firehose

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan & Star Trek (2009) parallels

Youtube Direktcoin, via HYST

‘Ne Münze auf ‘ner Tretmühle, eine Stunde lang.

SPOILERS AHEAD: 06:09 to 08:50 attempts with another coin, all failing 10:12 an almost successfull attempt 10:50 failed attempts 15:13 a hand 15:24 a Parker 20:44 other attempts 24:08 a black ball 27:04 a white ball 38:48 Parker 39:09 a red straw 41:26 a laptop 41:50 camera moves 42:01 A CAT!! 52:47 camera moves, showing a window 53:08 fingers 57:12 coin falls off 57:47 threadmill stops 58:27 Parker draws conclusion and lesson about life. Thanks for this action-packed adventure, Parker!

Trailrunner7 writes "Laptops belonging to several Facebook employees were compromised recently and infected with malware that the company said was installed through the use of a Java zero-day exploit that bypassed the software's sandbox. Facebook claims that no user data was affected by the attack and says that it has been working with law enforcement to investigate the attack, which also affected other unnamed companies. Facebook officials did not identify the specific kind of malware that the attackers installed on the compromised laptops, but said that the employee's machines were infected when they visited a mobile developer Web site that was hosting the Java exploit. When the employees visited the site, the exploit attacked a zero-day vulnerability in Java that was able to bypass the software's sandbox and enable the attackers to install malware. The company said it reported the vulnerability to Oracle, which then patched the Java bug on Feb. 1."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CSBG's collection of recurring comic book patterns includes a segment spotlighting all the characters who discovered Batman's secret identity -- RIGHT before they were killed.

“On April 30th, we will turn off posterous.com and our mobile apps in order to focus 100% of our efforts on Twitter. This means that as of April 30, Posterous Spaces will no longer be available either to view or to edit. Right now and over the next couple months until April 30th, you can download all of your Posterous Spaces including your photos, videos, and documents. Here are the steps: Go to http://posterous.com/#backup. Click to request a backup of your Space by clicking “Request Backup” next to your Space name. When your backup is ready, you’ll receive an email. Return to http://posterous.com/#backup to download a .zip file.”

- Posterous will turn off on April 30 - The Official Posterous Space

The rapidly changing world of distilleries.
(thanks Devin !)

What was I thinking?

Dapper Day is a social gathering for fashionably attired guests to visit Disneyland and Walt Disney World (and sometimes Paris Disneyland) in style. It is not a ticketed event or convention, just a day to look good at Disney with other like-minded (and dressed) folks. The next Dapper Day is their Spring 2013 gathering which happens Sunday, February 24, 2013 at both Disneyland in Anaheim, California (info) and Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida (info).

Inspired by the original Disney park designer’s illustrations, which often featured extremely well dressed guests enjoying the park, DAPPER DAY events celebrate the tradition of stepping out in style.

Artist Jerrod Maruyama (“Hipster Mickey“) will have some special merchandise available at the Disneyland event. More details at the Dapper Day site.

photo by Gabe Ayala via Dapper Day

via Jerrod Maruyama

Babylon 5 #10

In an open letter, award-winning science fiction author David Gerrold has asked DC Comics for balance — and a job.

In response to the publisher hiring Ender’s Game author and gay-marriage opponent Orson Scott Card to contribute to its Adventures of Superman anthology, Gerrold suggests DC hire an “openly gay writer,” which he happens to be.

“I see that you have hired a writer for Superman who has written strongly of his opposition to equal rights for LGBT people. And I see that there is an online petition protesting that move,” he wrote on Facebook. “Perhaps you could balance that decision by hiring an openly gay writer to draft a Superman story for a future issue.”

Gerrold brings an impressive resume to the table, having written numerous science fiction TV shows, novels, nonfiction and even some comics. His credits include episodes of Star Trek (including the famous “The Trouble with Tribbles” episode), Babylon 5, Land of the Lost, The Twilight Zone and even The Adventures of Superboy — so has some experience with the Last Son of Krypton. And he wrote two issues of the Babylon 5 comic, published by DC Comics, as well as Star Trek manga. His novelette The Martian Child won Hugo and Nebula awards.

Gerrold writes:

Dear DC Comics Editors,

I see that you have hired a writer for Superman who has written strongly of his opposition to equal rights for LGBT people. And I see that there is an online petition protesting that move.

Perhaps you could balance that decision by hiring an openly gay writer to draft a Superman story for a future issue.

I hereby volunteer.

I have been a fan of Superman since Bud Collyer played him on the radio. (Before TV was invented.) I can remember Brainiac’s first appearance, and Bizarro too. And I cried when George Reeves died.

