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While You Were Offline: Mr. Trump Goes to Europe to Spread Social Awkwardness http://ift.tt/2qrMiIt It wouldn’t be a Thursday on the internet if folks weren’t irrationally upset over something. The latest installment? A bunch of dudes who are mad that Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse is planning a women-only screening of Wonder Woman on June 6. It shouldn’t really be a surprise, because if there’s one thing men have proven themselves to be throughout history, it’s prone to childish overreactions whenever someone says something isn’t for them. But let’s not dwell on that ridiculous outcry. Instead, let’s focus on this pitch-perfect response from the theater in question:
Ah. Sometimes there is good in the world. There’s also, well, some bad. Here are all of the things you might have missed online from the past seven days. Don’t shoot, we’re just the messengers. Awkward Papal Photos: Horror EditionWhat Happened: It’s the team-up everyone has been waiting for: President Donald Trump and the pope! Together, they fight crime! No, wait. That’s not right. Together, they take really uncomfortable photos. Well, uncomfortable for them, but delightful for the internet.
Sounds like the meeting went better than the last time Trump and the pope had a run-in. Or did it? Photos from the meeting suggest it wasn’t quite as sunny as Trump’s tweet made it seem.
As news of Trump’s visit hit mainstream media, though, Photoshop masters quickly turned images of the meeting into a horror-filled meme.
Considering the Trumps showed up looking like the Addams Family, it was only a matter of time before this happened. But the volume and frequency with which these Photoshops hit the internet was pretty remarkable, and for a while it seemed as though the only thing that would stop them was divine intervention. Once they did peter out, it was hard to determine which was the best, but this Shining-themed GIF might come out on top:
The Takeaway: Apparently, papal supremacy applies to the internet, too. So, About That Picture of Trump with the Glowing Orb…What Happened: President Trump also proved adept at providing the internet with meme-worthy material while in Saudi Arabia.
That, surprisingly, isn’t a faked photo or one that’s been altered in any way. That’s actually a real thing that happened during Trump’s trip. As could only be expected, Twitter was enamored with the visual:
Of course, the media was just as fascinated, both by the photo op and the online reaction. But perhaps the best, most surreal follow-up was this extended Twitter joke:
The Takeaway: Perhaps people shouldn’t mock the orb too much. After all, they don’t know its true power. The Shake DownWhat Happened: Completing a hat trick of providing meme-worthy content last week, Trump was photographed sharing a rather unpleasant handshake with the new president of France.
OK, that was kind of weird. Twitter?
The handshake quickly became a thing. While surely no one involved wanted that strange moment to be a talking point, it was relatively innocuous compared to the other info that came out of Trump and Macron’s meeting.
Really? That doesn’t sound right.
Oh. So maybe that’s why Macron seemingly avoided Trump when they saw each other later?
For something so critical, international politics really can seem like high school sometimes. The Takeaway: Wait, did we say high school? It might be elementary.
Teachable MomentsWhat Happened: A potentially doctored school assignment created a new internet hero, who very deservedly got ice cream.
Now, before we go any further: Yes, the handwriting on the last two lines looks suspiciously different from the rest of the page, but don’t harsh our need for happiness with your logic. This is great, even if it’s a little fudged.
Unsurprisingly, almost everyone voted for ice cream, which led to the obvious conclusion.
Was it real? We’ll never know, although that handwriting thing didn’t really help its case. What matters is that the girl got her ice cream—either for her wonderful teacher feedback or for her willingness to be a prop to gain social media attention. Ice cream is important; everything else is futile. C’mon, it’s the weekend—you should spend it with some ice cream too!
Drumstick Twitter, can’t you be a little better at being subtle? Take a lesson from the Alamo Drafthouse! Go Back to Top. Skip To: Start of Article.Digital Trends via WIRED https://www.wired.com May 28, 2017 at 01:33AM
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Blockchains are the new Linux, not the new Internet http://ift.tt/2r9Lby0 Cryptocurrencies are booming beyond belief. Bitcoin is up sevenfold, to $2,500, in the last year. Three weeks ago the redoubtable Vinay Gupta, who led Ethereum’s initial release, published an essay entitled “What Does Ether At $100 Mean?” Since then it has doubled. Too many altcoins to name have skyrocketed in value along with the Big Two. ICOs are raking in money hand over fist over bicep. What the hell is going on? (eta: in the whopping 48 hours since I first wrote that, those prices have tumbled considerably, but are still way, way up for the year.) A certain seductive narrative has taken hold, is what is going on. This narrative, in its most extreme version, says that cryptocurrencies today are like the Internet in 1996: not just new technology but a radical new kind of technology, belittled or ignored by by most, which has slowly and subtly grown in power and influence over the last several years, and is about to explode into worldwide relevance and importance with shocking speed and massive repercussions. (Lest you think I’m overstating this, I got a PR pitch the other day which literally began: “Blockchain’s 1996 Internet moment is here,” as a preface to touting a $33 million ICO. Hey, what’s $33 million between friends? It’s now pretty much taken as given that we’re in a cryptocoin bubble.) I understand the appeal of this narrative. I’m no blockchain skeptic. I’ve been writing about cryptocurrencies with fascination for six years now. I’ve been touting and lauding the power of blockchains, how they have the potential to make the Internet decentralized and permissionless again, and to give us all power over our own data, for years. I’m a true believer in permissionless money like Bitcoin. I called the initial launch of Ethereum “a historic day.” But I can’t help but look at the state of cryptocurrencies today and wonder where the actual value is. I don’t mean financial value to speculators; I mean utility value to users. Because if nobody wants to actually use blockchain protocols and projects, those tokens which are supposed to reflect their value are ultimately … well … worthless. Bitcoin, despite its ongoing internal strife, is very useful as permissionless global money, and has a legitimate shot at becoming a global reserve and settlement currency. Its anonymized descendants such as ZCash have added value to the initial Bitcoin proposition. (Similarly, Litecoin is now technically ahead of Bitcoin, thanks to the aforementioned ongoing strife.) Ethereum is very successful as a platform for developers. But still, eight years after Bitcoin launched, Satoshi Nakamoto remains the only creator to have built a blockchain that an appreciable number of ordinary people actually want to use. (Ethereum is awesome, and Vitalik Buterin, like Gupta, is an honest-to-God visionary, but it remains a tool / solution / platform for developers.) No other blockchain-based software initiative seems to be at any real risk of hockey-sticking into general recognition, much less general usage. With all due respect to Fred Wilson, another true believer — and, to be clear, an enormous amount of respect is due — it says a lot that, in the midst of this massive boom, he’s citing “Rare Pepe Cards,” of all things, as a prime example of an interesting modern blockchain app. I mean, if that’s the state of the art… Maybe I’m wrong; maybe Rare Pepe will be the next Pokémon