Month: September 2016

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Will it Sous Vide? Boozy Pumpkin Pie

Hello, everyone, and welcome to a very autumnal edition of Will it Sous Vide?, the weekly column where I make whatever you want me to with my immersion circulator. This week, you all got very seasonal and elected pumpkin pie.

Or, shall I say “kind of pumpkin pie”?—because tag007’s wife said so. (To be fair, tag007’s wife seems like a smart lady.)

That would have been a delightful all on its own, but then botticellilove had to go and take it up a notch with this boozy suggestion:

Seeing that this tasked combined two of my favorite things (alcohol and pie) I was even more excited than usual to get to sous vide-ing. First things first, I had to infuse some booze. If found a pretty decent looking recipe for spiced rum on Anova’s site, and used that as a template, swapping out rum for rye, because I thought a spicy, slightly aggressive rye would hold its own against a sweet pie a little better than rum. (But feel free to use rum or any other ethanol of your choosing.)

I feel like this little guy should have a name.

For those playing along at home, you will need:

  • 375 mL or rye (I used Bulleit)
  • 1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
  • 2 whole cloves
  • 1/2 a cinnamon stick
  • 2 whole black peppercorns
  • 1/2 piece star anise (I effed up and used a whole one; don’t be like me)
  • 2 3-inch strips fresh orange zest (zest only – no white pith)
  • 2 1-inch slices of fresh ginger (not in the original recipe, but I thought it should be in there.)

I poured all of this into a quart-sized freezer bag, got as much air out as I could, and let that thing infuse for two hours at 70 degrees Celsius for two hours.

Once the two hours was up, I removed the bag from the bath and let it cool to room temperature in a bowl, then strained it into a pretty little glass bottle.

“Thanksgiving in a shot glass” is the best way to describe this stuff. It was sweet and spicy, with just a hint or citrus and ginger keeping everything from veering into the land of the cloying. I was pretty happy with my decision to use rye over rum, as a dark, molasses-y rum would have been a little much with all of the vanilla and whatnot. (I would however stick to the recommended 1/2 piece of anise, as it was just a touch too pronounced.)

The beauty of infusions like this is that, once they’re infused, you don’t need to do much to them. You could sip this chilled, maybe with a big rock, and be perfectly content, but it wouldn’t be bad in a toddy either. But we’re not here to make cocktails, are we? We’re here to make pie.

I’ve been making pumpkin pie for a good number of years now (it was actually the first pie I ever baked) and I rarely stray from the Libby’s recipe that’s printed right on the can. Like cheesecake before it, I wanted to try making a “traditional looking,” circular pie that could potentially be cut into wedges, as well as little single-serving pie jars. We’ll talk about the traditional pie first.

Rather than try and sous vide the entire thing in a pie plate (as I attempted in The Great Cheesecake Water Flood of 2016) I poured the Libby’s batter into a bag and submerged it in the water bath for an hour and a half at 80 degrees Celsius.

I then removed the bag of spicy orange batter from the bath and set it on the counter until it was cool enough to touch. Then I piped it into a pre-baked graham cracker crust. (You can use whatever kind of pre-baked crust you like, I just happened to have a bunch of graham crackers lying around.) I smoothed the top with a silicone spatula, and popped that baby in the fridge overnight.

The pie didn’t have that smooth, slightly shiny top that you see on a baked pumpkin pie, and I was a little worried about it holding its form during its journey from pie plate to serving plate.

It didn’t cut very cleanly and, as you can see from the above photo, it couldn’t quite keep it together. It also lacked that smooth, custardy, slightly fluffy quality that makes a pumpkin pie so delightful. The flavors were all there, and the filling tasted like it should, but it was a little lumpy for my taste, so I turned my attention to the jars.

