Award-winning architect Ben Pell has designed luxury homes and schools, but as a father, he has also acquired crucial insights into building one of the world's most mysterious structures: the pillow fort.
firehose
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12 Nov 21:17
An Architect Reveals The Secret To Building The Ultimate Pillow Forts
by Mark Strauss
firehose and -1 others like this
12 Nov 20:57
The Big Idea: Cixin Liu
by John Scalzi
The name Cixin Liu is largely unfamiliar to English-speaking science fiction readers, but to Chinese science fiction fans, he’s a superstar of the genre, amassing the sort of award tally and name recognition — and sales! — that would be the envy of any writer in the world. Now for the first time his novel The Three-Body Problem is available in English, translated by Ken Liu, himself a multiple award winner in the genre. With the help of Ken, Liu is here now to tell you his acclaimed work, and how it cuts against the grain for Chinese science fiction.
CIXIN LIU:
As a longtime scifi fan—I’m probably among China’s first generation of scifi enthusiasts—I’ve always believed in the existence of a large number of intelligent species and civilizations in the universe. If some of these civilizations discovered each other and could communicate with each other, they would form a cosmic society of civilizations. I’ve always wondered about the form of such a cosmic society and the kinds of relationships between its members.
In Chinese science fiction, extraterrestrial civilizations were usually imagined as benevolent and wonderful. This set off the contrarian in me, and I decided to imagine a worst-case scenario.
The only reference point we have in the study of cosmic society is human society. There are many different civilizations on Earth itself, each with its own internal complexities and relating to each other in complicated ways. Politics, economics, culture … feed into each other in an intractable knot. It’s very difficult to come to any clear conclusions about cosmic society based on this example.
But a soccer match inspired me. It was the first big-stadium match I’d ever been to: a game between the Chinese national team and UC Sampdoria of Italy at the Beijing Workers Stadium. I had just started my job back then, and all I could afford was one of the cheap nosebleed seats all the way in the last row. From that distance, the complicated technical moves the players made on the pitch were filtered away, leaving behind only a shifting matrix of 23 dots—one of the flitting dots being the soccer ball. Even the brightest star of the match, Ruud Gullit, was just another roving spot in my eyes. I regretted not bringing binoculars with me, but I also realized that the elimination of details revealed the clear mathematical structure of the game.
This is just like the stars, I realized.
Interstellar distances hid and made inaccessible the internal complexities of each civilization. In the eyes of observers like us, extraterrestrial civilizations appear as only points of light. The complicated internal structures and forces within each civilization are reduced to a limited set of variables and parameters associated with each dot. This also revealed a clear mathematical structure for cosmic society.
I came up with a set of axioms as the foundation of this approach to cosmic sociology:
- Survival is the primary need of civilization.
- Civilization continuously grows and expands, but the total matter in the universe remains constant.
Axiom number one should be self-evident, but the second half of axiom number two has not yet been proven by cosmologists. However, as a premise for a science fiction novel, I thought it was logically sound.
I also came up with three conjectures based on the facts as we know them:
First: barriers to communication. It is very difficult for civilizations to communicate with each other and to understand each other across the universe. This is due to 1) the insurmountable time delay imposed on all communications across interstellar distances (at least based on known physical laws); and 2) the vast biological differences between the two sides in any attempt at communications. On Earth, biological organisms are classified into domains, kingdoms, phyla, classes, orders, families, genera, species—the higher you go in the hierarchy, the larger the differences between taxa in the same rank. Humans cannot communicate effectively even with animals in another genus. At the cosmic level, if one takes into account the possibility of non-carbon-based life forms, the differences between them and humans may be greater even than the differences between domains on Earth.
Second: technological explosion. It took humans about a hundred thousand years to advance from stone tools to the age of agriculture, but only two hundred years to go from the steam age to the information age. Explosive advances in technology could occur at any moment in any civilization in the universe. Thus, even a primitive civilization that appears as harmless as a baby or a sprout is full of potential danger.
Third: detection reversibility. This concept is based on the Principle of Reversibility in optics. If one civilization can detect the existence of another in the universe, sooner or later, the second civilization can also detect the existence of the first.
Based on these axioms and conjectures, one can deduce a possible shape for cosmic society, and it is indeed a worst-case scenario, which sits at the foundation of my Three-Body series. The details of the deduction process is set out in the second book in the series, The Dark Forest, and as the title hints, the universe is a dark place where only one kind of relationship is possible between different worlds: as soon as one civilization has detected another, it must do all it can to destroy it. This has nothing to do with the moral conditions of the civilizations involved—as long as one accepts the two axioms, all civilizations must behave in this manner. Chinese readers dubbed this conclusion “The Dark Forest Hypothesis.”
