Young Hollywood heart-throbs Aisling Franciosi and Wolfgang Novogratz are featured in a major fashion spread shot in Bermuda at Town & Country magazine’s website. Irish-born Ms Franciosi has appeared in the TV shows The Fall and Game of Thrones and stars in the new movie The Nightingale, a historical drama. American Mr. Novogratz is known […] (Click to read the full article)

Bermuda over the long Cup Match weekend provided the ideal backdrop to showcase Haitian-American fashion designer Kerby Jean-Raymond’s latest collection, with Bermudian models also being featured in the publication. In a recent spread in the online edition of Elle magazine, Mr. Jean-Raymond — who first came to prominence with his Pyer Moss’ label spring menswear […] (Click to read the full article)

Bermudian fashion consultant Shiona Turini recently worked with American magazine Variety to style Kerry Washington for the publication’s cover photo shoot. Ms. Turini was also recently recognized for working with toy maker Mattel to style a line of Barbie dolls, and earlier this year attended the Costume Designers Guild Awards [CGDA] in Beverly Hills, California, […] (Click to read the full article)

The Bermuda Housing Corporation has opened its Church Street offices for payments only. A spokesperson said, “The Bermuda Housing Corporation has opened their Church Street offices at the Seven Arches building at 44 Church Street in Hamilton for payments only. The opening hours are 10.00am to 2.00pm Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday weekly until further notice. […] (Click to read the full article)

A 38-year-old man injured in a motorcycle crash on Sunday [July 21] in Paget was treated and discharged from the hospital, then arrested on suspicion of impaired driving. A police spokesperson said, “Around 9:15pm Sunday, July 21st a reported single vehicle motorcycle crash occurred on South Road in Paget near the junction with Cataract Hill. […] (Click to read the full article)

A 45-year-old Pembroke man was arrested on suspicion of causing injury by careless driving, while a 63-year-old Southampton man was arrested on suspicion of impaired driving following two separate collisions yesterday [Sept 3]. Reported Three Vehicle Collision on North Shore Road in Devonshire A police spokesperson said, “Around 5:50pm Tuesday, September 3rd a reported three […] (Click to read the full article)

A 28-year-old man was found in the road on Middle Road in Devonshire on Friday evening, and “motorcycle debris thought to be from this incident was later found along Frog Lane, Devonshire.” A police spokesperson said, “Around 8:40pm Friday, January 24th police and fellow first responders were dispatched to a reported single vehicle motorcycle crash […] (Click to read the full article)

Emergency services responded to a collision on Middle Road in Sandys this morning [Feb 19] involving a car, with damage to both the vehicle and a low wall visible at the scene.  Police were diverting traffic at the scene, with traffic heading out of Somerset experiencing delays. Further details are limited at this time, however […] (Click to read the full article)

Bimonthly newsletter released by the Institute of Transport Studies at Monash University

Accelerated bridge construction (ABC) utilizes rigorous planning, new technologies, and improved methods to expedite construction. Prefabricated columns and their connections to adjoining bridge members (cap beams, footings, pile caps, and pile shafts) are the most critical components of ABC in moderate- and high-seismic regions. The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Research Report 935: Proposed AASHTO Seismic Specifications for ABC Column Connections develops AASHTO specificatio...

One of the most important tips for protecting yourself from COVID-19 is to wash your hands for 20 seconds, or as long as it takes to sing “Happy Birthday” twice. British teen William Gibson decided he wanted the public to have more song options while fighting the spread of coronavirus.

Gibson created an online tool that allows a user to enter the title of their chosen song and artist to automatically generate a poster. The poster matches lyrics from the song to a 13-step washing routine. The UK’s NHS Health Secretary Matt Hancock has publically praised Gibson’s initiative as the posters have been shared extensively on social media. Gibson thought it would be popular, but has still been surprised to see some of his favorite celebrities posting about it. Visit the Wash Your Lyrics website to create your own poster for washing hands with your favorite song.

COVID-19 has shone a very bright light on the importance of widely available, affordable broadband. Nearly 42 million Americans lack access to any broadband whatsoever--double FCC estimates. And millions more can't afford service thanks to a lack of competition among very powerful, government pampered telecom monopolies.

