Bewarethewumpus

gameraboy:

This is 100% accurate.

Peanuts, Jan 31, 1951

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Author : EL Conrad

Temps pour out of slots, lining the windows and tapping the chipspecs implanted in their skulls. All that platform switching — everyone going from database to real time data simultaneously — causes a sysglitch that forecloses production until a tekfix.

A maximan admonishes the workers, “Don’t negi on storm, platform up shortly. Yay!”

“And if we need to go?” Outside, snow is falling fast and furious.

Maximan’s face stretches as she smiles double wide. “U can go. Who says no? UR all expendable. But we heart U and we plus U so if U go, don’t come back.” Her expression is distracted as nows play on her brain screen. “Reduction is production!” she finishes with forced cheer and the company motto.

No one reminds her that they aren’t reducing shit until she gets a tekfix. So young, so beautiful, and so brimming with nowpow, or maybe tompow, in any case just 24 and already a maximan at Midcorp — who would dare disturb her with fact?

It’s efficiency that eventually encumbers.Managers gotta keep it rolling or heads roll. Later has already been planned and predicted, workflowed, whiteboarded, and graphed, every aspect quantified and then spiced with a dose of chaos math. There are objectives and known results (OKRs). Metrics exist on what was and is and will be.

Output — production or reduction, whichever — has already been measured. Deficiencies are intolerable, and maximan changes her tune soon enough, expelling the temps right after transport is halted, “Secu’s #1 so go home! Grow balance. Have it all. Plus yes 2 checking 4 txts. U rule!”

Ellipsis and Wolf trek downcenter. Everything is lovely. Center is still, storm active, a reversal of biz as usual.

It’s late when they cross into the Point, fringe territory. Across the river, Metropolis is invisible, the perpetual glow of its mammoth structures dimmed to dark. But the Point is always powered. Corp’s most valuable pop shops are here. Liquid gold is the biggest biz, so there’s always juice to process piss.

At the factory where the couple rents a cube, the vidgard’s on the fritz. They take the prohibited fire escape to the roof, use of which is forbidden. Wolf lowers himself over the edge one flight to their window ledge, kicks the plastiglass out.

Ellipsis uses a system she devised and that Wolf strongly advises against, a superfine cord of woven space string, the kind they put in Secucorp laser shields. It works but does not look very secure.

When they first met, El’s daring thrilled Wolf — he never encountered a creature as alive in all the universe. But a decade plus can wear on any duo and now he wonders if the alien’s dangerous streak is dull, just a death wish. All life forms have defective creatures that get those when knowledge infects.

Wolf knows — as a boy he spotted his grandfather’s body hanging from the rafters of his forest cabin, a rope wrapped round his neck. It happened on the day the nows announced that corp was gov and gov was corp and that the twain had met at last in the name of efficiency and the single system system.

Still, despite her mate’s suspicions, Ellipsis is the one with hope. She doesn’t articulate this to Wolf because his magical realism involves a higher proportion of real to magic than hers; he disdains hope as a kind of corrupt, delusional philo for the consolation of morons. “That shit’s totally passe,” he like to say. “Went out with the separation of corp and state.”

Author : Roger Dale Trexler

Peterson peered out through the energy bubble surrounding him and surveyed the place he had arrived in. It was strange, this place, totally unlike his own dimension. The light was different. It cast a halo of yellow around everything, and it took his eyes a moment to adjust. When they did, he saw the scientists looking in on him. They were human, like he was. It was yet another surprise of many surprises.

He listened as the scientists talked.

“I don’t understand it,” said Professor Furia. “This man….” He turned and pointed at the man behind the glass “…should not be here.”

Professor Simpson nodded and walked to the glass case. “Have we finally opened the portal into another dimension?” he asked.

Furia replied, “I think so.”

Then, he turned and regarded Peterson.

Their experiment had been virtually fruitless till now. They had sent several short ionic bursts into a radioactive isotope. A strange reaction had occurred; but, beyond that….nothing.

Till now.

