Bewarethewumpus

I get it. The show is impenetrable, watching the whole thing takes 178 hours. It's also extremely silly — nearly every episode has a moment when grown men in pajamas throw themselves around in their chairs

But I want to make the case Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) is important and worth your time in 2015, and I want to suggest about 40 hours of Star Trek viewing that will cover all of the great episodes.

Author : Rollin T Gentry

In the lift, Lieutenant Andrews asked herself how she, of the two hundred telepaths in the fleet, had been so unlucky as to be assigned to the Vulcan’s Anvil, a third rate science vessel with an idiot for a Captain. She wondered what his latest discovery was. What had he dragged out of the nebula this time?

Stepping into the lab, Andrews could see the Captain, and the Chief Science Officer huddled over something emitting a bright, red-orange glow. As she approached, she saw a metallic box, the contents of which looked like lava throwing a temper tantrum. The stuff rocked back and forth as if it were trying to escape its container. She stepped closer and felt the most intense rage she had ever encountered.

“Eject it now,” she said. “I haven’t attempted to make contact yet, and I feel pure evil radiating from that box.”

“So it is sentient,” the Captain said eagerly, nudging the Chief Science Officer who, like a giddy schoolgirl, chimed in, “The box is made of an element that isn’t even on our periodic table.”

“Scan it, Andrews,” the Captain said. “That’s an order.”

So she reached out and touched it. The white hot rage reached into her mind, and as she lost consciousness, she let out a blood-curdling scream.

Andrews opened her eyes inside a bulbous body covered with a layer of slime. She paced the floor atop a multitude of tentacles, waving other tentacles in the air. She spoke angry words from a flap on her face set below numerous eyes. She/he was the ruler of this world. “Tell me again how you found the Queen with this commoner.”

“There is nothing more to tell, my Lord. What will you have me do with them?”

“Her lover goes to the dungeon. Rip off his tentacles and gouge out his eyes and take your time about it. As for the Queen, have her bound and delivered to our bedchamber. I will discipline her myself.”

Lieutenant Andrews tried to close her eyes, but they were not her eyes to close. She lived out the fast-forwarded life of a despot from a race that humans had yet to encounter.

When he laid waste to the temples of their ancient religion, the commoners finally rebelled. Andrews felt his surprise and disgust as he stood before the three priests, resting their upper tentacles on a slab of white marble, looking down on him. “According to the old ways,” they said, “we do not kill. Repent, and we will heal your mind.”

“Repent!” he laughed. “Heal me?” he mocked. “Of what? My rage is justified, and one day I will rise again.”

“So be it,” they said. The small, metal box sat on the floor. The tentacles of the priests began to glow. Andrews felt herself melting and materializing inside the sealed box.

For a long time he was in darkness, but after years of ruminating and rocking back and forth, he glowed red and yellow and black molten with rage. Memories and hatred were his only companions. Until one day.

The creatures had two eyes and two upper tentacles, and as he gazed up at them he thought, “I will kill every last one of you.”

Andrews opened her eyes in the infirmary. “Did they eject the box?”

“No,” the Doctor said, “we’re taking it back to Science Central.” He injected something into her IV.

“No!” Andrews said. “It wants to kill…” she whispered, as she fell back into a sedated slumber.

Author : Elijah Goering

The light from the unstable star took four hours to reach the scientific survey ship that was orbiting it. Consequently, it was four hours after the warning was sent before the ship’s one man crew reacted to it. The star was now too unstable, and the jump gate would have to be closed.

The jump gate, requiring rather a lot of energy to operate, orbited the star at a distance of just one light second. Although the warning was weeks in advance of the closing of the jump gate, it still felt a little late to the lone researcher billions of kilometers from the jump gate.

For nine and a half hours the man lay in his bed sustained by the ship’s machinery as his ship accelerated toward the star at three standard gravities, using up a little over two thirds of his fuel. The remainder was reserved for slowing down once he had passed through the jump gate. The ship would never be retrieved, but at least if he slowed down enough he could be saved.