As usual, with political pressure mounting to "do something," DC's solution is going to be to throw more money at the problem:

"The plan unveiled Thursday would inject $80 billion over five years into expansion of broadband infrastructure into neglected rural, suburban and urban areas, with an emphasis on communities with high levels of poverty. It includes measures to promote rapid building of internet systems, such as low-interest financing for infrastructure projects."

To be clear, subsidies often do help shore up broadband availability at coverage. The problem is that the United States government, largely captured by telecom giants with a vested interest in protecting regional monopolies, utterly sucks at it.

Despite ample pretense to the contrary, nobody in the US government actually knows where broadband is currently available. Data supplied by ISPs has never been rigorously fact-checked by a government fearful of upsetting deep-pocketed campaign contributors (and valued NSA partners). As a result, our very expensive ($350 million at last count) FCC broadband coverage map creates a picture of availability and speed that's complete fantasy. It's theater designed to disguise the fact that US broadband is mediocre on every broadband metric that matters. Especially cost.

While there has been some effort to fix the mapping problem via recent legislation, the FCC still needs several years (and more money) to do so. And while you'd think this would be more obvious, you can't fix a problem you can't even effectively measure. There's also not much indication that the $80 billion, while potentially well intentioned, would actually get where it needs to go. Especially right now, when federal oversight is effectively nonexistent.

You may or may not have noticed this, but US telecom is a corrupt, monopolized mess. Giants like AT&T and Comcast all but own state and federal legislatures and, in many instances, literally write the law. Feckless regulators bend over backward to avoid upsetting deep-pocketed campaign contributors. So when subsidies are doled out, they very often don't end up where regulators and lawmakers intended. There's an endless ocean of examples where these giants took billions in taxpayer subsidies to deploy fiber networks that are never fully delivered.

If you were to do meaningful audit (which we've never done because again we're not willing to adequately track the problem or stand up to dominant incumbent corporations) you'd very likely find that American taxpayers already paid for fiber to every home several times over.

That's not to say is that there aren't things Congress could do to help the disconnected during COVID-19. Libraries for example have been begging the FCC for the ability to offer expanded WiFi hotspot access (via mobile school buses) to disconnected communities without running afoul of FCC ERate rules. But while the FCC said libraries can leave existing WiFi on without penalty, it has been mute about whether they can extend coverage outside of library property. Why? As a captured agency, the FCC doesn't like anything that could potentially result in Comcast or AT&T making less money.

None of this is to say that we shouldn't subsidize broadband deployment once we get a handle on the mapping problem. But it's a fantasy to think we're going to immediately fix a 30 year old problem with an additional $80 billion in a mad dash during a pandemic. US broadband dysfunction was built up over decades. It's the product of corruption and rot that COVID-19 is exposing at every level of the US government. The only way to fix it is to stand up to industry, initiate meaningful reform, adopt policies that drive competition to market, and jettison feckless lawmakers and regulators whose dominant motivation is in protecting AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Spectrum revenues.

Maybe the pandemic finally provides the incentive to actually do that, but until the US does, these subsidization efforts are largely theater.

This seems to be something of a thing. Our last "Tales From the Quarantine" post focused on how television celebrities had taken to offering people help on Twitter with their virtual home decor in the latest Animal Crossing game. This post also involves Animal Crossing, but in a much more direct way. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there are enormous numbers of people who have suddenly found themselves without jobs or regular income. And, so, they've turned to irregular sources of income instead.

Ars Technica has an interesting interview with one of many people who have taken to the internet to indirectly sell Animal Crossing's "bells", the currency of the game.

In the midst of COVID-19, some New Horizons players are turning to World of Warcraft-style gold farming methods to make ends meet. In early April, Lexy, a 23-year-old recent college grad, created a Twitter account offering up bells (Animal Crossing’s in-game currency) for real-world cash (she requested we refer to her by a nickname to avoid potential reprisal from Nintendo). “I got laid off due to COVID so I'm farming bells in ACNH,” she wrote. “I really need to make rent this month so I'm selling 2 mil bells per $5, please message me if interested, I'll give you a discount the more you buy.”

