spriteleigh

Just a few days after Turkey's scandal-rocked government banned Twitter by tweaking national DNS settings, the state has doubled down by ordering ISPs to block Twitter's IP addresses, in response to the widespread dissemination of alternative DNS servers, especially Google's 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 (these numbers were even graffitied on walls).

Following the ban, Turkey's Twitter usage grew by 138 percent. Now that Twitter's IP range is blocked, more Turkish Internet users are making use of Tor and VPNs, and they continue to use SMS for access to the service.

It's interesting that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has singled out Twitter for his attacks ("Twitter, schmitter! We will wipe out Twitter. I don’t care what the international community says.") Why not Facebook or Google Plus? I'm not certain, but my hypothesis is that Facebook and Google's "real names" policy -- which make you liable to disconnection from the service if you're caught using an alias -- make them less useful for political dissidents operating in an environment in which they fear reprisals.

According to the Internet activist collective Telecomix, there also were reports that devices configured to use Google’s DNS service or other DNS providers outside the country were being hijacked to a local DNS server by the Wi-Fi network at Istanbul’s airport.

The move has driven up the usage of VPN services and the Tor anonymizing network in Turkey. Telecomix has been providing a list of Tor gateways for Turkish users. Tor network metrics show a huge spike in users directly connecting to the Tor network over the past few days, growing from 25,000 users to 35,000 since March 19. Downloads of VPN software have also exploded with VPN apps for Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android becoming the most downloaded apps from their respective app stores in Turkey.

After DNS change fails, Turkish government steps up Twitter censorship [Sean Gallagher/Ars Technica]

Artist Jordan Wolfson collaborated with animatronics studio Spectral Motion to create this artwork, currently on display at David Zwirner Gallery in New York City. Integrated sensors give the artwork an, er, interactive component. Full credits here. And you can see another clip of it here. (Thanks, Karen Marcelo!)

Here's a reading (MP3) of a recent Guardian column, What happens with digital rights management in the real world where I attempt to explain the technological realpolitik of DRM, which has nothing much to do with copyright, and everything to do with Internet security.

The entertainment industry calls DRM "security" software, because it makes them secure from their customers. Security is not a matter of abstract absolutes, it requires a context. You can't be "secure," generally -- you can only be secure from some risk. For example, having food makes you secure from hunger, but puts you at risk from obesity-related illness.

DRM is designed on the presumption that users don't want it, and if they could turn it off, they would. You only need DRM to stop users from doing things they're trying to do and want to do. If the thing the DRM restricts is something no one wants to do anyway, you don't need the DRM. You don't need a lock on a door that no one ever wants to open.

DRM assumes that the computer's owner is its adversary. For DRM to work, there has to be no obvious way to remove, interrupt or fool it. For DRM to work, it has to reside in a computer whose operating system is designed to obfuscate some of its files and processes: to deliberately hoodwink the computer's owner about what the computer is doing. If you ask your computer to list all the running programs, it has to hide the DRM program from you. If you ask it to show you the files, it has to hide the DRM files from you. Anything less and you, as the computer's owner, would kill the program and delete its associated files at the first sign of trouble.

An increase in the security of the companies you buy your media from means a decrease in your own security. When your computer is designed to treat you as an untrusted party, you are at serious risk: anyone who can put malicious software on your computer has only to take advantage of your computer's intentional capacity to disguise its operation from you in order to make it much harder for you to know when and how you've been compromised.

Mastering by John Taylor Williams: wryneckstudio@gmail.com

John Taylor Williams is a audiovisual and multimedia producer based in Washington, DC and the co-host of the Living Proof Brew Cast. Hear him wax poetic over a pint or two of beer by visiting livingproofbrewcast.com. In his free time he makes "Beer Jewelry" and "Odd Musical Furniture." He often "meditates while reading cookbooks."

MP3

Facebook continues to tighten the screws on the businesses that use the service to market to their customers. Independent research shows that new updates from businesses reach about six percent of the people who follow those businesses. It is rumored that Facebook intends to reduce this number to "between one and two percent" over time. Businesses that want to reach the people who follow them at higher rates will have to pay Facebook to reach them through paid advertisements.

If you're building your business's marketing and customer relations strategy atop Facebook, take note -- and remember that if you have a real website, all your readers see your posts, even if you don't pay Facebook!

