Mahmoud

​at home what do you have 

a snack

​what do call when two circles are next to each other.

a butt

Syrian refugees who found their way to Canada have been placed in a hotel hosting a furry convention. Wonderfully surreal scenes of displaced kids dancing with fursuiters were captured on video and posted to YouTube. The New York Daily News described an "aww-inspiring" encounter. (more…)

Bernie Sanders made folks like me eat a stack of humble pie on Tuesday night. He won the Michigan primary over Hillary Clinton, 50 percent to 48 percent, when not a single poll taken over the last month had Clinton leading by less than 5 percentage points. In fact, many had her lead at 20 percentage points or higher. Sanders’s win in Michigan was one of the greatest upsets in modern political history.

Both the FiveThirtyEight polls-plus and polls-only forecast gave Clinton a greater than 99 percent chance of winning. That’s because polling averages for primaries, while inexact, are usually not 25 percentage points off. Indeed, my colleague Nate Silver went back and found that only one primary, the 1984 Democratic primary in New Hampshire, was even on the same scale as this upset. In that contest, the polling average had Walter Mondale beating Gary Hart by 17 percentage points, but it was Hart who won, with slightly more than 9 percentage points over Mondale.

Indeed, my initial thought was to compare the Sanders upset with Clinton’s over Barack Obama in the 2008 New Hampshire Democratic primary, but that undersells what happened Tuesday night. I was in New Hampshire when Clinton won in 2008 and sat in stunned disbelief — Obama lost by about 3 percentage points, when the polling average had him ahead by 8 percentage points. In other words, tonight’s error was more than double what occurred eight years ago.

The question I am asking myself now is whether this means the polls are off in other Midwestern states that are holding open primaries. I’m talking specifically about Illinois and Ohio, both of which vote next Tuesday. The FiveThirtyEight polling average in Illinois gives Clinton a 37 percentage point lead, while the average in Ohio gives her a 20 percentage point lead. If Michigan was just a fluke (which is possible), then tonight will be forgotten soon enough. If, however, pollsters are missing something more fundamental about the electorate, then the Ohio and Illinois primaries could be a lot closer than expected.

Either way, this result will send a shock wave through the press. Heck, I’m a member of the press, and you might be able to tell how surprised I am. This will likely lead to increased news coverage of the Democratic race, which Sanders desperately needs in order to be competitive next Tuesday and beyond.

Sanders must rack up big wins, and fast. Thanks to an 83 percent to 16 percent win in Mississippi, Clinton gained in the overall delegate count on Tuesday and leads Sanders by more than 200 pledged delegates. Her strong performance in Mississippi also put Sanders further behind his FiveThirtyEight delegate targets. That may not be as sexy as the tremendous upset in Michigan, but math is rarely sexy.

Sanders, however, can breathe a deep sigh of relief that all the states in the Deep South have already voted. He can hope that tonight’s Michigan win will help propel him to victory or at least make him more competitive in states with large delegate prizes left, like California, Florida, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania. We’ll see if it does.

Listen to the latest episode of the FiveThirtyEight elections podcast.

Subscribe: iTunes |Download |RSS |Video

Wired: “Due to an oversight involving a haphazardly-installed Chrome extension during the editing process, the name Donald Trump was erroneously replaced with the phrase ‘Someone With Tiny Hands’ when this story originally published.”

Lockheed-Martin promises patched code will soar this month

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has run into yet another software bug, according to a report in IHS Jane's Defense Weekly.…

On Sunday, March 13, 2016, clocks are set forward one hour as most of the US, Canada, and Mexico's northern border cities begin Daylight Saving Time (DST).

The KLF's album The White Room came out 25 years ago this week, and it is fucking awful. Really, it's just a deplorable house/disco mess and I hate every track.

The KLF themselves, however, are absolute geniuses and I truly admire their commitment. First they published a book in 1988, The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way):

WE GUARANTEE THAT WE WILL REFUND THE COMPLETE PRICE OF THIS MANUAL IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO ACHIEVE A NUMBER ONE SINGLE IN THE OFFICIAL (GALLUP) U.K. CHARTS WITHIN THREE MONTHS OF THE PURCHASE OF THIS MANUAL AND ON CONDITION THAT YOU HAVE FULFILLED OUR INSTRUCTIONS TO THE LETTER. TO RECEIVE THIS GUARANTEE PLEASE WRITE TO KLF PUBLICATIONS, BOX 283, HP21 7HG, U.K. WITH YOUR NAME, ADDRESS AND A PHOTOCOPY OF YOUR PURCHASE RECEIPT AND AN S.A.E. YOU WlLL RECEIVE YOUR GUARANTEE WITHIN 28 DAYS. [...]

