blakesby:

beatonna:

olosta:

group of women having a smoke, gelatin silver print, c. 1896.

How to go back in time and be this person is the question

Why go back? Be that person now.

SUGAR LAND, TX—Shortly after reports surfaced today that the Boy Scouts of America had voted to lift its ban on gay youths, local homosexual child Max Lovell, 14, told reporters that he was looking forward to joining the organization and finally bei...

Delegates to the annual meeting of the Boy Scouts of America made a monumental statement Thursday, voting to allow openly gay youths to join scouting.

Update: Daniel’s blog post here provides some more info, including how to install the technology preview on Raspbian today. And Pekka’s blog post here has some very detailed technical information on the implementation of the Weston backend.

If you’re familiar with the Raspberry Pi desktop experience, you’ll have noticed that windows on the desktop can be a bit slower to move around than you’re used to on your PC or laptop. This is because X, the windowing software (or composition protocol) that we use, is not optimised to use the graphics core of the BCM2835, the chip at the heart of the Raspberry Pi. All the work is done by the ARM processor instead, which slows things down and leaves the graphics core twiddling its thumbs. That graphics core is extremely powerful, so we’re working on putting it to good use to fix the issue.

We’ve made the decision to bypass X completely. Over the past few months we’ve been working with our friends at Collabora to implement the open-source Wayland composition protocol on top of the BCM2835 hardware video scaler (HVS). The HVS is a very powerful piece of hardware, with a scaling throughput of 500 megapixels per second and blending throughput of 1 gigapixel per second. It runs independently of the OpenGL ES hardware, so we can continue to render 3d graphics at the full, very fast rate, even while compositing.

In comparison to our current X11 desktop environment, Wayland frees the ARM from the burden of stitching together the top level of the composition hierarchy, and allows us to provide some neat features, including non-rectangular windows, fades for windows which don’t have input focus and an Exposé-like scaled window browser (the sort of thing that Mac users will be familiar with). Legacy X applications can still be supported using XWayland. Check out this video from Collabora to see these features in action, and to compare the current state of affairs with the Wayland future. Those non-rectangular shapes? They’re also windows.

We’re still working to improve performance and memory consumption, and don’t expect to be able to replace X11 as our default desktop environment until later in the year, but we will be including a technology preview in our next Raspbian release. Until then, this post on Collabora’s website gives some more background.

As with PyPy, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has funded this work on Wayland; it’s one of the ways we are trying to give back to the open-source community. Obviously, much of the work on this particular project is Raspberry Pi specific, but there’s a large portion of what’s being done, particularly around XWayland and some of the generic effects in Weston, that can be reused on many other platforms.

We’re looking forward to being able to push out the full release in the next few months. We hope you like the look of it!

Yes, you read that headline correctly. Back in 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon, they were wearing custom-made suits crafted by people who had previously earned their living making bras and girdles.

sciencehabit writes "Only a few years after roach motels were introduced in the 1980s, they lost their allure for an increasing number of German cockroaches. Researchers soon realized that some roaches had developed an aversion to glucose—the sugary bait disguising the poison—and that the insects were passing that trait on to their young. Now, scientists have figured out how this behavior evolved."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ambrosial-eats:

Meyer Lemon Crinkle Cookies

Why am I even looking at these before breakfast?!

Haven't done this round-up in a while and I could use a little break from all this heavy-duty identity critiquing. So here are some interesting stories.

1. 2013 Logo Trends

The 2013 Logo Trend report from Logo Lounge covers some of the stuff we've loved to hate over the past year, including the "Crossed" (shown above) that isn't just pretty according to LL: "The X formed by these elements signifies a level of heritage normally associated with a pair of crossed swords. It's a technique that lifts the regal nature of the client it represents and implies a certain sophistication even if it's a pair of crossed plungers." Other interesting trends are "Eyelet", "Written" and "Line Craft".

Thanks to James I. Bowie for the tip.

