Enlarge / BJ is a wanted man in Nazi-overrun America for some reason. Probably because he has killed thousands of Nazis. (credit: Bethesda)

Wolfenstein: The New Order pulled off a pretty neat trick in 2014. Spiritually, the shooting-game surprise felt like a lost gem from the late '90s era of first-person, single-player shooters, yet it had all the bombast and polish of a solid modern game. Its levels found the right balance between linear and complicated, its guns were both familiar and powerful, and its plot offered depth for those who wanted to pore through optional books and letters. At the same time, it was ham-fisted enough for anyone who just wanted to violently kill a crap-ton of Nazis.

Nobody saw such quality coming from Wolfenstein, a series that had always lagged behind its more technologically advanced sibling Doom. So what happens when a game that surprised everyone gets its own sequel?

The bottom-line gist of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is easy to sum up: more of the same. The game's underlying 3D engine has gotten a new coat of paint, and the world has expanded with more characters and lunacy, but this by-the-books sequel will neither disappoint fans of the original nor convert anybody unmoved by the 2014 game. And if you're showing up to this year's Wolfenstein party because, for whatever reason, you have an itch to shoot guns at virtual Nazis as of late, be ready for some issues and pacing problems on your way through a solid Nazi-stomping quest.

A new thing that happened: The State Department will begin processing refugee admissions to the US again thanks to a new executive order issued today, but applicants from 11 countries will still have to prove that their arrival will serve the "national interest". That means half of refugees are still effectively barred. Meanwhile, over a hundred Cambodian-American refugees face deportation after one of the largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement round-ups in history. 

The State Department also said it's considering formally declaring Myanmar's persecution of Rohingya Muslim an "ethnic cleansing", and ranking Democrats on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee are working on additional sanctions. I guess that's better than nothing.

A thing that's still happening: So we really need to talk about media narratives. Arizona senator Jeff Flake, who had been one of the few open critics of 45 in the GOP, announced today that he will be retiring and not seeking re-election in 2018. He then gave a 17-minute speech on the Senate floor excoriating 45 and calling on his fellow Republicans to stand up to tyranny and turn to their morals and blah blah blah. You know what would really stick it to 45? Actually running in 2018 and making this administration's garbage policies an election issue. Plus, I'd buy his newfound soul a lot more if he hadn't voted for all of 45's cabinet confirmations and 91% of his policy positions. Then, half a day after his inspirational speech, Flake then voted against letting groups of citizens file class-action lawsuits against banks. As did Tennessee senator Bob Corker and Arizona senator John McCain, who are both often in the news "feuding" with 45, but who still toe the party line an overwhelming majority of the time. There's this conscious rehabilitation thing going on for Republicans who stand a chance of rebranding themselves as the "reasonable ones" for the 2018 midterms and it should be resisted at every turn.

Similarly, the Washington Post reported that the Clinton campaign and the DNC funded the research that led to the infamous "pee tape" dossier. This is being played as some huge revelation, but like... 1) Politicians pay people to do "oppo" research; it's kind of a thing. 2) We've known about this since at least March, when Vanity Fair reported that "unnamed" Republicans were the first to retain Fusion GPS, who turned to Democrats to continue sponsoring the work after 45 won the RNC nomination. There's a bigger point here about how ad-supported attention economies often make sensationalist headline-writing a matter of survival for news organizations. But we don't have to go chasing the shiny thing in front of our faces just because it makes for a nice media narrative. Otherwise we wind up with things like House Committees re-opening investigations into 7-year-old decisions on the basis of a conspiracy meme that Snopes debunked months ago.

A thing to think about: Shot: A majority of US Troops thinks white supremacy is a threat to national security, probably because one in four troops has seen white nationalism in the ranks. Chaser: A majority of white Americans think they're being discriminated against, which includes, among other things, being wrongly accused of racism.

A thing you can do: The House is voting on the Senate budget resolution on Thursday, which will allow them to implement trillions of dollars of cuts to Medicare and Medicaid with only 50 votes in the Senate. Call your House representative and ask them to protect Medicaid and Medicare. Also call your senators to support the Affordable Care Act stabilization bill that will temporarily renew cost-sharing reductions for the ACA.

A thing that made me laugh: He is not wrong.

 

Enlarge / Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray participates in a question-and-answer session while arguing for the renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act at the Heritage Foundation October 13, 2017 in Washington, DC. (credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

FBI Director Christopher Wray told a conference of law enforcement officials on Sunday that he and his colleagues have been unable to open nearly 7,000 digital devices in the first 11 months of the 2017 fiscal year.

“To put it mildly, this is a huge, huge problem,” Wray said at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Philadelphia, according to the Associated Press. “It impacts investigations across the board—narcotics, human trafficking, counterterrorism, counterintelligence, gangs, organized crime, child exploitation.”

