firehose

It looks to us that Kickstarter has cornered the most lucrative part of the crowdfunding market, leaving competitors like Indiegogo to fight for the scraps in far poorer niches. With its openness, Indiegogo was supposed to take advantage of the lucrative long tail of crowdfunding, but that is turning out to be a worth a lot less than expected as evidenced by the huge long tail of failed projects. For the crowdfunding market, it seems that quality is worth a lot more than quantity.

Wheelock College has the highest level of red ink among students who borrow for college, the magazine found. Some 82 percent of its graduates took on debt, and their average was $49,439. The 900-undergraduate school has an endowment of almost $43 million, a sliver of its neighbors. Wheelock College did not respond to requests for comment. Anna Maria College, also in Massachusetts, was close behind with $49,206 in debt for the 86 percent of students who borrowed to pay for school. Anna Maria College did not dispute the findings.

Q: Where did the idea for the song come from? /// A: I’m trying to remember. The way we work is we just sit and talk about everything and get ideas and take some notes. I guess we must have been talking about what kind of sound the fox makes. And then we had a chance to work with Stargate, a production company in New York City, they've produced for Beyonce and Rihanna--they’re Norweigans but based in the U.S.. We actually did a favor for them and we asked them if they could produce a song for us for the next season in exchange. And we assumed that they would turn down the offer because it wasn't a very good offer for them. But somehow they said yes. ////// Q: What was the favor? /// A: We made a video for one of the guys for his birthday party. So when the agreed, we started to discuss what to do with that kind of production value. Because we're comedians and what we do is comedy, we didn't want to use such a production team to try to make a hit sing. We thought it would be more fun to kind of abuse them somehow. We thought hey, we have this old idea about the sound that the fox made, because no one really knows. So we decided to do that instead of something intelligent, a hit. Which kind of backfired.

Who watches the neighborhood watchman? A neighborhood watch volunteer, who vanished after police linked him to a string of rapes that have terrorized Dallas since June, was arrested Tuesday in Lousiana after apparently going on the run. DNA evidence has linked Van Dralan Dixson, 38, to four of the nine rapes committed in South Dallas, Dallas police said. More tests are pending.

Apple released the iPhone 5S today and it's powered by their own A7 chip, which is a 64-bit ARM SoC and claims to be up to twice the CPU and graphics performance of its predecessor. The Apple A7 SoC has over one billion transistors and its interesting to see it being a 64-bit processor while ARM doesn't yet have out its own 64-bit chips in the wild yet. While the A7 is interesting, Apple isn't yet ready to comment on the compiler support...

WASHINGTON—New data released by the Foreign Trade Division of the U.S. Census Bureau has found that the United States exported over 6 billion tons of crude web content last year, outpacing all other developed nations as the world’s largest pro...

Google Can't Get Creative With Wiretap Law Courthouse News Service (CN) - Google cannot use a broad definition of "radio communication" to escape claims that its Street View cars violated federal privacy laws, the 9th Circuit ruled Tuesday. Street View cars, which travel the world taking photographs and capturing data for ... and more »

Haaretz

NSA Phone-Records Spying Said to Violate Rules for Years Bloomberg The U.S. National Security Agency violated rules on surveillance of telephone records for almost three years and misled a secret court, raising fresh concerns that spy programs lack adequate controls to protect Americans' privacy. The latest revelations show ... Government Releases NSA Surveillance Docs and Previously Secret FISA Court ...EFF Judge asked US in 2009 to prove collection of phone records was justified to ...Washington Post Snowden's latest leak: NSA shares unfiltered intelligence with IsraelLos Angeles Times ABC News -Jerusalem Post -Newsday all 263 news articles »

Sensors have played a role in mobile devices for years, even if it was simply a compass designed to help phone users find their bearings (in the woods, supposedly). Yet at Apple’s iPhone launch today, the company announced a “motion co-processor,” the M7 chip, on its higher-end iPhone 5S. The chip’s job is to continuously monitor the phone’s motion sensors—its accelerometer, a gyroscope and compass.

Again, these sensors in themselves are nothing new. But dedicating a special chip to watch them is. The M7, paired with something called the CoreMotion API—a piece of software that delivers the motion data in usable form to any app that requests it—means app developers will now be able to put Apple’s sensors to more use.

