firehose

boomerstarkiller67:

Mark Hamill with a Red Sonja shirt

MARK HAMILL IN A RED SONJA T-SHIRT.

nickkahler:

Frank Lloyd Wright, Cottage Studio for Ayn Rand, 1946

minhanossa:

Me

Colombian artist Diana Beltran Herrera creates remarkably lifelike paper bird sculptures that are painstakingly detailed down to their textured feathers. We previously posted about her paper bird and animal sculptures back in 2012–in the intervening years she has clearly fine-tuned her technique. Yatzer has more on Herrera and her sculpture work. Her work can also be viewed on Flickr.

photos via Diana Beltran Herrera

via Yatzer, Colossal

xombiedirge:

Illustrations by Rob Jones

All 100 original illustrations are available, plus there is also a limited selection of 8.5” X 11” screen prints on sale.

Part of the solo art show, "Grief " 100 self portraits", opening July 17th 2014 at Galerie F / Tumblr

lotrlockedwhovian:

I WANT THIS AT WORK

A new survey of the most expensive cities in the world puts Luanda and N'djamena at the top. How did these African capitals beat our perennial top dollar towns like Hong Kong and Tokyo?

There are 7.18 billion human beings on the planet today. And there are 7.07 billion mobile phone connections. But those belong to fewer than 3.6 billion unique subscribers, or just over half the earth’s population. Some of that other half of humanity without mobile phones are children, the elderly, or neo-luddites. But many more are simply too poor to afford a phone. For the 2.4 billion people who live on less than $2 a day, even the cheapest, most basic mobile phone is half a month’s wages.

But what if these people could get a mobile phone subscription without having to spend money on an actual phone? That would be good for those new subscribers—the benefits of connectivity to poor populations have been well-documented—and it would be good for mobile operators, which would find a new revenue stream from a previously untapped market.

Movirtu, a six-year-old company based in London, says it has the answer: virtual SIM cards that can be used on borrowed or shared phones. And Airtel, one of the world’s largest mobile networks, thinks Movirtu is right. Last month, Airtel signed a deal to bring Movirtu’s technology to the 17 African countries in which it operates. The system is already live in Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Carsten Brinkschulte, Movirtu’s CEO, says it has signed agreements with three other operators in Africa and Europe, though he cannot name them for legal reasons. The unnamed European operator will start its virtual SIM service by the second half of this year.

Like an email account for phones

Here’s how it works, for US readers (all others can skip to the next paragraph): Outside of the United States, almost every mobile network in the world operates on a GSM network, one of two standards for mobile phone connectivity. Unlike CDMA, which is used by big American carriers, GSM is linked not to the device but to a little chip that must be inserted into it, known as a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card.

Until recently, the only way for many in the world to use a phone number without owning an actual phone has been to obtain a SIM card, borrow a phone, remove the owner’s SIM, and replace it with your own. (In cheaper phones, the SIM is often located deep within the phone, beneath the phone’s battery, held in by a flimsy piece of metal.) Then, after using the phone, you go through the whole fiddly process in reverse and return the phone. It is a cumbersome exercise.

Movirtu does away with the requirement for a physical SIM card. Instead, it allows operators to sell virtual SIMs, which exist only as numbers. To use one, a subscriber simply borrows a phone and enters a short USSD code which tells the network that the phone is now using another number. The subscriber can then make and receive calls from his own number (at his own expense) on the borrowed phone. All that’s changed is an entry in the mobile network’s visitor location register, a backend database. To return the phone, the subscriber must enter the code again, and all is back to normal. Think of it as logging into your email account from a friend’s computer.

More realistic than waltzing up to a stranger and asking to borrow their phone is the use of virtual SIMs by families or communities. As children grow older and demand their own phones, families could get them virtual numbers so they have their own identity, without having to invest in extra devices. Or a group of a few people could share the price of a phone and use it with their individual SIMs.

And here’s the crucial bit: Since Movirtu’s technology relies on the mobile network, it doesn’t need an internet connection. Most other companies that offer virtual phone numbers (such as Skype) use Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) or WebRTC, both standards that need the internet to work. But data costs money, connections depend on network connections, and data services are expensive when roaming.

Multiple identities

Movirtu is not the first company to try virtual SIMs. Back in 2008, Comviva, an Indian firm then owned by Airtel, tied up with MTN, a large African mobile network, to offer virtual SIMs in Cameroon. By late 2009, it was claiming 30,000 virtual SIM subscribers (pdf). The service also launched in Ghana in 2010. In Cameroon, MTN now offers a “dual account” service, but it is only available as an extra service to people with existing physical SIM cards, not to those without devices. There has been little news from Comviva since 2009, though a company representative says the service continues.

But things are different now. For one thing, mobile phone subscribers have become accustomed to the notion of multiple numbers thanks the proliferation of to dual- and multi-SIM phones, which were still a novelty in 2008. And mobile subscribers in the poor world now routinely have two or more mobile connections to take advantage of differing tariffs on different networks. In Nigeria, the average subscriber has 2.39 SIMs. In Indonesia, it’s 2.62, according to the GSM Association (GSMA), a trade body of the world’s mobile operators. Movirtu’s Brinkschulte says the average for Africa as a whole is 1.4. “We think we can increase that further to two or three [SIMs per subscriber]. We think the overall potential is very large,” he says.

