It's difficult to keep up with the movement in the Edmonton Oilers' crease. The club began this season with a goaltending tandem of Devan Dubnyk and Jason LaBarbera. Midway through the year, they brought in Ilya Bryzgalov.
On Tuesday, on the eve of the trade deadline, they made another series of moves, bringing in Viktor Fasth from the goalie-rich Anaheim Ducks and, to make room, moving Ilya Bryzgalov to the Minnesota Wild for a fourth-round pick.
Bryzgalov had better hope he's got that fear of bears under control. He'll be wearing one on his jersey. (Yes, that's a bear. Let's not argue about the intricacies of the Wild's new logo).
The Wild have been rumoured to be in the market for a goalie for months now, thanks in large part to the uncertainty in their crease, with Josh Harding battling complications with his MS medication, and Nicklas Backstrom battling through injury. Darcy Kuemper has been filling the void in the meantime, and admirably -- he was one of the NHL's Three Stars this week -- but they needed an insurance policy.
The Wild have been tied to names like Brodeur and Jaroslav Halak, but it seems like they're confident enough in Kuemper to find him a partner as opposed to a replacement. That's where Bryz comes in.
He's is a fine choice. He comes cheap, for one thing, and for another, if anybody knows how to shut down crease drama, it's him.
As for the Oilers, this is a smart move for them. The Ducks needed to jettison a goalie, and Fasth has the potential to push Scrivens for the starting job. With Scrivens on a two-year show-me contract, and Fasth making $2.9 million a season over the same span, the Oilers now have two guys who could stake a claim to be their number one in the future.
I don't see this burning Minnesota. Bryz is an insurance policy anyway. And I don't see it burning Edmonton. But this could conceivably burn the Ducks, if Fasth is able to grab this opportunity and run with it. We'll give this one two Milburys:
They look blue, but they have no pigment. The appearance of color is generated by iridescence, as explained at Ed Yong's Not Exactly Rocket Science:
These little orbs are iridescent – they use special layers of cells, arranged just so, to reflect colours with extraordinary intensity. This trick relies on the microscopic physical structures of the cells, rather than on any chemical pigments. Indeed, the fruits have no blue pigment at all.
In the animal kingdom, such tricks are commonplace – you can see them at work on the wings of a butterfly, the shells of jewel beetles, or the feathers of pigeons, starlings, birds or paradise and even some dinosaurs. But in the plant world, pigments dominate and structural colours were thought to be non-existentare much rarer...
It was collected from Ghana in 1974 but it’s still as vivid as ever. (Unlike pigments, structural colours don’t degrade, so the fruits will retain their sheen for decades to come. Some fossils still keep their iridescence.)..
As light hits the top layer, some gets reflected and the rest passes through. The same thing happens at the next layer, and the next, and so on. Provided the layers are exactly the right distance apart, the reflected beams of light amplify each other to produce exceptionally strong colours. The technical term is “multilayer interference”. Or alternatively: “Ooh, shiny!”
More at the link about the evolutionary aspects of this adaptation. Via Ephemeral Curios, a science- and nature-oriented blog by a TYWKIWDBI reader.
Judy Mascolo made this amazing stained glass window of the triforce from zelda. I’m including a couple more photos of Judy’s work, but it doesn’t do her collection justice. there are INSANE amounts of awesome video game / geeky stained glass works on her flickr site and you must go check them out!
Here we have a plant from plants and zombies as well as mario and yoshi.
my jealousy of people who know how to do stained glass has not waned… seriously, I WANT these.
This is insane. I would never buy this (not that I was thinking about it). But people are dumb.
Your third-party pods will be no good here, soon.
Keurig is setting itself up to attempt a type of coffee "DRM" on the pods used in its coffee-making machines, according to a report from Techdirt. Keurig's next-gen machines would be unable to interact with third-party coffee pods, thus locking customers into buying only the Keurig-branded K-cups or those of approved partners.
The single-cup coffee brewers made by Keurig (owned by Green Mountain Coffee) spurred a rush by coffee brands into the single-cup-pod trade. The K-Cup patent expired in 2012, and prior to that, Green Mountain bought up many of its competitors, including Tully's Coffee Corporation and Timothy's Coffees. Competitors continue to sell K-Cups, often at a 15- to 25 percent markdown from Green Mountain's own pods, according to a lawsuit filed against Green Mountain by TreeHouse Foods.
Green Mountain plans to launch "Keurig 2.0" this fall, a new set of machines that will only interact with Green-Mountain-approved pods. There is no documentation showing how Green Mountain will control this. But if Sony is any precedent, it seems like maintaining control over plastic pods of coffee may be an uphill battle.