Firstly, you must be skint and on the dole. Anybody with a proper job or tied up with full time education will not have the time to devote to see it through. Also, being on the dole gives you a clearer perspective on how much of society is run. If you are already a musician stop playing your instrument. Even better, sell the junk. It will become clearer later on but just take our word for it for the time being. Sitting around tinkering with the Portastudio or musical gear (either ancient or modern) just complicates and distracts you from the main objective. Even worse than being a musician is being a musician in a band. Real bands never get to Number One -- unless they are puppets.

It's really pretty amazing. But then they followed their own instructions, and got a number one single later that year. And then they did it again in 1990. And all of this was wrapped up inside a whole lot of Robert Anton Wilson Illuminatus mythological nonsense.

(If you're like me, you might assume that the unrelenting awfulness of their music was, in fact, part of the joke.)

Then they retired in 1992 with a wonderful table-flip mic-drop:

The KLF and crust punk group Extreme Noise Terror performed a live version of "3 a.m. Eternal" at the BRIT Awards, the British Phonographic Industry's annual awards show; a "violently antagonistic performance" in front of "a stunned music-business audience". Drummond and Cauty had planned to throw buckets of sheep's blood over the audience, but were prevented from doing so due to opposition from BBC lawyers and "hardcore vegans" Extreme Noise Terror. The performance was instead garnished by a limping, kilted, cigar-chomping Drummond firing blanks from an automatic weapon over the heads of the crowd. As the band left the stage, The KLF's promoter and narrator Scott Piering announced over the PA system that "The KLF have now left the music business". Later in the evening the band dumped a dead sheep with the message "I died for you -- bon appetit" tied around its waist at the entrance to one of the post-ceremony parties.

Reactions were mixed.

And then in 1994 they withdrew the remaining £1M they had in the bank, and they set it on fire:

"If we had gone and spent the money on Rolls Royces and swimming pools, I don't think people would be upset. It's because we burnt it. [...] Seeing as you're talking about the charity angle: our burning that money doesn't mean there's any less loaves of bread in the world. Any less apples. Any less anything. The only thing there's less of, is a pile of paper."

"But there could have been a little more. More bread, more apples."

"No. We didn't burn any loaves of bread. We didn't burn any apples. Those loaves of bread still exist. There's nothing less in the world."

People rarely commit like these fellows did. Slow clap.

A behind-the-scenes look into the making of the film THE HOBBIT.

SUBSCRIBE: http://bit.ly/AdultSwimSubscribe

About On Cinema:
On Cinema is Adult Swim's finest authority on film, comparable to the great French film magazines in both content and depth. Host Tim Heidecker (of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!) and recurring guest Gregg Turkington illuminate which of the latest films are must-see's, which are unofficial sequels to unrelated films, and which aren't worth your time on a scale of one-to-five bags of popcorn. The coveted five bags of popcorn might not be given out easily, but that's kind of the point. See every episode of this enriching talk show now at http://AdultSwim.com.

Watch More On Cinema: http://bit.ly/OnCinemaSite

About Adult Swim:
Adult Swim is your late-night home for animation and live-action comedy. Enjoy some of your favorite shows, including Robot Chicken, Venture Bros., Tim and Eric, Aqua Teen, Childrens Hospital, Delocated, Metalocalypse, Squidbillies, and more. Watch some playlists. Fast forward, rewind, pause. It's all here. And remember to visit http://AdultSwim.com for all your full episode needs. We know you wouldn't forget, but it never hurts to make sure.

Connect with Adult Swim Online:
Visit Adult Swim WEBSITE: http://bit.ly/ASWebsite
Like Adult Swim on FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/ASFacebook
Follow Adult Swim on TWITTER: http://bit.ly/ASTweet

Peter Jackson Winged It | On Cinema 4th Annual LIVE Oscar Special | Adult Swim
http://www.youtube.com/user/adultswim

You might think that the difference between “perfume” and “cologne” is who the bottle is intended for, or which counter it’s sold at—the reality is a little more subtle than that. Simply, all fragrances are largely the same, but they’re given a name based on the concentration of oil in alcohol and water.