Before setting up this unorthodox income stream, Lexy had been working at a supermarket while developing her animation portfolio. She began exploring the idea of turning bells into cash after showing friends just how much in-game income she’d been making. “One of them asked to legitimately buy some for me,” she recalled in a Twitter interview. “I did some research and found some people selling bells on sites such as eBay, but for pretty ridiculous prices.” (Current prices on eBay seem more competitive, with some sellers offering rare gold tools and gold nuggets to sweeten the deal).

The threat from Nintendo is probably real. After all, unlike some other games where people do this sort of thing, Nintendo's game doesn't include any method for selling in-game resources for real currency. Nintendo is also notoriously prudish about things like this. And, finally, to make an effective go at this sort of thing, it takes some manipulation of the console in a way that is somewhat controversial with gamers generally.

Understandably, Lexy adjusts the clock on her Nintendo Switch to speed up the game’s slow, “natural” money-making cycle of harvesting daily fruit, digging up bells from the ground, and planting a daily “money tree” that can yield big profits. This kind of in-game “time traveling” is controversial practice among casual Animal Crossing players, but it's a practical necessity to maximize real-world bell-farming profits.

As for how much money people like Lexy are bringing in, it's in the four figures, but she wasn't any more specific than that. Payments are made through digital apps like PayPal, after which she visits the game islands of others and deposits the bells.

That all of this is going on during a global pandemic that has some folks farming bells to make ends meet and others with apparently enough disposable income to be buyers is all, of course, deeply strange. But it's also just yet another way technology is having an impact on our lives during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Switchzilla issues a whopping 30+ patches in time for the long UK weekend

Cisco has emitted a fresh round of software updates to address nearly three dozen security holes in its products.…

It's like three buses showing up at once carrying $8bn

India’s largest mobile carrier, Jio, has just scored a third new investor in three weeks!…

Zero-click remote-code exec hole found by Googler, updates emitted

Samsung has patched a serious security hole in its smartphones that can be exploited by maliciously crafted text messages to hijack devices.…

Every house resident understands how quickly she or he can build up a lot of unwanted junk, broken items as well as simply simple rubbish. For those who often tend to hoard, or delay disposal of garbage, this buildup can… Continue Reading →

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) finds Tesla's Autopilot cuts crashes by 40%. How cool is that? Autonomous vehicles are going to cause a huge decline in accidents and deaths. Even short of autonomous vehicles, when you get your next car try to get one that supports automatic braking on imminent collision detection. You could get a large fraction of the collision avoidance benefit at a much lower cost today. Check out Insurance Institute for Highway Safety ratings of collision avoidance systems in current cars. Watch a Tesla react to a crash in front of it: Watch a Tesla avoid hitting a reckless driver: A recent analysis finds that autonomous vehicles will allow 2 million disabled people to get...

Ziggy, is that you?

The bartender says “You can’t have that thing in here! Get out!” The guy says “It’s okay, this Alligator is highly trained. Just give me a few seconds and I’ll show you.” The bartender, intrigued, gives him the go-ahead. The man gingerly lifts the alligator up onto a table. By this point, everybody in the […]

The post A Man Walks Into A Bar With An Alligator On A Leash appeared first on Funny & Jokes.

Let me talk to you about “Crash” by the Primitives. Except I’m not actually going to be talking about “Crash” by The Primitives. Get me going about music long enough, and I will tell you about how “Crash” is a perfect pop song. Perfect. The chiming, arpeggiated guitars contrasted with the choppy, crunchy guitars; the … Continue reading Crash

Erowid Exp101191

After being elected in 2008 on "hope and change", "change you can believe in", and "change the way Washington works", President Obama now says that he cannot change Washington from the inside? Then why should we re-elect him in 2012? Continue reading →

Hillary Faces Questions About Cash Donations to Clinton Foundation. Continue reading →

Accountants CPA Hartford Connecticut LLC:  This is a rush transcript for April 26, 2015. It may contain errors. GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, HOST: And the author of “Clinton Clash,” Peter Schweizer, joins us now. Thank you for joining us this morning, Peter. … Continue reading →

Clinton Cash - do you trust Bill and Hillary Clinton in positions of power Continue reading →

The Brainwashing Of Hillary Voters Is Complete. Hillary Clinton voters are either getting paid or have been brainwashed into defending her pro-corporate status quo policies. Jimmy Dore breaks it down on his broadcast, October 20, 2016. Continue reading →

IBM has been recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays (SSA) for the fourth year in a row.

