
horse take off - rare look at the latest hollywood 3d horse movie

horse take off - rare look at the latest hollywood 3d horse movie
firehoseNew York is fucking stupid
What the glorious fucking fuck
After vocal protests and threats of self-immolation over the presence of Citi Bike in SoHo's Petrosino Park, this photo seems to indicate that maybe, just maybe, there's room for art and bike share stations to co-exist peacefully.
Minerva Durham, who usually runs her figure drawing classes out of her nearby Spring Studio, is protesting the docking stations by holding sessions outside this week—because nothing sends a somber message of resistance more forcefully than attractive naked people. If this tour de force somehow fails, Durham said last week that she would take the next logical step in protecting the park's artistic integrity: Death. She doubled down on this threat in an email to Gothamist yesterday:
Already I have spent every day that it has not rained in the park protesting. So I have been living every moment of my life to get those bikes out of designated park space. My youngest grandchild is more than five years old, so I figure I have no remaining biological duties and I can die if need be.Okeydokey then! The art class, however, appears to be proceeding uninterrupted by a single instance of seppuku. If Durham really wants to get rid of the rack, she should consider instructing her nude models to pose atop the bikes. You can swab a Citi Bike with antibacterial wipes until your fingers chafe, but there are some things you can't unsee—and direct taint-to-bike seat contact is one of them.

Neon Genesis Evangelion - quick sketch from Wizard World Philly
firehosevia GN
urgent attention: saucie

Today I came across goats playing on a trampoline while I was driving around and it was the happiest thing I’ve ever seen.
European developer Mighty Box Games created a game based off of what is (arguably) Joy Division's best song — a free-to-play, browser-based title created in Unity called Will Love Tear Us Apart?
The game was created as part of a project to adapt a song or poem into a game. Each verse of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" is translated into a different stage of the game, with special attention paid to the theme of that verse.
According to the game's Facebook page, Will Love Tear Us Apart? is about "the frustration of love that lingers beyond the realization of its unsustainability."
"It encourages players to reflect on the darker side of love: mis-communication, emotional impasse and the sadness of separation," the description reads. "Solace may be found in the brief moment of lightness that comes over us when we come to terms with the reality of an irreconcilable relationship with those we still have feelings for."
You can try Will Love Tear Us Apart? out for yourself over at its website.
firehoseboooooooo
fuckin' boooooooo

Continue reading Harmonix and Disney delve into 'Fantasia: Music Evolved' for Kinect
Harmonix and Disney delve into 'Fantasia: Music Evolved' for Kinect originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 04 Jun 2013 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Becky Stern of Adafruit has created a two different styles of glowing Chuck Taylor All-Star sneakers by installing Electroluminescence (EL) panels to the round all-star and rubber star badge logos and an inverter in the tongue. Stern quickly shows the entire process in this video, as well as step-by-step instructions at Adafruit.
video and images via Adafruit
submitted via Laughing Squid Tips
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Following remarks from Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki and an introduction by actor Bradley Cooper, Vice President Biden delivers remarks to clos...
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firehosenone of the changes are "it works" so, nope
firehosea nintendo DS monster game promo involving gifts and friendship
and they still show two grown-ass men in the ad
Register Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate 3DS in Europe, get free download for a friend originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 04 Jun 2013 02:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
MacRumors and other sites are reporting that Apple is now replacing broken iPhone 5 displays in-store. Previously, Apple would send the smartphone off for repair, and offer customers a refurbished unit in exchange. If the customer was out of their complimentary warranty period and didn't have AppleCare+, the exchange would set them back $229. According to MacRumors, Apple Insider, and a number of iPhone repair sites, the on-site repair will cost $149, GigaOm reports the same procedure will cost $199.
The move to shift iPhone 5 display repairs in-store is the first in a sweeping set of changes to how Apple deals with faults in its devices. The company reportedly plans to offer in-store repairs for camera, sleep / wake button, and logic board issues in July. Apple already offers home button, receiver, and battery replacement in-store, so the expanded options should mean that the majority of customers will see their devices fixed rather than replaced.
