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The post Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

via Marginal Revolution
Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

I will be the first person to declare my love of the wildly uneven Star Trek: Voyager above the rest of Star Trek (actually that’s a lie, because my colleague Katharine has beaten me to the punch on this several times). But friends: collectively, we are re-watching far too much Voyager on Netflix.

In celebration of the impending arrival of Star Trek: Discovery, Netflix has revealed an internal study of all the ways we’ve consumed over 536 hours of boldly going where, actually, many people have gone before. Most interestingly, the streaming service tallied up the most re-watched Trek episodes of all time and the results will, for once, make using a “set phasers to stunned” joke totally worth it. Because we’re re-watching Trek in the weirdest damn way.

There’s a few specific criteria here—Netflix counts a “re-watch” as a viewer going back to watch at least 6 minutes of an episode they had already viewed in its entirety, and the first two episodes of a series were culled from the results as they were, unsurprisingly, the most popular by an overwhelming margin. But what’s left after that for the 10 most re-watched episodes after that is a frankly alarming collection of episodes.

Some of these are obvious: The Next Generation’s “The Best of Both Worlds” is widely considered one of the greatest Trek stories of all time. And the overwhelming presence of TNG and Voyager is mostly thanks to episodes that feature the Borg, the franchise’s most iconic villains—or revolve around Seven of Nine. But look at this list. Not a single episode of Enterprise is maybe understandable, but no original series? No Deep Space Nine!? At least that one might be explained by the fact that people are simply watching larger amounts of it given its more serialized nature, instead of going back to revisit one-off episodes. Less explainable is why the hell “Clues”—the TNG episode where the crew passes through a wormhole and realizes they’ve been manipulated by a race of Xenophobic aliens trying to keep their planet hidden from outsides—is here above, like, almost any other episode of TNG.

Remember “Time and Again,” one of the first “proper” episodes of Voyager that saw the crew go back in time to the day before an accident wipes out an entire planet’s civilization? And that said civilization probably deserved it because of that one insanely annoying kid and for literally all of their clothing being various shades of orange, mustard, scarlet, and taupe? Apparently you do, because you re-watch it a lot. And who the hell is skipping all the way back to the end of Voyager just to re-view its finale “Endgame” so much? Spoilers: they get back to Earth, you guys. Stop re-watching it.

There is so much Star Trek to revist on Netflix right now—and in a few weeks, a whole new series in the franchise to discover. What we’re apparently choosing to return to instead is a little disconcerting, to be honest.

[Netflix via Business Insider]

via Gizmodo
This List of the Most Re-Watched Star Trek Episodes Is Baffling

via MakeUseOf.com
Hiren’s Boot CD: The All-In-One Boot CD for Every Need

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ—Offering immediate, over-the-counter relief to anyone suffering from a sudden misalignment of the four temperaments, Tylenol released its new black bile gel caps on Tuesday for people with unbalanced humors. “Simply take two bile caps when you feel a choleric disposition coming on, and you’ll start to notice harmony restored to the body and spirit within minutes,” said spokesperson Jamie Suarez, adding that each capsule is filled with enough of the melancholic element to draw out any predominance of yellow bile, blood, or phlegm, restoring physical, mental, and emotional vitality for up to 12 hours. “In addition to black bile gummies for children, it will also come in an extra-strength formula for people whose infirmities of constitution stem from even the most severe manners of dyscrasia and bodily imbalances.” Suarez went on to say that Tylenol has plans to complement the gel caps with soon-to-be-released home bloodletting and fire cupping kits.

via The Onion
Tylenol Releases New Black Bile Gel Caps For People With Unbalanced Humors

Link

After years of penalizing players for showboating after a score, the NFL has finally let up on its strict endzone celebration rules. ESPN sat down with a player who knows the drill all too well to get his opinion, and to announce his un-retirement.

via The Awesomer
Hingle McCringleberry on ESPN

via Dilbert Daily Strip
Comic for September 11, 2017

The search for the right shop system is often a tedious one. Which system is suitable, and offers all the functions and options that I need? nopCommerce stands out here, due to its comfortable, straightforward and clean interface and beautiful shop designs. Thus, it’s worth taking a look at this e-commerce system, which is also in use by several popular brands. nopCommerce is distributed as open source.