Go. But on the other hand, maybe the ratio of speculation to actual value in the blockchain space has never been higher, which is saying a lot. Some people argue that the technology is so amazing, so revolutionary, that if enough money is invested, the killer apps and protocols will come. That could hardly be more backwards. I’m not opposed to token sales, but they should follow “If you build something good enough, investors will flock to you,” not “If enough investors flock to us, we will build something good enough.” A solid team working on an interesting project which hasn’t hit product-market fit should be able to raise a few million dollars — or, if you prefer, a couple of thousand bitcoin — and then, once their success is proven, they might sell another tranche of now-more-valuable tokens. But projects with hardly users, and barely any tech, raising tens of millions? That smacks of a bubble made of snake oil … one all too likely to attract the heavy and unforgiving hand of the SEC. That seductive narrative though! The Internet in 1996! I know. But hear me out. Maybe the belief that blockchains today are like the Internet in 1996 is completely wrong. Of course all analogies are flawed, but they’re useful, they’re how we think — and maybe there is another, more accurate, and far more telling, analogy here. I propose a counter-narrative. I put it to you that blockchains today aren’t like the Internet in 1996; they’re more like Linux in 1996. That is in no way a dig — but, if true, it’s something of a death knell for those who hope to profit from mainstream usage of blockchain apps and protocols. Decentralized blockchain solutions are vastly more democratic, and more technically compelling, than the hermetically-sealed, walled-garden, Stack-ruled Internet of today. Similarly, open-source Linux was vastly more democratic, and more technically compelling, than the Microsoft and Apple OSes which ruled computing at the time. But nobody used it except a tiny coterie of hackers. It was too clunky; too complicated; too counterintuitive; required jumping through too many hoops — and Linux’s dirty secret was that the mainstream solutions were, in fact, actually fine, for most people. Sound familiar? Today there’s a lot of work going into decentralized distributed storage keyed on blockchain indexes; Storj, Sia, Blockstack, et al. This is amazing, groundbreaking work… but why would an ordinary person, one already comfortable with Box or Dropbox, switch over to Storj or Blockstack? The centralized solution works just fine for them, and, because it’s centralized, they know who to call if something goes wrong. Blockstack in particular is more than “just” storage … but what compelling pain point is it solving for the average user? The similarities to Linux are striking. Linux was both much cheaper and vastly more powerful than the alternatives available at the time. It seemed incredibly, unbelievably disruptive. Neal Stephenson famously analogized 90s operating systems to cars. Windows was a rattling lemon of a station wagon; MacOS was a hermetically sealed Volkswagen Beetle; and then, weirdly … beyond weirdly … there was
I put it to you that just as yesterday’s ordinary consumers wouldn’t use Linux, today’s won’t use Bitcoin and other blockchain apps, even if Bitcoin and the the other apps build atop blockchains are technically and politically amazing (which some are.) I put it to you that “the year of widespread consumer use of [Bitcoin | Ripple | Stellar | ZCash | decentralized ether apps | etc]” is perhaps analogous to “the year of [Ubuntu | Debian | Slackware | Red Hat | etc] on the desktop.” Please note: this is not a dismissive analogy, or one which in any way understates the potential eventual importance of the technology! There are two billion active Android devices out there, and every single one runs the Linux kernel. When they communicate with servers, aka “the cloud,” they communicate with vast, warehouse-sized data centers … teeming with innumerable Linux boxes. Linux was immensely important and influential. Most of modern computing is arguably Linux-to-Linux. It’s very easy to imagine a similar future for blockchains and cryptocurrencies. To quote my friend Shannon: “It [blockchain tech] definitely seems like it has a Linux-like adoption arc ahead of it: There’s going to be a bunch of doomed attempts to make it a commercially-viable consumer product while it gains dominance in vital behind-the-scenes applications.” But if your 1996 investment thesis had been that ordinary people would adopt Linux en masse over the next decade — which would not have seemed at all crazy — then you would have been in for a giant world of hurt. Linux did not become important because ordinary people used it. Instead it became commodity infrastructure that powered the next wave of the Internet. It’s easy to envision how and why an interwoven mesh of dozens of decentralized blockchains could slowly, over a period of years and years, become a similar category of crucial infrastructure: as a reserve/settlement currency, as replacements for huge swathes of today’s financial industry, as namespaces (such as domain names), as behind-the-scenes implementations of distributed storage systems, etc. … while ordinary people remain essentially blissfully unaware of their existence. It’s even easy to imagine them being commoditized. Does Ethereum gas cost too much? No problem; just switch your distributed system over to another, cheaper, blockchain. So don’t tell me this is like the Internet in 1996, not without compelling evidence. Instead, wake me up when cryptocurrency prices begin to track the demonstrated underlying value of the apps and protocols built on their blockchains. Because in the interim, in its absence of that value, I’m sorry to say that instead we seem to be talking about decentralized digital tulips. Disclosure, since it seems requisite: I mostly avoid any financial interest, implicit or explicit, long or short, in any cryptocurrency, so that I can write about them sans bias. I do own precisely one bitcoin, though, which I purchased a couple of years ago because I felt silly not owning any while I was advising a (since defunct) Bitcoin-based company. Featured Image: Jorge González/Flickr UNDER A CC BY-SA 2.0 LICENSEDigital Trends via TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com May 28, 2017 at 01:01AM
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Get off the grid without going hungry with the best backpacking stoves http://ift.tt/2rbT7AN The cooking stove you select for a backpacking expedition is a critical decision, determining how well (or how poorly) you’re going to eat and drink during your time in the outdoors. There are different factors to consider based on the location, season, elevation, and length of your journey, but we can help you make the right decision wherever the trail may lead. Whether you want the lightest stove for covering long distances, an alternative fuel source for higher elevations, or the capacity to serve a gourmet meal to a group of friends, we can recommend the best product for you. With that said, here are our picks for the best cooking stoves for backpacking. Our pickMSR WindburnerWhy Should You Buy This: The MSR Windburner is efficient, packable, functional, and great in windy weather. Who’s it For: Any backpacker, alpinist, mountaineer, or car camper How Much Will it Cost: $140 Why we picked the MSR Windburner: The MSR Windburner is an all-in-one integrated cook stove system that serves as any backpacker’s dream. MSR incorporated Reactor technology into its radiant burner and an enclosed, windproof design. A fuel-efficient system quickly brings water to a boil and a secure lid with a small spout ensures confidence while pouring. The pot locks onto the stove, ensuring unsurpassed stability. Its highlight feature is phenomenal wind resistance even in the most brutal alpine conditions. It features the highest quality integrated canister design on the