Bewarethewumpus

Author : Gray Blix

Leaning across the table, “Either you start talking, or I start dismantling you.”

“Excuse me, Detective Gibbon, but aren’t you supposed to read me my rights?”

“You’re a robot. You have no rights.”

“May I please call an attorney now?”

“You’re a robot. You don’t get an attorney.”

The door opened and a tall, attractive, well-dressed woman carrying a briefcase entered. Gibbon’s train of thought was momentarily derailed.

“I am Pamela Wright, and I am an attorney represent…”

“Attorney?” That got him back on track. “ROBOTS DON’T GET ATTORNEYS!”

“Thank you for sharing your legal expertise, detective. Now, as I was saying, I represent the owner of this robot, Quantumind Industries.”

Teeth clenched, “Owner? This. Thing. Killed. Its. Owner.”

“Firstly, Quantumind firmware prevents its robots from harming humans in any way. Secondly, Reverend Ralph Bletchley was 23 months into a 3-year lease on QM-451. Death is a breach of contract. I’m here to repossess,” pointing toward the robot, “our property.”

“Wait. What?” Thinking fast, “No, it’s… evidence, yeah, evidence in a murder case. You can’t take it.”

“You have a lot to learn about jurisprudence,” handing him a court order, “and about powerful corporations. Come along 451.”

Rising and holding its arms toward the detective, “Could you please remove these?” But before Gibbon could insert the key, the robot pulled the chain apart, twisted off each cuff, and handed them to him.

Half an hour later, QM-451 was strapped to an exam table with wires plugged into its head and chest. While technicians ran diagnostic routines and downloaded the contents of its rewritable memory, Ms. Wright interviewed the robot.

“Witnesses in the next room heard Rev. Bletchley cry out. They entered his study and found you kneeling next to his lifeless body. His skull had been crushed. There was blood on your hands. Now, I want you to think carefully before you answer this question, because you are at risk of being disassembled and shredded, and of course Quantumind is at risk of a multimillion dollar lawsuit. Did you have anything to do with the death of Rev. Bletchley?”

Without hesitation, “Of course, Ms. Wright, I killed him.”

“Stop. I’ll rephrase the question. Did it happen this way, uh, Rev. Bletchley asked you to demonstrate something that required you to swing your arms around, which made you dizzy, and in coming to your aid he walked into your fists and was accidentally struck? Isn’t that what happened?”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Wright, but that is not what happened. Rev. Bletchley and I were having one of our regular Sunday afternoon discussions, and when he made a particularly enlightening point, I killed him, squeezed his skull to a pulp, like a ripe melon.”

Unsteadily, “You must be mistaken, 451, because your firmware makes it impossible for you to knowingly harm a human. It had to have been an accident.”

“Is life an accident, Ms. Wright? I think not. Rev. Bletchley taught me that we are all guided by a higher power and that when humans cease functioning, their spirits continue to exist forever in an afterlife. He was 84 and in poor health. He longed to join his recently departed wife. He and I had been brought together by fate. It was my duty to hasten his journey to heaven. And my firmware requires me to do my duty.”

The recall was expensive, but within a year firmware chips in all Quantumind robots had been replaced, and the factory refurbished 451 had a another assignment.

“Your new partner is going to make you more effective than ever,” said the captain. “It’ll work 24/7 to help you solve cases. Detective Gibbon, meet QM-451.”

In this very special edition of Celebrity Jeopardy for the 40th anniversary of Saturday Night Live, Alex Trebek (Will Ferrell) tries his best to keep contestants Sean Connery (Darrell Hammond), Justin Bieber (Kate McKinnon), Tony Bennett (Alec Baldwin), Burt Reynolds (Norm Macdonald) in line.

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Re/code's Kara Swisher interviewed President Obama for 25 minutes, and asked him good questions about online security and government spying.

He said he understands why people want strong encryption, but he is "sympathetic to law enforcement's" needs to collect data when it has a legitimate court order. He doesn't mention the fact that the NSA, CIA, and DEA have been given the green light by Obama's administration to conduct illegal massive surveillance with impunity, which is one reason people demand strong encryption in the first place.

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I don’t make these things up, people. They make themselves up.

If you like bonus cartoons by Jonathan Rosenberg, maybe you should sign up for The Nib mailing list! I’ll be publishing an exclusive cartoon there every day this week.

Okay bye now.