I do have some small credential as a writer of science fiction and fantasy. I have published a few books and written a few teleplays. (You can look me up on the internet.) I have also written some mangas, and I wrote two issues of the Babylon 5 comic you published ten years ago.

I have some very good ideas that I think would work well for the series. I’d like the opportunity to write for you the very best Superman story ever.

Sincerely yours,

David Gerrold
“The Trouble With Tribbles”
Land Of The Lost
Twilight Zone
The Martian Child
(and a whole bunch of other stuff)

DC responded to the backlash to Card’s hiring earlier this week, saying, “As content creators we steadfastly support freedom of expression, however the personal views of individuals associated with DC Comics are just that — personal views — and not those of the company itself.”

Back in 2009, Lithuanian conductor and composer Mindaugas Piecaitis premiered “CATcerto,” his triumphant orchestral work featuring solo piano by Nora The Piano Cat. If you’ve not heard of Nora, the cat rose to Internet stardom in 2007 due to her ability to play the piano, and play it with notable improvisational skill. You’re welcome.

Thanks Jennifer Lynch!

Graphic designer Olly Moss was inspired by the Blue Willow dinnerware pattern to design his own, video game style.

Jason Reitman has once again successfully gotten us to write about another one of his impossible-to-get-into L.A. live readings by staging an all-female version of Glengarry Glen Ross on February 21—one that will argue it does not take brass balls to pretend to sell real estate, apparently. You think Jason Reitman is fucking with you? Jason Reitman is not fucking with you. He’s taken David Mamet’s classic script about what it means to “play the man’s game” and gender-flipped it, adding a little commentary on social stereotypes to this month’s sales contest. Oh. Has he got your attention now? Good. The ladies who call yourselves salesmen, you, er, daughters of bitches: Robin Wright as Ricky Roma/Al Pacino, Catherine O’Hara as Shelley Levene/Jack Lemmon, Maria Bello as Dave Moss/Ed Harris, Allison Janney as George Arranow/Alan Arkin, and Mae Whitman as ...

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colinneagle writes "While Steve Jobs' ire in regards to Android is well known, a recent report from Reuters relays that current Apple CEO Tim Cook never wanted to sue Samsung in the first place. 'Tim Cook, Jobs' successor as Apple chief executive, was opposed to suing Samsung in the first place, according to people with knowledge of the matter, largely because of that company's critical role as a supplier of components for the iPhone and the iPad. Apple bought some $8 billion worth of parts from Samsung last year, analysts estimate.' In various earnings conference calls, Tim Cook has repeated that he hates litigation, but has still toed the party line by exclaiming that Apple welcomes innovators but doesn't like when other companies rip off their intellectual property."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dwayne Johnson has revealed he’s no longer attached to star in Brad Peyton’s "Lobo," based on the DC Comics character, saying, “For a minute, I was interested in it, but then it went away.”

Harlem Shake (Matt and Kim Edition) (by mattandkim)

“South Of The Grapevine” is a Slayer and Marvin Gaye mashup music video by Wax Audio. It’s available at their 2012 album, Mashopolos III – Mashups For The People.

The day after President Barack Obama gave the State of the Union, ComScore, a digital analytics firm, released what might be called a “State of the American Internet” report. Here are some of its more surprising findings:

• The search market is showing signs of maturity, as core content searches declined for the first time in history, falling 3% last year. Even though more people are using search functions—4% more than in 2011—they are making 7% fewer searches per person. One reason for this, says ComScore, is that people are increasingly heading to specific locations to conduct searches—sites like Amazon, eBay or Facebook, or Whitepages.com. Of all leading search engines, Microsoft’s Bing was the only whose per-person search volume actually increased. But Google still dominates: It’s responsible for two-thirds of all web searches.

The number of core searches declined on the whole, even as more people searched the web. ComScore

• Only three social networks gained more unique visitors in 2012 than Twitter or LinkedIn. And they all focused on visual content:

Net user growth ComScore Net user growth ComScore

• While e-commerce spending rose 13%, digital content and subscriptions grew the most. Purchases of things like Amazon movie downloads and Netflix or Spotify subscriptions were the fastest-growing e-commerce product category, at 26%.

• But mobile-based e-commerce—”m-commerce”?—is stealing increasingly bigger slices of the pie. Mobile e-commerce now accounts for 11% of all online commerce. A chunk of that is due to the increase of “showrooming,” where in-store shoppers use mobile devices to compare brick-and-mortar prices with online options, often purchasing the product online.