After a particularly powerful burst into the isotope, Peterson appeared in the isolation chamber. Everyone was dumbfounded. Little did they know that Peterson had been working in his dimension to fix the mess they made. Each time they exploded an isotope, they opened a breach in his universe. Their latest experiment had opened a slit wide enough for Peterson to come through, and he did. He surrounded himself with a stasis barrier to hold in his own anti-matter and stepped into the opening.

Now, he peered at the scientists causing all the destruction. Furia and Simpson did not understand that they had breached an anti-matter universe from within a matter universe. They did not see the disintegration of planets, the screaming of millions as they sizzled out of existence.

“He shouldn’t be here,” Furia said. Then, he pursed his chin to his face. “You don’t think….?”

Simpson nodded. He turned to Peterson. “Do you understand me?” he asked.

Peterson nodded back.

“How is that possible?” asked Furia. Then, he saw the small device attached to Peterson’s chest. He pointed at it. “Is that thing translating for you?”

Peterson nodded again.

“Amazing!” Simpson said. “We don’t have anything like it over here.”

The two matter scientists looked at each other. Their only thought was that, if they could get that device, they would be able to fund their research with it for the rest of their lives.

“Why are you here?” asked Furia.

For a moment, Peterson did not answer. Then, he said: “To stop you.”

“Stop us?” asked Simpson.

“Yes. What you’re doing is destroying my universe.”

“We didn’t mean to,” said Furia. “We just need to know.”

“Know what?” asked Peterson. “That there are other universes?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there are….and you’re destroying one.”

He touched something in his palm.

“What’s that?” asked Furia.

“I’m sorry,” Peterson said. “But I have to seal the breach. Forgive me.”

He looked the two scientists in the eyes as he flicked the switch that broke the stasis barrier between the matter and anti-matter universes.

As the three scientists sizzled, then imploded, the breach between the universes was sealed, and both universes were safe again….for awhile.

Author : Gray Blix

I know, I know, a blog is not the most effective way to warn humanity about an extraterrestrial threat, but I can’t get the mainstream media to take me seriously. I can’t even get supermarket tabloids to answer my phone calls and emails. Photos of UFOs or ETs would get their attention, but I don’t have any. I just have alien voices in my head, and they’re apparently not newsworthy. Too many other people are walking around talking to themselves, like me. Which is my point, actually. I used to avoid such people, but now I seek them out to compare stories, and I’ve found that a lot of them are possessed by aliens. Remember that movie about a guy who gets hold of some special sunglasses that allow him to see aliens disguised as humans? Well, that’s me! Except I don’t need the sunglasses. And the aliens aren’t disguised as humans. They’re communicating with humans. Telepathically.

“Possessed” is not exactly the right word to describe this. It’s not like those movies about demons taking control of people. It’s more like a Vulcan mind meld. But not a one-time link. An ongoing conversation. Like that movie about a guy who communicates telepathically with a girl’s brain in a jar. That was a comedy, but this is serious. Really. Yeah, I can see why nobody pays attention to my warnings. Look, forget all that movie stuff. Let me boil it all down to a simple message: DO NOT TRY TO COMMUNICATE WITH ALIENS TELEPATHICALLY. Don’t do it. Don’t even think about doing it.

Well, OK, I think it’s safe to read this one-page blog, but only to get the message about NOT doing that other thing, so that you can prevent the aliens from getting into your mind the way they got into mine. Long story short, last summer my girlfriend and I were sitting on the porch swing at my parents cabin just looking up at the stars, and we saw a light moving across the sky. I said it was a UFO. She said it was an airplane. I leaned forward and thought, hey, you up there, if you’re an ET give me a sign. It stopped. I fell out of the swing, and when I looked up again I couldn’t pick out that light from amongst all the stars. But they had picked out my mind from amongst 7 billion humans. That’s how they got in. I invited them.