This is also an answer for the Fermi Paradox, a very dark answer. If any civilization exposed itself in the universe, it would soon be destroyed. This is why the universe is so silent.
Of course, this is just a possibility explored in fiction. Faced with the eerie silence of the universe, right now we have no way to prove or disprove this hypothesis.
There is something to the old saw about science fiction being the literature of possibilities. It presents various possibilities for the reader, and sometimes the possibilities that exert the most attraction are also the least likely. But in this wondrous universe, anything that seems impossible also has the potential to be reality. As G.R. Burbidge once said, “If stars did not exist, it would be easy to prove that this is what we expect.”
At the very least, it would be irresponsible to not consider the worst of all possible worlds as one possibility for the reality of our universe.
—-
The Three-Body Problem: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Indiebound|Powell’s
Read an excerpt. Visit Tor.com’s collection of material on the book, including commentary and further excerpts. Translator Ken Liu’s Twitter feed is here.
Sbkr.sbkr.sbkr, Luke.stirling and one other like this
11 Nov 19:42
Manslaughter Conviction Overturned For Scientists Who Didn't Predict Earthquake
by Soulskill
Jason Koebler writes: Geologists who didn't warn a town about an impending earthquake are not murderers, an Italian appeals court ruled today. A 2012 decision that rocked the scientific world has been overturned, according to Italy's Repubblica newspapers and confirmed by other Italian outlets. In that decision, six prominent geologists and one government worker were convicted of manslaughter for failing to notify the town of L'Aquila of a 2009 earthquake that killed at least 309 people. The scientists were originally sentenced to six years in prison and were to pay more than $10 million in damages. 
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
firehose, Scott Weigand and -1 others like this
11 Nov 19:42
Elon Musk confirms fleet of SpaceX micro-satellites for 'very low cost' internet
by Cassandra Khaw
Elon Musk has confirmed that SpaceX is indeed working on satellites. As spotted by Gizmodo, Musk tweeted that the company is in the early stages of developing advanced micro-satellites that can operate in large formations. A full announcement is to follow in two to three months.
When asked if the tweet pertains to the introduction of free and unfettered internet access, Musk replied:
News about the SpaceX CEO's possible plans to launch 700 satellites emerged last week. According to The Wall Street Journal, the machines would weigh less than 250 pounds and may cost roughly $1 billion or more to build. There is still no official word as to whether SpaceX will be entering an official agreement with WorldVu Satellites Ltd, who it was reportedly considering a partnership with.
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11 Nov 19:41
Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!
Super Mario 64: Chaos Edition Is Your Brain On Digital Drugs (VIDEO) #ArtTuesday
by Matt
Super Mario 64: Chaos Edition Is Your Brain On Digital Drugs, from FastCompany:
For those who weren’t born in the ’80s, Gameshark was a device that actually plugged into your game cartridges, caught the software before it reached your game console, and altered lines of code to add cheats like infinite lives. But because Gameshark was screwing with fundamental foundations of the game, it was wrought with errors. You might get infinite lives, sure, but that might come at the expense of the game’s entire backdrop going green.
Chaos Edition celebrates these errors in a Russian roulette style random code injections occurring in the background, which will ultimately result in an unpredictable, psychedelic funhouse of giant Marios, glitching environments, and sometimes even good old Exorcist-style head spinning of the beloved Italian plumber. As Kaze explains on YouTube, “This resulted in a pretty funny, unstable, and frustrating game. Don’t take this too serious and don’t try to get any progress done in the game. you won’t.”
Read More. And download the ROM image here for free!
Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!
firehose likes this
11 Nov 19:37
How you (yes you!) can get around Uber’s surge pricing
by Cyrus Farivar
Kevin Ebaugh
As Uber continues to expand worldwide (and has run-ins with local regulators), it’s become famous for its "surge pricing"—the phenomenon where as demand increases for cars, the price dramatically goes up.
New York State went so far as to put a cap on the practice during "abnormal disruptions" in July 2014. Recently, a North Carolina man was charged $455 for a 15-mile ride on Halloween night. Outraged, he reported it to the state’s attorney general, which has taken up the issue.
To deal with this problem, enter a new, free iOS app (an Android version is coming soon) called SurgeProtector. The app aims to help Uber users avoid being shocked by surge pricing simply by telling them where they can go to pay more normal prices. (Uber did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment.)
Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments
firehose and -1 others like this
11 Nov 19:37
iOS security hole allows attackers to poison already installed iPhone apps
by Dan Goodin
FireEye
Security researchers have warned of a security hole in Apple's iOS devices that could allow attackers to replace legitimate apps with booby-trapped ones, an exploit that could expose passwords, e-mails, or other sensitive user data.
The "Masque" attack, as described by researchers from security firm FireEye, relies on enterprise provisioning to replace banking, e-mail, or other types of legitimate apps already installed on a targeted phone with a malicious one created by the adversary. From there, the attacker can use the malicious app to access sent e-mails, login credential tokens, or other data that belonged to the legitimate app.
"Masque Attacks can replace authentic apps, such as banking and e-mail apps, using attacker's malware through the Internet," FireEye researchers wrote in a blog post published Monday. "That means the attacker can steal user's banking credentials by replacing an authentic banking app with an malware that has identical UI. Surprisingly, the malware can even access the original app's local data, which wasn't removed when the original app was replaced. These data may contain cached e-mails or even login-tokens which the malware can use to log into the user's account directly."
Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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11 Nov 19:09
The Ingenuity and Beauty of Creative Parchment Repair in Medieval Books | Colossal
by macdrifter
The Ingenuity and Beauty of Creative Parchment Repair in Medieval Books
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11 Nov 19:08
Space Oddity: Dartmouth Canes
by Preservation Services
The American Library Association annual conference concluded in early July and while at the conference I gave a presentation to the Book and Paper Interest Group of the Preservation and Reformatting Section of the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services. The theme was "Space Oddity" and the presentation had to be given in an Ignite Talk style, in our case 15 slides at 20 seconds each for a total of 5 minutes.
Canes of Dartmouth College
This storage solution for Dartmouth's collection of canes was created by North Bennet Street School summer interns, Becky Koch and Laren Schott, with oversight from Deborah Howe, the Collections Conservator.
The insert tray was fabricated from 2 pieces of blue, acid free corrugated board. Adaptations were made because a single sheet was not large enough to build the walls up.
For the insert box special attention was also paid in building handles that could withstand the weight of the canes. To do this the cotton webbing was threaded through the bottom of the tray that had been reinforced with a layer of 40pt board for extra support.
To construct the dividers score lines were determined and a pattern was made from a strip of paper. These marks were transferred to the 10 point folder stock.
Written by Barb Sagraves
What follows are the slides and my comments for each.
Canes of Dartmouth College
1800-2008
This storage solution for Dartmouth's collection of canes was created by North Bennet Street School summer interns, Becky Koch and Laren Schott, with oversight from Deborah Howe, the Collections Conservator.
The problem was how to store these wooden canes. The bulk of the collection were canes hand carved by Dartmouth students during their senior year. The most common embellishment of the cane head is what is know as the "Indian Head Cane".
 |
|
Here Deborah and the interns are arranging the canes by size. Prior to this treatment the canes were stored in a type of umbrella stand with open sides and very little protection. The canes were not stable and would slip and slide within the stand. The enclosure solution used both pre-made boxes and custom fit inserts. To begin, the canes were sorted by size. Most of the canes were a standard length.
|
The canes were surfaced cleaned prior to rehousing them. To surface clean them our interns took dry and sometimes slightly moistened (with water) cotton swabs and wiped away soot and dust. No repairs were necessary. All of the canes were in generally good shape.
 |
| The housing solution consisted of adapting a pre-made box to hold an insert tray, and thus created two layers for storage: a bottom layer and the insert tray forming the second layer. |
 |
| Pre-made box. |
The pre-made box was purchased from Gaylord. It was made of polypropylene measuring
38 inches x 24 inches, and about 6 inches deep.
Using heavy, natural cotton webbing, handles for the pre-made box were created and reinforded with Vyvek to help support the weight. The Vyvek is shown inside the box, where the cloth webbing is threaded through. Deborah suggests that in the next iteration of this box she would improve it by adding support stops for the insert tray to the pre-made box.
For the insert box special attention was also paid in building handles that could withstand the weight of the canes. To do this the cotton webbing was threaded through the bottom of the tray that had been reinforced with a layer of 40pt board for extra support.
In order to separate the canes from each other dividers were made from 10 point map folder stock. The folder stock was creased and folded to create a pocket. Each pocket was about 2 inches deep and 3 inches wide. Two pieces of folder stock were needed to create each divider layer.
