December 2011

Because it means I get churro-derived breakfast cereal. Athena and I both spotted this box in the store, said “Dude! Churro cereal!” almost simultaneously, and lunged for the box. I got it first because I still have the slightly longer reach. But I will share it with her, I promise. Regardless, it is truly an age of miracles and wonders. And for those of you asking whether it’s actually possible to get the sheer, unalloyed awesomeness of a churro into a breakfast cereal form, the answer is, of course not. Churros are perhaps nature’s most perfect hot fried pastry; Post Mini Cinnamon Churros™ can’t hope to replicate their native awesomeness. And as a breakfast cereal, the individual churro nuggets seem little unwieldy to me (I’m eating it as a snack, picking up each piece with my fingers, rather than trying to navigate the things unto a spoon through a bowl of milk). But this breakfast cereal version seems more like a churro than, say, a breakfast cereal version of a doughnut is like an actual donut, or a breakfast cereal version of a cookie is like one of them. The breakfast cereal churro is at least in the same actual family as the real thing, rather than being merely a sugared corn product extruded in the shape of something you’d rather be eating. So it gets a pass from me. I could go on about how a churroesque breakfast cereal is a testimony to the growing cultural and financial power of the burgeoning Hispanic market in the US. But then I would need graphs and charts and an easel. What I can tell you is that churros are fantastic and that having them even in denatured breakfast cereal form makes me happy. So thank you, Hispanic America, for being enough of a purchasing force in the US that I got to eat these this morning. You rock.

By choosing images over links, and by restricting markup, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are hostile to HTML. This is leading to the plague of infographics crowding out text, and of video used to convey minimal information. The rise of so-called infographics has been out of control this year, though the term was unknown a couple of years ago. I attribute this to the favourable presentation that image links get within Facebook, followed by Twitter and Google plus, and of course though other referral sites like Reddit. By showing a preview of the image, the item is given extra weight over a textual link; indeed even for a url link, Facebook and G+ will show an image preview by default. Consequently, the dominant form of expression has become the image. This was already happening with LOLcats and other meme generators like Rage Comics, where a trite observation can be dressed up with an image or series of images. Before this, in the blogging age, there was a weight given to prose pieces, and Facebook and Google preserve some of this, but the expressiveness of HTML through linking, quoting, using images inline, changing font weight and so on, is filtered out by the crude editing tools they make available. Feeds and feed readers started out this way too, but rapidly gained the ability to include HTML markup. Twitter went back to the beginning, and added the extra constrain of 140 characters because of it's initial SMS focus. Now it is painfully reinventing markup, though the gigantic envelope and wrapper of metadata that accompanies every tweet. This now has an edit list for entities pointing into it, and instructions for how to parse this to regain the author's intent is part of the overhead of working with their API. Image links, however — at least those from recognised partners — are given privileged treatment. Facebook and Google have emulated this too, leading to the 'trite quote as image' trope. The spillover of this to news organisations became complete this year, with blogs and newspapers falling over themselves to link to often-tendentious information presented in all-caps and crude histogram form. So here's my plea for 2012: Twitter, Facebook, Google+: please provide equal space for HTML. And for authors and designers everywhere, stop making giant bitmaps when well-written text with charts that are worth the bytes spent on them could convey your message better. Update: My son made a Rage Comic version of this post (with an explanation) why.

@dammitsweeney: "The fundamental problem is that many products are created to be sold, not used." care of @mitten. I'd expand it to things...

An ECMAscript framework to compile and run Lua code, allowing Lua to run in a browser or in Flash

Ah, the anticipation of Christmas morning. Who could ever forget that frenzied level of excitement we felt as children as we climbed into bed on Christmas Eve, with our palms sweating and our hearts racing. If you grew up celebrating Christmas, it's likely that you've felt this way at least once in your life (maybe you still do). The experience of waking up on Christmas morning and discovering a cache of otherwise unattainable goodies is one that you will never, ever forget. I have to tell you that my heart is pounding right now just writing this.

And with this comes my old friend: the solo, in-my-brain roleplaying. SWTOR is the first MMORPG to engage the part of my brain where my imagination dwells – and I’ve played a lot of them. Usually, I’m left with the cheap thrill of my level increasing, or my sword getting gnarlier, and SWTOR definitely leans on these same trappings occasionally. But, regardless, Bioware has succeeded in igniting my brain in ways that only single player games have previously – and, to frank with ya’ll, I can’t stop playing it. The in-brain back story and moral compass are all firmly in play, and enriching the game constantly.

@fwenzel: Full Sail "Wreck the Halls" out of a Full Sail glass. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmh.

Humans owe their big brains and sophisticated culture to a single genetic mutation that weakened our jaw muscles about 2.4 million years ago, a new study suggests.

QuickBoot is a handy utility to make it easier to reboot into your Boot Camp windows drive, or even another OS X install. It will also not permantly change your startup disk so once you reboot again, it'll boot back to your standard OS. Choose to boot windows and go get a drink, no more waiting around holding the option key. Great for bluetooth keyboard users where option key might not always work.

Favorite: Scott Weiland - I'll Be Home For Christmas, by scottweilandtv Music video for 'I'll Be Home For Christmas', a track from Scott Weiland's new holiday album, "The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year"

Favorite: [07] FAITH NO MORE - Poker Face (Lady Gaga) / Chinese Arithmetic (Download Festival 2009) *Sync* HQ, by fnmdownload2009 Faith No More - Poker Face (Lady Gaga) / Chinese Arithmetic (High Quality & Synchronized audio) Live @ Download Festival 2009 Donington Park, UK Mike Patton - lead vocals Billy Gould - bass guitar Mike Bordin - drums Roddy Bottum - keyboards Jon Hudson - guitar

However, there are still some of you out there that haven’t heard all of the tracks from previous years. So let’s rectify that. Below, you’ll find all of our exclusive VENTURE BROS. holiday tunes, leading up to the big debut of this year’s insta-classic.

Favorite: The Right Decision - Jesus Jones, by udenjan Video from album Perverse.

Favorite: Zeroes And Ones - Jesus Jones, by udenjan video from album Perverse

Favorite: Jesus Jones - Right Here Right Now - Hey Hey 8th June 1991, by DigitalStrip Jesus Jones perform on Australian TV show "Hey Hey It's Saturday" broadcast on 8th June 1991

The best memorial to the victims of 9/11, in Schneier’s view, would be to forget most of the “lessons” of 9/11. “It’s infuriating,” he said, waving my fraudulent boarding pass to indicate the mass of waiting passengers, the humming X-ray machines, the piles of unloaded computers and cell phones on the conveyor belts, the uniformed T.S.A. officers instructing people to remove their shoes and take loose change from their pockets. “We’re spending billions upon billions of dollars doing this—and it is almost entirely pointless. Not only is it not done right, but even if it was done right it would be the wrong thing to do.”

The decision, a milestone in the much-delayed revival of plant construction sought by the nuclear industry, involves the Westinghouse AP1000, a 1,154-megawatt reactor with a so-called advanced passive design. It relies more heavily on forces like gravity and natural heat convection and less on pumps, valves and operator actions than other models do, in theory diminishing the probability of an accident.

source: http://i.imgur.com

[tastefullyoffensive:via]

The US appeal court has ruled that "YouTube on steroids" site Veoh can't be sued for copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Judge Raymond Fisher said that rights holders (like UMG) were in a better place to identify infringing content than the video sharing site, putting the burden of finding and reporting dodgy vids on the record company's shoulders. The old-slugger's victory means that Viacom has less of a leg to stand on in its upcoming appeal against YouTube, since Judges can use the case as precedent to make their decisions. Sadly, victory will ring hollow for Veoh since the onslaught of litigation caused it to file for chapter seven bankruptcy before getting flogged on the cheap to Qlipso last year. UMG v. Veoh: victory has never been so pyrrhic originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink   |  Reuters, Judgment (PDF)  | Email this | Comments

submitted by mepper[link] [12 comments]

@sween: Well, these cookies aren't going to feed themselves to squirrels while clapping and giggling like a three-year old.

