firehose

Holiday

The latest gossip from Apple suggests that the development of the next two versions of the iPhone was carried out during Jobs' tenure.

During a talk at Oxford University back in February, scientist Richard Dawkins was asked to justify his belief in the scientific method. In his brief but pointed response, Dawkins explained that he believes in science because it works, or as he put it: “It works, bitches.” His quote appears to be a reference to a classic 2006 web comic by xkcd:

via John Adams

Submitted by: Unknown

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The King’s Speech Swearing Scene (by Bubblecup905) (just here so I can link to it in a bit)

debbiecountry:

Okay this is goofy, but I swear to you that I almost had to leave work I was laughing so hard at it. 

“

“I have the TAKS test to study for, not this unneeded craziness.” He filled out the rest of the page with the word “YOLO” (“You only live once”) and a happy face emoticon. The tweet was sent to the Arlington Independent School District (ISD) and the Texas Education Agency as a protest against the new STAAR test. About the test Birdine said, “It wasn’t for a grade. Colleges don’t see it. It didn’t help, it didn’t benefit my personal life at all.”

…

The Arlington high school junior’s tweet raised red flags and officials called the photo a breach of security which required punishment. He was issued a four-day on-campus suspension for the tweet and was forced to delete it.

”

- Student suspended for tweeting photo of “YOLO” written on test | Watch the video - Yahoo! News

Researchers from the very Potterian-sounding Aberystwyth University have discovered that William Shakespeare was a tax-evading grain hoarder. According to Dr. Jayne Archer and Professors Richard Marggraf Turley and Howard Thomas, Shakespeare made a lot of his money by buying up large amounts of grain, malt, and barley to store, later selling it for inflated prices when his fellow countrymen were struggling. They believe the playwright did this for 15 years and faced fines for illegal hoarding, as well as being threatened with jail time for failing to pay his taxes.

Interestingly enough, one of Shakespeare’s tragedies, Coriolanus, deals with grain-hoarding rather extensively. Written during a British peasant revolt in 1607, the play is set during a Roman famine and features plebeians challenging patricians for the right to set their own grain prices. As Archer told London’s The Sunday Times, the study’s discoveries show “another side to ...

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Last December, Google released Quickofffice for iPad, the company's first major release since acquiring Quickoffice in June of 2012. The app was positioned as a way for business who pay for Google's suite of apps to to open and edit documents that weren't native to Google Docs, and now its bringing that app to Android as well as the iPhone. Essentially, the new app will let businesses using Google Apps open and edit Microsoft Office documents on their mobile devices — from there, everything can be saved and re-shared through your Google Drive. It's a workaround for the fact that Drive doesn't let users edit Office documents natively, and its an important one given how dominant Office still is in business. We knew that Google was working on iPhone and Android versions of this app — it said as much back in December — so we're glad to see them finally hit the market. If you're a Google Apps customer, the new Quickoffice apps are available for free now in Google Play and the iTunes Store.

• Via The Next Web
• Source Google
• Related Items quickoffice google apps ios app android app iphone app update microsoft office office editing document editing Microsoft Google Apple

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The content available on Coursera and EdX is amazing.

The problem is that I need help to stay motivated and engaged. Coursera and EdX must figure this out… otherwise they’ll just keep losing 95% of their students.

I’m very worried that they don’t understand this. Here’s what Daphne Koller, founder of Coursera, said in November:

“Many of these students never really intended to seriously take the class in the first place.”

I did intend to take Introductory Human Physiology and Data Analysis. Stop blaming your users and instead say “Wow, so many people want to learn. How can we help them stay motivated and engaged? Let’s help them achieve their dreams.”

”

- Online Education’s Dirty Secret — Awful Retention by Peter Reinhardt

“Gerlach said he had no jurisdiction to approve a divorce because there’s insufficient evidence that Beatie was a man when he got married.”

- Transgender man plans to keep seeking divorce - Yahoo! News

Cult director Jess Franco, director of classic film Necronomicon, has just died.

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Joystiq has confirmed with Square Enix that "a number of positions" in its Los Angeles office have been eliminated today. Below, a statement from a Square Enix representative:

We can confirm that Square Enix's Los Angeles office has eliminated a number of positions as part of the corporate restructuring announced last week. This is an unfortunate situation and we are offering assistance and severance packages to any employees affected by this, we want to thank them for their hard work and sincerely wish them well in the future.

We're currently hunting down information regarding the exact number of individuals let go. We'll be sure to update as the story develops - of course, if you were one of the employees affected or know something we don't, feel free to drop us a line. Anonymity assured!