Mobile commerce growth rates (as a portion of total e-commerce activity) ComScore

• Traffic to the top 25 digital media properties grew by an average of 29%—and that was largely thanks to users on mobile channels:

The top 25 US digital properties, and their mobile-accelerated growth rates. ComScore

Hugh Pickens writes "Ariel Schwartz reports that researchers are working on an alcoholism vaccine that makes alcohol intolerable to anyone who drinks it. The vaccine builds on what happens naturally in certain people — about 20% of the Japanese, Chinese, and Korean population — with an alcohol intolerance mutation. Normally, the liver breaks down alcohol into an enzyme that's transformed into the compound acetaldehyde (responsible for that nasty hangover feeling), which in turn is degraded into another enzyme. The acetaldehyde doesn't usually have time to build up before it's broken down. But people with the alcohol intolerance mutation lack the ability to produce that second enzyme; acetaldehyde accumulates, and they feel terrible. Dr. Juan Asenjo and his colleagues have come up with a way to stop the synthesis of that second enzyme via a vaccine, mimicking the mutation that sometimes happens naturally. 'People have this mutation all over the world. It's like how some people can't drink milk,' says Asenjo. Addressing the physiological part of alcohol addiction is just one piece of the battle. Addictive tendencies could very well manifest in other ways; instead of alcohol, perhaps former addicts will move on to cigarettes. Asenjo admits as much: 'Addiction is a psychological disease, a social disease. Obviously this is only the biological part of it.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Flash is fast

The Lure of the Underground

That’s a lot of Luigis - Mario & Luigi: Dream Team

Nintendo teased that 2013 would be the year of Luigi before, and it’s delivering on that promise with Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon next month, a new Mario & Luigi RPG for 3DS (video here), and the New Super Luigi DLC pack for NSMBU. Mario will have his share of titles, too, with Mario and Donkey Kong and Mario Golf: World Tour.

The mishmash of Dream Team GIFs above come from Maxxie, Sootopolis, and Manolizer. In case it’s not clear in that last image, the game takes place in the mind of a sleeping Luigi — does that make this a sorta sequel to Super Mario Bros. 2?

BUY Mario & Luigi games, upcoming games

Adventures of Superman #1

At least three more retailers have joined Dallas’ Zeus Comics in deciding not to stock the first issue of the DC Comics anthology Adventures of Superman, which features a story by sci-fi author and vocal gay-rights opponent Orson Scott Card.

Citing the author’s efforts against the legalization of same-sex marriage, Whatever Store in San Francisco, I Like Comics in Vancouver, Washington, and Ralph’s Comic Corner in Ventura, California, have all said they won’t carry the print edition of the digital-first comic when it’s released May 29. (However, Mike Sterling, manager of Ralph’s, said his store will still order “the couple of copies for customers who have preexisting, ongoing comic savers for Superman items.”)

Best known for his award-winning 1985 novel Ender’s Game, Card has become notorious for his outspoken views on homosexuality and his advocacy against gay rights. A board member of the National Organization for Marriage, a group dedicated to the opposition of same-sex marriage, the author has tried to link homosexuality to childhood molestation, and advocated home-schooling to ensure children “are not propagandized with the ‘normality’ of ‘gay marriage.’” Following rulings by “dictator-judges” in 2008 that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, Card infamously endorsed a government overthrow.

DC’s announcement last week that he would contribute to Adventures of Superman sparked almost immediate outcry, leading the gay-rights advocacy initiative All Out to spearhead a petition demanding the publisher drop the author. As of this afternoon, more than 12,000 people have signed. DC is standing firm, however, releasing a statement that said, “As content creators we steadfastly support freedom of expression, however the personal views of individuals associated with DC Comics are just that — personal views — and not those of the company itself.”

National Organization for Marriage President Brian Brown, whose group launched boycotts last year against Starbucks and General Mills for their support of marriage equality, spoke out against the Card backlash, saying, “This is completely un-American and it needs to be stopped, “Simply because we stand up for traditional marriage, some people feel like it’s okay to target us for intimidation and punishment.”

For the three retailers, the issue comes down to whether they can justify supporting, even in a small way, someone who advocates denying marriage rights to lesbians and gays.

“We refuse to give money to someone who will then turn around and use that money to fund more anti-gay hatred,” Whatever Store wrote on its Facebook page.

In an email to ROBOT 6, I Like Comics owner Chris Simons explained, “After reading about what he [Card] believes and what he does to back up those beliefs I’ve just made the decision not to carry that book either. While Washington just recently legalized gay marriage I’m in a part of the state that definitely leans to the conservative and I expect some fallout from my actions. I know how naive this may sound, but it’s what Clark Kent would do. To me, at their core, comics are mostly about doing the right thing no matter what the cost. If I can see this and back it up with my actions I can’t imagine why DC can’t do the same.”

