firehosewhat the fuck
Look. There are other DVDs coming out this week. Indeed, some of them are pretty cool. But the fact remains that there is a DVD out tomorrow that contains beloved/cranky scifi author Harlan Ellison teaming up with the original Scooby gang to fight ancient evil. What more do you really need?
    
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firehosefuck you, shit
cocks
Last week, we all got our hopes up that the huge gaps in Doctor Who's history, with whole years of the show basically gone, might be filled in with the return of a bunch of missing episodes. And now, the inevitable has happened and reality has set in.
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Here’s another gem from the emails presented as evidence in the US government’s lawsuit against Apple over e-book pricing:
That’s Steve Jobs, then Apple’s CEO, writing to Eddy Cue, the executive in charge of iTunes and the App Store, five days before the iPad went on sale. He was linking to this story from AppleInsider, a news site that aggregates rumors about the company: “Apple’s iPad iBookstore offers low-cost e-book self publishing.”
That was apparently news to Jobs. Later in the email exchange, he asked, “Are we going to let anyone self-publish? Does Amazon?” (“Yes and yes,” replied Cue.) You can read the entire thread here (pdf).
Emails unearthed in the e-books trial, which is expected to wrap up arguments this week, have shed light on Jobs’s negotiating style and backbiting among executives at Apple and major book publishers. The exchange about self-publishing is less revelatory but confirms that Jobs, who often mocked Apple rumor blogs (and sometimes sued them), was also a reader of those sites.
Jobs reading AppleInsider may not be altogether surprising, but it’s still fun to imagine him reading—perhaps even nervously reading—rumor blogs in the week before the iPad first went on sale.
firehosehang in there, he kicks up the tempo on the second playthrough
What happens when you give a Mario piano score to someone who’s never heard it in his life?
Awesomeness.
Almost every self-proclaimed ragtime pianist I’ve ever met has been a total sightreading genius. I guess it’s also a thing that they have tons of experience having people throw them music and playing it right then and there.
what is this sorcery sadfkljalksdjf
Oh that’s so cute it’s completely different!!! ;u;
This Ragtime Mario Theme is my new favorite version.
Super Mario World Ragtime? Fuck yeah.
Awesome
This dog just wants to quietly enjoy her bone but Miles the cat wants to play instead in this video taken by Kevin G.
firehosefollow-up on the cosplayers-printed-onto-body-pillows story
tl;dr: READ THE FUCKING PHOTO RELEASE BEFORE YOU SIGN IT
firehosefollowup
#gamerculture
The video game collector who is in possession of a Sega Pluto, the never-released second model of the Sega Saturn, didn't know what he had on his hands until very recently. Once he became aware of the uniqueness of the console — and accordingly, of the high price it could fetch — he put it up for bidding on video game auction site GameGavel, and later on eBay. But according to the seller, who goes by Kidvid666 online, he's not looking to reap a profit from the extremely rare item.
Kidvid666 bought the console five or six years ago at a flea market in Stockton, Calif., for $1. "The guy I bought it from thought it was a VCR and I haggled him down to $1 from $5," he told Polygon over email. The system bears the Sega Saturn logo on the lid for its disc receptacle — the lid won't stay closed — but the unit is distinguished from the consumer model of Sega's mid-'90s console by its built-in NetLink modem.
"I just thought it was a huge Sega Saturn," he said.
Someone purporting to be a Sega employee revealed in April that he owned a 14-year-old Pluto prototype, and once Kidvid666 saw a news story about it, he realized that he had one, too.
In a GameGavel listing, he said he started the bidding at $1 and set a hidden, high reserve price because he was unsure of the Pluto's value. "Bid what you think the value is and that way we can all get a more accurate picture of the demand and value for this nearly one-of-a-kind item," he wrote.
The GameGavel auction ended at $7,600, and the eBay auction afterward ended at $15,500, neither of which met the listings' respective reserve prices. That's when Kidvid666 began to receive "backlash" on the internet, with commenters characterizing him as a guy who's just out to make a buck. But he said that he ran into problems on eBay: The sale didn't go through because the high bidder backed out, and none of the other bidders responded to second-chance offers.
Kidvid666 also explained that he doesn't have any particular attachment to the Pluto — "it's not like we hang out at family gatherings or anything," he said — but while he feels that it's "super rad to own a piece of Sega history," he's willing to part with it for the right price in order to help out his family.
"I just thought it was a huge Sega Saturn"
"I am looking to sell it so I can give the cash to my folks, plain and simple," he said. "I know I've been marked as 'a greedy unrealistic hipster' but I'd do anything for my parents. If it wasn't for them I wouldn't be in the situation I am today or collecting at all."
