Geppettofedora

Ouch. Level 538 is “Go outside briefly to pick up the mail”, but most players give up long before then.

Dear Log,

In a book about the international banking collapse of 2007, there's a section about how quantifying risk is a fool's errand.

And in that section, there's this:

«I’m willing to make a bet. This is it: that somewhere near you, wherever and whoever you are, there is a killer. A killer you’ve never noticed as a killer; a killer you’ve never thought about as a real danger to you. I’m not talking about an invisible killer, like a virus or bacteria; I’m not talking about an obvious killer, like the idiot in the 4×4 roaring down the road outside or the mugger lurking by the broken streetlight, I’m talking about a killer who is plainly visible, whom you see every day, whom you’ve known your whole life, and to whom you never give a second’s thought. This killer kills more than a thousand men and women in the United Kingdom every year, year in and year out, yet you’ve never heard a word about the dangers it represents. Bear in mind that cars and road accidents—that’s drivers, passengers, pedestrians, cyclists, everybody—come to a total of less than 3,000 deaths a year. This killer is between a third and a half as dangerous as all the road traffic in the United Kingdom.

Give up? I’m talking about stairs. That’s right, humanity’s friend the humble stair. If stairs were invented today and a full analysis of their dangers were made, along with the gory statistics—the literally gory statistics—there would be an impassioned, sustained, and I’m pretty sure eventually successful campaign to have them banned on health and safety grounds. It’s happened to much safer things than stairs. Stairs are absolutely lethal. I even myself know someone killed by his own stairs, one of the 1,000-plus deaths in a typical year. Yet we don’t perceive stairs as being risky. They’re filed away in the part of our consciousness where daily objects live, not in the part which attends to dangers and threats and risks to life. We don’t see these things entirely rationally, and familiarity breeds not contempt but a lack of attention. Why? We don’t really know. Our intuitive understanding of risks and of numbers is limited. The explanations usually reached for are of the currently fashionable cod-evolutionary-psychology sort which reaches back to ancestral humanity on the African savanna. We are bad with risk because our hunter-gatherer ancestors blah blah blah. The long and the short of it is that we aren’t all that good with risk.»

—I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay, John Lanchester, 2009

Law Enforcement Agencies All Over California Have Been Secretly Using Stingray Devices

More documents have been uncovered (via FOI requests) that show local law enforcement agencies in California have been operating cell phone tower spoofers (stingray devices) in complete secrecy and wholly unregulated.

Some of these agencies have had these devices for several years now. Documents obtained from the Oakland Police Dept. show the agency has had stingrays in use since at least 2007, citing 21 "stingray arrests" during that year. This is hardly a surprising development as the city has been pushing for a total surveillance network for years now, something that (until very recently) seemed to be more slowed by contractor ineptitude than growing public outrage.

The device manufacturer's (Harris) troubling non-disclosure agreement (which has been used to keep evidence of stingray usage out of court cases as well as has been deployed as an excuse for not securing warrants) rears its misshapen head again, mentioned both in one obtained document as well as by a spokesperson reached for comment. One document states:

"The Harris (REDACTED) equipment is proprietary and used for surveillance missions," the agreement reads. "Its capabilities can only be discussed with sworn law enforcement officers, the military or federal government. This equipment's capabilities are not for public knowledge and are protected under non-disclosure agreements as well as Title 18 USC 2512."

The Sacramento County Sheriff's Dept. had this to (not) say when asked about its stingray usage:

"While I am not familiar with what San Jose has said, my understanding is that the acquisition or use of this technology comes with a strict non-disclosure requirement," said Undersheriff James Lewis in an emailed statement. "Therefore it would be inappropriate for us to comment about any agency that may be using the technology."

Law enforcement agencies are conveniently choosing to believe a manufacturer's non-disclosure agreement trumps public interest or even their own protection of citizens' Fourth Amendment rights.