Sterling, a longtime comics blogger, acknowledged his store’s position on Card is a little inconsistent, but said in this situation a boundary has been crossed. “I know, I know … we carried the Ender’s Game comics. We’ve carried other comics by creators with reprehensible positions (though mostly expressed via Internet hot air, rather than being on a board, like Card, to try to enforce those positions on people),” he wrote this morning on his blog. “But this particular Superman comic is the one where the line is being drawn, where a message is hopefully being sent that we don’t want to support someone who is on the wrong side of history, on the wrong side of progress, and, when you get right down to it, on the wrong side of basic human decency.”

As it seems the key to David O. Russell’s renewed commitment to seeing projects through to the end is surrounding him with familiar faces so he doesn’t get spooked, Jennifer Lawrence is now set to reunite with her Silver Linings Playbook director on Shitty Shitty Bullshit—which is what we’re going to call Russell’s perpetually “formerly titled” American Bullshit until he picks a new name already. Shitty Shitty Bullshit: Shit Just Got Real will also see a reunion between Lawrence and Bradley Cooper, who stars as the federal agent who devised the 1970s-era ABSCAM sting operation with the help of a notorious con artist and his mistress. Russell’s Fighter stars Christian Bale and Amy Adams are also attached to play that con artist and mistress, while Lawrence will now play Bale’s wife. Also on board are Jeremy Renner, as a politician at the center ...

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Down for the Count is an informative chart illustrated by Los Angeles-based designer Philip Rhie for Vanity Fair. It shows the approximate amount of deaths that occur in films directed by Quentin Tarantino.

From Reservoir Dogs all the way to Django Unchained, the ratio of director Quentin Tarantino’s body count to body of work.

*A few numbers are approximated due to the impossibility of counting precisely how many ninjas are decapitated in Kill Bill Vol. 1, how many Nazis are in the theater when it gets set afire in Inglorious Basterds, and how many people fall in the never-ending shoot-out scene at the end of Django Unchained.

image via Vanity Fair

via I Love Charts

“To the victor goes the pour.”

“The Last Barfighter” is a “beercade” arcade video game machine developed by employees of Durham-based ad agency McKinney for Ten Percent, a program where they can “spend 10 percent of their time to come up with innovative projects of their own.” The game itself is a take on the fighting game, Street Fighter, but is notably different because when you beat your opponent, you receive a beer that is poured from the machine itself. It was commissioned by Raleigh beer company Big Boss Brewery.

What’s more memorable: sampling a beer poured by a bartender, beer rep or festival worker, or sampling a beer poured from a video arcade machine after you defeat your pathetic opponent in a game called “The Last Barfighter”? Everything about the Big Boss Brewery Beercade was handcrafted in-house at McKinney — from the classic arcade-inspired frame construction to the typographical styling and illustrations to the video game itself. It takes beer trial from forgettable smell-and-sip to memorable gloat-and-guzzle.

via Digiday, CNET, OhGizmo!, Incredible Things

Artist and urban planner Neil Freeman created this imaginary map of the United States which is divided into 50 states of equal populations (roughly 6 million people per state). In this scheme, California is divided amongst 9 states, while New York City becomes its own state. The map is Freeman’s commentary on the Electoral College system:

The fundamental problem of the electoral college is that the states of the United States are too disparate in size and influence. The largest state is 66 times as populous as the smallest and has 18 times as many electoral votes. This allows for Electoral College results that don’t match the popular vote. To remedy this issue, the Electoral Reform Map redivides the fifty United States into 50 states of equal population.

via Talking Points Memo

Danish designer Brian Wolter created this “fly thru” bird feeder that looks like a Burger King. The feeder includes a solar-powered LED lighting system so that migrating birds can find it at night (the feeder is presumably open 24 hours). Wolter has posted DIY instructions for the feeder on Instructables.

photos by Povl Thomsen

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

It is being reported by Umberto “El Mayimbe” Gonzalez of Latino Review that actor Harrison Ford is returning to Star Wars to reprise his role as Han Solo for the new series of films.

Watch the latest video at video.latino.foxnews.com

UPDATE:

Entertainment Weekly reporter Geoff Boucher says the deal is not sealed just yet:

Harrison Ford deal? My source says not yet.”It will not be for weeks and perhaps months.”

— Geoff Boucher (@geoffboucher) February 15, 2013

video by Fox News Latino

via Mirror TV

Feline Cerebellar Hypoplasia is a neurological condition that causes a cat to have coordination and balance problems, often resulting in a “drunken sailor” walk. It is caused by underdevelopment of the cat’s cerebellum during the animal’s development in the womb. Despite their impairments, cats with the condition still make good companions, and have a devoted following amongst owners who find the cats and their wobbly gait to be very endearing. For more on the condition see the blog Life with CH Cats.

video by hepjo

via Life with CH Cats