One subscription could cover all your devices
A final expected change could come to the way AppleCare itself works. Presently, new Macs, iPhones, iPads and other Apple hardware can be covered by AppleCare warranties on a device-by-device basis. Apple Insider reports that Apple is either shifting to or adding subscription plans that would tie AppleCare to customers, rather than individual devices. The change would mean that all customers with multiple Apple devices would be covered, and see additional purchases covered, by a single plan.
Lionhead teases Fable HD remake [update: Fable Anniversary announced] originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 04 Jun 2013 05:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
firehose"the financial services industry ... could use a dose of disruption"
oh it's disrupting all sorts of ways just fine on its own
Imagine if pouring over your finances were as easy as using your favorite app, or smartphone—or any of today’s crisply designed technologies that make life easier, smarter and more efficient.
Such is the task of Betterment CEO Jon Stein, who believes the financial services industry is actually making life more complicated, and could use a dose of disruption.
Betterment, Stein’s three year old startup, manages more than $200 million in assets—mostly in the form of savings and retirement accounts—for thousands of customers. The company’s approach to managing money is fundamentally democratic: its customers include everyone from the very rich to those who can barely afford to sock anything away for retirement. Like most financial advisors, Betterment charges an annual fee on the assets it manages. Betterment’s no-minimum account starts at 0.35% a year; customers who can afford to put more in are charged lower rates. (According to Betterment, that is one-tenth of what traditional financial advisors charge.)

Betterment’s offerings aren’t fancy; they’re intentionally unsophisticated. When people move their retirement or savings accounts to Betterment, their only options are index and exchange-traded funds from Vanguard and iShares—the sort that track the stock market passively, turn over investments infrequently to avoid tax hits, and have very low fees. (Betterment’s recently-hired “chief growth advisor” was last employed at Vanguard.)
“We don’t focus on bells and whistles,” says Stein. “We’re not trying to help you get a better return than the [stock] market.”
In lieu of the usual promises of financial advisors—which generally come down to assurances that they can beat the market though sophisticated strategies, and thus justify their fee—Betterment offers straightforward online tools that allow savers to manage their investments themselves, if they want to. Alternatively, customers can leave most of the decision-making to Betterment simply by telling the software about their goals and risk tolerance. (The video at the top of this article is a good introduction to the philosophy behind Betterment, and how that informs the design and function of the product.)
Here’s how it works: Savers start by creating an account at Betterment, and then connecting their bank accounts to Betterment’s own systems, if their goal is getting a better return on money they have in those accounts. For retirement savings, Betterment allows people to roll over their personal or corporate retirement plan. Then they are encouraged to create “goals”—which range from big ambitions like saving for retirement to smaller tasks like saving for an upcoming vacation. Adjustable sliders corresponding to risk tolerance and time horizon allow people to play with both and see, in real time, the results in terms of how long it will take them to reach their goals. Imagine managing your investments through a program as simple and straightforward as the Nest thermostat, which was created by a former designer of the iPod, and has its own “intelligence” in order to make it easy to save energy.
Betterment is so user-friendly that if someone doesn’t have any specific financial goals, the site will suggest them, based on what other users with similar profile—be it income level or profession—are saving for.
Almost all online brokerages, from E-Trade to Vanguard, now offer advice and even financial tools to make managing your finances simpler. But too often, those tools merely reflect the complexity of the financial services industry rather than boiling it down, which can be intimidating and fatiguing. Betterment tries to cut through the complexity to make financial decisions as easy as, say, working an iPhone. “For that younger customer who’s reaching that inflection point where they have enough savings that they need some guidance, but does not have a large enough stake that advisors are calling them every week, I think there is an opportunity for Betterment,”says Craig Martin, director of the wealth management practice at J.D. Power. Even people who worry about saving regularly and setting specific financial goals often don’t do it. And for many, employing someone else to do it is too expensive.