He's currently storing the Pluto in a safe deposit box while he explores other sale opportunities, although he's feeling "just a bit jaded by all the backlash [he] got via the internet over it."
Want to buy a military-grade drone? That won’t be easy, unless you’ve got a good relationship with Beijing.
This week’s Paris air show highlighted the trouble with the burgeoning drone economy: While the technology is better than ever, there still aren’t many people who can legally buy unmanned vehicles. Civilian buyers still face restrictions on usage. US and European regulators are still mulling rules for drones to share airspace with planes and helicopters. And strict trade restrictions make it difficult for the traditional leaders in the field, US and Israeli defense contractors, to export their drone technology. Just months after the first sale of US drones to a non-NATO country, Germany cancelled the purchase of four Eurohawk drones after delays in certifying them for flight in Europe.
All the better for Chinese aerospace companies, which aren’t hindered by such rules. As a result, China could become a drones “proliferator” to developing countries, according to a report (PDF) released on June 13 by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.”Chinese companies appear to be positioning themselves to become key suppliers of UAVs in the global market…Chinese UAVs are likely to be attractive to developing countries in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, particularly given their price points,” the report concludes.
China is developing UAV technology for widespread use in surveillance and combat. Almost every large manufacturer for the Chinese military hosts a research center dedicated to drone technology. The government proudly displays new designs at air shows and military parades. Earlier this year, Chinese officials considered using a drone to kill a drug trafficker (paywall) in Myanmar who had murdered 13 Chinese sailors.
The portability and low cost of drones produced in China makes them more attractive, according to the report. An example: China’s Wing Loong, a drone that is sometimes compared to the US’s Reaper, costs $1 million; the Reaper goes for around $30 million or more.
China’s drone technology is, according to some, about two decades behind that of the US. But China’s technology could be alluring enough to strengthen its ties to other emerging markets. China has already used its satellite technology for this purpose: Nigeria, Brazil, Venezuela and Pakistan have all bought or received Chinese satellites in exchange for Chinese access to their natural resources. In this way, drones become a kind of soft power currency for China, especially if no one else is willing to sell them.
firehosefewer with high-school diplomas but more with post-grad degrees
Things are looking grim for young Americans starting work.
According to a new report on the state of US education from the Council on Foreign Relations, Americans going into the labor force today are less educated than those retiring from it. This phenomenon is unique among developed countries. For 55- to 64-year-olds, the US has the highest percentage of high-school graduates and the third-highest percentage of college graduates; in people aged 25 to 34, the country is 10th and 13th respectively.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, people without a high-school diploma have the highest rate of unemployment and the lowest earnings.
At its current pace, the US will need to add a little more than 200,000 jobs a month in order to close the “jobs gap” by 2020, according to the Hamilton Project. But as baby boomers (those born in the generation after World War II) continue to leave the workforce, companies are having trouble finding skilled workers to replace them.
While robots and iPads may be invading the classroom, there might be something about education we can learn by looking back—about 40 years.
firehosefirehose comin'!
"The focused news diet, like The Sopranos, has a strong central thread. Each website you visit there is a couple of editors who really put their stamp on things. They make sure that the site is dialed in basically the same way, day after day. If you read the same blogs everyday, even single-author blogs, you begin to understand how they tick. There isn’t much that surprises you or is orthogonal to the focused news diet. Also, like The Sopranos, the focused news diet is easy to consume. You don’t have to try very hard, and it becomes like a habit. Even if you wanted to consume more news, you couldn’t really, because the daily habit of opening all those webpages would become cumbersome if you tried to add in any more sites. Just like The Sopranos, you come away with a strong point of view from a few select sources.
Now compare that to the diffuse diet, the feed reading diet. The feed reading diet could easily include over 100 different news feeds that could be a mixture of professional, pro-am, and amateur alike. It could go further still and include feeds from aggregators that collect sources from all over the place. In this diet, there is no way any one editor will overpower another. You end up being your own editor. You must build a context for yourself. Like The Wire, this becomes the reward, understanding how stories relate to one another. Understand the underlying allegiances each site has to one another. By building that context yourself, each story means more and gets placed in a larger web of interest."
firehoselol
The used games market and pricing model for AAA games cannot co-exist, the later being unsustainable while the former continues to grow, according to Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinksi.
Bleszkinski took to Twitter to argue that Sony's announcement that there will be no restrictions in playing used games on the PlayStation 4 may not have been entirely correct.
"I'd bet Sony has some similar stuff up their sleeves, they're just playing on the internet outrage for free PR," he tweeted. "You're all being played!
"You cannot have game and marketing budgets this high while also having used and rental games existing," he added. "The numbers do not work people."