Kevin Hoffman / The Blotter:Gay community apologizes to Amy Koch for ruining her marriage  —  The gay and lesbian community of Minnesota has issued a letter of apology to recently resigned Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch for ruining the institution of marriage and causing her to stray from her husband and engage in an “inappropriate relationship.”

submitted by go1dfish[link] [comment]

I suppose we could blame The Curse on The Fall, but then this phylogeny would suggest that Adam and Eve were part of a population of squirrel-like proto-primates living in the early Paleocene. That’s rather unbiblical, though, and what did the bats and elephant shrews do to deserve this?

pi4nobl4ck: Place your bets.

Remember when I said Chrome was annoying (and probably hinted they were evil) because they hid the ‘view source’ command? Welcome to evil Firefox! And yeah, Firefox also hides the protocol in the latest versions. Luckily it’s fairly easy to unhide it. Still, I’m not a fan of the layer of chrome being applied to Firefox.

Pat Garofalo / ThinkProgress:Auto Industry Success Continues, Further Vindicating Obama Rescue  —  Though the economy has struggled throughout 2011, one sector that saw some significant improvement was the American auto industry.  In fact, about one million more cars are expected to be sold this year than last year …

Favorite: Baby otters in my tub w/ no water, by WildlifeRehaber My grandma fed the otters in the tub but hasn't turned on the water yet

In a follow-up to his rocketry reviews in the Make: Ultimate Kit Guide, Stefan Jones sent us this wonderful backstory on how he got involved in hobby rocketry. It really brought back memories for me because I was introduced to model rocketry through the same year’s Estes catalog and had a very similar reaction. I’m sure many makers of our generation had a similar experience. -Gareth

The ADK TinkerKit is a complete pack of 25 TinkerKit Modules, Arduino Mega ADK, Mega Sensor Shield, and necessary wires to kickstart your Android development experience without soldering.

There have been discussions on this before, but they mostly come down to "I think it will...." or "It probably won't...". Who has actually tried it, how did it work, and how did you add it (Do you add it to the starter or wort, and if you add it to the starter do you aerate the wort)? I want to hear first hand experiences rather than just theories.

Bug fixes for the new django authentication. (bugs 703364 and 706530 and 708826) James built a new message broadcast app we will add to the site in 1.9 (bugs 705675 and 711728) Les merged our 'mdn' and 'master' branches and put the new wiki pages behind waffle so we can use more sane branches (bugs 702988 and 702989 and 702990 and 705849) Added attribution for our tumbeasts images (bug 704085) Tweaks and fixes to the now-released Apps page Various other bugs and fixes MDN 1.9 Les and Craig have done some good work to set us up to transition to BrowserID! At first we'll cover the "golden paths" of BrowserID - i.e., log in existing users with a single account, register new users. Aside from BrowserID, we're just working on a bunch of smaller bug fixes around the holidays. In Q1 2012 we are planning to sprint thru our wiki migration from MindTouch to django. Les has already started a migration script we will work on to import all the MindTouch wiki pages into django. That will be a big focus of 2.0. After that, the only big unknown is how to replace DekiScript with JavaScript. Since Jay will be gone, John is re-joining us part-time to do some product management along with folks from the Developer Engagement team until we hire a dedicated PM. Until that happens, we're going to work hard on the wiki migration and we'll only add features if they are high priority - like Apps, BrowserID, mobile, etc.

Benjamin J. Heckendorn is no stranger to game pads designed for people with disabilities, but the macro controller he just whipped up for Patrick Crowley (pictured above) might be his most impressive accessibility hack yet. On the latest episode of his show the modding extraordinaire crafts a breakout box that allows a complex set of commands to be triggered with just the touch of a button or foot switch. The box at the heart of the project is powered by a PIC microcontroller that takes inputs from a series of modular switches (up to eight) and turns them into virtual button presses that are fed to an Xbox 360 through a standard controller. In addition to being able to swap in eight different inputs, each one can be programmed to perform a different macro. We won't ruin all of the fun -- check out the PR and full episode after the break to watch everything from Ben Heck's holiday epiphany through the final testing. Continue reading Ben Heck delivers holiday cheer to gamer with modded macro controller Ben Heck delivers holiday cheer to gamer with modded macro controller originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Another six weeks have gone by, and another version of Firefox has been released. Still not officially "live," Firefox 9 improves on Firefox 8 with a JavaScript engine that's up to 30 percent faster and, well, not a whole lot else. Mac OS X users will have a little more to gain, as Firefox 9 also includes two-finger gestures for backward and forward navigation on that platform. The new version includes a number of bug fixes to improve stability and security, better support for HTML5, CSS, and MathML, and some improvements to its Do Not Track feature to allow scripts to know if tracking is enabled or not. All told, the new release includes more than one thousand bug fixes and improvements. But if Firefox users will notice anything new in Firefox 9, it's the JavaScript engine. The updated engine is potentially a big win for Firefox. Common JavaScript benchmarks have shown performance improvements of around 30 percent, and a paper about the new technology claims that real Web sites can see performance gains of 50 percent. The new JavaScript technology in question is called type inference. JavaScript is a dynamic language—a variable in JavaScript could be a number, or a string, or an array, or a function, or even change from one thing to another. This makes writing scripts forgiving, but makes it much harder for JavaScript engines to generate high-performance x86 code. When adding two variables, the engine has to consider all the different possibilities. With type inference, Firefox's JavaScript engine can, in many situations, figure out what type a variable is. In turn, this allows the generated code to be faster and more specific; it no longer has to consider all the different possibilities.Google's Dart tries to tackle the same problem, but requires a whole new language to do so. Read the comments on this post

Favorite: Pulling a tooth using a Nerf gun, by hoejo76 Nerf Big Bow is the perfect tooth extractor for creative young boys.... just watch and learn :)

Here’s the thing: If you’re using the holiday season to go out of your way to be an asshole to someone, believer or non-believer, you’re doing it wrong, and I wish you would stop. That’s not a war, it’s a slap fight and it’s embarrassing. As a non-believer, when someone says “Merry Christmas” to me, I say “Merry Christmas” back, because generally speaking I understand that what “Merry Christmas” means in this context is “I am offering you good will in a way I know how,” and I appreciate that sentiment. Left to my own devices, I use “Happy holidays” because I know a lot of people who aren’t Christians (or at least Christmas-centered) and that seems the best way to express my own good will; the vast majority of people get what I’m doing and appreciate that sentiment too.

A broad interpretation of SOPA's anti-circumvention language would sweep even more broadly than Tor. Software such as VPNs, used by security-conscious businesses, can also "bypass" a SOPA-established blockade. So could DNS software. And even the humble "/etc/hosts" file, part of every major operating system including OS X, Linux, and Windows, can be pressed into service as a SOPA-bypasser as well.

Favorite: Granpa Shuffelin' (Original), by IttasteLikeshit Yeah granpa, keep it up! http://www.facebook.com/mikemiers

location of my cat [tastefullyoffensive:via]

[via]

But whether John McCain or House Republicans have done or are doing more damage to the Republican Party isn't something that most people care about. What they care about is making sure that Congress doesn't raise their taxes while the economy is still in recovery. And if Republicans cared more about that, we wouldn't be facing this stalemate now. The American public would be better off, and so would the GOP.

Favorite: House GOP Refuses to Allow Dem Whip to Speak on Floor & Offer Senate Compromise, by NancyPelosi This morning, Speaker Pro Tempore Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA), under orders from Speaker Boehner, refused to allow Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer to speak on the floor and ask for unanimous consent to bring up the Senate bipartisan compromise to extend the payroll tax cut. Whip Hoyer and Congressman Chris Van Hollen are continuing to try to offer the Senate compromise even though Republicans walked off the floor. Once again, Republicans are risking a tax increase on 160 million Americans and the loss unemployment benefits for those who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own.