After the acceleration came free fall. The man floated around his ship for weeks and watched the evacuation of the solar system. The private ships of the wealthy went through first. Then the massive government transports carrying the population of the system’s inhabited planet. The people from the moons of the gas giants came behind them. Then the colonized asteroids, outfitted with powerful engines, fell from their orbits in precise spirals. One by one they passed through the jump gate. Research vessels from around the system went through at all stages, but none had been nearly as far as the deep space explorer four point three billion kilometers out. He could only watch as they all went through.

The last ship through the jump gate was the enormous space station which had anchored the space elevator above the planet. It had disconnected from the elevator at precisely the right moment and been flung toward the sun and right into the jump gate.

At last the man was left alone, light years from the nearest human being. He spent long hours each day staring at the jump gate, his only remaining link with his species. There was no way to tell whether or not it had been deactivated. It was pure black, absorbing all light that hit it. The station that encircled and housed it appeared black as well, silhouetted against the dying star behind it. If it was still active he would pass through it and find himself flying away from another star light years away. If not, it would do nothing to stop him from plunging into the dying star at a thousand kilometers per second.

It was seven weeks after he had received the message when the day, the hour, and the minute arrived. The computer needed no adjustments after it had set its course forty nine days before. It was only in the last second that the jump gate finally came close enough for the man to see it with his own naked eyes.

Author : Jae Miles, Staff Writer

The mists swirl about our feet and the cold blues of brushed steel surfaces surround us. There is distant hubbub, like a monster stirring in its lair – which is an accurate analogy.

The Major’s eyes open and focus on mine. She sits up: “War?”

“War.” I nod agreement and feel my tacticals run cold. From the glint in her eyes, she’s feeling it too.

They used to go to war with rules. Hundreds of them. Had whole committees of impartial referees to decide what you could and couldn’t do. It took centuries to shake that stupid, selfish habit. War should be terrifying. War should be abhorrent. War should be the final step in a long chain of failures to find a peaceful solution.

But when war becomes the only recourse, it should be done with unmitigated savagery, surgical precision and no restraints. Because when a war is fought, you are trying to make it the last one. You are praying that your descendants never have to go through what you’re going through. No man or woman should have to take weapons in hand to do mortal combat in the pursuit of peace, simply because other people failed to find another way. Naturally, every entity/nation has cadres that are always prepared, but they are just that: an elite few, separate from a society they cannot fit into and could not understand.

When the fighting starts, you make it brutal, you make it atrocious. So that when non-cadre look upon the remains, they are resolved to never permit it again. If you have done your job properly, the losing side will never resurge – because there is no losing side. The only memorial will be the cluster of silo graves that stand in mute testimony to another utter failure of civilisation.

Territories will be realigned. Populations will be transferred. Peace will resume in the appalled aftermath, reminded once again of the necessity for sanity to endure.

I pick up my rifle after sliding both machetes into their scabbards. Checking my charge levels, I exit the tent and go to join my unit. After the warbotics finish their tasks, we must be ready to carry the battle into the enemy before they can recover.

Our cadre will have engaged theirs as ruination fell from the skies. We got the drop on them, so they will fight like the damned. Maintaining the layered pressure of attack is the only element of strategic mastery that counts: the real-time accumulation and analysis of countless tactical outcomes to guide this implacable, nation-crushing offensive.

They call us Terminators – an ironic reference to legendary monsters that sought to overthrow mankind. We are what dead cadre members become: cybernetic agents of slaughter, cryohibernated in the hope that we will never be needed again.

This is only the third time I have been awakened in five hundred years. Mankind is – finally – getting better at peace.

Author : David Botticello

We only discovered them by mistake.
Waiting out in space, watching, listening. Deliberating.

We had this exploration drone, for a comet. It was supposed to land, take samples, send back pictures and analysis—you know the deal. The physics of the thing was astounding; firing what was essentially a ballistic camera off into space with only small maneuvering thrusters, trying to hit a chunk of rock and ice hurtling through space. It was almost comical, when it bounced off. Hubris you might say, that we thought we could accomplish such a feat. Space Command had given it fifty-fifty odds.

