firehose

observe-the-randomness:

I think I find this funnier than it actually is…

united_notions writes "An international team from UCSD and Philips Research have published a paper (article paywalled; extensive free related resources at UCS here) in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, showing the results of real-time magnetic resonance imaging conducted on a beatboxing performer. The authors make interesting comparisons to sounds in many minority languages around the world (such as the 'click' consonants in many African languages); they also show how beatboxing sounds can be represented using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BBC News

Italy racism row: Cecile Kyenge compared to orangutan BBC News An Italian senator has been pressured into apologising after he said the country's first black cabinet minister reminded him of an orangutan. Roberto Calderoli, from the anti-immigration Northern League, told a rally that the success of Integration Minister ... Italian senator urged to resign after racist commentUSA TODAY Top Italian senator Roberto Calderoli slammed for comparing black minister ...The Independent Italian senator likens black minister to orangutanHilton Head Island Packet Straits Times -Gazzetta del Sud english -Sky News all 65 news articles »

If you play enough video games, you end up going on some pretty silly quests. I’ve scaled buildings to find useless eagle feathers in Assassin’s Creed II, and I’ve endeavored to avoid covering myself with feces in Don’t Shit Your Pants. Still, there are limits to the inanity I’ll tolerate, and the eternal quest to earn legitimacy for games and games criticism is one quest that lies beyond the pale. Too pointless.

The Great Journey Toward Cultural Acceptance became a topic of discussion in industry circles again last week when Warren Spector, a veteran game creator, wrote an op-ed for GamesIndustry International with the headline, “Where’s Gaming’s Roger Ebert?” In the piece, Spector pleaded for more game critics in the mold of Ebert—critics who, like the lions of film commentary, write in mainstream print outlets for an audience broader than just game ...

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An anonymous reader writes "A Swedish professor of sociology has nominated Snowden for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. Giving him the prize would also 'save the Nobel Peace Prize from the disrepute that incurred by the hasty and ill-conceived decision to award U.S. President Barack Obama' the prize, according to professor Stefan Svallfors. He notes ultimately that at great personal cost, 'Edward Snowden has helped to make the world a little bit better and safer.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

by evilfaeton

She had been a Dave Matthews fan since she was 9. And she was on her way to see him at a show in Hershey, Pennsylvania. What she didn't count on was finding him stranded by the side of the road with his bicycle.

The owner of Hackaday, [Jason Calacanis], wants to sell this site.

When we posted this announcement, the comments section blew up and a whole bunch of people suggested doing a Kickstarter or crowdfunding campaign. This is it. We, the editors and contributors of Hackaday, want to buy Hackaday to keep giving you all these awesome hacks without the threat of some undue outside influence should someone else buy it.

We’re going to keep this stickied at the top of the front page for the duration of our Indiegogo campaign, so check out what else we have to say below.

Here’s the skinny: if this campaign is funded, the writers and editors of Hackaday will keep doing what we’re doing. If we’re successful, we’re going to write up more hacks than we are right now, hosting an awesome community, and expanding our custom builds. You know how [Caleb] built Thor’s Hammer? If we’re funded, we’ll be doing more stuff like that, only with a bigger budget. It will be awesome.

But wait, there’s more!

In addition to cool custom builds, we’re also going to be reaching out to the community. We’ll visit hackerspaces, do proper interviews, hold contests, and coming up with some giveaways. We might even do a few hackerspace/builder grants; sometimes we see a really cool build that’s constrained by custom or handmade parts (this spray etcher comes to mind) that need a shot in the arm and a little bit of funding to bring them into the ‘buildable by everyone’ level.

But wait, there’s problems!

Half a million dollars is a lot of money. A ton. You know when you see the ‘briefcase with a million dollars’ in movies and TV shows? That briefcase couldn’t hold a million dollars. It would probably be something like $200 – $300k. We’re going to need a lot of help from the Hackaday community.

[Jason] did offer a revenue-sharing plan for the community to buy Hackaday, something along the lines of $300,000 up front, and $10k a month for 30 months. We don’t want to do that. That would actually decrease the revenue available to the writers and editors for two and a half years. Yes, with this plan, the community would ‘own’ Hackaday, but it would be worse – no projects, no really cool stuff – for a fairly long time. We want to hit the ground running.