Safe, Stable and Expendable

With over 27,000 installations, nopCommerce is pretty popular. The system has been in development since 2008 and is currently available in version 3.90. With all that experience and success, it is understandable that the developers are confident enough to state that nopCommerce is one of the safest and most stable e-commerce systems out there.

In addition to the already vast scope of functions, there’s a marketplace that lets you expand nopCommerce in any way you like. For instance, you’ll find market themes to give your shop a new look, as well as many functional extensions.

Among other things, you’ll find widgets that allow you to promote offers or price reductions. You can add different payment methods, and add services for parcel delivery. Many extensions are free; some have to be paid for. The selection is broad and leaves little to be desired.

Download and Installation

The source code of nopCommerce has an impressive weight of 115 MB. After a free registration, download said code as a zipped archive. Since nopCommerce was developed using ASP.NET, a Windows server with IIS is required. MS SQL is the only possible database system.

Microsoft’s web platform installer easily installs nopCommerce on your server. Aside from the front end with the shop, there’s a capable, feature-rich, yet clean backend to manage your products, orders, and customers.

Extensive Product Management With Many Features For Clients

A comfortable and powerful product management is essential for any online shop. nopCommerce not only allows you to add meaningful images and descriptions to products, and categorize them. It also lets you set up a product in different versions. This means that a shoe in different sizes only needs to be created as a product once, and then you get to define the various characteristics of that shoe. These can be the already mentioned different sizes, colors, or materials. Price adjustments for individual versions are possible as well.

Tracking the stock is another important aspect of a working e-commerce system. With nopCommerce, you get to choose if you want the stock to be tracked for every single product. Of course, with products in different versions, you get to manage the stock separately for each version.

To simplify shipping, there’s also an option to enter the measurements and the weight of the product.

Digital Products For Download

When working with digital products like e-books or music, nopCommerce is a well-equipped shop system for you as well. In the end, nopCommerce doesn’t care whether products are sent via email or another physical way of delivery, or made available for download after payment.

You can also sell your music via nopCommerce, for example. Each product can be labeled as a digital product. Subsequently, the respective file is uploaded, and nopCommerce takes care of the rest.

Comparing and Remembering Products

The client gains a lot of information via the many characteristics that you can add to your products. As a unique feature, nopCommerce offers a product comparison. To do that, customers select multiple products from the shop, which will then be displayed next to each other.

Those that don’t want to purchase right away can add products to a wishlist, allowing them to add them to the cart at a later point.

When a customer finds a product that one of his friends might like, he can send the link to the product page to that friend via email.

Easier and Faster Checkout

Often, the customer’s shop experience cringes at checkout. Unfortunately, this is the point where the actual purchase is made. Checkouts are too complicated or too arduous in many cases. If a customer has to go through a tedious registration process before being able to purchase anything, that alone can be a lethal obstacle.

Thus, nopCommerce took some precautions here. Aside from the classic checkout, a so-called anonymous checkout is possible, too. Of course, it’s not completely anonymous. Nonetheless, your customers can order without having to create a customer account. Personal information is only recorded for this one order.

The so-called one-page checkout unites all information for the checkout on one page, reducing the number of purchase cancellations, which are a pretty common occurrence on multi-page checkouts.

Over 50 Payment Methods

In a lot of cases, purchases in shops fail when it comes to payment. Here, every consumer has their preference on how they wish to pay. If the preferred method of payment is not included, they’ll look for another shop that accommodates their desire better. To prevent this from happening to you, nopCommerce offers more than 50 payment methods.

This includes classics, such as paying via credit card or payment on delivery. Many payment providers, PayPal, and others are included as well. If you run a brick-and-mortar store besides your online shop, you can also offer the method “pay in store.” Here, the customers order online, but pick up the product at your physical location.

Shipping and Calculation of Shipping Cost

nopCommerce also cares for shipping. The delivery costs are calculated based on the measurements and the weight of the product. This allows you to ship your product as affordable as possible.

To be able to track shipping from your shop system, you can integrate providers like UPS or DHL. To do so, you need an account with the service that the shipping is taken care off by. Then, you’ll always see the status of your shipments.

Marketing, Marketing, Marketing

Unfortunately, good products and prices alone are not enough. They also need to be communicated accordingly. Thus, marketing is of particular importance in e-commerce. nopCommerce provides plenty of options here.