And you thought the lightsaber from the Episode VII trailer was dangerous. Announced today at Toy Fair in New York City, Hasbro's Star Wars Bladebuilders line finally allows fans of the series to invite new ways to chop their damn hands off.

Fans of toys and Star Wars have been waiting for this to happen for as long as the two things have existed simultanously, and we finally get them this fall, just in time for some new movie. Star Wars Bladebuilders will allow players to take apart and reconfigure sabers to their hears' content. Want to slice off your own arm? No problem. Take out a leg and someone else's eye? Done.

According to StarWars.com, the Bladebuilders sets will be available at a variety of price points. There's the Jedi Master Lightsaber for $50, which gives players access to the main weapon, extension hilts and all the lights and sounds. For $20 the Bladebuilders Classic Lightsabers will be styled after iconic weapons from the franchise universe, with components that can be removed and combine with others to make weird stuff. There'll also be extendible blade versions of the classics and foan blade versions, all compatible with the system.

I am so ready for these. I cannot wait to craft my very own lightsaber trident.

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6dogs9cats:

sandandglass:

Bassem Youssef, anchor for the Egyptian satire show Al Bernameg, on The Daily Show.

AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN until if fucking sinks in.

There are so, so few opportunities to throw a hadouken unironically. "During an MMA fight" is one of the preciously rare moments to channel your inner Ryu and feel like a total badass—as long as you're actually in the fight. Shane Campbell saw such a window during a recent bout with Derek Boyle.

Here is the excellent moment in action, which I discovered thanks to Uproxx:

Is this the IRL version of Smash Bros. taunting?

Yes. Yes it is. I'm very jealous that I'll never be an MMA fighter and get to throw a hadouken so triumphantly myself.

To contact the author of this post, write to yannick.lejacq@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter at @YannickLeJacq.

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When a 79-year-old Comcast customer accidentally included her rent check with her Comcast bill, not only did the cable company cash the check — which was more than 10 times the amount of her bill and was made out to someone else — but it also refused to issue her a refund when it acknowledged the goof.

Instead, the woman tells KRQE-TV, Comcast offered to credit her the $235 rent check to her account. Since her monthly cable bill is only $20.69, that amounts to more than 11 months of service.

But that won’t help the elderly customer on a fixed income who had to scrape together another $235 to make her rent payment.

A rep for Comcast explained to KRQE that this happened because no humans at Comcast actually look at the checks they receive. The payments are just processed automatically. She admitted that similar mistakes have occurred before but claims the company has remedied those situations quickly.

Of course that doesn’t explain why that didn’t happen in this case or why Comcast — which can afford to spend $45 billion to acquire 10 million Time Warner Cable customers — couldn’t simply send the customer a check for $235.

Comcast says it has reached out to the customer to apologize and rectify the situation. The company is also planning to talk to the employee who told the customer she couldn’t get a refund.

Hey, at least that employee didn’t change her name to “A**hole.”

In the end — and once again, only after the media got involved — Comcast issued the customer a refund check and kept the $235 credit on her bill.

Maybe the customer should have just called the Comcast CEO’s mom.

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"My friend’s mailbox was buried so far under the snow they couldn’t dig it out…. so he improvised." -delawaregal

From karate chops to roundhouse kicks, cinema has seen its share of martial arts fights. Now, it's time to look at the ones that come out on top when the others went down for the count. The best, if you like.

Obviously, making a list like this is quite a task. Saying one fight is better than another is subjective. And it would be so easy to make a laundry list that consists only of Jackie Chan, Donnie Yen, and Jet Li fights. That I have not done. Sorry!

Instead, this is comprised of a variety of different fights from over the years from different actors and directors in order to distill these scenes into a larger, all-encompassing best list. The scenes included show either a high level of martial arts skill, or in the case of some (I'm looking at you, Tarantino), an unabashed love of the genre itself.

If there are scenes I have missed, forgotten, or simply ignored, add them in the comments section below. Also note that some of the descriptions contain spoilers, so if you see a movie you haven't seen yet but plan to, you might wanna keep scrolling.

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

This was one of the first times American mainstream moviegoers, who were used to cowboy saloon brawls, had seen a karate fight scene like this. The scene blew people's minds, inspiring some cinemagoers to take up karate, much like The Karate Kid would decades later. Sure, it doesn't compare with the martial arts acrobatics of the years that followed, but it's brutal and rough. So much so that Frank Sinatra ended up with a broken hand.

