This never gets old.
Joe Bereta / Via youtube.com
Joe Bereta / Via youtube.com
Joe Bereta / Via youtube.com
Joe Bereta / Via youtube.com
At least 18 individuals have been detained in temporary accommodation for more than two years while awaiting deportation, according to government figures.
Campsfield Immigration Centre in Kidlington, Oxfordshire.
Luke Macgregor / Reuters
One individual has been awaiting deportation since February 2010 and has spent at least 1,701 days in the detention system. At least six other men have also been detained for more than 1,000 days while awaiting deportation.
Individuals awaiting deportation are typically held in removal centres, which are used by the Home Office to hold individuals for relatively short-term stays. But these figures, released under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal that some individuals have spent almost half a decade of their life detained inside such institutions.
Labour's shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, told BuzzFeed News it was "disgraceful" that individuals had been detained for over four years.
"No visa or asylum application process should take that long," Cooper said. "People should either be granted leave to stay in the country or, if they don't have a right to be here, they should be deported. Such long detention periods benefit nobody – it is traumatic for those being detained, it is incredibly expensive and it undermines confidence in our immigration system."
Cooper also criticised the current home secretary. She said: "Theresa May likes to talk tough on immigration, but the system she has overseen is a mess. It's time we had a government with clear plan to manage immigration in a fair way – and only Labour is offering that."
Campaigner Jerome Phelps of Detention Action told BuzzFeed News the figures were shocking: "The UK is locking migrants up indefinitely for years, without trial."
The figures, correct to September 2014, reveal there are 3,378 people detained "solely under Immigration Act powers" in the UK. At least 18 more individuals have spent over two years detained while awaiting deportation.
Phelps added: "These people are detained for deportation, but it stretches credibility to believe that it can take more than four and a half years to deport someone. In fact, 62% of migrants detained for more than a year are ultimately released, not deported."
Phelps said: "The Home Office is simply warehousing unwanted migrants, at vast public expense, causing incalculable damage to their mental health."
It is believed that those with the longest detention periods are often individuals who have committed serious offences and whom the Home Office believe may be at risk of reoffending or fleeing if given a deportation date.
The Home Office is required to review the situation of any person in detention every 28 days to see that they still meet the relevant criteria. Under certain situations, the Home Office cannot control how long a person is detained and how long they are kept in a detention centre, such as if the individual's intended country of return is not deemed safe.
A spokesman for the Home Office said that detention was only "used as a last resort", and added: "When we do detain people it is for the minimum time possible."
The spokesman said: "If a court determines that detention has been unlawful, compensation is paid at the end of litigation proceedings. This process can last for several years after the detention has ended."
These classic gags have stood the test of time!
BuzzFeedVideo / Via youtube.com
BuzzFeedBlue / Via youtube.com
Australians once again going wild abroad.
Nick Wray / BuzzFeed / Via youtube.com
Nick Wray / BuzzFeed / Via youtube.com
Nick Wray / BuzzFeed / Via youtube.com
Voulez-vous répondre à ce quiz avec moi?
Christian Zamora for BuzzFeed / Via Interscope
“I came out to my family last year as transgender, and in doing so saved my life,” 15-year-old Milo shared on his Tumblr.
"My family was super supportive (I’m really lucky)," Milo wrote of his coming out experience.
When your sister’s advice scares you off sex forever… The talk is so much worse the second time around.
Have no fear. You do not need to hold your breath while taking this quiz.
Life in 2005 was ~crazy~.
Candace Lowry / BuzzFeed
Originally the site was limited to Harvard students only. Every member was given an ID that started with #0.
Us Weekly
They’re called ONE Direction for a reason, guys.
From Morecambe to Ormskirk and Fleetwood to Nelson, we’re heading down th’memory lane.
Flickr: lukemontague / Creative Commons
Flickr: smaedli /Creative Commons
Not everyone can be Jim and Pam. But you can try.
Chief Cameron McLay apologized to those offended by the photo, but said he remains committed to ending racial discrimination in the workplace.
