firehose

I like almost everything about working in plain text and MultiMarkdown. However, after trying to do editorial reviews in plain text, I realized there was a major problem. How do you indicate deletions, additions and comments in plain text without mangling the text or making changes laborious.

After some failed trials with Github and file diffs, I decided I needed a new markup language.¹

Enter Erik Hess, my friend and part-time editor. We began a collaboration to solve our own problems. Within a couple of days of using the new markup, we realized that this was something that might have universal appeal. So it became a real project for us. CriticMarkup was born.²

What is it?

CriticMarkup is not a file format or proprietary application exchange format. CriticMarkup is a basic syntax that can be used in any application. Heck, it could be used with a typewriter. It's like Markdown but for denoting editorial changes.

• Addition {++ ++}
• Deletion {-- --}
• Substitution {~~ ~> ~~}
• Comment {>> <<}
• Highlight {{ }}{>> <<}

Here's a view of it in the context of a plain text document (colored for emphasis)

We carefully chose our syntax to avoid conflicts with MultiMarkdown, LaTeX and HTML. We wanted to be good citizens but we also want the syntax to make sense. I also, personally, think there is beauty in symmetry.

Where is it?

CriticMarkup has a home at criticmarkup.com.³ Easy right?

Some Tools

Because we actually use CM to do editorial reviews, we realize that good tools make everyone happy. So we made some. There's a Sublime Text package, which we demonstrate in the video. There's a BBEdit CLM, Keyboard Maestro macro, TextExpander snippets and system services for the Mac. Finally, there's a CLI tool that will convert a Markdown file that contains CriticMarkup into a really nice HTML document that can be used for reviewing.

Here's what the Markup version looks like in the exported HTML document:

The page can also toggle between an "Original" view that hides all editorial comments:

Want to see how the article will read if you just agree with your editor? There's a view for that too:

There are also nice JQuery enabled on-hover effects for editorial comments. Just hover over the double-dagger next to the highlighted text to see the editor's comments.

Of course you can also override the builtin CSS/JS with your own file.

Oh, and of course, because CM is just plain text, it also works great in Kaleidoscope.app. The text is still readable but the markup is obvious.

Onward and Upward

We made this for us. We think other people that are like us will find it useful too. We're considering how this syntax should evolve over time to make it useful to a broader group. There are a lot of gaps in the syntax that will be a problem for professional copy editors. We hope to reduce the number of gaps over time but we have our eye on simplicity as a top priority.

If you want to contribute feel free to drop by the Github or support discussion site.

The best way to support this idea is to make it work in cool ways. There are some great apps on the horizon that will make working with CriticMarkup even easier.

So, CriticMarkup is a thing we like and a thing we use. If you like it too, that's cool. Either way, Erik and I are pretty proud of the results.

Thanks

There were many people that provided some great feedback as the project evolved. I'm very thankful that these folks exist and made time to provide feedback. They are all superheroes and kind souls.

Will Oemler

Fletcher Penney

Jonathan Poritsky

Michael Schechter

Jason Snell

Brett Terpstra

Bob van der Clay

Federico Viticci

Yuvi Zalkow

1. For the truly creepy and astute reader, you may have noticed a post with the CriticMarkup tag a little while ago. There's also been many bookmarks on Pinboard that I've tagged with my project nomenclature.  ↩

2. The acronym we like is CM ↩

3. Isn't that site a beauty? Erik made the entire thing from scratch. He's awesome and also available for hire. ↩

One suggestion we received on Twitter: “You can put it in a sweater and never drink it again.” Gary He

Quartz broke the news over the weekend that Maker’s Mark is reducing the alcohol in its bourbon by three percentage points, from 45% alcohol to 42%, in order to keep up with rising demand. The story ignited a small firestorm as customers criticized Maker’s and its parent company, Beam Inc., for watering down the drink.

I heard from lots of whiskey drinkers on Twitter who had follow-up questions, so I posed them today to COO Rob Samuels, who prefers his Maker’s Mark neat, and his father Bill Samuels, who ran the distillery until 2011 and drinks his bourbon in Manhattans, Old Fashioneds, and over ice. Here are highlights from the interview.