Read more...

what has science given us beyond timekeeping devices, that when stopped, are far less accurate than their humble stone counterparts??

if you leave out all the things science has given us beyond that, you’re not left with much #flatearth

my favorite episode is where they see a moonman but it’s not a moonman……..

Hovertext: Douse thy life in the ranch dressing of compassion!

New comic!
Today's News:

crunchies

Who would dare handcuff a girl that young? Oh wait. We would!

Don't miss another Gag - Subscribe!: http://goo.gl/wJxjG

Visit our store: TheGagsStore.com

Social Animal? Here are a few interesting links:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/JFLGags
Facebook: http://facebook.com/jflgags
Instagram: http://instagr.am/jflgags

Filmed in Montreal, Quebec

Welcome to I Love Lists Friday! Let’s surf the internet together. 

1. All I ever want in a breakfast.
2. Started a pinterest board for my Spring Capsule Wardrobe!
3. Hello, gorgeous banana bread.
4. Your gifs hypnotize me.
5. Oh, Andrea. It’s beautiful.
6. Gross Kitchen Habits….you’re probably guilty of
7. This makes me want to paint.
8. One of my favorite Mitch Hedberg jokes.
9. Paint Water/Not Paint Water
10. Understanding Cravings. I really needed to read this this week.
11. Louis C.K.’s 70% Rule to Avoid Decision Paralysis
12. Brilliantly witty comic strips.
13. These brownies look bonkers.
14. Kids reads to dogs. This is so cute.
15. Omg #9
16. I love looking at pictures like this
17. All 20 Breakfast items at McDonald’s Ranked.
18. I’d say my parents were pretty strict.  I’m grateful for it though.
19. Amanda recreated one of my favorite breakfasts.
20. Anagrams that will make you laugh & think.
21. Rosa Parks’ featherweight peanut butter pancakes look light & fluffy

Recipes from the archives for your weekend adventures:

• Yogurt Waffles
• Chicken Piccata
• Twice Baked Broccoli Cheddar Potatoes
• The Last Word Cocktail
• Mom’s Coffee Cake

Books to Inspire:

•  A Year of Cozy
• The 52 Lists Project
• Start Where You Are

Things that caught my eye:

• This color palette
• Shot Reverse Shot
• All the plates in this etsy shop
• A new makeup bag

The post I LOVE LISTS appeared first on Shutterbean.

(Reuters) - A crew of goats brought in to devour invasive plants at a popular park in Oregon's state capital, Salem, have been fired because they ate indiscriminately, cost nearly five times as much as human landscapers and smelled far worse, a city official said on Friday.

Dottie may be gone but the show must go on. FishCenter Live continues the healing process TODAY at 4P: fishcenter.com.

SUBSCRIBE: http://bit.ly/AdultSwimSubscribe

Watch FishCenter: the world’s only LIVE marine-themed, call-in show. Streaming every weekday at 4P (continuous replays start at 6P) at fishcenter.com.

About Adult Swim:
Adult Swim is your late-night home for animation and live-action comedy. Enjoy some of your favorite shows, including Robot Chicken, Venture Bros., Tim and Eric, Aqua Teen, Childrens Hospital, Delocated, Metalocalypse, Squidbillies, and more. Watch some playlists. Fast forward, rewind, pause. It's all here. And remember to visit AdultSwim.com for all your full episode needs. We know you wouldn't forget, but it never hurts to make sure.

Connect with Adult Swim Online:
Visit Adult Swim WEBSITE: http://bit.ly/ASWebsite
Like Adult Swim on FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/ASFacebook
Follow Adult Swim on TWITTER: http://bit.ly/ASTweet

FishCenter Recap 2/22/16 | FishCenter | Adult Swim
http://www.youtube.com/user/adultswim

Last May, the IRS said 114,000 accounts were compromised. Now it's revealed that the real number is actually over 700,000. The post Hack Brief: Last Year's IRS Hack Was Way Worse Than We Realized appeared first on WIRED.

The history of the world in famous people’s lifespans.

In other news, water is still wet.

Bill Gates has joined Donald Trump in condemning Apple for refusing to backdoor its products at the behest of the FBI, promising that the company that he founded, a waning firm called Microsoft, would happily compromise its security on demand for the US government.

