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The new drop-down menu users will see alongside targeted ads.

Facebook

Facebook will soon start letting third parties merge their consumer advertising data sets with Facebook's own information, according to a post from the company early Thursday. The new system will let marketers target ads on Facebook based on what a user does both on and off Facebook, a tactic that Facebook criticized only a few years ago.

As Re/code explains, marketers have long been able to target Facebook ads using outside browsing information. For instance, if a user is searching for cooking utensils on Walmart, they may then navigate to Facebook and see an ad for KitchenAid. If KitchenAid (or its representatives) wanted to target an ad based on a user's Facebook data, they could also do that—if a user's interests include "lasagna," they might get a KitchenAid ad with a beautiful lasagna next to a stack of food storage containers.

Under the old system, KitchenAid could not integrate these two sets of information. Now things are different: KitchenAid can take your Facebook love of lasagna and Internet search for kitchen utensils and show you a lovely chrome-plated spatula supporting a nice, thick slice of your favorite food.

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Oh god, these Yoshi’s Wooly World prototypes ⊟

These way cute prototype pics of the Wii U game popped up in this afternoon’s Treehouse E3 stream segment with producer Takashi Tezuka. Like everything else awesome shown at E3, it won’t come out here until some time next year. The actual game is super adorable too.

Thanks to Ewzzy for the tip and for posting the shots online!

PREORDER Yoshi's Wooly World, upcoming games

OnlyMrGodKnowsWhy

Yes yes yes loooooooool

attn @horesshit attn attn

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An already bloody week continues, with the Portland area's third officer-involved shooting in as many days—this time on the Springwater Corridor.

Portland police killed a man they say was menacing two officers with a crowbar this morning, after the man was confronted about allegedly assaulting another person around 6 a.m. According to Portland Police Sergeant Pete Simpson, that assault took place near SE 104th and Foster, a stretch of road that closely parallels the Springwater. Two East Precinct officers responded, and found the suspect a short distance away on the recreational trail.

Simpson says the man began swinging a crowbar "without provocation." As the officers backed up, "attempting to disengage," Simpson says one of them tripped and fell and the suspect kept coming. Cops aren't yet saying which officer fired the fatal shot or shots. Nor can they say who the dead suspect was, where he was shot, or how many times.There were multiple witnesses, Simpson said.

Mayor Charlie Hales and Police Chief Mike Reese were on site earlier this morning, and police swarmed. Both the Springwater Corridor and a stretch of SE Foster have been closed for hours.

Simpson didn't know, as of a 9:20 a.m. briefing, whether the dead man was living off the Springwater, which is popular for homeless campsites. Last week, the Mercury looked at recent efforts by Portland Parks and Recreation to sweep camps on a stretch of the Springwater just west of this morning's incident.

Obviously the details are scant right now—including what types of "less-lethal" weapons the cops had at their disposal—but what we know of the incident seems similar to the death of Jack Dale Collins. In April 2010, Collins, who was homeless, had been cutting himself in a Washington Park restroom and yelling at park visitors. When Officer Jason Walters arrived, Collins began walking toward the officer with his six-inch one-inch X-Acto-style knife out. Walters, backing up, ran into a "physical obstruction" as Collins advanced. The officer fired two shots.

This has been an insane week for police shootings. Yesterday, Simpson announced Milwaukie cops had killed an "uncooperative" motorist inside Portland city limits, after a brief car chase. Details of that incident are still unclear. And school resource officers shot at the 15-year-old Reynolds High School shooter on Tuesday, apparently injuring him before he took his own life in one of the school's bathrooms.

"The headlines over the past three days have been exhausting for people," Simpson said this morning. He said a string of situations like Portland's seen drives officers' stress "through the roof."

Despite this morning's violence, Simpson stresses the Springwater Corridor isn't overly concerning for police.

"The reality is, it's pretty safe for most people," he said.

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Last year, the average CEO was paid $15 million, while the average worker at the same companies was paid $52,000. That’s one of the takeaways from comprehensive new research released today by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning American think tank, which examined CEO salaries at the 350 largest companies in the US. The chart above shows one of the metrics the researchers use, the gap between CEO salary and the average salary of a worker in the same sector.

As you can see, recessions tend to hit top executives in the pocketbooks (because of all those equity compensation plans) but the trend is clearly headed upward again: In 2013, the average CEO was paid 296 times more than than the average worker.

