firehose

Oh hai

The beloved but doomed Google Reader is still a healthy source of traffic. Google+, on the other hand…

According to data from the BuzzFeed Network, a set of tracked partner sites that collectively have over 300 million users, Google Reader is still a significant source of traffic for news — and a much larger one than Google+. The above chart, created by BuzzFeed's data team, represents data collected from August 2012 to today. (Yesterday, Google announced that it would close Reader in July.)

We should add that this data isn't complete. Google Reader traffic became much harder to measure last year when Google began defaulting users to SSL encryption in such a way that masked referral data. And this doesn't include data from apps that use Google Reader as a sync service, such as Reeder. In other words, it's likely that we're actually missing some Reader traffic here.

The second graphic* shows measured Reader and Google+ referrals over time. This one, too, requires qualification: The changes in Reader's numbers can be explained mostly by the addition of new sites to BuzzFeed's partner network, not growth in Google Reader (the total number of visitors to partner sites increased, in other words).

But the relative numbers are still surprising: Despite claims that it has over 100m monthly active users, Google+ barely moves the needle for sites across the network, while Reader is a healthy source of readers.

*For reference: in August of 2012, according to the same data, Facebook drove over 70m visitors to sites in the network while Google Reader was well under 10m.

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Pope - DJO (by dayjoborchestra)

““Some people called me said they were all offended, but I go, ‘Well, I do have big breasteses.’” - Oprah Winfrey”

- Oprah Responds To Terrence Howard’s ‘Tig Ol’ Bitties’ Comment

Marilyn’s Library | ES Updates:

List of her 436 books auctioned in 1999.

3737 days of uptime (by brafsnhu)

(via Good Vibrations Storage Unit by Ferruccio Laviani | mocovote.com)

(via Argentina’s pope goes for the Saints in soccer - Yahoo! News)

Image by kmw

Analogue Interactive, purveyor of ridiculously cool (and expensive) Neo Geo hardware mods, has upped the ante with a new service that builds custom, new CMVS Slims out of your choice of domestic and exotic woods, dubbed Black Label. Consoles start at $1,300, and that's for one made with domestic wood.

The Black Label set comes with an Analogue CMVS Slim, two analogue arcade sticks, brass Black Label tags and the requisite cables. Check out the entire selection on Analogue Interactive.

Custom wood Neo Geos are so pretty they might be worth the price originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 14 Mar 2013 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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“

Seen as a potential candidate for national office, the second-term Republican proposed eliminating Louisiana’s personal income tax and its corporate franchise tax, which together generated $2.9 billion in tax receipts last year.

He called for raising the state sales tax to 5.88 percent from 4 percent, broadening the sales tax to apply to many services, and increasing cigarette taxes to $1.41 from 36 cents per pack. Last year, the state sales tax generated $2.6 billion.

Similar plans have been floated by Republicans in Nebraska, Kansas and North Carolina this year. Critics have said that expanding sales taxes hurts working class and poor families who spend more of their income on items subject to the tax.

Despite a strongly Republican legislature in Louisiana, Jindal’s plan faces skepticism in some quarters.

The plan “will not even get out of the House of Representatives” because of the taxes it would raise, said C.B. Forgotston, a lawyer, political commentator and former legislative aide in Louisiana, who is often critical of Jindal.

The plan would need Democratic support to become law and Forgotston said that was unlikely to materialize because the bill does not increase overall revenues for the state.

”

- Louisiana’s Jindal details plan to end state’s income tax - Yahoo! News

magnificentruin:

via

son I’ll be playing you very special lullaby tonight so listen up

Miss Sanderson and the womanly art of parasol self defence:

unlockaflockofwords:

“Although the woman known as “Miss Sanderson” was a prominent fencer and self defence instructor in Edwardian London, regrettably little is known of her life – including her first name. At some point in the early 1900s she married Pierre Vigny, who had begun his own career in London as the chief instructor at the Bartitsu Club. Miss Sanderson, who continued to use what was presumably her maiden name for professional purposes, became Vigny’s assistant instructor when he opened his own school in Berner’s Street during 1903. By 1908 she was teaching her own unique system of women’s self defence, based on Vigny’s method but concentrating on the use of the umbrella and parasol….”

brock-obama:

Owls confirmed to be the creepiest birds ever. LOOK AT THE FUCKING THINGS. If you fail to notice the one on the left fucking SWALLOWING a rat, then you have the dude singing some satanic chant or something next to him, and then you have those two other fucking psychos synchronized to make you feel creeped the fuck out with their soulless dance of FUCKING DOOM.

I have been meaning to reblog this FOREVER. One, I love that .gif, because it is somewhat hypnotic and unsettling. Two, the commentary is GOLDEN. 

I want this as my screensaver for work. I wonder if that can be done. 

That feeling when you have never seen an image before.
Found via Bunami

Algorithms for the Kitchen » Google Reader’s sunset is the dawn of ownCloud News:

oh shit it’s ownCloud!

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams makes the leap to consoles on March 20, arriving first for Xbox Live Arcade. Publisher bitComposer mentions "a few days later" the game will arrive on the PlayStation Network.

