firehose

Bottom-of-the-barrel creature features. Topless-teen comedies. “Mockbuster” rip-offs. In Burbank, California, one low-budget studio cranks out whatever Netflix wants.

If you’re stuck in the virtual world like [Kevin Flynn] you can still make sure your pup is rewarded for good behavior. Just follow [Jwarp's] design for this Internet connect dog treat dispenser.

We were actually a bit surprised by the demo video. It shows that the compact unit is more than capable of reliably dispensing one treat at a time. It started as a wood prototype which allowed him to tweak how the servo motors worked before laying out all of the 3D parts in Sketch Up. Two motors cooperate to get the job done. The first allows one treat to exit that shoot coming from the center of the hopper. The other stirs the remaining inventory to both position the next treat and loosen any jams.

The base of the hopper serves as an enclosure of the Arduino UNO and an Ethernet Shield. A simple website is polled continuously. When it is found to contain the dispense command the hardware goes into action. The link above leads to the build photos, but there’s a bit of background info included in the Reddit thread.

This will go nicely with that automatic feeder you’ve been meaning to tackle.

Filed under: 3d Printer hacks, home hacks

MENLO PARK, CA—In a statement released to its 1.1 billion users, social media site Facebook announced Wednesday that the company will continue to make bad changes to its product, that members will be very upset with these changes, and that said memb...

Jay-Z can now join Tilda Swinton and The National in the category of performers-turned-performance artists. To promote his new art-themed album Magna Carta Holy Grail, Jay-Z is spending six hours rapping along to his song “Picasso Baby” at the Pace Gallery in New York. The performance art will eventually culminate in a music video for the song, but for now it’s being recorded on Instagram videos and Vines. Jay-Z recently tweeted he will be making “6 pieces of art” as the visuals for his new album. Hopefully the other five pieces will include watching Monty Python And The Holy Grail for six hours, stealing the Magna Carta National Treasure-style, and only communicating via Samsung apps for the next year.  [via Gawker]

Read more

Refresh is an iOS app that uses data from social networks and other online sources to provide users with a quick, 30-second briefing on anyone you’re meeting. The app provides users with information about the other person like jobs, achievements, interests, friends, and trips, giving the user useful conversation points. Refresh is currently in private beta, and prospective users can sign up at the Refresh website using their LinkedIn account.

images via Refresh

Thanks Will Mayo!

Lots of off-beat choices have been playing Zeus lately. You had Liam Neeson in the Titans films. You have Sean Bean in the Percy Jackson films. But screw that — we want Christopher Fuckin' Walken playing the King of the Gods. And this movie already exists.

Read more...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56OzqxGMr_U

Original Source

To cope with budget troubles, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration has steadily depleted a trust fund for elderly services created with an infusion of federal cash a decade ago. When Jindal took office, the Medicaid Trust Fund for the Elderly contained more than $830 million. Now, the balance has been cut in half to $410 million, according to the treasurer's office. By the end of the current fiscal year, it is projected to sink to $250 million or less. Officials involved with creating the fund expected the state to leave the principal intact and mainly use the interest and investment earnings, so the trust fund would provide a stream of funding for decades to pay for nursing home care and other health care services. Instead, the Jindal administration — with approval from lawmakers through the budget process — keeps dipping into the principal to plug health care budget gaps and finance Medicaid services at nursing homes. At the current rate, the money could run dry by the end of Jindal's current term, leaving his successor with a hefty health care financing gap.

	Courtney shared this story from fuck yeah, hard femme!:
	perfection

---

In a clumsy attempt to crack down on gambling, Florida has accidentally banned any machine that’s capable of playing games. Or so a new lawsuit claims.

It's 2013 and here we are, still looking around at one another with "Who farted?" faces when it comes to the topic of balancing both a career and a family. We've convinced ourselves that being a "working mom" is the dilemma of the modern woman without bothering to question that being a "working dad" is not even a thing that people say with a straight face. And that's what really stinks.

Yesterday a story appeared on the cover of The New York Times, called "Coveting Not a Corner Office, but Time at Home," about how one Wisconsin woman's approach to her career is indicative of a national trend of mothers who:

[F]ind climbing a career ladder less of a concern than finding a position that offers paid sick leave, flexible scheduling or even the opportunity to work fewer hours.

