The E3 gaming expo is underway, and there are already a ton of animated GIFs, all reacting to the various press conferences. We have gathered some of the most hilarious ones.
The GIFs might take a few seconds to load.
sources: demoncry54, ta-ble, R7729dash44, taidstick via animal-crossing, zferolie, imgur
To contact the author of this post, write to gergovas@kotaku.com
Like the OJ Simpson trial almost twenty years ago, there are some public events which not only divide people but divide you against people you didn't expect to be divided against. As a Republican you may be used to disagreeing with Democrats and vice versa. But with these other kinds of public events you have the shock of realizing you had very different sets of assumptions or even values than people you were used to agreeing with. I'm not sure of how TPM Readers in general feel about the Snowden story. But there's no question that a lot of readers are surprised and in many cases angry about what I've written on the subject.
That's fair. It goes with the job. But it's led me to try to think through what those different assumptions and values are that makes people react to this so differently. I think the key issue is how different people understand their relationship with the state (in this case the US government) and the national political community as a whole and the relationship between the two.
For me the story starts with the Bradley Manning case. This story has been going on for years and though I generally haven't written much about it, when I have, I've made clear that I don't see Manning as a hero or a whistleblower or really anything positive at all. At best I see him as a young and naive kid who got way in over his head.
When I first heard about the Manning case - or first understood that Manning was the likely source of the Wilileaks trove - I was frankly surprised that anybody saw him as a whistleblower. Perhaps due to the novelty of the Internet we don't really have a lot of past analogues for the Manning type. We're used to spies who give secrets to foreign governments, either because of ideology or money. But mass and fairly indiscriminate public disclosure is sort of a new phenomenon. In any case, back to the issue at hand. Pretty early I realized that to his supporters Manning was a whistleblower who was being persecuted by the government, almost like a political prisoner or prisoner of conscience.
Again, to me that's a total nonsequitur.
I'm a journalist. And back when I did national security reporting I tried to get leaks. So I don't think leaks are always wrong. I think the government and journalists both have legitimate interests that point in very different directions. In fact, leaks are an absolutely critical safety valve against government wrongdoing and/or excessive secrecy. But when someone in government leaks classified information they're breaking an oath and committing a crime. That's a big deal. Sometimes though the importance of what's leaked justifies the act morally if not legally. That is often the case. And that's one reason that while I think the laws against disclosure should be in place I also think it's imprudent for the government to try too hard to enforce them. I do not see how you can't prosecute Snowden since he's revealed himself publicly. And leaks should sometimes be investigated. But in most cases it's not worth snooping on journalists to try to find the culprit. The costs outweigh the gains. Because of that, it's really impossible to say leaks are good or bad in general. It's also true that people can leak information for petty or even evil reasons but the leak still serves a positive public purpose. Leaks are complicated. I think we know that. And being morally right doesn't necessarily get you off the hook for committing a crime.
Coming from this perspective, it's hard to see any justification for what Manning did, which is basically downloading everything he could find and giving it to a foreign national (Assange) with the expectation that he'd just dump it into the public. There were a couple clear cases of wrongdoing revealed in his documents. But the vast majority were fairly mundane diplomatic cables, military records and so forth. What on Earth do you think is going to happen to a soldier who almost literally breaks every rule in the book and dumps the country's email files for the world to see?
Soldiers get in huge trouble for going AWOL, even though one individual soldier abandoning his post seldom does much damage to a country or an army. This is a far graver insubordination with incalculably more widespread consequences. And yet, again, some people see him as a hero who should be celebrated rather than tried and punished.
My purpose here isn't to say, what the fuck are these people thinking. I'm trying to think through what is the difference between the prisms we're looking through that makes us see it so differently.
Here is I think the essential difference and where it comes back to what I referred to before - a basic difference in one's idea about the state and the larger political community. If you see the state as essentially malevolent or a bad actor then really anything you can do to put a stick in its spokes is a good thing. Same if you think the conduct of US foreign policy is fundamentally a bad thing. Then opening up its books for the world to see is a good thing simply because it exposes it or damages it. It forces change on any number of levels.
From that perspective, there's no really no balancing to be done. All disclosure is good. Either from the perspective of transparency in principle or upending something you believe must be radically changed.
On the other hand, if you basically identify with the country and the state, then indiscriminate leaks like this are purely destructive. They're attacks on something you fundamentally believe in, identify with, think is working on your behalf.