How much additional supply will be created by lowering the alcohol content in Maker’s Mark?

“Volume-wise, it’s not enormous,” Bill said. “It allows what Rob felt was an extra four years to fill the gaps that were causing us the biggest problems. The biggest ones are the bars and restaurants that have Maker’s Mark cocktails on their menus. We’re taking care of customers who have been with us for a long time.”

Is reducing the alcohol simply a matter of adding water?

Yes. Almost all bourbon brands “add water as it enters the barrel and as it leaves the barrel,” Rob said. Maker’s Mark will now just be adding just a little more.

Why not just raise the price? That’s another common solution to problems of supply and demand.

“Rob’s grandfather did not like ostentatiousness,” Bill said, referring to Bill Samuels Sr. ”It deliberately was not marketed as an image-transfer brand.” I pointed that out Maker’s Mark was once marketed under the slogan, “It tastes expensive…and is.”

Rob said that, yes, “for a period, it was a little more expensive than others,” but described Maker’s Mark as more a mid-market brand now. Jim Beam, owned by the same company, is a cheaper bourbon; Maker’s 46 is higher-end and higher proof. In that sense, lowering the proof of Maker’s Mark is diversifying the company’s selection of bourbon.

Pressed on the price issue, Rob said that distributors mostly control the pricing of Maker’s Mark but acknowledged, “Most years we’ve taken a modest price increase.” He also said the company is making investments to increase capacity.

What about other ways of increasing supply?

Bill said, “The one lever that we have had is age,” meaning that the bourbon could be aged in oak barrels for less time. But Maker’s Mark starts to taste too “grainy” when aged for less than six years, Bill said, so they couldn’t push it any further.

This question was submitted by Wired editor Ryan Tate, and I asked it word-for-word as representative of outraged customers: What will you do for a living after burning the American bourbon industry’s reputation to the ground and destroying your company?

“All we’ve asked is that folks keep an open mind until they taste,” said a somewhat chastened Rob.

Google Reader has been having some issues.

Here’s the thing: a bunch of RSS readers rely on Google Reader for syncing — but Google Reader is not a syncing service, and its APIs are undocumented and unsupported.

TechCrunch describes Google Reader as “benignly abandoned” — which, for native RSS readers that use it, is worse than actual abandonment, because broken syncing is worse than no syncing.

My friend Jake asks if Google could spin off Reader. My guess: it’s not worth their time to pursue. What they’d get for it isn’t worth the time to consider it. (And that’s before you factor in the difficulty of transferring it.)

Google has learned to focus, and they’re doing some great work. (I especially like Google Maps for iOS.)

Part of learning to focus is learning how to shut things down. Google has done well at that — but I’m surprised that Google Reader hasn’t been shut down yet. Better a clean shut-down than an ungraceful end.

OK – I said I wasn’t going to post again until I was back in the UK, but I just opened my laptop to check my mail at the airport and found something that really couldn’t wait. The folks from Mojang have finished the Minecraft: Pi Edition port, and it’s available for download now. For free.

You can see a post from Mojang about the news on their main blog; they’ve also opened up a Pi Edition blog, where you can find download instructions. I know some of you have already downloaded the beta version that was released in December; if you have, you’ll want to replace it with today’s release, which fixes some bugs and has more features.

To read more about Minecraft on the Pi, check out our previous posts, where you’ll find video demonstrating how coding inside the Minecraft: Pi Edition environment works, a report from MineCon, and more. Thanks to all at Mojang for all the work you’ve done on this, and greetings to those of you who are coming to the Raspberry Pi platform to play this new edition – we’re really happy to be able to welcome all you Minecrafters to the Pi family!

