In less than three hours, I constructed a virtual reality viewer from a used pizza box somebody had thrown away. Want to make your own? Here’s what you’ll need, along with some tips and tools for doing it right.
I haven’t tried this yet, but it looks pretty good. I’m excited to try some low-cost, DIY VR.
Dan JonesMariah Carey's "Merry Christmas" album is also free right now.
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Wrapped In Red (Google Play Deluxe Edition) (Entire Album)
By
Kelly Clarkson
Association of America while selling over 4.5 millioncopies worldwide. Its lead single, “MissIndependent,” became an international top-ten hit.
Trying to reinvent her own image, Clarkson decidedto part ways with American Idol management anddeveloped a rock-oriented sound for her secondalbum, Breakaway. It was certified sextuple-platinum and sold over 15 million copies worldwide. The album earned Clarkson two Grammy Awards for Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Taking full creative control of her third
album, My December, Clarkson served as the executive producer and co-wrote the entire album’s material.
Description provided by Wikipedia under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 4.0
Images courtesy of GettyImages-KevinMazur
Looks like IBM really is getting on board with Swift:
Hi, I’m John Petitto, one of IBM’s Swift developers located at IBM’s Mobile Innovation Lab in Austin. We love Swift here and thought you would too so we are making our IBM Swift Sandbox available to developers on developerWorks.
The IBM Swift Sandbox is an interactive website that lets you write Swift code and execute it in a server environment — on top of Linux! Each sandbox runs on IBM Cloud in a Docker container. In addition, both the latest versions of Swift and its standard library are available for you to use.
All you need now to start writing Swift code is a web browser. Very cool.
This story was co-published with The New York Times.
Mark Zuckerberg did not donate $45 billion to charity. You may have heard that, but that was wrong.
Here's what happened instead: Zuckerberg created an investment vehicle.
Sorry for the slightly less sexy headline.
Zuckerberg is a co-founder of Facebook and a youthful mega-billionaire. In announcing the birth of his daughter, he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, declared they would donate 99 percent of their worth, the vast majority of which is tied up in Facebook stock valued at $45 billion today.
In doing so, Zuckerberg and Chan did not set up a charitable foundation, which has nonprofit status. He created a limited liability company, one that has already reaped enormous benefits as public relations coup for himself. His PR return-on-investment dwarfs that of his Facebook stock. Zuckerberg was depicted in breathless, glowing terms for having, in essence, moved money from one pocket to the other.
An LLC can invest in for-profit companies (perhaps these will be characterized as societally responsible companies, but lots of companies claim the mantle of societal responsibility). An LLC can make political donations. It can lobby for changes in the law. He remains completely free to do as he wishes with his money. That's what America is all about. But as a society, we don't generally call these types of activities "charity."
What's more, a charitable foundation is subject to rules and oversight. It has to allocate a certain percentage of its assets every year. The new Zuckerberg LLC won't be subject to those rules and won't have any transparency requirements.
In covering the event, many commentators praised the size and percentage of the gift and pointed out that Zuckerberg is relatively young to be planning to give his wealth away. "Mark Zuckerberg Philanthropy Pledge Sets New Giving Standard," Bloomberg glowed. Few news outlets initially considered the tax implications of Zuckerberg's plan. A Wall Street Journal article didn't mention taxes at all.
Nor did they grapple with the societal implications of the would-be donations.
So what are the tax implications? They are quite generous to Zuckerberg. I asked Victor Fleischer, a law professor and tax specialist at the University of San Diego School of Law, as well as a contributor to DealBook. He explained that if the LLC sold stock, Zuckerberg would pay a hefty capital gains tax, particularly if Facebook stock kept climbing.
If the LLC donated to a charity, he would get a deduction just like anyone else. That's a nice little bonus. But the LLC probably won't do that because it can do better. The savvier move, Professor Fleischer explained, would be to have the LLC donate the appreciated shares to charity, which would generate a deduction at fair market value of the stock without triggering any tax.