Now, in practice, there are a million shades of grey. You can support your government but see its various shortcomings and even evil things it does. And as I said at the outset, this is where leaks play a critical, though ambiguous role, as a safety valve. But it comes down to this essential thing: is the aim and/or effect of the leak to correct an abuse or simply to blow the whole thing up?
In Manning's case, it's always seemed pretty clear to me that the latter was the case.
Let me put my cards on the table. At the end of the day, for all its faults, the US military is the armed force of a political community I identify with and a government I support. I'm not a bystander to it. I'm implicated in what it does and I feel I have a responsibility and a right to a say, albeit just a minuscule one, in what it does. I think a military force requires a substantial amount of secrecy to operate in any reasonable way. So when someone on the inside breaks those rules, I need to see a really, really good reason. And even then I'm not sure that means you get off scott free. It may just mean you did the right thing.
So do I see someone who takes an oath and puts on the uniform and then betrays that oath for no really good reason as a hero? No.
The Snowden case is less clear to me. At least to date, the revelations seem more surgical. And the public definitely has an interest in knowing just how we're using surveillance technology and how we're balancing risks versus privacy. The best critique of my whole position that I can think of is that I think debating the way we balance privacy and security is a good thing and I'm saying I'm against what is arguably the best way to trigger one of those debates.
But it's more than that. Snowden is doing more than triggering a debate. I think it's clear he's trying to upend, damage - choose your verb - the US intelligence apparatus and policieis he opposes. The fact that what he's doing is against the law speaks for itself. I don't think anyone doubts that narrow point. But he's not just opening the thing up for debate. He's taking it upon himself to make certain things no longer possible, or much harder to do. To me that's a betrayal. I think it's easy to exaggerate how much damage these disclosures cause. But I don't buy that there are no consequences. And it goes to the point I was making in an earlier post. Who gets to decide? The totality of the officeholders who've been elected democratically - for better or worse - to make these decisions? Or Edward Snowden, some young guy I've never heard of before who espouses a political philosophy I don't agree with and is now seeking refuge abroad for breaking the law?
I don't have a lot of problem answering that question.
Individual conscience is always critical. But when it comes to taking a stand on conscience it's not just the thought that counts. You put yourself to the judgment or the present and the future about whether you made the right judgment.
Now does this mean I don't think any of his leaks should have been published? No, I'm not saying that. I think it's quite possible some of them should have been. But I'm talking about how I see the guy himself.
Speaking for myself, the kind of balancing I'm describing is critical. But for a lot of people, again, there's really nothing to balance since transparency is always better or because change is so necessary that spilling the beans has to be a good thing. That just doesn't fit with my way of looking at these things. That's why I'm taking this story as it unfolds. And I'm very skeptical of the notion that what Snowden did is awesome just because leaking state secrets is always a heroic act.
[We have a thread now up discussing this post at TPMPrime.]
    
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Andrew.framptonNot sure I agree with the assessment of how an IT guy would not be able to understand a difference between "direct access" and "requesting access." Their job is to know the topology of the network and its interconnections. I am intrigued whether this was Greenwald sensationalizing the story or Snowden being misleading. However, I completely agree that Booze really screwed the pooch on their security, since inside threats such as the one Snowden represents to a system have to meet stringent government required access controls to prevent one person from having any more access than is required and the auditing mechanisms to catch someone downloading large swaths of information.
NSA leaker Edward Snowden (Credit: NBCnews.com)
While leaker Edward Snowden says that he was a spy for almost his whole adult life, his background suggest he wasn’t an agent so much as systems admin or engineer for most of it. He reportedly attended a Maryland community college to get enough credits for a high school diploma and was studying computing, but never completed the course work and later received a GED. He then enlisted in the Army in 2003 and become a security guard at a covert NSA facility at the University of Maryland. From there he leveraged his computer skills to get a job doing IT security with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), leaving in 2009 to become a private contractor serving at a variety of NSA locations — That’s the role where he became “hardened” as he watched President Obama advance “the very policies” he thought would be reined in.
Some of Snowden’s claims seem far fetched — like that he personally had “the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the President” — but as one of the guys doing internal network security for the agency, Snowden did likely have a fairly far-reaching ability to access documents and chatter flowing through the system. IT security folks need to have a certain level of authority to dig down and look at what’s happening in order to investigate possible security breaches and determine their sources, although there should be an auditing system in place to determine how often someone is looking at things they have no reason to be accessing.
