Midspot

Happy Thursday Fixers! Phew, what with all the war talk these last couple weeks, on top of the nigh improbable inevitable doomsday glinting at us from 2012, I thought today we might take a look at how one Canadian by the name of Bruce Beach is making sure humanity survives the nuclear holocaust. Take a look at this swanky fallout entrance.

You see, it all started in 1980 when Beach, a radiological scientific officer, decided that his line of work was going to kill us all. I can only imagine what began as a guilt ridden hobby ended up blossoming into a full on obsession. Over the next thirty years, Beach and his friends and family used 42 decommissioned school buses to form a 10,000 square foot underground city with enough room and supplies to house over 300 people. They then poured thousands of pounds of concrete over it, which had to be kept damp for months in order to set without cracking, and topped it off with fourteen feet of soil.

Beach proudly states that this homemade bunker can withstand anything short of a direct nuclear strike; though if movies have taught us anything, it’s that no one bombs Canada and it’s too cold to sustain zombies. But some of his work is just awe-inspiring in a can’t look away kind of way. For example, after passing through those Dharma-esque doors, inhabitants travel down the conveyor corridor…

via Historical Thursday: Ark II Facility – There, I Fixed It – Redneck Repairs.

I am absolutely fascinated with stuff like this. Not that I worry about the end of the world, just because I think it’s amazing that someone would exert the time and effort to create something so cool!

If live sound isn’t in your heart, get some cheap cabs and be done with it, but if you’re passionate about music and holding events, spend a lot of money, you’ll never regret it. Your girlfriend might but hey, thats girls, its all shoes, bags and god damn make up with them, i’m a man, and I like my fast cars, expensive Omega watches and most of all, pa speakers that do a better job at punching me in the chest and stomach than jean claude van damme could do if he has 14 grams of charly pumping through his veins.

Just six weeks after launch, Microsoft’s Kin, the social phone we wanted to love, is dead. Microsoft is ending its short life, sources close to Microsoft tell us.

There won’t be a separate Kin product anymore. Effective immediately, Andy Lees is shoving the entire Kin team into the core Windows Phone 7 team, so there will just be one big group to focus on Windows Phone 7.

The major reason? Sales. Microsoft never confirmed (or denied) that only 500 Kins were sold, but it’s clear that the response has been completely underwhelming. Otherwise, why kill a project that was in development for years after just a few weeks? (And cost millions.)

A major reason it bombed, besides the weird, non-specific faux hipster marketing? Price. Verizon priced Kin’s monthly service like a smartphone, even though it wasn’t one. Even cutting the device price drastically didn’t alleviate the high cost of the monthly plan. (The confusing Kin, a Windows Phone 7 Phone by Microsoft flustercluck branding didn’t help.)

via Microsoft Kills Kin.

This 1977 novel by Walker Percy (The Moviegoer) is a bleak psychological investigation of a Southern gentleman gone toxic and mad from his wife’s betrayal, his own violence, and various other sad things — including, it seems, America itself. It was one of many books read by good ol’ boy Sawyer on the beach during his downtime from A-team missions in the jungle. It was also one of three books (along with Watership Down and A Wrinkle In Time) on Sawyer’s dresser in his Sideways world; many Lost fans have inferred their presence in Sawyer’s afterlife fantasy to mean that they held more significance to him and to Lost than any other novel seen in his hands. Lancelot speaks to Sawyer’s unresolved rage over the deaths of his parents. (Perhaps coincidentally, the novel was published the same year as their murder/suicide.) But its final pages — in which the demented dark knight threatens to impose his own brand of justice upon the world unless God reveals himself and intervenes — mirror Richard Alpert’s complaint to Jacob that by remaining silent and separate from his Island people, he allows the devilish Smokey to manipulate and darken their hearts.

via Lost | ‘Lost’: The Essential Reading List | Photo 1 of 16 | EW.com.

As expected, Hulu today launched the $9.99 per month Hulu Plus service, offering full seasons of TV shows from ABC, NBC and Fox in HD. Hulu Plus will offer all episodes of current shows, plus past seasons of shows like 30 Rock, The Office, Heroes, and more.

