howlingbears

Jeff John Roberts, writing for GigaOm:

Even judging by the low standards of creepy data-mining apps, “Brightest Flashlight” did something pretty egregious. The free app, which was installed by at least 50 million Android users, transmitted users’ real-time locations to ad networks and other third parties. It was, in other words, a stalking device disguised as a flashlight.

f1ipster:

inseparable101:

This is how I picture the staff when the site’s having a problem.

This is so great

Pamela Vagata and Kevin Wilfong, writing for the Facebook Engineering Blog:

At Facebook, we have unique storage scalability challenges when it comes to our data warehouse. Our warehouse stores upwards of 300 PB of Hive data, with an incoming daily rate of about 600 TB. In the last year, the warehouse has seen a 3x growth in the amount of data stored. Given this growth trajectory, storage efficiency is and will continue to be a focus for our warehouse infrastructure.

600 TB of incoming data per day is mind-blowing. I can’t fathom it. And it’s great that they’re sharing this information. There can’t be that many entities dealing with this scale of data storage, and the others likely aren’t sharing what they’ve learned. This is the cutting edge of computer science.

liberalsarecool:

Five conservative judges are changing the laws set by Congress. They are changing the election system and the protections established over centuries in order to provide unlimited campaign funding for the mega-wealthy.

The right wing talks of tyranny and here it is.

Surprise! There's another Warhammer game in the works. It's officially the one millionth to be announced in the past year. Ok, not really, but it kind of feels that way. This latest is a collaboration between Games Workshop and Roadhouse Interactive, and it's called Warhammer 40K: Carnage. What's interesting here is that Carnage isn't a strategy game, but it's a side-scrolling brawler. You'll play a Space Marine laying waste to Ork enemies using tons of weapons and gear and fighting across many familiar lands from the Warhammer universe. Here's some screens.

I've got to say, I'm definitely digging the idea of a side-scrolling action game with cool 3D graphics set in the Warhammer universe. However, Games Workshop has been so liberal about licensing out their property that just having their name attached to a project doesn't necessarily mean a good game will come from it. Hopefully Roadhouse Interactive come through with the finished product, which should be arriving sometime in May. Until then, you can join in on the discussion for Warhammer 40K: Carnage in our forums.

gothiccharmschool:

In times of trouble

Ellen Ripley comes to me 

Speaking words of wisdom

Nuke the entire site from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.

Dave Feldman, co-founder of Emu:

We launched Emu for iPhone on April 2, and we’ve pulled Emu for Android out of the Play Store. We hope we’ll return to Android someday, but our team is too small to innovate and iterate on multiple platforms simultaneously. We’ve concluded iPhone is a better place to be:

• Our decision to build on top of SMS/MMS involved huge, unanticipated technical hurdles.

• Even when you don’t support older Android versions, fragmentation is a huge drain on resources.

• Google’s tools and documentation are less advanced, and less stable, than Apple’s.

• Android’s larger install base doesn’t translate into a larger addressable market.

A nuanced perspective.

Interesting on two levels. First, the content of the story — these maps and statistics show why simplistic market share comparisons do not even vaguely tell the story of the competitive dynamics between iOS and Android.

Second, it’s an interesting contrast in headline writing. I’m linking to a reprint of the story on Slate. Slate’s headline: “Here’s Why Developers Keep Favoring Apple Over Android”. The original, published on Business Insider: “These Maps Show That Android Is For People With Less Money”. When you look at the web page titles (what you see in your browser tab), the contrast is even more stark: “Apple vs. Android: Developers See a Socioeconomic Divide” vs. “Android Is for Poor People: Maps”.

You are being lied to about pirates:

medievalpoc:

k-ingsfoil:

spoopyfag:

keyboardwarriorprincess:

takethespearandpuncturetheflesh:

incisiveredneck:

Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls “one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the 18th century.”

They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed “quite clearly – and subversively – that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy.” This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.

Oops, turns out piracy is pretty much always a term like terrorist that gets slapped on whatever we don’t like despite being a general reaction to the status quo. And nothing’s really changed.

And when african pirates were captured by the British they were forced into the slave trade.

Horrible Histories taught me about pirates https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zwn5K89dE5c

They were generally democratic, disciplined, communal - they even had pensions! If you wanted out of the pirate life, you would be taken to a destination of your choice (anywhere in the world) and given a lump sum to help you with your new life.

interesting

Honor among thieves.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU YES i’ve spent like two years studying piracy (back when i had time to devote to reading and research) and yes pirates are actually all very interesting and democratic and great

Reblogging since someone recently sent me an ask on this topic (although now it appears to be lost somewhere in my inbox).