2. University of New Hampshire Presentation

The University of New Hampshire has been working with Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv to redesign their identity and, in a strange case of public sharing, they have released (sort of) a taping of Tom Geismar and Sagi Haviv presenting three identity contenders. The video can be watched on vimeo using "unhwildcats2013" as the password. For further reading, this story has all the sordid details, including C&G&H's $100,000-fee. I wonder if the presentation was taped so that when the eventual shit hits the fan and students complain about the logo change and due process they can show them this.

Update 8:55 am: Ah, too bad, they have removed the video altogether. I wish they would have kept it, it was an interesting look at the process. Sorry to all the late risers who missed it.

Thanks to Jonathan Steinberg for the tip.

3. New Handicap Symbol

Since last year, a group of academics at Gordon College, a small Christian institution in eastern Massachusetts, led by Brian Glenney (shown in video above) have been promoting a more active handicap symbol to replace the helpless-looking symbol we see everyday. This story covers how this effort might soon get a big boost as the New York mayor's Office for People With Disabilities "plans this summer to begin putting the new logo all over the nation's largest city," and a variation of the symbol — with arm stretched out, hailing — will be used on a new line of taxis designed to accommodate people with disabilities.

Thanks to Rebecca Knowe for the tip.

Don't forget to cast your vote about this post online

holy_calamity writes "Digital currency Bitcoin is gaining acceptance with mainstream venture capitalists, reports Technology Review, but at the price of its famed anonymity and ability to operate without central authority. Technology investors have now ploughed millions of dollars into a handful of Bitcoin-based payments and financial companies that are careful to follow financial regulations and don't offer anonymity. That's causing tensions in the community of Bitcoin enthusiasts, some of whom feel their currency's success has involved abandoning its most important features."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

4-6th January 2013 I had the pleasure to be a part of the feminist role-playing game convention FemCon, in Umeå Sweden. The event is best described by its tagline: ”By Women, For Everyone”.

The goal of FemCon was to create a gaming space where being a woman was normal, especially being a woman in a leadership position, as well as creating a kickass gaming convention. All of the organizers were women, and so were all the scenario writers, the game masters, the artists doing art exhibits and art workshops, and all the the seminar leaders. The drop in event Indierummet NordNordOst (The Indie-room NorthNorthEast) ran indie games designed by women. (Psi-run, Thou are But a Warrior, Kagematsu, Thousand and One Nights, Cat of Excellence and a bunch of other games.)

Players of all genders were welcome.

This was the first year FemCon was run and it was a small but intense event. There were about 50 participants and the event ran from Friday to Sunday. It was organized by the non-profit gaming club Gaia Projektet, and the main organizers where Johanna (“Jojjon”) Nyberg Hamrén, Jennie Larsson and Ewelina Lundholm. I was there to game master  ”Sagas of the Icelanders”  since it is a kickass game that addresses gender in a interesting way but also because I contributed to the game with the essay “Viking love life ” on viking gender roles, love and sexuality. I had a blast and Sagas was very well received at the event.

I’ve been to a bunch of gaming conventions, but somehow this was the nicest one so far. Cons are usually full of friendly and interesting people, but at FemCon it was super nice. Relaxed, inclusive and with a strong sense of an inviting community. I think that might been partly due to the size of the convention and partly due to the efforts the organizers taken.

All sort of small nice touches saw to create an inclusive and feminist event. The coziest armchairs and sofas were set aside for discussions corner for talking about feminism and gaming. There was free vegetarian food, coffee and cakes for game masters and volunteers. They had a Day Watch and a Night Watch, valiantly staying awake during the night to help out with any issue that might arise and create a safe environment during the night at the convention. Part of the money the Gaia Projektet earned through the event was donated to environmental charities. The scheduling saw to it that a seminar on gender stereotypes in pop culture was placed so that everyone could attend it without missing out on any of the gaming. All debates and discussion about gender and gaming was full of nuance and good listening. It was a very well designed event. Tons of small stuff like that add up to create a great atmosphere.

