Flowing Data has an excellent visual analysis of a ton of data. There are no conclusions presented, just data. It's fascinating to see all of this data on one page. I particularly found the Income charts interesting. It's hard for me to spend less than an hour looking at these charts.
Today, finally, the Federal Circuit overruled that case law and recognized the statute means what it says: if you claim something functionally, regardless of whether you use magic words, you’re likely limited to what you actually describe.
I know several people that work in patent law (it's even less awesome that it sounds). This is big news.
My bestie is a zoo keeper, and she told me that because of Jurassic World it has become a craze in the keeper community (!) to re-enact Chris Pratt. You guys, this is the best.
'Hello Games' Sean Murray announced that the highly anticipated No Man's Sky will be coming to PC the same day as the PS4, though he gave no indication of when that release would be, precisely. Murray talked a bit about the AI bots his team had to design to go and test the game's procedurally generated universe, creating technical reports and GIFs automatically for evaluation. "We grew up playing Elite. This was the game I imagined at the time," Murray said of his ambitious creation.'
'Cult hit European Truck Simulator is coming across the ocean as American Truck Simulator, which uses Google Maps to recreate US roads with accuracy.'
The first ever PC Gaming Show at E3 dragged a bit at points during its two-and-a-half hour run time. Still, the eclectic mix of on-stage interviews, trailers, and live demos offered its fair share of announcements for PC players who stuck with it until the end (like our steely nerved livebloggers). Here's a quick (but still lengthy) summary of the major news:
Microsoft head of Xbox Phil Spencer made an appearance to announce that Killer Instinct will be making the jump from Xbox One to PC. He also talked up Microsoft's renewed commitment to PC gaming and stressed how offering players a free upgrade to Windows 10 would allow PC developers to target a single OS as much as possible, rather than having to test on multiple versions of Windows. "We want to respect when developers choose to target TV screens, or when developers choose to go with mouse-and-keyboard control," he said.
Rod Fergusson of The Coalition announced another major Xbox title would be coming to the PC: Gears of War: Ultimate Edition. The series' first PC release since the original game was released in 2007 is actually a remake of that original game, but now with support for 4K resolution, an unlimited refresh rate, DirectX 12 graphics, and mouse/keyboard or wireless controller support on Windows 10.
Patrick O'Neill writes: After suffering one of the biggest hacks in federal history at the Office of Personnel Management, the U.S. government is sprinting to require a wide range of cybersecurity improvements across agencies in order to better secure troves of sensitive government data against constant cyberattacks. The top priorities are basic but key: Encryption of sensitive data and two-factor authentication required for privileged users. Despite eight years of internal warnings, these measures were not implemented at OPM when hackers breached their systems beginning last year. The calls for added security measures comes as high-level government officials, particularly FBI director James Comey and NSA director Adm. Mike Rogers, are pushing to require backdoors on encryption software that many experts, like UPenn professor Matt Blaze, say would fundamentally "weaken our infrastructure" because the backdoors would be open to hackers as well.
The Last Guardian is a long-awaited video game about the relationship between a boy and a giant creature that features the two solving puzzles together. Though it has been in development for many, many years, Sony reintroduced the title during their E3 2015 press event with a trailer and expected release date of 2016 for the PlayStation 4.
WASHINGTON—Shedding new light on the adolescent development process, a study published Tuesday by researchers at Georgetown University has found that girls go through their manga phase earlier than boys. “As our research team analyzed hundreds of children, we saw that the onset of interest in Japanese comics and graphic novels begins about one or two years earlier in females than in males,” said lead researcher Dr. Helen Akers, noting that girls typically get their first shoujo manga by age 11 and read them for several more years until they’ve fully transitioned to josei by age 14 or 15. “By the time most girls have finished Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon, many boys are just beginning to develop an interest in Dragon Ball Z. This is why, in many seventh- or eighth-grade classrooms, you might have a girl who has read 20 volumes of Fullmetal Alchemist sitting right next to ...
... and now rode it *out* of the NBA Finals while licking his fingers and giving people high fives while someone else carried the food and beer he was apparently holding prior?
J.R. Smith gliding through the hallways of Quicken Loans Arena with a Coors Light in hand and his feet on his hovercraft. Gotta love J.R.
