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Welcome to the cage, Airbnb
Spring Creek Linear City, Brooklyn NY (Plan of New York City 1969)
Much of this plan has come to fruition, first with Starrett City (towers in the park style development) and more recently with the Vandalia Houses, a New Urbanist approach to affordable housing. The Linear City plan grew out of the failed Cross-Brooklyn Expressway which would have run from Bay Ridge to East New York. Interestingly the Spring Creek plan advocates for the unbuilt Queens Interboro Expressway.
“Bells” (season 2, episode 1; originally aired 1/9/1986)
Blackadder meets a boy named Kate
(Available streaming on Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus, and Netflix)
“Bells” kicks off Blackadder season two in (mostly) fine form, quickly establishing the format for most of the rest of the season as the intrepid Kate (Gabrielle Glaister) decides to head for London and ends up entwined in the lives of our leads. With the exception of “Heads,” each episode in Blackadder II features a prominent guest star who propels the plot and prompts action from Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson) and company, and starting with Viola (from Twelfth Night) stand-in Kate is a great way to transition the audience from the Middle Ages setting of season one to season two’s Elizabethan court. Gabrielle Glaister is excellent throughout, overplaying the character’s earnest goodness just enough to parody the familiar type without becoming annoying. Her opening ...
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata and eight head executives were re-elected at the company's 74th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders in Kyoto, Japan today.
The nine candidates Iwata, Genyo Takeda, Shigeru Miyamoto, Tatsumi Kimishima, Shigeyuki Takahashi, Satoshi Yamato, Susumu Tanaka, Shinya Takahashi and Hirokazu Shinshi, were re-elected while one candidate, Mr. Naoki Mizutani, was elected.
Iwata underwent surgery to deal with a growth that was found in his bile duct last week and had to sit out of the company's annual shareholders meeting as a result. Nintendo's president did not attend E3 2014 earlier this month due unspecified health issues that rendered him unable to travel to Los Angeles. Iwata has already resumed light business duties but a little more time is needed before he resumes his regular work schedule.
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firehoseGREAT
Robot Entertainment designer Jerome K. Jones visibly cringes when you call Orcs Must Die! Unchained a multiplayer online battle arena game.
It's not a completely unfair comparison for the team-based game — which, yes, has online battles in an arena-like setting — but he's quick to point out these are simply elements of the genre, nothing more. By Jones' account, the game is more like two Orcs Must Die! titles smashed together.
Unchained has offense-heavy nature of MOBAs, the aggressive push for territory while slaughtering your opponents again and again with glee, down pretty well. It sets itself apart from the tricky, loaded-with-expectations genre, however, with a focus on defensive plays and traps — and its open arm acceptance of the oft-dreaded "toxic player."
While League of Legends developer Riot will ban even professional players for naughty behavior, and Heroes of Newerth creator S2 Games is trying to yank bad seeds out at the root with a brand new MOBA, Robot has a chill stance on the topic.
Haters, Jones says, are gonna hate. More importantly, if the toxic players are flocking to your game, you're onto something special.
"You need those people there."
"There's probably something good about the toxic players showing up and sticking with your game," Jones said. "The good thing is probably that it's a good game. It's holding their interest, it's keeping them around. It's making them passionate enough to give a damn."
Jones expects Unchained to draw in some aggressive players, but isn't interested in scaring them off. Gaming in general, he says, shouldn't try to eliminate that group. Players who want to avoid that aggression can choose to play defensively or act as a support character.
"I don't think those are bad people," he added. "You just gotta do your best to deal with them in whatever manner seems to work the best."
I tested this theory out during my hands-on time with the game. While the brute strength approach to pushing territory required me to be fearless — and convincing enough to make players rally to me — playing a guardian role changed the game's experience for me. I strategically laid out traps and built up my resources to summon stronger allies in each wave of attacks. If I wanted to get into the action, I could also man a character with long-range skills to support tank players from afar. Like Jones suggested, aggressive players were the least of my worries.
