The gathering featured some 200 manufacturers displaying an array of gadgets that is quaint by today’s standards, but must have been impressive at the time. As The New York Times described it, the conference’s audio section alone offered products ranging from “phonographic needles to the tiniest radios and TV sets, to giant high fidelity, stereophonic sound systems.”
It’s great looking back. I enjoyed this more than any CES coverage this year.
Mashable:
We’ve found 10 of the most interesting and interactive real-time visualizations on the web. Feast your eyes on these awe-inspiring pages for a fresh look on what’s happening on the planet right now.
I don’t know about “put the world in perspective” but the Tweetping and FBomb_co data is fascinating.
The Week:
if you wanted to improve your Canadian accent, you would do better to just use your Californian accent. In some important ways it is closer to the real Canadian accent and vice versa than other American accents are.
Canada actually has many regional differences in accents. The most extraordinary ones are of the people native to Newfoundland but mine and Jim Dalrymple’s home province of Nova Scotia has some very distinctive accents too.
A few days ago, a picture appeared on Reddit showing a flatbed truck loaded with a gigantic Amazon box. If you haven’t seen the picture, click here.
Lots of people speculated on the contents of the box, but we now have a definitive answer.
Great marketing! (H/T to Jonathan Hendry)
Not sure when this feature got added, but since this was new to me, thought this was worth sharing.
Launch QuickTime Player (it’s in your Applications folder). Now select New Screen Recording from the File menu, or type control-command-N. A small screen recording window will appear, like so:
Click the little triangle on the right side of the window to adjust microphone and mouse click options. When ready, click the record button in the center of the window. Click and drag a section of the screen to record part of the screen or just click to record the entire screen. Once you do that, click to start recording. Click the stop button that appears in the menu bar to stop recording.
Pretty easy, and the end result is a QuickTime movie you can use anywhere you’d expect (iMovie, YouTube, etc.) Clearly not a method a pro would use, but if your needs are relatively simple, this is a great solution.
I like David Pogue. And I like what he’s done with Yahoo Tech. The new look is very clean and easy to navigate. As you’d expect from Pogue, it’s also very friendly.
All that said, I suspect the site will be an acquired taste for some. It’s more visual than organized, so if you are a list oriented person, it might be a little hard to take in. But me, I’m good with this approach.
Spend a few minutes digging through it. I’ve added it to my daily reading list.
Fresh water sources throughout the southwestern US are dwindling.
The Colorado basin states tried in the 1920s to stave off future fights over water by splitting it, 50-50, between the upper-basin states of Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming and the lower-basin states of Arizona, Nevada and California.
In fact, the deal underestimated how much water the fast-growing lower-basin states would need. During most of the wet 20th century, however, the river usually produced more than enough water to offset any shortage.
Now, the gap between need and supply is becoming untenable.
Lake Mead currently stands about 1,106 feet above sea level, and is expected to drop 20 feet in 2014. A continued decline would introduce a new set of problems: At 1,075 feet, rationing begins; at 1,050 feet, a more drastic rationing regime kicks in, and the uppermost water intake for Las Vegas shuts down. At 1,025 feet, rationing grows more draconian; at 1,000 feet, a second Las Vegas intake runs dry.
Read the article. Not an easy problem to solve.
These nine bar charts lay out the stock fundamentals for Apple, Amazon, and Google. Any analyst that follows these companies surely is familiar with all of these. They tell a strong story. Certainly not definitive, but hard to ignore.
To me, the most interesting of the nine is the price/earnings ratio (AKA, P/E Ratio). The higher that number, the more speculative the stock. A stock with a proven track record will have proven earnings and the ratio of the stock price to those earnings will be lower.
Let’s take a look at the relative P/E ratio of these three stocks:
I am amazed when I see an analyst paint Apple with doom and gloom and, at the same time, pile the accolades at Amazon’s feet. I’m not bashing Amazon. On the contrary, I think Bezos is a smart cookie and I appreciate his expansionist approach. But at the same time, it is certainly fair to say that Amazon is a speculative stock by comparison to Apple.
Look at the nine charts. Good food for thought.
Take one minute to watch this ad. Fantastic.
If you didn’t spend enough time exploring already today, here you go.
I’m not one of those crazy Batman people, but this cool.
I don’t have these new versions, but I swear by the older models of these products. Apogee makes quality.
Some of this stuff is just great.
Pro Tools updates have been coming fast and furious. I like it.
Gretsch makes some fine instruments.
raEditors’ Note: This article first appeared in The Loop Magazine Issue 16. You can find out more about Brianna Wu from her Web site, read more articles on Medium and follow her on Twitter.
