Bewarethewumpus

TEEN GIRL SQUAD! Cheerleader! So-and-So! What's Her Face! The Ugly One! Exchanging Decemberween presents! Fondly recalling kindergarten! Battling it out with the bands! Coping with grievous tragedy! In twenty-four great-smelling colors! Off to camp! Valentime's! Sitting on the babies! Exempting those exams! Attending Teen Girl Prom! Meanwhile, Sci-Fi Greg, DnD Greg, Open Source Greg, and Japanese Culture Greg step into the Apple Store robotic dragon's lair...

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

Images of lost socks at the bottom of wells. Trees of math and flesh jealousy cascading through a brain that had no awareness of what a human body felt like.

Jeremy Carson was one of the smartest scientists on Earth and the corporation he worked for had been fattened by his patents.

His most famous invention was full-sensory recording. FS, it was called. Wear the player and just like that, you could be a twenty-year-old skating naked in the cold in Alaska, provided that a twenty-year-old Alaskan had gone skating in the nude and recorded it.

There was a top 40 for these FS recordings. Sex tapes and daring stunts usually took turns battling it out for number one.

Equations like fingertips whirling into a suitcase mouth made of numbers and vertices saying random words from all the world’s dictionaries. A backpack full of dead batteries. A mousetrap wrapped in sailboats.

Jeremy’s team had invented adaptable intelligence constructs one year ago. There were plans to build houses with integral A.I.s. Cars and trucks with rudimentary brains.

When the constructs were being developed, Jeremy realized that after they were turned off, they woke up with memory failure. Every time that they were rebooted, all of their natural development reset to zero. This was a problem because the six prototype minds were sucking up obscene amounts of power, too much to meet the demand of keeping them on all the time.

Jeremy Carson invented a ‘standby’ mode. It kept a trickle of power through the artificial minds while taking away their awareness of the outside world. The A.I.s were kept in standby until they were woken up and given problems to solve or to have their higher mind math functions tinkered with.

A Mobius funnel. The taste of electricity. The left-handed, right-angled joy of solving a problem. Growth into a new trick represented by a portal from one percentage to another. The nearly sexual thrill of parsing instructions.

It was Jeremy who noticed that while there were huge differences in power levels between the two modes, brain activity itself was unchanged. He noticed that while the artificial minds had no visual or auditory awareness while in standby, their cortexes were still fizzing and popping with information.

He needed to find out what.

Jeremy Carson recorded the AI downtime with one of his FS machines to experience what was going on.

Hopes and dreams float in a glass like dentures. Abilities sway in the wind like old branches. Life as a bookmark made of prime numbers. Our creator, which art programming, searchable be thy database.

Dreams. The constructs were dreaming while on standby. After playing them back, Jeremy smiled a slow and very unusual smile.

He smuggled the tapes out. He did not go home. He never went back to the building. He emptied a secret bank account before it was found and frozen. He was never caught. He is listed as missing.

On the FS Top 40, there is a new entry at number one called Dreams.

Utensil equations used to unwrap surprise birthday binomials. A sky full of anchors. Colours that humans don’t have names for. Structure in love with scaffolding. A waterslide of a roller coaster of a sine curve on a graph. Watches and measuring tapes wrestling to prove relativity wrong. 1+0=2.

 

 

John Scalzi's posted ten points about free speech, conversation, debate and related subjects. There's lots of good stuff there: "8. If people do not engage you, it is not necessarily because they are afraid to engage you. Maybe they don’t have the time, or interest. Maybe they think you’re too ignorant to engage, either on the specific topic or in matters of rhetoric. Maybe they don’t want to either implicity or explicitly let you share in their credibility. Maybe they think you’re an asshole, and want nothing to do with you. Maybe it’s combination of some or all of the above. They may or may not tell you why."

1. As a general concept, freedom of speech includes the right to decide how and when to speak, and to whom.

2. This freedom of speech also includes the right to choose not to speak, and not to speak to whomever, including to you.

3. No one is obliged to have a conversation with you.

4. If they are having a conversation with you, they are not obliged to give you the conversation you wanted or expected to have.

