While we wait for more news from the 3DS hacking front, the DS homebrew development scene continues to put out the occasional release, like this impressive prototype inspired by Portal. By the way, someone also put out a 2D Portal remake for DS several years ago, and it was pretty awesome!
The French coder behind this project, Smealum (who you might remember for his work on the Minecraft DS project), says PortalDS is “nowhere near playable yet,” but that he’ll eventually add other updates including audio. You should note that the above video was shot with an emulator, so you’ll see some graphical glitches not present in the actual game.
Instead of a video, the members of Metrix Create:Space in Seattle, Washington posted a self-guided virtual tour. There is a link to a professional photographer in the area that specializes in this kind of thing. We assume he’s a member and would love to know if he hacked his own setup to capture the spherical panoramas.
The image above looks toward the front entrance. To the right is a cafe type counter which even offers a menu board listing membership prices but also time rentals on things like one hour in the solder room. The tour includes shots from 11 vantage points highlighting each portion of the space. This includes everything you might expect (3d printing, laser cutting, electronic prototyping) but a few you don’t. There’s a toddler-safe play area (we hear that the Kansas City hackerspace has one of these too), and a huge pick and place machine.
Between Two Ferns is back—again! The second half of the web series’ Oscar-centric episode dropped today—just one day after part one—and it’s a doozy. Host Zach Galifianakis interviews Jessica Chastain (“Chestain”), Sally Field, Daniel Day-Lewis (kind of), and old pal and Hangover co-star Bradley Cooper. While things with Chastain and Field go swimmingly (We even find out how Field feels about pennies), things with Cooper don’t go so well and, ultimately, Galifianakis feels the wrath of his own ferns.
Mark Balelo, a buyer who appeared on several Storage Wars episodes, has died. Balelo's body was found on Monday, two days after he was arrested on suspicion of possession of methamphetamine. It's believed that he committed suicide via carbon monoxide poisoning. An autopsy is scheduled for today.
Balelo, 40, was one of Storage Wars’ flashier characters, always showing up in sharp clothes and wielding upwards of $50,000 in cash from his man purse (or “murse”). He even sold custom versions of his signature accessory on eBay, complete with an autographed picture of himself.
In 2011, Balelo bought a storage locker that contained a 1938 Action Comics book that had been stolen from a locker belonging to Nicolas Cage a decade earlier. Balelo returned the comic book, which was valued at $1 million, to Cage. Last year it was reported that Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant planned to ...
In December, I watched a glorious three-minute ad promoting travel across India. In it, India looks, well, incredible, as promised, and a tourist jaunts from the Himalayas to Kerala and beyond. The visitor is ethnically ambiguous, traveling alone—and female. I loved the scenic vistas, but couldn’t quite grasp how she did it. Was she safe? Were shorts appropriate dress across India? How did she board that bus without feeling those stray hands everywhere, then suddenly nowhere?
Here’s the commercial from the “Incredible India” campaign:
This was before the Delhi gang rape that has captivated the world and forced India to answer some tough questions on its treatment of women. In fact, on the day of the rape, I landed in Hyderabad for a two-week visit. Hearing about the gruesome crime, looking at my own itinerary, reflecting on the ad campaign, I wondered again if India really is safe for female travelers.
Not surprisingly, Indian tourism officials say yes.
“India is as safe a destination as any countries in the world for women travelers, either single or accompanied by other women,” says P. Rangarajan, assistant director of the India Tourism Office in New York. “It was indeed an unfortunate and a deplorable incident. Indians do not tolerate such a crime committed on a woman, whether she is an Indian or foreigner. The massive protests that erupted in the aftermath of the incident prove this point.”
