Supreme cuteness alert.
This adorable little cosplayer was involved in the opening of Studio Ghibli concept store in Hong Kong several years ago. This picture has just resurfaced—but there’s more where that came from. Check them out below.
Check out more pics from the opening on Crunchyroll.
The secretive court was set up to scrutinize the requests in secret, in order to ensure compliance with applicable civil rights requirements. That all makes sense. That every single request is essentially approved, however, seems at least curious if not a bit off. The government response about its perfect record of approvals is that the FBI and NSA are very careful when applying for surveillance.
My daily struggle.
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Asked by a Twitter member whether he was really telling people that they should say “I have two iPhone phones”, rather than “two iPhones”, Mr Schiller said that was correct.
Well, duh? Why else would we want them?
I am predicting that, once computers are doing the driving, there will be a lot more sex in cars.
That’s one of several things people will do which will inhibit their ability to respond quickly when the computer says to the human, “Take Over.”
Dan JonesI'd love to quit my job, and work for myself, but this is exactly why I don't.
I just read that Snake Guardz help prevent snake bites on hiking trails, camping trips, hunting and fishing excursions, and in the garden. The garden. You can get bit by a snake while gardening. That had not occurred to me before.
I'm never helping my mama spread mulch again.
I'm not even mowing the lawn anymore.
See, as you've probably noticed over the past few years Indiana Jones and I are very similar. One of the many things we have in common is that we both hate snakes. And while we both could probably benefit from a pair of Snake Guardz, I for one would rather just hire some kid who doesn't recognize the associated dangers to garden and mow the lawn. And take my girlfriend hiking and camping for that matter.
If you're willing to weather the weeds and sod on your own, Snake Guardz are a pair of nylon covers wth polycarbonate inserts that wrap around and snap onto your lower legs. There they serve as evil serpent-thwarting armor capable of stopping the penetration of poisonous snake fangs. Like snake boots, Snake Guardz are effective 17" up the leg, but unlike the boots they weigh just 11 ounces each. And obviously enable you to wear your own hiking or other utility boots underneath.
Snake Guardz are tested for puncture resistance to ASTM 1342-05 standards. In plain English: they can stop a 12-gauge shotgun blast at 20 yards. (Even better news if you're worried about snakes and the cowboy down the street trying to make you "dance.") When in place the Guardz cover shoe / boot laces to preclude the possibility of snake fangs getting tangled up in them during a strike as well.
Snake Guards come in a variety of colors and sizes S through 3XL.
http://ourvaluedcustomers.blogspot.com/2016/05/to-his-friend-from-ovc-archive.html
There’s a common conception that an opinion cannot be wrong. My dad said it. Hell, everyone’s dad probably said it and in the strictest terms it is true. However, before you crouch behind your Shield of Opinion, you need to ask yourself two questions.
Virtual reality may be a rising star, but the ArcelorMittal Orbit is going all-out, balls-to-the-wall IRL this summer with its curving, spiraling, plummeting tunnel slide. Dubbed simply "The Slide," this 584-foot-long adrenaline rush will open to the public on June 24, 2016 as both the highest and the longest tunnel slide in the world.
Sculptor Sir Anish Kapoor and engineer Cecil Balmond designed and erected the ArcelorMittal Orbit for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games in London. Looming over Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park the futuristic geometric stunner is England's largest sculpture. Its construction includes 35,000 bolts and enough steel to make 265 double-decker buses (60% of that is recycled steel from washing machines and used cars).
This year, with the addition of Kapoor and Belgian artist Carsten Holler's dramatic chute entwined with the ArcelorMittal Orbit's catawampus ladder formations, eager sliders will be able to take a presumably exhilarating 40-second decent through what is sure to become London's second most famous tube. The slide will have both transparent daylight segments and opaque sections of darnkess to weave and corkscrew through as participants make their way around the ArcelorMittal Orbit 12 times. The final 160+' is a straight run back to the earth.
In different languages what do we say to mimic animal sounds? Below is the world’s biggest multilingual list.