market, engineered to be used anywhere. One-liter and 1.8-liter capacity pots provide options for both solo or group travel. Everything packs up into the pot itself, making for a space-saving accessory in any backpack. Want to heat more than just water? The WindBurner Skillet is a perfect accessory that’s purchased separately and integrated into the burner. While it’s $140 price tag might seem a bit steep, bear in mind it is an all-in-one system and a cooking pot is included. Buy one now from: The lightestSnow Peak Lite MaxWhy Should You Buy This: The Snow Peak Lite Max is extremely lightweight and durable, made from high-end materials Who’s it For: The Snow Peak Lite Max is designed for the ultralight backpacker. How Much Will it Cost: $60 Why we picked the Snow Peak Lite Max: The Snow Peak Lite Max was designed with the ultralight backpacker in mind, without sacrificing durability or efficiency. The simple, compact stove easily screws on to a fuel canister and has water boiling within minutes. Titanium and aluminum reduce weight and are designed to ensure the stove’s stability. Folding arms reduce space but are large enough when extended to provide a stable cooking surface for a variety of cookware. A flame control valve ensures the easy transition between simmering and boiling states. This tiny product packs a powerful, burning punch and quickly brings water to a boil. When folded up, this stove fits into the palm of your hand which makes it an deal option for ultralight backpackers with distance to cover. It tucks away into the nook or cranny of any backpack and is so light, it’s hard to notice it’s even there. Buy one now from: The biggest capacityMSR DragonflyWhy Should You Buy This: The MSR Dragonfly ensures control and stability while handling larger cookware. Who’s it For: The MSR Dragonfly is for international travelers, gourmet chefs, and any group of backpackers seeking to cook comfort food out on the trail. How Much Will it Cost: $105 Why we picked the MSR Dragonfly: The MSR Dragonfly is an all-around backpacking stove perfect for groups, both domestic or overseas. The stove boasts an extremely stable base and durable frame that makes it ideal for larger pots up to 10 inches in diameter, attributing to its capacity to cook a lot of food in a short period of time. The stove burns many different kinds of liquid fuel including white gas, kerosene, auto fuel, and diesel, making for exceptional adaptability in any backcountry situation. A suspended burner cup ensures efficiency, allowing for the stove to burn hot while reducing heat lost to the ground. The MSR Dragonfly is a camp chef’s stove of choice, boasting a highly sensitive simmer capacity allocated by a dual-valve design. Its only downsides are a heavy weight at 14 ounces and the loud noise it makes while cooking — a small price to pay for a gourmet meal at the end of a long day on the trail. Buy one now from: The best multi-fuel sourceMSR Whisperlite UniversalWhy Should You Buy This: The MSR Whisperlite Universal burns any fuel source and is extremely easy to maintain. Who’s it For: Domestic and international backpackers who want the ability to use both liquid and canister fuel sources. How Much Will it Cost: $65 Why we picked the MSR Whisperlite Universal: The MSR Whisperlite Universal is the only stove on the market capable of utilizing both liquid and canister fuel sources. It’s also the lightest stove compared to others in its class and is extremely easy to maintain. This hybrid-fuel stove system is ideal for domestic backpacking ventures and will be coveted on overseas expeditions. At 11 ounces, it’s not terribly heavy for the adaptability it offers. AirControl technology ensures exceptional performance no matter what fuel type is selected. MSR designed it to provide consistent output from canisters and is efficient in cold weather conditions. The MSR Whisperlite Universal’s solid, stainless steel frame ensures stability and is designed to keep weight minimal. Buy one now from: The most efficient use of fuelMSR ReactorWhy Should You Buy This: The MSR Reactor offers a highly efficient use of fuel and bigger pot capacity options. Who’s it For: Any backpacker, alpinist, day hiker, or car camper. How Much Will it Cost: $150 Why we picked the MSR Reactor: The MSR Reactor is by far the most fuel-efficient option on the market and gets water boiling faster than any other comparable product. The protective housing allocated by the all-in-one design makes for the ultimate performance in windy conditions. This high-efficiency stove ensures minimal fuel waste. The included pot packs together with the stove into a small, compact size ideal for alpine expeditions and long treks. Unfortunately, the pot doesn’t attach to the stove, attributing to a lack of stability while cooking, and it doesn’t allow for simmering. This means the product may not be ideal for much more than boiling water for coffee and freeze-dried meals. The MSR Reactor comes in a variety of capacity sizes including 1-liter, 1.7-liter, and 2.5-liter, making it great for those traveling solo or in larger groups. Buy one now from: How We TestWhen possible, our cooking stoves have been tested on multiple-length expeditions during different seasons and at varying altitudes. We try to test each stove to its capacity, evaluating especially how well each one performs in cold and windy conditions. When testing a stove is not possible, we draw on extensive research of the features and compare it to similar products or older models. We analyze changes and improvements and draw on insight provided by the manufacturer and other retailers. Things to ConsiderThe ideal cooking stove for backpacking depends entirely on personal preferences and the type of expedition. You wouldn’t necessarily bring the same stove to hike the Appalachian Trail as you would on a venture into the Himalayas. Time spent researching your options is time well spent. Buying a cooking stove comes down to four things: The type of fuel you want to use, the size of stove you want to carry, the level of performance you seek, and the kind of meals you wish to eat during your travels. Canister vs. Liquid FuelBackpacking stoves utilize either isobutane or propane fuel canisters or traditional liquid fuel. Canister fuel is the best choice for domestic backpackers in that it burns clean, is very compact, remains easy to find in the United States, and is easy to transport. Also, universal threading exists between brands. The only drawback to canister fuel is its lack of performance in extremely cold weather and at higher elevations. Also, canisters aren’t often available internationally. Liquid fuel sources are primarily comprised of white gas which utilizes refillable containers. The advantage of a multi-fuel stove system means you can run on either canister or liquid fuel, but that adaptability is not necessary for every person. For backpackers who frequently travel overseas, having a stove with the capacity to utilize liquid fuel is a necessity. The downside to liquid fuel is its bulk, typically higher price, and a slower set up. All-in-one Models vs. Screw-on Canister ModelsAll-in-one models are great in terms of easy setup and especially when boiling water. These models include the burner, the heat exchanger, and the pot. Different sized pots make for equal use when traveling solo or in a group. Most products include an insulated handle that allows for eating directly out of the cookware. They’re also likely to be more stable than screw-on canister models. However, they do tend to be a touch heavier and feature less flame control. Screw-on canister models are better for ultralight backpacking. Most models fold up into the palm of your hand and can be squeezed into any size backpack. The bigger models boast better flame control and are made for serving gourmet meals to larger groups of travelers. Proper selection of a backpacking cooking stove is ideally based on how -- and what — you want to eat on your adventures.