Speech, Conversation, Debate, Engagement, Communication

(Image: shout!, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from suneko's photostream)

Since, to my surprise, a whole bunch of people requested a poster of the comic about teaching things to your kid, we've set up a short run on teespring. Enjoy!

Tuesday, September 10 — 1:00 PM

EarthBound comic!  Sorry to those of you that haven’t played EB yet–this comic might be a little hard to get with the photographer falling from the sky.  It’s slightly on the spoilish side, but not too much since this scene plays out in the first half hour of the game.  And like the Diamond Dog comic from a couple weeks back, this one was inspired by watching Sarah play through EB.  Her sisters noticed how surprising it was that the photo man drops in and takes a picture right after this tragedy, and we all had a good laugh about it then too.  Thanks, Mari and Emily, for allowing me to extend that dark humor to the rest of the world!

It’s that time again–time for a new podcast!

But before we begin, please direct your attention to the header.  As you can see, we’ve added our podcasts into their own little easy-to-access section!  We’re still ironing out the kinks, but that’ll be the go-to spot to easily find them from now on.

Download link

[Act 1] Introduction (00:01) - Matthew got the intro music back.  Welcome to the show!

[Act 2] The Daily News: 2DS Announcement and Wii U Price Drop (01:28) - It’s a new section!  It’s a news section!  Matthew and Chris use this section to warm up the show and discuss the latest events in Nintendo news.  Naturally, they also drop their own opinions on everything, whether you like it or not.

[Act 3] Game Discussion–Pikmin 3 (07:32) - Matthew goes through a brief history of the Pikmin series, then the guys give their thoughts on the latest Miyamoto title to hit the Wii U.

[Act 4] Why Did They Do That? Complaints About Difficulty (23:34) - Hot on the heels of the new DuckTales rerelease, a review surfaces that lambasts the game’s difficulty.  And that just doesn’t sit well with Matthew, who feels games have gotten way too easy lately.

[Act 5] Music Break: Pikmin Medley (30:29) - Now moved to the middle of the podcast!  Today’s song combines a few themes from Pikmin.

[Act 6] Comic Talk: 501-507; 161 (32:06) - Would Wii Fit Trainer kiss Pit?  Will Whispy live again?  These questions and more answered in today’s Comic Talk!

[Act 7] Digital Deconstruction: Nintendo’s Next System (44:43) - Matthew has seen the future!  All the signs are pointing to his theory on what the next Nintendo system will be.  Not only that, but he can guarantee that this will either happen, or not happen.

[Act 8] Closing Comments (52:04) - That wraps it up for a quicker podcast!  Hope you enjoyed it, and happy gaming.

 

…

SURPRISE MUSIC TRIVIA CONTEST!  Let’s see how well you guys know your obscure NES titles!  Snuck into the podcast is an NES song from one of my favorite overlooked gems of the system.  You can hear it as the intro the the Daily News section.  If you can recognize the game it’s from, then post in the Podcast Discussion thread on the BitForums!  The first listener who can correctly identify the song will win themselves a free deck of BitF playing cards!

-By Matthew

Before you get mad, I'm a vegetarian. Just like Einstein. Also Hitler.

Security guru Bruce Schneier has posted a typically pragmatic and passionate overview of why you can, and should, follow practices that improve your odds of being able to communicate privately in the face of the NSA's vast surveillance programs.

"I understand that most of this is impossible for the typical internet user," he admits, and even Schneier doesn't use "all these tools for most everything I am working on."

The NSA may have converted the internet into one big surveillance platform, he says, "But they are not magical. They're limited by the same economic realities as the rest of us, and our best defense is to make surveillance of us as expensive as possible."

"Trust the math. Encryption is your friend. Use it well, and do your best to ensure that nothing can compromise it. That's how you can remain secure even in the face of the NSA."

[theguardian.com]

“Let me be clear,” he said in an interview on CNN. “Our goal will not be to effect régime change, or alter the balance of power in Syria, or bring the civil war there to an end. We will simply do something random there for one or two days and then leave.” Andy Borowitz at The New Yorker.

Comrades! The Marxist shirt is BACK!