Zuckerberg didn't create these tax laws and cannot be criticized for minimizing his tax bills. If he had created a foundation, he would have accrued similar tax benefits. But what this means is that he amassed one of the greatest fortunes in the world 2014 and is likely never to pay any taxes on it. Any time a superwealthy plutocrat makes a charitable donation, the public ought to be reminded that this is how our tax system works. The superwealthy buy great public relations and adulation for donations that minimize their taxes.
Instead of lavishing praise on Zuckerberg for having issued a news release with a promise, this should be an occasion to mull what kind of society we want to live in. Who should fund our general societal needs and how? Charities rarely fund quotidian yet vital needs. What would $40 billion mean for job creation or infrastructure spending? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a budget of about $7 billion. Maybe more should go to that. Society, through its elected members, taxes its members. Then the elected officials decide what to do with sums of money.
In this case, it is different. One person will be making these decisions.
Of course, nobody thinks our government representatives do a good job of allocating resources. Politicians 2014 a bunch of bums! Maybe Zuckerberg will make wonderful decisions, ones I would personally be happy with. Maybe not. He blew his $100 million donation to the Newark school system, as Dale Russakoff detailed in her recent book, "The Prize: Who's in Charge of America's Schools?" Zuckerberg has said he has learned from his mistakes. We don't know whether that's true because he hasn't made any decisions with the money he plans to put into his investment vehicle.
But I think I might do a good job allocating $45 billion. Maybe even better than Zuckerberg. I am self-aware enough to I realize many people would disagree with my choices. Those who like how Zuckerberg is lavishing his funds might not like how the Koch brothers do so. Or George Soros.
Mega-donations, assuming Zuckerberg makes good on his pledge, are explicit acknowledgments that the money should be plowed back into society. They are tacit acknowledgments that no one could ever possibly spend $45 billion on himself or his family, and that the money isn't really "his," in a fundamental sense. Because that is the case, society can't rely on the beneficence and enlightenment of the superwealthy to realize this individually. We need to take a portion uniformly 2014 some kind of tax on wealth.
The point is that we are turning into a society of oligarchs. And I am not as excited as some to welcome the new Silicon Valley overlords.
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Jesse Eisinger is a senior reporter at ProPublica, covering Wall Street and finance. He writes a regular column for The New York Times’s Dealbook section.
ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.
Google Cardboard has long enabled us to enjoy virtual reality on the cheap, but thanks to a new app, it lets us create VR goodness, too.
Google today released Cardboard Camera, and it’s pretty much what it sounds like. The app will let you turn your Android smartphone into a virtual reality camera and take a VR photo with it. The photos will turn out sort of like a 360 degree panorama, and you can record sound to better immerse yourself in the moment that you’re capturing.
Cardboard Camera is a free download from the Play Store that supports phones running Android 4.4. and up. The app lets folks create their own VR content on the cheap, just like Cardboard lets us enjoy VR content without spending much (if any) cash. Google continues to work to make VR accessible to everyone, and Cardboard Camera is jut the latest example of that effort. Good on ya, Google.
Grab Cardboard Camera using the Play Store link below.
They say this Charlie Brown Christmas Tree is a nice reminder that the holidays are all about love, but I say it's an even nicer way to eliminate the time, hassle, and mess it takes to buy and put up a real tree. What a pain in Santa's fat gut that is. Hmmm, 8' noble fir hauled home on the roof of my car or 24" erection of wire and plastic delivered in the mail? Spending 4 hours unloading a tree, screwing it into a base, and decorating it, or spending 5 minutes unbending, inserting, and slapping on a lone red globe? Needles everywhere or needles nowhere? It's not a hard choice for me. Sure, the smell of a real evergreen is nice, but it's 2015. They have that in a bottle now.
Plus, Charlie Brown's tree comes with a Linus blanket.
Plus, I won't be killing a real tree like all of you other ax murderers out there.
The Peanuts special Christmas Tree is available in 14" and 24" sizes, with some assembly required to attach its meager limbs to the criss-cross wood base.