Well, it bounced. All that money, time, effort, skipping off the surface, back into space. And so we figured, might as well leave the cameras running, right?

And then three and a half months later, while going over the images in some lab late at night, my buddy says, “huh, that’s odd.”

That was how we discovered the Vorinii. They had it all perfectly timed, tapped into even our most secure networks, moving their ship around so that none of our satellites would ever see them—if everything had gone according to plan, that is. Damned deliberating aliens. Just waiting there. Watching us. But they hadn’t expected us to fail. No, I don’t even think they understood failure in those days. They just didn’t get the concept. Everything they do is a resounding success. Some people say they’re just that much smarter than we are. Others say they are a particularly lucky species, or that we’re an unusually unlucky one. Or that they plan so much they just rule out all the bad options. This priest from my bowling league thinks they have some sort of cosmic authority that conforms the universe to their desires, makes everything they do come out well. I’ve half a mind to believe him. But whatever the situation, however it goes, for some reason the Vorinii just, kinda, succeed.
And that’s why they were so interested in us—a kind of morbid fascination, when you think about it. We fail. Sometimes dismally, but other times, there’s a bit of comedy, or even glory to it.

Well they landed, made contact, explored, flew away, came back. The whole deal. They even took news of this odd new race called Humans to the stars.

Twenty-five years in the planning. Ten years of travel. Hundreds of thousands of manpower-hours. Resources from across the world, some of them near-irreplaceable.

So that’s our first introduction to the universe, I guess. We fail spectacularly.

UPDATE: The dogs have been found and returned to the family. FedEx says the driver, a contract employee, will not be working for the company pending the outcome of an investigation.

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Between FedEx, UPS, USPS and the numerous other delivery services out there, we thought we’d heard just about everything possible that a driver could do wrong. But then we heard about this story.

According to a post by a woman named Erica on Facebook, her home security footage caught a FedEx driver walking away from her home with two of her pooches in his possession.

Making things even more bizarre, she alleges that the driver wasn’t even making a delivery to her home but just came with the sole intent of snatching her dogs.

We’ve contacted FedEx, where a rep said the company is aware of the story and will provide us with an official statement later today.

Now we have no idea if the person is indeed a FedEx driver, so this could be a matter of just an a-hole dog thief caught on camera. Either way, the family is now missing two puppies, which is decidedly not cool.

[via Reddit]

Not unlike a mummy, the reanimated corpse of a bad bill that just doesn’t know when to stay dead is once again coming to the floor of a Congress near you this week. Tomorrow, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act — better known as CISPA — is once again going to be introduced before the House of Representatives.

The Hill confirmed the report that Maryland Representative Dutch Ruppersberger will (re- re-) introduce the bill tomorrow.

The new version is likely to be basically the same as the old, which “directs the federal government to conduct cybersecurity activities to provide shared situational awareness enabling integrated operational actions to protect, prevent, mitigate, respond to, and recover from cyber incidents.”

In other words, CISPA makes it easier for intelligence agencies to share everyone’s digital information amongst themselves, with the stated goal of preventing cyberterrorism and other hacks. But while security in the digital world is indeed rapidly proving to be at least as important as security in the physical world, the bill’s good intentions are matched by deep problems.

Specifically, lawmakers, advocates, and others have expressed concerns that as written, CISPA would allow the government to infringe (even more) on citizens’ privacy and would allow the government to demand access personal information, like emails and Internet history, without first getting search warrants or having to follow other legal procedures.

CISPA is one of those bills that just won’t stay dead. The first go at it came up for a vote in the spring of 2012. The legislation passed in the House in a 248-168 vote, but then didn’t make it in the Senate.

A year later, in 2013, CISPA came up yet again. The House once again supported it, voting 288-127 in favor, but the Senate didn’t even bother to give it a look, and there it died once more.