Metadata = Surveillance

An easy thought experiment demonstrates this. Imagine that you hired a private detective to eavesdrop on a subject. That detective would plant a bug in that subject's home, office, and car. He would eavesdrop on his computer. He would listen in on that subject's conversations, both face to face and remotely, and you would get a report on what was said in those conversations. (This is what President Obama repeatedly reassures us isn't happening with our phone calls. But am I the only one who finds it suspicious that he always uses very specific words? "The NSA is not listening in on your phone calls." This leaves open the possibility that the NSA is recording, transcribing, and analyzing your phone calls -- and very occasionally reading them. This is far more likely to be true, and something a pedantically minded president could claim he wasn't lying about.)

Now imagine that you asked that same private detective to put a subject under constant surveillance. You would get a different report, one that included things like where he went, what he did, who he spoke to -- and for how long -- who he wrote to, what he read, and what he purchased. This is all metadata, data we know the NSA is collecting. So when the president says that it's only metadata, what you should really hear is that we're all under constant and ubiquitous surveillance.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Worse:

Maybe the reason Prime economics have become tricky is because Amazon bundled in a video service nobody wants since 2011, leveraging one business' extreme success to juice the numbers of one that's faring poorly against its competitors. Netflix charges $95.88 per year for a similar service. How much of Prime's price hike was really to help pay for the video service that's just a tax on Prime members who have never used it and don't want it?

This isn't just an Amazon problem. In the last few years, Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter have all made huge attempts to move into major parts of each others' businesses, usually at the detriment of their customers or users.

Google, the geek world's undeserved, unquestioned darling for well over a decade, has made all of its core products worse by forcefully shoving Google+ into them. They're leveraging extreme success from some businesses (search, email, maps) to juice the numbers of one that's faring poorly against its competitors (Google+). Sound familiar?

Apple's Maps is still worse and has fewer features than Google Maps, which was previously integrated better into the iPhone and didn't enable as much Google tracking creepiness. Not anymore. (Although I think the fault of this is shared between Apple and Google.) Many of Apple's other applications and services have suffered as well as they've spread themselves too thinly and competed on more fronts.

The battle between Twitter and Facebook has made both products worse and caused weird restrictions to users on both sides, such as the walls both companies have installed between Twitter and Instagram. Twitter is now ultra-paranoid, defensive, aggressive, and full of annoying ads. Facebook's core product is a mess as it continually tries (and fails) to capture the usage and style of Twitter, while annoying people more and more to keep its ads effective. (At least Facebook is consistent: they've always been getting worse.)

Amazon making its retail business worse to prop up another part of its ecosystem shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Amazon doesn't want you to be only a retail customer anymore, and they'll keep making it harder to be.

They want to lock everyone into everything. Just like everyone else. And we're all worse off for it.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

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Seriously though, let’s all take public transportation.

Date(s): March 22, 2014

Address: Northwest Park, 145 Lang Rd., Windsor, CT 06095.

Details:

Bring an appetite for a full breakfast of pancakes and sausage smothered in 100% pure maple syrup made right at the Park.

Date(s): March 22, 2014

Address: The Warner Theatre, 68 Main St., Torrington, CT 06790.

Details:

Known for saying things that most people are afraid to think, Lisa Lampanelli's raunchy, gut-busting performances are wildly popular a theaters.

Date(s): January 18-Aug. 31, 2014

Address: The Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk, 10 N. Water St., Norwalk, CT 06854.

Details:

A special hands-on exhibit of jellies open on weekends and holidays and daily during school vacation weeks through June 30, and then daily in July and August.

Date(s): February 27-April 28, 2014

Address: Fairfield Museum and History Center, 370 Beach Rd., Fairfield, CT 06824.

Details:

Discover the vision and determination of Fairfield’s most famous women who forged new avenues of achievement not open to earlier generations.

Date(s): March 16, 2014

Address: New England Air Museum, 36 Perimeter Rd. (off Rte. 75), Windsor Locks, CT 06096.

Details:

Climb into the cockpits of up to 12 vintage aircraft, a full-motion flight simulator and two static flight simulators.