This is where things really got fun, because this is where I started mixing in booze. I prepared three jars with pre-baked graham cracker crusts and spooned pumpkin pie batter into each one. I left one jar plain and dosed the other two with the spiced rye, adding a teaspoon to one and a tablespoon to the other. These were then sealed and submerged for an hour and a half at 80 degrees Celsius, after which they were removed from the bath and allowed to come to room temperature with their lids off. (Removing the lids while they cool helps prevent condensation from collecting and pooling unattractively on the surface or your pies.) These were then place in the fridge overnight, letting me wake to a breakfast of pumpkin pies, both boozy and plain. Let’s examine each one up close.

Plain Jar of Pumpkin Pie

Based on the cheesecake experiment, I had a feeling that the jars were the way to go, and I was correct. This was one of the best pumpkin pies I’ve ever had, with a super creamy, custardy filling that scooped cleanly from the jar, and a smooth, slightly shiny top. The crust also held up well without getting soggy.

Pumpkin Pie with One Teaspoon of Rye

As you can see from the above photo, adding just a teaspoon of the spiced rye to the batter altered the consistency pretty noticeably. This pie was a bit wetter than the plain, but not entirely unpleasant, though the crust was a little soggy in parts. In terms of booze, the rye flavor shone through in a very nice way, adding even more warm, spicy flavor and just a bit of alcoholic bite. All in all, this was a good, but not great jar of pumpkin pie.

Pumpkin Pie with One Tablespoon of Rye

As you probably guessed, this jar was the least successful, and the wettest. It was mealy, the crust was completely saturated, and—I can’t believe I’m saying this—too alcoholic. It actually burned a bit going down. If a pumpkin spice latte and a Jello shot had a baby and that baby was disgusting, this would be that gross basic baby. Do not make this.

Turning back to our eternal question: Will pumpkin pie, both boozy and plain sous vide?

The answer: Why, yes it will, and you should do so, but don’t add booze to the batter. For the best results, cook it in a jar, let it chill overnight, and consume it with a nice pour of a infused whiskey or rum, like the classy grownup you are.

Photos by Claire Lower.

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Google Maps on Android Will Now Show Your Calendar Events in a Special List of Places

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Because most Google apps these days talk to one another, today’s feature introduction to Google Maps comes as no surprise and is most definitely a welcomed addition. For Android users, Google Calendar events will start showing up in Maps under Your Places>Upcoming to help you get to the places you need to get to. 

Google Maps, at least in recent months, seems to be adding all sorts of information from other Google places, like Contacts and Gmail. With Calendar, they are expanding on that close connection. All you need to do to get your events to show up in the Upcoming section is to make sure you put an address in the “Where” box of your Calendar entries. Assuming you are signed-in to the same account on your phone in both Maps and Calendar, the Upcoming list then is auto-populated.

If you need to get to a calendar event, jump into that Upcoming section, tap on the meeting or date or excursion, and the map will open to that location to let you quickly jump into navigation. If you don’t want something showing, you can tap the menu in that Upcoming entry and “Dismiss.”

Pretty simple, right?

google maps google calendar

Via:  The Keyword

Google Maps on Android Will Now Show Your Calendar Events in a Special List of Places is a post from: Droid Life

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Feds go after Mylan for scamming Medicaid out of millions on EpiPen pricing

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WASHINGTON, DC – SEPTEMBER 21: Mylan Inc. CEO Heather Bresch holds up a 2-pack of EpiPen as she testifies during a hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee September 21, 2016 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The committee held a hearing on “Reviewing the Rising Price of EpiPens.” (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Over the nine or so years that Mylan, Inc. has been selling—and hiking the price—of EpiPens, the drug company has been misclassifying the life-saving device and stiffing Medicaid out of full rebate payments, federal regulators told Ars.

Under the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program, drug manufacturers, such as Mylan, can get their products covered by Medicaid if they agree to offer rebates to the government to offset costs. With a brand-name drug such as the EpiPen, which currently has no generic versions and has patent protection, Mylan was supposed to classify the drug as a “single source,” or brand name drug. That would mean Mylan is required to offer Medicaid a rebate of 23.1 percent of the costs, plus an “inflation rebate” any time that Mylan raises the price of the brand name drug at a rate higher than inflation.