But with the new year comes a new Congress. Any old pending business was basically swept away when the 114th session of our august legislative body was sworn in on Tuesday, and now CISPA gets a chance to be resurrected and shamble once more before lawmakers.

Rep. Ruppersberger told The Hill, ““The reason I’m putting bill in now is I want to keep the momentum going on what’s happening out there in the world,” referring to the current zeitgeist around cybersecurity and internet espionage surrounding the Sony hack.

But Sony isn’t the only chatter flitting through the air. Revelations over the past two years about the depth and breadth of NSA snooping have given rise to a tide of talks about privacy rights.

That, too, might change some of the feeling behind CISPA this time around, even with a different party in charge of the Senate.

House Dem revives major cyber bill [The Hill]

There’s the kind of food experimentation that is based on aligning subtle flavor profiles and combining textures in complementary ways, and then there’s the “I wonder what X would taste like with a whole bunch of expensive stuff on top of it” experience. The latter is often just so much more fun than the former.

Such is the case for the dude at DudeFoods, Nick (he of the McEverything), who found himself with a cool $250 in gift card money to spend at William Sonoma, and no desire to buy any “overpriced” kitchen tools, “even with a gift card.”

Instead, his eye caught truffles for sale, and he joked with a friend about getting an ounce of white Italian truffles for $200 and just blow them all on one dish.

Going with the tack of combining luxury with economy, Nick and his pal decided to pair the truffles with a White Castle slider. From there, he says the idea to make the most expensive White Castle slider ever assembled “sort of just spiraled out of control from there” with the addition of “every other insanely expensive food I could think off.”

He included two pricy Wisconsin cheddars, “white Italian truffles, a couple ounces of prosciutto and then a slice of some duck foie gras and port wine pate bullshit thing that I picked up at a market near my work. Finishing off the slider was an ounce of Russian caviar and a fried quail egg. Oh, and I also sprinkled 24K gold flakes all over the entire thing just so it looked extra fancy. The only hipster food item that this thing was missing was morel mushrooms.”

The entire cost of the slider came out to exactly $400.

So what does all that money buy you? A mouthful of disgusting and the ruination of a perfectly good slider, Nick says, acknowledging that the included ingredients aren’t really meant to go together.

“In fact, the only thing that really made it any better were the two Wisconsin cheeses that I added to it,” he said, stating the obvious importance of cheese in all things. “Everything else just took away from the deliciousness that is the White Castle slider.”

When all is said and done, the thing was a “gigantic waste of money,” Nick admits, though it’s clear he enjoyed the effort overall.

“In retrospect though I probably should have just spent the $400 on 20 Crave Cases from White Castle, or in other words, 600 sliders,” he admits. “With how much I love White Castle that many sliders could have fed me for at least four or five days!”

Six hundred sliders in five days? Sounds like a challenge.

Comcast is reigning Worst Company in America champion for a reason: we’ve seen story after story after story where consumers have struggled just to get basic service from the company. But Comcast cable head Neil Smit was confident (or delusional) when he told a panel at the International CES that customer service would soon be the best product to come from the company.

Smit told the audience at a “Fast Innovation” panel Wednesday afternoon that Comcast is on the way to a complete customer service turnaround.

“We do need to transform our customer experience, and I think we have a lot of work to do,” Smit said, in what might be the understatement of the century. “It will take time, but we’ll get it done.”

Customer satisfaction surveys have consistently found Comcast lagging behind pretty much everyone. The most recent customer satisfaction surveys, released at the end of December, found Comcast scoring well below average in “overall satisfaction” in every area. In the 2014 American Customer Satisfaction Index, Comcast doesn’t just score in the bottom for pay-TV and broadband companies, but lowest among all companies, beaten only by their acquisition target Time Warner Cable.

To address customer satisfaction issues, Smit said, the company has already been hard at work by moving their “top product person” and putting him in charge of customer service. He was referring to senior vice president of customer experience Charlie Herrin, who the company promised in September would be on hand to fix customers’ cable experiences.