Is anyone else utterly floored that this is headline news?

Look, I love when women's issues are discussed in the mainstream on a national scale like this. At the very least—no matter the approach being heralded (lean in, lean out, lean back, what have you)—just talking about this stuff is a recognition of like, "Oh, hey, things aren't really equal after all. Would ya look at that?" Admitting you have a problem is always the first step, so that's a good start. But why have we stalled?

Maybe it has something to do with how it's still de rigueur on the front page of The New York Times to discuss a woman's favorite kitchen appliances in an article purportedly about her career.

On Sundays, she teaches at her church, and then prepares most of the meals for rest of the week, making great use of two wonders of modern cookery: the slow cooker and the freezer.

I mean, come on. I was made to believe that the future is now. So why does it read so much like we're only at the halfway point in the Carousel of Progress?

To be fair, The Times piece does offer a bit of advice to take some pressure off of working moms, suggesting that they ask their employers to allow them to work remotely one day a week. There's nothing wrong with that suggestion. It's a fine suggestion—but it's not a solution.

Honestly, I think that part of the problem is that we're approaching this all the wrong way. As women, we tend to ask ourselves what we can do to make it work. What more can we do so that we can do more? If that sounds like nonsense it's because it is.

The reason why we're all so fucked up over this issue is because women were/are raised with the implication that there's some kind of moral failing attached to improperly prioritizing making money and making a home. So to cover our bases, we take on everything, like this lady from Wisconsin.

On a recent Tuesday, which she said was broadly representative of most workdays, she rose at 5:45 a.m. and did a load of laundry before everyone else awoke. Soon she was wielding the hair dryer in one hand and a son’s permission slip in the other; running to the kitchen to pack lunches and help one of her sons make dirt cups (pudding and Oreo crumble) as part of a book report presentation; and then driving the children to school at 7:15 a.m. before commencing her 40-minute commute to the office, where she arrives a little after 8. She heads back out — often directly to the baseball diamond — at 4:30 p.m.

This lady is married. She has a husband. He was not described as a "working dad." The only mention of his involvement with familial chores was picking his kids up from school and coaching one of their sports teams. It is unknown what his favorite kitchen appliance is or whether or not he ever does a morning load of laundry to let his wife sleep in.

The truth is that our cultural understanding of a "working mom" is that of a personal chef, maid, nanny, tutor, and chauffeur all rolled into one frazzled superwoman who also happens to work outside of the home. That's because there are still undeniable innate gender essentialist biases regarding childcare and homemaking.

Our cultural understanding of fathers who work? They're just men. It doesn't seem fair. But perhaps we can tip the scales of inequality by tossing a couple of loads of laundry over their way.

Coveting Not a Corner Office, but Time at Home [NYT]

Original Source

	Courtney shared this story from fuck yeah, hard femme!:
	This is now what I will think of whenever someone uses the word "misandry" at me.

---

Guillermo del Toro pits robots and monsters against each other in "Pacific Rim," a massive movie that dominates the 2013 summer blockbuster season.

For hardware startups like Pebble (maker of the Pebble smart watch) and Ouya (which makes the Ouya gaming console), Kickstarter has been the holy grail of funding mechanisms. It provides a way for fledgling companies to rack up millions of dollars in seed funding without giving up an iota of ownership.

Tech startups that fund their projects in other ways, say, through venture capital or seed investors, typically have to give up a slice of equity and some control in exchange for funding. But on Kickstarter, the funding comes in exchange for what basically amounts to a review copy of the product for the customer, with fewer strings attached. For example, a recent piece by tech reporter Nick Statt notes that some people who backed Pebble on Kickstarter still haven’t received their order of the Pebble smart watch. Instead, Pebble took their money, delayed on fulfilling their orders and in the meantime sold thousands of Pebble smart watches to a bigger, arguably more important customer: Best Buy. A similar fate befell Kickstarter funders of Ouya, whose gaming consoles arrived in retailers before the company had met its Kickstarter commitments.

