Most people can play daily fantasy or casino games without a problem. “I know there are people that can do it normally,” Mr. Adams said, but he is not one of them. He also acknowledges that he ultimately bears responsibility for his addiction.

Yet gambling counselors say they could more easily help people like Mr. Adams if fantasy companies did not portray their games as involving mostly skill. That alone is a risk for addiction, said Keith Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling.

“The perception of skill has led many, many people down a very dark path,” he said.

—NYTimes: For Addicts, Fantasy Sites Can Lead to Ruinous Path

People, just don’t gamble.

You know, life is too short for ugly cars.

Seriously.

via Coudal

I love concept projects and Jay Machalani’s iOS 8 concept is very intriguing.

via The Verge

via Twitter

Interesting observations from John Gruber on the iPad Pro and Pencil:

For capacitive (finger) touch, the iPad Pro samples at twice the rate of previous iPads — 120 times per second instead of 60. With the Pencil, though, the iPad Pro samples at 240 times per second. The way the Pencil works requires cooperation with the display, and so there’s no way this Pencil could be made to work with existing iPads. The Pencil is not iPad Pro-exclusive out of product marketing spite — it’s exclusive to the Pro because the two were engineered in coordination with each other. And if Apple had designed the Pencil differently, to allow it to work with existing iPads, there’s no way it could have had this level of accuracy, because the tip would have needed to be broader and capacitive. (The Pencil’s tip is not capacitive at all — it doesn’t register as a touch at all on any other iOS device.)

I think it’s quite possible the iPad ends up being a slow win for Apple unlike the quarter-after-quarter smash hit the iPhone is.

At The Awl, Matt Buchanan on The Cool Way to Brew Good Coffee:

This exchange was a series of dog whistles between two obnoxious people: I wanted the coffee most appealing to a coffee jerk; the barista told me that this shop was aggressively Goodc. If you are not a beanboi, but are vaguely aware that a certain kind of highly conspicuous consumer likely enjoys “pourover” coffee which is made agonizingly slowly, one cup at a time, then you might be wondering how an automatic machine that brews like a gallon of coffee at once became a Cool Brewing Method in this age of All Things Craft. (Or not! RUN AWAY FROM THIS POST NOW, SAVE YOURSELF.)

I admit I’ve become a bit of a coffee snob in the last few years and enjoy multiple, self-made, pourover cups of coffee per day. I live in San Francisco, what do you expect?

My current favorite brand of coffee bean is by Ritual Coffee Roasters.

From Reuters, Taxi owners, lenders sue New York City over Uber:

Taxi owners and lenders on Tuesday sued New York City and its Taxi and Limousine Commission, saying the proliferation of the popular ride-sharing business Uber was destroying their businesses and threatening their livelihoods.

The lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court accused the defendants of violating yellow cab drivers’ exclusive right to pick up passengers on the street by letting Uber drivers who face fewer regulatory burdens pick up millions of passengers who use smartphones to hail rides.

I use Uber all the time in San Francisco, but I’m also aware it’s not the most upstanding business.

There’s a reason people flock to Uber: the experience of requesting and paying for a ride is seamless. What pisses me off is hearing taxi owners whine, bitch, and complain about Uber rather than figure out a way to improve the process of hailing a cab. No group should have an ‘exclusive right’ to business over others. Fuck that noise.

[To be clear, I could spend many blog posts on how much Uber’s business practices piss me off too. They’re a shady bunch.]

Nick Statt at the Verge on the Coolest Cooler Kickstarter disaster:

Coolest, the company behind a popular Kickstarter-funded cooler, is now selling its product for $499 on Amazon in an effort to raise enough money to continue producing new units. The news may frustrate Kickstarter backers, who were promised the product in February of this year. Coolest said today it now plans to deliver the last shipment of coolers to Kickstarter backers by April 2016.

In a video uploaded to YouTube, CEO Ryan Grepper said the Amazon sale is to “keep the lights on” and “make certain that every single backer’s Coolest can get made and shipped.” The problem lies in the cooler’s blending motor, which is made by a supplier that’s currently on strike, he said. Coolest has been unable to find a viable replacement.

As I’ve said before, making things at scale is not something you want to take lightly.

User interpol in the comments makes a great point:

Uhh, so $12,000,000 in funding — take off $1mil for Kickstarter fees — divided by 60,000 units is only $200 per unit.

This seems like a vastly underfunded project.

My two successful Kickstarter projects, Bicycles for Our Minds and Charms, Quivers, and Parades both involved two ingredients: paper and ink. Once your project involves electronics and moving parts it takes the complexity to a much higher level.

This doesn’t mean poster and book projects can’t be highly complex. Then can be.

NY to SF in 5 minutes shot entirely on an iPhone 6+ by Tom Harman.

via kottke

At Re/code, Noah Kulwin on investor Fred Wilson:

Last week, Silicon Valley freaked out when Fidelity lowered the value in its stake of Snapchat, Zenefits and other startups in which the investment conglomerate holds equity. In Snapchat’s case, it reduced the company’s worth from $16 billion to $12 billion. Zenefits’ $4.5 billion valuation was cut in half.

Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson, a longtime venture capitalist known for his early bet on Twitter, says in a blog post that these write-downs are going to keep on coming.

He argues that the “blurring of the lines between the public and private markets” means that as the economy slows down (or the air gets let out of the tech bubble, take your pick), the valuations of unicorns like Snapchat and Zenefits that have taken funding from late-stage growth giants like Fidelity are going to continue going down.

As Alan Kay best put it, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

If angel investors want to pop the bubble, or let air out the bubble or do whatever the fuck they want to do with the bubble, all they need to do change the amount of money they’re putting into these ‘unicorns’.

Also, can we stop using the word, ‘unicorn’?

Armin Vit posted some heart felt words for ExxonMobil regarding their constantly suing anyone using interlocking x’s in their logo.

This week (recorded 11/1/15) I rant to myself about San Francisco’s crap subway (aka BART), the bicycles on BART, dicks that don’t give up their seats for ladies, the lack of hustle in SF commuters, spineless SF drivers, people not wanting to pay for good design, the World Series, and New Jersey. This episode opens with a clip from A Streetcar Named Desire.

Listen Now

via little animal gifs

LOS ANGELES — When Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight” is released in a special roadshow version (with overture, intermission and additional footage) on Dec. 25, it will represent a feat worthy of the heist in the director’s “Jackie Brown.”

The film is scheduled to open on 96 screens in the United States and four in Canada, all in 70-millimeter projection, a premium format associated with extravaganzas of the 1950s and 1960s.

Yet from a theatrical standpoint, the technology is nearly obsolete. Last year, “Interstellar” opened in 70 millimeter at only 11 comparable locations. There were only 16 in 2012 for “The Master,” which renewed interested in the format. No film has opened with 100 70-millimeter prints since 1992. According to the National Association of Theater Owners, 97 percent of the 40,000 screens in the United States now use digital projection.

Over a period of a year and a half, the Weinstein Company, which will distribute the film, arranged for old projectors to be procured, purchased and refurbished and new lenses to be made for theaters.

NYTimes: Tarantino’s ‘The Hateful Eight’ Resurrects Nearly Obsolete Technology

Tarantino is so obsessive. I love it.