On Thursday the head of Russia's space agency "warned that new sanctions imposed on his country could have dire consequences for the International Space Station program," reports Space.com (in an article shared by Slashdot reader Hmmmmmm):
"Do you want to destroy our cooperation on the ISS?" read one of the tweets from Roscosmos Director-General Dimitry Rogozin, which was translated by Rob Mitchell for Ars Technica senior space editor Eric Berger, who shared Mitchell's translation on Twitter. Russia and the United States are the major partners in the ISS program, which also includes Canada, Japan and multiple European nations...
NASA, however, told Space.com later Thursday that civil cooperation between the U.S. and Russia in space will continue, particularly with regard to the ISS.
But Rogozin struck a much different tone, suggesting that the new sanctions could potentially result in the ISS crashing to Earth in an uncontrolled fashion. (The Russian segment of the ISS is responsible for guidance, navigation and control for the entire complex, according to the European Space Agency. And Russian Progress cargo craft provide periodic orbit-raising boosts for the ISS, to ensure that it doesn't sink too low into Earth's atmosphere....) Rogozin also stressed that the ISS would deorbit naturally without periodic reboosts courtesy of Progress freighters....
Just days ago, however, a Cygnus spacecraft built by aerospace company Northrop Grumman arrived at the ISS with a mandate to perform the program's first operational reboost, which may eventually transfer this capability to U.S. vehicles as well.
Business Insider reports that Thursday's tweets from the head of Russia's space agency also included a dire hypothetical. "If you block cooperation with us, who will save the ISS from an uncontrolled deorbit and fall into the United States or Europe?"
On Saturday Elon Musk "responded by posting the logo of his company, SpaceX."
Musk appeared to confirm that SpaceX would get involved, should the ISS fall out of orbit. A Twitter user asked if that's what the tech mogul really meant, to which Musk simply replied: "Yes."
NASA, meanwhile, said it "continues working with Roscosmos and our other international partners in Canada, Europe, and Japan to maintain safe and continuous ISS operations," in a statement to Euronews.
Gigabyte has released a new BIOS for its 500 & 400 series AM4 motherboards, enabling support for AMD's upcoming Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU.
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU Gets BIOS Support on Gigabyte's 500 & 400 Series AM4 Motherboards
The latest Gigabyte BIOS is based on the AGESA ComboV2 PI 1.2.0.6B BIOS which improves upon the 1.2.0.5 BIOS Firmware which introduced a few bugs when running with fTPM mode enabled. The new BIOS not only updates your motherboard to the new BIOS firmware but also adds new support for 'Upcoming New CPU' which is the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D. Another interesting feature added in the new BIOS is the reenabling of the 'Max CPU Boost Clock Override' option for AMD's Vermeer (Ryzen 5000) CPUs. Following are the main notes from Gigabyte (via Komachi).
Update AMD AGESA ComboV2 PI 1.2.0.6B for Upcoming New CPU support.
Reappear the option of Max CPU Boost Clock Override for Vermeer.
You can head over to the Gigabyte support page to find the correct BIOS for your motherboard.
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU Specifications
In terms of specifications, the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D will offer 8 cores and 16 threads within a single CCD. It will rock a base clock of 3.4 GHz & a boost clock of 4.5 GHz which is slightly slower than the 4.7 GHz of the Non-3D Ryzen 7 5800X. The CPU will feature a TDP of 105W which is the same as the Ryzen 7 5800X.
The main difference between the two chips is the amount of cache. The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D will carry 32 MB of L3 cache on-die and 64 MB of cache off-die within the vertical stacks. The CPU will feature a single 3D V-Cache stack that incorporates 64 MB of L3 cache and sits on top of the TSV's already featured on existing Zen 3 CCDs. This will give a total of 96 MB L3 cache directly to the Zen 3 cores.
AMD has thinned out the Zen 3 CCD and the V-Cache so they have the same Z-height as the current Zen 3 processors rather than varying heights between the cores and the IOD. Since the V-Cach sits on top of the CCD L3 cache, it doesn't affect the heat output of the core and has minimal power up-ticks. It is also explained by AMD that while frequency is important, most games are very latency-sensitive so adding more cache was the most practical choice. Also, the benefits of having the extra cache overweighs the frequency degradation so while that tradeoff had to be made, the chip still has better performance to offer over the standard Ryzen 7 5800X CPU.