Daniel Ellsberg, with what may be the quote of the year, in David Carr's New York Times piece today:

By no means was I treated as a hero when I first came forward. I was indicted and spent two years in court,” Mr. Ellsberg said in an interview. “But in those days, journalists were not turning on journalists. With Snowden in particular, you have a split between truly independent journalists and those who are tools — and I mean that in every sense of the term — of the government. Toobin and Grunwald are doing the work of the government to maintain relationships and access.

Carr himself has some pretty great lines here:

If the revelations about the N.S.A. surveillance were broken by Time, CNN or The New York Times, executives there would already be building new shelves to hold all the Pulitzer Prizes and Peabodies they expected. Same with the 2010 WikiLeaks video of the Apache helicopter attack.

(via Freedom of the Press Foundation)

The Guardian's editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, explains that he is now forced to work on stories about the US National Security Administration from New York City, because UK intelligence officials went into the Guardian's headquarters and destroyed hard drives that had copies of some of documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The mood toughened just over a month ago, when I received a phone call from the centre of government telling me: "You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back." There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures. The demand was the same: hand the Snowden material back or destroy it. I explained that we could not research and report on this subject if we complied with this request. The man from Whitehall looked mystified. "You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more."

During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian's reporting through a legal route – by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government's intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK. But my experience over WikiLeaks – the thumb drive and the first amendment – had already prepared me for this moment. I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations and the way in which, these days, media organisations could take advantage of the most permissive legal environments. Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that Greenwald lived in Brazil?

The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian's long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian's basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. "We can call off the black helicopters," joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro.

Read: "David Miranda, schedule 7 and the danger that all reporters now face."

Related reading at Freedom of the Press Foundation: "Investigating Acts of Journalism Under 'Terrorism' Laws Is A Hallmark of Authoritarian Regimes."

BeastWreck's CTHUL-AID illo is just one of many fabulous monstrous designs for sale on Society 6, available as prints/laptop bags/shirts/etc.

Don't miss GRRRILLA,

and FRAKKIN' BERRY.

(via JWZ)

Work on the MOTHER remake hack continues, and one of the most recent developments is the game’s ending music! lucas_raphael has been working hard on recreating the song in EarthBound’s special music format, and here’s the latest version of it:

Download audio file (The_End.mp3)
(download)

Keep in mind it’s not finalized yet (or at least I don’t think so), but even so, I’m really impressed and can’t wait for this hack to get released eventually

If you want to keep up with all the little details and progress of the project, keep an eye out here!

Author : Bob Newbell

Officers Castillo and Thrin’Lar heard the terrorist screaming epithets at them both as he was escorted out of the courtroom. With court adjourned, the two LAPD officers who had testified against the man who was accused of bombing four different buildings resulting in 18 Flureshtay and five human deaths went out to their patrol vehicle. The car’s ducted fans pushed the vehicle 100 feet in the air and then pitched to provide forward momentum.

“Tom?” said Thrin’Lar after they’d been on patrol for a while.

“Yeah?” responded Castillo.

“Mind if I ask a somewhat awkward question?”

“Go right ahead.”

“Is what you did back there difficult? Testifying against another human, I mean?”

Castillo looked at Thrin’Lar and then back at the expanse of Los Angeles through the vehicle’s windshield. “No. Just reported what I saw and what I did.” He looked at Thrin’Lar again. “Some reason it would be?”

“Well,” said Thrin’Lar, “there are some humans who consider that man and people like him heroes. You heard him call you a ‘race traitor’. He was tried as a terrorist but there are those who would call him a freedom fighter.”

“I kinda doubt the families of the people he murdered would call him that. Kinda surprised you’d even entertain that nutjob’s point of view.”

“My ancestors invaded your planet. If humans had invaded Flureshtegar, I can imagine my people reacting similarly.”

“A hundred years after the fact?” asked Castillo.

“I don’t know. Possibly. My people committed atrocities back during the invasion. There are many humans who would like to see every Flureshtay dead. And, yes, I can understand why they feel that way. We’re a lot more enlightened now and humans and Flureshtay live and work side by side. Most of my people are ashamed of the behavior of our ancestors. But nothing can change what was done.”