Facebook declined to comment on the percentage of fans that see posts from a typical Facebook page (the last publicly disclosed figure was 16 percent in the summer of 2012), but the company admitted in December that posts from Pages are reaching less users. Facebook attributes this change to increased competition as more people and companies join its service. The typical user is inundated with 1,500 posts per day from friends and Pages, and Facebook picks 300 to present in the News Feed. Getting squeezed out are both posts from Pages and meme photos as Facebook shifts its focus to what it deems “high quality” content.

The solution for brands with declining engagement, according to Facebook, is to buy ads. “Like many mediums, if businesses want to make sure that people see their content, the best strategy is, and always has been, paid advertising,” a spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.

The Free Marketing Gravy Train Is Over on Facebook [Victor Luckerson/Time]

A new Snowden leak details an NSA operation called SHOTGIANT through which the US spies infiltrated Chinese electronics giant Huawei -- ironically, because Huawei is a company often accused of being a front for the Chinese Peoples' Liberation Army and an arm of the Chinese intelligence apparatus. The NSA completely took over Huawei's internal network, gaining access to the company's phone and computer networks and setting itself up to conduct "cyberwar" attacks on Huawei's systems.

The program apparently reached no conclusion about whether Huawei was involved in espionage. However, the NSA did identify many espionage opportunities in compromising Huawei, including surveillance of an undersea fiber optic cable that Huawei is involved with.

A White House spokeswoman, Caitlin M. Hayden, said: “We do not give intelligence we collect to U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line. Many countries cannot say the same.”

But that does not mean the American government does not conduct its own form of corporate espionage with a different set of goals. Those concerning Huawei were described in the 2010 document.

“If we can determine the company’s plans and intentions,” an analyst wrote, “we hope that this will lead us back to the plans and intentions of the PRC,” referring to the People’s Republic of China. The N.S.A. saw an additional opportunity: As Huawei invested in new technology and laid undersea cables to connect its $40 billion-a-year networking empire, the agency was interested in tunneling into key Chinese customers, including “high priority targets — Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kenya, Cuba.”

N.S.A. Breached Chinese Servers Seen as Security Threat [David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth/NYT]

(YouTube link)

A Russian father and his baby daughter are having a seriously heated discussion. The little girl most likely only understands a few of the words, and she can’t reproduce them coherently, because she’s a baby. She can, however, reproduce the cadence, emphasis, and body language to an amazing degree, which is adorable. If I understood what she was arguing about, she’d have me convinced. According to the comments at reddit, he is chastising her for throwing her pancakes on the floor. That means that her side of the argument is a vigorous defense. -via Daily Picks and Flicks

The Business Software Alliance -- a proprietary software industry group -- has pulled a controversial ad that promised cash to people who snitched on friends and employers who used pirated software, after they were credibly accused of pirating the image used in the campaign.

The ad used a photo of a pot of gold, captioned with "Your pot of gold is right here baby. Report unlicensed software and GET PAID." The photo used in the ad was of a cake baked by Cakecentral user Bethasd (the cake itself is pretty amazing! "St. Patrick's Day Pot O' Gold - Chocolate Guinness cake with Bailey's Irish Buttercream").

The BSA has refused to comment on its use of the photo, or to confirm that it was licensed prior to use, but they immediately pulled the ad after being asked about it. Meanwhile, Torrentfreak "encourage[s] 'bethasd' to get in contact with the software industry group, and demand both licensing fees and damages for the unauthorized use of her photo. Surely, the BSA will be happy to hand over a pot of gold to her."

Representing major software companies, the BSA is using Facebook ads which encourage people to report businesses that use unlicensed software. If one of these reports results in a successful court case, the pirate snitch can look forward to a cash reward.

Below is one of the promoted Facebook posts that appeared in the timeline of thousands of people on Saint Patrick’s Day. It features a homemade cake in the shape of a pot of gold and sends a clear message to the readers.

“Your pot of gold is right here baby. Report unlicensed software and GET PAID,” the post reads.

Busted: BSA Steals Photo For “Snitch On a Pirate” Campaign [Ernesto/Torrentfreak]

(Video Link)

He went from the ice to the eighteenth hole, punched Bob Barker square in the face and saw what the old guy was truly made of, and brought the hockey fans to the putting green much to the dismay of the country club crowd. He’s Happy Gilmore, and he really should have been the star of his own 8-bit video game!