 

BlackBerry announced pop music star Alicia Keys as its new Global Creative Director with great fanfare during its launch of BlackBerry 10 late last month, but if a tweet posted by Keys today is any indication, she may not be being that faithful to the new platform. The superstar was caught tweeting "Started from the bottom now were here!" from the Twitter for iPhone app this morning, despite her promise to The New York Times that she was exclusive to BlackBerry 10 now. The original tweet has since been deleted, and Keys has followed up with not an apology, but rather a claim that she was hacked and didn't post the tweet in question. It's hard to say for sure whether or not Keys is telling the truth and someone with her password decided to play a prank on her, but it wouldn't be the first time that celebrity endorsers have been caught cheating on the company that they are paid to promote.

Late last year, a kerfuffle was started when Oprah tweeted a series of messages endorsing Microsoft's new Surface tablet — all from her iPad. Other celebrities have been caught promoting certain devices in music videos and the like only to be seen tweeting from competing products later on. But what makes Keys alleged offense so alarming is that she isn't just a paid promoter — BlackBerry has actually given her a title within the company and she's supposedly on its payroll.

For her part, the vast majority of the tweets posted to Keys' account have been from Twitter's web interface, which artfully masks what type of computer or device she is using to tweet. Chances are, this won't be the last time we see a celebrity use a device other than what they are promoting, or have one of their promotional team members commit a similar gaffe.

• Via Pocket-lint
• Source GizmodoAlicia Keys (Twitter)
• Image Credit Pocket-lint
• Related Items cheat tweet alicia keys creative director BlackBerry Cellphones

“Someone Should Start A Tumblr” is a Tumblr blog (naturally) of ideas people have for a Tumblr blog.

via Ironic Sans

Charlene deGuzman and Miles Crawford star in “Drum-Off,” a film where a couple argues about what to have for dinner with drums.

video written by Charlene deGuzman and directed by Miles Crawford

via Tastefully Offensive

Having already decided to cast himself as the star in his “Blazing Saddles-style” comedy A Million Ways To Die In The West, Seth MacFarlane has taken the natural next step and cast Amanda Seyfried as his girlfriend, because that’s the sort of thing you can do when it’s your movie. (Though, as you’ll find out if you attempt this, it also helps when you’ve already made a successful movie.) According to The Hollywood Reporter, Seyfried is in talks to play the woman who leaves MacFarlane’s cowardly farmer after he backs down from a fight, leading him on a quest to prove his manhood by learning how to sling a gun and an anachronistic pop culture joke or twenty. Charlize Theron is also on board, playing the wife of an outlaw who teaches him everything he needs to know “and then maybe they make out ...

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Tagged: plot thickens , pringles , dan harmon , failbook , g rated Share on Facebook

By John Walker on February 11th, 2013 at 7:00 pm.

Actual Sunlight is a game about suicide. Primarily a visual novel, but with player participation, it’s a superbly written, but ultimately incredibly dark and hopeless game. I think it’s also a very good game, and I find it terrifying to write about. As such, at the bottom of this post there are links to phone numbers for every country’s suicide prevention helplines. It’s a bleak to play, so please feel forewarned.

There’s something enticing about an eloquent misanthrope. That vicarious opportunity to hate, hate, hate, while still being entertained by a nice turn of phrase or particularly effective jab. It’s like observation comedy for the bitter – “Yes! I hate that too!”

Actual Sunlight is about the other side of it all. It’s about 28 year old Evan Winters, who has mostly given up. It’s about his misery, his depth of depression, voiced through his talented writing. From the game’s opening moments-

“Why Kill Yourself Today When You Could Masturbate Tomorrow?
By Evan Winter”

-you read his missives, enjoy the dark bitterness of his perspective on many matters, all while guiding him through the mundanity of his life. And get sadder and sadder.

Winter, and by proxy the game’s creator Will O’Neill, has a great skill with aphorisms. Winter says to a colleague in his office,

“All I’m saying is the worst thing about nice things is the people who can afford them.”

It’s a line that perfectly captures the tone of this really extraordinary game. It’s a brilliant line – in fiction. Whether growled into a microphone, or uttered by the wacky-faced comic wiggling a cigar at the side of his mouth, it deserves a laugh. But say it reality and it’s genuinely nasty. It’s dripping with hate. His colleague reacts sadly, because you would.