Furthermore, the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU will be compatible with a full range of AMD 400 and 500-series motherboards. Each motherboard maker will ship out their respective BIOS to add support to their products prior to launch so expect more motherboard makers to add support for the CPU for their respective lineup in the coming days as we get close to the Spring 2022 launch of the new CPU.
AMD Ryzen 5000 Series "Vermeer" & Ryzen 4000 'Renoir-X' CPU Lineup
With Russia’s invasion causing significant damage to Ukraine’s internet infrastructure, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on Saturday his company would bring its Starlink satellite internet service to the country. “Starlink service is now active in Ukraine,” Musk said on Twitter. “More terminals in route.”
Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route.
Musk’s pledge came after Mykhailo Fedorov, the country’s vice prime minister, mentioned him in a tweet. “We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations and to address sane Russians to stand,” Fedorov said.
While many were quick to praise Elon Musk’s announcement, others like Rebellion PAC executive director Brianna Wu noted Starlink is unlikely to help Ukrainians stay connected. For one, as The Verge points out in its review of the service, a Starlink dish requires a “near-perfect” line of sight with SpaceX’s constellation network. An urban environment is not a place you want to deploy the service since buildings (and, in this case, smoke from Russian artillery shelling) can easily obstruct a signal. There’s also the question of how you would get Starlink terminals to people in the city and other parts of the country. Kyiv, for instance, is surrounded by Russian forces.
⚠️ Confirmed: Real-time network data show a major disruption to #Ukraine's internet backbone provider GigaTrans, which supplies connectivity to many other networks. The incident comes as heavy fighting is reported in #Vasylkiv and #Kyiv 📉
Following four days of intense fighting, internet connectivity in Ukraine has been spotty at times, particularly in the parts of the country that have seen the most combat. On Saturday, NetBlocks told Reutersit saw connectivity to GigaTrans, Ukraine’s backbone internet provider, temporarily fall to below 20 percent of normal levels. While Ukraine hasn’t suffered a nationwide blackout yet, there’s worry the situation could change at any moment, potentially making it far more difficult for Ukrainians to stay in touch with their loved ones.
Countries imposing sanctions on Russia also depend on it for oil and natural gas, notes Slate's web editor.
"Noah J. Gordon, an adviser at the Berlin-based, climate-focused think tank Adelphi, thinks there's an opening here for Europe to take a different route — to pursue more energy self-sufficiency not by building out gas reserves, but by expanding its renewable energy sources at a faster pace."
Noah Gordon: [O]nly about 15 percent of Germany's huge gas consumption — almost all imports — is used in power production, and only 15 percent of German power is generated from gas. Most of that gas from Russia or elsewhere is used for heating buildings and in industry.... I think this crisis has really changed the terms of debate. There's a lot of talk today on massive European mobilization to build heat pumps so that Germany and the rest of Europe could heat their buildings with electricity instead of gas, and to renovate buildings for energy efficiency. This is a thing called the EU Renovation Wave, which is a buzzword that can now really get going....
[T]he answer is to reduce fossil fuel use as much as we can. There might not be a wartime mobilization to build weapons for this conflict, but there could be to build heat pumps and to renovate buildings. That's really the way out of this, and to get the clean energy to back it up.... Building a heat pump today isn't going to cut emissions on its own, and you need clean electricity to power the heat pumps, or you haven't made that much progress. But at least with heat pumps and efficiency, you're not locking in future fossil fuel use....
[Y]ou could get a paradigm shift after this, like we did after 1973 and the Arab oil embargo with a greater focus on alternative energy, such as nuclear, and an energy efficiency drive back then in the EU and Japan and even the U.S. in terms of car fuel economy standards.
Facebook is prohibiting Russian state media from running ads, YouTube is reportedly following suit, and Twitter is pausing ads so they don't detract from safety information.
Valve says it’s willing to work with Microsoft to bring PC Game Pass to Steam. “I don’t think it’s something that we think we need to do ourselves, building a subscription service at this time,” Valve CEO Gabe Newell told PC Gamer in a recent interview. “But for their customers it’s clearly a popular option, and we’d be more than happy to work with them to get that on Steam.”
Newell’s subsequent comments suggest PC Game Pass won’t come to Steam anytime soon, but that the two companies have had discussions about the possibility. “We’ve talked to people there quite a bit about that topic,” he said. “If your customers want it, then you should figure out how to make it happen. That’s where we’re at.”
