If you have an idea that would improve RSS for everyone, how about writing a blog post about it so we can all give it consideration, think about it, and possibly support your idea?
I've given this a lot of thought, and more than a meetup, what we need are people putting serious stakes in the ground. Interop they're willing to work on. Investments they're ready to make that could benefit their competitors possibly more than themselves.
We don't need 20 companies vying to be the 800-pound gorilla. We need an NBA or Major League Baseball. Some new rules that help our sport work better for the fans and the players.
In a blog post I wrote before RSS even existed, I said this:
Here's an invitation to truly embrace the creativity of others. Instead of beating your breast about how great you are, try saying how great someone else is. Look for win-wins, make that your new religion. Establish a policy that nothing will be announced unless it can be shown that someone else will win because of what you're doing. How much happier we would be if instead of crippling each other with fear, we competed to empower each others' creativity.
If there's going to be some new growth in RSS it's going to have to benefit everyone not just you. If you're willing to step up, now's a great time to do it.
PS: Here's an example of the kind of post I'm looking for. Nothing earth-shaking. The simpler the better. The idea is to build new interop.
I'm going to accumulate links to posts here. Hopefully the list gets reallllly long! :-)
Earlier this year, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) publicly revealed for the first time in a hearing that it has been using drones to conduct surveillance operations inside the country, a striking admission, given that domestic drone is a subject of intense debate and there's still not a clear set of rules governing the practice. Now, under prodding from Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), the FBI has finally offered a few more details about it's use of drones, namely, in how many cases it's deployed them and that it's never sought a search warrant for doing so. "Since late 2006, the FBI has conducted surveillance using UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] in eight criminal cases and two national security cases," wrote Stephen D. Kelley, the FBI's assistant director for the office of congressional affairs, in a letter to Paul. In a footnote added to this statement, Kelly explains drones were also approved in 3 other cases, but the FBI didn't use them.
"there has been no need for the FBI to seek a warrant or judicial order."
Kelley touts the success of the FBI using a surveillance drone in one in highly-publicized case, in which it helped rescue a 5-year-old boy from a kidnapper back in April. He notes that none of the drones the FBI uses are armed with any weapons, lethal or otherwise, and that drone use "must be approved by senior FBI management at FBI headquarters and in the relevant FBI field office." But the new information raises many more questions than it answers, namely: how many different times the FBI actually flew drones on each these cases? For how long? What specific information was captured by the drones during flight? And, what types of drones were used?
Then there's the issue of the Fourth Amendment, which protects US citizens from unreasonable search and seizure, and which typically means that law enforcement has to get a warrant to conduct a search. Kelly, though, reveals in his letter to Paul that the FBI hasn't actually obtained a warrant for any of its drone surveillance operations so far. "To date, there has been no need for the FBI to seek a warrant or judicial order in any of the few cases where UAVs have been used," Kelley writes, saying in all of the cases, the people surveilled had no "reasonable expectation of privacy."
But that rationale highlights a larger ambiguity about drone use on American soil, which is that there's great uncertainty over when aerial surveillance of any kind is legal. The Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that it was okay for a police department to fly a manned helicopter 400 feet above a suspect's property without getting a warrant, but it's unclear if flying any closer is Constitutional. Paul, for his part, says he's not satisfied with the FBI's explanations for warrantless drone use, and has sent the agency another letter saying he's concerned that it's "overbroad," and asking for more information. In the meantime, the new FBI disclosures provide at least a bit more insight into how fast surveillance practices are changing, and how the legal system has yet to catch up.
Let’s go back even further and peel off the gloss of nostalgia that covers those glorious touchstones of our youth.Star Wars? You have a boy named Luke Skywalker fighting an evil galactic empire, and the main bad guy—toweringly huge, clad entirely in black, and with a name that screams “villain”—is practically a caricature of movie evil. Raiders of the Lost Ark? The hero is trying to stop Nazis from stealing the Ark of the Covenant and the hero’s name is Indiana Jones. If you have a problem with a name like “Stacker Pentecost” and not with that, I can’t help you.