Digital Trends via Digital Trends http://ift.tt/2p4eJdC May 28, 2017 at 12:07AM
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Awesome tech you can’t buy yet: Fish drones, bottle gardens, AI longboards http://ift.tt/2r1pzWf At any given moment, there are approximately a zillion crowdfunding campaigns on the web. Take a stroll through Kickstarter or Indiegogo and you’ll find no shortage of weird, useless, and downright stupid projects out there — alongside some real gems. In this column, we cut through all the worthless wearables and Oculus Rift ripoffs to round up the week’s most unusual, ambitious, and exciting projects. But don’t grab your wallet just yet. Keep in mind that any crowdfunded project can fail — even the most well-intentioned. Do your homework before cutting a check for the gadget of your dreams. Splash Drone 3 — waterproof camera drone
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Flying a drone over solid ground is one thing, but flying it over water is a whole ‘nother ball game. With all manner of electronics on board, an unexpected aquatic landing is almost always a death sentence for your drone, which makes flying it much more stressful. That’s not the case for the Splash Drone 3, however. Recently launched on Kickstarter, this hardy little quadcopter is encased in a buoyant waterproof shell, so it can safely land and float on water without being damaged. But waterproof components aren’t the only trick Splash has up its sleeve. Beyond the watertight hull, it’s still got an impressive list of features. On its underbelly, the Splash is outfitted with a 4K camera nestled inside a 3-axis gimbal — both of which are completely waterproof. Thus, you can shoot while airborne or submerged. It’s also equipped with an auto-follow function, so it can shoot video autonomously while you play in the water. Read Read — braille-teaching system
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This one is fairly complex, so we’ll let the Read Read team do the explaining. Here’s an excerpt from their Kickstarter page: “97% of blind adults who cannot read braille are unemployed, yet only 8.5% of blind students receive enough instruction to learn braille. The biggest barrier to braille literacy is a lack or complete absence of high-quality braille instruction. Currently, blind students are unable to learn and practice braille reading independently — all of their learning hinges on the presence of a teacher who knows both braille, and how to teach reading. Thus, the majority of blind students in the US are illiterate.” Illiteracy in America is a huge problem for the visually impaired, and Harvard graduate student Alex Tavares built something to help. The Read Read, as it’s called, is the world’s first electronic braille teaching system that allows visually impaired students to learn the language independently. The Read Read uses a system of electronic letter tiles that can be rearranged to form words, like tiles on a Scrabble board. These tiles feature raised lettering and a corresponding braille translation, as well as a touch-sensitive strip that speaks the letter sound aloud when touched. Basically, this device allows people to learn braille without relying on a human teacher. Biki — fish-like submersible drone
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Bored of drones that fly in the sky? Check out Biki — an ROV that swims in the sea. The robotic submersible, recently launched on Kickstarter, can move at a leisurely 1.1 mph for up to 90 minutes on a single charge, with a flapping fish tail that propels it through the water. You can control Biki via the accompanying app or with a physical controller, and if at any point the connection goes down between you and the robot, built-in GPS means it’ll automatically return to base. You can even program your own routes and swim alongside, or simply let Biki wander off by itself while you stay on dry land and enjoy the footage it streams back to your smartphone or tablet. Built-in obstacle avoidance tech should save the robo-fish from any calamitous mishaps, though it clearly won’t be quick enough to escape the jaws of an angry shark that crosses its path. XTND — AI-powered electric longboard
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Ok so this one admittedly made us roll our eyes a bit when we first encountered it. Do you really need an electric longboard with artificial intelligence built in? Probably not — but after digging a bit deeper, it appears that the XTND does actually have some cool features that might make it worthwhile. For starters, the XTND collects information on every trip you take. Once it has a bit of data to work with, it’ll start adjust its own settings and adapt to your particular riding style. If you’re new and struggling (like standing incorrectly), the board won’t even move, thereby keeping you safe. Similarly, if you jump (or fall) off a board while it’s in motion, XTND will start braking and prevent itself from rolling forward. The board’s tracking ability is arguably its coolest feature. Over time, it’ll analyze the route you take and eventually suggest alternative routes that may be more efficient or more board-friendly. That way, you’ll be able to find better terrain, so you can get where you need to go more quickly and with less battery power expenditure. The World’s Smallest Garden — bottle-based hydroponic garden
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Like the idea of having a garden, but don’t have enough space to make it happen? Check out the World’s Smallest Garden — a diminutive cylindrical device you place in the top of a regular bottle, transforming it into a self-watering herb garden in seconds. Simply place the product into a bottle filled with water, and you’ll create an optimal environment for seed germination, as well as a mechanism through which your plants can water themselves. All you need to do is make sure the plants are put someplace sunny — or, at least, with access to the appropriate light — and then check on their water levels once a week. “What makes it so neat is its accessibility,” said Nate Littlewood, co-founder and CEO of Urban Leaf. “From the outset, we wanted to create a product that was easy to use and affordable. There are a ton of other home-hydroponic grow kits on the market already, most of which are in the $200 to $3,000 price range. These are inaccessible and intimidating to most people — and certainly too complicated for the beginner. The World’s Smallest Garden is intended as gateway product, designed to welcome people into the field of home-growing for the first time.”
Digital Trends via Digital Trends http://ift.tt/2p4eJdC May 28, 2017 at 12:07AM
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The Best Memorial Day Lifestyle Sales http://ift.tt/2qWLnCv The best Memorial Day lifestyle sales from Nordstrom Rack, H&M, Uniqlo, Anthropologie, Too Faced Cosmetics, and more. Bookmark Kinja Deals and follow us on Twitter to never miss a deal.
THe Big SalesIt’s that time again. Nordstrom Rack has brought back their Clear the Rack sale and it’s full (and I mean FULL) of really incredible deals. Designer clothing, brands you’ve never heard of, everything an extra 25% off. Today’s the first day of the sale, so what are you waiting for? Uniqlo’s affordability is sometimes thwarted by the shipping costs, so when there’s free shipping, you know it’s a big deal. From now until Monday, get any order (including their newly-launched, kickass collaboration with Nintendo) shipped to you for free. Now go enjoy your extra day off. Advertisement Advertisement Our advice? Check out the discounted Airism shirts and underwear, and stock up before it gets too hot outside. It’s time to milk fast-fashion retailer H&M for all it’s worth. Grab up to 60% off to celebrate Memorial Day Weekend and get your warmer weather wardrobe in check. It’ll be easy to look good and feel good with how much money you’ll save. Anthropologie will always be a good destination to start looking for something unique. With an extra 40% off sale styles, no code needed, that uniqueness is that much more affordable. Just add your new stuff to the cart and you’ll see the discount when you checkout. Free People has grown up out of their exclusively hippy-dippy, oversized style, and with an extra 25% off sale styles from now until Monday, you can take advantage. Add new denim to your closet or pair of shoes you’ve been eyeing all month for a third of what you’d normally pay. Plus, this sale lasts until Monday, so you have some time to decide. Need Supply, the Richmond, VA shop for everything trendy and cool, is having a sweet sale. Right now, they’re giving you up to 30% off a ton of styles thanks to their summer sale. Stock up on minimalist staples, or some really great beauty steals, and get ready for summer. Athleta is the Old Navy/GAP/Banana Republic brand that focuses solely on activewear. And while they normally don’t have sales, it looks like Memorial Day is an exception. Use the code DIVEIN and save 20% on all their solid swimwear, which includes bikinis, one-pieces, and cover-ups. Topshop is taking up to 40% off a ridiculous amount of things, including stuff from their Unique line. My recommendation is to check out the dresses and shoes, as my experience has proven that those are the most reliable sale items. Current/Elliott is a denim brand you see everywhere, but the price is just a little too much. Right now at Nordstrom Rack, not only is there a Current/Elliott sale, but Joie, purveyor of all things soft and comfy, is also marked down. So you’ll be able to get an entire outfit for the price of one, non-marked down pair of Current/Elliott jeans. What better way to get ready for the better weather than discounted Under Armour gear? This sale is full of practically every style you can think of, with styles for both men and women. From the classic Under Armour long-sleeves to training shoes to their Threadborne microthread technology, this gear is perfect for running outside in the warmer months. Nordstrom has two large sales each year: The Anniversary Sale and The Half-Yearly Sale. Well, today is about halfway through the year, so Nordstrom is taking up to 40% off a boatload of styles. It’ll take time to look through all the stuff, so maybe pencil it in as a meeting at work or something. There’s no better time to give Urban Outfitters a second look than when they mark down practically everything up to 50% off. Women’s styles, men’s styles, even apartment and home decor, all discounted for the long weekend. Kick your feet up and enjoy it. Home Goods
Bath & Body Works just dropped a whole bunch of spring scents to help bust through the gross weather we’ve been having. Right now, all their 3-wick candles are 2-for-$24, plus you can add an additional 20% off with the code SET4SUMMER at checkout.