While that number is amazing, even more amazing is what it doesn’t include—the compensation of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, which was $3.3 billion last year. If that number were included in the analysis, average CEO pay in 2013 would have been 510 times that of the average worker.

This disparity exacerbates growing concerns about income inequality, and to EPI’s researchers it suggests a problem: The high payments to CEOs aren’t reflective of their contribution to their firms, but rather a compensation process loaded with conflicts of interest. They suggest that the US government should tax performance pay again—cutting off a tax deduction that Facebook has used to great effect—and that it should set higher corporate tax rates for firms with extremely high ratios of CEO-to-worker pay.

If pro-Russian forces in Ukraine are going to be successful in redrawing the map of Europe , they're going to need some heavy equipment — like this 1943-vintage Soviet tank. Watch — or rather listen — as they try to get this relic going.

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Coffee retailer Starbucks has announced the beginning of a national rollout of Duracell Powermat wireless charging in stores beginning with those in the San Francisco area. The “Powermat Spots” will allow compatible devices to charge wirelessly in designated areas of tables and counters. Starbucks’ press release on the rollout indicates that the company will begin expanding wireless charging to “major markets” sometime in 2015.

photos via Starbucks

Supposedly the thing that characterizes science fiction as a genre is its interest in, well, science. And yet a lot of the very best treatments of science in novels lately have been in works that are classified as fantasy.

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We have been waiting for Alejandro González Iñárritu's movie Birdman FOREVER. And now the trailer is here in full, gorgeous insanity. It looks good—like, really good. We can't wait.

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Harald Reinl & Charles Romine, Mysteries of the Gods, 1976

Don’t buy a 3D printer. You won’t see me write that often, but right now there is a good reason: there’s a new South African-designed 3D printer in town, which will be going on sale within the next few weeks. And if all goes according to plan, says its creator, it’ll be bigger, stronger and cheaper than existing 3D printer designs – and it will be available through OpenHardware.co.za and other stores for around R5 000 or less.

Read full article.

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!

ANIMATED: Even NFL Network has World Cup Fever

Because I think it will be interesting to do so, and because I think this sort of transparency might even be useful: Here’s a disclosure statement of past and current business relationships that I have, that I can publicly announce at this moment (there may be business relations I cannot yet disclose for contractual reasons; those will be announced when possible). “Business relationship” in this case means an employee or contract relationship, or a freelance relationship that went beyond single, discrete pieces of work (like a short story or newspaper/magazine article). This list is current as of June 12, 2014; I’ll update as necessary.

Current business associations:

* Macmillan Publishing, through its imprint Tor Books, who is my primary fiction publisher in North America (and holds some of my audio titles and rights to some UK publications).

* Subterranean Press, who publishes my limited editions and other specialized work.

* Amazon, through its audiobook subsidiary, Audible.com, who is my primary audiobook publisher.

* The Orion Publishing Group, via its imprint Gollancz, who is my current UK publisher.

* Random House, via its imprint Heyne, who is my current German publisher.

* 21st Century Fox, via its FX network, where my novel Redshirts has been optioned for a television series.

* Industrial Toys, with whom I am working on its upcoming video game Midnight Star.

* Aside from Heyne and Gollancz, I have business relationships with more than 20 other publishers around the world for foreign translations of my work.

Previous business associations (currently existing companies only):

* The McClatchy Company. I worked at its Fresno Bee newspaper (’91 -’96).

* AOL (when it was America Online). I was an in-house writer/editor (’96-’98) and then did freelance work (’98 – ’07)

* NBCUniversal and MGM: I was a creative consultant for the TV show Stargate Universe, produced by MGM and airing on the Syfy network.

* Paramount Pictures, which held the film option on my novel Old Man’s War.

* Baker & Taylor: I wrote and contributed to books offered by its Portable Press imprint.

* The Penguin Group: I wrote books published by its Rough Guides imprint.

* The Walt Disney Company: I worked on a project covered by an NDA.

* AMC Networks: I wrote a column for its Web sites.

* Ziff Davis Media: I wrote reviews and columns for its Official US Playstation Magazine.

* Cox Media Group: I wrote reviews and columns for its Dayton Daily News newspaper.

* Time Warner Cable: I created a video game review Web site for its Road Runner High Speed Online subsidiary.

