firehose

The international coffee chain Starbucks often touts its relatively egalitarian culture, where employees are called “partners” and get equity in the company, regardless of their job function. That philosophy plays out in an unusual way in South Korea, where employees are all required to have English nicknames on their name tags instead of their employment rank, according to The Korea Times. Examples given include the fairly pedestrian “Kat” and “Adele”—but also coffee-themed monikers such as “Bean” and “Fresh.”

“Among partners, nicknames are preferred over formal titles such as ‘boo-jang-nim’ (manager) or ‘dae-li-nim’ (mid-level manager),” Starbucks’ Korea public relations manager Park Han-jo told the Korean paper. “This horizontal name culture creates a more natural environment for our partners and is part of an evolving culture that considers everyone from our customers to our partners.”

We reached out to Starbucks to ask whether this practice is unique to Korea or practiced in other markets, and will update this post if we hear back.

The practice seems to be an effort to push past Korea’s management culture, which tends to be intensely hierarchical and very formal. But employees may not necessarily be on board. The Korean telecom KT Corp. did away with the formal titles and rigid reporting structure in favor of a flatter model in 2009. After a few years, the company decided to revert back to the old ways—with the wholehearted support of its employees.

Seoul has more Starbucks locations than any other city in the world, with 284—so that’s a whole lot of nicknames.

 

Staring at the Sun

Jurassic Park

darkpathos:

"You either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain." 

According to Italian crop circle maker Francesco Grassi, he and a team of collaborators created these two crop circles last week in a farm field in Italy. Grassi says the circles are entitled “LENR Clock” (LENR stands for Low Energy Nuclear Reactions), and were created over the course of one night with the field owner’s permission. If the Facebook comments are to be believed, the crop circles were made by extraterrestrials.

photos via Francesco Grassi

via Boing Boing

sometimes people ask me what it’s like being a woman on the internet…

Danny Kelly takes a look at the NFL's best clipboard jockeys, because in this league, every team is one injury away from potential catastrophe.

We're firmly entrenched in the most boring part of the NFL offseason and literally almost nothing will happen for the next 30-odd days or so, aside from players tweeting pictures from their vacations and charity softball games. So, until then, let's talk about every fan-of-a-bad-team's favorite player: the backup quarterback.

Thus far in this series, I've looked at some of the NFL's best defensive lines, linebacker corps and defensive secondaries, the best running back groups, tight ends units, wide receiver corps and offensive lines. Much emphasis was given to depth and breadth of talent at each position-group, because the 16-game NFL season and subsequent post-season is very much a battle of attrition when it comes to injuries. No team is immune, and oftentimes the clubs that end up on top are aided by great luck in the health department. For that reason, instead of ranking the starting quarterbacks in the NFL (which has been done ad nauseam anyway), I wanted to instead focus on which teams are best equipped to keep the ship afloat were the worst to happen: a major multi-game (or more) injury to the starting signal-caller.

The starting quarterback is almost inarguably the most important player on an NFL roster. Success in the win-loss column and playoffs is almost always linked closely to the performance of a team's quarterback. There are many other variables, of course -- an elite defense, top-flight play-makers, the ball bouncing your way -- but what a quarterback does with the football affects the game greatly. Thus, a strong starting quarterback is essential in this league. A better-than-decent backup is an enormous luxury.

I included 18 NFL clubs on my list today, all teams that have, or have the potential to have, set themselves up nicely if every coaches' worst nightmare were to occur: a major injury to their starting quarterback. I'm sure I overrated, underrated, or forgot about a couple teams with talent and depth at the position within my list, but here we go.

FORMER STARTERS AND/OR HOMEGROWN VETS:

Have a backup quarterback with at least a cumulative season's worth of starting experience? Does your guy have Playoffs experience? Count yourself among the fortunate.

In no particular order...