JavaScript had a difficult childhood. It grew up in lawless neighbourhoods surrounded by gangs. It spent a lot of time listening to its parents fighting with one another about what they wanted it to be when it grew up. As any young language would, it tried hard to please its parents (and that barmy committee of uncles, and all the other random people trying to shape its future). As a result it suffers from what can only be described as behavioural quirks. Depending on which gang it’s hanging out with it will sometimes happily talk to you through its console.log, at other times refuse to say anything, and yet other times it will blow up in your face (but not tell you why).

@primesuspect: Still can't get over how brilliant Valve marketing is. I just won a free game... for playing a game. It's like they love us or something.

@SaraJChipps: Lastly, as long as I'm sharing controversial opinions: Coffee script is the devil.

SabreDAV allows you to easily add WebDAV support to a PHP application. SabreDAV is meant to cover the entire standard, and attempts to allow integration using an easy to understand API.

Favorite: Copper Pipe Magnet, by JamesRB1995 We have weird gravity here in Rockford Illinois. The neodymium magnets are super powerful and even though they are not attracted to the copper, they still produce eddy currents that buffer the fall as seen in the video. Lenz's Law make a great experiment for kids to adult. Also, great at parties when conversation goes stale.

While that fight is far from over, we’re now at a distinct point in the evolution of the web, and Mozilla has appropriately looked around, and broadened its reach. In particular, the browser isn’t the only strategic front in the struggle to promote and maintain people’s sovereignty over their online lives. There are now at least three other fronts where Mozilla is making significant investments of time, energy, passion, sweat & tears. They’re still in their infancy, but they’re important to understand if you want to understand Mozilla:

Favorite: First Round Capital Holiday Video 2011 - Rebecca Black Parody, by FirstRoundCapital In the past we have used song, dance and our impressive physiques to work our way into your hearts over the holiday season. This year has gone by fast and we have added a whole new cast of remarkable characters to our community. We are really inspired by our talented portfolio and lucky to be able to roll our sleeves up and deliver the 2011 edition of the First Round Holiday Video. And while it's not yet Friday...we hope it brings you a little holiday cheer.

Favorite: Megaupload Mega Song, by MrKimDotcom Enjoy the Mega Song. Merry Christmas and a happy new year! Thank you for using Megaupload.com. Song produced by Kim Dotcom and Printz Board. Vocals by Printz Board, Kim Dotcom and Macy Gray. Many thanks to: Will-i-am P Diddy Kanye West Chris Brown Jamie Foxx Kim Kardashian Lil John The Game Floyd Mayweather Serena Williams Ciara. VICTORY AGAINST UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP. Read this story for more information: http://bit.ly/rTa78D The Mega Song is back Join the fight against SOPA. You can find the HD 1920x816 version of this video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0Wvn-9BXVc

Earlier today, Megaupload released a pop video featuring mainstream artists who endorse the cyberlocker service. News of the controversial Mega Song even trended on Twitter, but has now been removed from YouTube on copyright grounds by Universal Music. Kim Dotcom says that Megaupload owns everything in the video, and that the label has engaged in dirty tricks in an attempt to sabotage their successful viral campaign.

Favorite: Radwanderung..., by jello1212 ...und a bisserl Northshore ;-) mit Loschi und Pauli --GoPro HD--

This shield allows you to connect a HP C6602 inkjet cartridge to your Arduino turning it into a 96dpi print platform. It only uses 5 pins which can be jumper selected to avoid other shields. It is designed with a Arduino Mega footprint but fully supports both the Arduino and the Arduino Mega. It uses all through-hole components to make assembly easy even for beginners.

Sure, you've probably been leading a compact disc-less life in the living room and on the go for quite a few years now, but there's one place where optical media often remains the only option for on-demand tunes: your car. Now select Ford owners in Europe have an option accessing and controlling their smartphones, flash drives or other USB mass storage devices from an in-dash audio system. The USB Music Box connects to compatible audio and nav systems with an AUX input, and lives in the glovebox, center console or armrest, pumping tunes through your car's speakers with "great sound quality very similar to that of the radio." Last time we checked, FM radio has an equivalent bitrate quite a bit lower than your typical digital music file, so that's not exactly a glowing testimonial. Still, if you're desperate for a way to carry thousands of tracks in your car without filling the trunk with an array of sizable silver saucers, it might be time to toss aside the gloves and open up the Music Box -- assuming, of course, that you own one of ten recent models outlined in the PR just past the break. Continue reading Ford USB Music Box adds mass storage playback, smartphone charging to AUX-enabled receivers Ford USB Music Box adds mass storage playback, smartphone charging to AUX-enabled receivers originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Dec 2011 10:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink   |  Ford  | Email this | Comments

You’re in my heart But urine needs to stay inside the box

Brussels sprouts aren’t exactly “mouth watering.” In fact, I’d be surprised if they’ve ever caused a mouth to water in their entire history. If they have, it’s probably because they were made with beer. Stone Brewing has turned boring Brussels sprouts into something you actually want to eat by what else – infusing them with beer. Stone Pale Ale to be exact. They serve this dish at their restuarant, Stone World Bistro and Gardens, which I had the pleasuring of visiting on my trip to San Diego last summer. The recipe is given in the new book The Craft of Stone Brewing by Greg Koch, Steve Wagner, and Randy Clemens. It’s a great book, and if you order it I recommend also getting The Brewer’s Apprentice which was also recently released by Stone. I’ve been given permission to reprint the Brussels sprouts recipe, so here you go: Stone Pale Ale & Garlic Stir-Fried Brussels Sprouts Recipe 1 pound brussels sprouts (about 4 cups) 1/4 cup canola or vegetable oil 1/4 pound pancetta, diced 6 cloves garlic, minced 1 1/2 cups (12 fluid ounces) Stone Pale Ale 1/4 cup vegetable stock Salt Freshly ground black pepper Finely diced tomato, for garnish Shaved or grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, for garnish Set up a steamer with 1 to 2 inches of salted water and bring the water to a rolling boil. Put the brussels sprouts in the steamer, cover, and cook until slightly tender, about 4 minutes. Drain and immediately transfer the brussels sprouts to a large bowl of ice water to halt the cooking and preserve their bright green color. Let them cool in the ice water for about 1 minute, then drain. Lay them on a clean dish towel and pat dry. Cut them in half vertically, right through the core. In a large wok or cast-iron skillet, heat the oil over high heat until it begins to shimmer. Turn the heat down to medium. Add the pancetta and cook, stirring occasionally, until it begins to brown. Stir in the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Turn the heat up to high, add the brussels sprouts, and cook, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned, 4 to 5 minutes. Add the beer and continue to cook over high heat until the liquid is mostly evaporated. Deglaze the pan by adding the vegetable stock, stirring and scraping up any browned bits that may be affixed to the pan. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with the tomato and Parmigiano-Reggiano. Serve immediately. So how did mine turn out? I had these beautiful pictures of bright green Brussels sprouts shimmering in their beer coating, but of course I accidentally deleted them from my camera. You probably don’t believe me and think I burnt them to a crisp. Hey, I’m not a great cook, but when it comes to cooking with beer I step up my game. Anyways, they came out great. Unlike some recipes, you use a lot of beer in this one (a whole bottle) so the pale ale definitely comes through. It does add some bitterness, so I don’t recommend substituting with Ruination. This recipe certainly made me enjoy Brussels sprouts more. I can’t eat them as a main course (as they suggest), but they’re perfect as a side dish. Give them a shot. I bet you can get the kids to eat them now. Reprinted with permission from The Craft of Stone Brewing Co.: Liquid Lore, Epic Recipes, and Unabashed Arrogance. Copyright © 2011 by Stone Brewing Co. and Randy Clemens. Published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, Berkeley, CA. Photo credit: John Schulz Photography.