While PC Game Pass may never come to Steam there’s at least precedent for Microsoft to follow. In the summer of 2020, publisher Electronic Arts made EA Play, its subscription service, available on Steam. It's worth noting, as The Verge points out, not every EA Play tier is available through the marketplace, and Valve's 30 percent cut of sales could be a contentious issue in any negotiations between itself and Microsoft. For what it's worth, Microsoft has also expressed an interest in getting Steam onto the Windows 11 app store. Last June, Microsoft’s Panos Panay said Valve would be “very welcome” on the marketplace.
Plunder Panic is an online platformer / capture the flag multiplayer game in Early Access. Get this PC game for free on Steam before February 28th 2022 at 7 PM CET and keep it forever.
IMDB Rating: 7.9/10 Genre: Documentary / History Size: 1014.81 MB Runtime: 1hr 55 min
In 1938, two aspiring comic strip talents, Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster, published a character that would create a new genre of fantasy, Superman, the first superhero. This film explores the creation of the character and his subsequent evolution over the decades through various media. With various interviews of noted creative luminaries, the film shows how the character has adapted to the times and bounced back from times when he felt irrelevant to always regain his prominence as one of the great heroes of popular culture. —Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com)
Valve founder and owner Gabe Newell did a few interviews as part of the Steam Deck launch, and in one of them, he said Game Pass could come to the Steam platform if Microsoft wanted.
I don't think it's something that we think we need to do ourselves, building a subscription service at this time. But for their customers, it's clearly a popular option, and we'd be more than happy to work with them to get Game Pass on Steam. We've talked to people there quite a bit about that topic. If your customers want it, then you should figure out how to make it happen. That's where we're at.
Right now Game Pass titles still don't work on the Steam Deck simply because it's not possible yet to install Windows on the platform. This should happen as soon as GPU drivers are released by Valve and AMD.
In another interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Newell also explained Valve's stance against blockchain and NFTs games. It is more about the actors currently in this space than the technology itself, he said.
You have to separate the underlying technology versus which actors are utilising that technology. It's like, if you're a chemist, and you're looking at nitrocellulose, you're like “Oh, yeah, we can do some really interesting stuff with that.” And then if everybody's buying guns and shooting people with them, you're sort of like, “Hey, this whole chemistry thing is great, but there are some outcomes that can be negative.” Not to equate NFTs with shooting people, but the underlying technology of distributed ledgers, and the notion of digital ownership, and shared universes, are all pretty reasonable.
The people in the space, though, tend to be involved in a lot of criminal activity and a lot of sketchy behaviours. So it's much more about the actors than it is about the underlying technology, or the rationale for what we're doing.
Everyone's favorite quiet little mountain town in Colorado is celebrating this year. After the highs and lows of an unprecedented $900 million deal that renews the series up to a 30th season (and an abbreviated 24th season, due to the ongoing pandemic), "South Park" returned to Comedy Central earlier this month for its landmark 25th season. And to mark the occasion, the satirical animated series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone decided to get fancy.
Since last month, the South Park Studios YouTube channel has been releasing special orchestral renditions of classic songs from the show's extensive songbook. They kicked things off with the opening theme song, followed by "Jackin' It In San Diego" from season 16, "Gay Fish" from the season 13 episode "Fishsticks," and arguably one of the most memorable songs from the series to date, "Kyle's Mom" from season 1 and the Oscar-nominated feature film "South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut."
Now, they've released another delicious track for fans to have themselves a time.
Packed Full Of Goodness
For the latest installment of this campaign, the 30-piece orchestra dug out a fan favorite "South Park" tune from the second season that was originated by a beloved staple of the show's early years. The next song in the program is "Chocolate Salty Balls (P.S. I Love You)" by Chef.
Originally appearing in the 1998 episode "Chef's Chocolate Salty Balls," the song was performed by the legendary Isaac Hayes. The award-winning musician and songwriter voiced Chef from the show's debut in 1997 to the end of the ninth season in 2006. Through his departure was surrounded by controversy, "South Park" and its creators still paid tribute to the original cast member by dedicating an episode to him after his death in 2008, and they continue to honor him today with this soulful performance.