It seems that Snowden used his network authority to gather the documents that he is now leaking, although access to the content of those documents may not have been necessary to his day to day procedures. Considering Snowden’s personal views on internet freedom and privacy (his laptop sports stickers from digital civil liberties advocacy organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation [EFF] and anonymous browsing tool Tor), it’s probable that some of the things he saw shooting over the networks set off alarm bells, thus eventually leading him to make the decision that allowing the general public access to the information was worth the personal repercussions of leaking them.
Indeed, Snowden describes the experience as having “an awareness of wrongdoing” that came from being in a position of “privileged access” where he was exposed to “a lot more information on a broader scale” than the average NSA employee. And as an IT guy, Snowden’s access to information combined with his understanding of the capacity of data collection possible and its long-term implications were also different than those of the average NSA employee. He wasn’t just worried that data was being collected, but that it would eventually be used selectively to derive sinister conclusions from the actions of people living innocent lives.
But as an IT guy rather than, say an intelligence officer, Snowden’s divorce from the actual context of the policies has led to some disconnects between initial coverage of the leaks and what appears to be the actual workings of the programs they describe. For example, while it was first claimed that PRISM allowed “direct access” to the servers of leading tech companies, later clarifications from the Director of National Intelligence suggest it was a more restricted computer interface with a legal functionality to request content data. But it’s easy to see the IT guy reading a slide that says “collection directly from the servers” of tech companies and interpret that as “direct access to servers,” especially if he was never briefed on the exact functionality.
However, the larger takeaway here is that as all sectors of our society have become more reliant on computer networks, system admins and IT professionals at large generally have much broader access to the information been carried across those networks than even the people directly responsible for the content flowing through the system. It’s certainly scary that the NSA wasn’t more careful about their custodial and auditing systems. But at its heart it looks like the reason the NSA documents are coming out now is the same reason you don’t want to look at porn at work: Your IT team sees all.
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Copyranter explains:
Prostitution is legal in Argentina. But it is basically unregulated and unprotected. So recently, a national sex workers union launched a sly street art campaign in Buenos Aires. Around the corner from the sexy fantasy image was the reality, and a startling statistic. Copy translation: “86% of sex workers are mothers. We need a law to regulate our work.”
If you're tired of thinking about government agencies having access to your phone conversations and social network activity, while geolocating your mobile devices, just relax for a minute. There are still beautiful things in the world that we've created with our computers. Like this film, "Hinode."
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The PS4. The Xbox One. The Ouya. The Game Stick. 2013's turning out to be the year for all sorts of new hardware to come out of hiding. And now those systems are joined by the most mysterious and colorful one of all: the iam8bit Entertainment System. Want to know the hardware specs? You'll need to go to an art show in Los Angeles—and not E3—to find out.
The wood-paneled box makes its debut tonight at an art exhibition put together by the iam8bit nerd collective and tonight's when its capabilities get revealed. The i8b ES is the work of L.A.-based Travis Chen, who's joined by more than 80 other creators who've made artwork based on old-school video game memories. The show's also going to have a life-sized recreation of Uncle Scrooge's Money Bin for folks to swim around in, too. So, if you're in Los Angeles, head on over to the iam8bit gallery and tell us what the damn box does, okay?
Andrew.framptonThis made me laugh more than I probably should have...
California-based artist Dan LuVisi has a knack for turning treasured childhood memories into high-octane nightmare fuel. Case in point: “No Country For Old Muppets," the latest in his ghoulish Popped Culture series.
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A few too many mushroom pickups and Mario Kart transforms into a seriously strange and gorgeous 1930-style grand prix, courtesy of artist José Emorca Flores, Mario re-imagineer extraordinaire.
But where's Waluigi? With all this insanity going on, he would probably look nice guy in a fuel-efficient family car.
Flores' prints are up for sale here, while his entire "The Kingdom of Krash" installation will be on display tonight through June 30 at iam8bit in Los Angeles.
Mario Kart by ~jose Emorca Flores~ [society6]
To contact the author of this post, write to gergovas@kotaku.com
Stop what you're doing and watch this. It's a video of sand. Sand skittering around on a vibrating plate, to be exact. But what happens when that sand skitters is amazing. Trust us – this is something you want to see.
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The must-read capitalist profile of the week is BloombergBusinessweek's look at Costco and its CEO, Craig Jelinek. Costco is the second-largest retailer in America, after Wal-Mart. Their business practices could hardly be more different.