Just how small can you make an engine? Two researchers from the University of Stuttgart and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Valentin Blickle and Clemens Bechinger, successfully shrank the Stirling heat engine down to a single, microscopic particle. The engine is so small, in fact, that the random fluctuations in position due to Brownian motion cause variations in its work output. This microscopic Stirling engine is controlled using a pair of highly focused lasers. Stirling engines, named after the Scottish inventor who created them in 1816, offer the highest theoretical efficiency of any heat engine—the same as the Carnot efficiency. Due to pesky entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, you can’t get all the heat you put in back out as work. The efficiency of any heat engine, then, is just the ratio of output work to input heat. The Carnot efficiency, conceived by Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (the father of thermodynamics), gives the maximum theoretical efficiency of the engine and depends only on the temperature range within which the engine operates. Read the comments on this post

If allegations surrounding Koch, who is married, are true, she would become in the eyes of many a prime example of the double standard surrounding the heated marriage amendment battle.

How much has it cost the entertainment industry to convince Rep Lamar Smith to introduce and ram through SOPA, which will cost the American economy billions, which will nuke the games, microprocessor, search, and other high tech companies in his Texas district? A mere $50K a year for 10 years. You know, it's one thing to be a sellout; but to sell out so cheaply -- man, have some self-respect. (via /.)

Case in point: Dodd recently told the Center for American Progress that "The entire film industry of Spain, Egypt and Sweden are gone."

New details are emerging about the rowdy behaviour of two Research In Motion executives who were fired for disrupting an intercontinental flight — including that they managed to chew their way out of restraints after being handcuffed by crew members.

Quick cocktail recipe for the holidays (there may be more of these): 2oz gin (Tanq or Tanq 10 works well) 1 tbsp rosemary simple syrup 2 tbsp fresh lemon juice Chilled club soda to top Build over ice in a highball or med highball. Stir.

Detroit Free Press:Howell mom sues over son getting suspended after debate about gays in school  —  A Howell mother has sued her school district and a teacher for booting her son out of class last year because her son's religious beliefs prevented him from accepting homosexuality.

Susie Madrak / Crooks and Liars:Scott Walker Shuts Down Cancer Screenings Through Planned Parenthood  —  Gov. Scott Walker is a ruthless extremist, and more women in Wisconsin will die of cancer, thanks to his right-wing vendetta against Planned Parenthood.  At least we have the satisfaction of knowing that every time he pulls …

Kevin makes beautiful hand-painted matrioshkas illustrated with whimsical, pop-culture figures. I really like this movie monster set, which features Godzilla, King Kong, Frankenstein's Monster, Dracula, Wolfman, Zombie and Mummy. Movie Monsters Russian Dolls (Set of 6) (Thanks, Kevin!)

America's newspaper editors have backed the fight to stop SOPA. Is there anyone left who supports this? Apart from the MPAA, RIAA and their shills in Congress? (Thanks, Dan!)

Occupy protesters and their kids made 5,000 paper hearts, one for each of the arrests at the Occupy Wall Street protests. They made a mosaic of these at the gates of New York's City Hall, only to have the police literally rip down and shred them. Parents for Occupy Wall St. March against police brutality. Children created 5,000 paper hearts one for every peaceful protestor arrested on behalf of the Occupy Wall Street movement in the three month period leading up to the march. The children delivered them to New York City Hall for Mayor Bloomberg only for the NYPD to aggressively tear them down and apart in front of the children. Children cried and the NYPD did yet another action against peaceful protestors. We as a country should not stand for this, get involved, speak up, do something for our children's futures. It's predictable but weird how many of the YouTube commenters criticize the parents for involving their kids with a protest. I grew up on protest marches and demonstrations with my parents, and I take my daughter to them, because I think that parenting is (partly) about imparting values to your children. Growing up amid a critical discourse about issues of social justice and freedom helped make me who I was, and my parents were always available to debate these subjects with me, encouraging me to listen to arguments on either side without hiding which side they were on. NYPD and NYC City Hall Break Kids Hearts (via Beth Pratt)

Spacemen was a short-lived early-1960s magazine specifically about space-themed science fiction movies. Warren Publishing -- creators of the classic magazines Famous Monster of Filmland, Monster World, Creepy, and Eerie -- produced only 8 issues of the magazine, helmed by Forrest J. Ackerman. The cover art is glorious (cover above by Wally Wood!) and you can find torrents of the whole scanned run of the magazine. Swapsale has a gallery of the covers. Here's an article that Ray Bradbury contributed. And dig this terrific submission letter sent to Spacemen by Stephen King, age 14.

Arch Druid : Thus our civilization has entered what John Kenneth Galbraith called “the twilight of illusion,” the point at which the end of a historical process would be clearly visible if everybody wasn’t so busy finding reasons to look somewhere else. A decade ago, those few of us who were paying attention to peak oil were pointing out that if the peak of global conventional petroleum production arrived before any meaningful steps were taken, the price of oil would rise to previously unimagined heights, crippling the global economy and pushing political systems across the industrial world into a rising spiral of dysfunction and internal conflict. With most grades of oil above $100 a barrel, economies around the world mired in a paper “recovery” worse than most recessions, and the United States and European Union both frozen in political stalemates between regional and cultural blocs with radically irreconcilable agendas, that prophecy has turned out to be pretty much square on the money, but you won’t hear many people mention that these days.  The point that has to be grasped just now, it seems to me, is that this is what peak oil looks like. Get past the fantasies of sudden collapse on the one hand, and the fantasies of limitless progress on the other, and what you get is what we’re getting—a long ragged slope of rising energy prices, economic contraction, and political failure, punctuated with a crisis here, a local or regional catastrophe there, a war somewhere else—all against a backdrop of disintegrating infrastructure, declining living standards, decreasing access to health care and similar services, and the like, which of course has been happening here in the United States for some years already.

One of my favorite mobile sites is Target (great job Matt Menzer). The beauty of this experience isn’t in the mind-blowing animations, it’s about the clarity of the content, the speed in which the page loads and the accessibility of the experience.

Favorite: We told Dads they're going to be Grandpas, by charper140 The reaction to the news...

Favorite: Epic Cat Fight (cat's horror), by ignoramusky cameraman - Akael88 http://www.youtube.com/user/akael88 http://myhomevideos.blogspot.com/2010/11/blog-post.html - about this video sound director - ignoramusky /watch?v=cIkc3eGPeRk - video about making of sound - used: music by Alan Silvestri (Predator & Predator II) http://www.youtube.com/artist/Alan_Silvestri just a little ....cut & glue ;) ----------------- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nfb1xZFT8Mw - Thank u RayWilliamJohnson ;) http://www.youtube.com/user/LifeInATent - thx...u know ;)

Favorite: Bearded Dragon playing Ant Crusher, by ThatSpecialGuy My Bearded Dragon showing her mad skills :) *The Game is actually called Ant Smasher Song: Nintendo - Super Mario Bros. Theme Song

Favorite: Numb3rs' description of IRC, by mircea2s Episode 6x07: Numb3rs describes the Internet Relay Chat protocol, a "pretty primitive chat program". It's how hackers talk when they don't want to be overheard. Oh, and they use leetspeek! "LUCKILY, I speak leet." ENHANCE! ENHANCE! CROP! ROTATE! ZOOM IN ON THAT REFLECTION! PS: now captioned in english and 1337 (f0r r34l h4x0rz!)

So it was as proponents of the Hollywood-funded bill curmudgeonly shot down all but two amendments proposed by its opponents, who fought to dramatically alter the document to preserve security and free speech on the net. But the chilling takeaway of this whole debacle was the irrefutable air of anti-intellectualism; that inescapable absurdity that we have members of Congress voting on a technical bill who do not posses any technical knowledge on the subject and do not find it imperative to recognize those who do.

