One of the biggest misconceptions around DJing today – with all the wonderful new digital systems, software, accessory controllers, new features and the like – is something that upsets me, as a teacher, more than nearly everything else. It stops people starting DJing, it puts fear into DJs who should know better – and it’s … Continued
The post “I Hate It When...
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A coalition of six environmental advocacy groups filed lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Denver on Wednesday challenging the decision of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to issue a permit for the expansion of Gross Reservoir in southwest Boulder County.
Chances are, you wouldn't recognize Saturn without its trademark thick band of rings. But if you could travel 300 million years into the future, you would need to, because by then, chances are those rings would be gone — and they could disappear even fast
A newly discovered object is the most-distant body ever observed in the solar system — and the first object ever found circling at more than 100 times the distance from Earth to the sun.
A humongous fungus lurking underground in Michigan is exceptionally old, tremendously heavy and has a curiously low mutation rate, a new study finds.
Have your kids stopped believing in Santa? You might be more upset than they are. Read this letter from Santa – ghostwritten by a scientist who specializes in imagination and human behavior.
This bad habit could raise your risk of serious eye infections and even lead to vision loss.
Recreational marijuana use is becoming increasingly legal across the U.S., but that doesn't mean that it's safe.
Dinosaurs that lived during the early Jurassic period could stop and smell the flowers if they so desired, according to a new study that describes the oldest fossil flower on record.
Chances are, you wouldn't recognize Saturn without its trademark thick band of rings. But if you could travel 300 million years into the future, you would need to, because by then, chances are those rings would be gone — and they could disappear even fast
A newly discovered object is the most-distant body ever observed in the solar system — and the first object ever found circling at more than 100 times the distance from Earth to the sun.
A humongous fungus lurking underground in Michigan is exceptionally old, tremendously heavy and has a curiously low mutation rate, a new study finds.
Have your kids stopped believing in Santa? You might be more upset than they are. Read this letter from Santa – ghostwritten by a scientist who specializes in imagination and human behavior.
This bad habit could raise your risk of serious eye infections and even lead to vision loss.
Recreational marijuana use is becoming increasingly legal across the U.S., but that doesn't mean that it's safe.
Dinosaurs that lived during the early Jurassic period could stop and smell the flowers if they so desired, according to a new study that describes the oldest fossil flower on record.
I have this IKEA HEMNES 8-drawer dresser. And due to downsizing to a house with 1,000 less square feet, a much smaller master bedroom and no walk-in closet, our laundry game is out of control. I’m wondering if there is a way to convert this dresser to a laundry sorter. One thought I had was […]
The post Hackers Help: Make IKEA dresser into laundry hamper cabinet? appeared first on IKEA Hackers.
Less than a week after the federal government refused to direct government-owned Via Rail to place a billion-dollar order for new rail cars with Quebec-based Bombardier, it announced a multi-year package worth more than $1.5 billion for Alberta’s oil and gas industry. The two decisions show how politically fraught the world of industrial strategy can be.
The Trudeau government’s moves, especially so close together, failed to elicit whoops of joy from its target audience out west and has prompted accusations of failing to protect jobs and create new ones in Quebec towns like La Pocatière, northeast of Quebec City, where Bombardier has a major production facility.
The Crown-owned railway last week announced it is giving its business to the German mega-corporation Siemens.
A good piece of the $1.5 billion in aid to the oil and gas industry announced December 18, will be in the form of loans by two government agencies, Export Development Canada and the Business Development of Bank of Canada, to aid oil patch companies find new markets. But Alberta Premier Rachel Notley points out that finding markets is not the industry’s problem. What hobbles it, she says, is the lack of means – be they pipelines or rail cars – to get product to market.
Oil and gas industry spokespeople add that while they appreciate the government’s solicitude, most companies have not been looking for government handouts. In fact, experts say the $1.5 billion will only really help smaller industry players, who might be having difficulty attracting private capital right now.
Environmentalists have their own reasons to be unhappy about this new financial commitment to oil and gas. When you put it together with the more than $4 billion to buy the Kinder Morgan pipeline, they say, it shows the Trudeau government, despite its brave talk, is moving backwards not forwards to meet Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions targets.
German company to build rail cars for Canada in the U.S.
The Liberal government and Via Rail management both say they could not give any preference to home-grown company, and the jobs it would create, because of trade deals with Europe and the U.S. The winning bidder, Siemens, has offered to consider Canadian sub-contractors for up to 20 per cent of the work on the Via Rail order, but makes no firm commitment. The German company will likely do the lion’s share of the work at its California facility.
Workers in La Pocatière point out that American rules requires 65 per cent of any public transit related manufacturing be done in the U.S. They wonder why Canada cannot do the same.
In Parliament, the NDP echoes that view. New Democratic MPs also say Quebec workers are victims of a bad trade deal – the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement or CETA – that Canada signed with the European Union last year. When the Siemens deal was announced, the NDP trade critic, Tracey Ramsay, told the House of Commons:
“The Liberal government refused to award a billion-dollar contract to Canada's Bombardier … because they know that using Canadian companies for procurement can get us sued by the EU under the investor-state provisions in CETA. When the Liberals called CETA a gold standard in trade, Canadians had no idea that meant giving away their jobs to foreign companies.”