Winter’s worldview is bleak, but ultimately selfish. His is a depression formed of the despising of others’ success, rather than his own failure. Worst, his perspective is driven by an incredibly hollow pretence at a philosophy of recognising the unfairness of society. He bemoans an existence with an education, food, shelter, but there are so many without, so who is he to… carry on complaining in his educated, well-fed shelter.

His hypocrisy makes him unlikeable, and yet his writing is absolutely compelling. And you get so much of it. In his opening written monologue he opines at the aforementioned disparity in conditions, and concludes,

“There has never been a better time in the history of mankind to be completely, cripplingly, devastatingly alone, and yet here you are: Thinking about giving up on the good times. Not realising that you still have so much to live for – that there is still so much to jerk off to.”

A review of A. Wake he’s posted on SomethingAwful contains the line,

“It’s not great that the game has ten different endings that require over a hundred hours of average playtime to see – that’s just a way of making you feel like you could be special, which is exactly what you never have.”

His own instructions for assembling a chest of drawers in his bedroom finishes,

“6. Turn structure around completely, exposing open rear side of dresser, and remove top drawer entirely, rendering entire dresser as giant open hole.

7. Realise that nobody will probably ever see how fucked up this is, that it wouldn’t be a criteria if any girl was actually willing to come here in the first place, and that you’re probably just going to leave all of your clothes hanging over furniture or stuck in the dryer anyways.”

So Evan is amusing and unlikeable. But this is a game about depression, and his being unlikeable becomes far more complex. Yes, he’s unlikeable because he’s a prick about everything, but he’s a prick about everything because he’s mentally ill. Transcripts of possible moments with a therapist delve further into this, but the inevitability toward which the game is aiming for a breakdown is perhaps its most harrowing aspect.

So much so that in the earliest moments, creator O’Neill has a moment of panic, and interrupts his own narrative. A message to any young people playing the game that they live with opportunity to change their destiny, rather than view this game as an inevitability of their depression. It’s not pat, it’s raw. “The fact that you are young means in and of itself that you still have a lot of time to change things. That doesn’t mean you’re going to get everything you want, but I promise that you can do a lot better than you will if you give yourself over to despair.” Emotionally, he ends this intervention with the words,

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

By the time everything is falling apart (even O’Neill himself notes in that message near the start, “It’s also pretty clear where all of this is headed”), those excellent lines are still coming.

“ALCOHOLIC VOMIT IS COOLNESS LEAVING THE BODY
By Evan Winters”

But what follows is just pure wretchedness. It’s the gruesomely honest version of the humorous hate from before. It’s the anger stripped of its safety nets. And from then on, it’s an inexorable descent toward suicide.

Actual Sunlight is a brutal depiction of a man’s life self-destructing, and it’s a game whose central character can only find hope in his own death. And as such, his own death is the only hopeful moment in the game. Which is just beyond uncomfortable.

So as O’Neill interrupts his own game to give his message, I am interrupting my own review with my own: Actual Sunlight depicts the sense of hopelessness that drives a person to suicide, and because it’s presented from a first-person narrative, it only comprehends that hopelessness, and dismisses any possibility for things to get better. And that’s a lie. A lie necessary for this story to be so well told, but a lie depression tells a depressed person.

There’s always hope. There is, no matter what a depressed mind will think, always a way for things to get better, for life to offer more hope than death. This game honestly captures the deception that there’s not for this one fat, 30-something man, but it is a deception, and there always is hope. And I say this as a fat, 30-something man with anxiety depression. I appeal to anyone who finds their own feelings echoed in Actual Sunlight to recognise the catharsis of being understood, certainly, but to hear another voice, one saying that hope always exists. If you’re in the UK, the Samaritans can be called, anonymously, at any time on 08457 909090, or emailed at joe@samartians.org. If you’re in the US, the NSPL are at 1-800-273-8255. If you’re anywhere else, this page has links to every nation’s own line.

Actual Sunlight can be downloaded for free from here.

“I will be there with a deep, abiding respect for the office of the presidency,” he said. “I’m not here to represent any specific cause other than freedom and independence and ‘we the people.’ ” To illustrate his point, he noted that he would not be carrying any weapons as he usually does.