Favorite: Magicka - I accidentally the whole dwarven army, by neotoy QRSQREQR FTW!

Clay produced the interactive Periodic Table of Swearing for Modern Toss. It was built in our Hoxton Street studio during our summer holidays. It's constructed from over 100 buttons, CNC'ed and laser cut MDF, direct to media printing, over 100 meters of cabling, over 300 soldered joints and a whole lot of swearing!

I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves.

Favorite: Some Quick Thoughts on "Until Abortion Ends", by illdoc1 See addendum here: http://jsmooth995.tumblr.com/post/14262038303/sitwherethelightcorruptsyourface-jsmooth995 http://twitter.com/jsmooth995 A personal pledge to help everyone at untilabortionends.com keep improving their diet so they can live longer and healthier lives. The members of that site seem quite earnest, and I hope in principle to be respectful of everyone no matter strongly I disagree, so I'm trying not to be TOO snarky here. But the underlying logic of this protest is baffling. They seem to be hoping that women who've decided to seek an abortion will visit this site and say "wow, if you feel strongly enough about this that you're making the irrevocable life-changing decision of giving up Dr. Pepper, maybe I should reconsider having a child that I can't support!"

Favorite: bgirl Anee (JAP) | 11 YRS OLD | Outbreak 7 | STRIFE.TV | prelim set, by strifetv prelim set from yesterday's first round at Outbreak 7 by 11 yr old bgirl Anee (Japan)

@chengwang: @lmorchard Yes. I mean these people have NO economics literacy either and set budgets. See: how many congressmen are actually proud of that.

@glenda: If one thing's for sure, it's that if you play a game of grab-ass with me, someone is gonna get hurt. #truefacts Glenda: 1 / Opposition: 0

Favorite: Francis is Upset about No Early Access to Star Wars the Old Republic, by boogie2988 WHERE IS MY INVITE BIOWARE?? I PREORDERED YESTERDAY GODDAMIT

...is this what I'm looking for?

Could this be the part I'm looking for?

Turns out that our headlining DJ last night, Alan Braxe, has a bladder control problem. That's the generous explanation for why he decided, in the middle of his DJ set, to turn around and piss on our back-wall curtain instead of using the restroom which is twenty feet away.

@ApocalypseHow: I want my obituary to read, "In lieu of flowers, please send EXPERIMENTAL REANIMATING DRUGS."

A BBC team have been working closely with Dr Venn's team to help recover the signals. BBC Television historian Peter Wells, explained "We now know these are original broadcasts. So far we have recovered about 7 weeks of old television signals from space. Every day in our lab is like traveling back in time. And speaking of which we have just started the digital recovery of signals that contain lost Doctor Who episodes.

@triptych: YUI 3.5.0 PR1 Is Now Available » Yahoo! User Interface Blog (YUIBlog) http://t.co/FEOdYOcU

@deadmau5: >>───KNEE───►

Favorite: LesbianFamilyAddressesTroyMIMayor.mov, by PeaceEqualityLove A lesbian married couple and their two daughters powerfully address Troy,MI Mayor, Janice Daniels, at a city council meeting about her derogatory Facebook posting about "queers" marrying in NY.

@lemay: My superpower is the ability to make elaborate contingency plans for things that are extremely unlikely to happen.

@lemay: Today's Peets barista had a tag on with a Hyperbole and a Half character proclaiming "Grind ALL the beans!!"

Justin Bieber Photobombing Russell Brand & Katy Perry at the 2011 VMA’s.  [Image by PictureGroup]

Culture Buzz A collection of the most confusing/unexplainable photos from my Tumblr blog, Black & WTF.

Jeff Bridges: 3 different films, same shirt.  (via:epic4chan)

@ragavan: @madhava go get some Ice Cream and maybe Android will be open sourced? #punny #notreally

The domi­nance of Face­book is a democra­tic pro­blem. Our only hope is to use the same tac­tic the inter­net used to win against the networks of the time: Open up for col­la­bo­ra­tion between networks. This is done through federa­tion. Here is how and why it will work, and how you can help.

Remix culture is the new Prohibition, with massive media companies as the lone voices calling for temperance. You can criminalize commonplace activities from law-abiding people, but eventually, something has to give.

@r1cky: i will miss the coffee machinery at moz TO http://t.co/FbLZSURE

Wikimedia Labs is a two-part project aimed at improving the volunteer involvement in operations and software development. The first part of this project is Test/Dev Labs, and the second part is Tool Labs.

The six children of Walmart's founders, Sam and James "Bud" Walton, had the same net worth in 2007 as the entire bottom 30 percent of American earners, according to an analysis from Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist at University of California-Berkeley's Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics.

Which is sooo close to being correct. The court actually prohibited mandatory school prayer. And that one word makes all the difference. (See: Twain, Mark on lightning-bug vs. lightning.)

Favorite: Form Voltron, by caliph77 Voltron

@kallistec: OH: you know that scene in LOTR where Gandalf falls down that chasm? That's where we store our logs.

Sometimes, just to screw with people, I will rewrite .bashrc to contain only: echo "Python 2.6.6 (r266:84374, Aug 31 2010, 11:00:51) [GCC 4.0.1 (Apple Inc. build 5493)] on darwin Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information." export PS1=">>> " trap bashtrap INT bashtrap() { echo -n " KeyboardInterrupt" }

Favorite: Serious Sam 3 BFE - Immortal Fast Scorpion, by MaxellVidea DSOGaming writes: "Okay everyone, I have a confesion to make; I simply love Croteam. It's not the extra and juicy details that the Croatian developer has added to the game. No no no, it's the introduction of an immortal speedy arachnoid enemy -- due to its anti-piracy protection system -- that is the icing on the cake." DRM Introduces Immortal Scorpion Serious Sam 3 BFE - Immortal Fast Scorpion level 1 HD rychlý nesmrtelný škorpion Music : Boss Fight Strings - Serious Sam 3 OST http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBDp0dVO_Gg npc bug crash kamikaze Secret Easter Egg fake shooter weaporn official help

Amendment 1092 to the Defense Authorization Act of 2012 is a well-intentioned but misguided provision outlining measures designed to reduce the prevalance of counterfeit chips in the US military supply chain.

Poor Fox News. They posted an article with a headline saying that a New Zealand man was the first amateur astronomer to capture a photograph of another galaxy — when in fact, Rolf Olsen had just captured an image of another solar system, Beta Pictoris. It's an easy mistake to make — galaxies and solar systems both have stars and planets in them, after all. Enter Steve Martin, who tweeted: "A galaxy IS a solar system. According to Fox fact checking." Responded Fox: "The error was brought to the attention of FoxNews.com by famed comedian, actor and author Steve Martin — who obviously recognizes a good story when he reads it — and we have corrected the headline."

That image (above, left) has become the centerpiece of Travel Wisconsin's website and Facebook page. Michigan is (justifiably) pissed off, as they have long compared their state to a mitten, and feel Wisconsin is just flagrantly stealing their mitten-shaped-state shtick! A website called Awesome Mitten first noticed and tweeted their outrage to their followers, and an all-out social media war has ensued.

@jbaruch: New encoding - WTF-8

Lucky Supermarkets has removed the tampered card readers, which were made by VeriFone, in the stores known to be affected and says it is enhancing security of every credit and debit card reader in all 234 of its stores. Joseph Steinberg, CEO of the security company Green Armor Solutions, released a statement saying "Everyone should always check any device in which they insert/swipe a credit/debit/ATM card, or to which they touch their card, to see if it looks like it may have been modified/covered."

Firefox developers like kicking puppies and raping kittens.