In essence, these startups used money provided by early customers to fund their growth while ignoring customer satisfaction. And the problem extends beyond Kickstarter. Pebble delivered its products to Best Buy before delivering the smart watch Statt’s pre-ordered on the company’s website—a site made possible in large part by Kickstarter. Statt cancelled his order in retaliation.

Pebble and Ouya are the two most-funded projects in Kickstarter history, netting $10.26 million and $8.6 million, respectively, which puts them in the enviable position of setting the standard for other tech startups.

Kickstarter’s founders are adamant that their site is not an investment vehicle or a store, but rather a new kind of funding mechanism, something akin to arts patronage. This model makes sense for music, film and other projects that have fewer avenues of funding available, but if the behavior of other tech startups follows the example of Pebble and Ouya, in the future backers might shy away from them. That would leave them groveling on crowd-investment sites like AngelList, FundersClub and Fundable, where funding is less democratic and, as a result, much harder to come by.

Yesterday, Orson Scott Card made an insane plea for tolerance of his intolerance. The reactions are flying hot and heavy:

1. David Gerrold, the author of the Star Trek episode "The Trouble with Tribbles," has responded to Card with a Facebook post:

You want me to be tolerant, Scott? First be one of those people who understands. Or to put it bluntly — get your fucking foot off my neck, then we'll talk tolerance.

See, Scott — I don't dislike you. I honestly don't. I think you're a very interesting author and you've turned out some works I admire. But you've made PR Mistake Number One. You've sided with hate-mongers. You've targeted a minority and you've characterized yourself as the righteous warrior. That gives you a short-term gain and a long-term loss. Look up Father Coughlin and Anita Bryant and Kirk Cameron.

Now you've made PR Mistake Number Two — instead of honestly and sincerely apologizing for the hurt you have caused others, you have doubled down. You have played the martyr card, arguing that you are the victim.

2. Joe My God points out that NOM head Brian Brown has sent out an e-mail that doesn't respond to NOM board member Card's calling the battle against gay marriage "moot." Instead, it asks for a lot of money, so that NOM can try to pass an anti-gay-marriage amendment to the Constitution. I wonder how much drama Card's statement caused at NOM HQ yesterday; I wish I could've seen the e-mail thread that must've erupted when they realized Card was fucking with their fundraising efforts.

3. In case you or someone you know on Facebook needs it, Rachel Eddin at Wired published a lovely dismantling of Card's plea for tolerance. It's just the thing to send to contrarians who try to suggest that Card is suddenly the victim in all this.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Major League Soccer All-Stars, meet Timbers Army.

Timbers owner Merritt Paulson, Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber and Portland mayor Charlie Hales just announced Portland will host next year's MLS All-Star game.

UPDATE (2:25 pm): If the nature of today's announcement wasn't completely obvious, one needed only look at the press conference's backdrop to see the news: Portland would host the 2014 Major League Soccer All-Star Game, the first major-league All-Star game of any sport to take place in the Rose City.

During a press conference on Wednesday afternoon at Jeld-Wen Field's Key Bank Club, Garber, Paulson and Hales made it official.

"There's something special happening in the market and this stadium," Garber said. "We're proud to announce that next year's AT&T MLS All-Star game will take place here in Jeld-Wen Field and the great city of Portland."

The exhibition match will pit the league's best—coached by Portland coach Caleb Porter—against a to-be-determined international team and will be aired on ESPN and in 130 countries worldwide.

Paulson—who joked that the presser was decidedly NOT to announce he'd been kicked off Twitter by Garber—said it's not hyperbole to say the Timbers have delivered on their promise of four years ago to shine a "terrific spotlight" on the community.

"We've got something really special here," Paulson said. "The eyes of the country and the world will be squarely on Soccer City, USA.

"We're gong to show them an All-Star Game like they've never seen before."

Paulson said he's looking to put together a "host committee" of key local, community and civic leaders, while promising "the biggest global soccer-name opponent that's ever played in Portland."

"I couldn't be more thrilled to be chosen," Paulson added. "We're gonna put our best foot forward, and work starts today on that."

Hales, who was introduced by an MLS emcee as "Charlie Sales," said it's a great honor for Portland and a great fit.