Interestingly enough, while the song was a hit in America, Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway, "Chocolate Salty Balls (P.S. I Love You)" was Hayes' only number one hit in the UK. This is especially mind-blowing when you think about his massive song catalogue with hit songs by Sam and Dave, Dionne Warwick, and himself. It was almost the Christmas #1 single in 1998, but Hayes was beat out by The Spice Girls by only 5,000 copies.
With so many songs left from throughout the show's run, who knows what "South Park" song this orchestra will tackle next? While we anxiously await the next installment of this YouTube series, fans should remember two things: First, new episodes of "South Park" will resume on Comedy Central on March 2, 2022. Second, a monumental 25th season? "The Simpsons" did it.
The Huffington Post reports on "the most drastic financial sanction yet on Russian President Vladimir Putin:
The United States and key allies will cut Russian banks out of the global financial messaging system SWIFT and begin to target Russia's central bank, according to a White House statement on Saturday...
The statement said the U.S., top European economies, Britain, and Canada would disconnect selected Russian banks from SWIFT, which will severely hurt their ability to operate internationally, and prevent Russia's central bank from using its foreign currency reserves to evade Western sanctions. The pro-Ukraine countries will also make it harder for wealthy Russians to obtain Western citizenship and launch a task force to freeze the assets of Russian elites — a bid to pressure Putin by hurting his friends....
It represents a significant escalation by America's European partners, many of whom worry about the economic toll their own countries will experience if they cut off ties with Russia.
"Elon Musk says SpaceX's Starlink satellites are now active over Ukraine after a request from the embattled country's leadership to replace internet services destroyed by the Russian attack," reports the Independent, in a story shared by Slashdot readers schwit1 and SubMitt:
Vladimir Putin's unprovoked invasion has left parts of the country without internet, while SpaceX has launched thousands of communications satellites to bring broadband to hard to reach areas of the world.
"Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route," the entrepreneur tweeted on Saturday.
The move came after Ukraine's vice prime minister urged Mr Musk to help them out, as the SpaceX system does not require any fiber-optic cables.
Newsweek reports that on Friday Ukraine's Vice Prime Minister also asked Apple's Tim Cook to stop providing products and services to Russians — including the Apple Store.
When Dungeons and Dragons was first released, it made no secret of its many literary influences. Authors which helped inspire the game included Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance. One author which stood above all others in the fantasy writer canon was J.R.R. Tolkien, whose work, The Lord of the Rings, had a popularity unmatched by any other fantasy author at that time and arguably since.
Even though Gary Gygax, the author of Chainmail (1971) and co-author of Dungeons and Dragons (1974), was not the greatest fan of Tolkien's work, he had no compunction about including certain of Tolkien's creations in his published work. The most notable was the inclusion of Hobbits as playable troop types characters whose characteristics were described in the above-mentioned works. Other Tolkien creations, like Balrogs and Ents, also featured in the games. Their inclusion continued in the five D&D Supplements and the D&D Basic Set published from 1975 to 1977.
While D&D was a small niche hobby publication, this unapproved borrowing did not attract notice, but as the popularity of D&D increased it started receiving mainstream attention. Sometime in mid-to-late 1977 TSR, the publishers of D&D, received a letter from representatives of Tolkien Enterprises (which held the film rights) demanding they cease using Tolkien's literary creations in their products. TSR then complied with the demand by trying to rename every instance of a Tolkien-derived name from their products and reprinting them. But some references were thought too blatant to just handle with a name change, so the balrog and several references to Tolkien got cut from the texts. This blog entry will try to identify every change in these works.
Election officials preparing for this year’s midterms have yet another security concern to add to an already long list that includes death threats, disinformation, ransomware and cyberattacks — threats from within.
This week we range the gamut from the biggest new little games in Steam's Next Fest, like Tower Princess, Potion Tycoon, Core Keeper, and Card Shark! Then we talk about a couple of smaller games you might have heard of, including Horizon Forbidden West and some game called Elden Ring. This week's music: Coheed & Cambria - The Liars Club
Prime Gaming is offering seven free titles starting March 1! Get Madden NFL 22, Surviving Mars, Crypto Against All Odds, looK INside, SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech and more games and freebies.
One of my go-to YouTube shows during the pandemic was Dana Gould's Hanging with Doctor Z. After a successful Kickstarter to fund more episodes, he's back with Season 2.
