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For a long time, Ubuntu has had trouble with ClickPad devices, where the touchpad itself is the mouse button (like those found on MacBook laptops). In Precise, ClickPad devices are now fully supported. Finally, you can click the button, but still move the cursor around with a second finger on the trackpad. In previous versions of Ubuntu, it had trouble recognizing the second finger. Unfortunately, trackpad support still really isn't there. While clicking and dragging mostly works, Canonical seems to have completely ignored regular mouse movement. If you have your thumb on the bottom of the trackpad, you can't move the mouse with a second finger. The whole thing still feels unnatural and unfinished. Here's hoping this will improve soon—at least we know they're now looking into it. Photo by Ryan Bailey. … [Read more...] about First Look at Ubuntu Linux 12.04 “Precise Pangolin”

Before long, the Sun had adopted “role players” as a rallying cry. After their high seeding allowed them byes through the first two single-elimination rounds, it’s a little perfect that they begin the playoffs in a series with shades of the ‘04 Lakers-Pistons Finals: the Sun the team-oriented, blue-collar machine, the Sparks the glamorous, star-powered juggernaut. … [Read more...] about Alyssa Thomas Couldn’t Lift Her Arms Above Her Head, But She Carried A Team To Victory

Personally speaking, reactive performances are generally much more interesting to watch than traditionally active ones. It’s not just the inherent difficulty of expressing internal emotions via external movements, or the subtlety required to pull that off without defaulting to exaggeration, but it’s also a more precise representation of how many people engage with the larger world. As satisfying as melodrama can be, so many of us don’t fall back on outsized passion to express ourselves. It’s often just a shift in expression, whether it’s as big as a facial twitch or as small as a nostril flare. Sometimes that’s all people can muster to get their feelings across, and it can be a particularly rewarding experience to to pick up on those cues to better understand someone’s emotional matrix. … [Read more...] about Even as it spins its wheels,

Punk vets Against Me! have a new album coming out this month. But while Shape Shift With Me won’t be out until September 16, the band has released a new music video for the album today, giving fans another glimpse of its latest stylistic shift. Directed by Say Anything star Ione Skye, “333” is a plum little piece of sexual psychodrama, starring Skye’s old friend, Orange Is The New Black’s Natasha Lyonne, as a ’60s-style housewife trying to keep herself some semblance of sane. … [Read more...] about Natasha Lyonne and

Once deemed “the people’s diva,” Kid Sister, a.k.a. Melisa Young, broke onto the scene with this bouncy track that’s all about looking and feeling good—and for not a lot of money. Kanye West reportedly heard the original “Pro Nails” from his touring DJ A-Trak—Kid Sister’s boyfriend at the time—and he gave the song a huge boost by hopping in for a remix on his 2007 Can’t Tell Me Nothing mixtape. Kanye’s verse doesn’t add much to the song, though his mere presence got his fellow Chicago rapper noticed, stoking anticipation for her full-length debut to a fever pitch. Unfortunately, none of the other tracks on 2009’s Ultraviolet would match the promise of “Pro Nails,” which finally, belatedly entered the pop charts nearly a year later around the album’s release. But the song remains an energetically playful high point, its squeaky synth effects stretching and popping behind Kid … [Read more...] about St. Vincent, No Age, and Yeasayer were the next wave of 2007