Dan JonesThis is excellent. He should rewrite other parables for modern times.
An amusing and instructive WSJ story by Drew Hinshaw about Nigerian parrots:
Hundreds of languages are spoken in this country: So which one do you teach a parrot?
It is a decision the pet shops of Nigeria confront every time a talking bird lands in their possession. Last year, a babbling grey parrot arrived at Salisu Sani’s bird stand in this northern city.
There was only one problem. She spoke one of the country’s lesser-known tongues.
“I told her: ‘This is a rubbish language. Try my own,’ ” recalled the lifelong parrot distributor, who spent weeks teaching the animal greetings in Hausa, a more widely spoken vernacular. [...]
The country’s 182 million people speak 520 different languages, according to Ethnologue, an atlas of the world’s linguistic boundaries, published by the International Linguistics Center in Dallas. Church services drag for hours as deacons translate their pastor’s sermons into three, sometimes four languages. Customer service lines begin with a plethora of options: one for English, two for Hausa, three for Yoruba, four for Igbo.
It makes the parrot business complicated, too. [...]
The language barrier means some pollys can accidentally squawk parrot profanities.
In Kano, Mr. Mohammad bought a secondhand parrot from an American or possibly British expat leaving Nigeria. When he peered into the cage, the bird blared back: “Waka, waka!”
In Hausa, this is a very bad thing for a bird to say. Roughly translated, it means “your mother.”
“That one was misbehaving,” Mr. Mohammad recalled. “It took a long time to sell.”
There’s a lot more there (“By a quirk of geography, parrots tend to live in the most multilingual corners of the world: the Amazon, Indonesia, Central Africa”; “As it turns out, parrots face some of the same language barriers. There are untold hundreds of different parrot dialects”) — read the whole thing.
A couple of brief items: if you’re in NYC on Saturday, you might want to attend the launch of the English edition of Oleg Woolf’s Bessarabian Stamps, translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk; it’s at Kray Hall, December 5, from 2 to 4 PM, and if I were in the city, I’d definitely go. And many, many thanks to whoever sent me a copy of Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks
Dan JonesInteresting ideas
You’ve always loved the name Sophia, but you know four little Sophias. Now what?
If you're in that bind, here's help. I've sought out less common alternatives that match the style and impact of Sophia, and every other top baby name.
It's easier said than done. Every name is its own world, with it's own unique combination of look and style, history and cultural imagery. The balance among those elements varies, too. Sound is more central to Jayden than to William. Biblical style is more upfront in Elijah than Andrew. And any match for Alexander should contract neatly to nicknames.
Then there's the constraint of popularity itself. Some styles, like biblical patriarchs, have been so thoroughly explored that most of the remaining rarities are rare for a reason. And for many names, popularity is style. No obscure name can sub in for Elizabeth or Joseph, since timeless, steady familiarity is at their essence.
So no name is a perfect match, but the suggestions below may just fill that Sophia-shaped hole in your heart. Each alternative is less than a quarter as popular as the original name.
GIRLS
Dan JonesIt's a Christmas album, so Michael Bublé is on it as well.
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Cheers, it’s Christmas. (Entire Album)
By
Blake Shelton
Cheers, It’s Christmas is the first Christmas album and seventh studio album by American country music artist Blake Shelton. It was released on October 2, 2012, through Warner Bros. Nashville.Description provided by Wikipedia under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 4.0
One of the perks of my new job: unlimited Dr. Pepper #DrPepper #FatManProblems http://ift.tt/1QhnoDG
Dan JonesI never really watched Samurai Jack, but it seems like a cool show. Maybe I'll try and watch the old episodes before it starts back up.
Cartoon Network teased us with a short video today announcing the soon return of an animated series we thought had been forgotten: Samurai Jack.
Genndy Tartakovsky, creator of the series, is attached to what’s being called “a new season for the epic story,” which will premiere on the mostly anime-filled Toonami block.