Chief Cameron McLay sent a mass email to the city's entire police bureau on Jan. 2, explaining the circumstances behind the photo and apologizing for causing any offense.
"If any of my [Pittsburgh police] family was offended, I apologize. You are very important to me and I would never hurt you purposefully," McLay wrote.
The chief said he had run into a group of activists while at a coffee shop and posed for the picture after speaking with them "about how implicit, or unconscious bias results in misunderstanding on all sides, and how the need is for dialogue to clear up misunderstanding."
"The sign indicated my willingness to challenge racial problems in the workplace," he wrote. "I am so committed. If there are problems in the [Pittsburg police] related to racial injustice, I will take action to fix them."
The photo of McLay had drawn criticism from the president of the union representing city police who said it insinuated that officers were racist, Pittsburgh's WTAE reported.
McLay insisted he was making no such insinuation in posing with the sign: "I saw no indictment of police or anyone else in this sign, but I do apologize to any of you who felt I was not supporting you; that was not my intent," he said.
"To me, the term 'white silence' simply means that we must be willing to speak up to address issues of racial injustice, poverty, etc," he wrote. "In my heart, I believe we all must come together as community to address real world problems; and I am willing to be a voice to bring community together."
Facebook: MetroNashvillePoliceDepartment
"I have a son who I have raised to respect police officers and other authority figures, but if he comes to me today and asks 'Why are the police allowing this?' I wouldn't have a good answer," the person wrote.
As part of a lengthy and nuanced response, Anderson wrote:"It is somewhat perplexing when children are injected into the conversation as an attempt to bolster a position or as an attempt to thwart the position of another. While this is not the type of conversation I ordinarily engage in, here are some thoughts you may find useful as you talk with your son.
First, it is laudable that you are teaching your son respect for the police and other authority figures. However, a better lesson might be that it is the government the police serve that should be respected. The police are merely a representative of a government formed by the people for the people—for all people. Being respectful of the government would mean being respectful of all persons, no matter what their views.
Later, it might be good to point out that the government needs to be, and is, somewhat flexible, especially in situations where there are minor violations of law. A government that had zero tolerance for even minor infractions would prove unworkable in short order.
Mid-season madness.
J.R. Smith.
Jerome Miron/Usa Today Sports
Dion Waiters.
David Richard/Usa Today Sports
The monster trade is said to take place tonight after all three teams involved — Knicks, Cavaliers, and Thunder — have played games.
Dion Waiters was pulled before the start of the Cavaliers' game against the Sixers.
Smith might have known his fate before the start of the Knicks' game against the Grizzlies:
WHY DOES DHOKLA PIZZA EXIST TO BEGIN WITH? Is nothing sacred?
Despite India being a historical melting pot of cultures and ideas, some of these minglings don't exactly translate well in the kitchen. Indian fusion dishes are invading restaurants and roadside eateries alike at an alarming rate. While we are all for innovation and creativity in food, some of these ideas are plain bizarre and so forced that we think they should probably be banned. Besides, "banned" is quite the buzzword of the current times, innit!
(Disclaimer: This compilation is written with a deep admiration for our nation's innovative foodies, so if any of the following foods are your favourites, feel free to laugh it off.)
When Pizza Hut launched Birizza in India earlier this year, there was quite some social media outrage protesting the blasphemous combination and rightfully so. In case you are wondering what this is, it is Biriyani covered with pizza crust. There cannot be a weirder combination of rice and roti in one dish. Great for people who cannot make up their minds on what to order.
Via http://www.pizzahut.lk
If you stumble and fall anywhere in India's northern half, chances are you wont be far from a momo stall. With these plump steamed dumplings filled with veggies (read cabbage) or meat, Tibet has left an indelible culinary stamp on India. But then we took the dish and made it our own by turning it into this ghoulish thing called Tandoori Momos. This is the Delhi love for everything tandoor, lassoing the innocent momo, lashing it with red paste and throwing it in the tandoor.