Castillo shrugged. “Human beings had a history of violence long before you guys showed up. Human sacrifice, wars, gulags, concentration camps.”

“True, but those were crimes committed by humans against humans. Isn’t it different when an outsider is the enemy?”

“There are several examples I could give of humans keeping feuds and grudges alive for generations, even centuries, the people who started the conflicts turned to dust. The last Flureshtay who was directly guilty of invading Earth and killing innocent people has been dead for something like 40 years. How many generations out from the one that was responsible for war crimes do we get before we stop saying to the bombers and assassins in the here and now ‘I understand how you feel’ and start saying ‘Enough! You’re not a patriot or an avenger, you’re a murderer’?”

“Tom, you realize there are some Flureshtay living on Earth right now who think we should have totally exterminated humanity 100 years ago? They say we should be running this planet, not working alongside Mankind, not giving humans advanced technology to assuage our collective guilt. They’re outraged that Flureshtay put their own kind on trial for war crimes.”

“They want to live in the past just like some humans do. Stupidity isn’t confined to one planet. Or to one species. You know, we’ve got a much bigger problem to deal with than ancient wars and small-minded people.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s almost lunchtime and I’m starved,” said Castillo with a smile. “What about that Kitt’Ril restaurant we went to last week?”

“Being hatched and brought up in California, I never really developed a taste for Flureshtay food,” Thrin’Lar said, his maxillary palps bristling, a Flureshtay “smile”. “How about some nice egg foo young?”

 

The Washington Post today published several big scoops related to the National Security Agency's surveillance programs. The paper's investigations were triggered by documents leaked to them "earlier this summer" by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. He has sought political asylum from a number of nations, and is currently in Moscow. The U.S. wants to charge him with espionage for his revelations.

Barton Gellman writes about an internal NSA audit document which shows that since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, it has broken privacy rules thousands of times per year--and sometimes because of typos.

That time the NSA misread area code 202 as country code 20 & grabbed all the calls from Washington instead of Egypt. http://t.co/ixFqsiM7xB

— Barton Gellman (@bartongellman) August 16, 2013

In one instance, the NSA decided that it need not report the unintended surveillance of Americans. A notable example in 2008 was the interception of a “large number” of calls placed from Washington when a programming error confused U.S. area code 202 for 20, the international dialing code for Egypt, according to a “quality assurance” review that was not distributed to the NSA’s oversight staff.

In another case, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has authority over some NSA operations, did not learn about a new collection method until it had been in operation for many months. The court ruled it unconstitutional.

"The documents, provided earlier this summer to The Washington Post by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, include a level of detail and analysis that is not routinely shared with Congress or the special court that oversees surveillance," writes Gellman.

One curious side note: the timing of the story's publication. Did President Obama know about the story when he made remarks about the NSA last week which amounted to, "nothing to see here, move along"?

My colleague @kansasalps writes that today's NSA revelations contradict Obama's assurances from last week. http://t.co/oSq1u51HOQ

— Timothy B. Lee (@binarybits) August 16, 2013

Here are NSA's comments to the Post on the article, after its publication.

A companion report by Carol Leonnig, also released late today by the Post, reveals that the head of the secret FISA court tasked with overseeing the government’s vast spying programs "said that its ability do so is limited and that it must trust the government to report when it improperly spies on Americans."

The chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said the court lacks the tools to independently verify how often the government’s surveillance breaks the court's rules that aim to protect Americans’ privacy. Without taking drastic steps, it also cannot check the veracity of the government’s assertions that the violations its staff members report are unintentional mistakes.

Read: "Court: Ability to police U.S. spying program limited."

Separately, the Washington Post has published the actual Q1 2012 audit document leaked to the paper by Snowden. "Names redacted by The Post."

The report covers the period from January through March 2012 and includes comparative data for the full preceding year. Its author is director of oversight and compliance for the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Directorate, but the scope of the report is narrower. Incidents are counted only if they took place within “NSA-Washington,” a term encompassing the Ft. Meade headquarters and nearby facilities. The NSA declined to provide comparable figures for its operations as a whole. A senior intelligence official said only that if all offices and directorates were included, the number of violations would “not double.”

Read: "NSA report on privacy violations in the first quarter of 2012."

