of Art facilities manager Don Henning confirmed to reporters that...

Retirement-aged people make poorer financial decisions and inconsistent choices than younger individuals with the same IQ, according to a new study from Australia and the US.

“So many of my highs and lows in Doctor Who are encapsulated by John [Barrowman] pulling his pants down.”

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Catherine Tate

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/sep/28/doctor-who-companions-billie-piper-catherine-tate-karen-gillan

(via enough-effing-owls)

PREPPING for an appearance on Dutch TV this week to talk about the new gun-control measures that take effect in Maryland starting October 1st has afforded me a priceless opportunity to watch lots of gun-rights videos. My favourite, I think, is Ice-T's appearance on CNN, where he seems not to grasp the concept of laws. ("I'll give up my gun when everybody else does," he says, with a wry, superior glare. Well, ah, yes. That's how laws work; they impose the same rules on everyone, all at once, to overcome prisoners' dilemmas like this one.) Another good one is this savvy, funny rabble-rousing speech by Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, at a rally in Idaho. Mr Rhodes opens up by scolding the crowd for being too lightly armed: "Where's your rifles? You know what your handgun is for, right? (Scattered crowd response.) To fight your way to your rifle!"

On a more serious note, conservative millennial pundit Ben Shapiro of Breitbart News had an interesting...Continue reading