firehose

Roughly 21 million adult Americans don't own a cellphone—and they're getting by just fine, thank you.

Dr. Drang:

At Ryan Irelan’s request, here’s a post about the structural design of potato chips by way of Euler-Bernoulli beam theory.

Worth it for the conclusion. (But don’t skip ahead. You need to read the whole thing to appreciate the conclusion.)

(And yes, this post is almost a year old. I’ve let… quite a few articles accumulate in my Instapaper queue over the last year.)

∞ Permalink

This is how Snapchat — and the most significant startup lawsuit since the Winklevosses sued Mark Zuckerberg over Facebook — was born.

Xbox Live Family Pack subscribers will soon have their bundled Xbox Live Gold accounts dissolved into individual, unlinked accounts on Tuesday, August 27, Microsoft announced yesterday in an email to subscribers.

In addition to having multiple subscription fees to worry about, this also means that users will no longer be able to access Family Pack-exclusive features, such as activity monitoring reports or the ability to allocate MS Point allowances to linked accounts. Reports will be removed during the account conversion on August 27, whereas allowances will be removed whenever the currency exchange takes place.

Microsoft is adding an additional three months of time to every Xbox Live Gold account that spawns from the conversion, so considering how Xbox Live Gold feature sharing works on the Xbox One, this isn't the worst of all possible futures - that's the one where Microsoft converts all Xbox Live Family Pack subscribers into Fruit-of-the-Month-Calendars of the Month Club subscribers. Every month, a new calendar about a different Fruit of the Month club!

Continue reading Xbox Live Family Packs converting into individual Gold accounts Aug. 27

Xbox Live Family Packs converting into individual Gold accounts Aug. 27 originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 10 Aug 2013 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Kitten with a whip

One of the great Twitter hashtags of this week is #KidNoir. Gail Simone, Kurt Busiek, and others have been coming up with punny titles for noir-genre kids movies.

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We've got a hard and fast rule against caps lock here on Joystiq, but don't think we didn't write at least three unacceptably uppercase headlines about Hyperkin's forthcoming line of pixel art controllers for PCs and Macs.

Beyond the aforementioned platforms and the fact that they're slated to release sometime next month, nothing else is known about these double-retro doodads. We're hopeful that the controllers' plentiful angles and corners will somehow tessellate into a comfortable gaming experience, despite what logic and medical science may suggest to the contrary. Still, depending on how much they wind up costing, their comfort index is likely to be completely irrelevant.

Update: Engadget got its hands on Hyperkin's pixelated controllers at E3 and found them to be "quite comfortable to hold and use." It's a medical miracle.

Pixel art controllers coming from Hyperkin this September originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 10 Aug 2013 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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People are losing their shit over Mega Kangaskhan

Nintendo blew up the spot at Pokémon World Championships by revealing another one of these dudes who can Mega evolve in Pokémon X/Y: Mega Kangaskhan.

Yeah, it’s dope that this upgrade gives it a Parental Bond ability that lets the kangaroo-dino thingy attack twice, but let’s be really real here: the baby Kangaskhan hopping out its mother’s pouch is what we’ll all remember, years from now.

And I’m not exaggerating about people flipping out over this reveal — listen to the crowd’s reaction in this clip posted by Nugget Bridge to hear what I mean:

"Ohh shhhiiiiiiiii"

PREORDER Pokemon X and Y, upcoming releases

Wow, everything I've been doing is wrong.

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An hour ago I heard a cough coming from my closet. Just a minute ago I heard it coming from under my bed… WHERE IS MY RAGGEDY DOCTOR???

One night, Phil Broughton arrived in Antarctica's Club 90 South and found the only seat available was behind the bar. That's how he became the frozen continent's de facto bartender, mixing drinks for and lending an ear to Antarctic researchers.

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by uelandir

Athletic World (Bandai - NES - 1986)

from wikipedia: “The game simulated five different Olympic-style challenges — Hurdles, Hop A Log, Animal Trail, Rafting, and Dark Tunnel. Movements in the game are controlled by the player physically running, jumping, and stepping on the pad in a similar fashion to modern dance pad games. Each challenge is designed to train the player in a different manner. Hurdles tests the player on timing, while Dark Tunnel challenges the player’s dexterity. This game also offers the unique feature of having players’ game play experience tailored to them by asking for their Name, Age, Gender, and the current date to provide them with customized advice.”

AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong fired Patch creative director Abel Lenz two minutes into Friday’s call with Patch employees.

WCVB Boston

One man dead, woman injured after trooper fires into car near Chicopee just ... Boston.com A 23-year-old man was killed and a 22-year-old woman was injured early Sunday morning when a state trooper fired several shots into their car during an altercation that broke out after a routine traffic stop near Chicopee, according to a statement from State ... Man shot to death, woman injured after altercation with Massachusetts trooper at ...The Republic State trooper on administrative leave after shootingCapecodonline Ambulance Struck by Stray Bullets After Overnight Armed Robberyabc40 MassLive.com -WSHM-TV -Boston Herald all 18 news articles »

camille-andre-book:

Mille bras

A study published last week in the New England Journal suggests that blood sugar levels may be a more important indicator than previously realized for non-diabetics: high blood sugar levels were linked by the study's authors with increased risk of dementia (summary free; full article paywalled). The study followed more than 2,000 elderly participants, and found a positive correlation between blood glucose levels and development of dementia, both for patients with and without diabetes.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OnlyMrGodKnowsWhy

code name PACKAGE

Turns out Bey was in town for her boy Jay Z's duet with that other guy at Fenway tonight. Stanley Staco reports she got as snagged by post-concert traffic as everybody else in greater Kenmore:

FENWAY: Mult Boston Police CycleDiv units Setting up to move Jay Z + Beyonce outa Fenway Area, Lansdowne St now Gridlocked - Avoid Area.