A loaf of bread made in the first century AD, which was discovered at Pompeii, preserved for centuries in the volcanic ashes of Mount Vesuvius. The markings visible on the top are made from a Roman bread stamp, which bakeries were required to use in order to mark the source of the loaves, and to prevent fraud. (via Ridiculously Interesting)
(sigh) I’ve seen these before, but this one’s particularly beautiful.
The reach of NSA's PRISM program has spooked some overseas companies from using US cloud providers.
The revelations about the National Security Agency’s (NSA) broad monitoring of traffic and access to the data of cloud providers spurred by the actions of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden may or may not have hurt national security, depending on who you ask. But according to a recent survey by the industry organization Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), the exposure of NSA’s PRISM program is having a very real impact on the bottom line of US cloud service providers in the form of lost overseas customers.
Concerns about NSA surveillance are hardly new. The PATRIOT Act’s “Enhanced Surveillance” provisions have raised privacy concerns about using US service providers since it was passed. The allowance for warrantless access to traffic to and from “protected computers,” the overly broad definition of what exactly a protected computer is, and provisions for access to business records and metadata about customers left many concerned that the FBI and NSA could gain access to their corporate data just by asking cloud providers nicely for it. Revelations about the NSA’s collection of phone call metadata from telecom companies in 2006 offered more evidence for those concerns.
Two years ago, I was interviewing the CIO of a major Canadian healthcare organization for a story on cloud computing, and asked if he had considered using US cloud providers or software-as-a-service. He said that he couldn’t even begin to consider those because of concerns because of Canadian patient privacy laws—not just because of differences between US and Canadian laws, but because of the assumption that NSA would gain access to patient records as they crossed the border.
117 days ago, having never done any programming in her life, Jennifer Dewalt built her first webpage. The next day, she built another, and she has kept building one new webpage every single day.
Instead of beginning with "Hello World," a class, or an interactive tutorial, Dewalt decided to just start coding, she wrote on Wednesday, day 115 of her trial by fire.
What’s the best way to learn to code? After pondering this question for way too long, I decided to JFDI. But instead of just starting aimlessly, I decided to adhere to a simple and strict structure:
1. Build a different website every day for 180 consecutive days. 2. Every website must be accompanied by a blog post. 3. Any code I write must be made publicly available on GitHub (open source) so that everyone can see it.
The San Francisco resident notes that her background is in art, but she wanted to move beyond drawings and sculptures. "[W]e are no longer governed by physical media," she wrote. "We have the Internet! The Internet is awesome because it breaks down so many obstacles that used to inhibit communication. Barriers to communication are so low, in fact, that we feel compelled to create virtual identities in order to communicate and interact with each other. I think this virtual interplay is ridiculously awesome, and I’m not satisfied with just being part of the conversation. I want to be able to create the communication channel that makes these interactions possible."
"The Tick" creator Ben Edlund was joined by plenty of surprise guests at Comic-Con International in San Diego to celebrate the mightiest of the big blue heroes' birthday, the big twenty-five.
Your mental image of Siberia is probably a snowy, wind-whipped expanse, perhaps with a cluster of buildings to house those banished from Russian society. Not this week.
An anonymous reader writes "Following the /. story on the Feds demanding SSL keys, now comes news that the feds are demanding user passwords, and in some cases, the encryption algorithm and salt used. From the article: 'A second person who has worked at a large Silicon Valley company confirmed that it received legal requests from the federal government for stored passwords. Companies "really heavily scrutinize" these requests, the person said. "There's a lot of 'over my dead body.'" ... Some of the government orders demand not only a user's password but also the encryption algorithm and the so-called salt, according to a person familiar with the requests. ... Other orders demand the secret question codes often associated with user accounts.' I'm next expecting to see the regulation or law demanding that all users use plain text for all web transactions, to catch terrorists and for the children."