Vega’s V-day card to Sagat

I’m loving this Street Fighter series from Meghan. Speaking of Sagat, Fire Emblem: Awakening fans might appreciate this probably not real shot.

BUY SSFIV 3D Edition, 25th Anniversary Collector's Set

Adeline hears Bad Brains for the first time. (by dudeabides671)

Maker’s Mark waters down its bourbon to meet rising demand - Quartz:

I’ve reached out to Beam to clarify whether the alcohol is being reduced by 3%, as the email says, or three percentage points, which would be more dramatic. The footer of today’s email suggests it’s the latter, describing Maker’s Mark as a 42% ABV beverage, which is also known as 84 proof; it was previously distilled to 45% ABV, or 90 proof. That would be a 6.7% reduction in the amount of alcohol.

You kill Osama bin Laden. You’re a hero. But you’re also left with…nothing? An Esquire article by Phil Bronstein published today describes the difficulty the guy who evidently shot the bullets that killed Osama bin Laden is having in adjusting to civilian life. After 16 years in the Navy’s most elite unit, the Navy SEALs, a man identified as “The Shooter” left the military, having accomplished what he felt was his life’s purpose. Bronstein writes:

The government does provide 180 days of transitional health-care benefits, but the Shooter is eligible only if he agrees to remain on active duty “in a support role,” or become a reservist. Either way, his life would not be his own. Instead, he’ll buy private insurance for $486 a month, but some treatments that relieve his wartime pains, like $120 for weekly chiropractic care, are out-of-pocket. Like many vets, he will have to wait at least eight months to have his disability claims adjudicated. Or even longer. The average wait time nationally is more than nine months, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Anyone who leaves early also gets no pension, so he is without income. Even if he had stayed in for the full 20, his pension would have been half his base pay: $2,197 a month. The same as a member of the Navy choir.

The article suggests that “the Shooter” has found it hard to find “normal” jobs, fulfilling positions at non-violent companies and not for security contractors. Bronstein alleges that, by poorly preparing Special Operations personnel for daily life, the US government has left its most talented warriors high and dry. They’ve done a special duty to their country and have years of leadership training—why not treat them differently? Why not provide better healthcare options or more training to work in the private sector? Although the healthcare point may be a valid one—benefits for new veterans cut off sharply after they leave service—in the long term, the Shooter will probably do just fine in the workforce.

First off, it’s not clear that better government programs would actually succeed at helping someone like the Shooter find a job. “Unfortunately these programs are staffed—in many or most cases—by people who have spent the majority of their careers in government, and themselves have very little experience in the private sector,” explains Brian Zawikowski, a headhunter at the Lucas Group who works specifically to place veterans. “I don’t know how much more [transition programs] could do, unless you throw a lot of money into them…Then what you have is a ton of contractors come in and essentially take money from the government.”

What’s more, the Shooter’s skills are actually in high demand. It’s just a matter of finding the right job, and maybe moving for the position. His skills are particularly coveted at the nation’s investment banks, where risk (financial, rather than physical) is a part of daily life. “We’re actually strongly pushed to seek out these kind of individuals for positions,” says Kyle Ramkissoon, Principal at IJC Partners, a firm which specializes in finding and placing candidates at hedge funds. “Talk about cool points. You’re a Navy SEAL, man! Think about bringing these guys to a client lunch, the kind of conversations that would ensue.” But those skills are in demand for more than cool points; “Aside from that, it’s the skills these guys have. You can’t learn that,” Ramkissoon adds.

The problem seems to be that business can’t find these highly trained veterans, and the SpecOps veterans don’t know how to make themselves seen by would-be employers. Ramkissoon laments that he can only find a handful of such candidates—or, indeed, veterans at all—in his databases when he’s looking to fill those jobs. “I don’t think they know where to find these jobs. [The government doesn't] provide these guys with a list of recruiting firms that specialize in placing veterans.”