Betterment also thinks tech-savvy users might trust its website more than a human advisor. ”A financial advisor could have a bad day, or might give you advice based on some sort of conflict of interest,” says Stein. “An algorithm can’t do that because the conflict of interest would be coded into the software. It’s illegal to do that and traceable.” In other words, regulators could trace the origin of any code that programmed the software to make trades involving a conflict of interest. (Whether regulators would bother to look is another story.) Like many financial advisors, Betterment does not earn commissions on the products it sells.
So what exactly goes into the algorithms? According to Stein, Betterment’s algorithms “implement the [financial] advice that almost everyone agrees on,” including having a diverse portfolio with a balance between stocks and bonds, and some exposure to international markets. Betterment’s software regularly rebalance the portfolio and manages automatic deposits from users. The site has a customer support line to answer questions about how the site works—but employees never dispense financial advice, says Stein.
Betterment can afford to charge less for its services partly because it doesn’t have the overhead of traditional brick-and-mortar financial advisors. Its service also don’t require costlier live interactions.
Small mom and pop advisors are “extremely expensive to do, and may not be worth that much. You’re trusting somebody, but why? Especially when you can do the same thing with a massively scalable platform like ours,” says Stein.”
Stein’s firm reflects the changes in the industry due to rising wealth disparity. More financial advisors are branding themselves as “wealth managers” to target high-net worth individuals. To keep costs down, lower-end advisors often just enter a customer’s information into a computer system that looks a lot like Betterment, if less user-friendly. “If your firm uses basic financial advising tools like Betterment already, and you’re just an overlay on top of that, then how much added value do you bring?” says J.D. Power’s Martin.
If Betterment’s business takes off and spawns imitators, some financial advisors may find themselves in the same unfortunate position as the travel agents who lost their jobs to online booking websites. For its part, Betterment just expanded to 36 employees, about half of which are engineers.
Stein says he is frequently approached about licensing Betterment’s technology or partnering with a large bank, brokerage or financial services firm. But for now, he’s riding out the company’s fast growth. “We’re totally focused on building our brand,” says Stein. The bike rack and nap room in Betterment’s Soho office in New York send a clear signal: Betterment’s brand wants nothing to do with its white shoe shop competitors.

Pretty sure this is some sort of astronomical phenomenon
SIGN HAS ONE JOB
SIGN DOES IT
NO MATTER HOW LONG IT TAKES
…The semi-Cardinal Virtue of Persistence, in a very pure form.
firehoseYES
YYYYEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Massive Chalice is now yet another Double Fine crowdfunding success after reaching its Kickstarter funding goal of $725,000 today.
As of press time, users have pledged $733,998 to the turn-based feudal fantasy title. The campaign still has 23 days left to go before it reaches its end.
This follows the success of Double Fine's first Kickstarter campaign Double Fine Adventure, now officially known as Broken Age, which reached $3,336,371. The studio first announced its latest project last week, revealing a development team led by Brad Muir is working to bring Massive Chalice to Windows PC, Mac and Linux.
Check out our in-depth feature on the creation of Double Fine's newest Kickstarter campaign and what it entails.
firehosebut does it even lift
In 2007, former Yahoo executive Chris Williams decided it was time to make money off fan fiction. "I work for a brand-new fan fiction website called FanLib.com and my colleagues and I want it to be the ultimate place for talented writers like you," read an email sent to hundreds of authors. "Together, we can create the greatest fan fiction site the web's ever seen!" In partnership with publishers and show producers, FanLib launched sweepstakes and contests for fans, letting winners contribute to scripts for series like The L Word.
But the response from fans was instant and furious. Some mocked the site's tone-deaf design, and others worried that it profited off authors without giving them any legal protection. "The people behind FanLib ... don't actually care about fanfic, the fanfic community, or anything except making money off content created entirely by other people and getting media attention," wrote fan fiction author Astolat. "They're creating a lawsuit-bait site while being bad potential defendants." After barely over a year, FanLib's infrastructure was bought by Disney, and the fan fiction archive was quietly shut down.
"What Amazon is trying to do is commodify a community."