wiredmikey writes "A shocking and sad day today in the security industry. Well known hacker Barnaby Jack has passed away, sending a shock through the security community. Jack, a famed white hat hacker, was scheduled to present at the Black Hat conference on Tuesday, and present research on vulnerabilities in implantable medical devices. Shocked reactions hit the Twittersphere on Friday, as many in the industry conveyed their condolences, shock, and even disbelief, hoping new of the death was some sort of hoax. 'I just wake up and heard this, really sad, I can't believe this, no words,' Cesar Cerrudo, CTO, IOActive Labs, said in an email to SecurityWeek. Barnaby Jack is probably best known for his ATM hacking demonstrations, which he liked to refer as 'Jackpotting,' and performed at a few conferences, including a demonstration at Black Hat 2010 that got media attention around the world. The San Francisco Medical Examiner's office told Reuters that Jack had died in San Francisco on Thursday, but did not provide additional details."
netbuzz writes "The latest scam involving stolen and/or fake Cisco equipment may also be one of the largest, as the Department of Justice says a 43-year-old San Jose-based reseller accumulated $37 million in ill-gotten gains over a period of years that he then poured into real estate and luxury cars. The feds say the guy also used part of the loot to set up college funds for his four children. At least four other such scams have been perpetrated against Cisco in recent years."
[If you can not see a video here view this post on Brand New]
Link
As part of the Wall Street Journal's Startup of the Year project, will.i.am explains when there is a problem with logos. And something about India.
nailed it DeMartino is only on for two seconds; absolutely nailed it
Obviously Aubrey Plaza was born to play Daria—the classic late '90s MTV cartoon about a high school girl with the flattest affect of all time—and obviously there should be a Daria movie. And yet? We must content ourselves with this fake trailer for a fake Daria movie starring real Aubrey Plaza. NOW DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHY I'M SO DISSATISFIED WITH LIFE???
least favorite trend of the modern internet is hiring assholes to talk for a minute before and after a 15 second youtube video about how fucking hilarious the youtube video is (attn: HuffPo, Yahoo)
You know those heartwarming videos of dogs welcoming their owners home after being away for a long time? Well, when it comes to our feline friends, the excitement level is just a little bit lower.
Because of Bull’s unique coat, he is suspected of being a chimera, a single animal that genetically is two animals, i.e., an individual that is its own twin. Bull, then, appears to be a chimera that is both black Lab and yellow Lab.
The public is divided over the not guilty verdict in the George Zimmerman trial and over the conversation about race that has surrounded it. The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted July 17-21 among 1,480 adults nationwide finds roughly as many satisfied with the verdict in the case(39%) as dissatisfied (42%), with nearly one-in-five (19%) offering no opinion.
More broadly, 52% say race is getting more attention in this case than it deserves, while 36% say the case raises important issues about race that need to be discussed.
African Americans express a clear and strong reaction to the case and its meaning: By an 86% to 5% margin, blacks are dissatisfied with Zimmerman’s acquittal in the death of Trayvon Martin. And nearly eight-in-ten blacks (78%) say the case raises important issues about race that need to be discussed. Among whites, more are satisfied (49%) than dissatisfied (30%) with the outcome of the Zimmerman trial. Just 28% of whites say the case raises important issues about race, while twice as many (60%) say the issue of race is getting more attention than it deserves.
Not only do reactions to the outcome of the case vary widely across racial lines, but overall interest levels also are very different. When asked, in a separate survey, what recent news story they are talking about with friends and family, 63% of blacks volunteer the Zimmerman trial compared with 42% of whites. Nearly six-in-ten African Americans (58%) say they followed news about the verdict and reactions to the case very closely compared with 34% of whites.
Young Less Satisfied with Outcome
Younger Americans express far more dissatisfaction over the Zimmerman trial verdict than do older Americans. Among those under 30, 53% say they are dissatisfied with the verdict and just 29% are satisfied. The balance of opinion is the reverse among those ages 65 and older: 50% are satisfied and just 33% dissatisfied. (See the table at the end of this report for a detailed look at opinions about the Zimmerman verdict.)
To be sure, some of this reflects the higher share of minorities among younger age groups. But there are sizable age differences in whites’ reactions to the verdict. Among whites younger than 30, as many are satisfied (39%) as dissatisfied (41%) with the Zimmerman verdict. Among whites 50 and older, majorities are satisfied with the verdict (57% of those 50-64, 56% of those 65 and older).