Fast forward to the present. I no longer have a girlfriend. My parents think I’m nuts. I dropped out of college. Not a day has gone by that aliens have not communicated with me. When I’m not out aimlessly wandering the streets starting conversations with people who talk to themselves, I spend a lot of time in my room watching movies. The aliens watch them through me. They’re not interested in the contents of my brain anymore, having thoroughly reviewed my memories and analyzed my cognitive processes. At this stage, I function as a streaming media device.

One day we watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and I asked why they’d never abducted me. I know, I know, a stupid question. It’s like I’m always looking for trouble. Anyway, they said they don’t do that much anymore. There’s nothing left to learn about the anatomy of humans or cows or any of the other earthly creatures they have dissected. Their clinical interest is all about minds now. Or so they say. But I don’t think it’s our scientific value that keeps them connected to us. It’s our entertainment value.

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From the mouth – or rather, the keyboard – of Hironobu Sakaguchi.

If you're a fan of the Final Fantasy series, you've heard of him. The man's blood and tears are in the genes of the game series, and while he no longer works at Square Enix, his influence remains.

In a Weekly Famitsu interview between Sakaguchi and current Final Fantasy helmsman, Yoshinori Kitase, the two titans of the JRPG world talked about their past, working together on Final Fantasy, and just what it is.

Sakaguchi and Kitase first worked together on Final Fantasy V, a game that initially never got a Western release. Recalled Kitase, "Mr. Sakaguchi and I worked on [the game's] events in a relay, so when we would go to work, the first thing we'd do is check the data the other had put up to check the continuity. We'd see each other's work and think 'I'll make something even better!' in a sort of competition."

The friendly rivalry between the two creators let had vastly different styles in their development on the game, with Sakaguchi focusing on drama and Kitase going for awe-inspiring spectacle. Said Sakaguchi, "Kitase was talented at making events that played out in a spectacle, like the avalanche event. I realized, I can't beat him there, so I went for the 'make you cry' direction. I figured I'd have to fight with emotional drama."

Kitase took on the role of director after Final Fantasy V, creating Final Fantasy VI, VII, and VIII, before settling in the producer's chair. It was during the development of Final Fantasy XIII when out of the blue, he reached out to Sakaguchi asking just what this series that Sakaguchi had created was. "I was talking with director Toriyama about 'what is Final Fantasy?'" Kitase said. "He said, 'With Disney, they have the words of Walt Disney that the modern animators still carry on. For Final Fantasy, shouldn't those words be Mr. Sakaguchi's?'"

"Final Fantasy is Final Fantasy if it has a blue window with text in it."

Very few members of the staff working on Final Fantasy XIII had ever worked alongside Sakaguchi, and Kitase thought some words of inspiration from the series creator would help. The two men had dinner, during which Kitase posed the question to Sakaguchi. Sakaguchi's initial response was "Final Fantasy is Final Fantasy if it has a blue window with text in it." This initial response was more or a knee-jerk reaction brought on by alcohol. "At the time, I was really drunk and just rattled off a response." Sakaguchi laughed. "But I regretted it the next day and wrote a proper response that I sent by email."

Sakaguchi's official answer was much more eloquent.

「足跡のない幾多の道を、ひたすらに生きる者たちで駆け抜け、最後には同じゴールに到達した後に生まれるもの」とでもさせてください。やっぱ、新しいことをつねに目指してたし、今後もそうあってほしいよね。

Translation:

Say it's "what is born after those who live intensely, run across a multitude of unbeaten paths to reach the same goal in the end." After all, we've always strived to do new things, and I'd like it if we kept doing that.

Looking back, Sakaguchi mused, "With Final Fantasy V, Kitase and I tried to change Final Fantasy and didn't hold back on our ideas. Even if we emptied ourselves, we'd pour out as many ideas as we could the next time around and change everything. Basically, 'so long as the blue window is there, you can do anything you want.'"

ファミ通.com [ファミ通.com]

Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

To contact the author of this post, write to cogitoergonihilATgmail.com or find him on Twitter @tnakamura8.

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An esports team formerly known as Arrow Gaming, successful in South-East Asian DOTA 2 tournaments before a match-fixing and betting scandal undid them in October, is returning to competition. Only with a more repentant name.