“We expect that customer service will soon be one of our best products,” Smit concluded optimistically, while we all rolled our eyes.

Per popular demand from the fans, YouTuber Eric95, the creator of Super Mario-themed cult hit parody games like “Supra Mayro Bross” (Super Mario Bros.) and “Mayro Kratt” (Mario Kart), brings the first teaser trailer for the next title in the Mayro franchise: Supra Mayro 64.

A group of travelers somewhere in the rural countryside of Russia encounter a long and winding road, quite literally.

You have probably played Tetris. You have probably watched people play Tetris. You have almost surely not watched people play Tetris like this.

During the Awesome Games Done Quick speedrun marathon this week, a group of puzzle masterminds tore through various versions of Tetris: The Grandmaster, pulling out all sorts of tricks to show off what they can do with the classic block game. The full run, which goes for about an hour and a half, is full of crazy challenges and moments, but it all peaks when player KevinDDR unlocks an easter egg that lets him play an invisible round of Tetris during the end credits, starting around 1:10:53 here:

It's really, really incredible. Be warned: you will never be able to consider yourself "good" at Tetris again after watching any of this.

Another highlight from this run: turning Tetris into fine art.

In this sequence, you can watch player Kitaru use his Tetris pieces to create a tricky diagonal pattern. As explained by the commentators, players would do this sort of thing for fun back in the 80s, when they were bored with the game and trying to come up with new challenges for themselves. That segment begins at 59:45:

Of course, if you have a spare 96 minutes, you should really watch the whole thing. It's remarkable.

You can reach the author of this post at jason@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @jasonschreier.

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You may be asking yourself “why would I want to watch a video of a gas station bathroom?” and that’s what we first thought too.

Last month master pianist/composer Sonya Belousova charmed us with on the spot arrangements of classic Nintendo themes, many of which she had only just heard for the first time. I was hesitant to post her follow-up, but then I heard her version of "The Scars of Time" from Chrono Cross.

I'm currently in the middle of my eighth or ninth replay of Chrono Cross, so Sonya's valiant attempt at replicating the mournful wind instruments of "Scars" with a massive custom string instrument arrived at just about the perfect time. Her version of "Aerith/s Theme" from Final Fantasy VII isn't bad either, especially considering the music doesn't evoke the emotional reaction in her that it would someone who'd played through the game.

She also beats the hell out of the poor piano while playing the main theme from Skyrim, replicates the Halo choir with keys and recalls a past BioShock performance.

You can check out more of Sonya's work at the official PlayerPiano YouTube channel, including music from Street Fighter, Tetris and Akira. They've also recently announced a full album of Nintendo themes for anyone who donates at least $10 to their Indigogo campaign.

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Since its inception, Netflix has been trying to personalize content recommendations for users, but it’s remained relatively neutral about which devices you should actually watch this content on. But today the company announced the launch of a “Recommended TV” program that will single out certain brands and models of smart TVs that Netflix believes offer the best options for viewers.

The program was announced in conjunction with the LG press conference at International CES in Las Vegas this morning.

““We’’ve created the Netflix Recommended TV program to help consumers identify smart TVs that offer better performance, easier menu navigation and new features that improve the experience for Internet TV services,’’” said Neil Hunt, chief product officer at Netflix. ““When you see a TV with the Netflix Recommended TV logo, it means that TV will provide an excellent Netflix experience, based on criteria our members tell us matter most.’’”

While the launch was announced at the LG conference, Netflix says that the first line-up of Recommended sets will include multiple manufacturers, like Sony, Sharp and VIZIO. It will also include the Roku TVs that were introduced at CES in 2014.

A decade of not standing in fires. Dark Legacy Comics, who have been around for almost the same amount of time as WoW, and their latest comic strip are a summary of all the guild and community drama we've all witnessed over the years.

And if you check below, the comic might suggest that early years of raiding were all full of love and fun. It's just not true. Raiding was brutal. 2011 though is spot on.