Last week during Sony's E3 press conference, Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Jack Tretton's announcement there would be no used games restrictions for the PS4 was met with a standing ovation. Bleszinski argued over Twitter that the used games market is on its way out, and gamers should expect new business models as the industry moves into next-gen.
"The visual fidelity and feature sets we expect from games now come with sky high costs. Assassin's Creed games are made by thousands of devs.
"Newsflash. This is why you're seeing free to play and microtransactions everywhere," he said. "The disc based day one $60 model is crumbling."
firehoseworth watching to the end
A group of U.K. jokesters decided to see what would happen if they kept a public elevator's doors from closing by using "the Force," a.k.a. a friend hidden around the corner. I don't know much about British law, but I think if a guy on your "lift" pulls this, you should be legally allowed to cut him in two and chuck the pieces down a shaft.
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@Dolly !!
Dame Judi Dench does needlework embroidery during movie shoots. And the embroidery is all swear words.
"She makes these like needlework embroideries on set in the tedium of filming", says MacFadyen, "but they are all: 'You Are a Cunt'. And she gives them as presents. And it's Dame Judi Dench. And she is doing this beautifully, intricate, ornate (work). You kind of see the work materializing as the shoot goes on. Like: 'You Are a Fucking Shit.'"
firehosevia Rosalind
Submitted by: Unknown
firehosevia Vjuliao
The Astonishing Annual Red Crab Migration
Named one of the planet’s most breathtaking migrations, the Christmas Island red crab exodus is a natural phenomenon that continues to astonish.
Making it onto CNN Travel’s recent list of the “10 most spectacular wildlife migrations,” the island’s annual red crab migration is an astounding event that involves the movement of millions of vividly colored crabs as they leave their in-land homes to breed and release eggs into the sea.
An Australian territory, Christmas Island lies some 2,600 kilometers north-west of Perth in the middle of the Indian Ocean. While just 1,500 people live there, it is home to an estimated 120 million crabs.
Photo credit: James Morgan [website]
firehoseOED is dead
firehoseSo with that in mind, this beta release centers on these core elements of the product:
Easy migration and onboarding from Google Reader.
A clean reading experience that gets out of the way and puts the focus squarely on the articles, posts, images, and videos themselves.
Useful mobile apps that sync with the web experience.
Support for key actions like subscribing, sharing, saving and organizing.
In the 60 days following launch, our focus will be on:
Android app.
Speed.
Integration with additional third party services (like Buffer, Evernote, and IFTTT).
Better tools to sort, filter and rank your reading lists and feeds, based on your networks, interests, likes, and so on.
Collecting and responding to user feedback.
…and getting started on:
Search.
Notifications.
The new Digg team just announced a launch date for its highly-anticipated RSS reader, which should be here in plenty of time to catch all the Google Reader refugees. The first version of the Digg Reader, which was built in just under three months, looks extremely similar to Google Reader but is missing some key functionality such as search, which Digg says will be added in future iterations. "Our aim has been to nail the basics: a web and mobile reading experience that is clean, simple, functional, and fast," Digg said in a blog post.
The Digg Reader will roll out first to the 17,000 users who gave Digg feedback on what they wanted to see in an RSS reader, then to anyone who signs up. Digg says the reader will be available to everyone by July 26, almost a full week before Google Reader is scheduled to shut down. Easy migration of data from Google Reader was a top priority. Digg is also introducing an iPhone app that syncs with the web version, with an Android app on the way. All features introduced this week will be free, but Digg plans to introduce premium paid features in the future.
firehoseyo is it
Apparently, there’s an unlikely suitor of global luxury goods: Buddhist monks.
A YouTube video showing Buddhist monks sporting aviator specs on a private jet has offended the sensibilities of the world’s largest Buddhist nation. Posted May 22, the snippet features a trio of Buddhist monks in mirrored sunglasses aboard a small jet. The monks, who hail from a temple in Thailand’s Sisaket province, aren’t doing anything outlandish, just fiddling with their headphones and rubbing their eyes. The problem is the luxury handbag placed next to one of them, which prompted a range of complaints about the incongruence of such excesses with Buddhism’s ascetic teachings. On Monday, Thailand’s national Buddhism body responded, saying it will keep a closer eye on monks around the country. Office of National Buddhism director-general Nopparat Benjawatananun said the monks in the video acted “inappropriately, not composed and not adhering to Buddha’s teachings of simplicity and self-restraint,” according to the Associated Press.
This isn’t the first time YouTube has caused problems for Buddhist monks. In 2011, a temple filed a complaint with police of a YouTube clip of dancing monks, saying it tarnished the temple’s image. But YouTube or no YouTube, some say misconduct by monks—many of whom are young men following the tradition of becoming novices or monks for short periods—is a natural outgrowth of Thailand’s growing affluence. According to a Citigroup report on the Asian retail landscape, roughly 19% of Thailand’s households will have incomes over $20,000 by 2017; in 2002 that number was 2.2%. Brisk loan growth in Thailand, which has outpaced GDP in recent years, is helping to boost consumption.