That's a might fine Dick Butt you drew there, Amaterasu.If you install the "Save to Google" extension for Chrome, you can now import your Chrome bookmarks into the Google Save site. Just open the sidebar menu from the Google Save site, click "import Chrome bookmarks" and wait a few minutes until all your bookmarks are saved online. Reload the pages and you'll see all of your Chrome bookmarks next to the pages and images you've previously saved.
For over a decade now, GNU Make has almost exclusively been my build system of choice, either directly or indirectly. Unfortunately this means I unnecessarily depend on some GNU extensions — an annoyance when porting to the BSDs. In an effort to increase the portability of my Makefiles, I recently read the POSIX make specification. I learned two important things: 1) POSIX make is so barren it’s not really worth striving for, and 2) make’s macro assignment mechanism is Turing-complete.
If you want to see it in action for yourself before reading further, here’s a Makefile that implements Conway’s Game of Life (40x40) using only macro assignments.
Run it with any make program in an ANSI terminal. It must literally
be named life.mak.
make -f life.mak
It’s 100% POSIX-compatible except for the sleep 0.1 (fractional
sleep), which is only needed for visual effect.
Unlike virtually every real world implementation, POSIX make doesn’t support conditional parts. For example, you might want your Makefile’s behavior to change depending on the value of certain variables. In GNU Make it looks like this:
ifdef USE_FOO
EXTRA_FLAGS = -ffoo -lfoo
else
EXTRA_FLAGS = -Wbar
endif
Or BSD-style:
.ifdef USE_FOO
EXTRA_FLAGS = -ffoo -lfoo
.else
EXTRA_FLAGS = -Wbar
.endif
If the goal is to write a strictly POSIX Makefile, how could I work around the lack of conditional parts and maintain a similar interface? The selection of macro/variable to evaluate can be dynamically selected, allowing for some useful tricks. First define the option’s default:
USE_FOO = 0
Then define both sets of flags:
EXTRA_FLAGS_0 = -Wbar
EXTRA_FLAGS_1 = -ffoo -lfoo
Now dynamically select one of these macros for assignment to
EXTRA_FLAGS.
EXTRA_FLAGS = $(EXTRA_FLAGS_$(USE_FOO))
The assignment on the command line overrides the assignment in the
Makefile, so the user gets to override USE_FOO.
$ make # EXTRA_FLAGS = -Wbar
$ make USE_FOO=0 # EXTRA_FLAGS = -Wbar
$ make USE_FOO=1 # EXTRA_FLAGS = -ffoo -lfoo
Before reading the POSIX specification, I didn’t realize that the left side of an assignment can get the same treatment. For example, if I really want the “if defined” behavior back, I can use the macro to mangle the left-hand side. For example,
EXTRA_FLAGS = -O0 -g3
EXTRA_FLAGS$(DEBUG) = -O3 -DNDEBUG
Caveat: If DEBUG is set to empty, it may still result in true for
ifdef depending on which make flavor you’re using, but will always
appear to be unset in this hack.
$ make # EXTRA_FLAGS = -O3 -DNDEBUG
$ make DEBUG=yes # EXTRA_FLAGS = -O0 -g3
This last case had me thinking: This is very similar to the (ab)use of
the x86 mov instruction in mov is Turing-complete. These
macro assignments alone should be enough to compute any algorithm.
Macro names are just keys to a global associative array. This can be used to build lookup tables. Here’s a Makefile to “compute” the square root of integers between 0 and 10.
sqrt_0 = 0.000000
sqrt_1 = 1.000000
sqrt_2 = 1.414214
sqrt_3 = 1.732051
sqrt_4 = 2.000000
sqrt_5 = 2.236068
sqrt_6 = 2.449490
sqrt_7 = 2.645751
sqrt_8 = 2.828427
sqrt_9 = 3.000000
sqrt_10 = 3.162278
result := $(sqrt_$(n))
The BSD flavors of make have a -V option for printing variables,
which is an easy way to retrieve output. I used an “immediate”
assignment (:=) for result since some versions of make won’t
evaluate the expression before -V printing.