The U.S. Open Cup moved from a Sounders-Timbers rivalry to a Sounders-refs rivalry very quickly. Clint Dempsey went ahead and slapped the notebook out of a ref's hand while he was carding Michael Azira, then shredded it:
That's a red card. Three Sounders got red cards in this game.
This, too, would have been a red card:
Sigi Schmid says he walked away from Seattle's bench at the end because he felt he "was maybe going to choke a referee."
This is what millions and millions of dollars in crowdfunding gets you, folks.
Cloud Imperium's Chris Roberts wasn't able to be at the show live, but he attended via video conference from England. From there, he showed some of the work he and his team were doing on motion capture, which he said would help make Star Citizen comparable to major AAA releases on an emotional animation level. "It's financed by all of you out there, and that speaks to the power of PC gamers," he said.
This is all I've ever wanted from PC gaming.
Frontier's David Braben (of Elite fame) came to the stage and got a little tongue-tied as he showed off a new game that, surprisingly, didn't feature outer space or spaceships. Instead, a pre-rendered trailer for Planet Coaster showed a lot of heart. In it, roller coasters, concession stands, and happy patrons popped up all around as a man got chased down for a bear hug by a darling mascot in a T-Rex suit. Braben called it a "revival of another long-dead genre" that the team at Frontier has "wanted to make for a long time." Look for it in 2016.
Alvin Gentry did his job with the Warriors. And now he wants his star to know that big things are coming with the Pelicans.
Alvin Gentry was hired as the Pelicans' new head coach in May, but he still had a job to complete as an assistant with the Golden State Warriors. Tonight, they won the title. And as soon as he got near a camera, he had something to say to his new star:
In case you didn't catch that: He's yelling "AD, WE'RE COMING RIGHT BACK HERE!" Cool moment.
Friendly reminder that it is okay to change how you identify
Human beings are constantly changing
New information constantly circulates
This can go for your gender as well
if you identify as genderless then change to genderfluid
that is okay
if you never change how you identify, that is also okay
identity does not have to be set in stone
The dynamic of the 2015 NBA Finals changed when Warriors coach Steve Kerr inserted Andre Iguodala into the starting lineup. Iguodala made such an impact in helping Golden State win the NBA title that he took home NBA Finals MVP honors. Stephen Curry may lead the way offensively for the Warriors, but Iguodala played a massive role at both ends of the court for the new NBA champions.
Iguodala hadn't started a game all season until he joined the starting five for Game 3. The Warriors didn't lose again. He spent the series serving as the primary defender on LeBron James, and while James put up huge numbers, Iguodala did an admirable job defending and came up with several huge defensive plays in key moments against James. His defensive effort was valuable enough, but Iguodala also found his outside shot during the series and became a major offensive contributor.
While Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and even Curry struggled at times during the series, Iguodala scored 14 or more points in five of the six games. He scored 22 in a huge Game 4 performance. He was arguably the best Warrior on the floor in the clinching Game 6, scoring 25 points while several other Warriors struggled to get going offensively. He didn't become the third Splash Brother during the series, but did rediscover his outside shot some and hit some timely three-pointers.
During the season, Kerr used Iguodala as a calming influence off the bench to settle the action when things went awry on the floor. He served that same role against Cleveland, but did so while playing defense against the best player int he world and while logging huge minutes. He was Golden State's best two-way player all series and was rewarded for his effort.
Iguodala claims Finals MVP honors over Curry who was excellent in his own right. The regular season MVP struggled at times -- including in Game 2 -- but could have easily added Finals MVP to his trophy case. He was at his best during the fourth quarters, twice scoring 17 in the final quarter while also heating up on Tuesday to put the game out of reach.
'It's one thing to win. It's another thing to win and innovate. The Warriors walked that daring path successfully, and in turn, they will inspire a generation of copycats around the league. That is the truest mark of a historic team.'
Instead of wondering if the Warriors are worthy champions, we should be appreciating just how unique their rise has been.
There's a school of thought that the Golden State Warriors somehow aren't worthy NBA champions. Everyone respects the hard work they've done, but skeptics love to shout that they benefited from forces beyond their control to reach the summit.
Those skeptics like to ask lots of questions, as skeptics do. Would they have won the title if Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love played in the Finals? Would they have won if the two next-best West teams didn't have to play each other in the first round? Would they have won if Oklahoma City wasn't reduced to a manic Russell Westbrook and nobody else? Would they have won if they weren't the only top contender to avoid critical injuries?