"We're Soccer City, not just here with the Timbers and the Thorns, but all over this city," Hales said. "We're rooted in with soccer here, just like those big Douglas Firs that Timber Joey uses to slice those wood cookies every time we score a goal."

"It's part of our culture, it's part of our community, and that's why it's such a great fit."

Hales looked at Garber and committed the city, its leaders, bureaus and citizens to "join with you and make this a great success for soccer and for Portland."

More to come...

Click past the jump for the official release from MLS.

NEW YORK—Major League Soccer announced today that Portland will be the host city for the 2014 AT&T MLS All-Star Game. The annual showcase event will feature several days of festivities, culminating in a match between the League’s top players and a renowned international club in late July or early August, 2014, at JELD-WEN Field, home to the Portland Timbers and one of the best soccer fan experiences anywhere.

Soccer in the Portland area and the Timbers have a long history of strong fan support and the club’s popularity has boomed since its inaugural MLS season in 2011. The 2014 AT&T MLS All-Star Game will be the first All-Star Game in a major sport for the city of Portland.

JELD-WEN Field is an iconic sports and entertainment facility located in the heart of downtown Portland, and officially reopened to the public for MLS on April 14, 2011, after a significant renovation crafted to create one of the most unique and authentic soccer environments in the country. Since then, the Timbers have sold out every MLS league match to date, currently a string of 42 consecutive sellouts.

“The Portland Timbers and their passionate fans have certainly earned the honor of hosting the 2014 AT&T MLS All-Star Game,” said Commissioner Garber. “This match will showcase to an international audience the incredible devotion to the game in the Pacific Northwest that serves as one of the most important stories for our league.”

Originally constructed in 1926, JELD-WEN Field is an historic civic gathering place that has played host to some of the region’s most memorable events, including Pelé’s official last professional game, the CONCACAF Gold Cup, FIFA World Cup qualifying matches and the 2003 FIFA Women’s World Cup. For more information, visit www.JELD-WENField.com.

“We are very pleased to host the national and international soccer community to Soccer City, USA, for the 2014 AT&T MLS All-Star Game and its surrounding events,” said Merritt Paulson, president of the Timbers. “This event will be the first major All-Star Game of any sport ever in Portland and the Timbers and our fans look forward to showcasing our fabulous city and JELD-WEN Field next summer.”

An exclusive pre-sale for Timbers season ticket holders, members of the Timbers Season Ticket Waiting List, Portland Thorns FC season ticket holders and club sponsors will be held at a date to be determined. A public on-sale date will also be announced at a later date.

“Portland is a soccer town, pure and simple, and we are honored that our city has been chosen to host the 2014 AT&T MLS All-Star Game,” said Portland Mayor Charlie Hales. “Our reputation as Soccer City, USA, began in the 1970s with the original Portland Timbers and has been put on display for many other wonderful events over the years, including the 2003 FIFA Women’s World Cup and a recent CONCACAF Gold Cup doubleheader. We earn that reputation every time the thunderous cheers for the Timbers and Thorns FC roll out of JELD-WEN Field and wash over downtown Portland. And in the summer of 2014, we look forward to earning that reputation once again during Major League Soccer’s showcase summer event. RCTID!”

The 2014 All-Star Game will mark the 11th time that an elite international club has played the MLS All-Stars, who are 6-2-1 in those matches entering the July 31, 2013 game against AS Roma in Kansas City. In addition to honoring the best players in MLS, the game has featured successful, world-famous clubs such as Manchester United (2010 & 2011), Everton FC (2009), Chelsea FC (2006 & 2012), and Chivas de Guadalajara (2003). The opponent for next summer’s game will be announced at a later date.