One classic are bonus points that you can credit to your customers for their purchases. These points can then be spent in a future order.

Discounts and coupons are a welcome reason to revisit a shop as well. Here, you have the choice between relative and absolute discounts. It’s also difficult to imagine an online shop without the option to rate products and write reviews. And you need not, as nopCommerce covers this perfectly.

nopCommerce has many other marketing tools for you – ranging from newsletters to gift cards. In the market place, there are tons of other options as well.

Conference in November

The “nopCommerce Days” in November are a sign of how actively nopCommerce is being developed. The two-day conference deals with the current and future development of the e-commerce system. Aside from technological aspects, like the optimization of 3rd party extensions, and the integration into WordPress, the question how an online shop can be turned into a real business is one of the topics.

The “nopCommerce days” take place on the 16th and 17th of November in New York. One of the keynote speakers is Microsoft’s Scott Hanselman.

via Noupe
Open Source: nopCommerce is a Powerful Yet Easy-to-Use Online Shop System

by Sam Bocetta
Sam gives us the basics of building an AR 15 Upper receiver, it is a job that is easier than you may think.

USA – -(Ammoland.com)- Nosy and want to build your own AR 15 Upper Receiver from parts? Follow these expert tips and save time, money, stress, and enjoy the procedure and the creation. I will not hold anything back; stop procrastinating and start building an AR 15 Upper following this guide.

This is 2017, and the AR Upper Receiver is the buzzword in the firearms market. After eight or so tumultuous years impending gun control hanging overhead like the sword of Damocles in addition to a flourishing firearms economy, the market is teeming with AR Upper Receivers and related merchandises. Parts and fittings are relatively affordable and plenteous.

With pre-owned quality parts in abundance, putting them together and building the rifle you’ve always desired is as easy as ABC. Believe me; building your own AR Upper Receiver is not rocket science.

If you are a novice in the world of AR Upper Receivers, don’t get lost in the maze. There is an entire world of terminology, abbreviations, and alternatives for your new rifle. You need to know where to start. Don’t spend a dime before you think, or better still, learn from an expert.

Before opening your purse strings, have a clear objective in mind. Why are you building an AR Upper Receiver? Is it personal defense, hog hunting, competition or sandpit plinking? Maybe you want memorabilia you can show off to “the boys” when they come visiting.

These are all good and funky reasons to own an AR Upper Receiver; have your main objective at the back of your mind. Different parts exist to kit your AR Upper Receiver to accomplish virtually any mission you want to accomplish. Customize your rifle to address your individual needs.

Equip yourself with a strong Bench Vice, a receiver block, an armor wrench, and a barrel nut wrench based on the type of handguard or rail you have. You will use the same punch and pin holder for the bolt catch pin for the forward assist installation.

1. Building an AR 15 Upper : Install the AR 15 Upper Receiver Forward Assist

If your AR 15 Upper Receiver doesn’t have a forward assist, you have to pop it in. There is a roll-pin that holds the entire assembly in place; this is a straightforward procedure. Position the flat side towards the outside and the bowed section towards the inside. Notice the recessed section removed from the forward assist, towards the bolt carrier, place the roll pin here to prevent the assembly popping out.

Once the forward assist is properly line up, daylight will be visible through the hole; bash the pin in place using a hammer. Give the forward assist a little jiggle every once in a while, nailing the pin in place to ensure the bowed out area snuggly aligns itself with the roll pin.

2. Install the AR15 Dust Cover

The dust cover is a headache, thanks to the spring. You want to position it, so it exerts pressure to the dust cover and ensures it doesn’t block the way while firing, and this is difficult. Insert half of the retaining rod with the dust cover on the gun before positioning the spring using the retaining rod itself. The short end is on the gun while the long end is on the dust cover.

3. Install the AR Rifle Barrel

The rifle barrel of the AR Upper Receiver isn’t just screwed in place; it’s attached to an extension of the barrel that is fixed using the barrel nut. You need to apply just enough torque to the barrel for everything to fall in place; the wrong amount of torque and the gun’s accuracy is ruined.

You need a Reaction Rod for this part; it comes a part of the armorer’s package and allows you to twist the AR Upper Receiver in any direction while everything else in the barrel remains perfectly in place. Use the vice to lock the sucker down, and you’re good to go.