And what's about 2015? For me both the love and the hate side would be "sitting in the garrison."

To contact the author of this post, write to: gergovas@kotaku.com

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(comic by owlturdcomix)

The 2015 Awesome Games Done Quick marathon kicked off yesterday, with an entire week of non-stop gaming speedruns benefiting the Prevent Cancer Foundation. This year the assembled speedrunners are playing *checks schedule* everything.

The action kicked off at noon Eastern time Sunday with a run through Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze and finishing off on Saturday evening with a sprint through The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Sandwiched between those two is everything from Shovel Knight to Mega Man to Blasto — people are going to play Blasto during this event. How odd. You can check out the full schedule here.

Along with proceeds from the official t-shirts at The Yetee and its own Humble Bundle, Awesome Games Done Quick 2015 will also be accepting donations all week long. I'd suggest checking the schedule, seeing if your favorite games have special donation-powered run tweaks, and saving up your good will for those special moments when your money will make a difference both against cancer and whichever speedrunner is taking on your game of choice.

If anyone needs me, I'll be glued to Twitch all week long. I love this damn event.

[embedded content]

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One year ago today, the ongoing epidemic of self-photography took on a competitive turn with the commencement of the Selfie Olympics.

Hoping to prove his manliness against Disney World's most manly man, a park visitor challenged live-action Gaston to a push-up contest — and got wrecked.

The actor that portrays Beauty and the Beast's antagonist at Disney World once again proves he's perfect for the role. Despite being taken down a peg or two by a tiny enchantress earlier in the year and being forced into portrait orientation by YouTuber Blake Platt (via Tastefully Offensive), Gaston proves his push-up prowess beyond a shadow of a doubt.

He's giving bad guys a good name here.

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Ever since Hot Rod metamorphosed into Rodimus Prime in the 1986 animated Transformers movie, fans have been envisioning what other prominent Autobots would look like wielding the Matrix of Leadership. Arise, Bumblebee Prime.

Despite what the upcoming Robots in Disguise animated series might say, humble Volkswagon (or Corvette some freaking Chevrolet for you movie fans) Bumblebee is a follower, not a leader. So were he forced to take up the ancient artifact that once transformed lowly Orion Pax into the mighty Optimus Prime, he'd likely be as big and pissed off as artist Enjaysee Customs depicts him in this gorgeous work of customization.

So, what would happen if Bumblebee had no choice but to take the Matrix and step up. Upgraded and seriously pissed off is my vision of exactly that!

Base used was a leader class DotM Sentinel Prime. The back pack was removed and hinges added to allow the figure to look much better from the side as well as stand more easily. It was next partly dismantled, primed with top quality plastic primer and prominent screw holes filled. The hands are by UFO and fully articulated at every joint. The head was designed by myself, 3D printed via shapeways and mounted using a Lego ball joint to allow more freedom of movement. The large guns are from a RotF Prime figure, the small guns and sword are by Dr Wu and the medium turrets are by the excellent FakeBuster on Shapeways.

The whole figure was painted by hand and decals designed by myself and printed on a professional Alps printer.

And suddenly I'm desperately searching for a Dark of the Moon Sentinel Prime of my own.

If you think the robot mode is impressive, wait until you get a load of Bumblebee Prime here in vehicle form.

Just soak in the details — the angry bee motif, the side mirrors that look like antennae, the Bee-Otch brand tires and that blue and silver sticker on the door panel, echoing the stripes on Optimus Prime's trailer.

Bonus points if you get the license plate reference.

I'm sitting here with the new Bumblebee figure from the upcoming animated series on my desk. I look at these pictures. I look down at his unblemished yellow plastic and despise him for not being more like Enjaysee's creation.

That's no leader. This. This is a leader.

While I gently weep into my hands, head over to Enjaycee's Facebook page for more pictures — including some outstanding work in progress shots — of the Bumblebee Prime we'll never have.

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See you at AEA, Bostonoids!