It’s also been suggested that Hackaday come up with some sort of equity system, effectively selling off shares so a whole bunch of people (or companies) have ownership. This is exactly the problem we’re facing right now – the possibility of an unknown business having undue influence over Hackaday. Too many cooks, or something like that. We’d like to keep this in the family, with the same amount of ads, the same content, but the independence to do what Hackaday should.

I must admit I’m rather pessimistic about Hackaday being able to get half a million dollars in crowdfunding. I’m willing to be proven wrong.

In the interest of fairness…

This is not the only ‘lets crowdfund Hackaday’ project out there. [Logan Collins] and [Brett Diedrich] have their own Indiegogo campaign running. [Caleb] and I talked with these guys, but we came to an impasse as to how Hackaday should be run in the future.

If the Hackaday community likes [Logan] and [Brett]‘s ideas, I encourage you to support them. This is a community driven site, and we’ll be more than happy to support anyone who comes up with a better crowdfunding campaign.

And that’s all she wrote

So there you go. We’re crowdfunding Hackaday so we can be independant forever and do really cool stuff. The owner of this site has assured me he’s on board with this plan.

This post is going to be stickied for the duration of the campaign, so if you have any questions, ask them in the comments. I’ll update this post with an FAQ shortly.

Filed under: Featured, news

shelikestowakeupandjustfakeit:

pre-order the book.

	Courtney shared this story from Ta-Nehisi Coates : The Atlantic:
	Mandatory reading of the day.

---

In trying to assess the the killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, two seemingly conflicted truths emerge for me. The first is that is that based on the case presented by the state, and based on Florida law, George Zimmerman should not have been convicted of second degree murder or manslaughter. The second is the killing of Trayvon Martin is a profound injustice. In examining the first conclusion, I think it's important to take a very hard look at the qualifications allowed for aggressors by Florida's self-defense statute:

 Use of force by aggressor.--The justification described in the preceding sections of this chapter is not available to a person who: (1) Is attempting to commit, committing, or escaping after the commission of, a forcible felony; or

(2) Initially provokes the use of force against himself or herself, unless:

(a) Such force is so great that the person reasonably believes that he or she is in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm and that he or she has exhausted every reasonable means to escape such danger other than the use of force which is likely to cause death or great bodily harm to the assailant; or

(b) In good faith, the person withdraws from physical contact with the assailant and indicates clearly to the assailant that he or she desires to withdraw and terminate the use of force, but the assailant continues or resumes the use of force.

I don't think the import of this is being appreciated. Effectively, I can bait you into a fight and if I start losing I can can legally kill you, provided I "believe" myself to be subject to "great bodily harm." It is then the state's job to prove--beyond a reasonable doubt--that I either did not actually fear for my life, or my fear was unreasonable. In the case of George Zimmerman, even if the state proved that he baited an encounter (and I am not sure they did) they still must prove that he had no reasonable justification to fear for his life. You see very similar language in the actual instructions given to the jury:

In deciding whether George Zimmerman was justified in the use of deadly force, you must judge him by the circumstances by which he was surrounded at the time the force was used. The danger facing George Zimmerman need not have been actual; however, to justify the use of deadly force, the appearance of danger must have been so real that a reasonably cautious and prudent person under the same circumstances would have believed that the danger could be avoided only through the use of that force. Based upon appearances, George Zimmerman must have actually believed that the danger was real.

If George Zimmerman was not engaged in an unlawful activity and was attacked in any place where he had a right to be, he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he reasonably believed that it was necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

There has been a lot of complaint that "stand your ground" has nothing to do with this case. That contention is contravened by the fact that it is cited in the instructions to the jury. Taken together, it is important to understand that it is not enough for the state to prove that George Zimmerman acted unwisely in following Martin. Under Florida law, George Zimmerman had no responsibility to--at any point--retreat. The state must prove that Zimmerman had no reasonable fear for his life. Moreover, it is not enough for the jury to find Zimmerman's story fishy. Again the jury instructions:

George Zimmerman has entered a plea of not guilty. This means you must presume or believe George Zimmerman is innocent. The presumption stays with George Zimmerman as to each material allegation in the Information through each stage of the trial unless it has been overcome by the evidence to the exclusion of and beyond a reasonable doubt. To overcome George Zimmerman's presumption of innocence, the State has the burden of proving the crime with which George Zimmerman is charged was committed and George Zimmerman is the person who committed the crime.