To construct the dividers score lines were determined and a pattern was made from a strip of paper. These marks were transferred to the 10 point folder stock.
Both short edges of the 10 point were marked, then the pencil marks were lined up on the edge of the table. The 10 point was creased cross grain to maximize length and to improve rigidity in the walls of the dividers. Because of the length creasing on the board shear was not possible.
The dividers were placed on both the bottom layer and the insert tray. They were not attached in any way – although they could be if desired. Deborah suggests sliding in 40 point strips inside the divider walls to give additional support and rigidity.
With the dividers in place the canes were arranged on each layer and the insert tray placed on top. Each box can hold 16 canes: 2 layers of 8 canes each. When each box set was constructed it was bar coded and labeled with the archival series number.
 |
| Bottom layer with canes. |
 |
| Insert layer in the box with divider and canes. |
There were also canes of irregular size: longer than the rest or with heads that made it difficult to apply a standard approach. For these canes the divider was placed diagonally in the box and the canes arranged accordingly.
By the end of the project over 100 canes were cleaned and stored in 8 custom boxes for 24 linear feet, and shelved in the Special Collections remote storage facility. A finding aid for the cane collection now lists the canes by individual box number thus improving not only the storage but also making it easier to retrieve a single cane. By this single conservation treatment both storage and retrieval have been improved.
Thanks to Deborah Howe for collaborating with me to create this Ignite Talk and to Becky Koch and Lauren Schott who designed this storage solution.
Written by Barb Sagraves
11 Nov 17:53
Let's Get This Over With
Well the gloves are coming off now that Gunshow is dying. let's just let it all air out like a rank pair of shorts. It's freeing.
PINOCCHIO! + STORE!
firehose, Damiani.guilherme likes this
11 Nov 17:52
Bruce Campbell Will Star In Evil Dead Sequel TV Series. Hell. Yes.
by gguillotte
Evil Dead is coming back in a big, big way, people. Original creators Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert are joining forces to bring the gruesome horror franchise to Starz. And yes, this does mean that Bruce Campbell will return as the one and only Ash Williams.
11 Nov 17:52
'Community' Enrolls Paget Brewster, Keith David for Season 6
by gguillotte
Brewster will play Francesca "Frankie" Dart, a consultant brought in to help whip the school into shape (good luck with that), while David plays retired scientist Elroy Patashnik.
11 Nov 17:52
U.S. justice temporarily blocks gay marriage in Kansas - Yahoo News
by gguillotte
A U.S. Supreme justice on Monday temporarily blocked gay marriage in Kansas a day before it was due to go into effect.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued an order saying that the court wanted gay marriage advocates to respond to the state’s application seeking to put gay marriage on hold. U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Crabtree struck down the state’s gay marriage ban last week, ruling that it would go into effect on Tuesday at 6 p.m. Eastern Time (2300 GMT) if no other court intervened.
Sotomayor's action does not mean the high court will grant the Kansas application.
11 Nov 17:51
Ian McKellen's Next Role Will Be An Animal Cracker—No Really - MTV
by gguillotte
So they’re making a movie about animal crackers — called “Animal Crackers” — and Sir Ian McKellen is going to be in it. Because, hey: if Candyland and Ouija boards and LEGOs can have their own chance on the big screen, why can’t everyone’s favorite childhood snack?!
11 Nov 11:49
waystiel: ermahgeerd: sexypotassium: why does no one ever talk about what fire actually is like...
firehoseit's fucking light from gobs of excited solid particles that move upward because they're surrounded by hot fucking gas, while goddamned gravity discards byproducts and ignites more fucking oxygen
fuck your chemistry teacher because it's fucking thermodynamics you dipshit
signed, a stupid louisiana public school graduate who's probably wrong on some level, but at least not _tumblr_ wrong
why does no one ever talk about what fire actually is like it’s not a solid, liquid or gas, it’s just kinda there
this is one of the things that have mindfucked me since forever
like what is itI asked my chemistry teacher this the other day and he said it’s technically a gas but then he whispered that it’s actually not and scientists just don’t want to admit that they have no fucking clue
my chemistry teacher’s great
11 Nov 08:18
Revolutionary ALMA & Hubble Image Reveals Planetary Genesis
Revolutionary ALMA & Hubble Image Reveals Planetary Genesis:
ALMA - Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array logo / ESA - Hubble Space Telescope logo.