Is it time you start saying goodbye to your [insert favorite toasted Quiznos sandwich here]? Not quite, but the sandwich chain is reportedly readying itself to file for bankruptcy-court protection in the next few weeks, under the strain of complaining franchisees and a $570 million debt load.
The Wall Street Journal cites insiders who say Quiznos has been wheeling and dealing with creditors for weeks to work on a restructuring plan to ensure a smooth cruise through bankruptcy court, but negotiations haven’t resulted in a deal just yet.
Even with a Chapter 11 filing to help Quiznos, the company will have to also work on its apparently testy relationship with many franchisees who say they just can’t compete with other businesses because it’s so expensive to run a Quiznos. And if your franchise locations aren’t thriving, that means the entire brand suffers.
Franchisees not only have to pay fees to the company to use the name Quiznos, but operators also have to buy most of their supplies and ingredients from Quiznos’ distribution business. Many franchisees complained that that business is overcharging them for what they could get cheaper elsewhere.
One franchisee said he spent about $350,000 to open a Quiznos franchise in 2005, but quickly realized that the business wouldn’t make enough money to cover expenses, and ended up selling the franchise for half what he paid for it. That was less than a year from when he bought it.
He says his annual sales would’ve come in around $600,000, but when he was losing $3,000 to $5,000 a month, it wasn’t worth it.
“It sounds like we were doing a lot [of business] but there was actually no profit because of food costs and labor,” he said.
The form I had to fill out to be reimbursed for my ALA membership asked for my SSN, which I wouldn't provide, of course, Because I really want that hanging around in some spreadsheet somewhere. Of course, it would be better if the SSN was public information, like other countries, and not something that was supposed to be secret. Find another way to verify me for a car loan.
Yes, my social security number was on display to everyone I handed my college ID card to. I was young and stupid.
Through my tenure as a student at the University of Maryland from 2000 to 2004, my social security number also doubled as my student identification number. I'd use this number and a password whenever I logged into the college's online management system, Testudo, which I did for everything from course selection and monitoring grades to signing up for basketball tickets. (Go Terps! 2002 National Champs whooo!) I vaguely recall having the option to change my student ID number to something else, but neither I nor anyone I knew ever went to the trouble of doing so.
This state of affairs comes to my mind at the moment because of an e-mail I got earlier this week telling me that my alma mater "was the victim of a sophisticated computer security attack that exposed records containing personal information." My name, social security number, and birthday are likely part of a cache of nearly 310,000 leaked records belonging to students and staffers going back to 1998.
After reading the e-mail, I immediately reverted to journalist mode; surely a security breach of over 300,000 computerized student records was the kind of story that would be relevant to the readers of this site. When I consulted with Ars Security Editor Dan Goodin on how to cover it, though, the response was pretty lukewarm.
“The tax itself would encourage people to reduce their drinking of sugar-sweetened beverages,” said Elissa Bassler, CEO of the Illinois Public Health Institute. NO IT WON'T. Did we not learn anything from cigarette tax?
Tax would add $1.44 for a 12-pack and 68 cents to a 2-liter bottle. Diet sodas would not be taxed.
Lloyd Oliver, a Democratic candidate for District Attorney in Harris County, Texas, doesn't think domestic violence is a real problem. He indicated to the Texas Observer that if elected, he'd move funding away from domestic violence to other issues. Harris County happens to have the highest rate of domestic homicides in Texas.
In an interview with the Observer's Emily Deprang, released Wednesday, Oliver said that “family violence is so, so overrated." Oliver, 70, has been a criminal defense attorney for 40 years. He's made unsuccessful bids for public office before, mostly to drum up business for his law firm.
And this isn't the first time he's espoused his views about domestic violence — in 2012, he said on a Texas radio show that victims should "maybe learn how to box a little better." When confronted about this statement on a PBS broadcast later in the year, he offered this:
There are some people — I don’t understand it — but part of their making love is beat up one another first. Why do we want to get involved in people's bedrooms?
According to the Observer, Oliver then went on to explain that taxpayer money and jail space should be reserved for "baby rapers."
Oliver will face former prosecutor Kim Ogg in the Democratic primary on March 4. It may seem like his campaign is dead in the water, but he already won the Democratic nomination for Harris County D.A. in 2012. The Republican candidate prevailed in the general election.
In other news, people are buying power ups for CCS. Wow.
King Digital Entertainment, the company behind the mega-hit game Candy Crush, has filed its IPO papers with the SEC, offering investors a look inside its massive popularity. And, well, dear God. Last year the company took in $1.88 billion with $568 million in profits—half $1 billion in profits! To put this in perspective, a mobile gaming company specializing in colored sugar baubles made more than a quarter of Amazon's lifetime earnings in a year.