The game would've had so many diverse gameplay elements- with a hockey playing segment, a golf segment, and plenty of butt kicking on every level, with plenty of yelling at the screen for good measure.

Too bad we’ll just have to settle for this 8-Bit Cinema animated short created by CineFix, which is great fun to watch but only makes me want to play a Happy Gilmore game even more!

-Via Uproxx

Christopher Kosek writes, "'The Default Trigger' is a 52 page, free (with a pay what you want version available) digital graphic novel about student loan debt, the shadowy figures lurking in the background who watch over our struggles and their insidious conspiracy to keep this cycle going. It's written and illustrated by me, Christopher Kosek. Plot (with spoilers): When a recent college grad, Joseph Doakes, defaults on over $100k in student loans,"

he receives a mysterious phone call offering to clear his debts in exchange for 2 weeks of service to his country. The catch, he won't be allowed to remember any of it. The rest of the story takes him through a series of blackouts. A new job he never applied for, waking up in and out of conversations, and finally being strapped to a lab table having brain procedures done to him.

We find out, this is all a plot by the government to trap our our most talented young people into volunteering for a process that prepares them for an inevitable alien colonization of earth and putting "body snatched" Americans into positions of leadership. When Joseph's procedures keep going wrong, he is sent back into the world, with a head full of conspiracy theories to hide the truth in plain sight.

The Default Trigger

Pay what you like version

Free PDF

(Thanks, Christopher!)

Dear Steve,

I understand you’ve been having trouble booking women guests for your TVO show “The Agenda.”

So, Steve, allow me to woman-splain your lady expert problem.

First, I hope you don’t mind if I call you ‘Steve’? You had some pretty personal things to say about me and my fellow ‘women experts’ in your recent column: “Where, oh where, are all the female guests?” You commented on my child-rearing choices, my vanity and my professional commitment. So, I figure, we’re on pretty intimate terms now.

Let’s start with childcare. Apparently “women use that excuse all the time.” Well, yes, Steve, they do. That’s because they have children. And the children need to be looked after. Being a woman-expert, I can tell you that according to Statistics Canada women perform double the hours of unpaid childcare work (50.1 hours per week) as do men (24.4 hours). The majority of women with young children work and work full time (also according to Statistics Canada). So that’s 40 hours a week at their regular lady-expert job, plus 50.1 hours taking care of the kids. Don’t even start me on the housework.

Why can’t they lady-experts find someone to take care of their kids while they talk to you on the TV? Well, for a show like yours that tapes during regular working hours, they would have trouble enough just finding a regular childcare spot—since Canada has one of the lowest childcare coverage rates among OECD countries. If they were able to find a spot and lived in Toronto, for example, they would have to spend (on average) the equivalent of 50% of their median employment incomes. And if they have two kids? Well, you do the math.

For shows that don’t tape during regular working hours, that’s another story. For those shows,  in addition to adding a media appearance to their 90.1 hours a week of work, they need to find a babysitter. Who they trust. Who is available at, let’s say, 24 hours’ notice.

I tell you what Steve, you give me a binder full of babysitters and I will give you a binder full of women.

Now for your second complaint. Why are the lady experts so worried about their appearance? Well, study after study has demonstrated that women leaders (and the lady experts) are far more likely to be judged on the basis of their physical appearance, than are their male peers. Field Museum scientist Emily Graslie recently shared some of the comments she receives in response to her popular science show Brain Scoop. Comments like: “Perhaps you should consider wearing slightly racier clothing?” and “she just needs some sexier glasses” and “she is really cute, but has she made herself unattractive on purpose?” Given this pressure, Graslie concludes, many women feel they don’t have the time, the patience or the interest in meeting both a high standard of professional expertise and physical attractiveness.

Finally, Steve, I appreciate that you and your producers are spending a lot of time trying to find more women experts. I really do. I encourage you to keep trying. It is hard. Here’s the thing. Changing the deeply-rooted economic, social and cultural norms which support gender inequality is hard. If it were easy, I would be sitting on a beach right now with my eight year old.

Instead, I am here, writing to you Steve. Don’t give up on me Steve. Don’t give up on the women experts. We’re here. We’re just really, really busy.

