One of the most fun things about reading Jiro Kuwata‘sBat-Mangais seeing all the changes that Kuwata made when he adapted stories that were originally published in the American Batman comics. Sometimes, they’re taken to a more elaborate extreme, like the now-legendary Lord Death Man story, and sometimes they’re almost completely rewritten, like Kuwata’s take on Batman’s battle with the pro-wrestling Hooded Hangman, but if you’re a die-hard fan of the Caped Crusader, there’s always enough in there to be amazing.
That’s why I’m so stoked about the next story, in which Batman faces the hulking, disfigured form of The Outsider — better known as his once-faithful butler, Alfred Pennyworth! Check out preview pages below, and get excited, it’s gonna be a good one.
The original version of the story ran in 1964′s Detective Comics #328, and over the course of several months involved Alfred’s seeming death and terrifying resurrection as a super-powered crime boss. I’ve always had a particular affection for it, since the very first comic that I ever read — DC Comics Presents #83 — was a sequel to this story.
Kuwata’s version kicks off in Batman: The Jiro Kuwata Bat-Manga chapter 31, available digitally this Saturday at Comixology.
I’ve completely reversed its protocol and found out the following key points:
• The authentication system is vulnerable, anyone could connect to your device.
• The protocol supports direct reading and writing of the device memory, up to 65K of contents.
• The protocol supports commands that are not supposed to be implemented in a production release (bootloader mode, device self test, etc ).
11-year-old Rowan is a family friend of David Perry, who published a transcription of the above letter with her and her parents’ permission over on his blog.
Dear DC comics,
My name is Rowan and I am 11 years old. I love superheroes and have been reading comics and watching superhero cartoons and movies since I was very young. I’m a girl, and I’m upset because there aren’t very many girl superheroes or movies and comics from DC.
For my birthday, I got some of your Justice League Chibis™. I noticed in the little pamphlet that there are only 2 girl Chibis, and 10 boys. Also, the background for the girl figures was all pink and purple.
I remember watching Justice League cartoons when I was really young with my dad. There are Superman and Batman movies, but not a Wonder Woman one. You have a Flash TV show, but not a Wonder Woman one. Marvel Comics made a movie about a talking tree and raccoon awesome, but you haven’t made a movie with Wonder Woman.
I would really like a Hawkgirl or Catwoman or the girls of the Young Justice TV show action figures please. I love your comics, but I would love them a whole lot more, if there were more girls.
I asked a lot of the people I know whether they watched movies or read books or comics where girls were the main characters, they all said yes.
Please do something about this. Girls read comics too and they care.
Sincerely, Rowan.
Perry points out that yes, we are getting a Wonder Woman movie from DC in 2017, but considering Rowan will be thirteen before she sees a DC movie with a female lead (let alone the representation she deserves in comics and toys), that seems beside the point. It takes bravery and intelligence to publicly critique content that you love, and budding female fans of Star Wars, Doctor Who, Ghostbusters, or any other universe that has historically defaulted to male protagonists deserve more heroines with that kind of heart.
This was in my psychology book. I thought it might be useful to those who can’t think if gender-neutral terms.
Finally I see something going against the implied language that suggests the male gender is the default gender, illustrated by “man-made, mankind” etc,
'The app’s developers thought it looked “good.” Zooming out from Tulsa, you can see the entire lower 48 states in one view, whichever way your phone is oriented. Why developers chose the city of Tulsa as the default map, rather than a zoomed out map of the entire US, was not revealed.'
Not everything Google does is decided by an algorithm.
Google Maps for iPhone shows US users this map of Tulsa, Oklahoma, when the app can’t figure out where you are located. Why Tulsa? It’s not the geographic center of the US mainland—that’s just north of Lebanon, Kansas—nor is it the center of where the US population lives—that’s Texas County in Missouri.
Tulsa actually sits a few hundred miles between these two centers. Google told Quartz there’s a very simple reason the town was chosen: The app’s developers thought it looked “good.” Zooming out from Tulsa, you can see the entire lower 48 states in one view, whichever way your phone is oriented. Why developers chose the city of Tulsa as the default map, rather than a zoomed out map of the entire US, was not revealed.
This isn’t the first time Google has chosen a random point on a map of the US—the company did the same thing when it chose a small town in Kansas for the center of the original Google Maps for the web in 2005. Sometimes eyeballing it just works.
When Kansas lawmakers introduced a bill outlawing municipal broadband network, there was no sponsor’s name on it: rumor has it that’s because it was written by a lobbyist called John Federico, who is president of Kansas Cable Telecommunications Association. The…
Camp at your leisure, Portland! Until Tuesday at least.
The city's anti-camping ordinance—currently under challenge in court—is on ice for the next week, courtesy of Commissioner Dan Saltzman.