Our snapshot of Giana Sisters after its PC launch last year noted developer Black Forest "knows how to make a platformer that requires more than sheer luck to complete, and how to incorporate strategy into a linear path."

The game is priced at 1,200 Microsoft Points ($15) on XBLA. Although there's no mention of the price on PSN, unless the publisher is striving for punky and painful duality, it should also be $15.

Gallery: Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams (3/14/13)

Continue reading Giana Sisters alter console reality later this month

Giana Sisters alter console reality later this month originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 14 Mar 2013 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Back in 2012 we wrote about the mission of Flint And Tinder to produce high quality men’s underwear in the United States. After an incredibly successful Kickstarter Project, the New York City company has set its sights on a new target: the hooded sweatshirt. The 10-Year Hoodie is designed to last for a decade or more thanks to durable features like American-made fleece fabric, reinforced stitching, and a brass zipper. To back up their product, Flint And Tinder is guaranteeing their hoodies for 10 years and is also offering a free mail-in mending service for the same time period. Flint And Tinder is raising funds for the project on Kickstarter.

via swissmiss

Rightfooted is an in-progress documentary from director and producer Nick Spark about the world’s only armless airplane pilot, Jessica Cox. Jessica was born without arms, and instead learned to type and even pilot an airplane using her feet. Handicap International has invited her to work with disabled students in Ethiopia, and the project is currently seeking funding on Indiegogo.

By Craig Pearson on March 14th, 2013 at 11:00 am.

Ye olde gaming about ye olde times. Pioneers is a 16th century four-colour turn-based exploration survival RPG. It has more genres than colours. I’ll bet you couldn’t make an Unreal 4 game with four colours. The fonts alone in that engine alone need a GeForce Titan to be rendered. But I digress, which is appropriate because Pioneers is a (currently) free indie game about exploration. Which, when you think about it, are nothing but well-funded digressions.

You’ll be part of an adventuresome crew, heading off into the ocean to see what sort of challenges the game will throw up at you. The early version here only has a couple of islands, but the promise is that of a world to explore. You’ll build a crew, buy what you need, grab a ship and then work on some quests. You could be heading out to uncover the mystery or missing explorers, or on a mapping mission. Whatever it is, it’ll lead you to islands fraught with danger. It’s not a nice place, and wolves, bears, even tribesmen will be out to get you. And those tribes don’t speak your language, so you might not know about it until you’re gutted.

I’ve only spent a few minutes to verify it’s not a secret virus that’ll replace Chrome with Internet Explorer – though that would be an apposite swap – and to have a small wander through the tutorial and opening sections. It’s all neat and charming, and would definitely make Adam rub his thighs. It’s early alpha, so there’s a fair number of things that will puzzle you if you don’t pay attention to the tutorial, and then there are a number of explanatory mis-steps. A lot of times it asks you to do something without telling you how to, which is a huge failing of a section that’s main purpose is tells you how to do things. But I muddled through, and I’m pretty stupid. Beyond that there’s definitely a nasty little adventure wrapped up in cute pixels. Observe this video through a telescope for maximum effect.

The alpha is a test-bed, and the developer will eventually ask for doubloons. Until then, it’s yours for free.

Trooper is an upcoming premium bottled British ale created by the legendary British rock band Iron Maiden and handcrafted by the independent family-owned Robinsons Brewery in Britain. Bottles of Trooper will be available to purchase at IronMaidenBeer.com in May 2013. You can watch their promo video to get a proper introduction to the beer from Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson.

Being a real ale enthusiast, vocalist Bruce Dickinson has developed a beer which has true depth of character. Malt flavours and citric notes from a unique blend of Bobec, Goldings and Cascade hops dominate this deep golden ale with a subtle hint of lemon.

According to the ale’s press release, managing director of Robinsons Brewery Oliver Robinson said:

“Trooper is a premium British ale with true depth of character and flavour. For more than thirty years, the unmistakable icon of Eddie, the band’s instantly-recognisable mascot, has adorned every album cover, T-shirt and poster – so it is fitting that Eddie will now adorn the cask pump clip and take centre stage on the bottle label of Trooper.

Not only does Iron Maiden genuinely enjoy a good pint of cask ale, but so do many of their fans – and they have an important part to play in our customer base. This partnership works for both of us. Music and beer are great treats for the senses in their own right, but the combination is very powerful. Authentic collaborations such as this are invaluable not only to our company but to the industry as a whole, because it shows that the world of real ale is more than just manufacturing, it is liquid artistry by the people who brew it – and for the people who drink it.”

images via Iron Maiden’s Trooper, Robinsons Brewery

video via Iron Maiden’s Trooper

via rainbowzombiesatemyunicorn, Nerdcore

New submitter KrisJon writes "The Obama administration is drawing up plans to give all U.S. spy agencies full access to a massive database that contains financial data on American citizens and others who bank in the country, according to a Treasury Department document seen by Reuters. Financial institutions that operate in the United States are required by law to file reports of 'suspicious customer activity.' A move like the FinCEN proposal 'raises concerns as to whether people could find their information in a file as a potential terrorist suspect without having the appropriate predicate for that and find themselves potentially falsely accused,' said Sharon Bradford Franklin, senior counsel for the Rule of Law Program at the Constitution Project, a non-profit watchdog group."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

By Emily Gera on Mar 14, 2013 at 8:11a

It is possible to play SimCity offline indefinitely, according to a video of a modded version of the game posted to YouTube.