Call me.

If you remember the first film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, the 1978 animated version by Ralph Bakshi–the legendary outsider director behind Fritz the Cat, Wizards, American Pop and Fire and Ice–you’ll recall the experience was a mixed bag.

The movie was a dark, moody, oversaturated vision of Tolkien’s world, with stunning design and many memorable scenes. Bakshi used rotoscoping to trace live footage for animation, and posterization to give it a rough, hand-made look. Both techniques allowed many corners to be cut, but at the time, the film’s PR claimed Rings was the “the first movie painting.”

Sadly, Bakshi’s 133-minute film left viewers stranded after the battle at Helm’s Deep, just as Gollum is about to lead Sam and Frodo into Mordor. Roughly two-thirds through Tolkien’s three-part story, Bakshi didn't get to make the final installment. Rankin-Bass, the studio behind the 1977 TV adaptation of The Hobbit, churned out The Return of the King as a “sequel” in 1980, with little artistic resemblance to Bakshi’s vision.

Now, quietly, some of the scenes from that 1978 classic have been rescued from the “cutting room floor,” Bakshi, now 75, said when I reached him via email this week.

Eddie Bakshi, Bakshi’s son, has been busy scanning in original “cel” artwork from Bakshi's archives, timing them to the cartoon’s original exposure sheets, and posting the scenes on Bakshi’s Facebook page. (The Facebook page also includes clips from Bakshi’s other films, though it appears none of these are new.)

The particular Rings footage that has been restored comes from the Gandalf vs. Balrog fight sequence, and it is brief. One clip is a three-shot, 12-second sequence of the two characters falling into the void, titled “Gandalf recalls fighting the Balrog.” The other is a 10-second shot described as “Gandalf duels with the Balrog and smashes into the endless staircase.” In the film, the Balrog battle was recounted via minimally-animated still images.

“If you’re getting close to delivery, it’s better to cut the animation out to make the scene work, than racing to reanimate it to make the cut work,” Bakshi said, recalling the hectic atmosphere as the film’s deadline loomed.

Asked why Gandalf and the Balrog look quite different in these new scenes, compared to the rotoscoped Gandalf and Balrog seen on The Bridge of Khazad-dûm, Bakshi said, “Well, it’s hazy, but I was trying to make memories different than the real time story. I was wrestling with trying to separate the styles.”

It’s unclear what other lost scenes from The Lord of the Rings might be found, shot and posted. Due to low budgets and little wiggle room to fix, reanimate or make cuts, “Very little or nothing ended up on the floor,” Bakshi said. If any gems are discovered, Eddie Bakshi will decide whether they are worthy of reshooting. For the elder Bakshi, it’s “been there, done it.”

Bakshi fans should feel nostalgia for this old footage, which evokes the days of hand-drawn animation: “It was great to see it again,” he added, “but I got aggravated at the animator again for making the mistake 30 years later.”

Still, Bakshi was effusive in his praise for his team of artists who made the movie, which included a young Tim Burton, in his first job out of college.

“My animators–old school–were the greatest ever," Bakshi said, "barring none.”

2048 is a super addictive tile matching game.

I apologize if you lose a few hours of your life.

The insanely high score is that of my girlfriend not me.

Michael from Muckrock sez, "With a Freedom of Information Act request, MuckRock has received copies of two of the guides Homeland Security uses to monitor social media, one on standard procedures and a desktop binder for analysts. Now we're asking for help to go through it: See something worth digging into? Say something, and share it with others so we know what to FOIA next."

In the collaborative spirit of Sunshine Week, MuckRock is throwing down a challenge: can you find the most interesting page, paragraph or redaction in the DHS handbook and standard procedures for the social media monitoring initiative? Winner gets 5 free MuckRock requests!

Here's how it works: To submit via Twitter, post a screenshot and PDF page number (not the page number listed on the document) and tag @muckrock in the tweet. If you're not on Twitter, submit your findings via the Google form below. All submissions must be in by next Monday, March 24, at midnight. MuckRock will announce a winner next week in a post of the best findings.

Help MuckRock scour Homeland Security's social media monitoring handbook

Peter "brokep" Sunde, co-founder of the Pirate Bay and Flattr, a service that allows fans to pay artists, is running for the European Parliament on the Pirate Party ticket (what else?). If I lived in Finland, I'd vote for him without a second thought.