Gameloft’s latest game Captain America: The Winter Soldier [$2.99] is now out worldwide for $2.99. A tie-in for the movie of the same name that is currently showing in theatres, it follows Captain America in an original adventure co-written by Marvel. You’ll punch and slam your shield at your enemies’ face while assembling a team of soldiers to fight alongside you. Here’s a video of the game in action that we captured at GDC:

This is not the first time that Gameloft has partnered with Marvel and its last game was Thor: The Dark World [Free]. We thought it was a pretty mediocre game when we reviewed it, and felt that it didn’t have the necessary spark. Let’s hope that Captain America: The Winter Soldier will bring out the thunder that we expected from Thor. Follow this thread for some early impressions on the game. Oh and a word of warning, it requires a constant online connection to play.

FTL’s release date has finally been announced, and I couldn’t be more excited. This roguelike space adventure has been really popular on PC and Mac and you’ll be able to get it on your iPad on April 3rd for $9.99 without any kind of IAPs. It was a natural fit for the platform but one that took a lot longer than expected to be announced.

FTL on iPad will also come with the new content found in the advanced edition that is featured in the trailer below:

In FTL you guide your crew through different systems while micro-managing every aspect of the ship. On top of that strategy layer you’ve got a full Choose your own Adventure Game that will impact your journey. A Crew members could die or you could find some new weapons just by exploring that asteroid. It’s also a heartless game that will challenge everybody, and you will die. A lot.

FTL is one of those games that people have always clamored for on the iPad, and come April 3rd we'll finally be getting our wish. For players on the PC, that's also when all the new Advanced Edition content will be available for you. Mark your calendars for next week.

flightcub:

totalitarian dystopian future lit is like “what if the government got so powerful that all the bad stuff that’s already happening ALSO HAPPENED TO WHITE PEOPLE?”

chasertiff:

When I say “boys are dumb” what I really mean is “boys have been raised in a patriarchal society that forces them into an incorrect and problematic view of masculinity that not only forces them to strip away valuable virtues from themselves, like patience and gentleness, but also forces them them to view and treat women in unhealthy ways that devalues women as people and makes them into objects purely for a man’s benefit”

but it’s a lot faster to say “boys are dumb”

In case you didn't know, the newest SMBC book is in stock on our regular store!

I completely missed this last year somehow when it was successfully crowdfunded on Indiegogo, but RIOT is one of the most interesting projects I’ve seen in a while. Being developed for desktops, iOS, and Android, RIOT is a part-procedurally-generated violent protest simulator.

The game’s visionary is former Valve man Leonard Mechiari, who says he wants you to see a riot from both sides of the line as a protester and as a cop. The game relies partially on procedural generation but there’s also distinct settings with different campaigns: anti-austerity protests in Spain, Italy, and Greece, and the crescendo of the Arab Spring in Egypt’s Tahrir Square.

The devs say that each character on-screen will have its own psychology and react to changing conditions on an individual level, and a physics engine means that individuals in crowds will move realistically.

RIOT is timely and bold and is exactly the sort of experience that games should be better than other media at portraying. The most recent dev blog post says that RIOT might be out in the second half of this year.

Watch the trailer below, and follow Leonard Mechiari on Twitter.

Yesterday was the vernal equinox, the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, despite continued wintry conditions in a few places. As the sunlight becomes more prevalent, people, plants, and animals are beginning to emerge from their winter modes to step outside, bloom, and otherwise welcome the sunshine. These photos show glimpses of the new season from around the world, as we shake off the winter and greet the spring. [26 photos]

Whew, done! Here’s a poster of western North American bird sound mnemonics. This one and my eastern one are in my store. Original is on my site here.

Robert Scoble:

Larry Page is on stage at TED right now. I’m at home watching.

He is not wearing Google Glass.

Scoble, Scoble, Scoble. Glass is so 2012. It’s all about Android Wear watches in 2014.

Readers with augmented eidetic memories may remember Pixel Hero Games, who made an iOS action RPG last year called Spiral that Clancy found to be one of the best-feeling touchscreen action games he’d ever played. The game was ambitiously tilted “Spiral: Episode One”, though in the 9 months since its release we’ve heard nary a peep about an Episode Two.