Saltzman, the city's housing commissioner (for now), penned an email to 16 local entities last week, asking them to hold off on enforcing anti-camping laws or conducting sweeps, the Mercury has learned.
It's not a warm-hearted détente in Portland's ongoing struggles dealing with homelessness. Instead, Saltzman and Portland Housing Bureau officials want to make sure the county's homeless aren't going into hiding as an important effort begins: the every-other-year count of homeless people sleeping on the streets.
The count officially began last night, and continues until Tuesday. In that time, outreach workers and volunteers are combing alcoves, overpasses, and popular camp spots to get a picture of how many people in the county are sleeping outside. (Because the study is technically a one-night snapshot, they're now asking people if they slept outside last night, January 28). The 2013 count found 2,869 people were "literally homeless" up almost 140 from 2011.
The effort is made more difficult if police and other public employees are rousting encampments, making arrests for camping, and taking people's things. So Saltzman's asked city bureaus, county law enforcement, Metro, the Port of Portland, and Union Pacific to lay off. Only Union Pacific, which has its own security force, didn't affirm the requests, according to the housing bureau's Shannon Singleton.
"It's really important to us to get an accurate count," says Brendan Finn, Saltzman's chief of staff. "We don't know who schedules what, when."
Portland Police Bureau chief spokesperson Sgt. Pete Simpson confirms the bureau's on board.
"We'll still obviously respond to incidents," he notes. "We’re going to protect the public and respond to crime."
Here's Saltzman's "URGENT REMINDER":
From: Commissioner Saltzman Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2015 11:03 AM To: Singleton, Shannon Subject: URGENT REMINDER: Suspension of enforcement for Homeless Street Count
As you know, the Homeless Street Count is an effort to capture a snapshot of the numbers, characteristics, and needs of people experiencing homelessness in Multnomah County. This is an additional reminder that the next biannual Homeless Street Count is scheduled for the week of January 28-February 3, 2015. To ensure that the count is as accurate as possible, we are requesting that all entities in Multnomah County that enforce the anti-camping ordinance or conduct homeless camp clean-ups suspend enforcement beginning tomorrow, January 21, to cover the week prior to and during the count (January 21 - February 3, 2015).
I believe most of you have already been in touch with Shannon Singleton of the Portland Housing Bureau to confirm your participation. If you have any questions please contact her at Shannon.Singleton@portlandoregon.gov or by phone at (503) 823-4978.
Again, we appreciate your support for this important effort.
Musician and Seattle resident Dave Matthews showed his support for the defending Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks on Thursday, raising the team's 12th man flag on top of the city's emblematic Space Needle ahead of the National Football League's title game.
"It's a huge honor," Matthews, who moved to Seattle over a decade ago, told local broadcaster KIRO. "It's so exciting to be in this city, the energy that everyone feels, the support that everyone feels."
No. I wanted to. It was my dream, but I got The Daily Show first.
Q: The Daily Show has almost caught up with SNL as a launching pad.
We do have good alumni. And SNL is just such a legendary launching pad. I have a couple of friends on that show and they’re amazing. But a lot of people say that, too, that The Daily Show is a launching pad for talent. So it’s nice to kind of be on a show that is still relevant that people are watching, too, like SNL is.
Q: The last few years, The Daily Show has had a very diverse cast. SNL got some heat a year or so ago for not having any African American women on the show at that time. What were your thoughts on that?
I was just like, “Oh, hell yeah, I know like 50 black female comedians that would be perfect for that.” Then they hired two wonderful people. Yeah, I was like, “OK, cool, well fix it because there are a lot of them that are amazing.”
Q: I can’t keep a straight face when Leslie Jones in on the stage.
She’s a beast. Male or female, black or white or whatever, she’s a beast…Sorry, I’m just looking at Lily Tomlin. Do you think I can say “hi” to her?
Q: Do it.
Hold on. [Williams races across the room and introduces herself to Lily Tomlin.]
Q: How did that go?
It was great! I was so scared. But she was great, she loves my hair, so that felt good.'
"What’s even more striking about Williams is that she truly is a student of comedy who claims influences as diverse as Gilda Radner (well, sort of) to Cheri Oteri to, yes, Lily Tomlin. But, as an African American woman in late night comedy, she’s aware of the hurdles – she has interesting thoughts on 'SNL' (a show she adores) and the Internet’s initial reaction to her being cast on 'The Daily Show.'"
MikeChino writes In an attempt to curb outbreaks of two devastating tropical diseases in the Florida Keys, the FDA is proposing the release of millions of genetically modified mosquitoes into the area. Scientists have bred male mosquitoes with virus gene fragments, so when they mate with the females that bite and spread illness, their offspring will die. This can reduce the mosquito population dramatically, halting the spread of diseases like dengue fever.