As people have become used to multiple SIMs for different call rates, they have also come to appreciate the benefits of having different numbers for different purposes, such as separating their work and personal lives.

A number for every occasion

Movirtu is also thinking beyond the poor world, though it is unclear whether Western consumers will bite: with smartphones and unlimited data plans commonplace, and with web-based alternative numbers easily available, Movirtu will need to make a pretty strong pitch to convince consumers and businesses that a separate network connection is necessary.

And indeed, there are some situations, even in the West, where a virtual SIM could come in handy. Many large Western companies now allow users to use their own phones for work purposes rather than carry a company-issued device as well. But for employees, that means the hassle of expensing partial phone bills; and for companies, the inability to take advantage of the corporate rates that come with bulk subscriptions. (It also means that when an employee leaves the company, she takes the number and her contacts with her.)

A virtual SIM makes it possible to carry just one phone, with a work and a personal number on it. It could receive calls on either number at any time, though would need to be told which number to call from. Movirtu’s smartphone apps make the process of switching numbers even easier than entering a code, and the fact that it works on mobile networks rather than over the internet means it is more robust and unaffected by slow data connections. Moreover, it is cheaper to pay call roaming rates than data roaming rates (necessary for services such as Skype) when you travel abroad.

Another practical application of virtual SIMs involves privacy. “If you want to sell your car, you probably want to give a number where potential buyers can call you,” Brinkschulte says. “But you may not want to expose your number to the whole world.” It could be useful for dating, he says. Criminals and adulterers might also find a virtual SIM handy.

We’ve come to learn over the past few years of struggling with maintaining our social media presences that human beings have different identities for different social situations—something Google+ tried to remedy with “circles.” Pretty soon we may also have a different phone number for each of our personal circles.

DENVER -- A Lakewood, Colo., baker is appealing the Colorado Civil Rights Commission's order that he prepare wedding cakes for same-sex couples. Jack Phillips on Wednesday asked the Court of Appeals to reverse the May ruling by the Civil Rights Commission. Phillips was sued by a same-sex couple after he refused to make a cake to celebrate their wedding in 2012.

2/2 #Cheney told @GoldmanSachs bankers not doing a dual attack was his biggest regret -- banker says statement was met w/ "stunned silence."

Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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Medium travel writer Reed Kennedy has created a pair of graphs that best demonstrate the proper amount of underwear to bring on a trip so as to pack light while minimizing the number of laundry loads.

I have spent more time trying to derive the optimal number of pair of socks and underwear to bring than anyone ever should.

images via Medium

via FlowingData

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

The Museum of Contemporary Craft is doing a bang-up job of keeping attention trained on its ongoing Fashioning Cascadia exhibit, maintaining activity with artist residencies and lectures throughout its run (it's set to close Oct 11). Mag-Big's Cassie Ridgway took up the residency mantle this week (a dispatch from which you can read on MOD, where she is also a regular contributor), where she is working on the foundation pieces of a new collection based on the idea of a uniform, called ""In the Working Woman's Uniform," which exhibit curator Sarah Margolis-Pineo says is, "a way to bring visibility to—and, in a way, to valorize—the women who have a hand in PDX's grassroots garment industry."

This evening Ridgway, along with her Mag-Big design partner Becca Price, is giving a free lecture at the museum at 6:30 about the history and relevance of uniforms as well as the process of designing a collection. Check out my article on it here before ya go! Also mentioned there is the launch of the Explorers Club, an ADX collaboration with Stargazer Farm, a series of meals and conversations centered around Portland's (and its surrounding area) manufacturing "ecosystem." The first weekly lunch is tomorrow (noon-2 pm) at ADX, and will be followed by dinners/brunches out at the farm. It's an exciting time for discussions of local product, from the city as well as its farmland outskirts, and increasingly the focus is becoming larger than just the food or fashion and craft scenes. Get in on it!

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Seen at the Student Center this afternoon: Tetris hash browns! #onlyatMIT pic.twitter.com/u2ct08oP0s

Laika releases the trailer for the stop motion animation The Box Trolls

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Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!

Almost certainly a tribute to the University of Louisville football team, which plays in Papa John's Cardinal Stadium.

This is it. This is finally the biathlon for our generation. Get arrested, crank-order pizzas. We here at SB Nation will be lobbying the International Olympic Committee, we can promise you that.

According to the Associated Press:

Police in southern Kentucky say they got a surprise delivery after charging a man with shoplifting - five pizzas showed up at the station.

Officers say 29-year-old Michael Harp asked to make a call on his cellphone Tuesday afternoon while being booked in Corbin. A short time later, police say, a pizza delivery driver showed up to deliver to "Officer Wilson," the name of the officer who arrested Harp.

Game. Set. Match. I believe that's checkmate, officers. Good luck trying t-- oh, you're eating the delicious pizzas? I guess I'll just, uh ... sit here in my cell, then. Carry on.

Via LaughingSquid.