Having left Arrow Gaming behind - who are now reforming with an all-new roster - the five busted competitors are starting their own team, and will now be known officially as "We Are Sorry".

While the move might help relations with more compassionate fans, it may not help them in terms of getting back into more serious DOTA 2 tournaments, because some have removed them from competitions while others have banned them for life, name change or not.

The organiser of one tournament that has let them in, the Vietnam Champion League Season 2, says they've been allowed to compete because "I believe in them. People make mistakes daily. If no one will forgive them, they might have to stop playing."

Ex-Arrow Gaming Players reform as We Are Sorry [GOSU Gamers, via Daily Dot]

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Who else but Weird Al could sleep on half a million views overnight after pulling off a magic trick like this?

The federal spending measure passed this weekend, and one of the provisions in it "effectively ends the federal government's prohibition on medical marijuana and signals a major shift in drug policy," reports the LA Times. The provision forbids federal drug agents from raiding retail operations.

I asked Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, if this was as big of a deal as it seems to be. He said, “It’s an historic vote in the annals of marijuana law reform. The disconnect between Congress and the vast majority of Americans regarding federal interference with state medical marijuana laws at last is over.”

Image: Shutterstock

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I've spent a long time playing For Glory in Smash Bros.—that hardcore one-on-one mode with no items and flat stages. And while much of that playtime has been me getting my ass kicked, I can't help but keep coming back to it. Part of it is that, in my experience at least, the players in For Glory are very classy.

Sometimes, when I kill myself in a silly way, I've noticed that other players sometimes promptly self-destruct too. At first, it baffled me. Someone in an online game is being nice? Isn't multiplayer famed for the shit-talkers, the teabaggers, the jerks and the assholes? And yes, when I accidentally kill myself, sometimes the response isn't kind. A self-destruct might be met with a taunt rather than a mercy self-destruct. But, more often than that, the other player will kill themselves too in an attempt to level the playing field. It's as if these players are silently saying, yo, I know that death was whack, and I'm not going to take advantage of it. It's also the sort of thing you never see in casual For Fun matches of Smash Bros., because those are modes where lives don't matter as much, and players aren't concerned with fairness.

I'm not alone in experiencing this phenomenon. Reader Sage Starkiller Gaming sent me a clip of a mercy self-destruct happening to them:

At around the :15 mark, you see the Fox die in a baffling way. In response, the Mega Man throws themselves off the stage too.

Here's another clip, where Alejandro Martínez finds that a Ness player is willing to sacrifice themselves to make things fair after a bad self-destruct:

I've also heard stories of players crouching down to signal to the other player that they need to go 'AFK' for a second—and the second player will stop fighting out of courtesy. These are just a few of the types of stories of great sportsmanship I've heard from the Smash Bros. community. It's the sort of thing that has me impressed with the For Glory mode, as easy as it is to ridicule for taking a party game like Smash so seriously.

That's not to say there is a consensus on how things like this should be treated. Over on the Smash Boards, for example, there's a thread discussing mercy self-destructs where there are some people saying that those who kill themselves in silly ways should suffer the consequences. It's a harsh mentality, but one that trusts that players must live with poor self-destructs if they're going to get better at the game. And some players aren't willing to do mercy self-destructs unless the initial self-destruct meets a certain criteria. Maybe the first person needs to self-destruct at a low percentage, or they have to have a certain amount of skill. Some players also recognize that if you do choose to keep playing normally despite a silly self-destruct, that win might not necessarily feel satisfying.

EDIT: We've had commenters like buttnothing discuss this sort of thing on Kotaku too:

So, there are arguments both for and against mercy-killings, but it's certainly a thing that some players experience, or have to think about how to deal with.

I'm not saying you have to do mercy self-destructs in order to exhibit good sportsmanship in For Glory matches. People have different philosophies on what is fair in a match. I understand that. But I would like to give those that do mercy self-destructs a shoutout: y'all are awesome, and you are inspiring me to become a nicer player in online games.

