Link
Currently on Kickstarter: Bloc Logos, a book cataloguing logos created within the Eastern Bloc's countries between 1950 and 1989 (after the fall of the Berlin Wall). The first volume will focus on Poland.
The Voice of Downtown Boston introduces us to PABU, a San Francisco Japanese restaurant that will open on two floors of the Millennium Tower next fall.
The modern izakaya and sushi bar will feature market-fresh menu with fish sourced locally from New England and flown in fresh from Japan’s famous Tsukiji market.
An anonymous reader writes: A paper from Microsoft researchers posits the possibility of 'pushing' web ads to a user's own computer and serving them into pre-arranged containers on web pages, with the EFF or ACLU serving as privacy mediators between the user and the advertisers who want to engage them. However the framework — dubbed 'Privad' — would need to get installed on the user's system by the same familiar means which the likes of Superfish [http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/05/07/2219201/superfish-injects-ads-in-1-in-25-google-page-views] use. The report admits that Privad would probably need to be disseminated "through adware-style software bundling, shopping discounts, toolbars or other incentives."
Kellogg’s has announced that it will launch a new mail subscription service that will deliver customized boxes of healthy snacks to people at home or at work. What do you think?
If it were easy to make good whisky anywhere, it would be made everywhere. And if it were easy to make good single-malt whisky in four years, everyone would do it. But Kavalan makes some very well-respected juice in four years in the mostly-hot country of Taiwan.
On my trip to the Kavalan whisky distillery that you can read out here and here, I spent a lot of time asking questions about what the differences in production are between Kavalan and scotch whisky, and other places where they had to compensate for their unique aging environment. Here are a few observations:
Preparation
They know that that they'll only be aging their whisky for 4-7 years, most of it closer to 4. They also know that their climate is hot and humid, though there can be a temperature range during the year that will suck the whisky into and out of the barrels causing interaction. They also know there will be a significant evaporation rate (angels' share) so that's another reason not to leave it aging too long.
In short, they don't have much time to get it right. There is no "fix it in the barrel" mentality, as too long in the barrel will taste just as bad as too little time in the barrel. They've basically got one shot to get it right so they go into it with cautious perfectionism.
Ingredients
American oak barrels give less tannin absorption than do French oak. So their ex-sherry, port, etc. barrels must be made from American oak.
Like other top whisky producers, they fly over to Spain and Portugal to personally source the best barrels.
Yeast - They use an alcohol-producing yeast and a flavor-producing yeast. I am not sure if this has to do with climate at all, or is just a unique method. See fermentation below.
Process
Fermentation is temperature-controlled to ensure consistency in batches. It is a long fermentation using 2 different yeasts and an additionally long period for lactic fermentation. This contributes to the signature fruity flavor profile Kavalan is after. I am guessing that given the short amount of aging time, they want the fruit notes to be most forward and the grain notes (signaling too-young whisky) less prominent.
Heads and tails cuts are different: A tight heart cut (so less heads and tails overall), but a little bit more of the heads and way less of the tails. Most whiskies that will sit in barrels a long time include a fair portion of the tails, as they break down/interact with the wood/oxygen over time and turn into good stuff. At Kavalan they don't have that much time.
Larger barrels (ex-port and sherry) are stored mostly on the hotter top floor of the aging warehouse. Larger barrels take longer to age the whisky inside them, as there is less wood-to-liquid ratio of smaller bourbon barrels.
Cautious Rechar. They do rechar barrels but the whisky aged in them is used for the base-level single-malt and the 46% version of that, not for any of the (so much better) Solist bottlings. Which helps explain why I like the single-cask bourbon barrel bottling so much better than those other two.
The sherry barrels come off a real solera after 20 years or so, then they are seasoned with 20 years old oloroso before Kavalan gets them.
Budget
Kavalan is a small part of a huge company, so they have budget advantages that they have certainly used.
I have sipped so many failed experiments over the years, many from otherwise quality distillers. I hate it when otherwise-quality producers put their failed experiments into bottles and try to pass them off to consumers. At Kavalan they purchased I believe 8 hybrid pot-column stills when they first built the distillery, which that they stopped using after they found that they didn't produce good whisky. (Don't worry, I think they have found another use for them that we'll hear about later.) That was an expensive decision; clearly one of many.
They hired whisky doctor Jim Swan, who is certainly not cheap, to get things running and continually checking in. He was there during my visit distilling a peated malt.
They throw away (or rather, recycle into the next batch) a lot of heads and tails.
The shave-toast-rechar process used on the Vinho Barrique barrels is also quite precious and must be super expensive, as they have to rebuild all those barrels in the process. I don't know too much about this process but have heard it is done in the wine industry (probably minus the recharring).
Consistency/Computer Control
Computers control washing, fermentation, and distillation.
They test everything along the way.
So, I'm sure that's not quite everything they do at Kavalan to make good whisky quickly in a hot climate, but it's a lot of it. So you might not want to run right out and set up your distillery in Sumatra just yet.
Amazon's e-book business is facing an antitrust investigation in Europe, where the European Commission says the company's contracts with publishers contain "clauses which seem to shield Amazon from competition from other e-book distributors."