Here's a brisk look at the most insane numbers, using these charts from the IPO as a guide.
1. The players. Start with the top-left graph, which shows 124 million daily average users (i.e.: DAUs). Candy Crush, a free-to-play game, attracts 98 million of those players. So, 100 million people play the same game every day. That's about the size of America's four largest states—California, Texas, New York, and Florida—combined. But the vast majority of these players don't pay Candy Crush a cent. So how does it make money?
2. The payers. Now to the top-right graph. Candy Crush's business depends on about 12 million daily players, or 4% of its population, to buy power-ups. There's nothing scary about a freemium business model so long as you move enough gamers through the door to convert them into payers, but it's already clear how challenging this will be for King, who admits in the IPO filing that average monthly payers have already declined by 1 million since the third quarter of 2013.
3. The profit. Now a look the bottom two graphs. First, the astonishingly good news. "Of the 5000 companies in NASDAQ, only 6 have as much revenue ($1.88b) and fat profit margins (30%) as King," Wall Street Journal buisness editor Dennis Berman tweeted this morning. But take a closer squint at the Q4 figures for revenue, gross bookings, profit, and adjusted earnings: They're all falling. King explains that "this movement is as a result of the seasoning of our older games in certain markets among our more occasional customers." It's a plausible explanation, but it's not a good excuse: You don't IPO into a crowded and competitive mobile gaming market when your consumer base is "seasoning"—which is admirably original IPO-speak for "disappearing."
4. The platform. Candy Crush's success might or might not last. But the power of mobile as a business seems pretty durable at this point. Weeks after Facebook and Twitter announced that they've figured out the mobile ad game, King says 70% of its bookings were generated by mobile users—a 7X increase since December 2012. It already has 408 monthly active users—a third as much as Facebook and 70 percent more than Twitter.
5. The problem. King isn't a diversified business. It's a viral hit. And the thing about viruses is that they tend to go away after a while. Candy Crush accounts for 78% of King's total business (and 86% of its mobile biz) and most of its meaningful numbers—paying users, revenue, profits—are already declining. Meanwhile, the experience of Zynga, Farmville, and Angry Birds suggests that these games are mobile mayflies, bursting into experience and flaming out in the blink of an eye. Candy Crush might be a marvelous game. It appears, for now, to be a slightly less marvelous investment.
King Digital Entertainment, the firm behind the ridiculously addictive game Candy Crush Saga, is going public.
According to the Irish company's Initial Public Offering SEC F-1 filing, King hopes the IPO will raise up to $500 million. The company has not yet decided the price range of each share or how many to list, but will likely look for a multibillion dollar valuation.
In the filing, the company offered some Candy-Crush-like infographics to illustrate just how insanely popular their flagship game is. Candy Crush dominates the company's other mobile games, with roughly 950 million more daily game plays and 78 million daily average users (on average in December 2013) than King's second most popular game, Pet Rescue saga. King has seen soaring growth in the past year, most of thanks to the cult obsession with Candy Crush and the millions of gamers who pay for perks like extra lives and other advantages.
In 2013, King's profit was $567.6 million, per the Wall Street Journal,an exponential increase from its 2012 profit of $7.8 million. The company's revenue jumped from $164.4 million to $1.88 billion that year.
Those numbers, however, aren't necessarily enough to get investors to reach into their wallets. According to Re/code, the fact that Candy Crush — which generates 78 percent of the company's revenue — is so far outpacing King's other games will certainly be viewed by investors as a red flag:
Even though revenue skyrocketed last year, it declined from $621 million in the third quarter to $602 million in the fourth quarter. King says “the decline was driven by a decrease in Candy Crush Saga gross bookings,” even though it is making a concerted effort to diversify into other games like “Pet Rescue Saga”, “Farm Heroes Saga”, “Papa Pear Saga” and “Bubble Witch Saga.”
Wary investors could (and should) look to Zynga as an example. The gaming company behind uber-popular Facebook-based games like Farmville went public in 2011, but has been in freefall ever since, due to the company's inability to launch another game as popular. But the jury's still out on Zynga, which some say could be just as profitable as initially thought. Yahoo Finance writer Kevin Chupka thinks Zynga is due for a comeback, arguing that the company's stock dip was due to their lack of mobile offerings. King, on the other hand, operates primarily in the mobile sphere, relying on mobile apps for seventy percent of its revenue.
The company secretly filed the offering last summer, but held off on announcing, as the Telegraph reported earlier this week that the company may have been experiencing cold feet. So it might be a while before King pushes forward with the plan and actually hits the market. But when they do, it will be under the symbol "KING," so people pouring money into "CNDY" or "CRSH" will be sorely disappointed.