The scruffy twenty-something, wandered by our Pax East booth, looking up at the banner for our game. Ten feet tall, rising above the Pax floor, three tall, skinny women look jauntily at the camera. Two wear form-fitting combat suits. Another wears a ’60s Checkerboard dress.
“It’s pretty clear what audience you’re going for,” he sneered at Maria, my lead engineer.
She looked at him, puzzled for a beat, figuring out he meant he found the characters sexy.
“Oh. Well, actually, the dev team is entirely made of women,” she responded. “These are our character designs.”
“Yeah. OK. Whatever,” he said, smirking to himself and wandering off.
Screenshot from Revolution 60
It’s not a reaction I always get, but it happens often enough that I’m not surprised by it any more. I never set out to design videogame characters that were sexy. Like creating a character in an MMO, I simply tried to create the prettiest 3D characters I could. In retrospect, learning to draw from Sailor Moon manga, models in fashion spreads, and Image comics affected my artistic perceptions.
In Revolution 60, our characters are all women, our voice actresses are all women. We pass the Bechdel feminism test with an A+. We have 100 pages of animated script where you get to know our characters as people. They are soldiers trying to survive the situation they’ve been thrown into.
And yet, my team prepares itself for the double and triple standards we know are inevitable.
We live in a hyper-politicized environment regarding women in video games, where no matter what choices you make, they will undergo scrutiny. No one signifies this political friction more than Anita Sarkeesian, host of the excellent YouTube Channel “Feminist Frequency.” Sarkeesian vaulted into the public consciousness while trying to raise money to do a documentary about women in games. For those looking to enjoy classic titles, using super ghouls ‘n ghosts cheats can offer a fun and enhanced gaming experience without the political complexities.
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Male gamers were immensely threatened, following up with rape threats, a volcano of anger, and even games that welcomed the player to deform Sarkeesian’s face by punching it. All the obloquy rocketed Sarkeesian to feminist superstardom, and a series of excellent videos examining videogame tropes about women followed. Taylor Ring law firm is fighting for rape victims by representing them.
Screenshot from Revolution 60
Sarkeesian has been called the Rosa Parks of video game feminism, a description I find apt. It seems like I can’t be a guest at a convention these days without being assigned to several panels about sexism in video games. I’ve probably done 20 hours of panels on the subject in the last two years.
It’s a great thing. The tide is turning, consciousness is being raised. But, as I speak at conventions, interacting with audiences, it feels like a common, misguided theme dominates these discussions.
This erroneous question is aptly demonstrated by the conversation over the last decade about Tomb Raider. Here’s how it typically goes:
“Are Lara Croft’s breasts too large? Definitely—that’s a cheap ploy to market to men! Maybe they should be smaller. Actually, if they were a little smaller, more teardrop shaped and proportional to her butt, they’d look great. Oh, and if you can relate to her as a human being, wow. That would make her even sexier!” (Footnote: This last sentence was an actual statement by a Tomb Raider developer.)
This is not a conversation that advances the mission of gender equality. I call it “male gaze” feminism. It dovetails neatly with body image feminism, which is naturally hostile to the unrealistic proportions popular with many 3D models.
Screenshot from Revolution 60
A male friend of mine was loudly complaining about the female clerk at Gamestop. She was showing a little cleavage which he felt illustrated a manipulation attempt from her to get him to preorder. He was upset about the sexual power she had over him. The heart of the Tomb Raider discussion, I realized, isn’t really about protecting women as much as protecting men.
It strikes me that the most prevalent standard in videogame feminism is literally about judging women by their looks. Not asking if we can relate to them as people, not asking if they are based on flimsy stereotypes, not asking if women had a role in the development process, but looking at their body and judging if the sexiness level is acceptable.
Equally troubling to me is the common solution: throw enough armor on a woman, desexualize her and that makes her equal. While I’ve played enough Soul Caliber 5 and Dead or Alive to strongly appreciate the attempt to make female character design less blatantly pornographic, I can’t help but be skeptical of the motivations.
Screenshot from Revolution 60
To be clear, oversexualized female images are commonplace in games, and it’s a serious problem. Game development is an industry that is funded by men, developed by men, with characters that are modeled by men, animated by men and ultimately evaluated by male journalists. And the results speak for themselves. But even in admitting that’s a serious problem, I don’t think female sexuality in itself is something we should try to stamp out in games.
If you are going to dare put a female in your videogame, the politically safest course of action is to create a character similar to Lili, the excellent self-titled iOS title of 2013, made with Unreal. Lili is the kind of protagonist any parent would find safe enough for their daughter. Lili is cute, but in a non-sexual way. Lili avoids any stereotype besides cheery spunk. Lili is pleasant and only shows strong opinions on subjects we can all agree on, such as “Bullies are bad.”