The propane-powered Pizzacraft Pizzeria Pronto pizza oven is ideal for backyard barbecues and tailgates, and Amazon’s taking a whopping $94 off today. Advertisement Sponsored The Pronto hooks up to any propane tank, and reaches temperatures of up to 700 degrees, resulting in crispy crust and melted cheese, all in just five minutes. The oven almost always sells for $300, and today’s $206 deal matches a short-lived discount from April. If you don’t have a pizza peel, Pizzacraft sells an accessory kit that also includes a cleaning brush. Update: This deal is now also available through Discount Tire (proper), in addition to Discount Tire Direct, through Saturday only. If your tires are about due for a replacement, Discount Tire Direct is offering up to $100 in Visa gift card rebates (in addition to any manufacturer rebates) when you order four new tires, plus an additional $100 if you order wheels as well, plus an extra $60 on each if you use a Discount Tire credit card. Just enter your make and model, click the options to see tires on promotion, and you’ll see the rebate amount (either $25, $75, or $100) on the right hand side. If your spring cleaning doesn’t involve revamping your home goods, what are you even doing? Add some awesome infographics to your walls with Pop Chart Lab’s 25% off sitewide sale. Get everything from the Connected Characters of Seinfeld to every single bird in North America. Enter the code KINJAPOP at checkout to see your discount. Advertisement Advertisement Add even more pop art to your life with some housewares, like pint glasses, tote bags, and more at a discount. Not only are they already marked down 20-50% off, the sitewide 25% off works on them as well. And if you need an attractive and easy way to hang your new posters, the 25% also works on poster rails. BEauty StealsTarte Cosmetics is one of those brands that is always in my makeup bag. Right now, celebrate Tarte’s Friends and Family Festival with a 15% off your entire order. Grab their Tarteist Lip Paint or Amazonian Clay 12-Hour Blush (in any shade you want) for 15% off with the code WEEKEND, before they’re gone. I’m a huge fan of Too Faced, and I feel that this is a brand everyone should try at least once. Even if you’re a Too Faced vet, this 20% off sale is perfect you too. Use the code GET20 and stock up on Better Than Sex mascara and Melted Matte lipstick while you can. Run. Run to Sephora or order the Urban Decay Naked Smoky palette online ASAP because at $27, you’re getting one of the best smoky eye palettes out there for 50% off. I’m telling you, do this right now or you’re going to regret it because it’s gonna sell out at that price. Advertisement Advertisement If you’re looking for something else to add to your makeup arsenal, their OG setting sprays are on sale as well. h/t Serefina Digital Trends via Gizmodo http://gizmodo.com May 28, 2017 at 12:03AM
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Cutting H-1B Visas Endangers Scientific Progress For Everyone http://ift.tt/2s3tY9u President Donald Trump’s recent executive order calling for a sweeping review of the H-1B visa program has raised alarm in STEM-related industries that rely heavily on an international supply of high-skilled labor. WIRED OPINIONAbout Harrison Brody is a PhD student in neuroscience at Yale University and a member of Yale Science Diplomats. Current policy for H-1B visas, which permit highly skilled foreigners to work in the US temporarily, prohibits employers from undercutting wages or favoring foreign workers over Americans. But the president, along with a sizable bipartisan contingent, claims that the program has enabled private employers, especially those in the tech industry, to flood the labor market and provide temporary training for workers who eventually set up shop abroad. These grievances may be legitimate, but the conversation has largely ignored another industry that depends on the H-1B visa program: academic scientific research. As a young scientist-in-training, I’ve had the distinct pleasure of working with and learning from a number of exceptionally gifted scientists from around the world. Many of the breakthroughs and discoveries made in labs where I’ve worked were in large part due to the extraordinary contributions of these foreign-born researchers. While Trump has revealed very little about his plans for reforming the policy, the ambiguity of the announcement and his subsequent silence on the issue have left scientists, both American and foreign-born, in a state of grave uncertainty. Academic institutions have long relied on an international network from which to source the most successful and talented scientists. This global supply of talent, unrestricted by national boundaries, is critical to the ability of US institutions to compete on a global scale, and this fact is reflected in current policy. While the government caps the number of new H-1B visas awarded to the private sector at 85,000 visas annually, the number of H-1Bs granted to academic and non-profit research institutions is currently unrestricted, demonstrating just how important an unlimited source of international talent is for scientific discovery and innovation. It’s unclear if the Trump administration’s H-1B visa reform will alter or eliminate this protection for research institutions. If the administration does ultimately recommend imposing tighter restrictions on the H-1B visa program, any changes that restrict how colleges and universities recruit scientists would have devastating repercussions. The contribution of highly skilled foreign talent to US innovation and economic growth is well-established, and much of this growth is closely tied to academic research. Patents can be a useful proxy for measuring innovation, and in 2015, approximately 22 percent of utility patents filed by US organizations in the category of pharmaceutical drugs and 24 percent of utility patents filed by US organizations in the category of molecular biology and microbiology were awarded to US colleges and universities by the US Patent and Trademark Office. These patents were in no small part due to the work of foreign-born academic researchers; a report from the Partnership for a New American Economy, a bipartisan research organization, found that 76 percent of patents awarded to the top 10 patent-producing US universities listed at least one foreign-born inventor. The report also found that 99 percent of these patents were in STEM-related fields. More than half of all basic scientific research conducted in the US, the kind of research that paves the way for advances in medicine and technology, was conducted at US colleges or universities, the report found. The scientific and economic gains produced by foreign-born innovators are in no way limited to the ivory tower. Researchers at the University of California, Davis and Colgate University found that an increase in the number of H-1B visa holders working in STEM-related fields can at least partially account for an increase in wage growth of native-born STEM workers in the same metropolitan area. Research conducted by the Migration Policy Institute suggests that a major factor in maintaining the United States’ edge in scientific innovation is a critical mass of talented and educated professionals. A pool of talent, coupled with capital, professional networks, and momentum, renews itself by attracting more and more skilled labor. But this cycle is by no means guaranteed indefinitely. Without an uninterrupted stream of global talent to draw from, the United States could quickly lose its edge to nations that gladly welcome high-skilled innovators and scientists. While members of Congress debate greater restrictions to the H-1B visa program, other rapidly advancing countries are poised to take advantage of any barriers that prevent highly skilled scientists from entering the US. Once lost, re-establishing a critical mass of talent and regaining US dominance in STEM-related fields may be impossible. While private sector abuse of the H-1B visa program is real and must be addressed, the solution should not be to restrict the number of H-1B visas granted to high-skilled scientists looking to conduct research in the US. Such a move would only serve to punish American universities, jeopardizing the nation’s scientific edge in the process. Rather, the US should enforce H-1B policy as it is currently written, holding private firms accountable for dishonest practices that exploit the program as a means of outsourcing US jobs. Most importantly, Americans should remember why US colleges and universities are protected from the H-1B visa cap in the first place: Ensuring academic institutions have unlimited access to a global pool of talent is a major driving force for scientific innovation and economic growth at home. Harrison Brody is a PhD student in neuroscience at Yale University and a member of Yale Science Diplomats. WIRED Opinion publishes pieces written by outside contributors and represents a wide range of viewpoints. Read more opinions here. Go Back to Top. Skip To: Start of Article.Digital Trends via WIRED https://www.wired.com May 27, 2017 at 11:33PM