IBM today announced new offerings to its Watson Data Platform, including data cataloging and data refining, which is designed to make it easier for developers and data scientists to analyze and prepare enterprise data for AI applications, regardless of its structure or where it resides. By improving data visibility and helping to better enforce data security policies, users can now connect and share data across public and private cloud environments.

IBM today announced a new all-flash, high-performance data and file management solution for enterprise clients running exabyte-scale big data analytics, cognitive and AI applications. The combined flash and storage software solution has been certified with the Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP) to provide clients with more choice in selecting the right platform for their big data analytics on data processing engines like Hadoop and Spark.

IBM today announced sweeping advances in its all-flash storage solutions and software to significantly drive down the costs of data and extend its solutions for hybrid and private cloud environments.

The IBM board of directors today declared a regular quarterly cash dividend of $1.50 per common share, payable December 9, 2017 to stockholders of record November 10, 2017.

The IBM board of directors today declared a regular quarterly cash dividend of $1.50 per common share, payable March 10, 2018 to stockholders of record February 9, 2018. IBM has paid consecutive quarterly dividends every year since 1916.

IBM anunció dos nuevas soluciones de almacenamiento empresarial completamente basadas en tecnología flash, las cuales ofrecen avanzada eficiencia e incremento en desempeño, así como una sobresaliente confiabilidad para ayudar a reducir costos, y acelerar infraestructuras y aplicaciones con manejo intensivo de datos.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) annonce aujourd'hui un élargissement de son portefeuille de stockage flash pour aider les clients à extraire beaucoup plus rapidement la valeur issues des données afin d’en tirer un avantage concurrentiel. IBM a lancé trois nouvelles baies « tout-flash » dotées d’une performance de pointe – une latence minimum de 250μs (microsecondes) - afin de résoudre le défi consistant à accéder rapidement à un grand volume de données pour les applications et les workloads cloud.

Melbourne, Australia - 18 August 2014: IBM (NYSE: IBM) and the City of Melbourne today launched a new interactive online experience for this year’s Melbourne Spring Fashion Week (MSFW) to enhance the iconic event and help shoppers hunt down the best retail bargains. The launch of the experience signifies the beginning of a three-year partnership between the City of Melbourne and IBM as the Official Innovation and Technology Partner for MSFW.

UPDATE: Both workshops filled very quickly. I only do these about once a year; apologies for the imbalance. I have set up a system so people who are potentially interested in future small-class lighting workshops can receive advance notice. More info here.

__________
I'll be teaching two, full-day lighting workshops in the suburban Baltimore/DC area on December 6 and 7.

They are two separate one-day events. These are small-group workshops, with a maximum class size of 12 people each day. These are shooting workshops, and you'll be behind (and/or in front of!) a camera for most of the day.

Assuming you arrive at this class with a basic understanding of f/stops and shutter speeds, you will leave with a strong foundation in the fundamentals of off-camera lighting. You will be comfortable using single and multiple lights both alone and/or balanced with a mix of ambient lighting.

All lighting gear will be provided. We will also provide lunch.

You will need to bring a camera that is adjustable in manual mode and has a hot shoe connection for a flash, a lens that covers normal and/or portrait range, one or two fully charged batteries and an empty storage card. Maybe a notebook and pen if you like.

That's it. Just show up ready to learn and to have fun. Leave the rest to me.


Details

Dates:
December 6 and 7, 2019

Time:
9:30am - 5:30pm

Price:
$259

Location:
Sandy Spring Friends Lyceum
17715 Meeting House Road
Sandy Spring, MD 20860


Note; These are the only small-class lighting workshops I'll be teaching in the US this year. In the past, these have tended to fill very quickly. So if this is something you'd like to do, I'd suggest signing up sooner rather than later.