People came from all over Sweden to be part of this event, including the head of Sweden gaming union¹ Rebecka Prentell and people who had twenty hours train rides came out to attend.

For many of us game masters and volunteers it was a powerful event. As one of the game masters expressed it, it was the first gaming convention that she wouldn’t be judged to be a good or bad game master for a girl. It was the first time her performances as a game master would not reflect on her gender, only at her as an individual. Where her failure or success would not be seen as a sign of how good all women are at game mastering. Only how good she was. Women were allowed to first and foremost be judged as an individual and not as a woman.

What of the men then, weren’t they discriminated against? No. Not in my opinion. Umeå has a very active gaming and convention scene. There are a lot of other role-playing events during the year. Those events are usually dominated by male game-masters and scenario writers. In that context, one event where men still are very welcome as participants but not as game masters is not problematic, in my opinion. An event like FemCon is about creating safe space where a underrepresented group get a chance be part of the norm for once.

FemCon rocked, and hopefully next year’s event will be even bigger and more badass.

(FemCon – A feminist gaming convention in Sweden originally posted on Gaming As Women.)

LOS ANGELES—Ahead of his impending free agency, Lakers center Dwight Howard told reporters Thursday that he is “very interested” in moving to Houston and completely ruining the Rockets.

SEATTLE—Citing “subtle notes of ethambutol and clindamycin,” longtime McDonald’s customer Chris Hingle reported Thursday that he could discern from the taste of his McChicken sandwich a definite change in the antibiotics the fast f...

catrinastewart:

Kirsty McMullan - The Everyday Museum of Everyday Portland

Some of the lovely work produced by Kirsty in our studio at Brighton this year. More of the studio work at http://studio6brighton.tumblr.com and more of Kirsty’s work at http://kirstymcmullan.tumblr.com

Just over a year ago the third season of Community ended with three episodes on a single night, beginning with “Digital Estate Planning,” which took place largely within Journey To The Center Of Hawkthorne, a retro-style video game. Shortly thereafter, an intrepid Redditor recreated a small, explorable version of the game that attracted a small group of dedicated developers, who have continued to update the game over the course of the past year.

The group recently celebrated their one-year anniversary, and though the game isn’t complete, it’s a much more immersive and game-like experience instead of a few different environments to look at. Various contributors have produced over 200 costumes for 20 different characters, including just about every possible permutation a fan could want. The levels have expanded to cover not just New Abedtown and Gay Island, but connector environments that require much more skill, and a weapons ...

Read more

To answer charges of sexism in "Star Trek," J.J. shows a cut scene of Benedict Cumberbatch showering.

Holy cow, the J.J. Abrams-produced Superman: Flyby is certainly shiny. Just think of all the lens flare you could get off all that alien chrome. Back in 2003, Abrams wanted to make a Superman movie and this is what it would have looked like.

Read more...

Those who feel that Alice Eve's underwear scene in Star Trek Into Darkness was gratuitous, this might make you feel better — director J.J. Abrams debuted a deleted, but equally gratuitous scene from the film of Benedict Cumberbatch showering on Conan last night.

Read more...

heyoscarwilde:

candid behind the scenes photos from The Muppet Movie circa 1978

via flickr.com

Introduction

Google Reader is essentially dead. Its passed on. This reader is no more. It has ceased to be. Kicked the bucket. Shuffled off its mortal coil.

I'll miss the syncing service, but I was never really thrilled with the interface so it's a minor loss.

Rather than throw out a bunch of alternatives that I've never used more than five minutes, I'll give you my opinions from the ground up. This post begins with the winner, Newsblur.¹ Future posts will discuss alternatives in the context of Google Reader, Fever and Newsblur.

Newsblur

Newsblur has been around for awhile but, like all RSS readers, received a huge influx of new users over the past two months. I tried it awhile ago before going back to Fever. Let's be honest, it wasn't great. There were bugs and it was ugly. But I liked what it had at its core. What it had was an honest and eager developer with some good ideas. So I kept up with the Newsblur blog and I'm glad I did. See this Verge article about the developer and the recent Newsblur redesign.