Verdict Divides along Partisan Lines
Reactions to the Zimmerman verdict are deeply split along partisan lines. A majority of Republicans (61%) express satisfaction with the verdict, compared with 42% of independents and just 22% of Democrats.
Partisan differences are nearly as stark among whites: White Republicans are about twice as likely as white Democrats to be satisfied with the verdict (65% vs. 30%).
Tea Party Republicans have an especially positive reaction to the verdict in Zimmerman’s trial. Fully 80% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who agree with the Tea Party are satisfied with the verdict, compared with 51% of Republicans and leaners who do not agree with the Tea Party.
While most white Democrats are unhappy with the verdict, dissatisfaction with the outcome is much broader among black Democrats (91% dissatisfied) than among white Democrats (56% dissatisfied).
There also are gender differences in opinions about the Zimmerman verdict. More men are satisfied (44%) than dissatisfied (36%) with the trial’s outcome while women, on balance, are more dissatisfied (48% dissatisfied vs. 35% satisfied). These differences are evident even when the respondent’s race is taken into account.
There is a substantial gender divide in views of race and the Zimmerman case. By nearly two-to-one (57%-29%) men say the issue of race is getting too much attention. But women are evenly divided: 43% say the case raises important issues about race that need to be discussed, while 46% say race is getting too much attention.
Most Democrats (62%) say race is an important issue in the case that should be discussed. This is also the view of a smaller majority (53%) of white Democrats. Just 18% of Republicans say the case raises important issues about race that merit further discussion while 68% say the issue of race is getting more attention than it deserves.
Established in 2004 as YouSendIt, Hightail, as it was renamed earlier this month, is an online service that allows transfer of large files between users — 43 million registered users plus however many non-registered users. YouSendIt was one of the (if not the) first player to allow this service — before DropBox and WeTransfer arrived on the scene — and despite its horrible user interface and clunky functionality at the time, it became the most well-known service for sending files that would otherwise clog e-mail programs. Today, beyond sending and receiving, the service offers "online file storage, sharing and management capabilities" so the name was apparently holding them back. Hightail worked with Siegel+Gale on naming and strategy and designed its own identity in-house.
"Hightail brings humanity to what was the YouSendIt brand," said Nik Contis, global director of naming for Siegel+Gale. "The new name elevates the brand, and brings forth the passion and drive of Hightail's customers."
The name Hightail suggests the ideas of speed, energy, motion, accomplishment, satisfaction and fun. Using Hightail creates a sense of empowerment, and enables customers to get things done quickly and efficiently.
Siegel+Gale press release
Hightail's C-level officers talk about moving "beyond send" in explaining the name change.
With a name that strides like a giant across a landscape of Boxes, Syncs and Shares alongside an audaciously elegant look that contrasts with the endless dreary blues of the cloud space, Hightail leads by example. It is the standard bearer that will help transform steady growth into true evolution and take our business to the next level.
An overly idealized version of Hightail in full effect.
A lot of people — on Facebook, on other blogs, and even in the tips we received about it — seem almost personally offended about the new name. Some even consider it misogynistic for the use of "tail" as slang for men trying to get laid (with women). The reaction has been a little extreme. The name is fine. My only problem is that, to me, hightailing it means escaping a bad situation more than doing something at high speed. Also, it's not like YouSendIt, with its triple camel case, was a thing of beauty and it was difficult to use in a sentence: "I'll send you the files via YouSendIt," whereas now you can just say "I'll Hightail you the files". That's economy of words right there. The biggest hurdle is getting people to calling the service Hightail and not YouSendIt. It should take about six months.
The text-only lockup of our name had to be bold and instantly recognizable. As I worked through different versions, I kept asking myself: would this work on the side of a space shuttle? Though simplicity was the main aim, I also wanted to give the wordmark something extra. The horizontal bar over the H adds a playfulness that subtly conveys the idea of doing more and that's what Hightail is all about. The Hightail wordmark is an introductory handshake that appears on our marketing and sales material, in press articles and on our corporate website.