This might be why: Pixel Hero have just announced that they’re working with Games Workshop to give Warhammer 40K character Eisenhorn his own series of action games for mobile. Eisenhorn: Xenos is due out in 2015 according to Pixel Hero’s release.

I’m sure most of you are wondering who Eisenhorn is. He’s a character created by Dan Abnett for a series of 40K novels, and you probably know Abnett even if you don’t recognise the name. He’s a longtime comic book writer and the creator of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy who are getting the silver screen treatment this summer. I’ve read the Eisenhorn books and they’re just a delight. The first one is called Xenos — which suggests the eponymous game will be covering similar territory. Importantly, Eisenhorn isn’t a Space Marine like the protagonists of so many 40K games before his: he’s an inquisitor, who travels the galaxy uprooting heretics and witches and the like.

How many forthcoming Warhammer 40K games is this now? Slitherine’s Armageddon wargame, Rodeo’s hush-hush probably 40K project, that daft-looking lane combat game Storm of Vengeance, HeroCraft’s Space Wolf card game, the mysterious 2D action game Carnage. I think that’s all of them.

^{Thor deleted scene}

Our comrades at Eurogamer are reporting that PC developers CD Projekt are collaborating with “an external partner” on a mobile game employing one of the Polish developer’s brands. The game is going to be announced very soon, EG was told.

Maybe I’m missing something here but there’s only two known brands in CD Projekt’s stable: The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077, with the latter PC game based on the old PnP RPG having been announced in January of last year. If we’re going to speculate wildly (and of course we’re going to do just that), it stands to reason that Cyberpunk 2077 is coming out sometime soon on PC, and it would make a heck of a lot of sense to release a related mobile game near that date for CD Projekt to get the most out of their marketing dollar. Plus, there’s already a Witcher mobile game in the works: the digital version of the Witcher Adventure Board Game announced back in January.

And as long as we’re climbing out onto this limb, let’s go a little further. Is CD Projekt’s unnamed mobile partner Fantasy Flight? The vaunted tabletop game publishers made a notable push into mobile gaming back in 2011 with the extraordinarily polished Elder Sign: Omens for iOS — and then vanished. But we know that Fantasy Flight is gearing up to get back into mobile: they’ve been hiring app developers and digital artists for a project that might be Android: Netrunner, and guess who’s making that aforementioned Witcher board game for CD Projekt? Fantasy Flight.

So given the clues we’ve got, I’m pretty sure we’re going to hear about a Cyberpunk 2077 mobile game pretty shortly, and I wouldn’t be too surprised if it was a digital card or board game being made in conjunction with Fantasy Flight. We’ll stay tuned.

After the jump, the remarkable Cyberpunk 2077 trailer from last year that bowled everybody over when it came out.

If you don’t watch this in fullscreen 1080p you’re an art criminal.

John Kirk, writing for Techpinions:

Suspend belief for a moment and imagine that the PC is an Elephant and that the Tablet is an Ass. (That wasn’t so hard, now was it?) Imagine further that you lived in a land where the only pack animals were Elephants.

If you only have one tool, then that is the tool that you will use for most every task. If you only have one pack animal, i.e., the Elephant, then that is the pack animal that you will use for most every task. (Similarly, if you only have one type of computer, i.e., the PC, then that is the computer that you will use for most every computing task.)

It’s exactly like the command-line vs. GUI arguments from the late ’80s and early ’90s. People today forget that that was a thing. But I remember when just about every single thread on Usenet — not just on tech groups, but on any group: sports, movies, politics, whatever — eventually devolved into an argument about whether GUIs were a fad and/or just for dummies who couldn’t figure out how to drive a computer using DOS or a UNIX shell.

Post-PC devices have already secured victory. It’s just a matter of waiting for the endgame to run its course. And then we’ll collectively forget the argument ever happened.

sizvideos:

TL;DR : Watch this incredible story in video

I used to work at the major game/pawn/retailer shop, and I learned something interesting about the way they operate.  A metric quite common among retailers is the ‘shrink rate.’  I’m not sure how other stores calculate it, but at Gamestop it’s something like this: (money made on stuff sold / (money lost on stuff (lost | stolen | handed out) *100)) = shrinkrate Think of the ramifications of that.  If your store does well, you can give stuff away and it’s all gravy.  Given that every store loses track of a few things here and there, if your store stagnates, you obviously