Microsoft's "Scroogled" campaign (no relation) boastfully compared Hotmail's privacy framework to Gmail's, condemning Google for "reading your mail." Now, Microsoft has admitted that it scoured the Hotmail messages belonging the contacts of a suspected leaker in order to secure his arrest, and points out that Hotmail's terms of service have always given Microsoft the right to read your personal mail for any of a number nebulously defined, general reasons.

The company says that is had an undisclosed "rigorous process" to determine when it is allowed to read and publish your private email. In a statement, it sets out what the process will be from now on (though it doesn't say what the process has been until now) and vows to include the instances in which it reads its users' mail in its transparency reports, except when it is secretly reading the Hotmail accounts of people who also work for Microsoft.

Here's a PGP tool that claims to work with Hotmail, and would theoretically leave your Hotmail messages unreadable to Microsoft, though the company could still mine your metadata (subject lines, social graph, etc).

Courts do not issue orders authorizing someone to search themselves, since obviously no such order is needed. So even when we believe we have probable cause, it's not feasible to ask a court to order us to search ourselves. However, even we should not conduct a search of our own email and other customer services unless the circumstances would justify a court order, if one were available. In order to build on our current practices and provide assurances for the future, we will follow the following policies going forward:

To ensure we comply with the standards applicable to obtaining a court order, we will rely in the first instance on a legal team separate from the internal investigating team to assess the evidence. We will move forward only if that team concludes there is evidence of a crime that would be sufficient to justify a court order, if one were applicable. As an additional step, as we go forward, we will then submit this evidence to an outside attorney who is a former federal judge. We will conduct such a search only if this former judge similarly concludes that there is evidence sufficient for a court order.

Even when such a search takes place, it is important that it be confined to the matter under investigation and not search for other information. We therefore will continue to ensure that the search itself is conducted in a proper manner, with supervision by counsel for this purpose.

Finally, we believe it is appropriate to ensure transparency of these types of searches, just as it is for searches that are conducted in response to governmental or court orders. We therefore will publish as part of our bi-annual transparency report the data on the number of these searches that have been conducted and the number of customer accounts that have been affected.

Microsoft: We have the right to search your Hotmail account (updated) [Mariella Moon/Engadget]

Hugh sends us An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments: "This book is aimed at newcomers to the field of logical reasoning, particularly those who, to borrow a phrase from Pascal, are so made that they understand best through visuals. I have selected a small set of common errors in reasoning and visualized them using memorable illustrations that are supplemented with lots of examples. The hope is that the reader will learn from these pages some of the most common pitfalls in arguments and be able to identify and avoid them in practice."

The ebook is gorgeous, and it's available on a name-your-price basis in Spanish and English. There are also print editions in several languages.

Such an argument assumes a proposition to be true simply because there is no evidence proving that it is not. Hence, absence of evidence is taken to mean evidence of absence. An example, due to Carl Sagan: “There is no compelling evidence that UFOs are not visiting the Earth; therefore UFOs exist.” Similarly, when we did not know how the pyramids were built, some concluded that, unless proven otherwise, they must have therefore been built by a supernatural power. The burden-of-proof always lies with the person making a claim.

Moreover, and as several others have put it, one must ask what is more likely and what is less likely based on evidence from past observations. Is it more likely that an object flying through space is a man-made artifact or a natural phenomenon, or is it more likely that it is aliens visiting from another planet? Since we have frequently observed the former and never the latter, it is therefore more reasonable to conclude that UFOs are unlikely to be aliens visiting from outer space.

A specific form of the appeal to ignorance is the argument from personal incredulity, where a person's inability to imagine something leads to a belief that the argument being presented is false. For example, It is impossible to imagine that we actually landed a man on the moon, therefore it never happened. Responses of this sort are sometimes wittingly countered with, That's why you're not a physicist.

5 The illustration is inspired by Neil deGrasse Tyson's response to an audience member's question on UFOs.

An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments (Thanks, Hugh!)

Some of them know what they're doing, some of them don't, and some of them are computer programs. [Stamen via Flowing Data]

One of the questions of the young writer is, how do I make my characters sound, well, characteristic? How do I make them all sound different?