Update: More details.

Layoffs hit Square Enix Los Angeles, part of 'corporate restructuring' originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 02 Apr 2013 19:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Can't afford the trip to Columbia? Want to catch up on lore and ethos that define BioShock before diving into BioShock Infinite? GameFly has you covered, offering a BioShock and BioShock 2 PC download bundle for only five bucks. Throw in the code GFDAPR20 at checkout for an additional 20 percent off, knocking the price down to a piddly $3.99.

Rapturous deal: BioShock 1 and 2 for $4 from GameFly originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 02 Apr 2013 19:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A small controversy has been making the rounds today as some people have noticed that the searches on Google for iOS apps are no longer showing the links to iTunes. First noticed by AppsFire cofounder Ouriel Ohayon, the issue is that the search results seem to be excluding iTunes and instead showing other results higher than usual. We reached out to Google for comment and a spokesperson tells us that it has had problem "fetching" iTunes' pages on the web, and therefore they're not showing up in search results.

We've been having some issues fetching pages from the iTunes web servers, and as a result some people may have had problems finding iTunes apps in search easily. We're working with the team there to ensure search users can find what they're looking for.

The explanation lines up with a brief analysis from Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land, who speculates that the classic "duplicate content problem" has split rankings for various iTunes pages. This isn't the only high-profile issue Google has had with dropping links from search results in recent memory — two weeks ago it blocked all links to Digg.com thanks to some overzealous spam control. Spam isn't likely the problem this time, but whatever the issue, Google claims to be working on a fix. Google has a real need to be impartial when it comes to serving up search results, so even the appearance of bias is harmful to its reputation — look no further than "Search Plus Your World."

• Via The Next WebSearch Engine Land
• Source Ouriel Ohayon (Facebook)
• Related Items search results seo duplicate content itunes Google

bunnyfood:

(via cupcakes-and-lithium:archiemcphee: MossyTortoise)

romulusthread:

wow toy story 3 did you have to be such a fucking disappointment

For some imagined worlds, the connection to their real-world counterparts is visibly close at hand. Trion Worlds‘ massively multiplayer online first-person shooter game Defiance launched today — and the Syfy television series that takes place in the same fictional world premieres April 15. The map below (linked from this forum thread) represents a portion of the game world, which is based at least partially on a terraformed (thus somewhat modified) San Francisco Bay Area. As the region is called “Madera,” it seems reasonable to assume it’s a fictionalized version of Corte Madera and environs — so we’ve included a Google satellite map of approximately the same area below.

Defiance is one of the most interesting transmedia projects going, as events in the show will have an active impact on the evolution of the persistent game-world (if not quite vice versa).  Perhaps more interesting as cartographic artifacts are the two maps of the show we have included at the end of the post, one apparently displaying the local area of many of the show’s events, the other displaying the United States as it has evolved in Defiance’s future — a future we’re looking forward to experiencing in both media.

From Google Maps: 

A local map of the events of the show (found on Gaming Phanatic):

A map of what was once the United States (also found on Gaming Phanatic):

 

People claim to read the seminal "men's magazine" for the articles. Thanks to Apple's porn ban, we may soon find out how many actually do.

Superhero Women in pants?! *GASP*. Artist Michael Lee Lunsford has created a line of fully dressed female superheroes; while Lunsford protests on his website that his creation was not drawn as some sort of moral lesson, we have to say, we love Zatanna in pants.

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The music video for “Purple and Gold” by Brussels-based band Recorders took over a year to make but it was worth it as it features nearly 4 minutes of dogs acting like people.

via Viral Viral Videos

The Providence, Rhode Island, skyline, with the “Superman building” on the left

Providence, Rhode Island’s Bank of America Building, known locally as the “Superman building” because of its resemblance to the Daily Planet on the Adventures of Superman television series, will go dark at the end of the month.

The Associated Press reports the familiar blue light atop the 1928 Art Deco-style building — at 428 feet, it’s the tallest in the state — will be turned off when Bank of America’s lease expires (the color was traditionally changed to red and green for Christmas, and red for Valentine’s Day). Likewise, the lights that illuminate the facade will be minimal, if they’re used at all.

Bank of America had been using less than half the 350,000 square feet it leased in the 26-story building. It has moved to two new locations in Providence, which combined boast about 153,000 square feet. High Rock Westminster, which bought the building in 2008 for $33 million, has said the best option is to convert its 350,000 square feet of office space into 290 apartments. However, to afford the construction the company would need to General Assembly to revive its historic tax credit program.