Thailand’s government has leaned fiscally conservative following its debt crisis in the late 1990s. In recent years, the government has turned to the private sector to juice growth. But one can’t help but wonder what the Buddha would think.
firehoseshared entirely for that dog
the way we live now
In the course of one week I both found a new apartment and moved in. I felt like the queen of the world, coordinating everything on my own in less than 5 days, only to have it all crash down around me on Friday when I moved. My movers were over 4 hours late and then we discovered that neither my sofa nor my armchair would fit through the entryway of the new building (it was built for doll people I think). Then when I convinced (more like begged) them to take the sofa and chair back to my old apartment until I found a solution, someone had messed up the lock on the old apartment building’s door and the movers had to climb the fire escape into my old apartment to get it. It was crazy. So this weekend I found myself looking up a service that is practically legendary in NYC: Couch Cracking/Breaking. When I told people I was doing this, most people didn’t know it was “a thing”, but if you live in a city with old buildings, you may have run into the problem a lot of New Yorker’s have: narrow hallways that can’t handle contemporary furniture sizes. I couldn’t fit things through my window so yesterday Hope and I sat on the sidewalk and watched my beautiful grown up sofa (the first piece I’ve truly splurged on in my adult life) be gutted, sawed into pieces and then re-built inside.
When I showed some photos on Instagram people asked me to post some more details about the process, so I thought I’d share some insight into the insanity that is couch cracking. Basically they remove the back and bottom upholstery, saw the back apart from the bottom, bring it inside and then re-build and re-staple the upholstery. The whole thing took an hour, start to finish. And while it’s not cheap ($250-$400 depending on couch size), it’s a heck of a lot cheaper and more convenient than buying a new sofa. So, enjoy the insanity of couch-cracking! xo, grace*I used NY Couch Doctor and would recommend them mildly. Their estimate was way off but they were fast and efficient).
NEXT STEP: SAWING THE COUCH APART! AAHHH!!
NEXT STEP: THEY SCREW THE FRAMES BACK TOGETHER AND STAPLE GUN THE UPHOLSTERY BACK INTO PLACE.
This room isn’t decorated or done, but generally the couch is up and running and I honestly can’t tell ANY difference, it’s amazing.
This Week's Entry: List of Chairs
What It's About: You may not give much thought to the humble chair, but someone out there has, compiling a list of over 130 types of chair. Designs range from the Watchman's Chair, built with a forward slant so the watchman in question doesn't fall asleep; to the Fighting Chair (less exciting than it sounds), used by fisherman for extra leverage against a strong catch; to the Poofbag Chair, a foam-filled beanbag chair and a ...
firehose"Will Wonder Woman strangle Cheetah to death with her lasso in an inevitable Justice League lead-in feature? Will the Flash take on the NSA in a mega-budget, mega-obvious political allegory?"
Despite a needlessly convoluted plot, a dreary visual palette, and a take on its titular titan that deviated rather dramatically from everything folks know and love about Kal-El, Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder's gritty Superman reboot drew big crowds this weekend. Clearing the June opening-weekend record in a single bound, Man Of Steel brought in a super-heroic $125.1 million—the year's second-highest debut, behind that other man of steel, Iron Man. Revisionist takes on iconic properties are all well and good, but who was this sullen imposter in the red and blue? (One theory: he's actually this guy. Or maybe this one.) Does this mean audiences can now expect dark re-imaginings of other beacon-of-hope superheroes? Will Wonder Woman strangle Cheetah to death with her lasso in an inevitable Justice League lead-in feature? Will the Flash take on the NSA in a mega-budget, mega-obvious political allegory?
Moviegoers ...
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The Chicago Tribune is reporting the death of Bernard “Bernie” Sahlins, best known as one of the co-founders (along with director Paul Sills and actor-turned-filmmaker Howard Alk) of The Second City, the improvisational-comedy theater that became a launching pad for star comedians, and whose influence changed the face of comedy and American acting. Although Sills generally gets the lion’s share of the credit for shaping the theater’s voice, Sahlins was equally legendary for his eye for talent, and for the sharp business sense that made Second City such a success. Sahlins is said to have died “peacefully” according to his wife, at the age of 90.
Sahlins was already a seasoned producer on the Chicago theatre scene when The Second City opened in December of 1959. He’d worked with Sills as co-founder of the University of Chicago-based Compass Players and at the Playwrights Theater Club in the ...
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