In this episode, he talks about comedy with national treasure Maria Bamford (Lady Dynamite). — Read the rest
I remember a time when anime was niche. Before Toonami and the advent of high-speed internet, anime felt like an underground secret. If you stumbled across a copy of Ninja Scroll or Appleseed at Blockbuster, you felt like you'd found the lost city of gold. — Read the rest
"Outlander" is getting ready to premiere its sixth season on Starz next week, and ahead of its arrival comes the news of an "Outlander" prequel. Following in the footsteps of "House of the Dragons," the upcoming "Game of Thrones" prequel at HBO, "Outlander" will go back in time — or perhaps forward in time, but before the events of the current series — in a new series on Starz.
According to Variety (via The Hollywood Reporter), current "Outlander" showrunner Matthew B. Roberts will write and executive produce the new show, and a writers' room is "being assembled with an eye to begin work in the coming weeks." Ronald D. Moore, who developed "Outlander" for television based on Diana Gabaldon's ongoing series of historical fantasy novels, will also serve as an executive producer on the new series.
There's no word yet on any plot specifics, but Gabaldon did drop a tease on Facebook earlier this month with the first line of a fresh prequel novel she is writing, centered on Ellen MacKenzie and Brian Fraser (the parents of Jamie Fraser, the character played by Sam Heughan on "Outlander"). The excerpt reads:
Ellen MacKenzie, eldest of the children of Jacob Ruadh MacKenzie, chief of Clan MacKenzie — well, the late chief, if only by moments, but she'd think about that later — grabbed Ailidh Watt from behind and dragged her out of sight, clapping a hand over her slobbering mouth to stifle her cries.
This Starz prequel won't necessarily be based on that book, but it's one possible direction they could go. Another is Gabaldon's 2013 prequel novella, "Virgins," which involved the mercenary exploits of a young Jamie Fraser and Ian Murray (played by Steven Cree on the show) in France in the 1740s.
For Moore, It's Better Late Than Never
"Outlander" debuted in 2014 and is still going strong in terms of viewership. Last year, Moore told THR's 'TV's Top 5' podcast that he "would've been happy to see [spinoffs] happen sooner than this but everything happens in its time." At that point, "Outlander" had not been renewed for a seventh season yet, but news of that came last year, also.
The pandemic caused delays for season 6, which is adapted from Gabaldon's sixth novel, "A Breath of Snow and Ashes," and which will continue the time-traveling romance adventures of World War II nurse Claire Fraser (Caitríona Balfe) in the 18th century. Season 7 will continue to keep pace with the book series, adapting the seventh novel, "An Echo in the Bone." However, it will be a full 16 episodes, in contrast to the abbreviated, 8-episode order for season 6.
"Outlander" season 6 premieres on Starz on Sunday, March 6, 2022.
Scientists have unveiled the largest human family tree ever created, a shared ancestry that is woven out of more than 3,600 individual genome sequences that date back more than 100,000 years, providing an unprecedented glimpse into the deep past and complex present of our species. Motherboard reports: The immense family tree was stitched together from existing datasets and contains modern genetic information from around the world as well as samples from extinct human relatives such as Neanderthals and Denisovans. Scientists led by Anthony Wilder Wohns, who conducted the research while earning a PhD at the University of Oxford's Big Data Institute, were able to confirm major events in human history from this integrated framework, such our species' migration out of Africa, while also encountering surprises about past populations that will require more research to understand. The outcome is a "unified genealogy of modern and ancient humans" that demonstrates the power of computational methods "to recover relationships between individuals and populations as well as to identify descendants of ancient samples," according to a study published on Thursday in Science. Though this particular study is focused on humans, the team noted that the same approach could be used for almost any other species.
One of the innovations of study is a new algorithm that can more efficiently collate all this information into a single genealogy or tree sequence. By revealing relationships between individuals and populations of humans that stretch back deep into our prehistory, the approach mapped out 231 million ancestral lineages of our human family over time, as shown in the [video here]. The findings confirmed the timing of many migrations that are known from archaeological evidence, but there were a few unexpected implications in the data as well. For instance, the new family tree hints that humans first arrived in North America 56,000 years ago, much earlier than is currently estimated, and points to human migration to Papua New Guinea a full 100,000 years before the earliest documented evidence of habitation in that region. These tantalizing results do not necessarily mean that those migration timelines should be pushed back, but they do offer a compelling avenue of research going forward.