This is a common problem, and shades over into the issue of authorial voice. All Heinlein heroes do sound alike, because they were written by Robert Heinlein. But consider Dickens. There is a specific Dickensian voice; you can recognize a passage written by the great man easily, whether fiction or nonfiction. But all of Charles Dickens’ characters do sound different. They cannot be mistaken for one another even though they are all Dickensian. Clearly, this is a grand trick and worthy of emulation.

How to do it? Well, broadly speaking, it is part of character building. If you can fully develop each character, they will sound different, because real people do sound different. Consider any two persons in your circle of acquaintance. They cannot be mistaken for one another (except in very rare cases like twins or mimics). But there’s a hatful of minor tricks that writers can use to help this along.

Every person has a certain set of favorite words. She always says ‘frightful’, while he always says ‘grody.’ You could chart this. You could draw up a spreadsheet of each character and assign each one a couple or three words specific only to them. Go through with word search and put them in. Select a given ejaculation of exclamation, assign to a character, and see that she uses it and nobody else does.

Writers (Judy?) often cast their main characters the way movie producers do. At the very minimum we find an image of our hero inspiring. The task is greatly eased by the existence of IMDB. The current Mandy Patinkin a little too avuncular and balding for your hero? Slide back in time and find the dashing image of a more Inigo Montoya-like man. You can do this vocally too, although I would not use actors or audio books. Remember that actors say words written by others; Inigo Montoya spoke the words not of Mandy Patinkin but of William Goldman. There are many, many other people whose words exist in both text and audio format, that you could simply assign to various characters in your book — politicians and pundits are especially plenteous, and you can find their audio files on line. You say that listening to the words of the pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church makes you want to stick knitting needles into your eyes? Tch, all books need a villain, and a villain needs to sound characteristic too.

But suppose your characters are not modern. If they were all born around 1200 AD, you do not want to model their speech patterns upon Donald Trump. Your only recourse then is research. If the person was sufficiently well known his words may have been written down by contemporaries. If he was literate he may have written a lot himself. None of the above? Then you have to get creative. Reading the words of persons of the same time period will give you a sense of the words they used and the things they wrote about.

Every group or division in life has its own speech. Every parent of a teen who is reading this is nodding with agreement. Entire novels have been inspired merely by the thrilling dialect of some subgroup. (The classic example here is Gidget, which was a novel before it was a TV show or movie.) There are slight but noticeable regional variations in US English; the variation is larger if you include Britain. You don’t want to load the dialog with different accents, because it’ll drive you reader buggy. But cadence, word choice, rhythm, you could do. And this shades over into jargon, the specific words of professions. Anybody who has ever been in the theater, or in the military, has certain words built into their systems. Find them and  use them.

There are other features of speech — squeaks, curses, even gesture. Assign a few to different characters. Keep it straight who is doing what.

What it finally comes down to is ear. You have to learn how to hear your characters. I’m reading a biography of Georgette Heyer, and apparently this was essential for her dialogue-heavy fiction. Every character had to have everything worked out — title, names, ancestry, speech — before she could begin writing. At that point all she would need to do is to let ‘em go, and write as fast as she could while they galloped away with the plot.

The ebook version of my novel How Like a God is now available from Book View Cafe.

My newest novel Speak to Our Desires is out from Book View Café.

I also have stories in Book View Café’s two steampunk anthologies, The Shadow Conspiracy and The Shadow Conspiracy II, as well as in BVC’s many other anthologies, including our latest, Beyond Grimm.

Turkish users: you can send Tweets using SMS. Avea and Vodafone text START to 2444. Turkcell text START to 2555.

— Policy (@policy) March 20, 2014

Juha sez, "Looks like Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan was serious about blocking Twitter (and possibly other social networks) in Turkey in the run-up to the election. Twitter users in Turkey are able to bypass the block though through SMS, and the whole thing could backfire badly on the government there. That Streisand Effect again."

Erdogan is the thug who ordered the vicious crackdown on the Gezi protests, whose government was subsequently rocked by a high-level, multi-billion-dollar money-laundering and corruption scandal that has played out largely in social media. He told reporters: "We will wipe out all of these [social networks]."

Paging Mr Canute, your tide is coming in.