Ensure the Reaction Rod’s slotted end sticks out when you place the Upper Receiver on the rod. The barrel should be aligned with the slotted end before mating the Upper Receiver with the barrel extension. Look for the small notch on the upper side of the Upper Receiver, for an alignment with the pin on the barrel extension; it holds the barrel and everything else in place.

Apply some lubricant to the Reaction Rod end before it goes into the barrel. Take care you don’t scratch the barrel extension due to the small clearances.

After coupling the two parts, place the barrel nut and lock everything in place. Put in some little lubricant on the thread of the Upper Receiver to ensure the process is smooth, and prevent the two materials from gnawing into each other.

4. AR-15 Barrel Nut Installation

The barrel nut couples the Upper Receiver with the barrel and also hosts the hand guards. Different manufacturers offer different specifications and instructions with regards to hand guards; the following is a general overview.

Timing the barrel nut onto the gun is essential. Start screwing the barrel nut using your hands before applying a calibrated torque wrench. Make sure it is perfectly aligned with the gas tube hole on the AR Upper Receiver, and only enough torque is applied. Otherwise, make appropriate adjustments following specific instructions.

There are kits that use screws while others use shims; the nuts are designed for either. Using the correct kit makes it easier for you to do proper timing. When everything gets in place, it is time to fix the gas tube, the last piece of the puzzle.

5. Install the Gas Tube

The gas tube is responsible for directing hot gasses out of the barrel to the gas key at the bolt carrier group; it’s the source of the energy that powers the action. Preparing and installing the gas tube is a walk in the park.

Start by pinning the gas tube in its rightful place on the gas block. This makes it easier for gas block to slide atop the barrier and create the connection between the gas tube and the port of the barrel.

Put the gas tube in such a way that the cut on one end of its side is parallel to the hole at the lower end of the gas block, before nailing everything into place. Once again, use the armor wrench to hold in place; nothing is easier.

After you pin the block and the gas tube together, you should now move to place them atop the barrel. Make sure that you align the gas block with the hole on the barrel and that the gas tube feeds through the barrel nut onto the AR Upper Receiver.

When you place a bolt carrier inside the gas tube, it should automatically slide into the gas key with no hassle. Putting the gas block in line is the easiest part of the entire process. Block the chamber using one finger before blowing into the muzzle to check that everything is where it ought to be.

You can know when you have done the right job based on the point where the resistance is felt. You should be able to tell what part is not in place.

6. Install the Hand Guards

Once again, what you do here depends on the particular manufacturer. There are hand guards that are screwed in while others are bolted. You now want to affix the hand guard on the barrel nut securely, and you are home and dry. (see related: Five Best Handguards )

7. Enjoy Your Handy from Building an AR 15 Upper.

Now that you identify the different parts of an AR Upper Receiver, and the steps to follow while building an AR 15 upper on your own, remember a safely check its functionality. If it didn’t work out the first time round, dismantle everything and give it a fresh start. Remember to check your State Laws with regards to firearms.

About Sam Bocetta:

Sam Bocetta is a retired engineer who worked for over 35 years as an engineer specializing in electronic warfare and advanced computer systems.  Sam now teaches at Algonquin Community College in Ottawa, Canada as a part time engineering professor. He’s also a writer at Gun News Daily, his favorite rifle is the AR-15.

This post Building an AR 15 Upper Receiver , Do-It-Yourself Guide ~ Assist Videos appeared first on AmmoLand.com Shooting Sports News .

via AmmoLand.com Shooting Sports News
Building an AR 15 Upper Receiver , Do-It-Yourself Guide ~ Assist Videos

You’d be forgiven for thinking RSS died off with the passing of Google Reader, but our old friend Really Simple Syndication (or Rich Site Summary) still has a role to play on the web of 2017. It’s faster, more efficient, and you won’t have to worry as much about accidentally leaking your news reading habit to all your Facebook friends. Whether you’ve never heard of it before or you’ve abandoned it for pastures new, here’s why you should be using RSS for your news instead of social media.

What is RSS?

For the completely uninitiated, RSS is just a standardized way of presenting text and images in a feed that can be used by a variety of apps and web services. It is just like how Twitter has a standard way of presenting text and images that all the various Twitter clients understand. Sites follow the rules for publishing their articles via RSS, and RSS readers follow the rules for presenting the information and laying it out.