"You go on offense, it's a little bit scary," Jones said. "You're going through all the enemy traps. You're going through heroes that are defending. But if you're on defense, you're sort of behind your traps, you're near your rift and you're with your lane guardians. Those kind of things provide a little bit of security to a player who might want to learn a little slower or might not feel offensive."
Players will also have the chance to play with AI opponents if real humans seem too intimidating. Robot Entertainment is still tinkering with bot intelligence to hit that sweet spot in terms of difficulty, and it's possible that their intelligence will even be adjustable. For now, however, it's a work in progress along with the rest of the game.
Robot is prepared to deal with passionate players, and Jones makes an effort to engage with them on the game's forums. Most of their unhappiness, he said, comes from a lack of understanding game development.
"They're not going to go away," Jones concluded of toxic players. "And honestly, I don't think you want them to.
"You need those people there. They're driving the game. They're giving it longevity. They're giving it passion. And when they find something about your game that they love, they defend it to the death. Those are the same people that can go to bat for you."
firehose'there is no sprite flickering in Shovel Knight. As it turns out, that was a deliberate choice on the part of developer Yacht Club Games. ... Even with the wider horizontal perspective, Shovel Knight retains an accurate vertical resolution, although each of the game's "pixels" are actually 4.5 x 4.5 pixels on a 1080p display. There are also a few colors used that weren't available in the NES color palette. In addition to the NES' 54 possible colors, Yacht Club added 4 more to enable more detail in certain levels and include characters with darker skin tones.
The game also abandons memory limitations, futzes with the number of colors that can be used simultaneously and allows for much larger sprites. One of the best bits in the piece involves Shovel Knight's excellent soundtrack. It's completely authentic to the era ... but only if Shovel Knight were created for the Japanese version of the NES, the Famicom. Some late NES-era cartridges used a chip that offered 3 additional sound channels, allowing games to have richer soundtracks. The western NES "lacked the necessary cartridge connections" for the sound chip, says D'Angelo, "so it's an unfamiliar sound to most western gamers." '
firehose"If you want a version of the OST you can play in an NES emulator – or on an actual NES, should you have a flash cart – you can get the NSF version here. What? Virt, you spoil us."
VIRT IS A GOD
Two Shovel Knight soundtracks! If you want the original, genuine chiptune steez, you can get the Shovel Knight OST from Bandcamp here. If you want the arranged version with lots of guest artists (including Manami Matsumae remixing Jake “Virt” Kaufman!) that one’s here. The price is right for both: literally any amount of money.
If you want a version of the OST you can play in an NES emulator – or on an actual NES, should you have a flash cart – you can get the NSF version here. What? Virt, you spoil us.
Oh, and in case you somehow didn’t hear, Shovel Knight is the business.
BUY Nintendo 2DS & 3DS/XL, upcoming games
By Graham Smith on June 27th, 2014 at 8:00 pm.
The email I received about Stage Presence, an Oculus Rift game where you must keep an angry festival crowd happy with nothing but your microphone, contained a single sentence that convinced me to post it. “I promise not to rename it ‘Bez Simulator 2014′.” Think how fast I’d have posted it if developer Jon Dadley had promised that he would rename it that.
Wonder what it’s like to stand on stage and dodge bottles being thrown at you by a mob? Watch the trailer below.
From that same email:
Stage Presence puts you and your band on stage at music festival in front of a huge crowd. Your bands equipment fails and you have to use the only working microphone on stage to keep the crowd entertained. If they get bored of your “singing” they’ll let you know by booing, shining lasers in your eyes and throwing bottles at you (some filled with urine). If you win them over they’ll jump around, wave flags, cheer, let off fireworks and flares.
Alas, I can’t try this out for myself as I’ve given back my borrowed Oculus Rift. Also there’s nothing I could do with a microphone that could keep anyone happy, let alone a festival crowd baying for blood. I do quite fancy a middle class version of same, though: the power’s gone out at Wimbeldon and you, Cliff Richard, are the only nice young man who can save the day.
There’s a Kickstarter on the way, but Stage Presence has been in publicly playable form since back in May. Given Glastonbury is this weekend it seems the perfect time to empathise both with crowds sinking into the mud and inexperienced musicians. Version 1.7 is downloadable at the Oculus Developer forums now.