Twitter is blocked in Turkey. On the streets of Istanbul, the action against censorship is graffiti DNS addresses. pic.twitter.com/XcsfN7lJvS

— Utku Can (@utku) March 21, 2014

An iPhone screen shot circulating on Facebook from a Turkcell subscriber purports to show that Twitter has been banned in the country, with an official message saying "the protection measure has been taken for this website".

"The international community can say this, can say that. I don't care at all. Everyone will see how powerful the Republic of Turkey is," Erdogan told supporters.

Turkey cuts off Twitter access ahead of local elections [Juha Saarinen/IT News]

Hugh from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez, "Sunshine Week may be just seven days in March, but fighting for government transparency is a year-round mission for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In fact, it's not unusual for litigation over public records to drag on for years upon years. To help make sense of it all, here's a handy infographic illustrating EFF's current Freedom of Information Act caseload." (Thanks, Hugh!)

Since Netflix CEO Reid Hastings published a statement on Net Neutrality and Comcast (whom Netflix has had to bribe in order to secure normal service for its users), Comcast has gone on a charm offensive. The company sent a statement to Consumerist in which it asserts an imaginary history of championing Net Neutrality, a work of Stalin-grade reality-denying fiction that has Consumerist's Chris Morran practically chewing the keyboard in rage:

Comcast’s David Cohen, Exec. VP of Shoving Mergers Down Consumers’ Throats, actually released the following laughable statement to Consumerist and other outlets:

“There has been no company that has had a stronger commitment to openness of the Internet than Comcast. We supported the FCC’s Open Internet rules because they struck the appropriate balance between consumer protection and reasonable network management rights for ISPs. We are now the only ISP in the country that is bound by them.”

W-W-WAIT A MINUTE (Insert sound of record scratching for full effect.)

What Comcast’s Regulator Whisperer fails to mention is that Comcast is only still bound by those Open Internet rules because it’s part of the agreement Comcast made to fool the FCC and Justice Dept. into allowing its merger with NBC Universal.

This is like a paroled convict saying she’s a real homebody without revealing that she’s not allowed to leave her home except for trips to work and to visit her parole officer. Or someone who brags about having a positive impact on the environment by only using public transportation without mentioning that he had his license taken away.

It's great to have Netflix onside for Net Neutrality, now if they only weren't engaged in a war on the open Web and demanding DRM in HTML5.

Not A Joke: Comcast Says No One Is More Dedicated To Net Neutrality Than It Is [Chris Morran/Consumerist]

JWZ's law states that "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail." A corollary is that every complex system expands until it becomes a bank. Yesterday, I wrote about how a chatbot for organizing coffee orders became a full-fledged bank.

Now, here's a 4chan post explaining a dumb/clever way of using Gamestop stores as fee-free banking institutions by pre-ordering (and pre-paying) for games, then cancelling your orders and getting a refund (to make a withdrawal), and ordering new games (to make a deposit). It's fee-free, and as a pre-orderer, you get all the bonus stuff (your bank pays you!).

This is probably more of a reflection of the total dysfunction of banking, where low interest rates and hidden inflation, as well as high fees, conspire to bleed out savers to pay for reckless speculation, but it's still a pretty clever way of getting fee-free banking from an institution with more branches, and better hours, than many banks.

I got really pissed off with US Bank because I kept overdrafting my account even though I opted out, and the same thing happened with my credit union when I got a debit card.

Now whenever I get paid I go preorder a whole shitload of games. Whenever I need money, I go to the nearest gamestop and ask for my money back on a game I don't want and make a withdrawal. The lines are shorter at gamestop than at the bank and I can trade in old games and have money go straight to my savings account. Gamestops are just as prevalent as banks in my town and I work at a mall so it's even more convenient than running an errand to the bank or using an ATM and getting charged.

The gamestop people are starting to catch on that I'm just moving money around and only buying one preordered game a year, if that, but there isn't shit they can do about it. The best part is, since I always preorder every game coming out I'm still guaranteed to get all the exclusive content whether or not I'm sure I want a certain game. It's like they're rewarding me for banking with them.

The First National Bank of GameStop 

If you're a student interested in Internet and technology policy, you're eligible to apply for an EFF Policy Fellowship, a ten week placement with public interest orgs in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America. It pays $7500, and you get to work on global surveillance, censorship, and intellectual property. "Applicants must have strong research skills, the ability to produce thoughtful original policy analysis, and a talent for communicating with many different types of audiences."