RSS requires some effort from publishers to cobble together an active RSS feed for their site, but the smartest RSS readers out there can often piece together a feed from new articles on a site even if there isn’t a dedicated RSS channel. Reader apps, like Feedly or Reeder, present new articles in a summarized, chronological list, usually in shortened versions that can then be expanded on the main source site.

Everything all of the time

One of the main reasons RSS is so beloved of news gatherers is that it catches everything a site publishes—not just the articles that have proved popular with other users, not just the articles from today, not just the articles that happened to be tweeted out while you were actually staring at Twitter. Everything.

In our age of information overload that might seem like a bad idea, but RSS also cuts out everything you don’t want to hear about. You’re in full control of what’s in your feed and what isn’t, so you don’t get friends and colleagues throwing links into your feeds that you’ve got no interest in reading.

Perhaps most importantly, you don’t need to be constantly online and constantly refreshing your feeds to make sure you don’t miss anything. It’s like putting a recording schedule in place for the shows you know you definitely want to catch rather than flicking through the channels hoping you land on something interesting.

There’s no rush with RSS—you don’t miss out on a day’s worth of news, or TV recaps, or game reviews if you’re offline for 24 hours. It’s all waiting for you when you get back. And if you’re on holiday and the unread article count starts to get scarily high, just hit the mark all as read button and you’re back to a clean slate.

The news, unfiltered

It’s certainly still possible to create a little news bubble for yourself with your choice of RSS feeds, but assuming you are enlightened enough to pick a few divergent sources, those articles come through without any kind of extra commentary or spin.

You don’t have to read what your uncle thinks about the latest action taken by the President, or go down a rabbit hole of nested Facebook comments to get to the actual news at the bottom of it. Sure, your chosen news sources might be opinionated, but at least you’re cutting out some of the white noise on top.

As we’ve already alluded to, when you follow the news via social media, you’re relying on other people bringing you the news, unless you’re following individual news stories. RSS is like getting your newspaper of choice delivered to the front door rather than relying on heading down to the local bar to listen in on what everyone’s shouting about.

With only one page to visit rather than dozens to catch up on, you can spend less time aimlessly drifting around and more time catching up on the posts that matter.

It’s not just for news

News is the primary driver behind RSS and most of your feeds are going to be populated with dozens of new articles a day, but the technology also proves its worth for keeping track of other stuff you’d typically miss on social media. Maybe that might be new wallpapers on your favorite art site, or an obscure blog you don’t want to miss a post from.

You can find RSS feeds for weather updates, new versions of apps, keyword alerts on search engines, new videos on your favorite YouTube channels, and even recent changes to the Netflix catalog. Basically anything you might want to keep track of and not miss because of the cacophony of voices on social media, RSS can help out with.

The always-useful IFTTT (If This Then That) is fluent in RSS, giving you even more ways to make use of RSS. You can build applets to generate tweets or Facebook posts or Instagram updates from a particular feed. Zapier is another service that can take RSS feeds from anywhere in the web and plug them into other apps and platforms.

Take a tour around the web and you’re going to find RSS in more places than you expected, whether that’s subreddits or users on Reddit, categories on Craigslist, or podcasts on SoundCloud, and your RSS reader of choice will be able to handle it all.

Finding an RSS reader

Speaking of RSS readers, we can’t give you a full rundown of all the different apps out there, but we can recommend a handful. Digg Reader sticks to the basics but does them well, letting you bookmark articles for later reading and surfacing popular content from the rest of the Digg network (if you’re interested in seeing it).

Feedly is a more comprehensive option, especially if you opt for the paid-for Pro version, with mobile apps and topic boards, and an appealing-looking layout that you can customize in various ways depending on how quickly you want to power through your feeds. Feedly also boasts plenty of third-party integrations, including IFTTT.

Meanwhile Panda is a clean and relatively young news aggregator, that works on the web and comes with a host of different layout options to choose between. It’s not quite as powerful as some of the other options out there, but Panda is promising plenty of plug-ins and new features on the way in the not-too-distant future.

Since Google Reader’s demise, the RSS reader scene has been quite a chaotic one, so before you invest in a client app to call your own, make sure you can export your feeds at a later date if you want to be able to take them elsewhere.

via Gizmodo
Why RSS Still Beats Facebook and Twitter for Tracking News

via TechCrunch
It’s time to build our own Equifax with blackjack and crypto