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The Community Zuck Longs to Build Remains a Distant Dream http://ift.tt/2s3N13N On February 16, Mark Zuckerberg published “Building Global Community,” a 6,000-word open letter directly addressed to Facebook’s users. “To our community,” Zuckerberg begins. “On our journey to connect the world, we often discuss products we’re building and updates on our business. Today I want to focus on the most important question of all: are we building the world we all want?” Zuckerberg goes on to propose a solution that—in true Silicon Valley fashion—involves the very company he created. With a bolded flourish, he writes, “In times like these, the most important thing we at Facebook can do is develop the social infrastructure to give people the power to build a global community that works for all of us.” The goal is noble. Membership in real-life groups has declined in the US “by as much as one-quarter” since the 1970s, Zuckerberg writes in his letter. And while the disenchanted might say the lure of an ersatz world like Facebook actually contributes to the diminishment of IRL community, it’s probably a fairer argument that community hasn’t eroded so much as transferred to a different space. Specifically, to Facebook, which has emerged as our world’s dominant social platform. But Facebook’s desire to become the bedrock of social infrastructure is somewhat troubling. The United Nations defines civil society as the “third sector,” alongside government and business. In both of those spheres, transparency is a prerequisite. The government is accountable to its citizens. Businesses are accountable to their shareholders and to the government. Yet Facebook straddles a sort of gray space. During the 2016 presidential election, Facebook helped register 2 million of its users to vote and is often the platform where potential candidates interface with those users-slash-constituents. Facebook also sells information about the habits of its users to advertisers. And that’s why things got so complicated when The Guardian recently published details from a leaked copy of the manual that Facebook gives its thousands of “content moderators,” the people who effectively monitor, police, and determine what we see in our Facebook feeds. What the document revealed is a deeply arbitrary set of guidelines that confuse the moderators who are helping to shape the civil society that millions of people rely on to, as Zuckerberg has put it, find meaning in their lives. There’s a lot in the specific rules that is problematic, but the biggest problem is that these guidelines were secret at all. In fact, it appears to go against one of the very suggestions Zuckerberg outlined in his manifesto: “The Community Standards should reflect the cultural norms of our community,” he wrote. “The approach is to combine creating a large-scale democratic process to determine standards with AI to help enforce them.” A spokesperson for Facebook tells WIRED that the company regularly consults with regulators, NGOs, academics and advocates in areas like self-harm, terrorism, and free speech. But as was evident by the outcry to the Guardian story, not only did Facebook users seem left out of the democratic process, they didn’t appear to even know any sort of process already existed. This Land Is Facebook’sTo its credit, Facebook has facilitated near-frictionless potential for positive community building: You can meet friends and connect with groups; you can publish ideas and broadcast videos; you can learn things, educate people, lobby lawmakers around the world. But, in accordance with the manual, you can also threaten and bully. You can upload a picture of a dog being tortured. You can say, “To snap a bitch’s neck, make sure to apply all your pressure to the middle of her throat.” You can tell your friends to beat up “fat kids.” You can show yourself killing someone. You can say you’re going to kill yourself, but only if you plan to do it at least five days in the future. You can’t say you like seeing animals getting tortured. Or upload naked pictures of a woman without her permission. You can’t announce you are going to kill yourself right now. You can’t say someone should kill the president, or write, “We should put all foreigners in gas chambers.” If you do, someone else on Facebook can notify the authorities—the Facebook authorities, aka moderators—and they, in turn, can shut down your account or even call actual law enforcement. If it seems hard to find the organizing principle, that’s because there appears not to be one. “It seems so reactionary right now, rather than saying, ‘Let’s take a step back and ask what our moral aims are in this privately owned, very public space that we have,'” says ethicist Christopher Robichaud, a senior lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Public Policy, who described the guidelines as “haphazard and schizophrenic.” To a degree, the rules do feel reactionary, a slapdash necessity borne of urgency. Self-harm and suicide videos flood onto the site, often at a rate of 5,000 every two weeks, according to The Guardian. Last month a Cleveland man murdered a stranger and posted a video of it to Facebook. Two weeks later, a man killed his baby and then himself on Facebook Live. Since then, safety appears to have become Facebook’s main focus. Zuckerberg reiterated this at F8, the company’s developer conference, earlier this month: “We have a full road map of products to help build groups and community, help build a more informed society, and help keep our community safe,” he said. But the guidelines for the company’s content moderators are the first glimpse the public has had at what providing that safety actually looks like on a technical level. The Guardian notes that many of the moderators profess confusion about how to follow the manual. Take the suicide rules, for instance, which state that moderators should keep videos or posts up as long as there’s a chance someone could save the person. “Once there’s no longer an opportunity to help the person,” they should take the livestream or post down. Why allow a suicidal threat to stay on the site for five days? It’s probably an arbitrary time frame, says Daniel J. Reidenberg, executive director the suicide prevention outreach group SAVE, which has helped Facebook for more than a decade with its suicide prevention tools and policies. But the idea is based on traditional suicide prevention techniques. “The concept behind it is that if you can see out into the future, that gives us hope and a chance to intervene,” he says. Still, that’s an incredibly difficult and subjective call to expect a content moderator, typically a low-paid employee with no professional experience with suicide prevention, to make. (And AI isn’t far enough along to spot these horrific videos automatically.) “They need a set of relatively straightforward organizing moral guidelines and principles that could then be applied to individual cases,” Robichaud says. Without them, the laws of the land become contradictory and hard to follow. In his manifesto, Zuckerberg lays out a plan for developing these moral guiding principles: he suggests asking the people. “The idea is to give everyone in the community options for how they would like to set the content policy for themselves,” he wrote. “Where is your line on nudity? On violence? On graphic content? On profanity? What you decide will be your personal settings.” Once again, Facebook’s secretive practices and tightly-held decision-making seem at odds with Zuckerberg’s democratic vision. This Land Is Our LandIt’s not just community guidelines that feel opaque; Facebook appears to fight transparency at every turn. The company has yet to release the data it has on how Russian hackers abused its algorithms to spread propaganda during the 2016 presidential election. How is that consistent with fostering an “informed” society? “For a private company like Facebook, which owns such an unfathomably large public space, to go about thinking about the ethics of it without bringing in the public at various stages would be really problematic,” Robichaud says. He argues that Facebook should let the Facebook citizenry weigh in on the creation of the community by helping to write the guiding moral principles that would inform any moderator manual. This makes sense, but when asked for comment about why they didn’t make the manual public, a Facebook spokesperson said the company feared people would find workarounds to the rules. One workaround to that problem would be to establish a core philosophy rather than reacting in a piecemeal way. And Facebook should be transparent about what those core philosophies are. It’s good that Zuckerberg is engaging directly with his company’s responsibilities in “building global community” and “strengthen[ing] our social fabric.” It’s also slightly troublesome that he is just now addressing this topic. Facebook has two billion users across the world. His company isn’t building global community so much as it has built global community. And if Facebook is intent on building a community that people increasingly live in, shouldn’t its citizens get a look at the blueprints? Go Back to Top. Skip To: Start of Article.Digital Trends via WIRED https://www.wired.com May 27, 2017 at 11:33PM