British journalist Monisha Rajesh spent four months traveling around India by train in 2010, an adventure chronicled in her book Around India in 80 Trains. She echoes Rangarajan’s views: “I can only speak for myself, but I felt perfectly safe traveling around India’s major cities, whether or not I had a companion,” she says. While she did spend much of the journey with a male friend, she insists she would have had no doubts about embarking on the same trip solo. “I did travel by myself for a month and was nervous at first, but as soon as people realized I was by myself they made it a point to take care of me,” she remembers. “Most families would invite me to sit in their compartments, and they would often give me their phone numbers so that I had someone to call in emergency.”
Hospitality industry officials actually note an uptick in women traveling by themselves—but accommodations for safety must be made. One five-star hotel in Hyderabad notes that it offers free rides home for women after “ladies night” at its nightclub, where they can drink for free. There are special floors designated for female guests; only those with room keys can enter and only female staff clean those rooms. “This was a very very heinous crime, and definitely, it has an impact. People are more cautious in terms of traveling,” says the hotel’s general manager, requesting anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the subject. “The service industry has become more cautious. You have to be cautious, so take care of yourself, and help us to take care of you.”
It’s not just foreign tourists or so-called NRIs (Nonresident Indians) like me who are now thinking twice, though. Women thinking about taking holidays throughout the country are more weary as well. Sonal Shah, editor-in-chief of Time Out Delhi, took a road trip to the recently concluded Jaipur Literary Festival, but only with a male friend to accompany her—and even then she courted unwanted attention. “I guess it’s fairly unusual for a woman to drive a car on the highway,” she says. “We got a bunch of comments and stares from guys on motorbikes at the sight of a woman driving, and a dude snoring in the passenger seat.”
For first-time female visitors to India, the staring is perhaps the one thing that takes the most getting used to. Rajesh found it irritating as well, but quickly realized that “this was out of curiosity rather than rudeness and harassment.” Rajesh also says issues surrounding women’s security are especially acute in Delhi. “To extend that to the entire country isn’t right. I saw a lot of women solo travelers while I was in India, and very few of them complained about facing anything greater than being stared at.”
During my own recent visit to Hyderabad, shaken up by the headlines in 90-point font at the breakfast table every day, I began rethinking whether or not I should embark on a planned getaway, a two-hour flight followed by a seven-hour drive to Coorg, with my younger sister. But I still went, making some adjustments—we hired an expensive car and driver through the hotel where we’d be staying, instead of a cheaper, unknown service, for example—and I still managed to have a good time. But a holiday where women can truly tour freely, safely, free of harassment, groping or staring? Now that would be incredible, India.
Follow Sarah on Twitter @BySarahKhan. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.
During the last weeks Ruby on Rails has been hit by several security vulnerabilites. As with all bigger open source projects, it is up to the community to spot and fix such issues. Last week I notified the Ruby on Rails security team about a huge vulnerability that I spotted in the latest stable release of Rails and its related gems. As a result the Rails core team published a security advisory today, urging users to upgrade the json gem to the latest stable release.
Shayne Hughes, CEO of Learning as Leadershipo, thought his staff had become too dependent on email to communicate. So he launched an experiment: no internal email for one whole week.
“During opening night for the school’s production of “Grease,” a 16-year-old stagehand named Zach Bickford ran on stage to flip the page of a 12-foot-tall wooden yearbook. The structure, more than twice Zach’s height with an estimated weight of 500 pounds, fell and crushed him. “Woke up on the floor, didn’t really know what happened or anything,” Zach said during a recent rehabilitation session at the San Antonio Children’s Hospital. One of Bickford’s injuries, a compound fracture of his lower left leg, was obvious. Not so obvious, but more serious, a crushed L3 vertebra in his lower back.”
“To whom does that ringing cellular phone belong? I use “whom” accurately and don’t end sentences on prepositions because I’m an English professor. I’ll just walk toward the sound and eventually locate its source. I can’t imagine it’s that Midwestern freshman, who is currently squirming in her seat with perspiration dotting her brow. I’ll approach her anyway, and if the phone continues chiming, I’ll know she’s the culprit… it’s still jingling that benighted popular-music ringtone… I’m just a few feet away now, inching along as if I’m in some decelerated temporality…”
After defeating everybody and reclaiming her dumbass husband's rightful title, her moron husband got his dumb ass killed and all their money took by the merchants whose asses she kicked.