Mainly sharing because I didn't know this book was a thing.
In honor of that special time of year when New Year’s resolutions are made abandoned, Laughton in the U.K. draws our attention to this particularly apropos selection from Awful Library Books.
"I know the giraffe is a nice looking animal, but I don't think there would have been such an outrage if it had been an antelope, and I don't think anyone would have lifted an eyebrow if it was a pig."
The Copenhagen Zoo is under major fire for putting a perfectly healthy giraffe to death in front of visitors, including children, and then proceeding to skin, slice and feed it to the zoo's lions. According to the Associated Press, the public event, promoted as a teaching exercise for the children, was well attended. (Warning: Some of the photos below might be upsetting to animal lovers.)
According to the zoo, the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA) recommended it put down Marius The Giraffe, because there were already too many giraffes with similar genes in the EAZA's breeding program. Plus, the Copenhagen Zoo already has seven other giraffes.
The Zoo went through with the euthanization even though more than 20,000 people signed an online petition to save Marius and one individual offered to buy the animal for $680,000. The zoo also refused offers from Britain's Yorkshire Wildlife Park because Marius' older brother lives there, and the Copenhagen Zoo's scientific director Bengt Holst didn't want Marius to take up space that could be used by a "genetically more valuable giraffe."
The zoo veterinarian, who shot the lethal bullet, described the killing in a similarly stark manner to Reuters:
The zoo veterinarian, said the giraffe was coaxed into a yard and over to a zookeeper, who held out rye bread - a food the giraffe was especially fond of, according to the video footage, which was distributed by Reuters TV. "I stood behind with a rifle, and when he put his head forward and ate the rye bread, then I shot him through the brain," he said. "It sounds violent, but it means that Marius had no idea of what was coming. He got his bread, then he died."
AP /POLFOTO, Rasmus Flindt Pedersen
Zoo spokesman Tobias Stenbaek Bro was less than sentimental when defending the zoo's decision to show children the vicious circle of life, even when it includes the dismembering of giraffes with human names. "I'm actually proud because I think we have given children a huge understanding of the anatomy of a giraffe that they wouldn't have had from watching a giraffe in a photo." What a nice lesson in death and eugenics for our children.
Holst also questioned motives of those raising an uproar about Marius, wondering if anyone would care if a less attractive animal were the victim.
"I know the giraffe is a nice looking animal, but I don't think there would have been such an outrage if it had been an antelope, and I don't think anyone would have lifted an eyebrow if it was a pig." The children of Denmark are learning all of life's lessons in one go, apparently.
Per the Zoo's website, which poses the question "Why does Copenhagen Zoo euthanize a healthy giraffe?" offers this explanation:
If an animal’s genes are well represented in a population further breeding with that particular animal is unwanted. As this giraffe’s genes are well represented in the breeding programme and as there is no place for the giraffe in the Zoo’s giraffe herd the European Breeding Programme for Giraffes has agreed that Copenhagen Zoo euthanize the giraffe. This is a situation that we know from other group animals that breed well. When breeding success increases it is sometimes necessary to euthanize.
The statement adds, "we see this as a positive sign," and reminds readers that "the same type of management is used in deer parks where red deer and fallow deer are culled to keep the populations healthy."
AP/POLFOTO, Rasmus Flindt Pedersen
The Dublin Zoo says it "does not agree with the euthanasia of a young healthy giraffe which took place at Copenhagen Zoo. We were very saddened to hear that this occurred despite the fact that there were zoos willing to take the animal." But animal rights groups are taking this as an opportunity to criticize all zoos, and to shed light on their cruel treatment of animals.
Animal Rights Sweden called for a boycott, saying "It is no secret that animals are killed when there is no longer space, or if the animals don't have genes that are interesting enough." A representative from Denmarks' Organisation Against the Suffering of Animals said the incident "shows that the zoo is in fact not the ethical institution that it wants to portray itself as being, because here you have a waste product -- that being Marius."
Well there you have it, kids. Giraffes live, genetically redundant giraffes die. If they're lucky, they get some bread before their body is ripped apart and eaten by carnivorous creatures in front of a rapt audience. Welcome to the cruel, dark world.
Over at the Sweethome, we researched robot vacuums for 22 hours, consulted allergy experts, and invited two of the best robots into our home for a few weeks. The Roomba 650 was easy to use and worked well on both bare floors and carpet, it even reminded us a bit of a pet.
Print this adorable page and fill in the blanks to share colorful clues with your Valentine. Your admirer can take this pretty, portable Wish List to your nearest retailer or shop online for the present that makes your heart skip a beat.
Youtube 