According to this ars technica article, the GnuTLS library has a certificate validation vulnerability that looks awfully similar to the recently patched Apple hole. "This time, instead of a single misplaced 'goto fail' command, the mistakes involve errors with several 'goto cleanup' calls. The GnuTLS program, in turn, prematurely terminates code sections that are supposed to establish secure TLS connections only after the other side presents a valid X509 certificate signed by a trusted source. Attackers can exploit the error by presenting vulnerable systems with a fraudulent certificate that is never rejected, despite its failure to pass routine security checks."

Date(s): February 2-April 27, 2014

Address: Eagle Landing State Park, Rte. 82, Haddam, CT 06438.

Details:

Enjoy winter while experiencing the beauty and solitude of the Connecticut River, home to migrating and resident Bald Eagles, and other wintering wildlife. A naturalist will talk about eagle biology and ecology, and point out other wintering birds and wildlife seen on our cruise. RiverQuest has a fully enclosed heated cabin, dress warm because you will want to be outside to observe up close. Reservations are required.

Date(s): February 16-May 17, 2014

Address: Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center, 110 Pequot Trail, Mashantucket, CT 06338.

Details:

Get a bug’s-eye view of some backyard insects in the Mashantucket Gallery’s newest exhibit.

Forekast.com is coming back soon!  We just put up a shiny new signup/splash page and wanted to share it with you and see what you think. As some of you may know, we started this project last year, but sadly had to put it on hold for various reasons (Mostly because Ray dropped a sandwich in the database server).  We’re sorry it took so long to get it back on track, but we’re really excited about the new version that’s in the works. One exciting new change is that it will now be for everyone around the world and not just for those within the U.S.  It’s still most likely a few months away from release, but we’ll have a lot more details for you once it’s ready.  In the meantime, we’ll be starting beta testing shortly and need users to help us use/test out the site before launch.  If you’re interested (You don’t need to be a pro or anything –we even let Raf use it.), you can just respond to the welcome email that’s sent to you after signing up on the splash page and let us know you’d like access to beta.

Thanks so much for all your help guys!

Twitch Plays Pokemon looks like an average Twitch game stream at first. In fact, it is a game in itself, as viewers are able to control the hero of Pokemon Red and Blue by inputting commands in the streaming platform's chat window. As of this...

We've known for a while that Ubisoft was planning to bring the manic, mush-mouthed Rabbids to the silver screen, but we now learn that the gaming giant has tapped Sony Pictures to aid in the attempt. "Sony Pictures has tremendous experience...

The South China Morning Post is reporting the demise of Red Flag, which is a government-backed Linux distribution by and for the Chinese people. "China’s best hope for a home-grown computer operating system to take on global giants like Microsoft lay in tatters after state-backed Red Flag Software was forced to close its doors for business. Founded in 2000 during the dot-com boom, Red Flag was once the world’s second-largest Linux distributor, providing desktop and server software built on top of the free and open-source Linux program. Despite its lofty goals and early success, Beijing-based Red Flag has gone out of business and terminated all its employment contracts on Monday, according to a report on the Sina news portal on Thursday."

Popular teacher turned part time accountant cooked the books at restaurant franchise.

38 Studios, the now-defunct company created by former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling and developers of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, left a big hole of debt in Rhode Island when it went bankrupt. A $75 million loan guarantee-sized hole, to be exact....

A skirmish over an unpaid bill in CCP Games' spacefaring MMORPG EVE Online escalated to a battle of epic proportions on Monday, costing its participants an estimated $500,000 in real-world cash so far, according to a USA Today report. When a missed ...

PlayStation and PS2 backward compatibility may soon be coming to the PlayStation 4, a source close to Sony told Eurogamer this week. Notably, the source stated that backward-compatible PSOne and PS2 games would be stored locally on PlayStation 4 ...

"Google and its ilk have always known that they could break the law right up until the day they were invited to make new laws."

During yesterday's hearing, Michael Watson, the shuttle company representative, defended his company's operations, saying, "We've used Muni stops for 10 years cooperatively." It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to recast a behavior that is, in point of fact, illegal as a virtuous act of private-public collaboration. San Francisco's Curb Priority Law prohibits non-Muni vehicles from blocking bus stops, a law that carries a $271 fine. Bus blockaders say that the various tech companies owe San Francisco $1 billion in fines for their illegal use of the stops over the past decade. [...] Google, Facebook and Apple aren't facing millions in unpaid parking fines, however, because the MTA hasn't been writing the tickets. Since the shuttles began using public bus stops, they've simply flouted the law without consequences.