Indianapolis Colts:

Starter: QB Andrew Luck
Backups: QB Matt Hasselbeck, QB Chandler Harnish

The Colts are obviously set at the starting job with Andrew Luck, but having a veteran like Matt Hasselbeck behind him is a very nice piece of insurance for a franchise that wants to make a third straight Playoffs run in 2014. Hasselbeck, 38, enters his 16th NFL season and didn't see much action last year, only appearing in three games while throwing it 12 times, but he has a career 60% completion rate on over 5,000 regular season attempts.

The Bald Bomber has extensive experience, with 197 starts, 34,000+ passing yards and 201 touchdown passes under his belt. For a guy that has to come into a game cold and show poise in the huddle, this matters. Additionally, Hasselbeck has a good amount of playoffs experience - he's started 11 games, including a Super Bowl, and has passed for over 2,700 yards with 18 touchdowns to nine picks in those games.

His physical ability is surely diminished, but he still retains elite-level expertise in offensive concepts and is well-versed in the Colts' playbook. All these things, apart from Hass' age, set the bar for what most teams look for in a backup, particularly teams with an established franchise QB. He's not going to slang the football all over the field, but he's a guy that can keep things afloat, in theory, if Luck ever missed starts. There's a reason he's making $8M over two years to hopefully sit on the bench.

Philadelphia Eagles:

Starter: QB Nick Foles
Backups: QB Mark Sanchez, QB Matt Barkley, QB GJ Kinne

Michael Vick started the 2013 season at quarterback for the Eagles, but after he was forced out with an injury, his backup in Nick Foles took over, and never looked back. Foles started ten games and passed for 27 touchdowns with only two picks -- an absurd 119 passer rating -- and now Vick is gone and his understudy holds the keys to the offense.

Backing up Foles this year is Mark Sanchez, who returns to football after sitting 2013 out with a shoulder injury. While the former fifth overall pick may not excite many as a starting quarterback prospect, he does offer quite a bit of value as an experienced backup (and he's getting $4M to be just that for Chip Kelly).

Sanchez has 62 regular season starts in his career, plus six in the Playoffs, and provides Philadelphia with a backup plan if Foles were to go down with an injury. Like Hasselbeck, Sanchez doesn't offer top-flight arm strength or dynamic athleticism, but he's an experienced veteran that could in theory manage a football game if called to do so, particularly with Philly's growing talent-base on offense.

Green Bay Packers:

Starter: Aaron Rodgers
Backups: QB Matt Flynn, QB Scott Tolzien

Cincinnati Bengals:

Starter: Andy Dalton
Backups: QB Jason Campbell, QB AJ McCarron, QB Matt Scott

Jason Campbell has 79 NFL starts and has a 60% career completion rate on four different teams. He'll play for his fifth team in 2014 and should give the Bengals a little bit of assurance in the case their starter goes down. Unlike others ahead of him on this list, Campbell also provides a little bit more in the athleticism department, something that should serve him once plays break down. It also does provide a slight deterrent to teams in sending too many all-out blitzes because of that escapability factor.

Seattle Seahawks:

Starter: Russell Wilson
Backups: QB Tarvaris Jackson, QB Terrelle Pryor, QB BJ Daniels

Tarvaris Jackson has played seven of his eight seasons in the NFL under offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell - first in Minnesota then later in Seattle, so his depth of knowledge into Bevell's playbook - the language and concepts therein - is pretty unmatched. Like Flynn in Green Bay, Jackson seems tailor made to be a backup in Seattle's system -- he possesses a strong arm to take deep shots downfield, a Seahawk staple, has mobility to run the bootleg game they adore, and has become very disciplined later in his career, which fits Pete Carroll's "protect the football" mantra perfectly. He's highly respected by his teammates -- something that certainly matters if he's every asked to command the huddle on meaningful snaps, and has taken a lot of reps with Seattle's offensive weapons over the past few years.