Before I get into the review and tutorial, let's get this out front. Newsblur offers a free account that will sync 64 feeds. Forget that exists. If you care about your feed reader, go buy the $24 annual subscription to the premium service.²

Getting Started

Newsblur offers direct import from a Google account. The import preserves all of the folders (or tags). After the import, I ended up with all of the subscriptions I had in Google Reader.

Newsblur can also import from an OPML file. I exported my feed data from Fever and imported directly into Newsblur. This worked perfectly. Every feed came over organized just as I had it in Fever.

But here's where Newsblur already starts to impress. Browsing through the feeds, I noticed several with a yellow exclamation mark. Clicking that icon shows that the feed is broken, but Newsblur offers up a couple of solutions. You can choose to either retry or use a new feed. If Newsblur already knows about another feed for the site it will suggest the alternative. This fixed several of the dead Feedburner feeds cluttering up my list as people flee Google.

The Reading Experience

Newsblur presents a similar yet more effective design than Google Reader or Fever. While feeds are grouped by folders, Newsblur also allows nested groups.

The main feed list may be toggled between two different modes, a simple List View and a Split View. The List View is a continuous stream of full articles. Scrolling through articles marks them as read.

I prefer the Split View, which presents an adjustable list of articles on the bottom and a full article view on the top.

I also turned on the option to show unread counts on the feed groups.

Side Note on Performance

Newsblur is fast. I mean **really** fast. All of the content is pre-fetched so that browsing is fluid. Scrolling through the full article list is instant and responsive. The cost of this performance is that there is no option to force all feeds to be refreshed. However, an individual feed is refreshed from a contextual menu. Details for a feed indicate how often it will be refreshed. Most are refreshed every 10 minutes.

Newsblur provides three reading modes:

• Original: The website home page
• Feed: The article feed source. This is the feed as generated by the site
• Text: A readable plain version of the article parsed from the website
• Story: The article as read on the website

Each feed can be configured with its own preference. That way pretty sites like The Mindful Bit can be read as it should be. Ugly and offensive sites can be viewed in a simple readable format.³

Newsblur has a good number of keyboard shortcuts to satisfy the Google Reader user. They are familiar enough to be proficient within a day of switching.

The careful placement of tools is welcome in reader. The Mark All as Read toggle is available right on the reading list bar.

Changing what is displayed in the feed list (unread, newest first, etc.) is easily accessed right on the list bar as well.

There's even an option to fix the marker that is used to set an article as read when scrolling. Slide this little arrow up and down. When the article title passes this marker it is automatically set as read. Basically, it allows me to tailor whether I need to see the entire article or just the title before it is marked as seen.

General Aesthetics

I started this review before the latest update to Newsblur. I'm glad I waited to publish because the new Newsblur is much more pleasing to the eye. Everything is cleaner and easier to use. There are nice animation effects and overall non-news information is less distracting.

The service has a number of general settings to help customize the experience.

Newsblur incorporates font adjustments right into the application. Helvetica or Georgia can be used and the point size is adjustable from 12pt to 17pt.

There is one little bit of visual clutter I actually turned on in Newsblur. I like the way it captures edits to articles over time and show the additions and deletions. This is an option.

The Great Intelligence

Where Newsblur departs from the crowded space of mediocre feed readers is with the customizable Intelligence training feature.

Out-of-the-box, Newsblur is just a typical feed reader. Click on a group and see all of the new unread articles. Click on a large collection and give up. But right click on an article and choose Intelligence Trainer. In the Trainer window, select a tag, author or word from the title and mark as thumbs up (green) or thumbs down (red). It's a simple process of selecting a word or phrase in a title. Topic tags are generally recognized from the source, as well as author tags. As a publisher, there are a couple of ways to make more information available to Newsblur and it's all in the FAQ.