Mylan has opted for such price increased—a lot. Since Mylan bought the rights to EpiPen in 2007, it has raised the price on 15 separate occasions, bringing the current list price to $608 for a two-pack up from about $50 a pen in 2007.That’s an increase of more than 500 percent, which easily beats inflation.

But instead of classifying EpiPen as a “single source” drug, Mylan told regulators that it’s a “non-innovator multiple source,” or generic drug. Under that classification, Mylan is only required to offer a rebate of 13 percent and no inflation rebates.

It’s unclear how much money Mylan has skipped out on paying in total to state and federal governments. But according to the state health department of Minnesota, as reported by CNBC, the misclassification cost that state $4.3 million this year alone.

In a statement to Ars, Aaron Albright, a spokesperson for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), said that regulators had told Mylan of the mistake “on multiple occasions.”

“CMS has… expressly advised Mylan that their classification of EpiPen for purposes of the Medicaid Drug Rebate program was incorrect. This incorrect classification has financial consequences for the amount that federal and state governments spend by reducing the amount of quarterly rebates Mylan owes for EpiPen.”

Those financial consequences may include penalties and other government claims. However, Albright declined to discuss potential penalties they’re pursuing, saying only: “We are not in a position to comment on specific steps taken by CMS or our other federal partners to correct this misclassification.”

The question of whether Mylan had misclassified EpiPens came up during a recent Congressional hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Mylan CEO Heather Bresch, defending the company’s prices at the hearing, stood by the classification. She noted that EpiPen was classified as a generic before Mylan bought the drug in 2007.

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This Gorgeous Fan Film Makes Us Want a Whole Indiana Jones Animated Series


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If you can watch this and not desperately wish that there was an Indiana Jones cartoon to accompany it, then you are a stronger person than I.

In his free time over the past five years, artist Patrick Schoenmaker has been putting together this wonderful trailer for an animated Indiana Jones adventure, and now the final thing is here and we desperately, desperately want there to be more..

It’s got the Indy vibe down to a pat (even without the stirring John Williams music), but the best part is the awesomely slick transitions between different scenarios as Indy whips, dodges, and rolls his way through various perils. It really sells the “globetrotting adventurer” vibe in a brilliant way.

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The Beauty and Perils of Konglish, the Korean-English Hybrid

Ran Park is a graphic designer from Ulsan, a coastal city in South Korea. Not long ago, she visited her home country after five years of studying in London and Los Angeles, and noticed something strange: the local language had changed. “People had started using English words as if they were Korean,” she says. Local fruit vendors sold “바나나,” pronounced “banana.” Electronics stores had posted advertisements for “컴퓨터,” pronounced “keomp-yut-eo,” or “computer.” The words looked Korean, but they sounded distinctly English.

Park’s observations inspired her latest art project, a zine filled with artfully smudged definitions of English words that have burrowed their way into the Korean language. She calls it “Lost in Konglish,” after the macaronic form of English sweeping through South Korea.

Konglish follows few strict rules. It includes loanwords like camera (written as “카메라,” pronounced like “camera”), and ice cream (once again, written as “아이스크림,” but said like, “ice cream”). Not all terms copy English exactly; nail polish (매니큐어), for example, is pronounced like “manicure.” Konglish also encompasses mistranslations, as well as fabricated phrases that incorporate English words but aren’t easily understood by English-speakers. The Korean translation for “cell phone,” for instance, is “hand phone.”

But Konglish does follow the rules of the highly phonetic Korean alphabet. Known in South Korea as “Hangul,” the language’s phonemic and syllabic characteristics, and even the shape one’s tongue makes when pronouncing specific sounds, are encoded into the structure of the written characters, themselves. If that strikes you as exceptionally cool, it’s because it is; linguists love the Hangul alphabet for how it marries the form and function of its letters. It is a simultaneously beautiful and practical system.