@mconnor: Poor @madhava and his crippling device addiction, one at a time isn't enough anymore http://t.co/GmGQBCKl

Favorite: MythBusters Cannonball Experiment Gone Wrong... Hits Houses and Car in Dublin, CA, by rathokan MythBusters Cannonball Experiment Gone Wrong... Hits Houses and Car in Dublin, CA

@anildash: Gee, I wonder why Facebook killed support for importing RSS feeds into notes? http://t.co/YQnD9lXw #gaslighting

Throughout its 224-year history, America has had many channels of discourse, its citizens expressing themselves by means ranging from pamphlets to protests, newspaper editorials to televised debates. In recent years, however, a significant new avenue of expression has emerged: "Peeing Calvin" decals.

@monkchips: @lmorchard @maralancooper could we get a decent coffee too, while we're at it?

@mart3ll: @shorlander close. I ignored the brand toolkit to pay homage to C&H: http://t.co/ymur1ES6

@jonoxia: Guys, I think there's something wrong with all these"instagram" links you keep tweeting. The pictures look all fuzzy on my screen.

@alanapost: A very humbled tip of my cap to the realist who farted in the scented plugin aisle

One week, George came in and typed up his piece, dropped it at the editor's desk, and went off into the night. The editor looked at the copy and it was utter gibberish. Lots of consonants. Remembering that George was a touch-typist, the editor took the piece, put his hands on the keyboard, but moved them one key to the side. The piece was perfect, except George had started one key over

@deadsquid: dinner conversation from a certain 12yo: "condoms help protect against minivans" #eif

Favorite: [The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim] Sheogorath would be proud of me., by DoubleagentMoA The song used is Five Armies by Kevin MacLeod Follow-up vid - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcfFUAiJwhE I had to re-upload this video due to copyright issues sorry about this guys!

@mconnor: MozTO is rolling with the email outage just fine... http://t.co/tAgOQF3s

Favorite: My Drunk Kitchen, Ep. 12: Pizza, by MyHarto Limited Edition MDK Gear now available! Get your gifts while they're...hot? Promo Code: HARTOHOLIDAY11 -- http://mydrunkkitchen.spreadshirt.com Buy 2 get free shipping at check out. Promo ends on 12/10! Twittah: http://twitter.com/harto Website: http://hartoandco.com Fan Page: http://facebook.com/my.drunk.kitchen

Favorite: If you have video conferencing meetings you might as well have fun with them, right?, by Christopher Blizzard

These projects are all very different, but the dynamic is the same. Someone builds a cool, free product, it gets popular, and that popularity attracts a buyer. The new owner shuts the product down and the founders issue a glowing press release about how excited they are about synergies going forward. They are never heard from again. Whether or not this is done in good faith, in practice this kind of 'exit event' is a pump-and-dump scheme. The very popularity that attracts a buyer also makes the project financially unsustainable. The owners cash out, the acquirer gets some good engineers, and the users get screwed.

Favorite: Skyrim : 2500 Cheese wheels rolling off a mountain., by STuKKie86 Find the ice troll! Music: tosca dave dudly

We believe the Web is a place where anyone can come to build their dreams. Watch the video and learn how a small group of people dedicated to making the Web a safe, open and accessible tool for communication, collaboration and community came together to create Mozilla – and how that work continues today

Do you like shoveling snow? Then stop reading this and go back to your pushups and granola because you are not someone that I want to talk to.

@neilio: Sweet Caroline, bum bum bum, good times never felt so sweet jesus I am high as a kite.

@jamessocol: Hanging out with @ednapiranha @paulosman @lmorchard and WillKG--pretty good first half-day in Toronto. Excited for this week!

With the Roots' new album undun due out next week, we spoke with ?uestlove on Tuesday about the Bachmann incident, which understandably had him a bit shook and scared for his job. But, as he told us with a laugh, one of his good friends and famed collaborators was actually hoping he'd get suspended: D'Angelo.

I'm very happy that Barlow has fallen in love with Downtown Detroit and everything that it has to offer him -- from grocery stores no one in the suburbs think exist to the dry cleaners where he drops off his shirts. Whether Barlow realizes it or not, through his words he has brought the late Mayor Coleman A. Young back to life. Or at least the former mayor's sentiment. In his twenty years in office, Mayor Young successfully drew a sharp divide between the residents of the City of Detroit and the suburbanites. The race riots of the late 1960s forced middle class whites to flee the city, but it was Mayor Young who kept them away. The polarizing mayor made the Eight Mile border a dividing landmark between the races. I'm afraid Barlow isn't helping matters today.

You may know this already, but the one thing I've learned since I moved here is that many, if not most, of the people who identify themselves as being from "Detroit" have really no idea what Detroit is like. That's because they really live in, say, Novi, Warren, even neighboring Redford, and haven't explored downtown in years. Holding onto mythologies perpetuated by a hysterical press over the past quarter century, they cling to the belief that there are no grocery stores in the city (we actually have 115) and still ask me where I get my dry cleaning done (for the last time, I get my dry cleaning done at the dry cleaners.) They've been to the Fox, to Comerica Park, and maybe waited in line at Slows, but they haven't been to MOCAD, Astro Coffee, D'Mongo's, Good Girls Go to Paris, Le Petit Zinc, Supino's Pizza or any of the other places that have popped up over the past half-decade.

Favorite: Minecraft Super Mario Land in Stop Motion., by minecrafta2z Our recreation of the original gameboy Super Mario Land in stop motion. We hope you enjoyed it! Please subscribe and remember to check us out at http://www.minecrafta2z.net

@jaydeflix: Of all the things I've seen that I could dress my XBL Avatar in/with, the Voltron Costume is the first I'd really spend money on.

This is the true ‘bomb’ contained in Obamacare and the one item that will have more impact on the future of how medical care is paid for in this country than anything we’ve seen in quite some time. Indeed, it is this aspect of the law that represents the true ‘death panel’ found in Obamacare—but not one that is going to lead to the death of American consumers. Rather, the medical loss ratio will, ultimately, lead to the death of large parts of the private, for-profit health insurance industry. ... If you believe that the end of private, for-profit health insurance is some type of nefarious step towards a socialist society, then you might want to attend church this Sunday to mourn the loss of health insurers being able to worm out of covering the bills of a cancer patient because she forgot to write down on her application that she had skin acne for three months when she was a teenager.

Favorite: Philip Glass at Occupy Wall Street protest, by alexrossny From an Occupy Wall Street protest at Lincoln Center, on Dec. 1, 2011. A performance of Philip Glass's Satyagraha at the Metropolitan Opera has just ended, and in the first three minutes of the video protesters try to get operagoers to ignore the police, walk down the steps, and join the demonstration. Then, after 3:00, Glass recites the closing lines of his opera, which come from the Bhagavad-Gita: "When righteousness withers away and evil rules the land, we come into being, age after age, and take visible shape, and move, a man among men, for the protection of good, thrusting back evil and setting virtue on her seat again." Video by Alex Ross: http://www.therestisnoise.com/

Here at GeekDad we review a lot of products — books, toys, gadgets, software — and I know it’s impossible for most parents to actually afford all of the cool stuff that gets written up. Heck, most of us can’t afford it either, and we’re envious of the person who scored a review copy of a cool board game or awesome gizmo. (Disclosure: that person is probably me.) So while we love telling you about all the cool stuff that’s out there, I understand that as parents we all have limited budgets and we sometimes need help narrowing down our wishlists.

If we had to imagine our dream DIY project chances are it would involve Arduino, Twitter and, of course, cats. How we'd combine those things we're not sure, but we'll admit to being big fans of Samuel Cox's eSleeper, which turns a hollowed-out eMac into a bed for his feline. Inside the shell is an Arduino Ethernet connected to an IR sensor, some LEDs and a sound shield. When the cat breaks the infrared beam it triggers the iconic Mac chime and turns on a series color-shifting LEDs for a little mood lighting. From there the clock starts ticking. When little Fluffy (Captain Whiskers? Matlock? Penny? Greg?) decides she's had enough napping and leaves the white plastic cocoon, tripping the IR sensor again, a random phrase is tweeted, along with the length of the cat's siesta. Check out the video after the break to see the eSleeper in all its adorable DIY glory.