Jackson has 34 career starts, but he only played in garbage time in 2013. That said, he made the most of it, posting a 140.2 passer rating on 10-of-13 passing for 151 yards and a touchdown. During Seattle's 2013 preseason, Jackson completed 26-of-36 passes for 9.9 YPA, three touchdowns and no picks (131 rating). Those stats don't matter, obviously, but they do show his comfort level in the Seattle system.

Miami Dolphins:

Starter: Ryan Tannehill
Backups: QB Matt Moore, QB Pat Devlin, QB Brock Jensen

Matt Moore returns for his fourth season in Miami this year, and could be counted among the more experienced and quality backups in the league. Moore hasn't played much since Tannehill arrived, but he last started in 2011, where he threw for 2497 yards, 16 touchdowns and nine interceptions with 7.2 YPA and an 87.1 rating. His rating with the Dophins has hovered right around 85.0, so while he's not necessarily who the team wants as "the guy," he makes for a nice insurance policy in case Tanny were to miss a few games. Moore has 25 starts in his career.

Dallas Cowboys:

Starter: Tony Romo:
Backups: QB Kyle Orton, QB Brandon Weeden, QB Caleb Hanie

Kyle Orton has 70 starts in his career and his teams have gone 35-35 in those starts. I suppose if we're holding to Pat Kirwan's claim that a good backup can help your team manage itself to two wins in four games, Orton's career "record" (I'm not using QB wins, don't worry) shows maybe he makes for a pretty decent backup. Orton's career 83-to-59 TD-to-INT ratio is respectable, but his 8.0 YPA, 68% completion rate, and 95.5 rating in four games with Dallas is better.

Orton seems to be holding out right now in the hopes the Cowboys will cut him (perhaps he feels he can start somewhere else, and he may be able to), but if he ends up being Tony Romo's backup again in 2014, he'll be one of the more experienced and reliable backups in the NFL.

JOURNEYMEN BACKUPS:

No one's going to call these high-upside, sexy picks for backup quarterbacks, but Offensive Coordinators value experience and practical knowledge on playbooks, systems, concepts, and reading defenses.

San Diego Chargers:

Starter: QB Phillip Rivers
Backups: QB Kellen Clemens, QB Brad Sorensen

Kellen Clemens started nine games for the Rams in 2013 and has 21 starts during his eight-year career, and was surprisingly ... well, good might not be the right word, but respectable in replacement duty for Sam Bradford last year. He proved to be very tough, while he threw for 58.7%, 1673 yards, eight touchdowns and seven interceptions. The Rams went 4-5 while he was under center, which is not eye-popping, obviously, but pretty good considering he was facing NFC West defenses in four of those eight games (all losses). When it comes to journeyman backups, you can do a lot worse than Clemens.

St. Louis Rams:

Starter: QB Sam Bradford
Backups: QB Shaun Hill, QB Austin Davis

The Rams replaced Clemens with another long-time, respected journeyman in Shaun Hill. Hill hasn't started a game since 2010 but in very limited action the past few seasons, has looked efficient. He's certainly experienced, with 26 starts in his career, and keeping with the ~.500 benchmark, his teams have gone 13-13 in those starts. These past four years in Detroit, he's started 10 games, passing for 2891 yards on 62% completion rate, 18 touchdowns and 12 picks. The Rams will obviously hope that Bradford can emerge and stay healthy in 2014, but Hill's a nice, savvy veteran to have waiting in the wings.

DEVELOPMENTAL POTENTIAL (WILD CARDS):

New England Patriots:

Starter: QB Tom Brady
Backups: QB Ryan Mallett, QB Jimmy Garoppolo

I thought for sure that Ryan Mallett was going to be a first-round pick -- top-10, even -- in 2011 but he slipped into the third round and has languished on the bench behind Tom Brady since. There were rumors he'd be traded to the Texans during the earlier part of the offseason, but assuming he sticks in New England, the battle between Mallett and rookie Jimmy Garoppolo will be a fun one to watch.