It also accommodates, and morphs around, other languages—particularly English, the cultural cachet of which is evident in the rise of Konglish throughout South Korea. In Seoul, luxury apartments go by names like “Luxtige” (a portmanteau of “luxury” and “prestige”), or “Forestige.” According to The Korea Herald, these Konglish names help promote a “premium brand image.” When the City of Seoul selected a new promotional slogan, “I.Seoul.U,” Koreans mocked it on social media, saying it didn’t make sense in English. Park, too, acknowledges the ascendency of the English language in her home country: “It is really important for going out and getting a job,” she says.

But Park is also skeptical of English’s increasing influence on the Korean language. For one thing, she says, pseudo-anglicisms often lack the descriptiveness of native words. (In North Korea, for example, people don’t call donuts “donuts”; they say “ga-lack ji bbang,” which translates loosely to “a ring of bread.”) “People haven’t really realized that there’s a phenomenon, that we are losing our own language,” she says.

To that end, she designed “Lost in Konglish” to become less and less legible as you flip through it. She also created graphics of new letterforms that fuse the shape of Korean Hangul letters with English ones. The artful distortions and smudges grow more intense, until the text becomes indecipherable. “It becomes more chaotic, because the phenomenon is more serious,” she says. “There is communication missing.”

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Uber and Amazon Want to Muscle In on the Shipping Industry

The shipping industry is large, complex, and relatively unchanging. So it’s perhaps only natural that tech companies are eying it as a sector ripe for innovation.

Amazon’s most famous shipping aspirations are, admittedly, airborne. It’s desperate to develop a drone delivery service, and it also leases 40 Boeing 767-300 cargo airplanes to airfreight goods. But the company is used to moving stuff around on the ground, too. It has thousands of tractor-trailers that it uses to ferry its inventory between warehouses, and it’s been experimenting with an Uber-style network called Flex which allows people to deliver packages for it in order to make a buck.

But according to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Amazon’s ambitions go far beyond its current logistics operations. Despite much protestation by Jeff Bezos that Amazon isn’t seeking to supplant the likes of UPS and FedEx, the newspaper cites over 20 past and present executives from the company as sources confirming that its plan “is to one day haul and deliver packages for itself as well as other retailers and consumers.”

According to those sources, Amazon seeks to build a more flexible kind of shipping service, with, for instance, out-of-hours deliveries. Its desire to decrease reliance on established delivery firms is understandable—in 2015, it spent 10.8 percent of its sales revenue on shipping. Building a UPS or FedEx rival from the ground up is surely complex and expensive, but Citigroup estimates that it could save it as much as $1.1 billion per year.

Amazon isn’t alone in eyeing up the industry. Uber also has plans to move more than just people. It announced on Wednesday that it was massively expanding its Uber Eats food delivery service into 22 new countries around the world. It currently serves just six.

But perhaps more interesting from Uber is the news that its newly acquired self-driving truck startup, Otto, is set to expand its fleet of vehicles and start hauling freight to warehouses and stores next year. The move will help Otto test out the autonomous driving systems that it’s developing in more realistic use-cases, as well as allowing Uber to experiment with another kind of shipping. According to Reuters, the long-term plan is to “compete with the brokers who connect truck fleets and shippers.”

As Farhad Manjoo recently pointed out in the New York Times, autonomous 18-wheelers are very much a live issue. They’re likely to make a widespread appearance on our roads far sooner than fleets of self-driving cars, and when they do they will have a profound economic impact. With trucks that can roll autonomously all day long, jobs will be lost by some and fortunes made by others.

Uber knows that, and Amazon is aware that its own logistics wing could allow it to assert its dominance in retail even further. Both organizations are approaching their plans like any self-respecting Silicon Valley company would, with confidence that daring business models and large investment can successfully upend the incumbents. They may yet deliver on that goal.