Though Microsoft's Bitlocker full-disk encryption was considered very secure at its launch, questions have since been raised about its integrity. The company was an early participant in the NSA's Prism program.

Update: Gates has issued a non-denial nonpology insisting that he stands behind his words, but he's still a good guy, so cut him some slack.

Previously.

In modern software development, a project isn't a project without a proper versioning scheme.

Weak version management neglects clients like lack of source control neglects collaborators. Dependency management and migration rely on versions. Beyond the technical, a project's version bears a huge impact on the perception of the project. It informs adoption and entices users to upgrade. The version is attached to the name of the project — appearing closer and more often than the names of the maintainers. Versions are how a project builds a legacy.

So why do projects leave versioning to afterthought? What do clients expect and what do projects need?

Followup: This post culminated in the announcing CalVer and launching calver.org. This page provides a thorough background to the CalVer best practices.

Semantic Versioning

Currently, the go-to versioning system for open-source software is referred to as Semantic Versioning, or SemVer.

Take a quick look at the 40 most recent updates on the Python Package Index (PyPI). My glance showed all but six packages had the comfortable three-part versioning scheme, major.minor.micro. Among those packages the highest minor version was 108. The highest micro version was all the way up to 595.

So, if SemVer is so popular, it must be easy, right? Follow a couple straightforward steps. Pick a number, add one to it. With arithmetic that simple, what could go wrong?

SemVer and code breakage

Everyone knows it's more exciting to announce 2.0 than 1.7.0, even if there's more user demand for the latter than the former. This is especially true with SemVer, because a SemVer major version change implies breaking the API.

As we will see, there are consequences to this. People judge value based on version number. SemVer supports this opaque apples-and-oranges comparison, punishing libraries that get it right on the first try, and encouraging libraries to break APIs to appear more mature and get that coveted 2.0.

SemVer and release blockage

More damaging than the fatuous 2.0 is the epidemic of Zeno's 1.0.

Witness the version, racing to numeric motionlessness. (Image based on Martin Grandjean's.)

To quote the second answer in SemVer's own FAQ:

If your software is being used in production, it should probably already be 1.0.0. If you have a stable API on which users have come to depend, you should be 1.0.0. If you’re worrying a lot about backwards compatibility, you should probably already be 1.0.0.

On this count, SemVer might be found not guilty.² If so, it's the SemVer users that didn't get the memo — myself included. Maybe if it had been in the spec itself.

The problem is the heavy emphasis on "public API" breakage. Conservative library authors end up indefinitely preferring the semantic power of 0.x: The ability to break APIs. Whether the cause is conservatism, humility, or misunderstanding, the effect is misrepresenting the release state of many major libraries.

A more practical scheme might help represent accurate versions for mature, production libraries like Cython (0.23) and SciPy (0.17), both of which have books and nearly a decade of release history still on PyPI.

SemVer and certifiability

Appealing to engineering aesthetics, SemVer is presented as a "specification". But, unlike the vast majority of successful RFCs, there is no validation or certification that can determine whether a project has a correct implementation. Yes, if a project API changes, but the major version is not incremented, the SemVer specification has been violated. But there's no way to test that generally, and no one does it specifically.

SemVer is a detailed suggestion. Software breaks as quickly as SemVer's promise. The remediations do not happen. Better to embrace the realities of versioning, rather than argue over the MUSTs and MUST NOTs of an unenforceable specification.

Collective Expectations

Let's take a brief moment to reconsider the humble version.

We encounter far more software than we write. Few, if any, expect compliance with all the suggestions in SemVer. So what do we expect from our versions?

There are three main expectations driving modern software versioning:

#1 Versions go up

The later the release, the greater the version. Sofware should not change without a version change, and the version must go up, and never come down.

#2 Versions correlate to software quality

A project name communicates an ideal. The project version communicates current progress toward that ideal. Vision pursued by version: The greater the version, the greater the software.

#3 Versions are numeric, except when they're not

Here's where things get hairy. Numeric versions are the default, but non-numeric versions and version components abound.

Version vernacular is now thoroughly mainstream: "alpha", "beta", "dev", "nightly", "stable", and so on. There are also named project versions, like those used in Linux distributions, such as Debian's "jessie", Ubuntu's "trusty", and Windows' "longhorn". Non-numeric versions are often hijacked for branding purposes. Numerical versions' technical utility is much more important to preserve.