Wray’s remarks come less than two weeks after another top law enforcement official, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, called for “responsible encryption”—a seemingly magical method by which only law enforcement would be able to defeat the encryption on a digitally-locked device.

Perched atop the Kodiak Queen, a former WW2-era Navy fuel barge, this 80-foot ‘Kraken’ now serves as the base of an artificial reef and marine research station on the ocean floor near the British Virgin Islands. The project, entitled BVI Art Reef, accomplishes a range of goals all at once: saving a decorated ship from destruction, transplanting coral to a new site in the hopes that it will flourish, creating an epic dive site and underwater art gallery, and providing a new habitat for marine life.

Photographer Owen Buggy documented the process, from the early stages of building the massive sea monster to sinking it in April 2017 to checking out the results a few months later. Sunken off the coast of the island Virgin Gorda with the help of tugboats and helicopters, the installation is already helping to rehabilitate heavily over-fished marine populations. Filmmaker Rob Sorrenti also got some great footage, presented as a documentary entitled ‘The Kodiak Queen,’ which is due for release in early 2018.

“This is the story of learning from past lessons and coming together to create something greater; rooted in joy and fueled by the power of play,” reads the BVI website. “This is the story of a group of friends from around the world who fell in love with the BVIs… and turned a weapon of war into a platform for unity – and a catalyst for new growth. This charitable kick-off in the British Virgin Islands combine art, ocean conservation, world history, marine science and economy… to solve a series of challenges in the BVIs by asking: how can we use play and collaboration to install permanent solutions that boost the local economy, secure the prosperity of these pristine islands for generations to come?”

“Our solution: a fantasy art eco-dive and ocean conservation site that puts the BVIs on the map as having one of the most unique and meaningful dive sites in the world… and one of the most forward-thinking approaches to creative problem solving that secures the education of its youth, and the health and prosperity of this island nation.”

Get updates on the project at the BVI Art Reef Facebook page.

Ron Amadeo

Google's new flagship smartphones, the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, are out today. In the life of any major smartphone, there comes a time when it must hit iFixit's workbench for a teardown, and for the 2 XL, today is that day.

The site found a few surprises inside the Pixel 2 XL. First up is a magnesium mid-frame, which should make the phone extra stiff. The mid-frame is also housing a heat pipe for better cooling, which seems to be showing up more and more in smartphones. Under X-Ray, you can see that, like the smaller Pixel 2, the Pixel 2 XL does have antenna bands, but they're invisible on the 2 XL. It is also nice to see the "Active Edge" pressure sensors, which allow you to squeeze the phone to call up the Google Assistant.

Enlarge / Still looks Kindle-ish. (credit: Amazon)

Amazon launched a revamped version of its Kindle Oasis e-reader on Wednesday. The new device will remain the highest-end model in Amazon’s popular Kindle series, but it comes with a host of tweaks compared to the previous Oasis, which launched in early 2016.

The reader now has a 7-inch e-ink display, a full inch larger than its predecessor. Amazon says that display will still sport 300 pixels per inch, so text should be just as sharp as before.

Perhaps the most welcome news for Kindle diehards is that the new Oasis is waterproof. Amazon says the device is IPX8 rated, which means it should survive being dunked in more than two meters of water for up to 60 minutes. Though it’s lamentable that such waterproofing is still limited to Amazon’s priciest Kindle, the addition is long overdue; competing manufacturers like Kobo have sold waterproof e-readers for years now.

Enlarge (credit: Mikhail Deynekin)

Last week, The Wall Street Journal dropped a bombshell when it reported that Russian government hackers located confidential National Security Agency material improperly stored on an employee's home computer with help from Kaspersky antivirus, which happened to be installed. On Tuesday, The New York Times and The Washington Post provided another shocker: the Russian hackers were caught in the act by spies from Israel, who were burrowed deep inside Kaspersky's corporate network around the time of the theft.

Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab disclosed the intrusion into its network in mid-2015. Kaspersky released a detailed report that said some of the attack code shared digital fingerprints first found in the Stuxnet worm that sabotaged Iran's nuclear program. When combined with other clues—including the attackers' targeting of entities located in the US, which is off limits to the NSA—most analysts concluded that the 2014 hack was carried out by Israel. At the time, Kaspersky Lab researchers said that the hackers appeared most interested in data the company had amassed on nation-sponsored hackers.

The NYT, citing unnamed people, said on Tuesday that Israeli spies indeed carried out the attack. More revealing still, the report said, that during the course of the hack, the spies watched in real time as Russian government hackers turned Kaspersky antivirus software used by 400 million people worldwide into an improvised search tool that scoured computers for code names of US intelligence programs. The NYT likened to a "sort of Google search for sensitive information." The Israeli spies, in turn, reported their findings to their counterparts in the US.