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Why You Should Keep Funding Kickstarter Projects That Don’t Deliver http://ift.tt/2ruhvyu Backing a crowdfunding project in 2017 is a terrible idea. You’re more likely to lose your money than receive the thing you pledged to buy. Remember the Coolest Cooler, with $13.2 million raised? It was selling on Amazon before shipping to backers. Lily Camera’s selfie-drone didn’t ship, even with $34 million in crowdfunding and $15 million in venture capital. Wearables company Pebble raised $43 million on Kickstarter and $10 million in outside capital, but still didn’t survive in the long run. All of these are stories of defeat. As a three-time project creator, I can understand why backers are becoming jaded. The epic failures dominate any semblance of the good. It’s gotten to the point where much of the appreciation—for the difficulty of creating an idea, funding it, and delivering it to backers—is now lost. I mean, shit, anyone should be able to deliver the product you saw in the video, right? Unfortunately not. Making a new hardware product is really hard. Let’s make a giant assumption that you can engineer the product you promised. Even then, you have to manufacture it, and that’s not just a difficult engineering problem, at also a cash problem. As your project grows more ambitious, the cash problem grows with it. Manufacturing has two general phases. The first is pre-production: engineering reviews, tooling, testing, certifications, and the building of demo units that you don’t sell. These costs are prepaid, so you incur them months before your first unit has shipped. Also, these costs don’t scale down just because you are a low-volume producer. They’re fixed and based on the complexity of the product. An iPhone battery case, for example, takes about $200,000 just to get through this pre-production phase. The second phase, the actual production, requires you to buy a lot of inventory. The payment terms on parts, labor, and logistics generally require 50 percent down and 50 percent upon delivery. Throw in minimum order quantities, often in the thousands, and a 5,000-unit run of a $25 product is another $125,000. Those costs add up quickly, and very few people have that kind of cash on-hand. For most project creators, crowdfunding is their only source of capital. I’d forgive you for thinking that somebody other than the customer should pay to manufacture a new product, but that’s a much harder road. To raise the venture capital necessary to get a product made, you need a track record, a mind-blowing demo, or significant traction in the market. You can’t get any of those things without money. Angel investors will fund the engineering of new ideas, but they won’t fund manufacturing. Banks will loan you a dollar when your balance sheet is large enough to guarantee their return—which, again, doesn’t happen until you have money. You see the pattern here; it takes money to raise money. Crowdfunding is the only way to enable a small group of people to turn their hardware idea into a sustainable company. That’s why the people who truly fund the production of new ideas are customers. At my company, Moment, we just funded our third project on Kickstarter. Along the way, we’ve also raised some angel money and gathered a little bit of venture capital. Hang on, you might say—a company has done all that, and they’re still crowdfunding? WTF? Correct. We actually need crowdfunding more than ever. For example, our Moment 2.0 project was made up of phone cases and an interchangeable lens system for smartphones. It included three new products across six different devices. The pre-production cost for all that hardware was $500,000—costs incurred before we even bought any inventory. If we didn’t get crowdfunding, we wouldn’t have had enough capital to bring those products to market. If we raised traditional investment capital and didn’t crowdfund, we ran the risk of being wrong about customer demand. If nobody was interested in buying the thing we made, we’d run out of money as fast as we raised it. Crowdfunding lets us know that yes, this is an idea people will pay for, and we can easily sell enough of these to cover the high cost of production. As a small company, we need that guarantee crowdfunding provides. When Moment was just four people and an idea, the risk of failure was having to find a new job. Now, as a company with 20 employees, the bigger risk is that we go bankrupt and can’t make payroll. This doesn’t mean you should back every project you encounter. To the contrary—you should be cynical about the company’s ability to deliver, selecting only projects you truly believe are worthy. But, at the end of the day you should keep betting on crowdfunding projects. Despite being a gamble on the consumer’s part, it’s the only way to enable a small group of people to turn their hardware idea into a sustainable company. Unfortunately some creators will get the whole thing wrong and flame out in spectacular fashion, burning through a ridiculous amount of money. Others will take this responsibility seriously and actually deliver on their promise. They will build a sustainable business piece by piece, creating a relationship everyone can be proud of. Three years into Moment, we still have a long way to go before we reach our own expectations. But without customers betting on crowdfunding, we wouldn’t exist. Marc Barros is the co-founder of Moment, Contour, and Hardware Workshop. Find him on Twitter at @marcbarros. WIRED Opinion publishes pieces written by outside contributors and represents a wide range of viewpoints. Read more opinions here. Go Back to Top. 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The GIF Turns 30: How an Ancient Format Changed the Internet http://ift.tt/2s3z85t The web’s favorite file format just turned 30. Yep, it turns out the GIF is a millennial, too. At the same time, 30 makes the GIF ancient in web years, which feels a bit weird, given that the proliferation of animated GIFs is a relatively recent phenomenon. Today, Twitter has a GIF button and even Apple added GIF search to its iOS messaging app. Such mainstream approval would have seemed unthinkable even a decade ago, when GIFs had the cultural cachet of blinking text and embedded MIDI files. But today they’re ubiquitous, and not in some nostalgic sense. Animated GIFs have transcended their obscure 1990s roots to become a key part of day-to-day digital communication. Some, like Orson Welles clapping or Michael Jackson eating popcorn, have become instantly recognizable shorthand. Others, like Sean Spicer disappearing into the bushes—itself a remix of a popular Simpsons GIF—serve up political satire. The GIF does double duty as both expression and as badge of digital literacy. Not bad for an image standard that pre-dates the web itself. giphy.comToday GIFs are synonymous with short, looping, animations. But they got their start as a way of displaying still images. Steve Wilhite started work on the Graphics Interchange Format in early 1986. At the time, he was a programmer for Compuserve, an early online service that let users access chat rooms, forums, and information like stock quotes using dial-up modems. Sandy Trevor, Wilhite’s boss at Compuserve, tells WIRED that he wanted to solve two problems. The first was that Compuserve needed a graphics format that worked on all computers. At the time, the PC market was split between several companies, including Apple, Atari, Commodore, IBM, and Tandy, each with its own way of displaying graphics. Compuserve had used other graphics formats of the era, such as NAPLPS, but Trevor thought they were too complex to implement. So he tasked Wilhite with creating a simple format that would work on any machine. Second, he wanted Wilhite to create technology that could quickly display sharp images over slow connections. “In the eighties, 1200 baud was high speed,” Trevor says. “Lots of people only had 300 baud modems.” The average broadband connection in the US is more than 40,000 times faster than even those blazing fast 1200 baud connections, so Compuserve needed truly tiny files. The web’s other major image format, the JPEG, was under development at the time. But it’s better suited for photographs and other images that contain high amounts of detail and won’t suffer from a small amount of distortion. Compuserve needed to display stock quotes, weather maps, and other graphs—simple images that would suffer from having jagged lines. So Wilhite decided to base the GIF on a lossless compression protocol called Lempel–Ziv–Welch, or LZW. Wilhite finished the first version of the GIF specification on May, 1987, and Compuserve began using the format the next month. This was two years before Sir Tim Berners-Lee announced his World Wide Web project and six years before the Mosiac browser made the web accessible to less technical users. But it was the web that made the GIF what it is today. Under ConstructionThe GIF was perfect for displaying logos, line art, and charts on the web for all the same reasons that Wilhite first developed the format. And because portions of an image could be transparent, meaning an image could blend into the background or be fit together with other images in interesting ways, it enabled web designers to create more complex layouts. But the most important thing about the format was that Wilhite had the foresight to make it extensible, so that other developers could add custom types of information to GIFs. That enabled the team behind the Netscape browser to create the animated GIF standard in 1995. “I didn’t ask Steve to put in as much extensibility as he did, but I’m glad he did,” Trevor says. Soon, “under construction” GIFs adorned practically every site on the web. The “Dancing Baby” becoming one the web’s first true viral video sensations. The dancing 7-Up mascot “Cool Spot” also made a unconscionable number of appearances, making it perhaps the first viral #brand GIF. Giphy.comThe file format also became the center of one