firehose

The New Nintendo 3DS is a big improvement in many immediately noticeable ways, based on some hands-on time with the forthcoming Nintendo handheld at Tokyo Game Show 2014. It certainly makes playing Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, the Capcom game chosen to show off the New Nintendo 3DS to the public for the first time, a lot easier.

The biggest addition to the New Nintendo 3DS are the handheld's new inputs: a new analog nub that sits above the ABXY button cluster and the new ZL and ZR shoulder buttons. Compared to the current Nintendo 3DS XL, a few other inputs, like the start and select buttons, have been shifted around — they've moved from below the bottom 3DS screen to below the ABXY buttons, just like the Nintendo 2DS.

That analog nub was initially the most worrying aspect of the New Nintendo 3DS design, but it works well enough. It's not like the circular analog Slide Pad; it's a firmly planted, sturdy rubbery nub that requires a bit of force to use and has almost no detectable range of motion. In a game like Monster Hunter, it's good for controlling the game's camera — certainly better than other options — but it's not quite a second analog stick. It will be interesting to see how well the nub performs as an aiming device for crosshairs.

The ZL and ZR buttons seem like they might be a big tough to reach or reliably touch, but they're good too. I found it easy to rock my index fingers from the outer shoulder buttons to the inner shoulder buttons without much trouble.

The New Nintendo 3DS screens look great, and the stereoscopic 3D on the upper screen looks sharper than ever. Nintendo promises a wider viewing angle for 3D viewing, and tilting the New 3DS from side-to-side showed that the handheld will live up to that promise. The same expanded viewing angle doesn't apply when you're tilting the New 3DS up and down, but the better 3D view is welcome regardless of its limitations.

Other small form factor changes include some tweaks that I liked — there's symmetry to the 3D and volume sliders on the upper half of the New Nintendo 3DS — and some that I didn't — the bottom half of the device has a glossy plastic backing that immediately struck me as less comfortable. I've grown accustomed to the matte finish of the current Nintendo 3DS XL.

We had limited time with the New Nintendo 3DS and only got to spend it with the larger "LL" model, but the new hardware is already looking like a worthwhile upgrade. The new analog nub takes a bit of time getting used to but, the New 3DS plays better and looks better than its predecessors.

The New Nintendo 3DS hits Japan on Oct. 11, but won't be released in North America and Europe until 2015 at the earliest.

iCloud Drive is now available on Windows, but not OS X.

Andrew Cunningham

Apple officially released iCloud Drive yesterday as part of the iOS 8 update, but it came with a caveat: turning it on disables the "old" way of iCloud syncing, but OS X doesn't yet support iCloud Drive and won't until OS X Yosemite is released later this fall. If you use iCloud to sync application data between your phone, tablet, and desktop, this means you'll need to keep living with the more limited version of iCloud until Yosemite is out (or roll the dice and give the Public Beta a try).

If you're a Windows user with an iPhone, though, you can go ahead and pull the trigger on that iCloud Drive update now. Apple today released an updated version of the iCloud for Windows application that adds full support for iCloud Drive. Install the program and sign in, and iCloud Drive will appear in your user profile folder and your Favorites menu in Windows Explorer, much like Microsoft's own OneDrive cloud storage service. This is the first opportunity that Windows users will have to view and directly manipulate iCloud data, not counting the more limited capabilities of the iCloud.com Web apps, and it's a nice new addition for people who like iOS but don't care to use Macs.

Otherwise, iCloud for Windows continues to be more limited than iCloud on either iOS or OS X. It can sync with your Photo Stream and sync Safari bookmarks with either Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Chrome, and if you have Outlook 2007 or later installed it will also offer to sync your iCloud mail, calendars, contacts, and reminders. However, it can't use iCloud Keychain to sync passwords, nor does it provide any kind of "Find My Device" functionality as it does in both iOS and OS X. You can't sync Notes data directly either, though that feature is accessible via iCloud.com.

A shale gas well being drilled in Louisiana.

Daniel Foster

The primary public concern surrounding fracking—the fracturing of shale rock layers with hydraulic pressure to release the natural gas and oil they contain—has been the perceived risk to drinking water. After all, the water used to fracture the rock is laced with chemicals that enhance the process, and some of them are hazardous. While those chemicals haven’t really shown up in water wells, natural gas has. If natural gas isn’t identified and vented, it could collect in buildings and pose an explosion hazard—videos of garden hoses turned into flame-throwers have made the rounds.