One such app, featured in Apple’s announcement, is the Nike+ Move app. It seems to be a way to get your phone to keep track of your every step, much like Nike’s Fuelband wrist monitor or similar devices like the Fitbit Flex or the Jawbone UP. It remains to be seen why Nike would give people a reason not to buy its Fuelbands.

But this is just part of a broader trend towards always-on sensors.

Samsung, in its Galaxy S3 and S4 phones, puts the standard accelerometer to some novel uses; for instance, you can turn over the phone to reject a call or zoom in and out of a picture by moving the phone back and forth. But the recently-launched S4 also includes temperature and humidity sensors. Users can make the most of them by downloading apps such as WeatherSignal, which turns your phone into a miniature measuring station for a crowd-sourced weather map.

Motorola’s new Moto X is always listening. Its built-in audio chip specializes in noise cancellation and speech recognition. (Samsung devices too can listen out for specific words, like “Hello Samsung”). Yet the device will also “anticipate” user movements, according to AllThingsD. Hold your phone up as if you’re about to take a photo and the camera will switch on for you.

Such devices could hasten the advent of the “internet of things,” a vision of a world in which countless mundane objects, from shoes to cars to doors, are connected to, and can be monitored and controlled over, the internet. The problem with the vision is that it’s costly to put sensors in lots of things. But a phone’s built-in sensors can do a lot of the same tasks.

Thanks to the ubiquity of mobile phones, some of these kinds of data are already being compiled. Google Maps, for instance, collects data on the movements of millions of phones that use the app to build up detailed maps of traffic. If all phones had temperature and humidity sensors, WeatherSignal could do the same for weather. Sound data could provide information about neighborhoods that are particularly noisy or even help police pinpoint disturbances.

Aside from the obvious privacy concerns, up to now one of the main obstacles to always-on sensors in phones has been that they drain battery power. We don’t yet know whether the new iPhone will solve that problem. But you might as well get used to the idea that your phone is passively collecting more information on you than ever.

Cinema as we know it is dead, today's children don't even have the attention spans to pay attention to a goddamn cartoon, imagine the sort of behavior you're teaching these screeching little cretins, etc.

The Walt Disney Studios invites animation fans to experience a classic film like never before with a new interactive theatrical event for the whole family: “Second Screen Live: The Little Mermaid.”

Beginning September 20, this beloved musical adventure returns to select theaters for a special limited engagement, only this time viewers are encouraged to become a part of the story. This unique engagement marks the debut of Disney Second Screen Live, a new second-screen technology that allows audiences to engage with the film, each other and their fellow audience members.

By simply downloading the free “Second Screen Live: The Little Mermaid App” to an Apple iPad or iPad mini and bringing their Mermaid-loaded devices to participating theaters, fans and families can interact with the film, play games, find hidden treasure, sing along, and compete with the audience for the chance to win great prizes!

More info here, should you or your dull-eyed offspring care to participate in the irreparable and cataclysmic destruction of the formerly enjoyable moviegoing experience.

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With so much focus in the US on Syria, where even US president Barack Obama says there is no immediate threat to American interests, it might be worth re-focusing for a moment on this chart from the Bipartisan Policy Center. It shows the government’s supply of cash running out sometime between October 18 and November 5—a serious threat not just to the US but also to the global economy:

The US reached its public debt limit on May 19 after Congress reinstated it following a brief suspension. The ceiling is now $16.669 trillion, though only a little more than $10 trillion of that debt is held by the public. To help keep the free cash flowing, the Treasury has adopted “extraordinary measures,” which mainly consist of holding off on the reinvestment of certain government funds in Treasury securities so that it can continue offering them to the public. Those measures only created limited space for new borrowing, though. While the expanding economy has increased tax revenue, government obligations scheduled for October, including the accrual of military benefits and public pension payments, will likely leave the US without cash, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center’s analysis.

In that case, either Congress raises the legal borrowing limit in time for a refinancing, the US defaults on its debt with disastrous consequences, or things get entirely weird. One thing’s for sure: An uncertain process around lifting the ceiling will upset markets.