George Zimmerman is not required to present evidence or prove anything.

Whenever the words "reasonable doubt" are used you must consider the following: A reasonable doubt is not a mere possible doubt, a speculative, imaginary or forced doubt. Such a doubt must not influence you to return a verdict of not guilty if you have an abiding conviction of guilt. On the other hand if, after carefully considering, comparing and weighing all the evidence, there is not an abiding conviction of guilt, or, if having a conviction, it is one which is not stable but one which wavers and vacillates, then the charge is not proved beyond every reasonable doubt and you must find George Zimmerman not guilty because the doubt is reasonable.

It is to the evidence introduced in this trial, and to it alone, that you are to look for that proof.

A reasonable doubt as to the guilt of George Zimmerman may arise from the evidence, conflict in the evidence, or the lack of evidence.

If you have a reasonable doubt, you should find George Zimmerman not guilty. If you have no reasonable doubt, you should find George Zimmerman guilty.

This was the job given to the state of Florida. I have seen nothing within the actual case presented by the prosecution that would allow for a stable and unvacillating belief that George Zimmerman was guilty.

That conclusion should not offer you security or comfort. It should not leave you secure in the wisdom of our laws. On the contrary, it should greatly trouble you. But if you are simply focusing on what happened in the court-room, then you have been head-faked by history and bought into a idea of fairness which can not possibly exist.

The injustice inherent in the killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman was not authored by jury given a weak case. The jury's performance may be the least disturbing aspect of this entire affair. The injustice was authored by a country which has taken as its policy, for lionshare of its history, to erect a pariah class. The killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman is not an error in programming. It is the correct result of forces we set in motion years ago and have done very little to arrest.

One need only look the criminalization of Martin across the country. Perhaps you have been lucky enough to not receive the above "portrait" of Trayvon Martin and its accompanying tex. The portrait is actually of a 32-year old man. Perhaps your were lucky enough to not see the Trayvon Martin imagery used for target practice (by law enforcement, no less.) Perhaps you did not see the iPhone games. Or maybe you missed the theory presently being floated by Zimmerman's family that Martin was a gun-runner and drug-dealer in training, that texts and tweets he sent mark him as a criminal in waiting. Or the theory floated that the mere donning of a hoodie marks you a thug, leaving one wondering why this guy is a criminal and this was one is not.

We have spent much of this year outlining the ways in which American policy has placed black people outside of the law. We are now being told that after having pursued such policies for 200 years, after codifying violence in slavery, after a a people conceived in mass rape, after permitting the disenfranchisement of black people through violence, after Draft riots, after white-lines, white leagues, and red shirts, after terrorism, after standing aside for the better reduction of Rosewood and the improvement of Tulsa, after the coup d'etat in Wilmington, after Airport Homes and Cicero, after Ossian Sweet, after Arthur Lee McDuffie, after Anthony Baez, Amadou Diallo and Eleanor Bumpers, after Kathryn Johnston and the Danziger Bridge, that there are no ill effects, that we are pure, that we are just, that we are clean. Our sense of self is incredible. We believe ourselves to have inherited all of Jefferson's love of freedom, but none of his dependence on slavery.

You should not be troubled that George Zimmerman "got away" with the killing of Trayvon Martin, you should be troubled that you live in a country that ensures that Trayvon Martin will happen. Trayvon Martin is happening again in Florida. Right now:

In November, black youth Jordan Davis, a 17-year-old Jacksonville resident, was the only person murdered after Michael Dunn, 46, allegedly shot into the SUV Davis was inside several times after an argument about the volume of music playing.

According to Dunn's girlfriend, Rhonda Rouer, Dunn had three rum and cokes at a wedding reception. She felt secure enough for him to drive and thought that he was a good mood. On the drive back to the hotel they were residing at, they made a pit stop at the convenience store where the murder occurred. At the Gate Station, Rouer said Dunn told her that he hated "thug music." Rouer then went inside the store to make purchases and heard several gunshots while she was still within the building.