[We] also wanted another mark for our users -- something more personal, a sign that you're among friends. That mark is the Hightop and it represents how we want people to feel when they use Hightail. It's a design you might see on an astronaut's mission patch or an Eagle Scout badge, a mark that symbolizes the success and accomplishment of completing the task at hand, something that lets you know you're part of a team.
I wanted the Hightop to have its own frame. But I refused to use a circle. […] I wanted something different, a shape that would speak to our brand values of exploration and movement, a frame that was balanced and geometric but also dynamic and original. Odd number-sided shapes are perfect thanks to a flat base that grounds the shape and a point at the top that moves your eye up and out. Triangles are boring, pentagons are too militaristic and nonagons don't reduce well, which made the heptagon an easy decision.
The Hightop's colorsHightail's Facebook cover image (made darker in Photoshop so that you could see it).New signage.Paper cups.
Regarding the identity… the old logo was fairly decent with its paper airplane that provided a nice metaphor for sending digital files lightly among users, but its blue and green color palette and web design at the time, made it feel like a phishing site. The new logo and web/app design is clearly meant to make the service appear more sophisticated and trustworthy. The new wordmark, based on Hoefler & Frere-Jones' Tungsten, is handsome and bold. Hard to criticize for anything other than being simplistic (or having no more paper airplane). The dash above it doesn't quite "convey the idea of doing more" as the quote suggests. I actually thought the dash had been added so that when "The Hightop" mark is used on its own, it creates a "T" in the counterspace of the "H" and the dash, short for HighTail. The Hightop mark is a nice reduction of the identity and the heptagon shape will probably what makes the new identity stick.
A hipster explains the benefits of Hightail's mobile app.
In the link to the quotes above, there is a lot of talk about space exploration and astronauts and wondering if the new logo would work on the side of a space shuttle — it's fine to have big ambitions, but let's also drop it a notch. This whole higher-meaning becomes a little grating in all the videos and Hightail's Facebook status updates. There is a little too much confidence in the new name and brand that doesn't allow its users and audience to build it for them and help establish a productive bond that will make them choose Hightail over its competitors. Overall, I think the change is very positive but I could have done without the "We Rule" attitude.
Hed is deceptive; the suggestion in the story is actually worse, claiming the men were paid to go to a bar and get drunk and convince the woman to let them grope and harass her three times, ostensibly for footage to be used in an amateur film on plastic surgery. The men were paid $90 each, the woman nothing, and nothing really suggests she consented (or was even in a state to consent) to being groped for a film.
It now appears that the video was likely staged, with the men playing assigned roles and the woman an actress who participated willingly.
If you're a "normal married dude," who also happens to have a ton of sex on the side, you probably go to a motel or the back of a Jeep, I don't know. But if you're Google's executive chairman, knee deep in it with billions to spend, you have this soundproofed third base Xanadu.
Context: Sean Payton, the New Orleans Saints' only Super Bowl-winning coach and consensus best offensive coach active in professional American football, was suspended for all of last year because of his stupid defensive coordinator.
Unable to coach pro football, he coached his son's sixth-grade football team. The team went to the league championship and lost only two games, but both losses came against the same team, and both losses were by criminally large margins.
After the first loss (38-6), Payton pulled in two retired hall-of-fame coaches, Gruden and Parcells -- five Super Bowl championship rings between the three of them -- to rework his game plan ahead of the rematch.
Adams’s team has 12 plays, with names picked by his kids to help them remember their assignments: “Power” is “Pizza” and “Spinner” is “Spaghetti,” and so on. The important thing is not so much the plays but how they are taught and how they fit together. “We have a counter for every run, and a fake off of every counter,” says Adams. Before going to this system, Adams says he’d “never won anything” in football, “at any level, including in college.” But since taking over at Springtown Orange, he’s turned the team around in just a couple of seasons, bringing home their first title last season. If it’s good enough to beat Sean Payton, with the assistance of Jon Gruden and Bill Parcells, does that mean Cisar, Adams, and others are onto something big?