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Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH the Top Secret Files of Dick Cheney reveal why torture ISN'T torture anymore!

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Sterling Davis

Every single one of the big ISPs has been spending the better part of a year telling both the government and the public that using Title II to regulate net neutrality would be so counterproductive, ineffective, and unlawful that it would ruin the whole internet for everyone forever. Their main threat has been that with tighter regulation, they will stop spending money investing in networks. But to their investors, company executives are telling a different tale entirely: Comcast, Charter, and Time Warner Cable have now joined Verizon in admitting that from an investment standpoint, Title II won’t really harm them or change much of anything at all.

Executive leadership from all three companies spent some time at a conference trying to “ease concerns” about the impact stronger regulation would have on investors, the Washington Post reports.

Participants at the conference of course asked the heads of the ISPs about their thoughts on the Obama administration’s call for the FCC to use Title II to create strong net neutrality regulation. If there’s one thing on earth executives hate, it’s scaring investors — and so all of them deflected concerns that strong regulation would be a problem for their businesses.

Charter CEO Tom Rutledge admitted that while he doesn’t really want Title II, as long as the FCC is careful only to apply relevant parts of the regulation (a process called forbearance, and one in which title II advocates are strongly in favor) then really, it’s no big deal. “It’s not like we can’t operate in that world and that we don’t want to, but we’d rather have a good regulatory regime than a complicated one.”

Time Warner Cable COO Robert D. Marcus, meanwhile, fielded a question about federal interference in price regulation if the FCC uses Title II, a concern that opponents of regulation have often floated. But, Marcus said, that’s really not a concern at all. He answered that, “No one, Title II proponents and opponents alike, have suggested that whatever the FCC does it should include any component of rate regulation.”

Comcast CFO Michael Angelakis hedged slightly more than his peers. When asked if Title II regulation would change the way Comcast runs its business, he answered, “I certainly hope not,” but continued, “the devil would be in the detail and it’s too speculative right now to sort of make those kinds of decisions.”

Angelakis stayed slightly more on-message with the “regulation is bad” theme than his counterparts, concluding: “We want to invest in infrastructure, we want to invest in broadband, we want that to be an important part of our legacy in terms of how we invest in and build these kinds of things and Title II just is unfortunately a negative,” without saying why.

Comcast, like Verizon and AT&T, has previously said that using Title II “would be a radical reversal that would harm investment and innovation.”

These admissions — that perhaps regulation won’t actually be the end of the world as we know it — come right after Verizon’s inadvertent honesty last week. The company tried to walk it back as soon as the headlines began to appear, but by then everyone — including FCC chairman Tom Wheeler — had heard the message.

Comcast, Charter and Time Warner Cable all say Obama’s net neutrality plan shouldn’t worry investors [Washington Post]

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That explains the hats.

During preparations for the filming of a television program at Buckingham Palace, someone found a mushroom with hallucinogenic properties growing in the sprawling Palace gardens.

“The mushroom’s hallucinogenic properties have long been known and it has commonly been used in rituals,” reports the AP, soberly.

“Palace officials said Friday there are several hundred species of mushrooms growing in the palace gardens, including a number of naturally occurring Amanita muscaria.”

Officials say garden shrooms are never used in the palace kitchens. But no word on whether the Queen uses them from time to time in her royal rituals of blood sacrifice, baby-dismemberment, and Satanic fornication.

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Y'know, Rockstar's open-world games would be a great place to make a goofy comedy about bumbling crooks…

The Most Wanted trailer clip from the folks at YouTube's Commandoflauge channel hits all-too-familiar beats that are standard fare for loads of criminal caper flicks. But, something about seeing those familiar plot points done in GTA V makes them feel funnier. Maybe it's how unrealistic everything feels by virtue of being done in a video game engine. If this wind up being a full-scale production, then it'll be worth watching just to see how it actually gets made.

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Sonya Belousova is one of today's most accomplished young composers and pianists. Watch her demonstrate her skill by listening to a series of Nintendo themes — most for the first time ever — and then coming up with gorgeous arrangements on the spot.