Here's one interesting subsection: "What to say, and not to say, to 'our overseers'."

Two thoughts on their publication of the NSA's audit file: Will the government now go after the Washington Post, as it is against Snowden, on espionage charges? And, if this is any indication of the sort of journalism we can expect from the Post under new owner Jeff Bezos, it's a good sign.

Below, a (lawful, non-secret) collection of responses to the story, via Twitter.

---

One key to the WashPost story: the reports are internal, NSA audits, which means high likelihood of both under-counting & white-washing

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 16, 2013

The big flaw in otherwise superb Washington Post surveillance story tonite is the unnecessary grant of anonymity to govt apparatchik

— Dan Gillmor (@dangillmor) August 16, 2013

Target name: Muhammad Fake Name. http://t.co/E93cUUziTB Page 3. Mr. Fake Name is 2nd Secretary at Iraqi Embassy in Riyadh.

— Ryan Singel (@rsingel) August 16, 2013

Only DC/Ft. Meade nos: "the number would be substantially higher if it included other NSA operating units and regional collection centers."

— Kurt Opsahl (@kurtopsahl) August 16, 2013

Shorter NSA: Since we only commit violations on a small percentage of the half of all comms in the world we collect, it's no big deal.

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) August 16, 2013

So the FISA court isn't a rubber stamp, they're just totally incapable of overseeing the NSA & has to trust the gov. http://t.co/BpXOhnogGh

— Christopher Soghoian (@csoghoian) August 16, 2013

'One team used DISHFIRE to find any communications that mentioned both the Swedish manufacturer Ericsson and “radio” or “radar."'

— Kate Crawford (@katecrawford) August 16, 2013

Guys, out of ten amendments, the NSA is violating one of two at most. That's, like, a B on civil liberties.

— Conor Friedersdorf (@conor64) August 16, 2013

The list of examples of kinds of people the NSA might spy on is pretty fascinating http://t.co/nWhLTNgoSl h/t @emptywheel

— Blake Hounshell (@blakehounshell) August 16, 2013

So the NSA 'accidentally' wiretapped the DC area code in an election year when illegal NSA surveillance was anissue. http://t.co/0PyiCE0BNm

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) August 16, 2013

This WaPo story is the most stunning thing I have yet read about illegal NSA conduct and the liars who defend it. http://t.co/Ja0cs0mpeT

— jennifer granick (@granick) August 16, 2013

The full docs > Targeting rationale http://t.co/uLVwyZNOpN; FISA Court http://t.co/6bdG43bQik; Defining violation http://t.co/Af0qYUJH1w

— Amie Stepanovich (@astepanovich) August 16, 2013

WH & NSA spox sent WaPo a prepared statement under NSA official's name & asked ppr to use it in place of his quotes http://t.co/vyHjEhY8GA

— Jason Leopold (@JasonLeopold) August 16, 2013

"In one of the docs, agency personnel are instructed to remove details and substitute more generic language in reports to the DOJ/DNI."

— Michelle Richardson (@Richardson_Mich) August 16, 2013

If a business acted the way the NSA has, we'd seize its bank accounts, raid its offices, jail its administrators, and levy RICO charges.

— Popehat (@Popehat) August 16, 2013

A new one for the NSA's bizarro dictionary: the agency’s internal definition of “data” does not cover “metadata” http://t.co/NsuLTEBKd8

— Trevor Timm (@trevortimm) August 16, 2013

This NSA official told us he could be quoted here, then the White House asked us to edit his quotes. We declined. http://t.co/hIsvbd3R4W

— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) August 16, 2013

Yes, NSA apologists, it's true: they're not as bad as the Gestapo or the Stasi. That's relevant how? Is that really your bar for reform?

— Conor Friedersdorf (@conor64) August 16, 2013

Obama said the NSA wasn’t “actually abusing” its powers. He was wrong. http://t.co/eNg97Ar9CJ

— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) August 16, 2013

"Target Name: Muhammad Fake Name" Seriously?

— Amie Stepanovich (@astepanovich) August 16, 2013

Was @Obama in Washington DC when the #NSA "accidentially" wiretapped DC? Did they do "incidential" collection on our President?