(Read more: The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo, Reuters, The New York Times,  “Uber Is Betting We’ll See Driverless 18-Wheelers Before Taxis,” “Self-Driving Trucks May Hit the Road Before Google’s Cars,” ‘U.K. Signs a Deal with Amazon to Test Delivery Drones”)

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The New Raspberry Pi OS Is Here, and It Looks Great

The Raspberry Pi’s main operating system, Raspbian, just got a brand new look from the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Dubbed PIXEL, it’s a skin for Raspbian that modernizes the interface, adds some new programs, and makes it much more pleasant to use. Let’s take a closer look at your Pi’s new appearance.

The New Splash Screen Replaces the Old Cryptic Boot Messages

The first big change you’ll see is the lack long strings of text when you boot up your Raspberry Pi. In their place is a splash screen that shows the operating system and version number, just like you’d find on any other modern computer. Otherwise, the overall boot time and process remains the same.

PIXEL Comes Preloaded with RealVNC, Chromium, and More



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PIXEL also adds a few notable new default programs. The biggest new app is Chromium, which replaces the aging Epiphany web browser. This is the first version of Chromium built specifically for the Pi and uses the Pi’s hardware to accelerate video playback. Chromium comes with a couple extensions installed, including uBlock Origin for blocking ads as well as the h264ify extension for improving YouTube video quality on the Pi. Chromium is best suited for the Raspberry Pi 2 and 3, but still works on the Pi 1 and the Pi Zero.

RealVNC is included so you can easily use the Raspberry Pi from a remote desktop right out of the box. If you’ve never used a RealVNC on your Pi before, set up is very simple. RealVNC is a nice way to access your Pi if you only own a laptop and don’t feel like buying a keyboard, mouse, and monitor.

There’s also a new SenseHAT emulator that makes it so you can test ideas for the SenseHAT peripheral. The emulator allows you to adjust the gyroscope, temperature, screen, and tons more.

PIXEL Comes with a Bunch of Good-Looking Wallpapers



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This might not sound like much, but considering that Raspbian’s default background has always been either blank or the Raspberry Pi logo, it’s really nice that PIXEL comes with a bunch of wallpapers. Included are 16 photos from one of the Raspberry Pi developers, Greg Annandale. You can get to them by clicking the Pi Logo > Preferences > Appearance Settings.

Of course, you’ve always been able to use your own wallpapers, but it’s much nicer when you’re greeted by a photograph on your first boot.

PIXEL Features All New Application Icons, New Temperature and Voltage Icons



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You likely don’t think about the quality of an icon very often, but the icons in Rapsbian were always a bit lacking. They were drab, sometimes pixelated and blurry, and looked a bit muddy. Now, they’re much more vibrant and easier see at a glance.

Also gone is the cryptic rainbow display that warned if your Pi was under voltage or over temperature. In its place is a lightning bolt for voltage and a thermometer for temperature, which should make troubleshooting a ton easier.

Each Window Sports a Cleaner, Rounded Title Bar



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In previous iterations of Raspbian, the windows were blocky squares that always made the system look outdated. Now, it’s much more modern looking with rounded corners, a new title bar, and new close/minimize/maximize buttons. It’s a minor change but looks a lot better overall.

You Can Easily Disable Wi-Fi or Bluetooth



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If you don’t need Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, having them on can drain power quickly, which is a problem if you’re working on a project that uses a battery pack. PIXEL adds in a new menu for both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth that makes it a lot easier to turn either off. Just click the icon, click the off button, and you’re all set.

How to Update Your Current Version of Raspbian

PIXEL will ship as the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s main operating system from here on out. If you already have a copy of Raspbian up and running, you can update it to this version by loading up the command line and typing the following commands:

sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade 
sudo apt-get install -y rpi-chromium-mods 
sudo apt-get install -y python-sense-emu python3-sense-emu 
sudo apt-get install -y python-sense-emu-doc realvnc-vnc-viewer

If you prefer to start from scratch and burn a new image, you can get PIXEL from the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s downloads page.

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