I can pick out a tune on just about any instrument you mut in front of me, but what Sonya of PlayerPianoMusic.com does in this video, a few weeks old but currently making the Reddit rounds, is some sort of dark melodic sorcery.

While the themes from games like Kid Icarus, Castlevania, Duck Tales and Mega Man are ingrained in the collective gamer consciousness, Russian-born Belousova is hearing most of these for the first time, save the original Super Mario Bros. music.

Her Duck Tales moon theme arrangement literally brought a tear to my eye.

The video was put together as a reward for one of Player Piano Music's Indiegogo campaign. Good man, Oliver.

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DC Comics has announced that its March 2015 variant covers will pay tribute to some of the most iconic films of the past 100 years. Here, compiled for your viewing pleasure, are all 22 special edition covers, along with the movie posters that inspired them.

The covers were debuted yesterday by DC, Screenrant, BuzzFeed, /Film, IGN, and HitFix, and pay tribute to such films as Gone With The Wind, Free Willy, The Mask, North by Northwest, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Mars Attacks!, and a lot more. (Notably, most of the films are owned by Warner Bros., and all but three of the films were released in the 20th Century – the exceptions being Harry Potter, Magic Mike, and 300.)

Scroll down to compare all 22 variant covers with the posters they were inspired by. Keep scrolling for the full list of artists responsible for this incredible collection.

• ACTION COMICS #40 inspired by BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, with cover art by Joe Quinones
• AQUAMAN #40 inspired by FREE WILLY, with cover art by Richard Horie
• BATGIRL #40 inspired by PURPLE RAIN, with cover art by Cliff Chiang
• BATMAN #40 inspired by THE MASK, with cover art by Dave Johnson
• BATMAN & ROBIN #40 inspired by HARRY POTTER, with cover art by Tommy Lee Edwards
• BATMAN/SUPERMAN #20 inspired by THE FUGITIVE, with cover art by Tony Harris
• CATWOMAN #40 inspired by BULLITT, with cover art by Dave Johnson
• DETECTIVE COMICS #40 inspired by THE MATRIX, with cover art by Brian Stelfreeze
• FLASH #40 inspired by NORTH BY NORTHWEST, with cover art by Bill Sienkiewicz
• HARLEY QUINN #16 inspired by JAILHOUSE ROCK, with cover art by Dave Johnson
• GRAYSON #8 inspired by ENTER THE DRAGON, with cover art by Bill Sienkiewicz
• GREEN LANTERN #40 inspired by 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, with cover art by Tony Harris
• GREEN LANTERN CORPS #40 inspired by FORBIDDEN PLANET, with cover cover art by Tony Harris
• JUSTICE LEAGUE UNITED #10 inspired by MARS ATTACKS, with cover art by Marco D'Alphonso
• JUSTICE LEAGUE #40 inspired by MAGIC MIKE, with cover art by Emanuela Lupacchino
• JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK #40 inspired by BEETLEJUICE, with cover art by Joe Quinones
• TEEN TITANS #8 inspired by THE LOST BOYS, with cover art by Alex Garner
• SINESTRO #11 inspired by WESTWORLD, with cover art by Dave Johnson
• SUPERGIRL #40 inspired by WIZARD OF OZ, with cover art by Marco D'Alphonso
• SUPERMAN #40 inspired by SUPER FLY, with cover art by Dave Johnson
• SUPERMAN/WONDER WOMAN #17 inspired cover by GONE WITH THE WIND, with art by Gene Ha
• WONDER WOMAN #40 inspired by 300, with cover art by Bill Sienkiewicz

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ABC 7 News, Bay Area:

“A plain clothes California Highway Patrol officer who drew his gun and pointed it at protesters in Oakland on Wednesday is still on active duty and his supervisor said Thursday there is no indication that he did anything wrong.”

Just another day in America, guys.

Previously.

[Thumbnail: Michael Short/San Francisco Chronicle, via abc7news.com, view full size here]

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(Eric Hauser)

In a call earlier this week, Verizon flat out told investors that they were not concerned about the effect Title II regulation would have on their networks, the Washington Post reports.