6 November 2014ALMA image of the protoplanetary disc around HL Tauri
This new image from ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, reveals…
firehose likes this
11 Nov 07:51
Harvard secretly installed cameras in lecture halls to monitor student attendance
by Dante D'Orazio
firehose"university officials didn't inform professors or their students that they were being monitored. Bol says that was to make sure that the data gathered was accurate"
Even students at the world's finest universities can struggle to make it to class. At Harvard, university officials initiated a controversial research program that saw cameras secretly installed in lecture halls just to keep tabs on student attendance. The program — which was kept secret from professors and students alike — was revealed this week at a faculty meeting, reports The Boston Globe.
The research project, which was carried out this past spring, used cameras placed in lecture halls to take a photo every minute. According to remarks from university vice provost Peter Bol, computer software then analyzed the pictures to see how many students attended lectures. The photographs were then destroyed.
But university officials didn't inform professors or their students that they were being monitored. Bol says that was to make sure that the data gathered was accurate, and he added that the research wasn't designed to track particular students or analyze professors. Instead, professors were provided the data after the research was completed.
The incident raises concerns over how and when a community can be studied for research without their knowledge. A balance must be struck between maintaining useful data without compromising privacy. Many believe Facebook similarly crossed that line when it altered hundreds of thousands of users' News Feeds for a psychology experiment that was revealed this summer. In its defense, Harvard says that that a federally-mandated review board approved the project, though officials note that the assistant undergraduate dean will be consulted for any similar projects in the future.
11 Nov 07:19
submitted by derpinpdx
[link] [12 comments]
when did powell's technical books close?
firehoseI hadn't even heard or noticed! :( :( :(
"It was integrated into the main store after the renovations there"
I walked by it today and it's turned into an artisan 'Make/Oregon' pop-up shop of some sort.
[link] [12 comments]
11 Nov 06:34
Mitch McConnell Says The Best Way To Drink Bourbon Is In A Manhattan
by djempirical
firehosefuck you
my booze my decision
I don't go into your house and tell you how to clean your gun collection, you fucking twat
WASHINGTON — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has a message for all you bourbon aficionados out there: Put it in a Manhattan, or you’re doing it wrong.
In a wide-ranging interview with Yahoo News, the Kentucky Republican refused to take sides in the state’s age-old bourbon brand war but did reveal he’s partial to the classic Manhattan cocktail, which he called a “terrific drink.”
On more serious topics, McConnell bluntly warned that immigration reform will need to include a strong guest worker program if Republicans are to support it and said he has “great skepticism” about the ability of new gun control laws to have any effect on attacks like last year’s Sandy Hook massacre.
The full interview can be found here:
11 Nov 06:31
cloudhime: Starbot is a light, melancholic rpgmaker game...
firehosevia Toaster Strudel
(shared for "eccentric, slightly intimidating sloths")
Starbot is a light, melancholic rpgmaker game tribute to The Little Prince. You play as a work-in-progress robot who befriends a star, explores satellites, and fetches parts for their (v gay) engineer and mechanic. Their journey takes them through strange dream worlds and crosses paths with a cast of wistful NPCs and eccentric, slightly intimidating sloths.
Music and sound by enderbabby and close beta by zdou, rhythmprince, and enderbabby.
11 Nov 04:46
Utah's premature fumble humiliation is complete with Taiwanese animation
by James Dator
It was only a matter of time before this happened. Kaelin Clay can't simply drop the ball before a touchdown and have Oregon return it 100 yards and remain unscathed. Here are the best moments. By "best" we mean "weirdest."
1) Marcus Mariota riding a giant duck and leaping at the Heisman
2) Kaelin Clay urinating everywhere and causing Mariota to catch fire
3) Fans turned into bananas
firehose and -1 others like this
11 Nov 04:42
sensei-aishitemasu: kili-fili-and-frilly: And for all these...
And for all these reasons, I’ve decided to scalp you, and burn your village to the ground.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING
Reblogging every day this month tbh
11 Nov 00:19
For Cheesy Friends: Pizza BFF Necklaces | Incredible Things
by djempirical
firehoseYES
YASSSS
djempirical:pizza:
I’ve never seen anything so perfect in my life. This is the Pizza Necklace which can be combined with up to 9 slices to create the ultimate BFF necklace. That way you and 8 of your closest friends — wait, who the hell has that many best friends?! Doesn’t seem like a very exclusive title if there are EIGHT of them. But this is totally convenient for me, because pizza IS my best friend! And I’ve been looking for a way to express my undying love and affection for my little chee chee nom nom BFF. I mean, besides devouring every last bite and licking the box clean of any cheese droppings. I love you, Pizza. MWAH!
Russian Sledges, firehose likes this