@joestump: I hold my friends to high standards because they deserve better and I love them.

Khloe Kardashian stepped out yesterday without any makeup on -- and she doesn't care what you think about her "flawed" face.

Both software developers and users should demand more. Developers should look for ways to reach their users unimpeded, through still-open platforms, or through pressure on the terms imposed by the closed ones. And users should be ready to try "off-roading" with the platforms that still allow it—hewing to the original spirit of the PC, perhaps amplified by systems that let apps have a trial run on a device without being given the keys to the kingdom. If we allow ourselves to be lulled into satisfaction with walled gardens, we'll miss out on innovations to which the gardeners object, and we'll set ourselves up for censorship of code and content that was previously impossible. We need some angry nerds.

Aussie indie pop group Hey Geronimo were interested in promoting their latest single, "Why Don't We Do Something?," so they made this terrifying montage of iOS games acted out in real life, you see. We're not exactly sure how this happened, but we can't say we're sorry it did.

High on catnip, Jinx was convinced that Misty was a succulent sausage ripe for the taking.

A little over a month ago, the revolutionary Lytro light-field camera became available for pre-order. But a few lucky pro photographers have been using the Lytro and its “living picture” technology for the last few months, and now we can see their stunning results.

Keep in mind that Valve isn't above trolling its own fans -- Gabe Newell could have a 50-square-foot room at Valve studios stuffed full of Half-Life 3 t-shirts, foam hands and head crabs to keep the excitement alive, and a lot of empty hard drive space for the actual game. Nonetheless, @Ekanaut, the marketing man for Monday Night Combat studio Uber Entertainment, spotted this Half-Life 3 shirt "worn by a Valve employee" at Seattle's Eastside Industry Night.

Occupy Wall Street went up to protest at Lincoln Center last night during a performance of Philip Glass' opera Satyagraha. New Yorker music critic Alex Ross was there and captured the protest on video, which included Glass himself reading the closing lines from the opera, amplified to the crowd by the people's mic. It is an amazing scene.

Favorite: 09 - The Ritual / Ancient Battle / 2nd Kroykah, by NewAngel4eva Soundtrack from Star Trek TOS episode, Amok Time.

We previewed Hyperkin's SupaBoy back in the summer and loved the idea of toting 'round original SNES games without resorting to Ben Heck-style crafting. The handheld takes full-size cartridges, packs a 3.5-inch screen and a battery that's disappointingly rated for just two point five hours (best keep a power cable handy). It'll also double as a home console: there's an AV-out port and slots for two classic controllers for when you wanna kick it old-school. It's reportedly compatible with titles like Mario World, A Link to the Past and Starwing Starfox, but who needs them when we've got a mint condition copy of Tetris Attack at home? It'll cost you $80 and is available from Amazon as of yesterday -- we suggest you get to practicing blowing the dirt from the connectors, since you'll be doing a lot of it soon.

Overall we can say the Git migration was a success. It turned out to be an immense task with a maze of dependencies, but in the end we’re on a current version control system that should last for years to come. It opens up many new workflow possibilites and solves some of our existing problems, not to mention it’s blazing fast. If you’re more interested in the technical instead of the social migration of SVN to Git, I wrote a blog post a few years ago on my personal blog that you may be interested in, and there’s also a couple of pointers over on github on how to make the conversion.

"How much coffee is safe?" the BBC wonders, before letting us know that "the advice is much less clear-cut." Psh! We can tell you how much coffee is safe. More »

There's nothing better than a wild UFO conspiracy theory — unless it's a UFO theory that wraps in a debunked comet, the Catholic Church, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. ... So will YOU be ready when Jesus of Borg arrives?

Booted up Minecraft 1.0 for a few minutes, and still don't get it. Back to looking at YouTube.

A Monroe man trying to shoot a squirrel wound up shooting himself. Ethan Bennett, 36, told Benton County sheriff’s deputies he was at his residence at about 4:15 p.m. on Wednesday when he tried to shoot the rodent with a .22-calibre rifle. The squirrel reportedly ran up his leg, and he pulled the trigger, hitting himself in the foot. Deputies contacted Bennett at Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center, where he drove himself after the accident. Law enforcement agencies investigate all gunshot wounds admitted to the hospital. Hospital personnel said Bennett was treated and released. Capt. Greg Ridler said Bennett did not kill the squirrel. “The squirrel scared him,” Ridler said.

The Earth pulses with a special kind of resonant wave. The Schumann Resonance has long been dubbed 'the Earth's heartbeat,' and it has only been spotted from below. Recently, though, satellites have found signs of this electromagnetic heartbeat leaking up into space. The heartbeat of the earth goes at about eight cycles per second. Like many other heartbeats, it's regulated by electricity. When lightning strikes the earth, it creates electromagnetic waves in the atmosphere. These waves are caught between the ground and the upper atmosphere, sixty miles up. Most of these waves are dampened and shake themselves to nothing. Others, with just the right wavelength and frequency, just keep going. The wavelength is the circumference of the earth (or twice the circumference, or three times, or four, and so on). This means that the troughs of these waves will always line up, as will the crests. When crests combine, they get bigger. And with lightning hitting the earth over four million times a day, these waves keep getting the boosts they need. The waves don't sweep across the surface of the earth. Instead they're like standing waves, that just pulse at their troughs and crests - a resonant heartbeat. Scientists call this heartbeat The Schumann Resonance, and always thought it was confined to the earth. It had to be trapped under the blanket of the ionosphere. In a paper in the online journal Geophysical Research Letters, NASA scientists working on the Goddard Space Flight Center have revealed that they have detected these waves five hundred miles up. It seems these waves are skipping, or leaking, through the boundaries of earth and out into space. Image of Vector Electric Field Instrument: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Via Geophysical Research Letters

When their son, Geoff, passed away, Mary and Steve Patterson decided to honor his memory by keeping up Geoff's Tumblr where he made fun of shitbirds, fatties, and asswipes.

3D Classics: Kid Icarus trailer. It’s Kid Icarus with… backgrounds! This is seriously mind-blowing stuff. I’m not even being sarcastic, either. This game looks awesome with even static backgrounds. I’m genuinely impressed. They look kind of better than the NES could do, giving it a PC Engine-esque look. I’m so down for this.

Favorite: Revenge of the Nerds - NERDS!, by crarmstrong Clip from Revenge of the Nerds where Ogre and the other football players scream "NERDS!"

A small Pike County church has voted not to accept interracial couples as members or let them take part in some worship activities.

@xeni: I have breast cancer. I am in good hands. There is a long road ahead and it leads to happiness and a cancer-free, long, healthy life.

Let me float that the encampments are fundamentally about using government power against itself. By staking out a little ground and saying, "No, the government does not rule this space," it gets the mayors and police chiefs worked up. They deploy their increasingly militarized police officers to say, "Yes, the government does rule that space." Then, the protesters link arms and chant, and the riot cops come in with pepper spray and batons.

Early last month, I traveled from my Denver home to Rhode Island to meet Brandon Winrich, a music composition major at the University of Rhode Island. It was the conclusion of a remarkable artistic journey for him, and was a life-changing day for me — a day three years in the making.

Favorite: Ralph Wiggum "Ente Ente", by GodGid "ihr wisst doch, es ist Ralph" XD

Favorite: Too many Ralphs, by michrev This is something I've wanted to do ever since I made that Family Guy poop. And that's pretty much all I have to say.

Favorite: Stupid duck, by MufridBootis Duck Duck Duck Duck Duck Duck

Decentralization, in tech as in politics, is how we prevent one entity from having too much power. Power corrupts.

Later, Boehner came around to admit that an extension would help boost the economy. To help Boehner out, several actual economists have said that letting the cut expire would, in fact, hurt growth and destroy jobs. According to Macroeconomic Advisers, allowing it to lapse “would reduce GDP growth by 0.5 percent and cost the economy 400,000 jobs.” An analyst at Barclay’s estimated that letting the cut expire would knock 1.5 percent off of first quarter growth next year.