Suggesting that, of course, seems absurd. Youth football and the NFL are obviously night-and-day different; it’s laughable to suggest that because the single wing won a sixth-grade championship it could win a Lombardi Trophy, so laughable that no one would suggest it. No one, that is, except Vince Lombardi: “What would happen if someone came out with the single-wing offense?” Lombardi once asked. “It would embarrass the hell out of us.” And Lombardi wasn’t alone. Roughly 20 years later, fellow Hall of Fame coach Bill Walsh once said he’d “reflected on the single wing,” and, in his view, “those blocking schemes would just chew up NFL defenses. You could double-team every hole and trap every hole.”
'“I know I have a history of knee issues and microfracture surgeries, but my doctors will clear me for full-contact by early August, and I’ll definitely be ready by opening day,” Oden said while reportedly experiencing sweeping, severe burning sensations across every inch of his skin.'
INDIANAPOLIS—Having already received interest from several other NBA teams, reports confirmed Thursday that former Portland Trail Blazers center Greg Oden suppressed acute shooting pains throughout his entire body while holding talks...
Capcom has confirmed on its official blog that the DLC episode and costumes recently announced for the Japanese version of Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies will also make their way to western territories, sometime after the game is released on the 3DS eShop this fall.
No release date was given for the extra content as no release date yet exists for the game itself, although Capcom did divulge that the bonus episode is entitled "Turnabout Return." It also dropped a small handful of screenshots of the bonus costumes, which we picked up and put into this-here gallery. There was also no word on pricing, or whether the costumes and extra episode will be sold separately.
What we do know, and this is perhaps the most important thing, is that there's an orca whale with a mustache and a pretty pink star on its head.
aka run the defense I used against my college roommate in Madden and just get like the fastest dude with at least 80 tackle and strafe in front of him five yards back from the goal line but that only really worked in Madden 06 because directing blockers only worked past the line of scrimmage
That second player doesn’t even have to be a linebacker. Alabama, which has won three national championships in four years and boasts the best defense in college football, constantly varies the defenders assigned to the quarterback. When Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart gives a “force” call, he explains, that leads to a gap replacement with the defensive end. “The quarterback sees the crashing end and pulls the ball,” Smart says. “We roll the free safety down to the line of scrimmage and he has the quarterback.” And all this varies based on the opponent. “If the quarterback is a better runner, we make him give to the tailback,” said Smart. “If the tailback is the better runner, we give the force call, and the defensive end crashes inside and makes the quarterback pull the ball.”
Not all the problems with defending these plays last season were tactical. NFL defenders not used to the read-option frequently lacked the mastery of the subtle techniques that made them All-Pros against traditional attacks. Backside defenders — usually the very player the quarterback is reading — have an especially difficult job. “The defensive end gets the shaft because he has to play two aspects: the dive, the bend of the dive to the inside out to the QB,” says Aranda, the Wisconsin defensive coordinator. This fundamental problem is also why the old just-hit-the-quarterback tactic is not optimal, at least as an every-down strategy. If the defensive end or linebacker gets upfield too quickly, that means he is not squeezing the cutback and may be opening up a huge lane for the quarterback.
You know what would be cool?
(39%) as dissatisfied (42%), with nearly one-in-five (19%) offering no opinion.
ay the case raises important issues about race that need to be discussed. Among whites, more are satisfied (49%) than dissatisfied (30%) with the outcome of the Zimmerman trial. Just 28% of whites say the case raises important issues about race, while twice as many (60%) say the issue of race is getting more attention than it deserves.
he verdict and just 29% are satisfied. The balance of opinion is the reverse among those ages 65 and older: 50% are satisfied and just 33% dissatisfied. (See the table at the end of this report for a detailed look at opinions about the Zimmerman verdict.)
hile most white Democrats are unhappy with the verdict, dissatisfaction with the outcome is much broader among black Democrats (91% dissatisfied) than among white Democrats (56% dissatisfied).
of Hispanics and just 28% of whites. (See the table at the end of this report for a detailed look at opinions about whether the case raises important issue about race that need to be discussed).
Capcom has confirmed on its official blog that the DLC episode and costumes recently announced for the Japanese version of Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies will also make their way to western territories, sometime after the game is released on the 3DS eShop this fall.
Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies DLC episode, costumes headed west originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 25 Jul 2013 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.