Mallett may emerge as the backup once again, and to this point it's tough to tell what he really offers, as he's only thrown four regular season passes, but dammit if I can't remain intrigued with his potential. If Mallett is not the answer, perhaps Garoppolo is. Bill Belichick obviously saw enough to select the Eastern Illinois product in the second round. Either way, New England has some developmental talent at the position, making the Patriots worth watching in the preseason.

San Francisco 49ers:

Starter: QB Colin Kaepernick
Backups: QB Blaine Gabbert, QB McLeod Bethel-Thompson, QB Josh Johnson

Blaine Gabbert was the tenth overall pick in the 2011 Draft, but never panned out starting for a very bad Jaguars team his first two seasons. He's now gotten a much-needed change of scenery, and will be studying under Jim Harbaugh and Greg Roman. Harbaugh, a former quarterback himself, is widely credited with resurrecting Alex Smith's career when he arrived in San Francisco, so with that precedent and for that lone reason, I list Gabbert here. Harbaugh has worn through a few backups during the past year, but he does have a history of getting quarterbacks to play their best.

Gabbert is a very good athlete with a strong arm, and a limited amount of experience, which typically doesn't hurt ... and that's it so far. If Harbaugh can help simplify things for Gabbert and use his talents correctly, he could emerge as the primary backup to Colin Kaepernick.

Houston Texans:

Starter: QB Ryan Fitzpatrick
Backups: QB Case Keenum, QB Tom Savage

Free agent Ryan Fitzpatrick has won the starting job in Houston but Case Keenum and Tom Savage make for an interesting competition for the backup job with the departure of T.J. Yates. Keenum passed for 1,760 yards, 7.0 YPA with nine touchdowns to six picks in relief of Matt Schaub last year, fairly admirable numbers for an second-year quarterback that had gone undrafted. He's the favorite right now and the Texans would at least have a backup that knows their system and has some starting experience.

Tom Savage, meanwhile, was a bit of a sleeper this year at quarterback and had been compared to, among others, Ben Roethlisberger in some scouting reports. Savage not only has an awesome football name, he's in the running to jump past Keenum for the backup job. Keep an eye on this battle.

ROOKIE BACKUPS:

These rookies are not expected to start this year, according to front office and coaching staff comments, anyway, but they're in a position to possibly surprise.

Jacksonville Jaguars:

Starter: QB Chad Henne
Backups: QB Blake Bortles, QB Ricki Stanzi, QB Stephen Morris

When the Jags drafted Blake Bortles with the third overall pick, head coach Gus Bradley quickly stated that the team planned to sit him for an entire year. He also stated that the Jags have rallied around Chad Henne as the starter, but we'll see what happens when the bullets start flying. My gut would think that Bradley will stick to his convictions this year regardless of their record or public pressure, but you just never know.

Jacksonville is obviously very high on Bortles, and Bradley has a history in Seattle with another team that started a young rookie over the experienced veteran, and the results there were satisfactory for all parties. Regardless, for purposes of this article, Bortles makes for an intriguing backup his rookie year, with a very high amount of upside.

Oakland Raiders:

Starter: QB Matt Schaub
Backup: QB Derek Carr, QB Matt McGloin

The Raiders will certainly have an interesting quarterback competition during training camp and preseason, but if early reports hold true, it's looking like it's Schaub's job this season. That said, second round pick Derek Carr has impressed in camps and OTAs. With the way that Schaub played last season, bereft of any confidence throwing the ball, he could be a surprise to jump into the starting job. Whether it's Carr as another high-upside backup or Schaub as the veteran mentoring backup, Oakland should be one team to watch at that position this year.

QB BATTLES:

These four teams should have proper quarterback battles on their hands. I won't call any of them now, but they're included because regardless of who emerges as starters for each club, each one of those teams will have a solid backup as well.