A collective face palm
There is no way the prime minister and his colleagues can make a silk purse out of this sow’s ear. They can hardly claim it is good thing for the workers of La Pocatière that workers in California will be building railways that will run from Quebec’s capital, through the federal capital to Ontario’s capital and beyond.
The best the Liberals can offer is bland boiler-plate generalities on the long-term value of freer trade and open borders. On December 11, the prime minister put it this way:
“Signing trade deals allows us to access procurement opportunities around the world so that we can see things like Bombardier trains in Africa, in Asia and around the world. We will continue to promote the extraordinary quality of the work that is done by Canadian companies around the world. We know that as we engage in trade we create better opportunities for our workers and for all Canadians.”
The response of NDP parliamentary leader Guy Caron seems, in this case, quite apropos.
“Mr. Speaker, when the prime minister tries to make us believe that the contract given by VIA Rail for a German company to build trains in the U.S. is the best thing that can happen, we can feel a collective face palm from Canadians …”
And so, as the year comes to an end, the Trudeau government has managed to annoy most Albertans, a good part of the environmental community and a significant group of workers and businesspeople in Quebec. It’s all in a day’s work, perhaps an inevitable consequence of governing such a vast and diverse country.
Karl Nerenberg has been a journalist and filmmaker for more than 25 years. He is rabble's politics reporter.
Photo: Justin Trudeau/Flickr
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This is a three and a half minute video of a woman at the gas station trying to figure out how to fill up the Tesla Model S she's driving. Admittedly, finding the gas tank on a Tesla is almost impossible. Some might even argue it is impossible, but those people don't try hard enough and believe in themselves. That said, I refuse to believe this isn't fake because it would just be too much for me to bear right now. I've had a long morning. "What, did you blow up your Tesla trying to fill it with gas?" My girlfriend's. Keep going for the video.
Because everyone needs a hobby and bubbles and fire are both great options, these are four videos of Youtuber Dustin Skye creating inverted fire tornadoes in bubbles he's blown. They're impressive, but still -- four separate videos? By the time I finished the last one I swore to myself I could die happy if I never saw another inverted fire tornado in a bubble in my entire life. Keep going for the videos, the fourth of which is slow motion and I was just kidding Dustin, I love this stuff.
Because bad decisions aren't going to make themselves, this is a video of a group of good ol boys who look like no strangers to regret driving a Polaris Ranger into a pond and sinking it. I'm not sure what the hell he expected to happen, but clearly they don't call the Polaris Ranger the Jesus of ATVs for a reason. Keep going for the video.
This is a video demonstration of a fully autonomous morphing quadrocopter that can change its shape on the fly in order to fit through narrow vertical and horizon gaps, inspect things up close and personal, and carry different objects. Some more info while I see if there are any robot apocalypse bunker builders willing to work over the holidays:
In this work, we propose a novel, simpler, yet effective morphing design for quadrotors consisting of a frame with four independently rotating arms that fold around the main frame. To guarantee stable flight at all times, we exploit an optimal control strategy that adapts on the fly to the drone morphology. We demonstrate the versatility of the proposed adaptive morphology in different tasks, such as negotiation of narrow gaps, close inspection of vertical surfaces, and object grasping and transportation. The experiments are performed on an actual, fully autonomous quadrotor relying solely on onboard visual-inertial sensors and compute. No external motion tracking systems and computers are used. This is the first work showing stable flight without requiring any symmetry of the morphology.Obviously, if you were wondering where a safe spot to hide from killer robots is, the answer is fewer and fewer places. You think we'll even live to see 2020? *shaking Magic 8-Ball* Oh boy, this isn't good -- it didn't even give me an answer. "That's because it's a coconut." Hoho, so it is. Pina colada anyone? Keep going for the full narrated video.
This is a photographic triptych captured by a person standing in front of their house with a cell phone of a cloud formation that very clearly looks like a person vaping. Mother Nature, am I right? "What about her?" Her nipples can cut glass. "How do you know?" She broke into my car once while I was still in it. Thanks to Allyson S, who agrees the fidget spinner must be behind the house.
Charles Martinet (right), the voice of Mario in games since the mid 90's, has just been awarded the Guinness World Record for Most Video Game Voiceover Performances As The Same Character, with a staggering 100 thanks to the recent release of Super Smash Bros Ultimate. Charles actually voiced Mario at trade shows for Nintendo since 1990, and his first game credit was the 1995 Windows release of Mario's FUNdamentals before the groundbreaking Super Mario 64 came out the following year. So like, who's in second place? Because Charles also voices Baby Mario, Luigi, Baby Luigi, Wario, Waluigi, and Toadsworth, so he's probably also in second place with Luigi. But that's just my guess AND THE PERSON WHO'S LOUDEST IS ALWAYS RIGHT, BAR RULES. "Wait -- are you in a bar?" Well it's more of a bar-restaurant. *asks for menu* Nevermind, just a bar. Take turns standing in front of the dart board while the other person throws? Keep going for a short interview with Charles I posted previously.