One of the private-sector companies trying to tackle that problem is ExBellum, a job-hunting service launched in 2012 that caters specifically to SpecOps veterans moving into civilian life. Founded by Judson Kauffman, himself a Special Operations veteran, the service connects employers specifically interested in hiring special forces alumni with a pool of such workers. “You have employers who are really dying for real leadership. You can’t find it at the nation’s top MBA programs,” says Kauffman. For both veterans and would-be employers, “there was really no clear place to go and that’s why we founded this business.” ExBellum combines a job board that works like a SpecOps LinkedIn and services to help vets meet people, hone resumes, and learn business jargon. So far, Kauffman says Special Forces veterans have signed up in droves.

Admittedly, the road from military to civilian life for SEALs like the Shooter is not always straight. Finding a job isn’t the easiest task for anyone entering the workforce, not to mention newcomers unfamiliar with the private sector who may never have put together a resume before. Then again, SpecOps vets are the cream of the crop—highly educated and well-trained—and actually in high demand, so long as they’re willing to be flexible and move for a job or work at learning the business lingo. Although both Kauffman and Zawikowski (also a veteran) were sympathetic with the Shooter’s story—and noted that he will probably face challenges making the transition—both were confident that he’d ultimately end up alright. “I wouldn’t think that a guy like that would have difficulty getting a job,” Zawikowski says.

“OK, just so I get this right: You’re arguing that most Americans have a mental illness. Exactly. That’s definitely correct. But — if that’s true — wouldn’t that mean “mental illness” is just a normative condition? That it’s just how people are? That doesn’t make it normal. This is based on science. If there was a flu epidemic, and 60 percent of the country had the flu, it wouldn’t make it normal … the problem is growing, and it’s growing because there’s a subtle war — in America, and in the world — between business and health. It’s no secret that 2 percent of the human population controls all the wealth and the resources, and the other 98 percent struggle their whole life to try and attain it. Right? And what ends up happening is that the 2 percent leave the 98 percent to struggle and struggle and struggle, and they eventually build up these stresses and conditions. So … this is about late capitalism? Definitely. Definitely.”

- Chuck Klosterman on Royce White - Grantland

Where's the human connection anymore? Teens these days, with their texting and what not. In my day--

1906 Punch comic, meet 2013 Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic.

(via @kiptw)

skade88 writes "Pepsi will release on Feb 28th a new breakfast Mountain Dew. The new drink called Kick Start is Mountain Dew mixed with fruit juice. It will come in two flavors, Citrus and Fruit Punch. 'Our consumers told us they are looking for an alternative to traditional morning beverages – one that tastes great, includes real fruit juice and has just the right amount of kick to help them start their days,' said Greg Lyons, Mountain Dew's vice president of marketing."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The WSJ reports that Apple is "experimenting with designs for a watch-like device that would perform some functions of a smartphone, according to people briefed on the effort." An excerpt: The company has discussed such a device with its major manufacturing partner Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., one of these people said, as part of explorations of potentially large product categories beyond the smartphone and tablet. Apple's efforts come as companies have introduced various kinds of wearable gadgets, mainly designed to measure physical activity. More sophisticated devices face big technical challenges, but also are attracting investments from large technology companies. Foxconn, as Hon Hai is also known, has been working on a spate of technologies that could be used in wearable devices, one of these people said. In particular, the Taiwan-based company has been working to address the challenges of making displays more power-efficient and working with chip manufacturers to strip down their products."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

First time accepted submitter thoughtfulbloke writes "Ron Paul has gone to the United Nations' World Intellectual Property Organization to seize control of the RonPaul.com domain from the fans that built it up, rather than purchase it. From the article: 'The proprietors of RonPaul.com say they reached out to the retired politicain and offered him RonPaul.org as a free gift, but if he "insisted" on owning RonPaul.com then they would sell it to him. There was a catch, though. It would be part of a "liberty package" with the site's 170,000 person mailing list for... wait for it... $250,000. They think the price is totally worth it: '"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The location clock found in the Harry Potter books makes for a really fun hack. Of course there’s no magic involved, just a set of hardware to monitor your phone’s GPS and a clock face to display it.