Minnesota Vikings: QB Matt Cassell, QB Christian Ponder, QB Teddy Bridgewater

Cassell is the favorite to win the job, meaning high-upside rookie Teddy Bridgewater and former 12th overall pick Christian Ponder will fight for the #2 job. Ponder and Cassell have the experience you like at backup quarterback, and Bridgewater has the most potential. Should be interesting.

Browns: QB Brian Hoyer, QB Johnny Manziel, QB Tyler Thigpen, QB Connor Shaw

If Johnny Manziel ends up winning the starting quarterback job for Cleveland, the Browns could do worse than have Brian Hoyer at the backup spot.

Buccaneers: QB Josh McCown, QB Mike Glennon, QB Mike Kafka

The QB competition is heating up in Tampa Bay, and whether it's McCown or Glennon as the backup, both are experienced and provide some upside for the Bucs. Another one of the more interesting battles to keep an eye on.

Jets: QB Geno Smith, QB Michael Vick, QB Matt Simms, QB Tajh Boyd

The thought I've heard recently is that Michael Vick will emerge as the starter in 2014 for the Jets, putting Geno Smith back on the bench but giving him a little more time to develop his game. If Smith holds on to the reins, though, the Jets have a proven backup in Vick, provided he's healthy.

★★★

I'm not going to pretend I got all these into the correct groupings, and I'm sure I left a few candidates off the list, so in the comments below, let me know where you differ in opinion or let me know where I missed the mark.

Fashion is tough. The Cleveland Cavaliers have proved that point.

Andrew Wiggins #1 overall draft pick T-shirt pic.twitter.com/eJ8f2igXYQ

— darren rovell (@darrenrovell) June 27, 2014

The NBA Draft and NBA fashion walk hand-in-hand. It's not always about the suits that draftees wear, sometimes the hats and shirts capture the imagination. Like this effort from the Cleveland Cavaliers to celebrate Andrew Wiggins, which draws your eye for all the wrong reasons.

Somehow the Cavs found a way to fit 10 different fonts into a shirt with 14 words. It's impressive really, or it would be if this wasn't the worst shirt that's ever existed. If all those fonts weren't enough that also took the time to find some really good royalty-free clip art to enhance the experience and make it look like a Batman comic.

Keep doing you Cleveland. Keep doing you.

The embattled Redskins QB is looking to hire a team of professionals to help with his friends' record.

All spelling errors from the world's foremost NFL fan are intentional (we think). -Ed.

So I audtioned.

It all started like most jobs do, with a highly polarizing overrated Quarterback posting a opportunity for employment on his twitter feed while people are criticizing him for not paying enough attenton to playing football. Griffin deleted his tweet to protect his favstar rankings probly but here it is:

Lets talk about this ad for a second. Why does RG3-13 need a sound engineer? The graphic designer doesnt suprise me since he apparently needs a new logo every time he converts a second and short. Maybe he meant "sound" as in "good" and engiKNEEr so that he can finally get his legs put back together (no offense to Sandra Fluke). At any rate I figured Im allready a accomplished graphic designer so maybe I can spread my wings and try some thing new here.

2th- Look at that email address. "Work for the third" at gmail? Got to love how this guy thinks people will want to work for him. Heres a news flash- no one wants to work for you- your not Dan Snyder. Heres a list of some things that dont "work" for RG3:

• -Scrambling
• -Throwing a ball
• -that hairstyle

But anyways I gritted my teeth and typed that email address. I didnt like doing it, but some times youve got to be brave and do things that make you uncomfortble if you want to win big like the Rooney family hiring Mike Tomlin. Heres the response I got back:

So Griffins got a team of artist with Interscope (Limp Bizkit, Smash Mouth). Sounds lucrative especially when you consider that Nate Newtons distributions deals werent so much Interscope as they were Interstate so this is much better.