This is 'The Greatest Christmas Story', a new trailer released for Die Hardby 20th Century Fox to add fuel to the fire of the 'Is it or isn't it a Christmas movie' debate. Now whether you believe Die Hard is a Christmas movie or not, I think we can all agree it's definitely one of the greatest musical rom-coms of all time. "You haven't seen it, have you?" Are you kidding? It's my favorite rated R, my mom would skin me alive.
Keep going for the trailer.
Note: Some cursing with an accent. This is a short half-out-of-focus video from Bude, Cornwall, UK of a massive piece of cliffside that's decided it doesn't want to be part of a cliff anymore, it wants to be part of the beach, and cleaves itself off to fall to the water below. The lady filming is pretty far away, but I'm not sure I would even be standing that close. Or standing at all, because I hate standing. Give me a piggy-back? "How much do you even weigh?" Have you ever tried lifting Thor's hammer? "No." Well about twice that, plus a JanSport backpack full of snacks. Keep going for the video.
Elon Musk's SpaceX halted on Wednesday the long-delayed launch of a navigation satellite for the U.S. military, failing to complete its first designated national security mission for the United States due to a technical issue with its rocket.
On the back of Disney increasing its shareholding in Oslo-based Kahoot to four percent last week, Kahoot today announced a new initiative that helps to position the popular startup — which already has 60 million games and has seen over 1 billion players engage on its platform over the last year — as the “Netflix for […]
Elementary Robotics has raised $3.6 million in seed funding to begin building a manufacturing facility and expand its presence in Los Angeles as the city continues to grow as a hub for robotics and automation. Earlier this year, Embodied announced a $22 million round for its personal robotics platform focused on healthcare and wellness, while InVia Robotics […]
Dataiku wants to turn buzzwords into an actual service. The company has been focused on data tools for many years, before everybody started talking about big data, data science and machine learning. And the company just raised $101 million in a round led by Iconiq Capital, with Alven Capital, Battery Ventures, Dawn Capital and FirstMark […]
Candid, a teeth aligner startup that aims to make straight teeth more accessible and more affordable than Invisalign, is evolving its direct-to-consumer business. In addition to its at-home impression process, Candid recently started enabling people to come into a physical office to get their teeth scans completed. Today, Candid is opening physical storefronts in San […]
PetaGene, the Cambridge, U.K.-based genomics data compression startup, has raised $2.1 million in further funding. Leading the round is U.S. venture firm Romulus Capital, with participation from other unnamed investors Silicon Valley and London. It brings total funding to $3.2 million. Previous investor Entrepreneur First, the company builder backed by Greylock Partners, also followed on. […]
Adtech cybersecurity company Devcon announced today that it has raised $4.5 million in seed funding. Over the past couple of years, ad fraud has become a bigger concern in the industry, but Devcon co-founder and CEO Maggie Louie said most existing solutions focus on things like verifying ad quality and confirming that impressions aren’t coming […]
Coinbase acquired Earn.com for at least $120 million back in April. And the company now plans to transform Earn.com into Coinbase Earn, a website with educational content to learn more about cryptocurrencies. Users who complete those classes will earn tokens. Coinbase bought Earn.com partly so that it could appoint Earn.com co-founder and CEO Balaji Srinivasan […]
If you’re concerned about what you eat, there’s a good chance you’ve looked at the food in the supermarket, or in your fridge, and wondered where it actually comes from. Now urban farming incubator Square Roots is introducing a new way for you to check full history of the produce that you’re about to purchase. […]
On Wednesday Bob Gibbs, Assistant Administrator, Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer at NASA, sent out an agency-wide communication to employees announcing NASA servers had been compromised back in October.
A former NASA engineer took matters into his own hands after he had two packages stolen off of the porch of his California home in the middle of the day seven months ago.
Facebook gave other big tech companies "intrusive access" to the personal data of its 2.2. billion users — in some instances to private messages, usernames and contact information — raising questions about whether the company ran afoul of a 2011 consent agreement with the Federal Trade Commission.
An eagle-eyed Google Maps user has reported a mysterious "UFO sighting" in the skies above a Florida swamp.
The halls of the holiday season are typically decked with family, fun, and GIFTS. A lot of those presents will likely include technology that can streamline your life in a myriad of ways. From smartly lighting up rooms throughout your home to brewing and grinding your coffee at any time of day, here are a few gifts to give a loved-one – or yourself!
The European Union said it is probing a “potential leak of sensitive information” following a New York Times report that EU diplomatic cables were hacked.
A group of consumer advocacy, privacy and public health groups urged U.S. regulators to probe whether children are being endangered by deceptive apps in Google's Play app store for smartphones using the Android operating system.