The answer to those questions is besides the point. Every NBA champion wins through a combination of amazing play, good health and luck. The last two Heat champions benefited from Derrick Rose's injury. Suns fans still think the Spurs' 2007 title is tainted by Phoenix's controversial suspensions. Michael Jordan's Bulls won their first title a Lakers team falling apart with injuries and never had to play Hakeem's Rockets. The 80s Lakers and Celtics played against JV opposition in their conferences compared to today's champions. The 60s Celtics didn't even have actual opposition until the Finals. We can play this game forever.
Besides, this year, the answer to all the skeptics' questions was yes. That's how good the Warriors were.
Golden State won 67 regular-season games and had one of the eight best point differentials of all time. They lost just seven times with their full roster healthy in the regular season, an amazing accomplishment in an era where talent is spread so evenly through the league. They had the league's MVP in Stephen Curry and reasonably could also have won Defensive Player of the Year (Draymond Green), Coach of the Year (Steve Kerr), Most Improved (Klay Thompson) and Sixth Man of the Year (Andre Iguodala).
They then blew through the playoffs, going 16-5 with a net point differential matched only by three other champions since 1997. They never faced elimination, something LeBron's Heat, the Big 3 Celtics, last year's amazing Spurs and four of Kobe Bryant's five champion Lakers clubs can't say. When the Warriors twice faced 2-1 deficits, they made bold adjustments that led to three straight comfortable victories.
Those skeptics are just making excuses for not seeing these Warriors coming. With one notable exception, no credible voices predicted the Warriors would win the title before the season began. They made no major roster changes from a team that lost in the first round. A new coaching staff came aboard, but since when has a new coaching staff ever turned a good team into a historic one in one season?
Since 2015, apparently. Steve Kerr and his staff designed a new offensive system that activated the unique talents of Curry, Thompson and Green while elevating the already-stout defense even higher in the rankings. Kerr expertly navigated egos, moving proud veteran Andre Iguodala and former All-Star David Lee to the bench without incident. Then, he elevated Iguodala again in the Finals and sent Andrew Bogut, once the foundation of Golden State's defense, to DNP-CD land. Iguodala rewarded Kerr's faith by winning the NBA Finals MVP award. Every button Kerr pushed worked.
A coaching staff isn't supposed to make this big a difference so quickly. The Warriors' did.
Then, there's how the Warriors won. They are not the first team to spread the floor and shoot threes, but they did it without a Big 3 like Miami, a legendary big man like Tim Duncan or a collection of experienced veterans like Dallas. Their star shot 30-footers and then countered with drives to set up three-footers. They pushed the ball for threes and accepted twos when those were taken away. They played fast and still shut teams down defensively. They turned down a trade for a top-10 player because they thought he couldn't help them win as much as a guard that hadn't sniffed an All-Star team prior to this year.
Maybe that's why skeptics exist. It's unreasonable to expect any team can transform this much in one year. It's unreasonable to believe any team can win in a way that flips the middle finger at the right way to win a title. It must be a historical blip, and historical blips quickly correct themselves.
Yet this actually makes the Warriors' title more impressive. It's one thing to win. It's another thing to win and innovate. The Warriors walked that daring path successfully, and in turn, they will inspire a generation of copycats around the league. That is the truest mark of a historic team.
The Warriors challenged everything we thought we knew about this game and won in dominant fashion when other basketball revolutionaries couldn't. You can choose to appreciate that, or you can keep appealing to the court of basketball conventional wisdom on the basis of procedural technicalities.
'Michael Jordan never had to play an opponent this good. Michael Jordan never had to play the opponents he did play with as little help as James. Would Jordan have been able to overcome the odds James faced this year due to his incredible greatness? Maybe! We'll never know. He never had to.'
LeBron James was brilliant against a great team with awful teammates. If you're looking for reasons to hate LeBron James, this isn't one of them.
We are not LeBron James stans. We understand that it is quite possible that he can fail, and that on some points in his career, he has failed.
This is not one of those failures. Calling this a failure implies the Golden State Warriors aren't good. Calling this a failure implies James underperformed. Calling this a failure implies James' teammates were good enough to win.