These clauses give Amazon "the right to be informed of more favorable or alternative terms offered to its competitors; and/or the right to terms and conditions at least as good as those offered to its competitors," the EC said in its announcement today.
"The Commission will now investigate further whether such clauses may hinder the level playing field and potentially decrease competition between different e-book distributors to the detriment of consumers," it said. The clauses "may make it more difficult for other e-book distributors to compete with Amazon by developing new and innovative products and services," the commission said.
It might be too late for Age of Ultron, but it looks like Marvel has listened to some of our vocal and widespread criticism of the lack of merchandise for women, and will be attempting to remedy that problem with Captain America: Civil War.
At the Licensing Expo in Las Vegas this week, Marvel unveiled Civil War merch that included brands like Hasbro, LEGO, Funko, Hot Wheels, Rubies, Mad Engine, C-Life, Jay Franco, Global Brand Group, Kellogg’s, Hallmark, and American Greetings. You can expect to see the goods next March.
According to Paul Gitter, senior VP of licensing for Marvel at Disney Consumer Products, “We’ll see an extension mixing in new characters with new skills. There will also be a big focus on adult female apparel.” Apparently, this will include merch for “newer” characters like War Machine, Black Widow, Falcon, and Black Panther.
Which sounds great; but belying this message is a new job posting for Disney’s UK team that specifically asks for “a Digital Content Producer to work in the ‘Boys’ market, including franchises such as Marvel and StarWars [sic].” They repeat that phrase three times in the posting, noting that candidates need “[a]n understanding and interest in the production of web content for a younger audience (specifically in the ‘Boys’ market)” and that they will have “[t]he chance to work with our most exciting franchises in the ‘Boys’ market, including Marvel and StarWars.”
Only time will tell if Disney Consumer Products has really been listening to fan response and will expand their merchandise lines for women – but hope springs eternal, I suppose.
The federal government claims the publisher of "The Doom That Came to Atlantic City" deceived Kickstarter donors, and used most of the money he raised for personal expenses.
WASHINGTON—Following weeks of declining performance within the nation’s highest judicial body, the Supreme Court announced Thursday that it has sent a struggling Associate Justice Samuel Alito down to a lower federal court. “Sammy’s been a little cold with his dissenting opinions lately, so we’ve assigned him to a minor appellate jurisdiction until he can better contribute to this court,” Chief Justice John Roberts told reporters, confirming that Alito had been removed from the Supreme Court’s nine-person roster and appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. “Obviously, Sammy is a veteran legal scholar who has played a deciding role in several high-profile cases, but until he regains his stroke, we need to go with someone who can best interpret statutory law as set out by the U.S. Constitution. But we’re confident that he only needs to author a few ...
Walter De Gregorio, FIFA's Director of Communications, stepped down this week after a joke he made about FIFA's recent scandals was televised in Switzerland. The joke?
The Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, the director of communications and the general secretary are all sitting in a car – who is driving? The police.
Honestly... Not a bad joke.
Prior to the Swiss interview, De Gregorio had said, "This for Fifa is good. It is not good in terms of image or reputation but in terms of cleaning up, this is good … It is not a nice day but it is also a good day. The process goes on and we are looking forward."
De Gregorio will continue working with FIFA through the end of the year.
The economics of cloud computing are compelling. For companies, the lower operating costs, the lack of capital expenditure, the ability to quickly scale and the ability to outsource maintenance are just some of the benefits. Computing is infrastructure, like cleaning, payroll, tax preparation and legal services. All of these are outsourced. And computing is becoming a utility, like power and water. Everyone does their power generation and water distribution "in the cloud." Why should IT be any different?
Two reasons. The first is that IT is complicated: it is more like payroll services than like power generation. What this means is that you have to choose your cloud providers wisely, and make sure you have good contracts in place with them. You want to own your data, and be able to download that data at any time. You want assurances that your data will not disappear if the cloud provider goes out of business or discontinues your service. You want reliability and availability assurances, tech support assurances, whatever you need.
The downside is that you will have limited customization options. Cloud computing is cheaper because of economics of scale, and -- like any outsourced task -- you tend to get what you get. A restaurant with a limited menu is cheaper than a personal chef who can cook anything you want. Fewer options at a much cheaper price: it's a feature, not a bug.
The second reason that cloud computing is different is security. This is not an idle concern. IT security is difficult under the best of circumstances, and security risks are one of the major reasons it has taken so long for companies to embrace the cloud. And here it really gets complicated.
On the pro-cloud side, cloud providers have the potential to be far more secure than the corporations whose data they are holding. It is the same economies of scale. For most companies, the cloud provider is likely to have better security than them -- by a lot. All but the largest companies benefit from the concentration of security expertise at the cloud provider.
On the anti-cloud side, the cloud provider might not meet your legal needs. You might have regulatory requirements that the cloud provider cannot meet. Your data might be stored in a country with laws you do not like -- or cannot legally use. Many foreign companies are thinking twice about putting their data inside America, because of laws allowing the government to get at that data in secret. Other countries around the world have even more draconian government-access rules.