(Note: Los Angeles City Hall was actually used for exterior shots of the Daily Planet on Adventures of Superman.)

Now you can use the Random Dungeon Generator poster to construct dungeons online!

Click here!

This is a reward from the Random Dungeon kickstarter which I'm making available to everybody.

My ambition is to add a "Dungeon Robber" game mode so that this interactive version of the poster can be used as a fiendishly difficult roguelike. For now, though, players can use this as a First Edition DMG-compatible rooms/passages/monsters/traps generator for solitaire D&D and DMs can use this for designing dungeons.

Calgary Herald

Shots Fired At Border Agents In Washington State: Report Huffington Post SUMAS, Wash. — U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested one man Tuesday and were searching for another in a remote area along the U.S.-Canadian border in northwest Washington, after the agents encountered the camouflaged pair and one shot at them, ... Shots fired at federal agents near WA border, suspect at largeMyNorthwest.com US Rep. Ron Barber welcomes delay in cuts to Border Patrol payExplorer News Search near Canadian border for man who opened fireKING5.com WISH all 45 news articles »

New York Times

SEC Sets Rules for Disclosures Using Social Media New York Times Reed Hastings, chief of Netflix, used Facebook to brag about his company. Richard Brian/ReutersReed Hastings, chief of Netflix, used Facebook to brag about his company. 8:34 p.m. | Updated Chief executives can now feel free to post, blog or tweet — as ... SEC Embraces Social MediaWall Street Journal SEC clears up 'confusion' over social media rulesWashington Post SEC to Allow Shareholder Information Through Social MediaKTIC Journal of Accountancy -Forbes -Chicago Tribune all 126 news articles »

The Santa Cruz Patch reports that researchers at the University of California Santa Cruz have taught one of their resident sea lions, Ronan, how to keep a beat. In this video, you can see her bopping her head to “Boogie Wonderland” by Earth, Wind & Fire and other funky songs. Peter Cook of the University’s Pinniped Cognition and Sensory Systems Laboratory confirms that Ronan is the “first non-human mammal shown able to find and keep the beat with musical stimuli” which “challenges earlier evidence from humans and parrots suggesting that complex vocal mimicry is a necessary precondition for flexible rhythmic entrainment.” According to the University’s Newscenter, Cook is the first author of the study which was published online April 1, 2013 in the Journal of Comparative Psychology (pdf).

The capability to synchronize movement to a steady beat (called “sensorimotor synchronization”) is a behavioral capability once thought to be unique to humans. Recently, this ability has been identified in a few other species, most notably the sulfur-crested cockatoo. Previously, this ability had only been shown in animals demonstrating vocal mimicry. Due to this, it has been suggested that sensorimotor synchronization to rhythmic stimuli could be a byproduct of evolutionary adaptations supporting complex vocal learning. In order to explicitly test this hypothesis, graduate student Peter Cook and researcher Andrew Rouse have trained and tested sensorimotor synchronization in a vocally stereotypic mammal: the California sea lion. Thus far, the sea lion subject has learned to reliably synchronize a continuous head bob to click tracks of different types and tempos. She has also transferred this behavior to new tempos and sound types. Most recently, she has successfully demonstrated the ability to synchronize her movements with music. These results confirm that a vocally inflexible animal can learn to flexibly synchronize motor behavior to external auditory stimuli and present a strong challenge to the supposed primacy of vocal mimicry.

Thanks Kevin!

Some very old X-23 sketches I did before I started on the first script. The last pic is as far as I got on a new costume before the series was cancelled. It was a blast working with Marjorie and Jeanine on the book, though.

The Atlantic Wire

The AP's Ban on 'Illegal Immigrant' Will Change How We Talk About Immigration The Atlantic Wire Starting now, you will never see the "lazy" words "illegal immigrant" in another AP story unless they're quoting someone important saying it. That faint sound you hear is Senate reporters from the AP, The New York Times, and beyond smacking their delete ... Is the AP Right to Stop Using the Term "Illegal Immigrant?U.S. News & World Report all 149 news articles »

It's been so long since we've mentioned a big-name Zynga departure, so here we go: Dan Porter, former CEO of Draw Something developer OMGPOP, which Zynga acquired a year ago for $200 million, has exited the company.

USA Today reports Porter, who served as VP of Zynga's New York office, leaves as the studio continues work on Draw Something 2. The original Draw Something has enjoyed over 100 million downloads since launching last February.

Draw Something studio CEO leaves Zynga originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 02 Apr 2013 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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