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Read more of this story at Slashdot.
firehose'Massachusetts raises their state minimum wage to $11 an hour—now the highest in the country.'
GOOD MORNING, BLOGTOWN! I'm a big man, give this man room. I'd a hit everything, from Cancun to Grant's tomb. LET'S GO TO PRESS.
Pro-Russian separatists and Kiev government mediators meet face to face in an attempt to bring peace to a very ugly situation. Meanwhile thousands of Ukrainians rush for the Russian border to escape the onslaught of violence.
A US official confirmed today that our military has armed drones flying above Baghdad—as backup for 180 military advisors in the area.
Today in dumb things Republicans say: An Arkansas GOP official resigns after telling a magazine that if Hillary Clinton returned to the state, she'd "probably get shot." Bye-bye, dumb-dumb!
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton continues to struggle with the (correct) perception that's she's a richy-rich.
Massachusetts raises their state minimum wage to $11 an hour—now the highest in the country. (Jealous much?)
115 gay and lesbian couples get married in a mass wedding ceremony in Toronto.
One of the few Republicans who can tell which way the wind is blowing, GOP Senator Susan Collins of Maine publicly voices her support of same-sex marriage.
In India, a Bengal tiger leaps onto a fishing boat, grabs a man, and drags him away to his death... which is completely horrible, but a cooler way to die than prostate cancer by a long shot.
In extremely creepy news, during the investigation of a toddler who died in a sweltering hot car, police look at the internet browsing history of the father and find a search for... you guessed it... "how long it takes for animals to die in a sweltering hot car." OH, NO.
According to the CDC, if you're having 15 drinks per week and you're a man, you're considered a "heavy drinker." HAHAHA! I only have 14. (By the way, women are thought to be heavy drinkers if they only have "8 or more" per week. So now they not only have to battle for equal pay, but equal boozing as well?)
Actor Shia LeBeouf "LeBeoufs it" again, getting arrested for drunken disorderly conduct and smoking a cigarette in a Broadway theater.
The US moves on to the knockout stage of the World Cup (despite yesterday's boring loss), and today the goal-scoring Dutch take on the goal-denying Mexico. (That should be a good one!)
Now here's what's going on in your neck of the woods: More rain today and tomorrow (BOO-HOO-HOOO! or rather "Yaaaaaay!" according to some of you Portland-centric snobs), but sunny sun returns on sunny Sunday! YAYYYY! (Or "boooo!" for you snobs.)
And finally... ridin' dirty at Disneyland.
Americans Were Asked To Place European Countries On A Map. Here’s What They Wrote:
i have been laughing for days “glad to see college paid off” “i went to college i have my masters” “cold”
Reblogging again because perfection
I larffed a lot, because I could do better than that - though by Eastern Europe and the Balkans I’d be floundering (and in good company - Palmerston, Gladstone, Chamberlain, Metternich, Bismarck…)
At the same time, give me a name-the-state map of the USA and I could only label New York, Long Island, New Jersey, Florida, Texas, California and Oregon with any certainty, and make a creditable stab at a few others.
The rest would be vague labels - “Flyover country, keep flying”, “Wheat or still dust?”, “John Wayne land”, “Fargo, ya you betcha”, “DC or State?”, “South Canada”, “Whistle Dixie here”…
But it’s nice to see I was born in The Shire! :-)
My fave is “Benedict Cumberbatch’s house”.
THE SHIRE. …. :)
firehose'The hole left in Aperture’s absence will encourage Apple to expose more of those great lossless editing tools into Photos.'
LOL AND/OR THEY'LL TELL YOU TO GET LIGHTROOM, WHICH IS WHAT THEY'RE ACTUALLY DOING BECAUSE THEY WANT OUT OF THE PRO GAME SO GOT-DAMN BADLY, KNUCKLEHEAD
Along with iPhoto, it’ll be replaced with the upcoming iCloud-backed Photos app on Yosemite and iOS 8.