Not only has San Francisco allowed tech companies to violate the law with impunity, but now that public outcry has made some kind of action politically expedient, the MTA seems to have allowed the industry to write the very regulations that are supposed to rein them in. [...] Under the guise of regulating the shuttles, the program regularizes the status quo -- allowing the private buses to continue using the approximately 200 bus stops it already uses for a nominal fee. (Large employers like Google are expected to pay about $100,000 per year; were Google to be charged the $271 fine, its bill would balloon to $27.1 million each year.) [...] If Muni simply enforced its current laws instead of creating this new program, the monetary benefit to the city would be significantly higher.

This might not anger San Franciscans so much were it not for the fact that the MTA does enforce its laws, harshly, against individuals. Several speakers at the hearing had received tickets for the same behavior Google buses get away with daily -- pulling into a bus stop to drop someone off. And while the $271 fine may be insignificant to a company like Google, it's a potentially devastating sum for people struggling to get by in a city where the cost of living seems to rise by the day. [...]

This is the contradiction of the Google Bus, and it's one that should resonate across the country. The Google Bus is the embodiment of a system that indemnifies the actions of corporations while increasingly criminalizing and punishing individuals. Google and its ilk have always known that they could break the law right up until the day they were invited to make new laws. That is the power of corporate wealth, and in San Francisco as in the rest of the country, it rules supreme.

Chess 2 is sure getting a lot of buzz. It launches on OUYA on January 21st. (It's a timed-exclusive there, but will make its way to other platforms after that.) You can get the print-and-play rules here, by the way.

Here's lots of recent news stories about Chess 2:

Eurogamer.

Among Pixels.

Polygon.

BT.

Zipped Gaming.

Softpedia.

Gamemoir.

There's also an upcoming upcoming Indie Games Magazine coverage. Daniel Pruzina of Indie Game Magazine said "Chess 2 is parked between 'amazing' and 'really amazing' due to its outstanding playability and uniqueness among Ouya titles." He also said, "starting Chess 2 and seeing the tutorial was pretty cool. I thought it was a pre-rendered vid at first." Nope, it's real-time 3D!

There's also these older articles if you missed them. They're both great in-depth coverage about the design of the game:

Eurogamer.

Wired.

There's a whole bunch more coming right around the time of the January 21st launch too. It's just incredible how much response there is to Chess 2. Thanks everyone, and I hope the launch goes well!

Food Project Proposes Matrix-Style Vertical Chicken Farms

Philosopher Paul Thompson from Purdue University has suggested "The Blind Chicken Solution." He argues that chickens blinded by "accident" have been developed into a strain of laboratory chickens that don't mind being crowded together as much as normal chickens do. As a result, he argues, we should consider using blind chickens in food production as a solution to the problem of overcrowding in the poultry industry. He argues that it would be more humane to have blind chickens than ones that can see.

But Ford goes a step further and proposes a "Headless Chicken Solution." This would involve removing the cerebral cortex of the chicken to inhibit its sensory perceptions so that it could be produced in more densely packed conditions without the associated distress. The brain stem for the chicken would be kept intact so that the homeostatic functions continue to operate, allowing it to grow.

Ford proposes this solution for two reasons: To meet the rising demand for meat, particularly poultry, and to improve the welfare of the chickens by desensitizing them to the unpleasant reality of their existence.

A challenge for Ford's system would be the lack of muscular stimulation. However, Ford proposes using electric shocks similar to that used in other lab meat experiments.

The likeness to The Matrix has not gone unnoticed by Ford. "The similarities are patent, although in The Matrix the dominant species were kind enough to provide the subspecies with a alternate reality, which was far better than the their 'real' post-apocalyptic world," he told us. "This was a lovely gesture by 'The Machines,' but the chickens in this system will not be privy to such a luxurious appendage to an already elaborate system, especially in this age of austerity."

Previously, previously, previously.