So they sent me some track to mix and let me tell you it is pretty much the most profane song Ive ever heard. Heres the first of the tracks he wanted me 2 put together: WARNING- FEATURES CUSS WORDS

DISGUSTING! It goes verse my religous beliefs to even listen to this crap. Im a fan of REAL hip-hop like Will Smith or Beastie Boys not this R&B (must stand for "Rude and Beyond the ralm of good taste" if you ask me.)

I could never imagine Kirk Cousins having a record label with artists like this and Terry Bradshaw must be rolling over in his grave. So I knew I needed to clean this up a bit. In fact there were like a dozen track's they wanted me to mix down for them. They wanted me to put it over a Drake beat they sent which sound's illeagal to me in terms of trade mark/copyright violaton which Washington havent had so much luck with recently. I figured Im not one to opt out of any job applicaton, but I hate Drake. If Griffin wanted to associate himself with losers from Canada hed of gotten drafted by he Bills. So I also wanted to make sure I under stood the nature of the job. I dont work for free folks.

So here it is the Official RG3mix by me. I hope you like listning to it as much as I enjoyed making it and sending it Robert Griffin III. He still hasnt responded which is just so dissappointing. Make sure to listen to the whole thing, even if it gets kind of heavy on the Thousand Foot Krutch but this is just a demotape version we can fix that in post.

I will keep you up dated as I progress throuh the interview process.

Johnny Manziel wants you to leave Johnny Manziel alone, you Man-zealots.

So it has come to this: Johnny Manziel is now sick of hearing about Johnny Manziel. Addressing media at a Play 60 youth clinic as part of the NFL Rookie Symposium, the rookie quarterback was -- of course -- asked about his reputation as a partier. Manziel was unabashedly unrepentant.

"I'm not going to change for anybody,'' Manziel said, via Cleveland.com. "I'm going to enjoy my time off.''

Manziel's most recent Johnny Faux-Pas was getting caught on camera talking into a stack of money as if it were a telephone. "I can't hear you," he told a wad of green leaves made of cotton and linen. "There's too much money in my fucking hand."

This upset a lot of people from Joe Montana to Cleveland-favorite Brady Quinn (who seriously has a lot to say). Manziel responded by telling everyone, essentially, to chill:

"Nothing on the weekends that I'm doing is hopefully hurting any of my teammates in the locker room and more than anything, my teammates are getting tired of being asked about me because a low man on the totem pole,'' he said. "I'm just like any other rookie out here that they haven't been asked about a thousand times. More than anything, I think they're tired of that. They're tired of the hype, which I am as well. So I'm sitting there seeing these things and I'm tired of it as well."

Great job, you guys, we took one of the most hype-able people in the world and made him anti-hype.

NEW PRODUCT – Female-Female 2.54 to 2.0mm Jumper Wires x 40

These jumper wires come with a twist! Instead of going from 0.1″/2.54mm pitch headers to breadboard or something like that, these are 2.54mm to 2.0mm! Handy for making wire harnesses or jumpering to annoying 2mm-pitch connectors, these premium female-female jumper wires are around 8″ (200mm) long and come in a ‘strip’ of 40.

Each pair of wires has 2 2.54mm (.1″) sockets on one end and a sing 2×2.00mm (.08″) socket on the other on the other end (1x2mm aren’t available). This allows you to connect products with 2.00mm header spacing like the XBees to a breadboard! Just put extra-long male headers in the breadboard and connect!

These come in a ribbon strip but you can always pull the ribbon wires off to make individual jumper wires OR keep them together to make neatly organized wire harnesses.

We suggest picking up some extra-long break-away header pins as well, you can stick those into the sockets to turn the cables into 2mm socket to 2.54mm male!

For best results, when plugging these in a line, have the sides with the ‘silver latch bit’ sticking out since that side is a tiny bit wider than 0.1″ or .08″.

In stock and shipping now!

sansasilvertongue:

moriarty:

are u fucking kidding me what the fuck is wrong with interviewers these days

nonononono what is wrong is not how close they are or whatever

he’s asking chris evans to objectify scarlett right in front of her, that’s fucking disgusting

eso Logic posted some new photos of their PiPlanter and will be updating the blog soon once the project is further along. We’re excited to hear more! View the new code here.