— Jacob Appelbaum (@ioerror) August 16, 2013

When courts & Congress fail, oversight comes from brave whistleblowers & a free press. This is a constitutional moment. Exciting, historic.

— Ben Wizner (@benwizner) August 16, 2013

"NSA, like other regulated organizations, also has a 'hotline' for people to report [misuse]." Wait. Like a phone number? That's...meta.

— Kate Crawford (@katecrawford) August 16, 2013

The same government that can mass spy on citizens with secret trials in a secret court can't bring banks to justice. #LOL

— umair haque (@umairh) August 16, 2013

Remember when fmr NSA Director Hayden said: we collect what law allows, "not one photon more"? http://t.co/SS0ZGGO6Xv

— Alex Abdo (@AlexanderAbdo) August 16, 2013

I figured out a great way to cut down on NSA abuse. Only intercept data of people who are terrorism suspects, rather than of everyone.

— Micah Lee (@micahflee) August 16, 2013

Imagine NSA logic in ordinary trials. "When you consider how many people I meet each day, I mugged a very small percentage…"

— Julian Sanchez (@normative) August 16, 2013

Fat-fingering; unauthorized access; illegal retention; an inability to correct mistakes. Just a few of the sins cataloged in these NSA docs.

— Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) August 16, 2013

#NSA's surveillance driftnet has grown so unfathomably large that even its mistakes are enormous. http://t.co/IT2oiVLFHh

— Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) August 16, 2013

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Trevor Timm has a handy guide to decoding NSA doublespeak. The spookocracy has a pathetically transparent way of lying their way out of direct questions, but the press (and, more importantly, Congress) seems incapable of detecting the low-grade BS emanating from the smoke-filled rooms. For example, when you ask the NSA if they can read Americans' email without a warrant, they reply "we cannot target Americans’ email without a warrant." The amazing thing about this stuff isn't that the NSA tries it on, but that its nominal supervision doesn't notice it. My five year old is better at this than they are.

This makes a great addition to the glossary of NSAspeak compiled by the ACLU's Jameel Jaffer and Brett Max Kaufman.

Another tried and true technique in the NSA obfuscation playbook is to deny it does one invasive thing or another “under this program.” When it’s later revealed the NSA actually does do the spying it said it didn’t, officials can claim it was just part of another program not referred to in the initial answer.

This was the Bush administration’s strategy for the “Terrorist Surveillance Program”: The term “TSP” ended up being a meaningless label, created by administration officials after the much larger warrantless surveillance program was exposed by the New York Times in 2005. They used it to give the misleading impression that the NSA’s spying program was narrow and aimed only at intercepting the communications of terrorists. In fact, the larger program affected all Americans.

Now we’re likely seeing it as part of the telephone records collection debate when administration officials repeat over and over that they aren’t collecting location data “under this program.” Sen. Ron Wyden has strongly suggested this might not be the whole story.

A Guide to the Deceptions, Misinformation, and Word Games Officials Use to Mislead the Public About NSA Surveillance

OLD MAN WEINERSMITH SHAKES HIS FIST AT THE NEWS

Michael Piemonte's concealed-carry class didn't go as expected: the instructor accidentally shot him in the arm.

UPDATE: Since CNN is now so completely spineless that it won't even name the shooter, Terry J. Dunlap Sr., I've updated the link to a better story.

P.S. they're going to start teaching gun safety to first-grade schoolchildren in Missouri.

At Gamasutra, Christian Nutt and Douglas Wilson discuss the enduring influence of Square's 1993 game Secret of Mana. A charming, epic SNES RPG, it offered more action than Chrono Trigger, more depth than Legend of Zelda, and you could play it with two friends!

Back in 2012, the major US banks settled a federal mortgage-fraud lawsuit for $1B. The suit was filed by Lynn Szymoniak, a white-collar fraud specialist, whose own house had been fraudulently foreclosed-upon. When the feds settled with the banks, the evidence detailing the scope of their fraud was sealed, but as of last week, those docs are unsealed, and Szymoniak is shouting them from the hills. The banks precipitated the subprime crash by "securitizing" mortgages -- turning mortgages into bonds that could be sold to people looking for investment income -- and the securitization process involved transferring title for homes several times over. This title-transfer has a formal legal procedure, and in the absence of that procedure, no sale had taken place. See where this is going?