Here's the magic: Articles that contain a thumbs-down term are hidden from the feed list. Switching to the Focus mode shows only articles that contain thumbs-up terms, hiding both the undesireable and unrated. Only articles that contain a positive attribute make it through the Focus mode.

By casually training Newsblur I've given myself a very easy way to get to just the news I want to read. This may seem insular, but in reality it has made high volume sites like TechCrunch and The Verge useful to me. I can now subscribe to them and get just a trickle of articles from writers I like or topics I care about.

About Focus

I'm pretty brutal about applying my negative ratings and pretty spare in positive ratings. I like coffee, but if I only have a few minutes to read, it's probably not going to be about coffee.

If I want to see everything, it's easy enough to switch modes and show every article in a feed or group of feeds. Newsblur provides visual queues throughout the interface to indicate stories I should like. There is a green count indicator in the folder view and items in the article list receive a subtle green dot. Words in titles that match my preferences are highlighted in green, as well as authors in the bylines.

Entire feeds can be marked as Thumbs-up. There are several feed sources that I do this with. This allows me to quickly toggle to the Focus mode and select a feed group. Every article is visible in the list.⁴

You know what is a pleasure? Selecting my All Feeds category and only seeing 20-30 articles that fit exactly what I'm interested in.⁵

The Dashboard

The Newsblur Dashboard is superfluous but has some small value. It's a place to see information about the service, like new features, community feedback and the total feeds and users on the service. The Dashboard also provides some suggestions for feeds to follow but it feels like these suggestions are purely based on popularity because they had no relevance to my taste.

Hooking Up the Pipes

While Newsblur has an option to export feeds as OPML, there are few good ways to get information back out. The web interface has several options to invoke bookmarklets but the experience is tedious and takes the user out of the reading context.

The iOS apps have a slightly better experience for sharing but still not great. There are some aspects I really dislike. See below for further discussion.

The big problem is that none of my favorite feed reading apps support the Newsblur service. I hope that changes. They make a great API. Get to it Mr. Reader.

The Social Hour

Newsblur has a number of social features built in. You can follow users and share stories to your "Blurblog". I do not use these features because I don't like social networking.

I do like the activity monitor. Newsblur keeps track of what I do. If I saved an article it shows up in my activity monitor. Clicking an activity takes me to the article. It's not terribly useful but it's also not intrusive.

The Apps

Here we are, at the real deciding factor for most services. How can someone use Newsblur? Well, I'm happy to say that the iOS apps are really good. They load fast and have almost all of the features as the Web site.⁶

iPhone

The iPhone app is laid out well. The app launches to the list of feeds and folders. Tapping a folder instantly shows the list of articles. Best of all, the Focus mode works perfectly. It's a great way to dive in quickly, read some interesting stuff and get out.

Tapping on a story shows the feed view with a great layout that highlights the tags and authors. Stories can also be viewed in the built-in browser by tapping the compass in the upper right corner.

The Send To functionality is nice but limited. I was disappointed that there was no option for Pinboard or Pinbook sharing on iOS. The Copy function is also a little odd. It doesn't copy just the address of the current article. It copies the title and the URL. This could be great for Drafts actions but stinks for getting articles into Pinbook.

After sharing an article on the iPhone, the screen smoothly scrolls to the bottom of the page to show the sharing summary. The experience is nice and feels like a lot of thought went into how people actually read.

Aside About Sharing

I send a lot of stuff I read out to Twitter. I have IFTTT rules that automatically capture the links and add them to Pinboard. But I also think Twitter is a good way to share stuff that I don't have much to say about.

I really dislike the way Newsblur shares links on Twitter. It does not share the original link. It [shares a Newsblur "blurblog" link](http://macdrifter.newsblur.com/story/save-keyboard-maestr/a96a14). Maybe there is a good reason for this but I can't think of one I care about.

The reading experience is nice. Quickly plowing through stories with the big NEXT button is smooth. This feels like a native app with no delays at any point.