The other day I tried running NSNIPES, a multiplayer networked game that came with old versions of NetWare. The game worked fine, but I couldn’t get out of it. Esc did nothing, any “usual” combinations like Alt+X, Alt+Q or similar had no effect. So I found the game documentation (because of course it was documented in NetWare reference manuals just like any other program shipped with NetWare), and learned that to quit the game, one has to press Ctrl+Break.
Only pressing Ctrl+Break elicited no reaction from NSNIPES. But then I noticed that pressing Ctrl+Scroll Lock did. So… why is that?
There are really two mostly separate questions. Why does NSNIPES treat Ctrl+Scroll Lock as if it were Ctrl+Break, and why does actual Ctrl+Break not work, or only works very intermittently? Let’s answer that one at a time…
Finding the answer to the first question is pretty easy. The original PC had a Scroll Lock key (scan code 70 decimal or 46 hex). When pressed together with the Ctrl key, the Scroll Lock key functioned as a Break key because that’s how the PC BIOS treated it.
The Enhanced 101/102-key keyboards added a separate Pause key; the key is special and when pressed together with Ctrl, it produces a sequence simulating the press and release of a key with scan code 46h but prefixed with E0h. When the key is released, no further scan codes are generated. The Pause/Break key is the only key on a standard keyboard which behaves in this manner.
The 1986 PC/AT BIOS and later systems only trigger Ctrl+Break functionality when the E0h prefix is seen. Older BIOSes ignore the E0h prefix and trigger Ctrl+Break in response to both Ctrl+Break and Ctrl+Scroll Lock.
OK, so that probably explains why NSNIPES reacts to Ctrl+Scroll Lock, but not why it misses Ctrl+Break. Or at least misses Ctrl+Break most of the time.
As it turns out, NSNIPES has its own keyboard interrupt handler (IRQ 1) and completely bypasses the system BIOS. The strategy NSNIPES uses is not unreasonable: The program keeps an array reflecting the state of all keys indexed by their scan code, which is updated by the interrupt handler and periodically checked by the main routine.
The problem is apparently that the main routine does not run in a tight loop and “only” checks the keyboard state several times a second. If the user pressed and released a key really quickly, NSNIPES might miss it. That does not happen in practice because human fingers aren’t that fast.
But microcontrollers simulating human fingers are. Remember the Ctrl+Break key behavior which simulates both a press and a release when it is pressed? This poses no problem to the system BIOS which keeps track of the current modifier key state and processes each scan code as it comes in.
But NSNIPES is different. The simulated key press/release sent by Ctrl+Break on an Enhanced keyboard is fast (somewhere in the range of several milliseconds), much faster than a human. If the NSNIPES game loop does not happen to check the keyboard state in the brief instant between receiving the 46h scan code indicating a key press and the C6h scan code indicating a key release, it will completely miss the key.
And of course the reason why Ctrl+Scroll Lock actually works in NSNIPES is because it behaves like other keys, meaning that it does not send the key release scan code until after the user actually physically releases the key. Hence NSNIPES has enough time to see it pressed. And because NSNIPES is old, it has no special logic for Enhanced keyboards; as far as it is concerned, Ctrl+Scroll Lock is Ctrl+Break.
While freezing can be a great way to preserve many foods before they spoil, some foods simply don’t freeze well. When it comes to freezing eggs, however, the advice is decidedly mixed, even here at Lifehacker. In the past, we once advised that freezing eggs is a giant pain and not worth the effort; we later said that…
Cybersecurity researchers have taken the wraps off a previously undocumented and stealthy custom malware called SockDetour that targeted U.S.-based defense contractors with the goal of being used as a secondary implant on compromised Windows hosts.
"SockDetour is a backdoor that is designed to remain stealthily on compromised Windows servers so that it can serve as a backup backdoor in case the
Secret recordings of a surveillance firm's presentation show how much iCloud data Apple surrenders to law enforcement with a warrant -- though it's Google and Facebook that can track a suspect to within three feet. Apple Insider reports: PenLink is a little-known firm from Nebraska which earns $20 million annually from helping the US government track criminal suspects. PenLink also sells its services to local law enforcement -- and it's from such a sales presentation that details of iCloud warrants has emerged. According to Forbes, Jack Poulson of the Tech Inquiry watchdog attended the National Sheriff's Association winter conference. While there, he secretly recorded the event.