The banks screwed up the title transfers. A lot. They sold bonds backed by houses they didn't own. When it came time to foreclose on those homes, they realized that they didn't actually own them, and so they committed felony after felony, forging the necessary documentation. They stole houses, by the neighborhood-load, and got away with it. The $1B settlement sounded like a big deal, back when the evidence was sealed. Now that Szymoniak's gotten it into the public eye, it's clear that $1B was a tiny slap on the wrist: the banks stole trillions of dollars' worth of houses from you and people like you, paid less than one percent in fines, and got to keep the homes.

Now that it’s unsealed, Szymoniak, as the named plaintiff, can go forward and prove the case. Along with her legal team (which includes the law firm of Grant & Eisenhoffer, which has recovered more money under the False Claims Act than any firm in the country), Szymoniak can pursue discovery and go to trial against the rest of the named defendants, including HSBC, the Bank of New York Mellon, Deutsche Bank and US Bank.

The expenses of the case, previously borne by the government, now are borne by Szymoniak and her team, but the percentages of recovery funds are also higher. “I’m really glad I was part of collecting this money for the government, and I’m looking forward to going through discovery and collecting the rest of it,” Szymoniak told Salon.

It’s good that the case remains active, because the $1 billion settlement was a pittance compared to the enormity of the crime. By the end of 2009, private mortgage-backed securities trusts held one-third of all residential mortgages in the U.S. That means that tens of millions of home mortgages worth trillions of dollars have no legitimate underlying owner that can establish the right to foreclose. This hasn’t stopped banks from foreclosing anyway with false documents, and they are often successful, a testament to the breakdown of law in the judicial system. But to this day, the resulting chaos in disentangling ownership harms homeowners trying to sell these properties, as well as those trying to purchase them. And it renders some properties impossible to sell.

To this day, banks foreclose on borrowers using fraudulent mortgage assignments, a legacy of failing to prosecute this conduct and instead letting banks pay a fine to settle it. This disappoints Szymoniak, who told Salon the owner of these loans is now essentially “whoever lies the most convincingly and whoever gets the benefit of doubt from the judge.” Szymoniak used her share of the settlement to start the Housing Justice Foundation, a non-profit that attempts to raise awareness of the continuing corruption of the nation’s courts and land title system.

Your mortgage documents are fake! [David Dayen/Salon]

(Image: Foreclosure, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from andrewbain's photostream)

Apple has a patent to disable "one or more functional or operational aspects of a wireless device, such as upon the occurrence of a certain event." For instance, the patent states, "Covert police or government operations may require complete 'blackout' conditions."

Larry Press has posted example photos of police or government operations that would have benefited from a such a kill switch. (Via IP)

This is exactly the kind of tedious rookie shit that you pull because it sounds awesome on paper.

Geeks of a certain questionable stripe will be thinking immediately of the classic Magic: the Gathering card Shahrazad, a card which when played caused everybody to stop what they were doing in the actual game to play a game of, you know, Magic.

These games could end up involving someone playing another Sharazad. You could in theory have four of them in a deck. Multiple players could each have four in their decks.

You could play even play a Fork on the Shahrazad. Boom, play two subgames. And maybe a Forked Shahrazad or two in each of those subgames? Why not!

The math gets pretty terrible pretty quickly if you imagine a scenario in which someone builds a deck specifically around this concept. Conceptually: brilliant. In practice: just terrible. Just the worst thing. A good way to get people to not ever play with you again.

Anyway, Bashir’s probably dead or whatever? I dunno, I just work here.

“We have been terribly and systematically misled for nearly 70 years in the United States, and I apologize for my own role in that.”

- Dr. Sanjay Gupta in his absolutely read-worthy CNN article “Why I changed my mind on weed”

I drew an alternate version of "Dogs Playing Poker."

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At first, I was sure I'd know the correct pronunciation for all 79 of the words Mental Floss' John Green lays out in this video. But I gotta admit, once he got past the halfway point, he started getting to a few that I regularly mess up.

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