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Have you ever seen a sign outside a restaurant, café or bar that made you decide that you just HAD to eat there? It takes a clever mind and a gifted artist to be able to come up with such brilliant signs, but here and there, the signs are so good they even manage to make it off the street and onto the internet where they can live forever. Here are a few of the greatest street-side dining and drinking signs ever spotted online.
Brooklyn pizzeria Vinnie’s Pizza is so proud of the artwork and puns on their daily specials board that they actually have a Tumblr dedicated to them. We covered some of their Game of Thrones specials back in March, since then they’ve made some great new designs, including a whole slew of Arrested Development specials.
A few months ago, the restaurant made a special Grumpy Cat menu that might have even made Tard happy.
Personally, I’m pretty big on the Pear and Loafing in Las Vegan options, even if vegan spare ribs sound like they might cause some fear and loathing in my stomach.
Getting 10% off is great and all, but that’s still less than your standard tip. On the other hand, getting two meals for free (even at an inexpensive place like Burbank’s Not A Burger Stand) is a pretty big deal. In fact, I know quite a few people who would agree to be body slammed if it meant getting a free meal and even I would be willing to body slam a willing “friend” if it meant a free meal.
Not A Burger Stand is king when it comes to offering discounts for ordering in the voice of certain geeky characters. At one point, ordering in the voice of Fozzie Bear could have earned you a 10% discount and delivering jokes as Fozzie may have even won you some rotten tomatoes. For May 4th, ordering in Yoda’s voice would score you a discount and dressing in Star Wars gear would earn you a free meal.
At one point in time, doing the Truffle Shuffle would save you 10%. On another day, you could save 10% by reporting your order as Ron Burgundy and score a free meal with any jazz flute performance.
Perhaps the board that the majority of Neatonauts would most appreciate is this Dalek one that promises a free meal if you arrive in a TARDIS.
Sometimes you can tell a discount was created by bored employees who just need something entertaining to help them get through the day. Of course, any Sean Connery impression would be lacking without a “the-rapists” joke and that just seems awkward to work into a restaurant order, so the employees very well may have been disappointed by their discount offer by the end of the day.
I can’t think of anything that makes me want a burger more than cats. Actually, that’s a lie, for some reason cats and burgers just make me think of a hairball burger, which makes me never want to eat again. Regardless, this sign spotted by Redditor kenpachi11 that features a well-read cat still makes me want to support the burger joint that put it out, even if that just means buying a bottle of soda.
Did the “Red Wedding” episode of Game of Thrones get you down, well, remember, contrary to what the Starks always warn us, summer is coming -and that means cooling down with some a Venti passion tea lemonade. Even Joffery couldn’t have an attitude about something that refreshing.
Oh no! Ned is back from the grave to remind us that winter is, in fact, coming. Oh, wait, he’s just back from the grave to recommend we order an eggnog latte when the weather cools down again. Gee, that’s much less creepy.
Hey, at least the artwork, by Justin Lawrence Devine, looks fantastic.
No matter how cold it gets in the winter, Flying Saucer Pizza Company promises to be warmer than a tauntan and much tastier. As if this sign and the restaurant’s name didn’t already emphasize how awesome this place is, then don’t miss the rest of the photos on That’s Nerdalicious, which show off the place’s great Borg statue and fantastic art featuring space-travelling pugs.
A lot of coffee shop owners are hesitant to take a stance on divisive public issues. Fortunately, Fayes is willing to put themselves out there no matter what the detractors think about their beliefs.
I can’t help but wonder how many people went in to this cafe just to screw with the toilet paper dispensers after seeing this sign spotted by Redditor suburbanite.
It’s hard not to wonder if a slice of pizza should ever cost more than a dollar if you find a place that offers a great slice of pizza for a dollar. But that doesn’t make the use of memes to explore that thought any less fantastic.
The only problem with this sign is that those who would be able take advantage of the deal would never actually realize their friends were imaginary, which means adult Calvin would probably waste money all night buying drinks for a probably very threadbare Hobbes. This was spotted by Redditor stinkyrat who was excited to finally have a place where he could go with all of his friends.
You probably won’t get syphillus, can stave off the zombies and meet Zuul at Cajun Mikes? Count me in. Apparently this ad also suckered in Redditor scansinboy too.
So, would you guys eat or drink at any of these joints and have you ever seen any hilarious eatery, café or tavern signs that could have blown these ones away?
Andrew.framptonIf you have not watched GoT yet: SPOILERS!!!