As for the video itself, we only get a glimpse of what’s to come. The figure in the video is presumably Jack himself, outfitted with new armor along with his signature sword. Aku, his demon rival, is also seen in the background sporting his flaming eyebrows and deadly stare. It’s enough to bring me right back to the original style and flourish I loved from the original run.
Samurai Jack ran on Cartoon Network from 2001 to 2004 before being unceremoniously cancelled, despite any resolution to the show’s singular narrative. Growing up in feudal Japan, the newly-minted samurai (later known as Jack) took on the shape-shifting demon, Aku, in a battle for the entire world. Nearly defeated, Aku threw Jack through a time portal, transporting him thousands of years into the future.
Jack had to use his legendary sword and grit to survive this war-torn wasteland filled with dangerous machines, aliens, and mythological foes on his way to finally confronting Aku again in this new world. Unfortunately, that battle never happened.
In 2016, we may finally get the ending we’ve been waiting over a decade for. And would it be asking too much for some sort of theatrical release? Yeah? OK, just pretend I didn’t ask for that.
Jacob Kastrenakes, writing for The Verge:
Adobe is finally ready to say goodbye to Flash. In an announcement last night, Adobe said that it will now “encourage content creators to build with new web standards,” such as HTML5, rather than Flash. It’s also beginning to deprecate the Flash name by renaming its animation app to Animate CC, away from Flash Professional CC.
Adobe is also now ready to congratulate the new president of the United States, Barack Obama.
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Caroling Medley
There are 6 other songs available for download.
By
VeggieTales
The Piano Guys joined forces with special guests to perform a beautiful rendition of “Silent Night” at the Cathedral of Saint John the
Nothing makes a better pair than a snack and retro gaming!
You can find LDS Christmas music from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the following ways:
Shooting fireballs from your empty hands just got a sleeker, slyer, more compact upgrade. Ellusionist, by way of magician Adam Wilber, introduced the original Pyro open-palm fireball shooter around this time last year. Its wrist unit contains 4 separate chambers, individually triggered for multiple shots, and each detonated by a remote device. Fireball kindling comes in Flash Packs, a treated tissue paper that burns super fast and disappears just as quick. The Pyro Mini pulls all the same tricks, but with less bulk to make it a less obvious badass source of your badass sorcery.
Ellusionist reports the Pyro Mini has also been streamlined for easier use and comes packs with "a host of new features that rival anything you'd see in a James Bond movie." In addition to being 50% smaller, the Mini has a built-in trigger on the top of the device, so you don't have to hold a separate remote trigger (though you still can). It is also USB-rechargeable from a laptop, rather than battery-operated. But the best new Pytro Easter Egg is probably its Burst Fire feature. Hold the remote or trigger down for a few seconds and turn your unleashed mono-ball of fire into a tag team. Two great balls of fire!
Police: “Come on mate people clearly heard you yelling you were going to kill her and furniture getting thrown around the unit.”
Man: “It was a spider.”
Police “Sorry??”
Man: “It was a spider, a really big one!!
Police :”What about the women screaming?”
Man: “Yeah sorry that was me, I really really hate spiders.”
soidreamtiwasastarfleetcommander:
It will be ok, as long as we take care of each other. One ship, one crew, Earth and Humanity.
“Let me help. A hundred years or so from now, I believe, a famous novelist will write a classic using that theme. He’ll recommend those three words even over I love you.”~ Jim Kirk to Edith Keeler in The City on the Edge of Forever (Star Trek: The Original Series, Season 1)
According to the report, the four-year-old stallion was allegedly caught on two separate occasions while it was engaged in sexual intercourse with another male. “When this was reported to the authorities, the horse was rapidly taken away and isolated,” the report posted on US and French sites claimed.
The decision was endorsed by the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the report claimed, adding that it signed the horse’s death warrant in front of the television cameras, Saudi site Sabq reported.
Small doses of Viagra are also given to premature babies if they have a potentially lethal lung problem called pulmonary hypertension, which is the leading cause of death in preemies after their first month of life.