Modder UKAzzer uploaded the video which shows him disabling the game's disconnection timer. Previous tests confirmed that SimCity will kick a user from the game after roughly 20 minutes of offline play; however, while it's unclear the impact offline mode has to cities, the video demonstrates some form of unlimited offline play is indeed possible.

Beyond this, the modder is shown accessing the game's debug mode. In doing so he is able to edit highways that connect cities together. According to the modder's post on Reddit, "You can edit the highways ANYWHERE — even outside of your city boundary, and even if you quit the game and log back in later, it's all saved safely on the server.

"This shows that highway editing will be easily possible, AND that editing outside of the artificially small city boundaries should be very viable too."

The mod also adjusts the apparently "fluffed population count" to show the actual population count in cities, something users have complained about since the game launched.

Maxis general manager Lucy Bradshaw previously told Polygon it is not possible to make the game an offline title without "significant" changes.

"We offload a significant amount of the calculations to our servers so that the computations are off the local PCs and are moved into the cloud," she said. "It wouldn't be possible to make the game offline without a significant amount of engineering work by our team."

Maxis announced earlier in the month it has "no intentions" off making SimCity available for offline play.

Polygon has reached out to Maxis for a breakdown of what specific calculations are being conducted by servers and which are handled locally. We have also reached out to the modder for an explanation of how difficult it is to access the offline mode.

In This Storystream:

• Mar 14 2013, 8:11a

  SimCity mod demonstrates the possibility of some form of indefinite offline play

• Mar 14 2013, 6:50a

  SimCity server upgrades completed for 'faster, higher capacity' performance

• Mar 12 2013, 4:33p

  SimCity server status page now available

• Mar 10 2013, 11:36p

  SimCity's server issues 'almost behind us,' says Maxis

• Mar 10 2013, 2:25p

  Maxis rolls out SimCity update 1.3, fixes shard selection, server switches

• Mar 10 2013, 7:56a

  SimCity fix makes servers 40 times faster, rolling shut downs hit as patch applied

• Mar 9 2013, 4:03p

  Maxis has 'no intentions' of offlining SimCity, but will look into it to 'earn back' trust

• Mar 9 2013, 1:01a

  Maxis explains what went wrong with SimCity and what the developer is doing to fix it

• Mar 8 2013, 10:58p

  EA giving free game to SimCity players, hopes to fix launch issues by this weekend

• Mar 8 2013, 2:08p

  EA suspends SimCity marketing campaigns, asks affiliates to 'stop actively promoting' game

• Mar 8 2013, 9:38a

  Internal Maxis memo outlines SimCity stabilization efforts

• Mar 7 2013, 7:00p

  EA not offering SimCity refunds

• Mar 7 2013, 6:07p

  SimCity no longer being sold by Amazon, warns about server issues (update)

• Mar 7 2013, 11:19a

  EA turns off SimCity's fastest gameplay mode as it struggles with servers

• Mar 6 2013, 11:02p

  SimCity servers continue to struggle as game hits more countries (update 4)

• Mar 6 2013, 5:09p

  Maxis continues to add, patch SimCity servers to address performance problems

• Mar 5 2013, 5:04p

  Origin customer service responds to SimCity server outage complaints

• Mar 5 2013, 2:00p

  Today I Played: SimCity

• Mar 5 2013, 8:30a

  EA Origin struggling to meet SimCity demands at launch

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Okay, maybe it's the camera angle, but there is some resemblance between Arrested Development's George Bluth Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor) and the new Pope Francis I, no?

Submitted by: Unknown (via Reddit)

Tagged: TLL , jeffrey tambor , pope francis i , george bluth Share on Facebook

Everything You Need To Know About The Steubenville Rape Trial:

ladyaches:

The boys’ lawyers plan to argue that silence is consent. 

The boys’ lawyers plan to argue that silence is consent. 

The boys’ lawyers plan to argue that silence is consent. 

THE BOY’S LAWYERS PLAN TO ARGUE THAT SILENCE IS CONSENT

Two weeks with no pope (PNG Image, 365 × 608 pixels)

jasnw writes "I'm one of apparently many people who moved to OS X from Linux in the early/mid 2000s for their desktop system, keeping Linux boxes around for the heavy lifting and server work. I may also be part of a large segment of that group now considering a return because of all the iOS-ification of OS X, despite the fact that the Linux desktop still falls short in the 'it just works' area. I'm angry enough at Apple, and wary enough of Linux, that I might just go to using Windows 7 for the desktop (not Win8, however). What is the feeling/experience of other 'traitors' who run OS X for the desktop and Linux for everything else?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.