Upon returning and seeing Dunn put his gun back into the glove compartment, Rouer asked why he had shot at the car playing music and Dunn claimed that he feared for his life and that "they threatened to kill me." The couple drove back to their hotel, and claim they did not realize anyone had died until the story appeared on the news the next day.

After killing Jordan Davis, Michael Dunn ordered a pizza.

When you have society which takes at its founding the hatred and degradation of a people, when that society inscribes that degradation in its most hallowed document, and continues to inscribe hatred in its laws and policies, it is fantastic to believe that its citizens will derive no ill messaging.

It is painful to say this: Trayvon Martin is not a miscarriage of American justice, but American justice itself. This is not our system malfunctioning. It is our system working exactly as it should, given all of its programming. To expect our courts, our schools, our police to single-handedly correct for this, is to look at the final minute of the final quarter and wonder why we couldn't come back from twenty-four down.

To paraphrase a great man--We are what our record says we are. How can we sensibly expect different?

America's Part-Time Recovery, in which the regular jobs that were vaporized in the Great Recession are replaced with shitty part-time jobs, is working out beautifully for the noble job creators. Thanks to a combination of high unemployment, the looming Obamacare law, and greed, it appears that for many workers, part-time status is the new normal.

HonorPoncaCityDotCom writes "Stanley Coren reports that a number of new television stations are providing programming specifically designed for dogs and while many people report that their dogs completely ignore what is visible on television, with modern resolution and quicker imaging, more dogs have become potential television viewers. The increase in dog viewership is primarily attributed to the way the dog's eye works. The image on a standard television screen is updated 60 times per second and since a human's flicker fusion frequency is only 55 Hz, the image appears continuous and the gradually changing images give us the illusion of movement. However dogs can discern flickers at up to 80 Hz so with the increased availability of high-resolution digital screens that are refreshed at a much higher rate, the images are less likely to appear to be flickering to the canine eye. Presentation factors are also an issue. Dogs are most likely to respond to images that have been captured at the eye level of a dog with a low camera angle where there are moving things like animals or birds. But even if that requirement is fulfilled, most dogs do not watch television because the TV is normally placed at a comfortable eye level for human beings and dogs do tend not to scan upward, and therefore do not notice the TV images. All of which brings us to DogTV, the first cable network to deliver 24-hour programming for dogs that lets you flip on the channel while you go out for the day as your pet is stimulated, entertained and relaxed. 'If the dog wasn't enjoying it, he would find something else to do, like nibble on the end of a sofa,' says veterinarian Ann E. Hohenhaus."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

College students James Doernberg and Kai Jordan took selfies at all 118 subway stations in Manhattan on July 10th, 2013. “The whole trip took 9 hours almost to the minute, and was quite a challenge, as we had to hop off the train, find a sign, take a photo, and get back on the train before the doors closed,” Doernberg told Gothamist in an interview. All 133 photos can be viewed on imgur, and more information can be found in the pair’s interview at Gothamist.

images via James Doernberg

via Gothamist

and the shower still going

— Noemi (@JFCNoemi) July 9, 2013

What! The golden girls is on?

— stoner queen (@stonerqueenn) July 15, 2013

Anagramatron is a bot written by developer Colin Rothfels that finds and retweets Twitter anagrams. Rothfels has also made an Anagramatron Tumblr blog that embeds the anagrammatic tweets alongside one another.

I'm in a sweet room.

— Joe Wescott (@joewescott) July 9, 2013

Eminem is too raw.

— Arthur (@ArthurKeeney) July 12, 2013

via Waxy.org Links

A dance move that refers back to Doug E Fresh, an original rapper from the late 1980s, referenced as early as the mid 90s by the Beastie Boys as “fresh as Dougie." See the Wikipedia page on Doug E Fresh for the proper dance moves.

Link (thanks, Alex!)

Here’s something we thought we’d never see: a robot that turns a computer drawing into a tattoo on the user’s arm.

The basic design of the robot is a frame that moves linearly along two axes, and rotates around a third. The tattoo design is imported into a 3D modeling program, and with the help of a few motors and microcontrollers a tattoo can be robotically inked on an arm.