During the presentation, PenLink's Scott Tuma described how the company works with law enforcement to track users through multiple services, including the "phenomenal" Apple with iCloud. Apple is open about what it does in the event of a suboena from law enforcement. It's specific about how it will not unlock iPhones, for instance, but it will surrender information from iCloud backups that are stored on its servers. "If you did something bad," said Tuma, "I bet you I could find it on that backup." Tuma also says that in his experience, it's been possible to find people's locations through different services, although not through iCloud. "[Google] can get me within three feet of a precise location," he said. "I cannot tell you how many cold cases I've helped work on where this is five, six, seven years old and people need to put [the suspect] at a hit-and-run or it was a sexual assault that took place." It's also possible for law enforcement and firms like PenLink which help them, to get location data from Facebook and Snapchat. [...]
Some of the most indelible performances in cinema seem to come from a place beyond acting. One of the greatest ever committed to film was from Renée Maria Falconetti in Carl Theodor Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc," which gives us an unbearable intimacy with the young martyr as she faces her cruel inquisitors. For all the director's severe stylistic choices, it is Falconetti's raw emotion that lingers the most. To look upon her face at a distance of almost a century, her intensity is so vital that it gives the sense that she is still alive and suffering in the same room as you. The screen ceases to exist.
I was reminded of Falconetti's remarkable presence when I first saw Isabelle Adjani in "Possession," although on face value their performances are wildly different. While Falconetti seems to draw from a deep well of personal and spiritual anguish, Adjani is more like a sorceress conjuring up a maelstrom of malevolent psychic energy.
In researching this piece, I discovered that there may be more of a connection between the two actors than I first thought; while the incredible performances are clearly down to immense talent on the part of Falconetti and Adjani, we also have to consider the impact of the auteurs behind the camera. Falconetti never made another film, while Adjani was deeply troubled by the final cut and the methods of Andrzej Zulawski, the director who pored his own personal circumstances into his bizarre tale of divorce, sexual deviance, and dopplegangers. He also reportedly put his actresses in a trance for certain scenes (via BFI).
"Possession" occupies a strange place in the history of horror, a cult item that sits in an oblique space between arthouse and grindhouse, a film that plays like "Marriage Story" by way of H.P. Lovecraft. Its notoriety has grown over the years, in part down to its reception on first release. In the U.K., it was caught up in the Video Nasty furore of the early '80s, while in the U.S. it was butchered by over 40 minutes ... that version of the film must have been a totally different experience.
There is also the enigma of its director, Andrzej Zulawski, the maverick Polish auteur born a year before his contemporary Krzysztof Kieślowski (The "Three Colors Trilogy") who never achieved the latter's widespread arthouse success, largely thanks to his uncompromising approach to his themes and storytelling.
Let's take a closer look at this brutal curio and how it affected its star, Isabelle Adjani...
So What Happens In Possession?
Mark (Sam Neill) returns home to West Berlin from an espionage mission to find that his wife Anna (Adjani) wants a divorce, but won't tell him exactly why. Mark eventually agrees, giving up their apartment and custody of their young son, Bob. Totally distraught, Mark hits the bottle and regresses to a childlike state in a hotel room. When he recovers, he goes back to the apartment to find Bob alone and neglected. Anna's behavior has become extremely erratic, leaving the boy home alone while she is out sleeping with her lover, Heinrich (Heinz Bennent).
Mark refuses to leave his son with Anna and starts doing the school run, where he meets Helen (Adjani again), Anna's doppelgänger. After he violently confronts Heinrich and Anna attempts suicide, Mark hires a private eye to follow her. He traces her to a squat-like flat where she has a second lover, one that appears to be from another world...
Set against a bleak backdrop of Cold War tension in a divided Berlin, Zulawski creates a sense of squirming unease. For all the film's notorious gore provided by Carlos Rambaldi, the special effects wizard who would later give us a cute little brown alien who just wants to phone home, it is the visceral scenes of a marriage in terminal breakdown that are the most disturbing.
If it wasn't for the horror elements and the histrionic fireworks, "Possession" would be a far tougher watch than it actually is. Zulawski goads some truly bizarre performances from his cast to create a sense of spiraling madness. In that sense, his actors delivered in spades ... especially Adjani.