_She escaped dressed as a monk_ and fought legal battles for compensation, and when that didn't work she went back to piracy and beat the Germans stupid up and down the coast until she died of old fucking badassism.
“Fru Elise og Olav Nilsson valgte til slutt å slutte seg til Christian 1, men kongen avsatte Olav Nilsson som høvedsmann i Bergen. Dette førte til at Olav tok opp igjen sjørøveriet, og fru Elise deltok aktivt i virksomheten. Hun skal ha vært kaptein på et av kaperskipene og hadde en utmerket base på setegården Talgje i Ryfylke, hvorfra hun skal ha oppbrakt flere hanseatiske skip. Elise ble på nytt frue på Bergenhus da Olav Nilsson 1455 erobret Älvsborg festning og overlot denne til kongen mot å få igjen Bergenhus len. På veien til Bergen benyttet ekteparet anledningen til å plyndre noen hanseatiske skip.”
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Fuck yeah Norwegian pirate women. She doesn’t have her own Wikipedia page (naturally), but you can read all about her in Norwegian at the link below, or about her incompetent husband on Wikipedia.
Ms. Elise and Olaf Nilsson ultimately chose to join the Christian one, but the deposed king Olav Nilsson as captain of Bergen. This led to Olav took up piracy, and Mrs. Elise actively participated in the activities. She should have been the captain of one of the privateers and had an excellent base on seat farm Talgje in Ryfylke, where she must have upset several Hanseatic ships. Elise was again mistress of Bergenhus Olav Nilsson 1455 Älvsborg fortress conquered and handed it to the king to regain Bergen County. On the way to Bergen, the couple used the occasion to rob a Hanseatic ship.
First time accepted submitter Rawlsian writes "Great Falls, Montana, television station KRTC issued a denial of an Emergency Alert System report that 'dead bodies are rising from their graves.' The denial surmises that 'someone apparently hacked into the Emergency Alert System...This message did not originate from KRTV, and there is no emergency.'"
Since finishing the Scott Pilgrim series, creator Bryan Lee O'Malley's been working on a new project called Seconds, an original graphic novel from Random House about a same-named restaurant and its staff. Seconds was due for release this year, but O'Malley recently answered a fan question on Tumblr explaining that it's been delayed until sometime in 2014 due to a shoulder injury that he's since recovered from.
I hurt my shoulder last summer and couldn't work for a few months and unfortunately the book had to be delayed because of it.
I'm back to work on it now, but it won't be out until.........2014...............
Apparently, O'Malley's injury was also the reason fans have been seeing so much of his art lately, such as the Young Avengers variant cover, or the Battle Royale movie poster, as the smaller projects have served as a warm-up as he returns to drawing Seconds. Either way, it's nice to get an update, and fans can always re-read Scott Pilgrim (Now in black-and-white and color) while they wait for the new book.
Valve is opening up Left 4 Dead 2's Mutations, a set of modified gameplay modes, to further modification by the community with the release of the Expanded Mutation System, now in beta.
According to an update on the official Left 4 Dead blog, EMS is a "vastly improved scripting system" that will allow modders and script authors to have greater control over how Left 4 Dead 2 can play. While stock Mutations allow relatively simple tweaks to existing game rules — for example, giving everyone an M60 with infinite ammo, or requiring headshots to take down common infected — the update will let mod authors "create deep custom experiences that can be played on any map or tailor create something for new or existing maps."
The Expanded Mutation System beta launches with a new survival mode called Holdout and examples of gameplay tweaks that let Survivors build land mines and barricades, as well as purchase emergency ammunition.
Valve writes that the Expanded Mutation System will eventually roll into the main game and the recently launchedLeft 4 Dead 2 Steam Workshop.