Russian cosplayer SoDespair has brought back Daria Morgendorffer, the bitingly sarcastic lead from MTV’s 1990s animated series, Daria, in a series of great cosplay images. The photo gallery highlights not only Daria but her friends Jane and Trent Lane. via deviantART photos by Sery image via...

The 1960s Sixfinger from Topper Toys was a clever toy for kids (marketed to boys) that provided an extra finger for fun. The commercial for it is a hoot and shows off its many features, such as writing with its hidden ballpoint pen, shooting off cap bombs at your pals and more. Ignore the obvio...

The Bronx's anti-gay New York state Senator Ruben Diaz Sr (center in the photo) nearly single-handedly held up gay marriage legislation in the state for years because he does not like gay people. Now, in an irony of ironies, a building in the Bronx named after him will now the the home of the Br...

Favorite: Ketchupbot + 20th Century Fox Theme on a Flute, by creepsinc

Totally broke best overactor of his generation Nicolas Cage will do anything for money. Just look at his IMDb page. Sorcerer's Apprentice? Really? Well, now he sold off one of his comic books for $2.1 million. More »

Classic! Just Glue Some Gears On It (And Call It Steampunk)

Fartastical fraud victim Kris Humphries has pressed on with his belief that he was merely a plot device used by his temporary wife Kim Kardashian to boost ratings. "I felt like I was on a fast roller coaster and couldn't get off when now I know I probably should have," TMZ quotes the genteel gia...

THQ has given fans of Voltron a twin stick shooter, in the vein of the classic arcade game, Jackal. You get to pick any of the five Lions at the beginning of the stage and with a sweet intro to the mission thanks to THQ using actual clips from the original Voltron animated series you are ready to bring a whole bunch of pain to the forces of King Zarkon.

So you develop PHP 5.3 on a Mac? Mebbe you, like me, are a fan of Symfony2? Then you might have noticed a few deficiencies in the pre-loaded version of PHP 5.3 on your computer. Here’s how to …

ORLANDO, Fla. -- The Republican Governors Association met this week in Florida to give GOP state executives a chance to rejuvenate, strategize and team-build. But during a plenary session on Wednesday, one question kept coming up: How can Republicans do a better job of talking about Occupy Wall Street?

Favorite: Doctor Who - Clean Tom Baker Opening (1974), by timelord726 Clean Doctor Who opening titles, used for the majority of Tom Baker's era, beginning in 1974 Title design by Bernard Lodge Theme version by Delia Derbyshire

Favorite: Thames Television Ident, by JokerCapt Thames Television Ident

Favorite: EMF - Unbelievable, by emimusic Music video by EMF performing Unbelievable.

Favorite: Crumbelievable, by joeyheadset From joeyheadset.com: The Kraft Cheese Corporation uses EMF's classic single "Unbelievable" to hawk fragmented cheese on an unsuspecting public.

Oh, you bet your ass MEGATHRUSTERS ARE GO! It even says "Voltron will be back after these messages" when you pause!

No, this isn't a recycled news item from the 1980s -- it's 2011, and MJ Mahon and 8 Bit Weapon have just announced the release of the Apple II DMS Drummer, a wavetable-based drum sequencer for Apple II-era machines. The monophonic synth reproduces eight drum sounds like bass, snare, rim shot, hand clap, tom, hat open, hat closed and "lazer," along with a sequencer that lets you plug in up to 16 drum patterns across 256 slots. Seems like just the thing for chiptune composers hankering for a way to make authentic eight-bit drum tracks using vintage Apple hardware. System requirements call for an Apple IIe, IIc, IIc+ or IIgs with 80-column capability and a 5.25-inch floppy drive -- you know, pretty modern stuff. A limited demo version is available, but if that doesn't satisfy, you can either buy it on a floppy for $14.95 or download a .dsk disk image for $9.95. Oh, and neither require a time-traveling DeLorean to go back to 1985.

$ t=$(df --total|awk '$1~/total/ {print $2}');sudo du / --max-depth=1|sort -rn -k1 | awk -v t=$t 'OFMT="%d" {M=64; for (a=0;ac){c=a}}br=a/c;b=M*br;for(x=0;x i'm using gawk, you may get varying mileage with other varieties. You might want to change the / after du to say, /home/ or ...

In a time of legislative gridlock, the Stop Online Piracy Act looked like a rare bipartisan breakthrough. The bill, known as SOPA, promised a brave new Internet—one cleansed of “rogue websites” that hawk pirated songs and movies as well as counterfeit goods. For Congress, the legislation’s goals...

Money talks, but not loud enough for the 99%. By circulating dollar bills stamped with fact-based infographics, Occupy George informs the public of America's daunting economic disparity one bill at a time. Because money knowledge is power.

When it came time to try out some old-school computing [Quinn Dunki] grabbed a 6502 processor and got to work. For those that are unfamiliar, this is the first chip that was both powerful, affordable, and available to the hobby computing market back in the 1970′s. They were used in Apple computers, Commodore 64, and a slew of other hardware.

DreamHack is by far the largest LAN party in the world (or “digital festival” as the organizers like to call it), and as a result the infrastructure is second to none. Wiring up more than 12,000 devices to a single network is difficult — and keeping them sufficiently watered with plenty of internet bandwidth is even harder. Fortunately, this year, Telia and Cisco provided no less than 120 gigabits of internet bandwidth — or about 10Mbps per attendee; not bad.

At this point, Google would be better off focusing its attention on Android. With some tweaking, Android could power the same devices as ChromeOS, with more native functionality. Someday we may be ready for a browser-based OS, but we're not quite there yet.

“There’s going to be a more natural way to share things with one another than having thirty ‘like’ and ‘+1′ buttons next to everything we see. The wonderful thing is that this will arise organically, as we gain experience with life online, and not be invented by any one company,” says Ceglowski.

I would like to document an emerging set of programming conventions, philosophies, and values that I see evolving in the node.js community. I call this the node aesthetic.

@epuckett: "best way to herd cats is to move the food." right on gerhard klimeck #umci

@fchimero: Things no one ever says: I wish I had more ways to passively communicate my status and activity across a multiplicity of social networks.

My parents bought my Uncle Kenny’s Commodore 64 for me back in 1985. If I remember correctly the sound chip had blown out, so the first thing we they did was have it fixed. Sixteen years later, I still own (and use) that same Commodore computer. I’ve owned dozens of other Commodore computers ov...

Wine Enthusiast Magazine named Founders Brewing Co.'s Kentucky Breakfast Stout the No. 2 beer for 2011.

Some of the most foul smelling creatures on Earth are known simply as odorous frogs. These amphibians have a normal odor like that of rotting fish, but it's worth braving their disgusting smell for the life-saving substances that coat their bodies. Because frogs live in warm, wet places — the ...

Thanks to our friends over at THQ and Twitch.TV for having the Green Lion drop this press release off to share with you. Watch live video from THQtv on www.twitch.tv In celebration of THQ’s release of VOLTRON: Defender of the Universe (NOW available on XBox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network...

A Threadless kiosk at a Dominick’s at 2550 N. Clybourn. Image Credit: Matt W. News From The Future – Crowd Sourced T-Shirt Vending Machines… …the automated kiosk is part of a pilot program Threadless entered with Coinstar, Inc. Many of us have used Coinstar to cash in large amounts of change ...

It's usually pretty easy to track down most big Hollywood releases and major TV shows on DVD, or on Netflix. But what about those works that aren't popular enough for mass production, such as old TV movies, pilots that never made it to air, or lost films that only a die-hard film fan could appr...

When it comes to achievement badges, I see them falling into three categories: 1) Things I have done once 2) Things I have done once, and could probably do again, but not right now 3) Things I can do right now