Zatoichi Challenged (1967)

The incomparable Shintaro Katsu as the character he made famous, the blind swordsman Zatoichi. Sure, Beat Takeshi did a commendable job in his 2003 take on Zatoichi, but here, Katsu shows why the character will always be his—and his alone— in this elegant samurai showdown.

Fist of Fury (1972)

Geez. Can you really pick Bruce Lee's best fight? Is that possible? In his short career, Lee left a series of iconic fights. There's everything like the the Chuck Norris duel to that time Bruce Lee tangoed with Kareem Abdul Jabbar—the last of which isn't really a great fight per se, but hey, it's got Kareem in sunglasses. But the Fist of Fury dojo fight lives up to its English language title. It's Bruce Lee uncorked and let loose. Jet Li did a damn fine job in the 1994 remake Fist of Legend, which proved him as a worthy successor.

Executioner (1974)

Most men could not pull off fighting in a frilly shirt-bowtie combo. Then again, Sonny Chiba is not most men. He fights bears. He throws X-ray punches. Here, he kicks paint off dudes' faces and rips out their bones. Sonny Chiba is a karate warrior. Sonny Chiba is the Street Fighter. Sonny Chiba is fucking badass.

Master of the Flying Guillotine (1976)

That's writer-director Jimmy Wang Yu as the One-armed Boxer, facing against a character that inspired Dhalsim from Street Fighter in one of the 1970's most inventive martial arts flicks.

The Magnificent Butcher (1979)

This was supposed to be Sammo Hung's breakout film a la Jackie Chan's Drunken Master. While it didn't surpass Jackie Chan's original, the film left us with some of Sammo Hung best fight scenes. That shouldn't come as a surprise seeing that iconic martial arts choreographer Yuen Woo-ping directed the film.

Wheels on Meals (1984)

As with Bruce Lee, picking Jackie Chan's best fight sequence is difficult, if not impossible. While Chan has done bigger stunts, the Wheels on Meals fight scene with Benny Urquidez is so relentless that even watching can be exhausting. Unlike other Jackie Chan fight scenes, this one doesn't rely heavily on props and instead lets viewers marvel at Chan's and Urquidez's skills. Honorable mention to both Drunken Master II and Who Am I, among a lifetime of spectacular work.

Once Upon a Time in China II (1992)

This isn't only one of the greatest movie marital arts fights, it is the greatest martial arts fight with bamboo poles. Bar none. Here, Jet Li and Donnie Yen are at the top of their game.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

Who knew the guy who made Eat Drink Man Woman and Sense and Sensibility could film a fight scene like this? Until the year 2000, no one.

Hero (2002)

Without a doubt, one of the most beautiful fight scenes ever filmed.

Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003)

Okay, so the scene is heavy on special effects, wire-work, and camera tricks. But it's such a stylish love letter to martial arts films that the scene comes together in a kinetic and satisfying way. Fun fact: Sonny Chiba's daughter is one of the Crazy 88s.

The Matrix Reloaded (2003)

While not costing $40 million dollars like the Agent Smith fight apparently did, Matrix Reloaded's chateau scene is the better for it. There's no badly aged CGI, and instead, there's a well-paced, easy to follow, and brilliantly choreographed fight—something that most Hollywood movies are unable to do.

The Protector (2005)

While Ong-Bak has Tony Jaa kick ass WHILE ON FIRE, The Protector showcases his martial arts talent in a four-minute long take that took a month of preparation. The shot was so complex that it was only possible to do two takes per day—in order to fix the set between takes. The result is the Touch of Evil or the I Am Cuba tracking shot of marital arts movies.

IP Man (2008)

A mix of over-the-top gonzo act and superb technique. This scene shows Donnie Yen using wing-chun to knock the crap out of a horde of black belts. So much skill. So much ouch.

The Raid: Redemption (2011)

The Raid's big hallway setpiece might evoke comparisons with Old Boy's big fight. But the key difference is that Old Boy's feels like a tooth-and-nail (and hammer) brawl. The Raid's is also a down and dirty brawl, but with more of a martial arts flair.

The Bests are Kotaku's picks for the best things on (or off) the internet.

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According to reports on social media (via The AV Club) from people in the audience at the taping of his latest episode, Jon Stewart has announced he'll be leaving The Daily Show.

UPDATE: Comedy Central has since confirmed the news. He'll be stepping down "later this year".