Also on the anti-cloud side, a large cloud provider is a juicier target. Whether or not this matters depends on your threat profile. Criminals already steal far more credit card numbers than they can monetize; they are more likely to go after the smaller, less-defended networks. But a national intelligence agency will prefer the one-stop shop a cloud provider affords. That is why the NSA broke into Google's data centers.
Finally, the loss of control is a security risk. Moving your data into the cloud means that someone else is controlling that data. This is fine if they do a good job, but terrible if they do not. And for free cloud services, that loss of control can be critical. The cloud provider can delete your data on a whim, if it believes you have violated some term of service that you never even knew existed. And you have no recourse.
As a business, you need to weigh the benefits against the risks. And that will depend on things like the type of cloud service you're considering, the type of data that's involved, how critical the service is, how easily you could do it in house, the size of your company and the regulatory environment, and so on.
This essay previously appeared on the Economist website, as part of a debate on cloud computing. It's the first of three essays. Here are Parts 2 and 3. Visit the site for the other side of the debate and other commentary.
Mark Lewis and his wife bought a house in Winterville, Georgia, in August 2012. They figured getting Internet service would be as simple as calling up AT&T, because the prior owners had AT&T DSL (Digital Subscriber Line). The neighbors also have AT&T DSL service providing about 3Mbps.
“The previous owners had left their DSL modem and everything in the house,” Lewis told Ars. But when he called AT&T, the company said they were “at maximum capacity, but if someone else in your neighborhood terminates their service that should open up something for you.”
In October 2013, two of Lewis' neighbors moved out, and he called AT&T to see if that opened up a spot for him. The answer was no. It continues to be no.
It beggars belief, but it appears that Elon Musk's Hyperloop is actually going to be built. The first test track will only be five miles long, and it won't operate at the supersonic speeds that Musk envisioned, but still, it's coming—Musk's "cross between a Concorde, railgun, and an air hockey table" really is coming.
Back in January, Elon Musk said that he planned to build a Hyperloop test track "soon" and that Texas was "the leading candidate." Curiously, nothing more has been said by Musk on the matter since. Then, in February, Hyperloop Transport Technologies (HTT)—an organisation that is unaffiliated with Musk—said that it had struck a deal to build a five-mile Hyperloop in California.
HTT is a research company that was founded soon after Musk's original Hyperloop thesis was published in 2013. The structure of HTT is somewhat interesting: it has employees, but it also uses crowdsourced engineering talent from across the US that is being paid in stock options. The CEO is a guy called Dirk Ahlborn, who founded JumpStartFund—an online platform that facilitates with building crowd-powered projects; basically, he took his own service and used it to build HTT.
And finally, there is the most salient sameness of all: like a prolific movie studio specialising in one particular genre, the greatest police brutality videos – in number and quality – are produced in the US.
The international community has a pretty standard prescription for poor countries: Leverage development aid, attract foreign investment, and earn your way into middle income.
But the other side of the equation is that the international financial system makes it quite easy for bad actors in those countries to make off with the cash aimed at bolstering public prosperity, slipping it out of the country illicitly through trade fraud and secret bank accounts. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the poorest countries in the world see the biggest relative illicit outflows, according to a new study from the NGO Global Financial Integrity that provides a glaring example of how futile these efforts are without more attention to illicit financial flows.
For example, here are 20 countries that see much more money slip out through their borders than comes in via official development assistance and foreign direct investment combined between 2008 and 2012:
So for every dollar invested or donated to, say, the Philippines, almost $5 leaves the country illicitly. That’s not exactly a recipe for development.
Or take this table, which shows that of the 82 lowest-income countries, twenty see funds equivalent to more than 10% of their annual economic production leave the country illicitly:
Corrupt officials and lax customs practices are part of the problem in these countries, but every transaction takes two parties, and advanced economies, including the United States and the European Union, are not taking the steps needed to make it harder for people to launder money in the international financial system. GFI’s leadership criticized global leaders for failing to even deploy tougher rhetoric at the recent meeting of the G-7 economies.
“We are very disappointed in the G-7’s inaction on the issue of illicit financial flows,” GFI Managing Director Tom Cardamone said in a statement. “Failing to take a strong position on illicit flows—the most damaging economic problem plaguing the developing world—is a huge opportunity missed.”
This week, the World Conference of Science Journalists is taking place in Seoul, South Korea. It's mostly an opportunity for journalists to exchange ideas and discuss global and regional issues that affect their reporting. But they do bring in a few scientists to talk to the journalists, and this year that group included two Nobel Prize winners. One of those was Tim Hunt, who was scheduled to give a talk on creativity in science.
Hunt's talk ended up being notable for its blatant sexism. While the reporters weren't actually reporting when Hunt cut loose, Ivan Oransky of Retraction Watch confirmed that several of them quickly huddled to get his quotes down. They were later shared by Connie St. Louis, who heads the journalism program at City University, London. Hunt later confirmed the accuracy of the reporting.
Referring to women, he said, "Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them, they cry." He later went on to say that, while he doesn't want to get in the way of women, he's "in favor of single-sex labs."
OnlyMrGodKnowsWhy
.jpg){kind=link}