Game of Thrones is a lot of things—fantasy drama, water-cooler provocateur, softcore porno—but it is most certainly not a kid's show. Someone should really invent a filter, like those gore-filters they have in video games. And hey, what do you know, someone did! (Spoilers after the break!)
SPOILERS FOR THIS WEEK'S GAME OF THRONES FOLLOW
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FOR REAL
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HERE THEY COME, BABY
Over at the recently launched (and excellent) TV site Previously.TV, David T. Cole has put together three outstanding gifs censoring the instantly infamous Red Wedding scene for kid-appropriateness.
My favorite one is the monkey, because obviously.
Photo: Florestan Korp
Forget graffiti! Dutch designer Thor ter Kulve is putting the "fun" back into functional civic infrastructure with ... furniture!
Joseph Flaherty of Wired wrote:
[Thor ter Kulve's] projects include a swing that can be surreptitiously clamped to a light pole, a wacky sprinkler designed to be mounted on a fire hydrant, and a cozy fireplace crafted to sit on top of a public trash can.
Ter Kulve’s mission is to transform dull locations into stimulating destinations with small tweaks to their design. In a time of economic hardship he is trying to maximize the value of public space, even if it means occasionally running afoul of zoning boards or police officers.
“In the Netherlands it is forbidden to attach anything to public trees, not even a birdhouse, let alone a swing,” he says. “But this is also an issue I like to address — why do we use this common field in this way? And aren’t the rules preventing joyfulness to happen?”
Take a look at more of ter Kulve's art projects:
Andrew.framptonGood times with slow motion.
A studio filled with slo-mo fun:
Bruton Stroube // Slo-mo Booth Supercut from Bruton Stroube Studios on Vimeo.
Andrew.frampton@Skippy
Like St. Vincent before him, an animated Stephin Merritt has done a cover of a song from Bob’s Burgers for the Bob’s Buskers series. In this edition, Merritt covers “Electric Love” from season three episode “Topsy,” in which all three of the Blecher children, along with their aunt Gayle and landlord Mr. Fischoeder put on a play about Thomas Edison’s affair with an elephant in an attempt to devastate Kristen Schaal-voiced character Louise’s Edison-obsessed teacher. The clip features the family at the park watching Merritt as Topsy with an assist from Kenny Mellman (Kiki & Herb) as the inventor. It is undeniably delightful. The Buskers series is no the first instance of a band covering a Burgers cut, as the National did their own version of Linda Belcher’s Thanksgiving Song in time for the holiday last year. In a perfect world, “Butts, Butts, Butts” from “Art Crawl” will get the Buskers treatment by Diplo. It just feels right. Watch the Merritt clip over at NYMag.
There were two types of people watching Game of Thrones last night. Those who had read the books, and knew what was coming. And those who had not, and inevitably lost their shit.
Without getting into spoiler territory, let's just say important things happened that, had you not been previously aware, might have come as a shock. Which probably explains why so many people around the world who had read the books got their cameras out and filmed the reactions of those who had not.
Laugh if you want, but I can sympathise. I knew what was coming and was still a little caught of guard, especially with what happens at the very start. You know. The bit that's not in the books but which ends very badly.
Game of Thrones: Red Wedding Reactions Compilation [YouTube]
Andrew.framptonSomeone hunt this down and I WILL buy and wear it.
Submitted by: Unknown
Forget canvases. Forget dull poses. Forget all that. That's exactly what artist Hikaru Cho is doing, so you should, too.
Here, you are looking at Beat Takeshi—well, a painting of Beat Takeshi. In case you are not familiar with Takeshi, he's a famous movie director, actor, and comedian. He also starred in a notoriously difficult video game.
This painting of him is most unusual.
See?
Hikaru Cho (aka "Chooo-san") is a young Japanese artist Kotaku featured last year. She uses acrylic paint to create her unique body art.
As previously mentioned, she began doodling eyes on her hands while taking study breaks. The art was so cool and interesting that she started uploading pics to the internet.
Even though Cho is still in art school, she's already gained the attention of some of Japan's biggest celebrities.
Below, check out her body art of and with major Japanese stars, like singer and actress Anna Tsuchiya, influential producer Terry Ito, and big time comedian George Tokoro.
Up top, that's model Nozomi Sasaki.
Here, you can see how the Beat Takeshi painting compares with the real Beat Takeshi (next to Takeshi with blond hair, that's George Tokoro).
Photos: shoba_ba 1, 2, 3, Face to Face, Open Your Heart, The spine fixer Mr.Tokoro
To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft.
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.