Sign-Up Links

Friday, December 6 [FRIDAY'S CLASS HAS BEEN FILLED]

Saturday, December 7 [SATURDAY'S CLASS HAS BEEN FILLED]

A piece I finished five years ago today, on April 15, 2012, for the blog of Gollancz, my UK publisher: Triggers, FlashForward, and Me by Robert J. Sawyer Thanks to the good people at Gollancz, I was recently interviewed in SFX, the world’s top-selling English-language magazine devoted to science fiction. I spoke in that interview […]

The voice of Ahsoka Tano tells StarWars.com about writing the new Little Golden Book and rewatching Star Wars: The Clone Wars for inspiration.

U.S. Financial System “Monitor” Failed to Flash Warning as Fed Pumped $6 Trillion Emergency Liquidity into Wall Street

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 8, 2020 ~  The Office of Financial Research (OFR) was created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 to keep the Financial Stability Oversight Council (F-SOC) informed on emerging threats that have the potential to implode the financial system — as occurred in 2008 in the worst financial crash since the Great Depression. The Trump administration has gutted both its funding and staff. One of the early warning systems of an impending financial crisis that OFR was supposed to have created is the heat map above. Green means low risk; yellow tones mean moderate risk; while red tones flash a warning of a serious problem. On September 17, 2019, liquidity was so strained on Wall Street that the Federal Reserve had to step in and began providing hundreds of billions of dollars per week in repo loans. By January 27, 2020 (before … Continue reading →

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Hi! I've been stuck inside for weeks, probably just like you. I go out running every day, dodging people, but otherwise it's lockdown-mode. Our washing machine promptly broke, so I had to replace that thing. It became a project, because (aside from the difficult but mostly uninteresting process of getting it onto the second floor) one of the things that contributed to the last one's failure was its not-very-stable footing, and I wanted to do this one well. The thing resides inside a nice (but probably unnecessary) tile basin, which poses a few problems: It would make it impossible to get to the bottom doors on the machine, and it makes it impossible to adjust the feet in situ for leveling purposes, and the basin is not at all flat. The weirdly-shaped surface meant that my CAD prospectus was not very useful, which is annoying because I like to measure like 200 times in CAD and then cut once.

Figure 1. Click to zoom

The other problem is that I didn't have the right wood for this, and although Home Depot claimed to be able to do a same-day shipment, they gave me the runaround for over a week (I still don't have it). It's understandable, but our piles of laundry were getting a bit dire, so I just had to make do with what I had. In figure 1(a) I sawed through these 6x6 timbers with a 3.5" saw, which took like an hour. Then I used the also-too-small table saw to mill that into the smaller size I actually wanted (figure 1(b)). Then, I painstakingly test fit the logs in the basin, and sawed/planed/chiseled/sanded them until they were sitting stably on that curved surface without wobble. This was a real pain. The best advice I have for doing this was to get the tile sopping wet, then place the wood there for a moment, and then see where the high spots are based on where the wood is wet. (It would work better with some dye or something, but I didn't want to ruin the tile, ugh.) At that point we have some logs that were nice and sturdy, but not necessarily level gravity-wise. My solution here was router-out cups for each of the washer's feet, which I could set the depth of so that the washer would be level without any adjustment. (This also has the nice advantage that the washer can't jump around more than a few millimeters!) This was accomplished by using a laser level for an accurate level, and then putting some objects of fixed height (here the feet from the old washer, which will be disassembled for its more exciting pieces) into each cup, and iteratively routing the depth until they all touch the laser line exactly (Figure 1(c)). All that work paid off, though, because when we finally dropped the washer into place, it was as level as a spirit level can possibly indicate (Figure 1(d)). No pictures of the install here because this is like in my bathroom and that seems weirdly intimate to put on the internet for some reason.

SIGBOVIK is tomorrow, but this year there is no in-person event due to the shelter-in-place order! The proceedings is shaping up nicely though, and there is some "podcast" expected. I have a few silly papers in there, but I'll save those for tomorrow. No talks from me this year; the whole situation in the world has been sort of draining my creative energy, but hopefully I will start feeling good again soon.

"Mad Mike" Hughes, a self-styled explorer and daredevil bent on proving that the earth is flat was killed over the weekend when his homemade rocket crashed in the California desert over the weekend.

Air travelers cannot receive cash compensation if their flight is delayed by a passenger biting others and assaulting crew members, an adviser at the Court of Justice of the European Union said on Thursday.