This is a tough business to stay in, especially if you don’t have a solid day job or a partner with same. I hear folks say that the 4-5 book place is where a lot of folks start to make money, and it’s true that this is the first year I could earn what I’d call a living wage if I quit or was laid off. But I know too much about publishing – and the changing tastes of the readership – to go all in making $30-40k a year when I’ve spent this long slogging to get to $100k through a combined workaholic income stream of novels, day job, and freelancing. You don’t give all that up just because you had one positive year.
If I’ve learned anything about publishing it’s that you should always hope that one great year is the start of an upward trend – but you should never count on it.
I was poor in 2007. I have no interest in going back if I can help it.
And that’s why I’m not quitting my day job.
Metroid Prime Trilogy, which includes the acclaimed GameCube originals Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, as well as Wii classic Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, is currently 50 percent off. The offer is good today until Feb. 5 at 8:59 a.m. PT, so if you're craving spacey first-person action, get on this now.
The compilation was originally released on the Wii in 2009, but it was discontinued less than six months after release, so the game has always been in short supply. It added Wii Remote controls to the original GameCube games, as well as 16:9 support.
One caveat, if you can call it that — you'll need a Wii Remote and Nunchuck to play the game. Sadly, there's no Wii U GamePad support.
Anyone who supported Barack Obama’s run for president in 2008 remembers the name of David Plouffe, the campaign’s manager, whose daily emails flooded supporters’ inboxes and are part of what prompted Obama to call him “the unsung hero of this campaign” in his acceptance speech.
So for many in the US who use the taxi service app Uber, today felt like a throwback to the days of “Yes We Can.”
Now the company’s senior vice president for policy and strategy, “David Plouffe for Uber” sent an email this morning to tell the service’s customers that for every ride taken during the Super Bowl on Sunday, Uber will donate $1 to the non-profit Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).
Yes He Can: David Plouffe works for Uber (price gouging we can believe in)? I'd like to see David Axelrod at Grindr. pic.twitter.com/Rdh1CgQfaP
Even the subject line of the email was similar in tone to the ubiquitous “Hope” and “Change” emails of 2008, with its vague collection of keywords: “Choice is a Powerful Thing.”
David Plouffe just sent me a email about Uber in an identical format in which he used to take money from me for the Obama Campaign.
Quartz reached out to Uber for comment, and will update this post if we hear back.
Plouffe helped elect Barack Obama in 2008 as his campaign manager, focusing on grassroots and online efforts. He also served as a senior White House adviser, bolstering the 2012 re-election push. He began working with Obama during his 2004 senatorial campaign.
He arrived at Uber as senior vice president in charge of policy and strategy in August, at a time when the company needed his political acumen—both to deal with the controversies it was embroiled in, such as Uber’s campaign to recruit drivers from competitor Lyft, and to handle the company’s dealings with city and federal authorities.
“Over the years, what I’ve come to realize is that this controversy exists because we are in the middle of a political campaign and it turns out the candidate is Uber,” CEO Travis Kalanick said at the time. “Our opponent—the Big Taxi cartel—has used decades of political contributions and influence to restrict competition, reduce choice for consumers, and put a stranglehold on economic opportunity for its drivers.”
Uber’s image has suffered over the years, with problems ranging from its price-surging policies, to accusations of sexual assault by drivers, to executives suggesting digging up personal dirt on reporters who are critical of the company.
But now, Emily Greenhouse at Bloomberg notes, “there are signs of incipient Plouffe-ism, green shoots of a savvier political sense”—for example, the company’s efforts to redeem its image by delivering flu shots, groceries and even puppies to office workers.
Even though Plouffe had been at Uber for several months, customers were surprised to receive his email:
Lil Wayne has been having some issues with his label, Cash Money Records. Back in December, Lil Wayne—whose real name may or may not be Lillian Wayne Carter—took to Twitter to complain about the label refusing to release his latest album, Tha Carter V, and also to say that he wants “nothing to do with” Cash Money. Unlike most angry rants that people tweet about, though, Lil Wayne has actually continued to care about this. In fact, he cares about it so much that he’s now suing Cash Money for $51 million. (Insert easy “cash money” joke here).
That comes from TMZ, which reports that Wayne is claiming Cash Money has neglected to pay him an $8 million advance for when he began recording Tha Carter V as well as $2 million from when he completed it. Wayne argues that, since the label apparently has no interest ...
'LibreOffice ships with fonts named Clarito and Caladea that are designed with the same metrics and proportions as Microsoft's fonts, but with free and open licensing. While their appearance isn't identical, this means that documents using those fonts will open on open source platforms without having their layout thrown off.
Important features like Track Changes have been refined to look and work more like their equivalents in Office; accepting or rejecting a change now jumps to the next change, for quicker, easier document review.'