This is bad news for people who liked the organizational features of Aperture, as they’ll probably not be replaced. But it might be good news for many people, like me, who wanted Aperture’s powerful RAW adjustment tools but with simpler iPhoto-like management and iOS-device sync.1 The hole left in Aperture’s absence will encourage Apple to expose more of those great lossless editing tools into Photos. (iPhoto has always quietly offered some lossless RAW editing, but nowhere near the power of Aperture’s.)
Plus, Aperture has been plagued with bugs, poor performance, slow updates, and extreme neglect for most of its life. It defined a useful category, then let the better-executed, better-maintained Lightroom eat its lunch. I’ve used many versions of each for extended periods, and Lightroom is the better app by far, especially in performance, editing tools, and adjustment quality. Sure, the interface is a bit weird, but so is Aperture’s.
Apple discontinuing a mediocre, neglected, poorly competing pro app to focus on a much better consumer app is a clear win for everyone.
Recent versions of Aperture and iPhoto have been able to share the same library to approximate this balance, but you still needed to launch Aperture to do advanced edits — and recent versions of iPhoto haven’t been very good. ↩
firehose"Washboard, a startup that mailed you quarters to do your laundry"
I have a soft spot for academic studies about multiplayer games. Partly, this is because games are my stomping ground, and I like to nitpick the things I love. But more importantly, such studies are often reflective of how game culture is inextricably tied to the real world. The values we hold out here can’t help but trickle down into virtual environments as well. There’s a new study that illustrates this beautifully, with a focus on social norms and expectations. In other words, my jam.
“Sex role stereotyping is hard to kill” is the work of Adrienne Holz Ivory of Virginia Tech, Jesse Fox of Ohio State University, Frank Waddell of Pennsylvania State University, and James Ivory of Virginia Tech (thanks to Wai Yen Tang, who sent the study my way). They conducted a field experiment to explore the relationship between social categorization and in-game interaction. They predicted that male players who behave aggressively would gain more compliance with friend requests, while female players would benefit from behaving submissively. In other words, if you conform to the social expectations attributed to your gender, people are more likely to reward you for it.
Over the course of several weeks, the researchers played public Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 matches under two fake usernames: “John” and “Ashley,” followed by random strings of numbers. During the matches, the researchers transmitted pre-recorded utterances over voice chat. The gender of each voice corresponded to the gender of the username in use. Both speakers were white, and used Standard American English accents. Positive comments included things such as “nice shot!,” whereas negative comments were the usual batch of “you suck” and so forth. Some matches were also played without using any recorded comments. After each match, the researchers sent friend requests from “John” or “Ashley” to everyone they’d just played with. They then kept track of how many requests were accepted.
Overall, the researchers collected data from 1371 participants, but only used 520 as their final sample (the rest were thrown out due to conditions such as waiting too long to answer a friend request). Once the numbers were crunched, here’s what they found:
Now, there are a few caveats to keep in mind. Firstly, this study was conducted solely within Call of Duty. You can’t apply these results to the gaming community at large, or even to the entire FPS genre (Call of Duty is a very different scene than, say, Team Fortress 2). Additionally, as the researchers point out, the one big drawback is that they had no way of collecting demographic information for the people they were sending friend requests to. While it’s likely that most of the players were male, it’s also a pretty safe bet that there were some women in there, too. (I would be fascinated to see whether or not these trends vary between male and female players. Judging by other studies I’ve read on gender role stereotypes, I tend to think not — but then again, raise your hand if you’re a female gamer who has ever been excited to find another woman playing alongside you in a multiplayer match, regardless of her behavior. I know I have.)
Disclaimers aside, I will say that the results of this study mesh with my own in-game experiences. Pushy dudes get respect, while ladies who use smiley faces and say “lol” a lot tend to fare somewhat better than others. As for the higher acceptance rate, that’s not a surprise, either. Outing yourself as female in a public multiplayer match often results in insults and harassment, yes, but private messages and friend requests are commonly part of the package, too. Granted, my experiences on that front are less varied than some. Like many women, I use a gender-neutral username. Nowadays, this is more out of habit than anything else.