One participant on the call asked specifically if a change to net neutrality regulations would have an impact on “the attractiveness of investing further in the United States.” And although Verizon CFO Francis Shammo reiterated the company’s preference for the FCC not to use Title II, he also made it very clear that even if the commission did so, it would have absolutely no impact on the company’s investment in networks (emphasis added):

I mean to be real clear, this does not influence the way we invest. I mean we’re going to continue to invest in our networks and our platforms, both in Wireless and Wireline FiOS and where we need to. So nothing will influence that.

Despite his reassurances to investors that Title II would not actually harm Verizon’s operations, Shammo repeated the company stance that Title II would earn the FCC a lawsuit, saying that “I think it’s going to be a very litigious environment” if the commission goes that route.

Verizon is not alone in their opposition to Title II. All of the ISPs have been staunchly against stronger regulation since the moment the 2010 rule was vacated, but their fervor increased following the President’s call for the FCC to use Title II. Immediately following the statement from the White House, the major trade group representing ISPs clamored that doing so would destroy investment, despite evidence to the contrary.

AT&T followed the next day by doing their best to make the argument that Title II will stifle innovation and block investment a self-fulfilling prophecy. The company dropped a not-so-veiled threat that net neutrality regulation would make them take their investment ball and go home when CEO Randall Stephenson told investors: “We can’t go out and invest that kind of money deploying fiber to 100 cities not knowing under what rules those investments will be governed.”

Of course, AT&T’s threat is and was somewhat hollow, as although AT&T has been considering perhaps expanding their gigabit fiber offerings to as many as 25 new cities, they haven’t started any of those improvement projects at all, yet.

The threat alone of stronger regulation is clearly a deterrent to further upgrades from AT&T. Except even without regulation, those upgrades have not exactly been forthcoming. So far the gigabit fiber expansion is more about good press releases than about good service to customers. And so, too, is the threat to take it away.

Verizon’s C-suite leadership telling investors not to worry about Title II confirms what the data have already shown: the claims about network investment are, at best, concern trolling and, at worst, disingenuous and hypocritical deflection. The FCC expects to be sued no matter what not because regulation will destroy private business, but because big companies want the ability to make more money at consumers’ expense.

Verizon: Actually, strong net neutrality rules won’t affect our network investment [Washington Post]

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Former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden (Larry Downing/Reuters)

Michael Hayden, who led the CIA during George W. Bush's second term, said today "I didn't lie and I didn't mislead Congress" about torturing war-on-terror detainees during Bush's presidency.

I am not a crook or a liar, Hayden seems to be saying again and again during softball, reverential TV news interviews. But the truth would appear to be that he is both.

From AP:

"I don't know that the report that was released yesterday is that historically accurate," Hayden said in a nationally broadcast interview. "It reads like a prosecutorial screed rather than a historical document."

Regarding claims that the CIA's interrogation techniques were harsher than previously disclosed, he said, "It may be more slightly layered in the details, but everyone knows what waterboarding does. It prompts the anti-drowning reflex in an individual."

"I'm sure it's horrible," he said in an interview on NBC's "Today" show. "But it's also horrible for tens of thousands of American airmen whom we used it against for training."

"I disagree with the fact that you're claiming it to be news," he told interviewer Savannah Guthrie. "These topics and subjects were all out there."

In related news, Hayden was joined by former CIA directors George Tenet and Porter Goss, along with three ex-deputy directors, for an op-ed published today in the Wall Street Journal which said the Senate Intelligence Committee report was wrong in saying the agency had been deceptive about its post-9/11 work. The interrogation program, they say, has saved thousands of lives.

"The committee has given us... a one-sided study marred by errors of fact and interpretation--essentially a poorly done and partisan attack on the agency that has done the most to protect America after the 9/11 attacks," they wrote.

In an appearance on MSNBC, Hayden added that he was worried the Senate's report could transform the CIA into a "timid" agency.

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