---

Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

hipstitsandlips:

wearelike-smallpotatoes:

zomey:

My bosses daughter wanted hair like mine for her schools Crazy Hair day, so I took on that 14” challenge and put it up for her n walked her to school . Needless to say she’s very popular in that bodunk town now :p

This is the CUTEST FUCKING THING AHHG

dude seeeeriouslyyyyy

An anonymous reader writes Google often gets criticism for its seemingly boundless desire for data collection and analysis, but the company says it has higher ambitions than just figuring out how best to serve advertising. Speaking to the NY Times, Larry Page said, "We get so worried about these things that we don't get the benefits Right now we don't data-mine healthcare data. If we did we'd probably save 100,000 lives next year." By "these things," he means privacy concerns and fear that the data might be misused. But he also pointed to Street View as a case where privacy concerns mostly melted away after people used it and found it helpful. "In the early days of Street View, this was a huge issue, but it's not really a huge issue now. People understand it now and it's very useful. And it doesn't really change your privacy that much. A lot of these things are like that."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

OnlyMrGodKnowsWhy

Handselling opportunities: Readers who prefer their dystopias with much more amorality, and fans of Korean films starring Chris Evans.

Snowpiercer Vol. 1: The Escape by Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette (Titan Comics, $19.99, 9781782761334)
In the near future, humanity's battles with global warming accidentally lead to a new ice age, in which the entire world is covered in never-ending snowfall. Most of the Earth dies in these sub-zero temperatures, while a handful of survivors board a nonstop train 1,001 carriages long that runs around the earth. Unfortunately for many, class distinctions survive the end of the world: the rich and powerful live in hedonistic luxury at the front of the train, and the weak and poor live in unbelievable squalor in the tail of the train.

Proloff is a "tail-f**ker" (the epithet leveled at the poor) who attempts to leave his carriage to move forward. What follows is an absurd journey through the train to meet the president of the world. Proloff sees how the 1% lives, and wants nothing more than to join them, even as a mysterious plague starts making people sick.

The characters in Snowpiercer are bleak and desolate, much like the landscape. There is no one to root for; there isn't even anybody to like, not really. Reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, these are simply people trying to survive in an immensely broken world.

Handselling opportunities: Readers who prefer their dystopias with much more amorality, and fans of Korean films starring Chris Evans.

Original Source

OnlyMrGodKnowsWhy

“can i play as a woman rock”—one of Laura Hudson’s friends on FB

The game’s description says it all: “For a long time, there has been one game missing from the market: a genuine rock simulator.”

Still in development, Rock Simulator 2014 is currently one of the highest-ranked games on Steam Greenlight, a community-based system that helps select games for distribution.

So what exactly do you do in Rock Simulator 2014? Pretty much what it sounds like: Gaze digitally at silent, immobile stones. Current screenshots indicate that you will be able to “watch beautiful rocks in any location in the world,” including grass plains, salt flats, deserts, and mountains.

If you think that’s a joke, well—it was.

“It started off as a parody,” says Rock Simulator 2014 creator Ryan, who declined to give his last name. “But after seeing the great reaction, it is now a completely serious game.”

A hobbyist developer in Tampa, Florida, Ryan says the game was partly inspired by Goat Simulator, another title that started as a parody of mundane simulation games like Agricultural Simulator and Train Simulator. But it, too, became real after the internet went wild for it.

In other words, Rock Simulator 2014 is a parody of a simulator game that was itself a parody of simulator games, forming a giant simulation Ouroboros forced over and over into playable existence by the collective irony of the internet.

The simulator parody trend has also turned its gaze back onto mainstream games, with a Goat Simulator trailer aping the survival horror game Dead Island, and a fan trailer for the strait-laced Farming Simulator poking fun at the bawdy, hyperkinetic video montages of first-person shooters.