My taste for public matches has waned as I’ve gotten older, and I find that the vast majority of my multiplayer time is spent in private games with good friends. But in my early multiplayer years, I learned very quickly to just keep my mouth shut and play. I wouldn’t lie about my gender if I was asked, but this happened rarely. “Gender neutral” translates as “assumed male,” and therefore left alone. But there were times when I would speak up, either literally over voice chat, or in solidarity if I saw another female player being picked on (“hey, there are other girls here, too” — that kind of thing). Every time it happened, the response I got was the same. Insults. Name calling. Friend requests.
This is somewhat uncomfortable to admit, but this study has me thinking more about myself than my in-game experiences. The female behavior the authors describe as stereotypical — “aligned and supportive,” “oriented toward communal goals” — is my standard operating procedure. I don’t enjoy trash talk, nor do I like bad sportsmanship. I give my friends a world of grief, but I don’t do the same to strangers. If another player is bothering me, I prefer to mute rather than fight. I try to act positively, be it by helping out newbies or smiling through defeat. “Oriented toward communal goals”? Yeah, that’s me.
When I first started playing multiplayer games, I did my best to act like “one of the boys.” Again, I wasn’t on mic much with strangers, but I threw my weight around in party chat, and I gave as much as I got. I hated it. It felt ugly and ill-fitting. I was much more at ease once I started acting in a way that was more in keeping with how I am offline — quiet but friendly around strangers, averse to conflict, and more concerned with having a good time than winning. I know in my core that’s who I am, but this study has got me questioning where those traits came from. How much is nature, and how much is nurture? Probably a bit of column A, a bit of column B. I hope the former is the stronger, but I wonder. I wonder.
Funnily enough, it was a group of men who made me realize that I could fit in with a kinder attitude, too. It was through my male gaming friends’ example that I saw the benefit of saying “good luck” and “good game.” That was the crowd I wanted to be a part of. That was the way I wanted to be. I haven’t talked with any of them about this study, but I’m curious to hear whether the results resonate with them, as well. I remember a conversation I had with my brother a few years back, in which he discussed how he’d tempered his behavior in multiplayer games. He played an endless amount of DOTA in his early teens, and I remember being put off by the toxic way he and the other players acted toward each other. He shook his head as we talked about it. “I said a lot of stupid things,” he said. “I was kind of an ass. It’s just how everybody is in those games, y’know?”
Yeah, I know. Nature, nurture, social expectations. It’s the oldest story in the book.
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firehosevia Bunker.jordan
The FDA is considering changing marijuana's status, so that it would no longer be classified as a drug with the highest risk for dependency and no medical benefits whatsoever. Instead, restrictions would be loosened to allow further study of its medical uses.
firehosevia Bunker.jordan
I want to be the first person on the moon to shoot a sniper rifle at earth and hit a wasp nest. my whole life so far is leading up to that moment
A daring cat makes an amazing leap from a ladder on the roof of a handyman’s van to the roof of a house where he gets some love as he steps through an open window as captured in this wobbly 2012 video posted by oMagiccx.
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Today show anchor/noted germophobe Matt Lauer is under fire today, not for the usual reasons but for a question he asked General Motors CEO Marry Barra in an interview. Barra appeared on Today yesterday to discuss GM’s alarming recall rate in recent years; at the end of the interview, Lauer asked Barra the following question: “You’re a mom, I mentioned, two kids. You said in an interview not long ago that your kids told you they’re going to hold you accountable for one job and that is being a mom. … Given the pressures of this job at General Motors, can you do both well?”
Upset viewers mobilized on social media to criticize Lauer, effectively shifting the conversation from “What is GM’s role in the deaths of at least 13 motorists linked to faulty GM vehicles?” to “Why is Matt Lauer such a sexist jerk?”. Lauer ...
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BoozeBot is a cocktail-making robot currently under development by UK-based programmers Alun King and Chris Whitcombe. The robot can be equipped with up to 16 ingredients and contains a library of over 4,500 drink recipes. Drinks can be ordered through the robot’s touch screen or via a mobile app. King and Whitcombe are raising funds on Kickstarter to finance production of BoozeBot .
photos via BoozeBots
submitted via Laughing Squid Tips
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firehosegreat, the wizard is an elven asshole
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