But tying that natural gas to fracking projects isn’t as straight-forward as many assume since there are natural sources of methane as well. One group of researchers has been studying this question for several years, focusing on Pennsylvania, where the Marcellus Shale has been targeted by the natural gas industry. A controversial analysis the group performed concluded that natural gas in well water was more common near active natural gas production wells, indicating that much of the contamination was related to recent human activities rather than natural conditions.

The researchers also looked for hints of natural migration of fluids from the Marcellus Shale, which is deep underground, to the well water, which is taken from sources closer to the surface. By analyzing elements like chlorine and strontium, they identified the fingerprint of briney Marcellus fluid in some of the water wells, which pull from an aquifer where concentrations of those elements are much lower. They concluded that some of those fluids were present, casting doubt on the idea that the Marcellus Shale was too tight a seal to allow fluid to escape upward into drinking water. That work also indicated that some of the methane-contaminated wells seemed to be impacted by naturally occurring methane, but typically the ones close to natural gas production wells weren't.

This week, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency unveiled the latest statistics on cab use in the city. In short, If you're a cab driver, it's bad news. Between March 2012 and July 2014 the average amount of monthly cab rides declined from 1,424 a month to 504.

What happened? The short answer is the obvious one: Uber and Lyft are growing. The start-ups have put a serious dent in the taxi industry, and San Francisco is pinning it as the major factor in the decline. But it's difficult to say what else might be happening; the companies don't share their data publicly, and so it's hard to directly correlate cab rides with Uber rides. Regardless, the taxi industry in the city is now providing incentives to drivers to keep them from jumping ship. They'll be temporarily waiving some regulatory fees and reviewing other regulations.

socialjusticekoolaid:

Protesters from across St Louis turned up and turned out for the first St Louis County Council Meeting since Mike Brown’s Death. (Part II)

The St Louis County Council meeting was a fiery afar, as residents from across the county demanded Darren Wilson’s arrest, answers for Mike Brown’s death, and expressed frustration at their own police force being turned on them like they were enemies of the state. #staywoke #farfromover

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callto726:

Madamemoisselle Yulia at Jeremy Scott Spring/Summer 2014

Source: Flow on the Street

scattacat

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Facebook has a problem: your Friends list has grown so broad that sharing a photo or status with all of them probably doesn't make much sense. People still do it out of habit, and because there aren't many clear-cut ways to share with just your family or just your close friends. But according to a new report, Facebook is building a standalone app to help you do exactly this.

TechCrunch reports that Facebook is building a new app codenamed "Moments" that lets you share with smaller groups of people. The report says that the app most resembles Cluster, a social networking app that lets you create "spaces" for each of your family and friend groups, and then share photos or texts with them. Cluster, notably, is a network of its own, while Moments, reportedly, shares content back to Facebook.

Cluster lets you share with smaller groups

This is actually a great idea, on Facebook's part; we don't need one more network to manage, we need a better way to quickly share something with our family, and then have them understand that we've shared it with only them when it pops up in their news feed. Currently, if you post something on Facebook and share it with only a few people, it will indeed show up in their feeds, but it's not obvious that the post has been shared with a smaller than usual audience. Thus, the message changes, and these people think you've shared a photo with everyone, and not just them.

Facebook's two-sided problem is a tough one. The company has come out with various features to address both issues — first, sharing to smaller audiences, and second, having those audiences know when they've been shared with — but none of them have seemingly achieved wide adoption. Facebook's first solution is two-pronged. You can either share with a custom "List" you've created, or pick people one-by-one to share with when you create a post. The second solution involves a tiny icon in your feed that indicates something has been shared with a small group including you, but isn't obvious enough. Moments could, seemingly solve for both of these issues in a more intuitive fashion.

Facebook recently updated its audience selector to make it more obvious who you're sharing with

The app reportedly lets you tap on a group of friends you've created to share with them. This is easier than creating Lists, which still has a terrible interface, and is also easier than tapping the names of your family members in an ordinary Facebook post. Moments would share directly back to Facebook, but when the people you've shared with see a Moment in their feed, it would be called out, and not just fly by like any other post.

We don't need one more network to manage, we need better ways to share

Moments could even send you a push notification when a friend has shared something with you specifically. In this case, the signal behind any post would be extremely high, whereas today a quick browse through the news feed might yield a dozen wedding photos from someone you haven't seen in a decade. Signal is important. Signal is addictive. Signal is one of the reasons Snapchat hasn't created a Select All button. To do so would be to create the Facebook feed problem all over again.

The original appeal to Facebook was that what you share becomes valuable when it's shared with a small, tight-knit community. The plot worked. 1.32 billion people joined the site, which is still growing like gangbusters in many countries. But, for all the early Facebook users who have now accumulated more friends than they can count, Moments could provide some salvation — if Facebook ever launches the app.