FENWAY: Jay Z + Beyonce (code name PACKAGE) now being Rolled Out Lansdowne St under Boston Police Escort - Active Area

FENWAY *update* Package in Limo Stuck on, Ipswich St, due to disabled motor vehicle ahead, Crowd is forming, BPD units working All Hands.

Original Source

OnlyMrGodKnowsWhy

Disney had warned people in advance there wouldn’t be some big reveal today despite the buzz surrounding the panel. “But we didn’t expect it to be true,” laments Entertainment Weekly’s Lindsey Bahr.

:\ :\ :\\\

Fans who packed into the Anaheim Convention Center for Disney’s live-action D23 panel on Saturday were left in a lurch, disappointed and upset, after it was revealed there would not be any news about the new Star Wars movies.

The beating Disney's taking online right now from voracious Star Wars fans ranges from the reasonably disappointed to, well, the not-so-reasonable: 

The reaction wasn't entirely unexpected. Disney had warned people in advance there wouldn't be some big reveal today despite the buzz surrounding the panel. "But we didn’t expect it to be true," laments Entertainment Weekly's Lindsey Bahr. "If Disney doesn’t do anything Star Wars, that will be the headline on many blogs Monday morning," Slashfilm's Peter Sciretta said before the panel began. Sure enough, minutes after Disney chairman Alan Horn told the crowd there wouldn't be any news Slashflim had this headline up: "Disney Chief Insists ‘Star Wars: Episode VII’ Will Arrive in 2015; No New Info Coming From D23." His tweet could be considered a threat if that wasn't how everyone is covering the disappointment, in some way, ourselves included. 

But this is what movie studios can expect from scoop-hungry fans every time they have these big conventions. The reveal hype generated by places like Comic-Con, where fans learned Batman and Superman will be teaming up for the first time on screen this year, will drive fans to react like this whenever they're left with nothing. The expectations are there, and studios can meet them or face the wrath. 

But, in the end, it's not like any of these people aren't going to line up for three months ahead of Episode Seven's release. 

Original Source

It was also used in Futurama in prof. Farmsworth’s cool o meter. At the max it goes “Oh yeah”. When Bender has a tv program wiere bad things happen.

Link

Kagetsuki writes "While grainy GIF images can have entertaining uses, they aren't the ideal animated image format due to lack of full color support and an alpha channel [for varied transparency]. Animated PNG doesn't have these faults and has been available and incorporated in quite a few browsers since roughly 2004. Lack of tools and recognition has hurt adoption, so to remedy this there is a campaign on Kickstarter to create an Open Source, high quality Animated PNG [APNG] conversion library and GUI Editor based on the APNG Assembler tool 'apngasm.' Even the primary goal includes libraries/modules for C/C++ and Ruby along with a cross platform GUI authoring tool. Aside from supporting the project simply using APNG willl help raise interest and support in the standard and bring us one step closer to a world with cleaner animated images."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The cargo vessel MS Renata deftly transports shipping containers around the port of Rotterdam, Netherlands in this time-lapse by MotorschipVitesse.

via The Presurfer

ancientromebuildings:

Baths of Caracalla - Caldarium

We mentioned yesterday in our article on Tom Hiddleston playing Captain Hook in Disney's The Pirate Fairy that Loki Hiddleston sung a few lines of "The Bare Necessities" at the D23 Expo panel where the casting was announced. Lo, video of the event has now surfaced. Personally, I'll just watch this a few times and skip the movie itself. (via: Digital Spy) Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?

Pagoda Cat is watching you meditate. Shot in Burma (Myanmar) by HeyItsWilliam, who shared this in the Boing Boing Flickr Pool.

Concept ships and environments by Yong. Concept Robots!








Keywords: concept spaceships ships flying vehicles in sci-fi science fiction alien planet environments technical concept art by YongSub Noh facebook portfolio samples concept artist from korea

ATÉ MAIS OTÁRIOS!

This remarkable quote is reported by Paul Pope, describing how a pitch of his was rebuffed by an un-named executive.

Asked by Yang if he had tried to do an all-ages book with a franchise character, Pope said he did test the waters, only to be knocked back. "Batman did pretty well, so I sat down with the head of DC Comics. I really wanted to do 'Kamandi [The Last Boy on Earth]', this Jack Kirby character. I had this great pitch… and he said 'You think this is gonna be for kids? Stop, stop. We don't publish comics for kids. We publish comics for 45-year olds. If you want to do comics for kids, you can do 'Scooby-Doo.' And I thought, 'I guess we just broke up.'"