Six years later, media powerhouse Amazon is giving the idea another try. In May, Amazon announced Kindle Worlds, a fan fiction wing of its publishing program. In exchange for work written for three Warner Bros. shows, authors will receive between 20 and 35 percent of the revenue from each sale. Rather than existing in legal limbo, stories will be officially sanctioned by copyright holders. And it's one of the only ways for fan fiction authors to easily sell their work. But to some authors, Kindle Worlds is still a step backwards — an effort to monetize fan fiction while stripping out its best features.
"What Amazon is trying to do is commodify a community," says Nistasha Perez, who handles communications at the Organization for Transformative Works. Among other things, the organization runs a massive nonprofit fan fiction site called Archive of our Own, created by Astolat and others in direct response to FanLib. AO3, as it's called, has become one of fan fiction's central hubs, along with LiveJournal, Wattpad, Tumblr, and Fanfiction.net. It's designed for and by fans, supporting itself with periodic fundraising drives.

The problem, as Perez and others see it, is that Amazon's publishing program simply misunderstands what fandom is about. To them, the often collaborative process of fan fiction can't be shoehorned into a single ebook file. "I'm going to write this story for my friend because she's having a bad day, and then somebody is going to decide to draw fanart for me, or leave a two-page paragraph about how much they enjoyed it," says Perez. But Amazon's terms of service give it exclusive rights to stories and a license to use new elements in them — like original characters or specific settings. That likely means stories can't be posted elsewhere or built upon by other fans.
Ironically, this could make people less likely to buy Kindle Worlds' product. As it stands, Amazon is in competition with a vast array of free options, including well-curated selections by individual fans. A typical fan fiction story might start on Livejournal in response to a prompt, then get cross-posted to Fanfiction.net, Archive of our Own, and a dedicated fan site. Kindle Worlds authors can sell their work, but they can't tap into the same wide network of collaboration and support
Amazon is in competition with a vast array of free options
Though Kindle Worlds could get more licenses in the future, it currently only allows fan fiction from three properties, and only one — The Vampire Diaries — is particularly active. Inside Vampire Diaries fandom, there's tentative consideration of Amazon's offer. "It's been an ongoing discussion," says Vampire Diaries fan That_Treason, a software engineer who started writing fan fiction about a year ago as practice for original fiction. "There are definitely some of my friends who are interested in being a guinea pig for the rest of us, and seeing if it's actually a useful tool."
But she's less sure that she would actually buy an ebook from Amazon. "The way I would be most willing to pay for something is if it were something I had already read," says That_Treason. "If I had read it through all the way and thought ‘Wow, that was really amazing — I would want to support that author,' then I might want to buy a copy and read it on my Kindle." Without a good way to vet stories, Kindle Worlds has less to offer than its free competitors. "Whether I'd be willing to pay for something without knowing the author... I don't know." The fan fiction gift economy doesn't just mean collaboration — it also means that people would rather support someone who's built up a reputation for good work.
A Kindle Worlds ebook might not make much money, but it could pull fan fiction out of fuzzy legal territory
That_Treason acknowledges that the money from Kindle Worlds would probably be negligible, but she says there's another reason she'd want to try it out: not having to worry about her story falling into a legal gray area. The Organization for Transformative Works insists that fan fiction is fair use, but the legal precedent is far from clear. Unfortunately, this means Amazon's offer could be a double-edged sword. "The fandom that I write in has been relatively tolerant on this thing," says That_Treason. "But now that they have an official license, will they start to crack down on Fanfiction.net or on AO3? These are questions I'm concerned about for my own writing, even if I don't go to Amazon."
Amazon's actual terms of service could pose a more immediate problem. As science fiction author John Scalzi pointed out soon after the announcement, publishers can use fans' original story elements without further pay, which has alienated some people. There are also ongoing questions about where publishers will draw the line for what to accept. General guidelines forbid graphic sex or "offensive" content like excessive violence or profanity. But a longer set of rules will apply to each fandom, and nobody knows yet what it will include. Both Amazon and Warner Bros. declined to answer questions about the guidelines.