A Toxic Divorce Fantasy ... With Monsters
Director Andrzej Żuławski spoke of two sources of inspiration for "Possession." First, he saw Ingmar Bergman's "Scenes From A Marriage," and felt it lacked something ... namely, monsters. He also went through his own divorce from actress Malgorzata Braunek, during which he went home to find his son unattended and covered in jam, a moment that found its way into "Possession." For all the gruesome horror, it is a deeply personal break-up film, one that has been described as misogynistic revenge for Zulawski's own failed marriage. The director is often labeled as misogynist and/or misanthropic, and one of the troubling aspects of "Possession" is figuring out whether it is a film about misogyny, or just plain misogynistic.
"Possession" is set up to let the viewer draw their own conclusions, and I find it hard not to lean towards the latter. Although Adjani's performance is the most eye-catching, the story is told almost exclusively from Mark's perspective. This is a tale about a man who simply can't believe his wife doesn't want to be with him any more, and goes off the rails because she's off doing stuff beyond his control. He needs to possess her and Anna wanting to do her own thing is portrayed as hysterically bats*** crazy, culminating in that horrific moment in the subway when Adjani thrashes around oozing blood and other fluids onto the floor. It's a tour de force moment, but it is hard to see it as anything but Anna's punishment for her actions.
In its bizarre way, the conclusion is some form of apocalyptic reconciliation. Mark has found Helen, his wife's double and the opposite of Anna, a simpering blank and the chauvinist's ideal woman -- beautiful, happy, subservient, and content to just sit around watching the kid. Anna has freed herself from Mark and birthed her new monstrous lover, but she can only reproduce his likeness. Despite all this, they still find their way back to each other in their bullet-ridden fate.
The finale is unremittingly bleak. Mark and Anna die reunited, leaving their terrified son in the hands of their sinister dopplegangers as bombs rain down outside.
The Trend Of Toxic Directors
In recent years, Shelley Duvall has spoken out about her traumatic experiences on "The Shining," regarding how Kubrick wanted to keep her in a constant state of anxiety and pushing her through a grueling amount of takes (via The Mirror). This culminated in a Guinness World Record of 127 takes in the scene where she is swinging a baseball bat at Jack Nicholson, genuinely looking on the verge of exhaustion.
This brings us to the long and troubling history of male directors abusing female stars to supposedly get the desired performance out of them.
All the way back in the '20s when Dreyer shot "The Passion of Joan of Arc," rumors emerged that he treated Falconetti very harshly to get her to the right place emotionally for her legendary performance. As Roger Ebert tells it:
For Falconetti, the performance was an ordeal. Legends from the set tell of Dreyer forcing her to kneel painfully on stone and then wipe all expression from her face--so that the viewer would read suppressed or inner pain. He filmed the same shots again and again, hoping that in the editing room he could find exactly the right nuance in her facial expression.
This pattern of abuse in the guise of auteurship is repeated again and again, from Hitchcock pelting Tippi Hedren with live birds in "The Birds" to Tarantino spitting in Uma Thurman's face and choking her with a chain in "Kill Bill" (via Insider).
Adjani reportedly suffered from post-traumatic stress after her performance in "Possession," which wouldn't be a surprise; she is frighteningly uninhibited in that subway scene, her emotions as naked as Falconetti's decades earlier. At what cost? Zulawski told the story of Adjani's alleged suicide attempt on numerous occasions, taking a rather belittling tone on the subject. As he said on the DVD commentary:
"When she saw the film, after, she committed suicide because she never wanted to see the dailies, so she really didn't know how do we look at her, and she committed suicide, but being Isabelle Adjani... and you must understand, in Europe, Isabelle Adjani is a diva, she's a big thing... and she went to the bathroom and she cut her wrists with a G2 machine [razor] which cuts you half a millimeter of skin and not much deeper..."
As for Zulawski, Adjani stated that he was manipulative and abusive on set, supposedly to get the right level of crazy from his actors. Adjani felt that the film was "psychological pornography" that delved much further into the soul than was appropriate. Years later, she said that she would never allow herself to be insulted by a director like that again. In an interview, she said:
"Possession is only the type of film you can do when you are young. [Zulawski] is a director that makes you sink into his world of darkness and his demons. It is okay when you are young, because you are excited to go there. His movies are very special, but they totally focus on women, as if they are lilies. It was quite an amazing film to do, but I got bruised, inside out. It was exciting to do. It was no bones broken, but it was like, 'How or why did I do that?' I don't think any other actress ever did two films with him."
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