of the web’s first patent disputes. In 1994, IT giant Unisys claimed to own the LZW protocol that Wilhite used in the GIF specification. The company threatened to sue anyone who made software that could create or read GIFs without paying for a license. Unisys’s LZW-related patents expired in 2006, but the ordeal of dealing with the company left a lasting impression on Trevor, who now works as a consultant helping tech companies avoid running into patent suits. The animated GIF epidemic ended about as quickly as it started. As web design professionalized, those under construction GIFs disappeared. Animators and artists, meanwhile, moved on to more sophisticated media like Flash and later HTML5. But the format survived on web forums and sites like 4chan, Reddit, and Tumblr. Adam Leibsohn, the COO of the GIF search engine Giphy, calls the GIF an “insurgent format.” It enables people to publish moving images in places they weren’t necessarily intended, like someone’s signature on a forum. “The easiest, simplest thing wins,” he says. As people realized they could stick tiny, looping bits of animation into web-based conversations, GIFs became a new form of expression. Clips of people clapping, slamming their heads on a desk, or dancing replaced text, and new, more artistic GIFs emerged as a form of micro-entertainment. The rise of smartphones made this form of visual communication all the more appealing. Giphy.com“We’ve reduced our shorthand to things like ‘lol’ and ‘wtf’, things that aren’t very expressive,” says David McIntosh, CEO of the GIF search service Tenor. “With GIFs you can express a wide range of emotions.” About 90 percent of the service’s search terms are related to feelings, he says. It’s hard to say exactly when the GIF re-entered the mainstream web experience. The Nieman Journalism Lab called the 2012 Summer Olympics a “coming-out party” for the animated GIF. That same year, Oxford Dictionaries named “GIF” the word of the year. By early 2013, GIFs were showing up in museums and marketers wanted in. That year Steve Wilhite was awarded a life-time achievement award at the Webbys, where he stirred up a mini-controversy by telling the world that GIF is pronounced like the peanut butter brand Jif, not like “gift.” At the time, it was easy to see GIFs as a passing fad, a throwback to the 1990s along with the “soft grunge” trend. It seemed like surely something newer like Vine or Snapchat would replace GIFs. But all these years later, Vine is gone and the GIF is still with us. Part of that success owes itself to web obsessives, who have built up an enormous inventory of GIF files to choose from. When you want to express dismay or joy or any other emotion, all you have to do is go to Tumblr, Giphy, or Tenor and you can find a ready-made loop. You can think of it as an expansive visual vocabulary built over the years. And while newer formats might bring more options, Tumblr creative director David Hayes says that the GIF’s technical limitations are actually its strength, not its weakness. After all, artists have long used constraints to spur creativity. “The GIF has constraints that will continue to challenge people,” he says. “You have to make trade-offs with the file size, the frame rate, and the intensity of color.” Instead of asking what’s next, Hayes says, perhaps we should ask whether the GIF is the end-point for visual language. Let’s give it another 30 years and see what happens. Giphy.com Go Back to Top. Skip To: Start of Article.Digital Trends via WIRED https://www.wired.com May 27, 2017 at 11:33PM
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Lawyers, Not Ethicists, Will Solve the Robocar ‘Trolley Problem’ http://ift.tt/2rbLESD People seem more that a bit freaked out by the trolley problem right now. The 60s-era thought experiment, occasionally pondered with a bong in hand, requires that you imagine a runaway trolley barreling down the tracks toward five people. You stand at a railway switch with the power to divert the trolley to another track, where just one person stands. Do you do it? This ethical exercise takes on new meaning at the dawn of the autonomous age. Given a similar conundrum, does a robocar risk the lives of five pedestrians, or its passengers? Of course, it isn’t the car making the decision. The software engineers are making it, cosseted in their dim engineering warrens. They will play God. Or so the theory goes. Giving machines the ability to decide who to kill is a staple of dystopian science fiction. And it explains why three out of four American drivers say they are afraid of self-driving cars. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration even suggested creating something of an “ethical” test for companies developing the technology. But the good news is, that point might be moot. In a paper published in Northwestern University Law Review, Stanford University researcher Bryan Casey deems the trolley problem irrelevant. He argues that it’s already been solved—not by ethicists or engineers, but by the law. The companies building these cars will “less concerned with esoteric questions of right and wrong than with concrete questions of predictive legal liability,” he writes. Meaning, lawyers and lawmakers will sort things out. Solving the Trolley Problem“The trolley problem presents already solved issues—and we solve them democratically through a combination of legal liability and consumer psychology,” says Casey. “Profit maximizing firms look to those incentivizing mechanisms to choose the best behavior in all kinds of contexts.” In other words: Engineers will take their cues not from ethicists, but from the limits of the technology, tort law, and consumers’ tolerance for risk. Casey cites Tesla as an example. Drivers of those Muskian brainchildren can switch on Autopilot and let the car drive itself down the highway. Tesla engineers could have programmed the cars to go slowly, upping safety. Or they could have programmed them to go fast, the better to get you where you need to be. Instead, they programmed the cars to follow the speed limit, minimizing Tesla’s risk of liability show something go awry. “Do [engineers] call in the world’s greatest body of philosophers and commission some grave treatise? No,” says Casey. “They don’t fret over all the moral and ethical externalities that could result from going significantly lower than the speed limit or significantly higher. They look to the law, the speed limit, and follow the incentives that the law is promoting.” By that, he means that if policymakers and insurers decide to, say, place the liability for all crashes on the autonomous cars, the companies making them will work very hard to minimize the risk of anything going wrong. The public has a say in this too, of course. “[T]he true designers of machine morality will not be the cloistered engineering teams of tech giants like Google, Tesla, or Mercedes, but ordinary citizens,” writes Casey. Lawmakers and regulators will respond to the will of the public, and if they don’t, automakers will. In January, Tesla pushed an Autopilot update that lets cars zip along at up to 5 mph over the limit on some roads, after owners complained about getting passed by everyone else. The market spoke, and Tesla responded. Ethics in Self-Driving CarsStill, thought exercises like the trolley problem helps gauge the public’s thoughts on autonomous vehicles. “When you’re trying to understand what people value, it’s helpful to eliminate all the nuance,” says Noah Goodall, a transportation researcher with the Virginia Transportation Research Council who studies self-driving cars. The thought experiment can provide a broad overview of what kinds of guidelines people want for those cars, and the problems they want addressed. But it can confuse them, too, because they are the fringe case at the fringe of fringe cases. “Trolley problems are pretty unrealistic—they throw people,” says Goodall. The trolley problem also assumes a level of sophistication from the technology that remains quite some way down the road. At the moment, robocars cannot discern a child from a senior citizen, or a group of two people from three people–which makes something like the trolley problem highly theoretical. “Sometimes it’s hard to come to a fine-grain determination of what’s around [the car],” says Karl Iagnemma, who used to head up the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Robotics Mobility Group and is now the CEO of the self-driving software startup nuTonomy. “Typically the information that’s processed by a self-driving car is reasonably coarse, so it can be hard to make these judgments off of coarse data.” Helping people feel comfortable with autonomous vehicles requires “being upfront about what these vehicles really do,” Goodall says. “They prevent a lot of crashes, a lot of deaths. Fine-tuning things are difficult, but companies should prove they put some thought into it.” More than 35,000 people die on American roads every year; over 1.25 million people die worldwide. Worrying about the ethical dilemmas of something like the trolley problem won’t save lives, but honing autonomous technology might. But in addition to hiring more engineers, all these companies developing robocars might want to hire a few smart lawyers. Turns out they’ll have a hand in the future of mobility, too. Go Back to Top. Skip To: Start of Article.Digital Trends via WIRED https://www.wired.com May 27, 2017 at 11:33PM |
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