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Friday, August 24, 2012

This Specialty Crop Generates The Highest Profit Per Acre

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/specialty-crop-profit-per-acre-is-2012-8

The Minnesota Department of Agriculture has released a report, summarized by the Minneapolis Fed, showing strawberries are far and away the most profitable "specialty" crop planted by Midwest farmers. Here's the full chart.

Minnfed

The report used farm records from 2008 to 2011 from in-state producers to find out average financial performance for nine crops. At least five farms had to have grown the crop for it to be included in the analysis.

"Just as strawberries are often the first crop out of the field, so too are they first in financial returns after direct expenses and overhead are paid, followed by assorted vegetables," the Fed notes. "In some cases, they didn't have much competition; four of the nine categories did not recover their basic costs or merely broke even."

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The Wacky Words That Are Now in the Oxford Dictionaries Online: LOLZ, Photobomb, Mwahahaha and More [Wtf]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5937502/the-wacky-words-that-are-now-in-the-oxford-dictionaries-online-lolz-photobomb-mwahahaha-and-more

Dictionaries exist in between a rock and a hard place: jump on new words too late and they look like a dinosaur, add in words too early and they're made into a mockery. Words are hard, yes, but some words don't exactly need defining like some of these just added to the Oxford Dictionaries Online.

Surprisingly (or I guess, not really anymore), there were a lot of wacky tech and Internet words that made the cut to be included inside the Oxford Dictionaries Online. But here's the thing about adding words we use on the Internet to the English dictionary: we're not really talking English. It may sound like it, it may look like it but it's a whole 'nother lingo altogether. Anyways:

lolz
mwahahaha (seriously?)
photobomb
ridic
tweeps
ethical hacker (this cracks me up)
hackathon
hat tip
lifecasting
inbox (just now?)
UX
video chat
Wikipedian
See, I can totally understand how some of those words need defining. UX, inbox, video chat, even hackathon. But words like mwahahaha and ridic are well, ridic. Come on now. Here are some none tech words that are now part of the dictionary and they're even more ridiculous:
date night
dirty martini (what?)
douche (they're an official breed now!)
DW
genius (what the fuck?)
group hug
guilty pleasure
hosepipe ban (wait this is seriously what the fuck)
micropig (a pig of a very small, docile, hairless variety)
OH
ripped
soul patch
vajazzle
vote someone/thing off the island (what is this Y2K?
I need to learn a new language. [Oxford Dictionaries, Image Credit: sergign/Shutterstock]

Freescale's new industrial touchscreen tech even works in the rain

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/24/freescale-xtrinsic-touchscreen/

Freescale is announcing a new industrial touch sensing technology that'll even sense your swipes and prods through a film of water. Xtrinsic 3.0 is designed to be used in industrial, medical and in-car systems, with pre-built user interfaces ready to be added to any device its jammed inside. In addition to being able to work through water, it can withstand noise, detect electrical interference and reduce false touches. It's being demonstrated at the company's technology forum in India from today, presumably ready to be licensed by passing equipment manufacturers in short order.

Continue reading Freescale's new industrial touchscreen tech even works in the rain

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Freescale's new industrial touchscreen tech even works in the rain originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Aug 2012 01:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Thursday, August 23, 2012

Make Fresh Bread in Minutes in a Pressure Cooker [Cooking]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5937291/make-fresh-bread-in-minutes-in-a-pressure-cooker

Make Fresh Bread in Minutes in a Pressure Cooker One of our favorite food hacks is making fresh bread without a bread maker. If you own a pressure cooker, you can get make delicious and rich-tasting loaves at home in under twenty minutes.

Laura at Hip Pressure Cooking (the same smart site that showed us how to cook eggs in a pressure cooker) reveals this new bread-making technique. You'll need some sort of container, like a coffee can or heat-proof glass measuring cup, and just a few simple ingredients (e.g., flour, baking soda, yogurt). After pressure cooking for fifteen to twenty minutes you should get a warm loaf (even faster than baking bread in a crock pot). The bread doesn't come out crunchy, but you can quickly grill a few slices or put them under the broiler for some crust.

The pressure cooker is a wonderfully versatile kitchen tool. One of the best things about this, besides the time savings, is you avoid heating up your kitchen with the oven.

Pressure Cooker Bread: Less energy, less time, REAL bread! | Hip Pressure Cooking

Gigabyte P2542G gaming laptop hands-on (video)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/23/gigabyte-p2542g-gaming-laptop-hands-on/

While we managed to get our hands on Gigabyte's latest graphics card-toting Ultrabook back at CeBIT, we've just finished handling the P2542G (its high-end gaming sibling) at the laptop and motherboard maker's UK launch event. Packing a 15.6-inch 1,920 x 1,080 display, it runs on an Ivy Bridge Core i7-3610QM, with a 2GB NVIDIA GTX 660M card to power PC gaming's latest and greatest. Add in a Blu-ray player and THX-certified dual-woofer sound system and you have the makings of pretty capable beast -- not to mention looking the part with a yellow paint job and dual exhaust vents along the back edge. Read up on our impressions and check out our video hands-on after the break.

Gallery: Gigabyte P2542G gaming laptop hands-on