Via foodspotting.com
Idli, the healthy steamed dish, known for its fluffiness, gets morphed into an oil soaked, crispy monster, in this "Idly chilly", which also has North Indian cousins like Paneer Chilly. To add to the ~sophistication~ of this dish, it comes in two variants, idli chilly dry and idly chilly gravy. Wow. And if not making a "chilly" version of this is not enough, there are also manchurianised versions of idli, giving stiff competition to the Gopi (gobhi) Manchurian.
A date has not yet been set for the wedding.
A friend of Fry's told The Sun, which broke the story: "We’ve got the old Stephen back. He has spoken about his problems in the past because he wants others suffering with depression and loneliness to know it can affect everyone."
BR / Splash News
Stephen and Elliot get on brilliantly together. It's fantastic to see Stephen with a smile on his face again. He has been very, very open about his battles with drugs and depression. Elliot seems to have given him the confidence to live his life again. It's great to have the old Stephen back.
The Facebook founder says the Oculus Rift headset could be the future of the internet. But to get there, he needs to do battle with the entire gaming industry.
An attendee tries on the Oculus VR Inc. Rift Development Kit 2 headset at the 2014 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles.
Kevork Djansezian / Reuters
Just before the Oculus Rift Kickstarter campaign launched, Brendan Iribe brought what looked like a large hunk of plastic into the San Francisco offices of Unity Technologies, whose game development platform is one of the industry's most widely used. Unity CEO David Helgason tried on what was the very first version of the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset whose maker was destined to be bought out by Facebook for more than $2 billion before ever having a product hit the market.
"It was really, really bad back then," Helgason told BuzzFeed News in an interview. "It didn't know what was down — they had to hard-reset what was down, otherwise the world would seem like it was tilting. Even then it was such a touching experience to be inside a world like that. But I got super sick from the first dev kit. It was terrible, right, but even then it was such a touching experience."
Since then, the Rift has made a lot of progress. Even the very first iteration of the device, with all its flaws, was described by many who used it — both veteran game developers and regular users — as a masterpiece. But in interviews with more than a dozen game developers and executives either building applications for the virtual reality headset or familiar with those who are, one clear theme emerged: The Rift's biggest challenge isn't getting the technology right.
Instead, the make-or-break issue will be beating the competition and winning the hearts of developers, as swarms of technology majors pour billions into rolling out their own virtual reality devices. And unlike Oculus and its parent company Facebook, the competition has a track record of pushing out devices and games that reach, and delight, the mass market. At the Consumer Electronic Show this week in Las Vegas, manufacturers are expected to show off a wave of VR devices — and Oculus, too, will be there.
The Rift faces the tech industry's perennial technology chicken-and-egg scenario: To get software developers on board, you need your devices in the hands of a critical mass of consumers — and consumers gravitate toward devices that have the best software. Facebook has many things going for it: near limitless cash, a visionary leader, a deep pool of technical talent. But it has no experience building or publishing games, which in the early days will be the killer app of virtual reality headsets.
A representative from Oculus VR declined an interview request for co-founders Iribe and Palmer Luckey.
The Rift needs hit games, and fast. Words With Friends creator Paul Bettner's studio, Playful Corp, is one of the first publishers Facebook is working with to build those critical launch titles. Independent developers are still encouraged to develop for the kit through platforms like Unity, but with the competition racing to define the market, Facebook has rapidly begun working on developing its own software.
"I've been a huge advocate within Oculus pushing for a solution to that chicken-and-egg problem," Bettner told BuzzFeed News. "It depends on who you talk to; my sense is that gamers and video games are the Trojan horse required to get virtual reality off the ground. From my standpoint the way you solve that, it becomes like any other console launch."
The Nintendo Wii, which pioneered novel methods of gameplay using sensors and hand gestures, is a good example of the challenge ahead, Bettner said. "The Wii was doing enough things different that they were basically launching something [brand new] — not the same as VR but they had to prove this new controller was something people want to buy instead of buying a PlayStation," he said. "They went out and built a bunch of first-party software [like Super Mario Galaxy and The Legend of Zelda] that proved the value of that platform, because they couldn't rely on developers to do that."