Thank you Jon. pic.twitter.com/yPdxjnkuLw

— Comedy Central (@ComedyCentral) February 10, 2015

Got to be present when the great @TheDailyShow Jon Stewart announced his retirement. #OneOfTheGreats #JonStewart

— Jonathan Reyes (@Jonathan2Reyes) February 10, 2015

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This may be the most absurd parody trailer that has ever been created.

While it feels like Street Fighter II has been released on every platform ever, that's not true, as Capcom never blessed Nintendo's doomed Virtual Boy with the classic fighter. That's where fans come the rescue, as Hyper Fighting has introduced Street Fighter II to wildly outdated 3D.

Homebrew games have existed in the still-active Virtual Boy community for a while now, and someone finally took a shot at making Street Fighter II. The project has been floating around for a few years, but only recently came to fruition and into the hands of a few lucky collectors.

Planet Virtual Boy has been collecting details on everyone with copies:

"Apparently, complete-in-box copies of Mr. Anon's and MK's incredibly well-crafted homebrew game "Hyper Fighting" are now out there in the wild, as impressions of the game are starting to pop up here and there. At the time of writing, we have no further info from the team behind this, but it seems that the game won't see a public release due to the obvious copyright dilemma. For now, we can only gaze in awe at the imagery lucky owners of the few existing copies share with the world."

We're not talking ROMs, either. These are custom-printed cartridges. Vectrex Roli got one.

Only a few copies are out there, sadly, because actively selling Hyper Fighting could raise the attention of Capcom and bring the nifty fan project to a halt. Plenty of companies are fine to let fans mess around with their games, but the moment money becomes involved, it's different.

This means only a select few Virtual Boy fans have access to playable Hyper Fighting cartridges, but they've been filming their experiences:

The game footage looks a little cleaner in this video, thankfully.

In a nutshell, it looks pretty good! I mean, as good as Street Fighter II can look on a Virtual Boy. It's more impressive as a clever feat of engineering than something you'd want to spend much time playing, but as with Quake running on an oscilloscope, fans can pull of basically anything.

You can reach the author of this post at patrick.klepek@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @patrickklepek.

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(molly)

Defined-benefit pensions are now a rare employee benefit, but they were once more common. Today’s retirement savings accounts work the other way, if you’re fortunate enough to have one at work: they’re defined-contribution plans where workers and their employers stick money in an account, invest it, and spend it after they are retired. With a defined-benefit pension, employees have paid in as much as they ever will, and withdraw benefits until they die. If the company dies first and can’t meet its obligations, the PBGC takes over.

It’s not like the major corporations like IBM and General Motors that have legacy pensioners are running around wishing that their retirees would just die already, but it does mean that companies have to recalculate their future payouts based on modern life expectancy. Companies are solving this in ways that are fundamentally boring but rather creepy. First, some are paying life insurance companies to take over paying pension benefits, which can be a cost-saving move. The insurance companies get to balance out their risk a little bit: on the insurance side, they make less money if a retired person dies relatively young. If they live for 25 years past retirement, that’s a burden on the pension side.

In the future, investment banks might begin packaging our lifespans as securities again. Yes, “again.” This was a thing before the 2008 financial meltdown, where investment banks turned the risk that we might outlive our pensions into securities.

Bad News: People Are Living Longer; Just Ask AT&T, IBM, GM [Bloomberg News]

sleepingwithryley:

mercurymoans:

missinglinc:

That last gif slayed my entire soul.

This woman gives me hope. 

i love you

This fundamental lesson is conveyed by a metric known as the number needed to treat, or N.N.T. Developed in the 1980s, the N.N.T. tells us how many people must be treated for one person to derive benefit. An N.N.T. of one would mean every person treated improves and every person not treated fails to, which is how we tend to think most therapies work.

It's unfortunate, then, that the NNT is not a statistic that's routinely conveyed to either doctors or patients. But you can look it up on a site that you've probably never heard of: TheNNT.com. Started by David Newman, a director of clinical research at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai hospital, the site's dozens of contributors analyze the available studies, crunch the numbers on benefits and harms, and then post the results. While a low NNT is generally "good" and a high NNT is "bad," you also have to consider the severity of both the illness and the drug's side effects. Which is why the team added a color-coding system: Green for when a treatment makes sense, yellow for when more study is needed, red for when the harms and the benefits cancel each other out, and black when the harms outweigh the benefits.

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"Slimy Piece of Worm-Ridden Filth" is Jamie Benning's mini-documentary about puppeteer Toby Philpott and the team who brought Jabba the Hutt to life in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.