Fandom thrives on flipping morality systems, reinterpreting relationships, and changing tones — probing the dark implications of a lighthearted video game or putting dramatic characters in ridiculous situations to imagine how they'd react. It's a way to create new stories that critique the old ones, or simply to explore the things that aren't shown in the source material. Much-mocked genres like slash fiction create new ways to explore relationships and alternate character interpretations give us stories from the villains' point of view. Depending on what Warner Bros. is comfortable with, authorized fan fiction may be stripped of much of its power. And because of licensing issues, writers can't submit "crossover" fiction, which combines characters or settings from multiple works.
Kindle Worlds gives fan fiction authors something they'd probably never get anywhere else: a sense of legitimacy and a bit of money. Scalzi also notes that there's already a version of paid and licensed "fan fiction" if you count tie-ins — depending on your interpretation, Amazon is either democratizing or undercutting the tie-in novel market. Unlike FanLib, fan fiction writers are getting more than a contest prize; they're being treated as real authors and given real legal protection.
But fan fiction isn't just a lesser version of ordinary fiction. It's a medium and genre with its own conventions and strengths, and that's what Perez worries Amazon is missing. "[Fan fiction is] a reaction to large publishers, a reaction to mass media," she says. "It's a reinterpretation from a minority point of view, a female point of view, an LGBTQ point of view, a queer point of view — it's reinterpreted to represent people who are often not represented in mass media. In a lot of ways, it feels like Amazon hasn't even scratched the surface of what fandom is."
Amazon today announced it's exclusively adding "thousands of TV episodes from Viacom to Prime Instant Video." The content is mostly kids programming, with shows like Dora the Explorer and Blue's Clues. Those are coveted shows for streaming services, and up until late May they were on Netflix. Amazon has also snagged up other Viacom properties more attuned to adults, including Tosh.0 and several other shows from MTV and Comedy Central.
A source close to the deal characterized it as amounting in the hundreds of millions of dollars, though an exact figure wasn't disclosed in Amazon's announcement. It is a "multi-year, multi-national" agreement and the largest video deal Amazon has ever landed — both in terms of cost and in the number of episodes it's added to its libary in a single shot. In its announcement, Amazon was quick to note that the shows would be available on its Kindle Freetime Unlimited service, a $2.99-per-month subscription that offers Prime members different books, apps, movies, and shows for kids.
Though Netflix apparently wasn't able to renew its deal for Viacom's kid's programming, it's not left in a lurch: it still will have Disney's programming in its stable beginning in 2016. In the meantime, Amazon seems to have a strong advantage in the surprisingly important genre of children's TV. Both companies have been making strong plays in independently produced shows for adults — perhaps original programming for kids won't be far behind.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If 3D printing will up-end manufacturing as we know it, and if China is home to the world’s largest and most successful manufacturing industry, it ought to stand to reason that if—or when—3D printing eventually goes mainstream, China’s manufacturing will suffer, right? Some people certainly think so.
But even if they are right, they are also far from the only ones to have thought of it. China’s plan to counter this eventuality? To take control of 3D printing. Luo Jun, the head of the Asian Manufacturing Association, a Chinese trade body, said at a 3D printing conference in Beijing last week that he expects revenues from products and services in the industry in China alone to grow to 10 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) within three years. That’s a third of AMA’s own projections of global revenues of $5 billion by 2016, and just under half the $3.7 billion forecast for 2015 that Wohlers Associates, a research firm, made a year ago. Luo sees the market doubling in size every year after that.
Luo’s confidence stems from an investment made by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology late last year. It formed the “China 3D Printing Technology Industry Alliance” to fund 10 research centres at a cost of 200 million yuan, which will be matched by local governments. The first of these, in Nanjing, was approved in March. Some 40 companies have joined the alliance.
If China’s 3D printing industry matches Luo’s projections, it will have grown an order of magnitude from 2012. Last year, the US accounted for about 60% of the industry’s global revenues of $2 billion. China claimed a meagre $153 million.