In addition, I ran a writing/editing business called Scalzi Consulting, which undertook projects for various clients, including Sullivan & Company (a marketing group), Network Solutions, US Trust, Oppenheimer Funds and Warburg Pincus. Scalzi Consulting is currently dormant as I focus on fiction.

After enjoying Evan B’s recent miniland scale Firefly lifter, I’m overjoyed to see yet another iconic spacecraft get the same treatment! This time it’s Eagle 5 from Mel brooks’ classic Star Wars spoof Spaceballs, courtesy of Chris Rozek.

And in a matter of days you’ll be able to see this creation – and a million others – at Brickworld Chicago. Let’s just hope Chris can hang onto this build longer than the giant one he traded away in Simon’s Red Brick Game!

Cotton Delo, reporting for Advertising Age:

But what Facebook is now enabling is far more expansive in terms how it uses data for ad targeting. In a move bound to stir up some controversy given the company’s reach and scale, the social network will not be honoring the do-not-track setting on web browsers. A Facebook spokesman said that’s “because currently there is no industry consensus.” Social-media competitors Twitter and Pinterest do honor the setting. Google and Yahoo do not.

“Google does it” is not exactly a badge of honor, privacy-wise. More and more, the entire advertising industry is turning into a threat to privacy. Advertising should be about attention, not privacy.

Facebook will honor the settings to limit ad tracking on iOS and Android devices, however.

On iOS, they have no choice. Apple’s privacy controls are in the hands of the user, not the developer or advertiser. That’s why the whole “Do Not Track” thing for websites is a joke. It’s like putting a “Do Not Burgle” sign on your front door versus installing a lock. (And even if you do install a lock, you can’t trust Google not to pick it.)

Coming soon – The Adafruit OONTZ Open-Source Grid Controller – 8×8 + White LEDs. Build and customize your very own open-source button grid controller based on the Adafruit Trellis with the OONTZ kit! Designed by PaintYourDragon, this DIY kit comes with delicious translucent button pads, controller pads, diffused white LEDS and a custom laser cut enclosure. The result is a sturdy and elegant but also super-hackable music or video (or something else???) controller device

We designed this kit for ease of use and ultimate flexibility. All you need is an Arduino Leonardo, basic soldering tools and an afternoon. Once assembled and programmed with the Arduino IDE, this box turns into a USB MIDI device that works with any computer and has 64 buttons with controllable LEDs. Our default example program sends a MIDI Note On and Off message for each button press but with a little programming ingenuity you can send and receive any kind of MIDI command. Since its USB MIDI it can work instantly with just about all synth software. Don’t like MIDI? The Leonardo can also emulate a USB keyboard or plain old USB serial.

Since it’s Arduino-powered, adding more stuff like accelerometers, potentiometers, rotary encoders, etc. is straight-forward and uses existing libraries available on the Internets.

Each order comes with:

• Four Trellis control PCBs
• Four matching Trellis Elastomer button pads – 64 total buttons
• Three packs of diffused white 3mm LEDs – 75 total LEDs, so you have a couple extra.
• Custom designed laser-cut enclosure, clear body and black top

You’ll need to add: an Arduino Leonardo, some 22AWG solid core wire (better than stranded but stranded will also work in a pinch), soldering iron & solder, basic hand tools, and a micro USB cable.

Sign up now and get notified when this kit is ready for sale! We’ll email you once we have the kits ready to go Meanwhile, you can take a peek at the github repo

SIGN UP.

The Materials Research Workstation is a 3D printer designed by Harrison Tyler, Evan Roche & Lucas Haroldsen. This 3D printer is a platform that focuses on flexibility of use for materials research using fdm printing processes.

The printer is designed to accommodate pneumatic syringe based printing, but also accommodates printing in plastic with a hot end, among many other material possibilities.

The printer is currently in Beta stage. The first build workshop for the mrws3dp was hosted in Baltimore from June 3 – 5, 2014. A second workshop will be scheduled for July 2014. Details for this event will be announced on this website.

Read full article.

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!

….y’all, when the “real” news has people treating shit like this as a joke and the joke news has to point that out and bring it back to seriousness? It’s like breaking the Seventh Seal. We’re done. As a culture we’re just done.

Now, this specific map isn't in the quiz, but The Guardian has a quiz that tests your fictional geography knowledge. What really stands out is that some books have need of very elaborate maps where others have sketches you can easily imagine being done on napkins.

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