[Alastair Barber] finished building the clock at the end of last year as a Christmas gift. The display seen above uses an old mantelpiece clock to give it a finished look. He replace the clock face with a print out of the various locations known to the system and added a servo motor to drive the single hand. His hardware choices were based on what he already had on hand and what could be acquired cheaply. The an all-in-one package combines a Raspberry Pi board with a USB broadband modem to ensure that it has a persistent network connection (we’ve seen this done using WiFi in the past). The RPi checks a cellphone’s GPS data, compares it to a list of common places, then pushes commands to the Arduino which controls the clock hand’s servo motor. It’s a roundabout way of doing things but we imagine everything will get reused when the novelty of the gift wears off.

Filed under: gps hacks

For most of the history of television, the barrier to syndication—and to profitability—has been 100 episodes. The shows that have made it to that mark are an unusual group. Many were big hits. Some found small cult audiences. Still others just hung on as best they could and never posted numbers quite low enough to be canceled. In 100 Episodes, we examine the shows that made it to that number, considering both how they advanced and reflected the medium and what contributed to their popularity.

After taking control of the Walt Disney company in 1984, Michael Eisner and Frank Wells had a simple goal for the company’s animation division: It had to be at the top of every possible medium. While the benefits of that strategy in the company’s film division paid off with movies including The Little Mermaid and Beauty And The Beast, the story ...

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Politico

Senior military leaders warn cuts are dire threat to defense at dangerous time Washington Post (blog) Senior Defense officials warned Congress Tuesday that the looming sequestration cuts represents a dire and unprecedented threat to the U.S. military, harming everything from combat readiness at a time of dangerous international tensions to the Pentagon's ... US Military Leaders Paint Dire Picture Under SequestrationDefenseNews.com Pentagon: Budget Cuts Are 'Particularly Tragic,' 'Collateral Damage'Huffington Post No. 2 Defense official: I will refuse part of my salary if sequester happensWashington Examiner Detroit Free Press -ArmyTimes.com -Reuters all 132 news articles »

In January, I had the fortune of being a keynote speaker at LCA2013. One of the tchotchkes I received from the conference organizers was a little USB memory stick.

I thought it was a neat coincidence that I was in a factory that manufactured exactly such memory sticks about a week before the conference. In fact, I managed to score a rare treat: the factory owner gave me a sheet of raw chip-on-flex, prior to bonding and encapsulation, to take home.

The USB sticks start life as bare FLASH memory chips. Prior to mounting on PCBs, the chips are screened for capacity and functionality. Below is a photo of the workstation where this happens:

In the image, you can see stacks of bare-die FLASH chips, awaiting screening with a probe card. I love the analog current meter and the use of rubber bands to hold it all together. The probe card has tiny needles on it that touch down on microscopic (less than 100-micron square) contacts on the chip surfaces. Below is what a probe card looks like.

Below is an image through the microscope on the micro-probing station, showing the needles touching down on the square pads at the edge of the FLASH chip’s surface.

Interestingly, this all happens in an absolutely non-clean-room environment. Workers are pretty much handling chips with tweezers and hand suction vises, and mounting the devices into these jigs by hand.

Once the chips are screened for functionality, they are placed by hand onto a PCB. This is not an unusual practice, pretty much every value-oriented wirebonding facility I’ve visited relies on the manual placement of bare die. The photo below shows a controller IC being placed on a panel of PCBs. The bare die are in the right hand side of the photo, sitting in the beige colored waffle pack.

The lady is using some sort of tool made out of hand-cut bamboo. I still haven’t figured out exactly how they work, but every time I’ve seen this process they are using what looks like a modified chopstick to place the chips on the board. My best guess is that the bamboo sticks have just the right surface energy to adhere to the silicon die, such that silicon will stick to the tip of the bamboo rod. A dot of glue is pre-applied to the bare boards, so when the operator touches the die down onto the glue, the surface tension of the glue pulls the die off of the bamboo stick.

It’s trippy to think that the chips inside my USB stick were handled using modified chopsticks.

The chips are then wirebonded to the board using an automated bonding machine which uses image recognition to find the location of the bond pads (this is part of the reason they can get away with manual die placement).