What a great essay from Om Malik. While I'm not a big reader of GigaOM, I've always had a fondness for Om. He's brutally honest but seems genuinely considerate.
That became the core founding principle of GigaOM. When I was growing up, my grandparents and parents always said: if you treat people with respect and decency they will treat you in the same way. And those who don’t, well, you don’t have to deal with them. It has served me well pretty much all my life.
Om is not representative of most "serial entrepreneurs". Most of them write self aggrandizing bullshit about the struggles of middle class white people and how hard it is to be ultra-wealthy.1
There's not many Silicon Valley people I would say this about: Om is a good role model and I trust him.
No, I won't link to that garbage. Just look for the latest internet outrage-turd. This guy will be one of the biggest flies. ↩
What they did not want you to ever find out is that your generation, the generation born between 1980-1995, actually outnumbers the Baby Boomers. They knew that if you ever turned your eye towards political reform, you could change the world. They tried to keep you sated on vapid television shows and vapid music. They cut off your education and fed you brain candy. They took away your music and gave you Top Ten pop stations. They cut off your art and replaced it with endless reality shows for you to plug into, hoping you would sit quietly by as they ran the world. We as a society are only as strong as our weakest link. Give ‘em hell, kids.
““In December, [Megan Phelps-Roper, formerly one of the Westboro Baptist Church’s most vocal members] went to a public library in Lawrence, Kansas. She was looking through books on philosophy and religion, and it struck her that people had devoted their entire lives to studying these questions of how to live and what is right and wrong. ‘The idea that only [[Westboro Baptist Church] had the right answer seemed crazy,’ she says. ‘It just seemed impossible.’””
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Metafilter member “the man of twists and turns” said: I’m going to stick this quote into every discussion of why libraries are important.
Sometimes you think that a topic would be interesting to research, but don’t have time to do it yourself. I figure that this is exactly what blogs were invented for. So, without further ado, here are some links about toilets presented without discussion (although the juxtaposition of stories is not always accidental). Feel free to add your own in the comments.
Japanese tourists are said to be frequently distressed at the lack of clean public toilet facilities in Taiwan. In particular, they are horrified at the sight of bathroom trash bins filled with used toilet paper.
In a Taiwan airport recently, someone snapped a picture of a toddler defecating onto a newspaper in the middle of the ground, reportedly with a bathroom nearby.
Currently, the United States spends more than $6 billion a year on toilet tissue—more than any other nation in the world. Americans, on average, use 57 squares a day and 50 lbs. a year.
For thousands of women across India, the existence of a toilet near their workplace is no small thing. It affects women’s ability to work, their safety… and their mobility.
Anita Bai Narre of Chichouli village of Betul district in Madhya Pradesh was handed a cheque for Rs. 5 lakh by Union Minister of Rural Development Jairam Ramesh, on behalf of Sulabh International, for standing up for her dignity on reaching her husband’s place and demanding the construction of a toilet.
creeping feeling that Community is Family Guy-ing/Simpson-ing/turning into a pop culture reference buffet instead of sharp but palatable media criticism-ing
As we reported back in November, a group of concerned Community fans worried about our culture’s severe dearth of Community-related discussion put together CommuniCon, a safe place where Community fans could find fellow Community fans and talk about how much they like Community. This weekend it actually happened, and it seems other people showed up too—including a panel of writers, a “No Small Parts” panel of actors like Charley “Fat Neil” Koontz, surprise appearances from Gillian Jacobs and Yvette Nicole Brown, and, perhaps most importantly erstwhile showrunner Dan Harmon, who was given a microphone and unlimited time to talk about the show he no longer runs. Fortunately, for those who couldn’t make it to the convention, the Internet exists, and it continues to do an almost-as-decent job of cataloging people’s thoughts on Community.
First up, Zap2Itcompiled a few highlights from the panel featuring writers ...