I noticed a couple of bugs in the iPhone app where the next-button overlapped the Training-button. Given that the training function can be accessed by a dropdown menu, this wasn't a deal-breaker.

iPad

The iPad app is also great. It makes appropriate use of the space and isn't just a web view or an upscaled version of the iOS app. As with the iPhone version, the iPad version is responsive. Articles open instantly. The feed list refreshes in just a couple of seconds.⁷

All the functionality is still there on the iPad. Adding feeds is easy. Just fill out the URL and set a folder for the new feed. Move feeds and share articles just like on iPhone or, for the most part, the web.

The Intelligence Trainer works just as well on iPad as on the web. Select title text or tags to filter by tapping and swipping. All of this filtering data is sent back to the Newsblur service to improve the reading experience across your account.

What's Missing

The big gap is search. There isn't any. I can save articles until my heart is content but I have to browse through them to find anything specific.

The second big gap is that lack of integration with IFTTT or Zapier.⁸ In Fever, I used the RSS feed of my favorites to pump articles into Pinboard. There's no such option in Newsblur.

While the Trainer is excellent, I'd like more control over the system. I'd like a way to see everything I've ever given a thumbs up or down to. I'd like a way to manually add terms without needing to see them in an article first.

Conclusion

Newsblur may be the best feed reading service I've used. It certainly feels better than Google Reader ever did. It's faster and the Focus mode is terrific. Newsblur sets a standard that is hard to beat and I'm happy to pay to support something so valuable.

The limited edition serving of fries is twice the size of a large portion and contains a whopping 1,142 calories - more than half the recommended daily calorie intake for women.

DevoBots is a DEVO-authorized iOS app that is a both a synthesizer and robot design app. The synthesizer function features 1980s-era sound loops taken from DEVO’s archives. The robot maker lets users create their own DEVO-inspired robot avatars. Created by Whitewall Studios, app is now available on iTunes. We previously posted about DevoBots back in 2012.

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

Jon Russell:

I’m really impressed with the Hangouts messenger service. Web client is a good addition IMO, but mandatory G+ account is a big frustration.

Benedict Evans had a brilliant post a month ago about why consolidation may not be the endgame for mobile chat:

On mobile the social graph comes ready-made in your address book and the accompanying PSTN numbering system. Your phone already knows who your friends are – you don’t have to enter them into each new social network. Both Whatsapp and Viber leverage this: they look at your phone book and tell you who’s already using it.

This is a much simpler global identity system than Facebook Connect: phone numbers (and the address book) are themselves a single global social network that any app can use, bypassing Facebook’s biggest protective ‘moat’ and removing a lot of the problems of fragmentation. Such apps ride on mobile and mobile numbers just as Facebook apps ride on Facebook and websites ride on the web. There are lots of social apps on mobile, just as there are lots of apps on Facebook or lots of sites on the web: this is not necessarily a problem.

Hangouts ignores this ready-made network in favor of Google+.¹ uses this network, but puts it behind Google+; unlike other services, a Google+ account is mandatory and the first screen you see.

Not that Google had any choice in the matter: Google+ is the entire point. As I wrote yesterday:

The solution to no cookies is identity; this is what Google+ is all about. Google builds best-in-class mobile apps that work significantly better when you log in with the Google+ account you didn’t even know you had [in order to gather data]…tracks you across the web, and then monetizes you on their search engine, YouTube, Gmail and AdSense. Everything is connected; it’s either signal or ads.

Google+ is the key to Google’s strategy, yet Google+ will make it much more difficult for Hangouts to succeed broadly.

This is the definition of a strategy tax.²

ē

1. I was sloppy on this point, and regret it. Thanks to Satish Varma for the correction.
2. To be clear, I’m not saying it’s bad (or good; you’ll note I rarely make such judgments on this blog). A strategy tax is anything that makes a product less likely to succeed, yet is included to further larger corporate goals