(view in HD)

The first half of the video above starts out with the operator pulling off and replacing a mis-bonded wire by hand, and re-feeding the wire into the machine. Given that these wires are thinner than a strand of hair, and that the bonding pads are microscopic, this is no mean feat of manual dexterity.

Here’s a scan of the partially-bonded but fully die-mounted PCB that I was given as a memoir from my visit (I had since crushed some of the wire bonds). The panel contains eight USB sticks, each consisting of a FLASH memory chip and a controller IC that handles the bridging between USB and raw FLASH, a non-trivial task that includes managing bad block maps and error-correction, among other things. The controller is probably an 8051-class CPU running at a few dozen MHz.

Once the panels are bonded and tested, they are overmolded with epoxy, and then cut into individual pieces, ready for sale.

Interestingly, the entire assembly prior to encapsulation is flexible. The silicon chips have been thinned down by grinding off their back sides to the point where they can tolerate a small amount of flexing, and the PCB is also so thin, it is flexible.

For those of you interested in this kind of thing, here’s the die marking from the FLASH chip; apparently it is made by Intel:

Here is also a die shot of the controller chip:

And now you know where those tiny USB thumb drives are born.

Thanks to David Cranor for contributing images. Images used with permission.

PS: chopsticks

“Florida Man” is a parody Twitter account that humorously posts real headlines about the “world’s worst superhero.”

Florida Man Attacks Three Women With Sword And Peanut Butter Sandwich | bit.ly/OZOguG

— Florida Man (@_FloridaMan) February 10, 2013

Florida Man Arrested For Giving Wedgies | kens5.com/news/Fla-man-a…

— Florida Man (@_FloridaMan) February 8, 2013

Florida Man Busted In Dinosaur-Smuggling Caper | miamiherald.com/2012/10/17/305…

— Florida Man (@_FloridaMan) February 9, 2013

Double duty

“Hello. This is Jackie Russ, Eddy from the city of summer fell with important no related information from Monday, February 11th. If you Hi Snow accumulation and ongoing work to clear public street and walkways and the forecast for possible additional snow this week. The City still emergency will remain in effect until further notice. Residents may continue to park in municipal or school lost until the snow emergency is listed, trash and recycling pick up schedules will continue as usual this week. E P W N contractor cruise are working around the clock to clear snow over the next week, including removing snow banks that impair visibility as well as at bus stops and cross Fox for public safety reasons, particularly for children school has been canceled for wednesday, more information and updates will be available by the city website facebook and twitter feed. Thank you for your cooperation and understanding as we work to ensure safety and accessibility throughout the city.”

Nine months after the last episode, Zach Galifianakis’ Between Two Ferns is back, and thank heavens for that. In the brand new episode—part one of two!—Galifianakis interviews Oscar hopefuls Jennifer Lawrence, Naomi Watts, Amy Adams, Christoph Waltz, and a totally soused Anne Hathaway before graciously having each of them escorted off his set. As always, Galifianakis asks only the hardest-hitting questions, like whether Waltz has ever considered changing his name to “Christoph Breakdance” or if Adams’ high school nickname was “Firecrotch.” Revel in all the awkwardness below while anxiously awaiting part two.

Between Two Ferns: Oscar Buzz Edition Part 1 from Zach Galifianakis

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Though the Oscars’ snubbing of Ben Affleck has already been thoroughly scolded by his wins at the Golden Globes and the Directors Guild, this weekend’s big win at the BAFTAs was the most humiliating yet, delivered as it was in a cutting British accent. Argo took three top honors at the annual British Academy Film Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Editing for its imaginative technique of splicing in a much more exciting ending, continuing the film’s seemingly irrepressible run to getting screwed over at the Oscars by old white men who preferred Lincoln. Meanwhile, Steven Spielberg’s hilarious comedy of errors about why America never should have left the British Empire earned another Best Actor victory for Daniel Day-Lewis, and fellow lock Anne Hathaway picked up another Best Supporting Actress win for Les Misérables and breathlessly thanked every individual member of Parliament, probably.

Far ...

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