Dave from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez, "The government often makes itself more accessible to businesses than the general public. For Sunshine Week, we compiled this guide to using FedBizOpps to keep an eye on surveillance technology contracts."

Fedbizopps is a weird, revealing window into the world of creepy surveillance, arms, and technology contractors who build and maintain the most oppressive and unethical parts of the apparatus of the US government. Everything from drone-testing of biological and chemical weapons to license plate cameras to weaponized bugs and other malware are there. The EFF post also has links to data-mining tools that help estimate just how much money the private arms dealers extract from the tax-coffers.

One set of documents describes the Director of National Intelligence’s goal of funding “dramatic improvements in unconstrained face recognition.” A presentation from the Navy uses examples from Star Trek to explain its electronic warfare program. Other records show the FBI was purchasing mobile phone extraction devices, malware and fiber network-tapping systems. A sign-in list shows the names and contact details of hundreds of cybersecurity contractors who turned up a Department of Homeland Security “Industry Day.” Yet another document, a heavily redacted contract, provides details of U.S. assistance with drone surveillance programs in Burundi, Kenya and Uganda.

But these aren’t top-secret records carefully leaked to journalists. They aren’t classified dossiers pasted haphazardly on the Internet by hacktivists. They weren't even liberated through the Freedom of Information Act. No, these public documents are available to anyone who looks at the U.S. government’s contracting website, FBO.gov. In this case “anyone,” is usually just contractors looking to sell goods, services, or research to the government.  But, because the government often makes itself more accessible to businesses than the general public, it’s also a useful tool for watchdogs. Every government program costs money, and whenever money is involved, there’s a paper trail.

Transparency Tip: How to Track Government Projects Like a Defense Contractor (Thanks, Dave!)

Paul Bennun, who helped created the groundbreaking, video-less binaural sound videogame Papa Sangre sez, "We're making a 'video game without video' and we're turning to Kickstarter to fund it. Team Papa Sangre has been responsible for some fantastic 'work of art' games over the last few years; games with the unique quality of having no graphics whatsoever, based on some (dare we say it) kick-arse technology that helps us make entire worlds in sound. The one-before-last starred Benedict Cumberbatch; the last one starred Sean Bean and was the best-reviewed iOS game of 2013 according to Metacritic. The next one most certainly isn't art (well, actually it is but that's not so obvious). It's you versus the zombies and it's just batshit crazy. We want make something much more direct. The problem is the economics of audio games are tricky. If we don't get defined support it's going to be a lot more tricky to know when or how we can game the game out -- so we've turned to Kickstarter."

I know Paul personally and he gets stuff done. While all kickstarters carry the caveat that you may get nothing for your money, I have extremely high confidence that if this is funded, it will happen.

You’ll be fighting over 10 Zombie types, each with its own unique behaviour or special trait. It will be tough, but you’re in luck. With an arsenal of 15 upgradable weapons, from shotguns and swords to bazookas and automatic rifles, you’ll be able to build your perfect loadout to take on the undead in two different game modes over 4 exotic Arenas. And you’ll always be watched by Dr. Bastard as he tries to kill you for the crowd’s amusement.

As you play you will earn Coins and Diamonds, which will allow you to buy weapons, upgrade the ones you have and boost power ups. We will offer a few optional IAP items to speed up your earnings, but no amount of IAP will make up for true skill for all purposes of competitive gameplay though Game Center leaderboards. We've put a lot of effort in balancing the game to make sure that IAPs are not required to progress normally in the game. Furthermore, as a pledger, you'll be given a Coin Doubler, with with you'll get the weapons you want as fast as you need them.

Audio Defence: Zombie Arena

The Delorean from Back to the Future 

Darren Rawlings, an animator and illustrator in Canada, imagines a world in which all TV shows and movies are spinoffs of The Transformers.

Which is, of course, as it should be.

His series “If They Could Transform” takes the most famous on-screen cars and envisions them as transforming fighting robots.

I am left wondering which are Autobots and which are Decepticons.

The General Lee from The Dukes of Hazzard

The Mystery Machine from Scooby-Doo

Ecto-1 from The Ghostbusters

-via Roadtrippers