Portland will be the 16th different city to host the MLS All-Star Game and JELD-WEN Field will be the 11th All-Star venue built or renovated for soccer. A list of previous All-Star Game results and host cities is below.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

There are some cool shows happening this week, some of which are sort of secret and some which aren't really that secret. Here's the lowdown:

TONIGHT
Blouse is playing at Valentine's. The Portland dream-poppers have recently wrapped their second album, Imperium, which comes out September 12. They haven't played a local show in many moons* but tonight they'll be playing some new songs, along with old ones, at Valentine's. Cover is $5, and Blouse plays at 10:30 pm. DJs Jalalipop and RaSean will also spin some records.
* a vague descriptor indicating that I actually don't know how long it's been

TOMORROW
Country shitkickers Denver are playing a show which also doubles as a video shoot for Paste Magazine at the Aloft Hotel, out by the airport. That sounds like a very strange venue, perhaps, but the Aloft regularly has music at their W XYZ Bar. This is a free show, but Paste has an RSVP set up on their site, so you might want to go fill it out to make sure you can get in. (Bonus! The RSVP vaguely states, "Come early for drinks with Paste!" which may or may not mean free booze?)

FRIDAY
New York guitarist Marnie Stern has been hanging out a little in Portland this week; she's gonna duck down the West Coast to play the Phono del Sol festival in San Francisco on Saturday. Before she does that, though, she's playing an all-ages show at the Record Room on Friday at 5 pm. Cover is $3 and you can expect some serious shredding. Facebook event here.

SATURDAY
Not a secret show at all, but this hot tip just turned up in the Mercury mailbag: "It is better to have bands like Radiation City who have dance and samba sounds replacing the old tired lo-fi American indie sound and its pathetic arms folded fans—yet how come you don't review bands like Ron Ruedi and the Hurricanes? They are playing at Lydia's Restaurant and Lounge every Saturday night, 183rd and Glisan. These are the true sounds of liberty." You heard the guy.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Pinball is apparently making a national comeback (thanks to baby boomers and hipsters, who agree “Pinball Wizard” is just way better on vinyl) and now a Kickstarter Campaign is looking to fund the World’s Largest Museum of Pinball. Founder John Weeks leveraged all his financial resources to purchase 18 acres of land, a 40,000 square foot building, and 500 different pinball machines, and all he needs to complete the project is $150,000 for renovations.

The Kickstarter page conveys the founder’s deep love of the pinball “sport” and also makes the case that Weeks is probably a million playboy/secret superhero of the Bruce Wayne-variety by explaining his absence in pinball-culture, “With the majority of his time focused on running his Internet-based businesses, he loves spending time playing pinball with friends…and avoiding the attention of the spotlight.”

The campaign video is well worth watching if only ...

Read more

Summer Glau has reportedly joined the cast of "Arrow's" second season in a recurring adversarial role as Isabel Rochev, the Vice President of Acquisitions for a company hoping to take over Queen Consolidated.

Benedict Evans, in Glass, Home and solipsism, one of the most insightful posts I’ve read in some time:

Your customers’ relationships with you are the only relationships you have as a business and you think a lot about them. But you’re one of a thousand things your customer thinks about in a week, and one of dozens of businesses. And they probably have their own ideas about how they want to engage with you (though they wouldn’t put it in those words) – assuming they think about you at all.

This applies even to Google or Facebook (which brings me to the title of this post). There’s lots of data showing the high proportion of online time that people spend using Facebook, and the high volume of web searches that they do using Google. Facebook and Google are important. But that doesn’t mean they’re everything.

It applies to Apple too, and there’s no better example than iCloud versus Dropbox.

Steve Jobs famously called Dropbox “a feature, not a product.” And, if you look at the Mobile Hierarchy of Needs, he was right; Dropbox sits firmly in “Services,” one piece of the overall device value stack.

But devices – even Apple ones – are ultimately a means to an end. For my mother, her iPad lets her see pictures of the grandchildren; for my wife, her PC was a lifeline to Taiwan for four years; for me, my phone keeps me connected and engaged in technology, regardless of time or place.

It’s the ends that are meaningful and infinitely valuable, and Dropbox’s approach to my most important data¹ is much more in line with the value I ascribe to that data: it’s available everywhere.

Not so for iCloud: data is available only on Apple devices, and it’s not exactly clear how to get it out. iCloud is beneficial to Apple’s business model – more devices – yet actively hostile to my needs, in much the same way Facebook Home ignored how people actually use smartphones.

The problem for iCloud, and by extension Apple, is that services – driven by the need for data to be everywhere – are a horizontal layer, orthogonal to the the vertical nature of devices.