$ make -f sqrt.mak -V result n=8
2.828427
Without -V, a default target could be used instead:
output :
@printf "$(result)\n"
There are no math operators, so performing arithmetic requires some
creativity. For example, integers could be represented as a
series of x characters. The number 4 is xxxx, the number 6 is
xxxxxx, etc. Addition is concatenation (note: macros can have + in
their names):
A = xxx
B = xxxx
A+B = $(A)$(B)
However, since there’s no way to “slice” a value, subtraction isn’t possible. A more realistic approach to arithmetic would require lookup tables.
Branching could be achieved through more lookup tables. For example,
square_0 = 1
square_1 = 2
square_2 = 4
# ...
result := $($(op)_$(n))
And called as:
$ make n=5 op=sqrt # 2.236068
$ make n=5 op=square # 25
Or using the DEBUG trick above, use the condition to mask out the
results of the unwanted branch. This is similar to the mov paper.
result := $(op)($(n)) = $($(op)_$(n))
result$(verbose) := $($(op)_$(n))
And its usage:
$ make n=5 op=square # 25
$ make n=5 op=square verbose=1 # square(5) = 25
Looping is a tricky problem. However, one of the most common build
(anti?)patterns is the recursive Makefile. Borrowing from the
mov paper, which used an unconditional jump to restart the program
from the beginning, for a Makefile Turing-completeness I can invoke
the Makefile recursively, restarting the program with a new set of
inputs.
Remember the print target above? I can loop by invoking make again with new inputs in this target,
output :
@printf "$(result)\n"
@$(MAKE) $(args)
Before going any further, now that loops have been added, the natural
next question is halting. In reality, the operating system will take
care of that after some millions of make processes have carelessly
been invoked by this horribly inefficient scheme. However, we can do
better. The program can clobber the MAKE variable when it’s ready to
halt. Let’s formalize it.
loop = $(MAKE) $(args)
output :
@printf "$(result)\n"
@$(loop)
To halt, the program just needs to clear loop.
Suppose we want to count down to 0. There will be an initial count:
count = 6
A decrement table:
6 = 5
5 = 4
4 = 3
3 = 2
2 = 1
1 = 0
0 = loop
The last line will be used to halt by clearing the name on the right side. This is three star territory.
$($($(count))) =
The result (current iteration) loop value is computed from the lookup table.
result = $($(count))
The next loop value is passed via args. If loop was cleared above,
this result will be discarded.
args = count=$(result)
With all that in place, invoking the Makefile will print a countdown from 5 to 0 and quit. This is the general structure for the Game of Life macro program.
A universal Turing machine has been implemented in Conway’s Game of Life. With all that heavy lifting done, one of the easiest methods today to prove a language’s Turing-completeness is to implement Conway’s Game of Life. Ignoring the criminal inefficiency of it, the Game of Life Turing machine could be run on the Game of Life simulation running on make’s macro assignments.
In the Game of Life program — the one linked at the top of this
article — each cell is stored in a macro named xxyy, after its
position. The top-left most cell is named 0000, then going left to
right, 0100, 0200, etc. Providing input is a matter of assigning each
of these macros. I chose X for alive and - for dead, but, as
you’ll see, any two characters permitted in macro names would work as
well.
$ make 0000=X 0100=- 0200=- 0300=X ...
The next part should be no surprise: The rules of the Game of Life are encoded as a 512-entry lookup table. The key is formed by concatenating the cell’s value along with all its neighbors, with itself in the center.
The “beginning” of the table looks like this:
--------- = -
X-------- = -
-X------- = -
XX------- = -
--X------ = -
X-X------ = -
-XX------ = -
XXX------ = X
---X----- = -
X--X----- = -
-X-X----- = -
XX-X----- = X
# ...
Note: The two right-hand X values here are the cell coming to life
(exactly three living neighbors). Computing the next value (n0101)
for 0101 is done like so:
n0101 = $($(0000)$(0100)$(0200)$(0001)$(0101)$(0201)$(0002)$(0102)$(0202))
Given these results, constructing the input to the next loop is simple:
args = 0000=$(n0000) 0100=$(n0100) 0200=$(n0200) ...