None of these things are true. In fact, pretty much the opposite of all three are true. Criticizing LeBron James for this series is stupid, unless you think it's reasonable to criticize a guy who played really well for the fact that his teammates were awful and his opponents were incredible.
LeBron was amazing
James was brilliant as a scorer. With the best defense hounding him, he dropped 35.8 points per game. James was brilliant as a passer, averaging 8.8 assists per game. James was brilliant as a rebounder, averaging 13.3 rebounds per game.
LeBron was brilliant doing everything. He had two triple-doubles, including the first 40-point triple double in the NBA Finals in 30 years. He averaged a stat line that few players had scored in a single game in the history of the Finals. James did this on nearly no rest, and with no other decent offensive option on his team. That's amazing.
The Warriors are really incredible
The Warriors won 67 regular-season games, tied for fourth-most of all time. They had an average point differential of 10.2 points per game, the eight-best of all time. They had the second-best offense in the league in terms of efficiency and the best in terms of points per game. They had the best defense in terms of efficiency.
When the postseason started, they didn't relent. They only dropped three games in three series to win the Western Conference, which was among the most stacked conferences in NBA history.
The Warriors were a historically great team. Only one team with a higher per-game point differential than the Warriors (the 1971-72 Bucks) and only one team with more wins than the Warriors (the 1972-73 Celtics) failed to win the NBA Finals. It makes sense that the Warriors won, too.
The Warriors were better on offense than the Cavs, better on defense than the Cavs, had a deeper bench than the Cavs, were less injured than the Cavs, and had strategies that attacked the Cavs' weaknesses. This was a mismatch.
LeBron's teammates were butt
This probably would've been an uphill battle with Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving, their second- and third-best players. Then both got hurt!
Timofey Mozgov was the best healthy player besides LeBron, and his primary skill is finishing shots James set up. Tristan Thompson was probably next best, and he isn't much of a scorer outside of putbacks. J.R. Smith, Matthew Dellavedova, and Iman Shumpert combined to average 25 points on 30 shots per game. (That is bad.) James Jones was okay, if one-dimensional. The Cavaliers didn't regularly play any other players, meaning these six bad-to-mediocre players and LeBron were the only options.
LeBron's teammates were completely, utterly hapless unless James made things happen. There was the time James scored or assisted 16 of 17 first half baskets in Game 5. And there's the fact that entering Game 6, the Cavs scored 97.2 points per 100 possessions when James was on the court and just 54.6 when he was off the court. One of those is sub-par. The other is egregiously awful.
★★★
LeBron James led an outgunned team into a matchup against one of the best teams in NBA history, and they probably should have been swept. Instead, they won two games and only got blown out once. The only reason is because of James' play.
Many people are very passionate about insisting LeBron James isn't so great. That he isn't Michael Jordan, that he isn't Kobe Bryant.
If you must insist James isn't great, point to one of the times he wasn't great. It's happened before! Like in 2010, when he took the NBA's best team and didn't get out of the conference semifinals, or in 2011, when he put up a series of duds while losing to an inferior Mavs team.
In 2010, James took the best team in the NBA and failed to get it out of the conference semifinals, losing to the Celtics in a series featuring a 32-point home blowout in Game 5. In 2011, James and the superstar-filled Heat had a 2-1 lead on the Mavericks, the team with the third-best record in the Western Conference. James fell apart, finishing third on the team in scoring after a string of dismal individual performances.
Using this series as evidence is completely ridiculous. Michael Jordan never had to play an opponent this good. Michael Jordan never had to play the opponents he did play with as little help as James. Would Jordan have been able to overcome the odds James faced this year due to his incredible greatness? Maybe! We'll never know. He never had to.
Criticizing LeBron James for the way he played this series is patently absurd. He was brilliant, but the odds were so stacked against him that his brilliance was futile. That shouldn't be a demerit in his book. It should be a credit to the team that just beat him, and a reminder that there's nothing sadder than a great performance squandered.
baseball is the least interesting part of baseball
Position players pitching is one of the most fun parts of baseball, so you can't blame the Phillies for wanting to see a lot of it. Tonight, they brought in Jeff Francoeur, and he started off strong!
Remember busy signals? The Phillies do. Jeff Francoeur now definitely does. Frenchy ended up throwing 48 pitches, which is kind of a lot. The bench tried everything to get the bullpen's attention. Or maybe they were just trying to give up.
Super Opinionated.