So with the advent of Rock Simulator 2014, have we finally reached Peak Joke Simulator?

Internet searches reveal that this isn’t that first time the joke has been made. There’s a game called Rock: The Simulator Game, another Russian-language game whose name translates to “Stone Simulator” and a video titled Rock Watcher Simulator 2014. But it’s certainly the first time the gag has caught fire like this.

The responses on the game’s Greenlight page are half the fun. Most are parodies of fan responses to other games’ Steam pages: Several commenters ask whether there will be a multiplayer mode, suggest downloadable content, and even request a trading card series.

Another comment grumpily notes that it is “not an actual rock sim” since it features a third-person view of the rock, rather than the first-person perspective of the rock itself. Several readers demand to know whether they will be able to customize their rock.

Ryan says that his four-person team plans to have a playable beta version ready for release within several weeks, including dynamic new mini-games that involve rocks rolling down hills. Regardless of whether or not Rock Simulator 2014 is greenlit by Steam for distribution, they plan to finish the game and release it for free on the Strange Panther Games website.

You will, Ryan says, be able to customize your rock.

Original Source

submitted by lucyppp [link] [117 comments]

Michael Sienkiewicz posted this awesome video and code for bare metal multiplayer Tetris for the Raspberry Pi:

Link to the GitHub repo

A multiplayer Tetris game written in bare metal assembly for Raspberry Pi. This project was completed in 3 weeks (amidst exams and normal school work) as an extension to Imperial College London’s first year computing project.

Our source code features:

- 4000 lines of documented ARM assembly code
- Optimised driver for a NES controller connected via GPIO
- Asynchronous networking for two Pis connected via GPIO
- Doubly buffered rendering logic for HDMI output
- Custom ARMv6 assembler written from scratch in C (released as binary only)

Tetris Duel Team:
Han Qiao
Piotr Chabierski
Michał Sienkiewicz
Utsav Tiwary

Read more.

Parker Reed made this great in-car bluetooth audio receiver using his pi! Get the code here.

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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

Unpaid Intern Is Ruled Not an "€˜Employee,"€™ Not Protected From Sexual Harassment:

blue-author:

provocatoria:

incisiveredneck:

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York found that because Wang was an unpaid intern, not an employee, she could not bring a claim under the New York City Human Rights Law. This discrepancy’s not new: Unpaid interns aren’t covered by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and while local laws can protect them, New York’s state and city laws do not.

Well no wonder employers fucking love unpaid internships so much. Not only do interns have no expectation of pay, but they have no expectation of basic rights either.

Holyfuckwhatthefuckisthisshit. 

See also: “independent contractor”.

popular shared this story from The NewsBlur Blog.

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Like it says on the tin, you can now go back and see what you’ve read with the Recently Read Stories feed. It’s on the bottom of your feed list, just above the saved stories.

This feed records all of the stories you’ve read in feeds, shared blurblogs, and even in feeds you’re not subscribed to. It does not record stories that are marked read as part of a mark all/previous as read action.

This tutorial from Interlock Rochester shows you how to program your Pi to announce its IP Address:

Alternately, with a little bit of prep work, perhaps using the above technique to get everything set up to start, you can program your Pi to announce its IP address via audio using text-to-speech.

The essence of this trick is to install a text-to-speech program, create a small script to extract the IP address, to pass that address to the text-to-speech program, and then finally to configure the initialization scripts to run the readout script shortly after booting.

I’m working with a rev B Raspberry Pi running Raspbian, but the approach should be generalizable to any distro for which a TTS package is available.

First, set up the Raspberry Pi with keyboard, mouse, wired networking, and video, either HDMI or analog. If you use analog, you may need to increase the font size considerably even to be able to read the screen. Open a terminal and install festival:

sudo apt-get install festival

Read more.

submitted by IWanttoWorkforOPB
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