The display output, to be given to printf, is built similarly:
output = $(n0000)$(n0100)$(n0200)$(n0300)...
In the real version, this is decorated with an ANSI escape code that
clears the terminal. The printf interprets the escape byte (\033)
so that it doesn’t need to appear literally in the source.
And that’s all there is to it: Conway’s Game of Life running in a Makefile. Life, uh, finds a way.
For anyone needing to use a language they don’t know, Google Translate has been the go-to service to translate native language to foreign. The service has now turned ten, and over those ten years the evolution has been absolutely amazing.
The service started with two languages and now supports 103. It has 500 million users translating over 100 billion words a day, and amazingly, 92% of translations come from outside of the US.
The amount of improvement over the last ten years is staggering. Not only have new features like live translations been added, but the translations themselves have become a lot more natural and accurate. Russian translations used to be awful, but they’ve come a long way.
Happy tenth birthday to Google Translate, and let’s hope there are many more.
Never learn to do anything: if you don’t learn, you’ll always find someone else to do it for you.
Mark Twain
I'm not a germophobe, but I am incredibly lazy. And a kit that retrofits my standard toilet with a touchless, auto-flush mechanism means no more bending over! No more holding the handle down! No more jiggling it to make sure the water stops running under penalty of girlfriend wrath!
Kohler's Touchless Toilet Flush Kit will turn almost any toilet into the kind that keeps your hands clean and your back in the full upright and locked position. You will have to wave your hand over a sensor to activate the flush, but that's kind of like using a magic wand, and will give you the opportunity to yell banishment proclamations at your pee and poo, so it's OK.
Kohler says the touchless flush kit is easy to install, and takes only 10 to 20 minutes (i.e., half the time you end up sitting on the toilet after eating Taco Bell.) Its sensor device sits inside a small black module that mounts to your toilet tank high above the waterline. A chain then connects a flush actuating wheel to the flush valve, and the sensor projects an electromagnetic field through the lid, plus another 2" to 3� above the toilet. It is this area where you'll wave your hand to activate a flush. (Kohler says they've kept the sensor range tight on purpose to preclude accidental flushes.)
The Touchless Toilet Flush Kit comes with all components needed for installation and use, including the 4 x AA batteries it uses to power the sensor. Each set of batteries should be good for 6 to 12 months of flushes, depending on how many times nature calls in your house. A low battery indicator beeps with each flush when replacement is needed.
http://theunderfold.com/2016/04/19/playing-dark-souls-3/
Far too accurate
I wish I could say I wouldn't, but if I was in Link's place I probably would have done the exact same thing.
http://maximumble.thebookofbiff.com/2016/04/29/1322-give-up/
How I feel most days
We recently heard about Google asking for testers for a new travel app, and now we get to take a look at it. The app is called Google Trips and it’s all about trip planning and information.
The test participants who were chosen had to have had an upcoming trip to try the app on, and the app populates itself based on emails from your Gmail. Inside the app you’ll be able to view info on reservations, local transportation, local attractions, and more.
The app also works offline, which is great news for those who don’t insist on buying cell service on an unlocked phone when they go abroad.
Google is currently looking for feedback, so if you have the app, you should definitely tell Google what you think. It’s far from finished and we don’t know when it’ll be officially released, but it’s looking pretty useful. What do you guys think of it?
Google’s OnHub routers are constantly being updated with new features and bug fixes. They’ve gotten significantly better since their release, and as the owner of one, I’ve quite enjoyed the changes.
The latest change is geared more towards the power users, which is great to see as the routers are a bit limited for power users. IFTTT support is now included with the router, so once you sign up for IFTTT, you can head to the OnHub channel and get started tinkering!
IFTTT is a service that allows you to make basic “recipes” that trigger commands based on things happening. For example, you can make it send you an email if a certain device connects to the router, or turn on the lights when your own phone connects to WiFi.
There are plenty more applications, so check out the video below for info and ideas!