Hulu Plus will be available on Windows and Mac computers, the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Samsung TV’s and Blu-ray players, and soon on the PS3. The Xbox 360, Sony TV’s, and Vizio TV’s will follow.

Hulu Plus, with a heavy focus on TV shows, is an interesting companion for Netflix streaming, and gets us one step closer to cutting the cable TV cord…

If you’re interested in Hulu Plus, you can sign up for a preview invitation.

Update: My biggest complaint about Hulu Plus (besides the lack of CBS, FX and TNT) is that they will be showing commercials. This is a big win for Netflix since they don’t show commercials on streaming.

via Hacking NetFlix : Hulu Launches $9.99 Per Month Hulu Plus Service.

Porn sites may soon be able to tag themselves with a .xxx address now that ICANN has given the new domain name its initial OK.

After denying several requests over the years for a new .xxx top-level domain, ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) finally relented Friday by giving the new domain its conditional approval.

ICM Registry, which would manage and sell the new domain name to porn sites, has waged a long struggle to get .xxx accepted by ICANN as a top-level domain, only to get a thumb’s down at each turn. ICM’s Chairman Stuart Lawley has consistently touted the .xxx domain as a way to segregate and safely filter out adult entertainment sites. However, conservative groups have in the past lobbied Washington and reportedly pressured ICANN to deny the request.

via ICANN OKs .xxx domain name for porn sites | Digital Media – CNET News.

Based upon a recent email to the X.Org developers’ mailing list, Canonical is nearing the point of one of their goals for Ubuntu 10.10 of a rootless X Server, or being able to run the X.Org Server without root privileges.

All that’s left to accomplish within the Ubuntu land according to Canonical’s Christopher James Rogers is working out a /dev/backlight device interface that udev would set the appropriate permissions on for the user. The /proc/mtrr may also need to be handled too, but Rogers doesn’t believe any of the drivers (at least the main KMS drivers) are using this interface. With all of the necessary prerequisites addressed, when starting the X Server they will have a check to see if kernel mode-setting is being used, if /dev/backlight exists, and if /dev/input/* has appropriate user permissions. If all conditions are true, the X.Org Server would not be run as the root user, which leads to better security. Of course, this feat has already been achieved by other Linux distributions such as Moblin and now MeeGo.

via [Phoronix] Ubuntu Nearing X Server Not Running As Root.

Picked up some new speakers last night for the DJ rig. 4 dual 12″ Sonics to be precise. These will work great for outside shows and street dances. These are speakers to handle the mids and highs and weigh about 100 lbs each! Good thing they have built in wheels on them.

I can’t wait to try them out next weekend at the Driscoll 4th of July street dance. Should really put out some volume!

MOORHEAD, Minn. (AP) — A North Dakota Highway Patrol trooper based in Fargo is accused of assaulting his wife while she held their infant son.

Michael Polomny, 40, was arrested Wednesday at the couple’s home in Moorhead, Minn. He made a court appearance Thursday and a judge set bail at $6,000 bond or $2,000 cash. He also is barred from contacting his wife and children.

Polomny, a seven-year veteran of the patrol, is accused of pushing, kicking and punching his wife while she held their 3-month-old son. His attorney declined comment.

The patrol says a Fargo-based trooper was put on administrative leave Wednesday but the agency would not identify the trooper by name.

via Fargo-based Highway Patrol trooper charged.

There is so many levels of FAIL on this that I don’t even have a proper comment…

Ron Wayne is usually just another gambler at the Nugget Hotel & Casino in Nevada. He comes here a couple of days a week to try his luck on the video poker machine. But on this trip, he drew some curious onlookers, as he was escorted by a CNN camera crew. A gift-shop worker asked him if he’s famous.

“Well, I’m one of the founders of Apple Computer,” Wayne responded.

Wayne, 76, is used to the puzzled looks. He said people assume that he must be living in a mansion.

“I’m living off my Social Security and I do a modest trade in collectors’ stamps and coins,” he said.

via The gambling man who co-founded Apple and left for $800 – CNN.com.