Since the arm isn’t a regular surface, [Luke] needed a way to calibrate his forearm-drawing robot to the weird curves and bends of his ar.  The solution to this problem is a simple calibration process where the mechanism scans along the length of [Luke]‘s arm, while the ‘depth’ servo is manually adjusted. This data is imported into Rhino 3D and the robot takes the curve of the arm into account when inking the new tat.

Right now [Luke] is only inking his skin with a marker, but as far as automated tattoo machines go, it’s the best – and only – one we’ve ever seen.

Filed under: Arduino Hacks, robots hacks

GIF: Maps On The Web

Vince Miklos collects GIFs of Empires, from the Roman to Soviet. [io9]

"Look out for my new book - 'Shit Hack : all the secrets of writing sensationalist drivel that readers should know.'" — UK writer Tim Hayward on the Telegraph's nonsense listicle "The 20 shocking secrets every diner should know" (based on the book Restaurant Babylon). It includes gems like #5: "Sometimes the 'specials' are only 'special' because restaurants are desperate to get rid of them." And #18: "Drugs use is rife amongst workers, mainly cocaine." The list was so bad even the Daily Mail picked it up. [Twitter]

With this kaleidoscopic map, Justin Palmer takes a digital chainsaw to Portland and shows the world its rings. Track the color changes to see where old neighborhoods meld with new ones: Structures shown in aquamarine date from the 1890s, purple from the 1950s and hot pink to white from 1970 onward.

There are more than half a million building records in Portland's archives that have dates attached to them. Perhaps because he was deprived of such reams of information growing up in a picayune Mississippi town, Palmer felt compelled to map them in dazzling peacock hues. "I thought it could be cool to see what the data would look like on a map using a style similar to what Eric Fischer used for MapBox and Open StreetMap," says Palmer, a 33-year-old Pearl District resident who works at GitHub.

In "The Age of a City," blooms of magenta show off the relative youth of satellite communities like Beaverton, Happy Valley and outer Gresham, and a solid wash of chilly blue reveals central Portland's geezer status. When making the map, Palmer was pleasantly surprised by a few patterns, such as the way older and more developed neighborhoods tended to follow historical streetcar lines. Then there's Interstate 205 acting like a wall separating two oceans of different-era structures, which the map's creator is still scratching his head about.

"Many of the structures west of 205, even outside of the city center, trend in the early 1900s, and then you have the interstate and everything east of it trending in the 1950s and '60s," he says. "According to Wikipedia, I-205 didn't exist until 1975, so I'm not sure why this divide exists."

Other things he noticed, as quoted from his making-of explainer:

• The dream of the '90s is still alive in 75,434 structures. The 1890s haven’t fared so well, with only 942 structures still standing.

• The busiest year was 1978 with 10,265 structures listed.

• It looks like '50s-era housing development relied more on the grid system, than say, the '80s and '90s where the cul-de-sac was seen more often.

If you look hard enough, you can also see what appears to be the signature of the subprime mortgage crisis. "The correlation with the housing crisis was particularly interesting," Palmer says. "I don't think we really knew what was happening until the recession hit in 2008, but you can see a sharp decline in new structures starting in 2006."

Here's a far-out view:

Newer development around the University of Portland and the Swan Island Basin:

Ordered streets in the Irvington 'hood:

The meandering roads of Beaverton:

Ladd's Addition, a "vortex" of standalone homes and the oldest planned residential development in the city:

Several miles to the south is Oregon City, the first urban area west of the Rockies to undergo incorporation. It's home to some of the Portland area's oldest buildings, like the Francis Ermatinger House from 1845 and the 1849 residence of Dr. Forbes Barclay, “[a]rctic explorer, physician, public official, philanthropist” and mayor of the town:

Maps courtesy of Justin Palmer of Lab Rat Revenge

The Justice Department just announced that federal prosecutors are looking into the Trayvon Martin shooting to see if criminal civil rights charges against George Zimmerman are appropriate. Although the DOJ opened an investigation into Martin's death last year, the agency stepped aside to allow the state prosecution to proceed.

Read more...