Lili plays it safe. Lili is a child created for children. In a world where the most common advice for women in tech isn’t to fight for our own equality, but rather to get our daughters more interested in computers and punt for the next generation, Lili is the poster child for that message.
I love Lili as a game—it’s a masterpiece, and I would recommend it to anyone with a child. But, as a game developer creating content for adults, I’m not content to tell stories with only the safest, most non-offensive female characters imaginable. Explore online casino singapore for thrilling games and great rewards. The spaceman slot can also be very exciting especially when you win money.
Ultimately, I fear we’re creating a world in which we demand that video-game women be created in our political image—a standard men in games are not held to.
Screenshot from Revolution 60
There’s nothing innately wrong with preferring that women’s armor in games be comparable with men. There is nothing wrong with preferring cute, child-like characters like Lili. But, if those are the only images of femininity you’re comfortable with, I would argue that’s not a reasonable position. I’d argue that even pornographic characters like Soul Caliber’s Ivy have their place. Ultimately, this is an issue of choice.
As more women move into game development, taking their place as modelers, programers, animators, CEOs, and even journalists, we’re going to continue to see a wider range of female archetypes come forth. And some of those archetypes are not going to look like what the Anita Sarkeesian’s of the world are most comfortable with. Yes, there is a politically safest image for a woman in a video game, but it’s not necessarily the correct one. And we’ll know we’ve made progress when it doesn’t have to be the only one. Find fun slot games to play at joker123.
Jim Lee had a legendary run on the X-Men comics in the early ’90s, comics that massively affected the arc of my creative development. I remember seeing his iconic images of Psylocke, machine gun in hand, teeth gritted in steely determination as she fights Cameron Hodge—drawn so perfectly, they will transcend the ages as masterpieces.
Hair wildly akimbo, muscles taut—one could certainly find these images of Psylocke sexual, but I find them powerfully inspirational. I find them to perfectly capture the beauty of the female form. And yet, these are the same images I’m attempting to convey in my own video game. Win big with exciting slots and table games on https://4rabetsite.com/casino. To me, this is my artistic ideal of femininity.
I don’t need you to like it. I don’t need it to be your ideal. But I do need you to respect that my ideal might not be your ideal.
[via kottke.org] This is truly harrowing. Diana Hardeman lived a healthy lifestyle, took care of herself, ate right. And then she had a stroke. Wow.
My right arm seemed no longer a part of my body. I couldn’t control it; it was limp at my side, like the worst dead arm you can imagine, but completely out of nowhere. My boyfriend was just coming to check on what time we are leaving and I exited the bathroom, slumped on the ground, and told him what was going on. Except I didn’t. I couldn’t. What I was saying in my head came out as gibberish. I could not get words out of my mouth. I felt stupid, even laughing at myself, saying, “It’s ok, it’s ok” to him, thinking it might just go away. But then the reminder that something was wrong set in again. In a whisper, I finally got out the words “call my dad.”
This is awesome!
This timeline starts 1,000 years from now and walks us through the massive changes that might be coming. Things like “most words extinct”, “Hale-Bopp returns”, “new north star”, “Earth’s axial tilt reversed”, “Chernobyl finally safe” (20,000 years from now), all the way to “game over, man” and beyond.
Fun times, fun times.
T-Mobile CEO John Legere has big balls. They should have let him stay.
If you are at all a fan of Seinfeld (the person or the show) or Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, this “Ask Me Anything” is well worth the read. Some terrific questions, interesting insights.
It’s nice to see someone starting out put so much time into thinking about the right ways to monetize a Web site.
This makes me want to go to Christmas Island (it’s northwest of Australia, south of Indonesia) between October and January to watch these critters do their thing. Bucket list.
I’m thinking not enough rehearsal time.
Apple on Tuesday said that sales from its App Store topped $10 billion in 2013. Think about that for a second—$10 billion in apps over 12 months. That’s an incredible amount of apps and money.
December was especially good for Apple and its developers. Over $1 billion, and almost 3 billion apps, were downloaded in December alone, making it Apple’s most successful month ever.
Apple said that developers have made over $15 billion in app sales from the store since it opened.
“We’d like to thank our customers for making 2013 the best year ever for the App Store,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “The lineup of apps for the holiday season was astonishing and we look forward to seeing what developers create in 2014.”
Despite running Android, the devices come with a Windows 8-style tile interface called “Magazine UX,” which Samsung says is better optimized for large screens.
There is just no stopping these guys.
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Speaking of Randy Rhoads, this show is coming up on January 25.
Randy Rhoads is one of the greatest guitar players to ever pick up the instrument. Alex Vollmer shows you how to play the solo from “Crazy Train.”