Case Study: Chrome vs. Firefox

We take our version expectations for granted, but a convention this fundamental has profound effects at scale. As mentioned above, higher versions are expected to be better, especially within a project. But there is at least one case where this impact very publically spilled out across projects: The Chrome-Firefox Version Wars.

When Google Chrome entered the browser race, it brought with it a fast feature release schedule and a versioning system to match. This versioning system had Chrome see a dozen major releases while Firefox was still 3.x. Firefox looked like it was being left in the dust, despite the fact that Chrome was less mature and, as anyone who used it at the time can attest, Chrome 4 wasn't half the browser Firefox 4 ended up being.

After a couple years of this onslaught, Firefox switched its versioning system to match. Now, despite browsing for hours a day, few users or even developers could tell you off the top of their heads what version of Firefox/Chrome they use.³

SemVer ignored this huge precedent, harshly judging fast-moving projects. Let's call that our last straw and look at an alternative.

Calendar Versioning

If you're an earnest engineer with honest intents of creating, releasing, and maintaining a project, then calendar versioning may be for you. CalVer fulfills all of the versioning expectations, so what advantages does it bring?

CalVer leverages natural understanding

People are calendar-oriented. Practically, it's just easier to remember that a library was causing a live issue back in 2013 than it is to remember that up until version 1.6.18 that library had a lot of bugs.

Furthermore, in long-term development, releases pile up and increasingly large major versions blur together. Browser versions have been rendered meaningless. But the calendar is one construct where numbers increase and cycle regularly. Leveraging that natural understanding anchors otherwise arbitrary versions.

CalVer has better semantics

Ironically yes.

"Semantic" Versioning is all relative. One developer's 1.0.0 is another's 0.0.1alpha. As authors, we try to ignore this and write others off as wrong. But as clients, we make snap judgments, and SemVer lets us forget and pretend. Calendar versioning is absolute and neutral, with practical advantages to boot.

As application developers adding functionality, evaluating a new library means ascertaining maintenance status, usually by looking at the most recent release date. CalVer puts us in the ballpark right away. As maintainers depending on many libraries, calendar versioning allows us to look at the dependency list and quickly ascertain which libraries are good candidates for updating. CalVer even lets us take that a step further, with date-based deprecation.

Many might not realize it, but the oh-so ubiquitous Ubuntu is in fact calendar versioned. For example, version 15.04 came out in April, 2015. It gets better when you remember Long-Term Support. Ubuntu's LTS support lasts for five years. So, 14 + 5: Ubuntu 14.04's end of life will be in 2019. You don't have to look anything up. It's all right there in the CalVer semantics.⁴

CalVer protects projects

If you care about the future of the project, then guard it against one of the worst fates: the fatuous 2.0. Give your project a future. Guard against the learned expectation of 2.0 or death.

A 1.x always carries one advantage over a 2.0: the code is deployed and working. Avoid contempt for past decisions and current users. In engineering, utility is half of correctness.

SemVer is set up so that every major release implies a minimum threshold of change. If the project is founded on and aiming for correctness, fewer and fewer changes are required. Donald Knuth embraced this in the extreme by having TeX's version approach π asymptotically. Suffice to say with CalVer, you are safe to add as much or as little functionality as needed.

Too often projects become a victim of versioning. New projects end up masquerading as new versions. D3 could have been Protovis 2.0, but instead, a successor was created. Both projects coexisted and we are all the better for it. Same with characteristic and attrs. Successors and CalVer protect projects and do justice by clients and code.

Summary

Consider adding a calendar component to your next library's versioning schemes. As for my opinion, I've joined other maintainers in doing so for boltons and ashes. I've found it makes a lot of sense for libraries, and a little less sense for protocols and services.⁵

Either way, think about project versions. The version is part of your project's face and your clients' integration. After spending days, weeks, and months on a project, it's worthwhile to spend a few minutes or hours designing a versioning system tailored to the needs of project users and maintainers.

If you're into enterprise software considerations like these, subscribe or follow me on Twitter for some details about my upcoming O'Reilly project.

---

Russia requested permission on Monday to fly a surveillance plane equipped with an advanced electro-optical imaging sensor over the US, despite objections from American officials. Both the US and Russia are signatories on the Open Skies Treaty, an in...

“and this one is in the shape of the word ‘gamer,’ and bios starts up with a shotgun noise, a chainsaw noise, and a sexy moan. you can disable the shotgun noise though”

Machine-powered variant