Document Foundation
The new OS X theme is much less colorful than the Windows theme.
7 more images in gallery
Free and open source office suite LibreOffice was updated today, with its developers calling it "the most beautiful LibreOffice ever."
LibreOffice is a fork of the OpenOffice suite created in 2010 amid concerns of Oracle's stewardship of OpenOffice; OpenOffice was subsequently transferred to the Apache Software Foundation. Both projects have subsequently continued as open source alternatives to Microsoft Office.
The highlight of the new release is a far-reaching visual refresh, with menus, toolbars, status bars, and more being updated to look and work better. While LibreOffice retains the traditional menus-and-toolbars approach that Microsoft abandoned in Office 2007, the new version is meant to make those menus and toolbars easier to navigate.
' "Raina refuses to delay the launch, and the cops must 'level up' to protect her," reads the official description.'
The social media campaign known as GamerGate has been in the mainstream eye nearly since its inception, with coverage from outlets ranging from The New York Times to CNN. Now the harassment that springs from GamerGate will be showcased in an unexpected new place: NBC crime drama Law & Order: SVU.
According to fan blog All Things Law and Order, an episode of Law & Order: SVU titled "Intimidation Game" will air next month. The episode covers a woman game developer who is preparing to launch her first game only to be met with "a stream of online insults, intimidation and death threats from the male-dominated gaming community." Another woman developer is assaulted at a gaming convention, leading to intervention from series mainstay Detective Tutuola (played by Ice-T).
"Raina refuses to delay the launch, and the cops must 'level up' to protect her," reads the official description.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (usually shortened SVU) is a spin-off of long-running crime drama Law & Order. Premiering in 1999, SVU primarily focuses on crimes involving sexual assault.
The GamerGate movement and Twitter hashtag is a social campaign defined by most supporters as a call to effect change in video game journalism and to defend the "gamer" identity. The movement is difficult to define because what it has come to represent has no central leadership or agreed-upon manifesto. The hashtag was first used by actor Adam Baldwin in August after intimate details of a personal relationship between a video game developer and a video game journalist were made public and led some to allege cronyism between press and developers. The campaign is now also linked to ongoing and well-established harassment of women in video games, including Depression Quest creator Zoe Quinn, Sarkeesian and Giant Spacekat head Brianna Wu, though many of GamerGate's supporters deny the campaign should be blamed for harassment.
While there have been no publicly reported cases of physical violence tied directly to GamerGate, there's little doubt that this synopsis draws on some of the episodes of harassment and anger that have become synonymous with the movement. We'll have to wait to watch the episode to see how close to home it hits.
Conan insisted that it was a fine-free zone, and Marshawn instructed him in the ways of the crotch grab.
With the Super Bowl a few days away, Conan O'Brien decided to unite the two biggest personalities on the Seahawks and Patriots, Marshawn Lynch and Rob Gronkowski, over a game of Mortal Kombat. But the topic of conversation quickly turned to things besides video games.
After a game, O'Brien asked Gronkowski to show him how to celebrate, and ... well ... watch what happens next up there. It turns into a discussion about the "obscene gesture" Lynch has been fined for repeatedly. But O'Brien insists Lynch won't get fined -- in fact, he offers to pay $50 -- for a lesson in how to hold one's crotch. Lynch obliges, and the rest is gold. (Watch the NFL actually fine him for this.)
Eventually, O'Brien decided that although Lynch won more games, the pair should split the trophy since he's a Patriots fans. Gronkowski took the trophy (a mashup of the Super Bowl trophy and a severed head, because Mortal Kombat) and made a classic Rob Gronkowski blowjob joke by placing the trophy over O'Brien's groin:
Among the series enjoying critical acclaim — True Detective, Breaking Bad — women are often either shiftless femmes fatales or harried wife-mothers the protagonist is neglecting/staying alive to provide for. In the USA consultant procedural, girlfriends and wives are always first and foremost teammates and partners. They’re never victims, and their lives can’t be traded in for male character development. Sex itself is an afterthought on all these shows — never a central plot point or a significant character motivation. It’s one of the reasons media critics tend not to take the series seriously, but it’s a small price to pay for some television that doesn’t center on sexual violence. The network’s sexiest hetero star — White Collar’s ocean-eyed Neal Caffrey — is played by a gay father in his mid-thirties, and even if that mattered, it wouldn’t matter. He spends his erotic energy flirting at work.
"not all men" yeah youre right, Protoman, a perfect man, an unbeatable machine, hell-bent on destroying every evil standing between man and freedom, built for one purpose, to destroy Wily’s army of evil robots, ready, willing, prepared to fight, would never do that.
"Black transgender people live in extreme poverty with 34% reporting a household income of $10,000 or less, over eight times the general population rate - National Black Justice Coalition" via Deviant Phoenix