The only coherent strategy for Apple is a walled-garden of sorts that protects their vertical business model. A services-centric company like Dropbox, on the other hand, ought to pursue a horizontal strategy predicated on maximizing the number of interconnects with the layers above and below; clients on every platform address the latter, and yesterday’s announcement of the Dropbox Platform are focused on the former.

From Wired:

Today, at Dropbox’s first-ever developers conference, the company is officially launching a new set of coding tools designed to push Dropbox into every corner of your digital life. Not content to stay sequestered inside the box, the company’s co-founders are unveiling ways for developers to meld their service with every app on every device you own…

Dropbox may be in a unique position to do just that. For now, the company has no overarching obligations to Apple, Google, Facebook, or Microsoft. While pundits have recommended that some big tech company ought to snap up Dropbox while it’s still relatively affordable, Dropbox is in a position where it can layer itself over competing operating systems while being beholden to none. Says Houston: “No engineer in Cupertino is thinking: ‘How do I make this work with Android?’” Leave that thinking to Dropbox…

Taken together, she says Datastores and Drop-ins transform Dropbox into a platform that enables a “pervasive data layer” — a way for all your digital stuff to follow you everywhere, regardless of device, operating system, or app.

The strategy is spot-on; while iOS and Android (and mostly Samsung) have effectively won the battle for devices, the winner in horizontal services will certainly not be Apple.

The contenders in the consumer market:²

• Google has pole position. Android was a detour to ensure the services layer was competitive, and now Google is fully focused on winning. However, Google is not as developer friendly, and the way they view data as a commodity can result in user-hostile choices. Moreover, there is always the potential of Google favoring Android, although I think the removal of Andy Rubin was about making sure this doesn’t happen
• Microsoft has more strengths here than most people realize. Skydrive is one of the best products they make, and Azure cloud services already provide most of what Dropbox is rolling out. The challenge for Microsoft is perception and mindshare amongst developers especially. Moreover, Microsoft’s strategy of devices and services is about competing both vertically (devices) and hoizontally (services). This is a great recipe for strategy taxes
• Amazon has pieces, particularly cloud storage, and they are clearly willing to compete on price. However, to say that Amazon struggles with great user interfaces is putting it kindly, and I don’t see any real evidence they are interested in anything they can’t sell
• Yahoo! has massive reach, and some intriguing pieces, including Mail, Flickr, and now Tumblr. However, they are pursuing the Google signal-to-ads monetization model, and haven’t been relevant to developers in…ever? Yahoo should have bought Dropbox
• Dropbox has a great base product, a monetization model that is aligned with the value customers place on their data, and excellent mindshare amongst app developers especially. However, Dropbox has a much more limited reach, and I’ve seen precious little evidence they have the marketing chops to overcome that

There likely won’t be one clear-cut winner, as the individualized nature of data works against the network effects that would lead to winner-take-all. That said, Dropbox’s developer mindshare is a massive asset in this regard, especially if Dropbox is able to marshall developers as Dropbox advocates.

Regardless, that set of contenders is good company and gives a hint as to why Dropbox’s valuation is so high.

1. I’ve been a paying customer for going on six years
2. Box, for example, makes noises about consumers but is an enterprise company; Dropbox is the opposite

The post The Dropbox Opportunity appeared first on stratēchery by Ben Thompson.

Ramon Davila is one name in a growing list. He’s among the nearly two dozen federal background check investigators to face criminal charges in recent years for falsifying his work on investigations performed on contractors and employees seeking government clearances. But more than year after charging Davila, the Justice Department only just learned that he [...]

Make Wearing A Suit Easy In Double-Breasted Flannel.

Laurence Olivier.

The Brogrammer is a mostly mythological figure, a nine-headed scapegoat. But there are, of course, programmers who also happen to be massive bros. For instance, the dudes who founded mega-valuable Snapchat.

Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

TAMPA, FL—A week into his rehabilitation stint with the minor league Tampa Yankees, third baseman Alex Rodriguez reportedly impressed his new teammates Wednesday by sharing valuable tips about proper technique for putting each other down.

BuzzFeed has created a handy chart that details the current line of the British line of royal succession, including Prince William and his wife Catherine’s baby due to be born this month. Here’s a larger version of the image.

image via BuzzFeed