For now, the most formidable Rift competitor is Sony and its Morpheus VR headset. Through the PlayStation, Sony has a proven history of driving the adoption of new hardware, and whenever a new console comes out, Sony can lean on decades of relationships in the video game industry. On top of that are the game development studios it owns, which can finance to create massive sales-drivers like Uncharted and The Last of Us. That financing doesn't just fund large development studios, but also massive marketing and advertising campaigns that can span from billboards to television and the Internet — and potentially even Facebook itself.
Releasing a big, expensive new game alongside a flagship new console is a dance Sony and the big studios have done for a long time. "When you do co-launches, you're dependent, much like in your best friend relationships, and you learn over time who you can count on and similarly who you can't count on," said Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Bing Gordon, a longtime executive in the industry. "You know these companies have been to war together. Their relationships have stood the test of time."
Sony, too, has already demoed launch titles for the Morpheus, like Eve Valkyrie, a space-piloting game that's a spin-off of Eve Online — a game beloved by a niche of hardcore players who devote hundreds of hours to playing. Square Enix, the creator of the Final Fantasy series, has also planned to launch a version of Thief.
Sony's Morpheus VR device, unveiled at the Game Developer Conference last year.
Yuya Shino / Reuters
Many developers are also expecting Microsoft to have its own take on a VR headset, and like Sony, it has a proven record driving console adoption. Indeed, of the developers BuzzFeed News spoke with, many described an industry that is essentially holding its breath to see what Microsoft comes out with.
Other competitors are also trying to get in on the action. Samsung released its own virtual reality system, the Gear VR, which connects Samsung's Galaxy Note 4 to a headset powered by software from Oculus VR. Samsung might not fall directly into the category of competitor due to its partnership with Oculus VR, but the company has massive production and distribution channels and knows how to push devices through global retail channels in huge volumes. The company's Galaxy Note phones are often credited with creating the market for larger "phablet"-sized phones.
And the competition could potentially expand beyond simple VR headsets. Magic Leap, a tight-lipped company specializing in augmented reality, raised $542 million in a financing round last year that Google led. The search giant had previously created an augmented-reality device of its own, Google Glass, which has so far failed to create an enthusiastic user base.
Each competitor has different, but equally formidable, mechanisms for getting as many devices into as many households as possible. And volume attracts not only developers — who will inevitably build the killer app that sends VR mainstream — but also large game publishers like Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, and Activision-Blizzard. Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed franchise has been a staple for consoles — but if it's going to make it into a VR headset, it's going to find its way to the best-selling hardware first.
The same holds true for independent developers. For a small development studio, creating a game for multiple platforms takes a lot of time and money — both things in short supply for a small team, or a lone developer. While the process of "porting" games — translating the code to work on several consoles — has gotten easier, developers still have to ensure the game feels right.
"If you have a PC game that uses a keyboard and you go to console, you have to come up with a new way to come up with an interface," Mike Bithell, the creator of Thomas Was Alone, told BuzzFeed News. "We took [Thomas Was Alone] to iPad, we had to completely reinvent the way to control. Those changes pile up. The porting the code bit, is probably now — and it's weird to say it — the smallest job."
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledges the challenge. "It needs to reach a very large scale, 50 million units to 100 million units, before it'll really be a very meaningful thing as a computing platform," Zuckerberg said on the company's third-quarter earnings call last year. "So I do think it's going to take a bunch of years to get there. Maybe, I don't know, it's hard to predict exactly, but I don't think it's going to get to 50 million units or 100 million units in the next few years."
Zuckerberg's vision for Oculus Rift isn't necessarily restricted to games. And the applications for the Rift could very well go beyond simply video games; Zuckerberg himself has said it is essentially a bet on the future of the internet. But device adoption has historically been driven by games, whether with consoles or smartphones, and in getting into the console business, Facebook faces one of the greatest competitive challenges in its 10-year history.
Modeling is tough.
The Christmas gift.
Getty Images/iStockphoto tracy king