The good news is that US borrowing this fiscal year is set to be $400 billion lower than last year, and next year will be even lower, around 3.4% of GDP, putting the US on a path to reduce its publicly-held debt over the next decade. That should be a good incentive for an agreement to raise the debt limit (why sabotage the government over debt when debt is already going down?). But political conflicts mean that any agreement will be accompanied by sturm und drang.

BBC News

Nigel Evans quits as deputy speaker amid sex charges BBC News Conservative MP Nigel Evans has resigned as Commons Deputy Speaker, after being charged with offences including sexual assault, indecent assault and rape. Mr Evans is accused of eight offences in total dating between 2002 and 2013, the Crown ... Britain: Legislator Is Charged With Sexual Assault and RapeNew York Times Nigel Evans resigns as Deputy SpeakerTelegraph.co.uk Commons deputy speaker Nigel Evans resigns as he faces rape and sex chargesThe Independent Daily Mail -Fox News -Reuters UK all 72 news articles »

Pitchfork elevating their interactive game

Wildfang—the tomboy-oriented online shop that went viral months before they had even one item up for sale—recently opened a physical location on SE Grand, and tonight they're hosting an opening party with live music by the Summer Cannibals, DJ K Marie, and the obligatory refreshments (7:30-11 pm).

Wildfang in particular, amid the flurry of constant new businesses in Portland, is an interesting one to watch. Hatched by a couple of young Nike geniuses, their branding campaign and pace of growth is remarkably successful. They (along with Poler) are among the savviest young brands putting roots down here, and they're ambitious. It isn't that what they're offering—in terms of brands and merchandise—is so terribly different, but the mini social empire they're creating is an impressive thing to behold.

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WASHINGTON—ESPN’s Monday Night Football commentator Jon Gruden reportedly continued speaking into his microphone for 45 minutes following the conclusion of last night’s Eagles–Redskins matchup, incessantly rambling on about ...

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Newsday

BofA, Alcoa and HP are ousted from Dow Jones index Los Angeles Times NEW YORK — The stock market's all-star team has some new players. Leaving the Dow Jones industrial average is aluminum giant Alcoa Inc., computer-maker Hewlett-Packard Co. and financial behemoth Bank of America Corp. Joining the index of 30 ... Dow 30 adds Goldman Sachs, Nike and VisaUSA TODAY Shakeup for Dow Jones industrial averageBBC News S&P 500 gains for sixth straight session, Apple fallsReuters New York Times -Alaska Native News -Morningstar.com all 214 news articles »

Many theater-goers are annoyed by cell phone use during films but one journalist at the Toronto International Film Festival took his response to the extreme yesterday - he called 911.

Funksaw writes "In a political op-ed on his blog, long time Slashdot reader and contributor Brian Boyko (the guy who did that animated Windows 8 video) — now a candidate for state representative — explains how lobbyists from car dealerships successfully banned Tesla Motors from selling cars in Texas. From the article: 'Tesla Motors doesn't just present a case study of why a lack of campaign finance reform blocks meaningful reform on the issues that Democrats care about, like climate change and health care. A lack of campaign finance reform blocks reforms on both the Left and the Right. Here's the big elephant in the room I'd like to point out to all the "elephants" in the room: With a Republican-controlled legislature, a Republican executive, and many conservatives in our judiciary, why the hell don't we have free markets in Texas? Isn't it the very core of economic-conservative theory that the invisible hand of the free market determines who gets what resources? Doesn't the free market have the ability to direct resources to where they can most efficiently be used? I'm not saying the conservatives are right in these assumptions; but I am saying that our broken campaign finance system makes a mockery of them.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Remember that great footage of an adolescent Mr. Bungle (as “Bister Mungle”) performing at their high school talent show? Well, now a reader has sent us even more footage of Mike Patton and Trevor Dunn performing at age sixteen, with their then-band, Gemini, at Eureka High’s talent night in 1984.  It’s pretty much as precious as you’d think: Patton is dressed like Rob Halford by way of Nikki Sixx, and the band has some choreographed stage moves and everything (which is okay, because they were sixteen and aping Judas Priest, not twenty-six and seriously suggesting that we should take this shit seriously).

Below, watch Mike Patton, Trevor Dunn, and Gemini cover Maiden, Priest, Mötley Crüe, Kiss, Quiet Riot, and more… I hope it brings you as much joy as it did I:

Thanks: Tom L.

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