Andrew

Apple's latest beta, iOS 9.3, brings quite a few changes to iOS 9, including a new "Night Shift" feature. Night Shift is designed to cut down on the amount of blue light an iOS device is putting out during the evening hours, based on studies that have demonstrated that blue light can negatively impact sleep by altering the body's circadian rhythm.

With Night Shift mode enabled, when the sun goes down, the iPhone's screen will automatically change towards the warmer (yellower) colors in the spectrum, reducing blue light. In the morning, the display automatically turns to its normal temperature color, mimicking natural daylight.


Many people who use f.lux on the Mac are likely already familiar with the type of visual changes to expect with Night Shift mode. f.lux is an app that has been available for free on the Mac for several years, successfully cutting down on the amount of blue light that users see at night.

In fact, f.lux recently attempted to introduce an iOS app that featured the same functionality, but because it used private APIs, it skirted the App Store by asking users to side-load the app on their devices using Xcode, something Apple asked f.lux to put a stop to shortly after it was released.

At the time, Apple said that asking users to side-load an app violated the Developer Program Agreement, and f.lux was forced to stop providing the app to iOS users. F.lux appealed and asked Apple to allow the necessary APIs for a legitimate App Store app, but it appears Apple was working on its own in-house solution instead.

Night Shift is currently available to developers who have downloaded the iOS 9.3 beta. Today's beta also includes several other important features, including the ability for an iPhone to connect with more than one Apple Watch and improvements to Apple News, Notes, Health, and CarPlay.

Update: The Night Shift feature appears to be limited to iOS devices that have a 64-bit processor. That includes the iPhone 5s and later, the iPad Air and later, and the iPad mini 2 and later.




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What led a militia to take over a federal building in Oregon? Behind the tense standoff is a legitimate protest over a troubling law — specifically, a very harsh mandatory minimum sentence.

The building takeover began after armed men broke off from a peaceful march over prison sentences given to two local ranchers, Dwight and Steven Hammond. The dad and son have been sentenced to five years in prison for starting fires in 2001 and 2006 — supposedly to kill invasive species and protect their ranch — that damaged public land. No one was hurt as a result of the fires, but federal law required a judge to give the ranchers at least a five-year sentence anyway.

If the mandatory minimum seems harsh to you, you're not alone. The judge in the case argued that it's too much. And whatever one thinks about the merits of taking over a federal building with the threat of gun violence (the Hammonds, for their part, have distanced themselves from the building takeover), the sentence is leading to yet another look at the problem with mandatory minimums.

The Hammonds were sentenced to five years in prison for starting a fire that didn't injure anyone

Associated Press

To understand how we got to this point, it's important to first understand some of the backstory with the Hammonds. (Much of the following timeline is based on Les Zaitz's great reporting for the Oregonian.)

In 2001, the pair started a fire on their land to, they said, destroy invasive plants. But federal prosecutors argued that the Hammonds started the fire on federal property with a different motive: to cover up illegal deer killing. Whatever the reason, the fire spread to public land, burning 139 acres of public land and forestalling grazing for two seasons.

In 2006, the Hammonds started another fire, one that the government acknowledged was a defensive move — to stop a lightning-caused fire from spreading to the pair's ranch. But prosecutors argued that the fire violated a countywide burn ban and was started despite knowledge of nearby part-time firefighters who could be harmed by another fire.

The fires didn't injure anyone, but they did damage federal property, a violation of federal law. (As Vox's Jennifer Williams explained, the militia members and protesters in Oregon don't necessarily agree that this should be federal property — they would rather see it in the hands of local ranchers, loggers, and miners.)

The men were convicted and sentenced for federal arson in 2012, under the federal Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 that, despite its name, also defines how the government deals with arson cases on federal property.

The law requires that those convicted for arson of federal property receive a five-year mandatory minimum sentence. But US District Judge Michael Hogan said this was too harsh, violating Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. So he sentenced Dwight to three months in prison and Steve to a year, sentences that both men served.

In a rare move, federal prosecutors appealed the sentence. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed that Hogan had illegally sentenced the Hammonds, and ordered the two men to serve the mandatory minimum sentence, which they were expected to do after the holidays. Then began the protests and, finally, the takeover of a federal building.

Even the first judge in the case thought the sentence was ridiculous

It is notable that a judge disagreed with the mandatory minimum sentence applied in the case, arguing, "It would be a sentence which would shock the conscience."

But this actually isn't the first time a mandatory minimum law has forced a judge to carry out a sentence he doesn't agree with. In another case, the law forced a Utah judge to give a 55-year sentence to Weldon Angelos for selling marijuana while allegedly possessing a gun in the early 2000s. Paul Cassell, the retired judge who tried Angelos's case, told ABC News in 2015 that the sentence still bothered him: "If he had been an aircraft hijacker, he would have gotten 24 years in prison. If he had been a terrorist, he would have gotten 20 years in prison. If he was a child rapist, he would have gotten 11 years in prison. And now I'm supposed to give him a 55-year sentence? I mean, that's just not right."

Still, this is exactly what a mandatory minimum sentence is supposed to accomplish. The tough-on-crime laws imposing mandatory minimums in the 1980s and '90s were passed with the explicit goal of limiting discretion in the court system that lawmakers feared was leading to prison sentences that were too lenient. So legislators set a floor on just how low sentences could go, creating some harsh punishments along the way to deter crime. (The research shows these sentences and other mass incarceration policies have long reached the point of diminishing returns, and don't significantly reduce crime.)

Critics, such as Families Against Mandatory Minimums, have argued that the sentences are too harsh. In the Hammonds' case, the judge said the sentence violated the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution. But time and time again, courts have upheld these mandatory minimums, as Jacob Sullum explained for Reason:

In rejecting Hogan's conclusion that the mandatory minimum was unconstitutional as applied to the Hammonds, the 9th Circuit noted that the Supreme Court "has upheld far tougher sentences for less serious or, at the very least, comparable offenses." The examples it cited included "a sentence of fifty years to life under California's three-strikes law for stealing nine videotapes," "a sentence of twenty-five years to life under California's three-strikes law for the theft of three golf clubs," "a forty-year sentence for possession of nine ounces of marijuana with the intent to distribute," and "a life sentence under Texas's recidivist statute for obtaining $120.75 by false pretenses." If those penalties did not qualify as "grossly disproportionate," the appeals court reasoned, five years for accidentally setting fire to federal land cannot possibly exceed the limits imposed by the Eighth Amendment.

So the protesters, like the judge, may think the Hammonds' sentence is unreasonable. And there is certainly some validity to that argument, given that the fires the pair started didn't harm anyone. But the mandatory minimum sentence is the law, and judges are forced to enforce it until the law changes.

Matt Granger:

The Huffington Post’s article, “40 Unforgivable Plot Holes in ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens”.

Over the last few weeks I saw this article reposted over and over both by folks in the film industry and outside of it. The reposts often carried captions from Facebook users like “Yep!” or “This is exactly my problem”. Oh shit. Did I miss something? Maybe the Huffington Post and half of Facebook saw something I didn’t. I needed to know more. So I read the article. I read it numerous times. In the end, I came to my own conclusion…

The Huffington Post has no idea what the fuck it’s talking about.

I don’t know about the rest of you but I’ve grown exhausted with the horseshit, hater culture that online, millennial ‘journalists’ use to click-bait their way to some sort of self-perceived intellectual high ground. Hate first. Don’t bother asking questions later.

Loved this takedown.

There are wearables, and then there are wearables, as in the things we actually have to wear, or feel compelled to wear on a very regular basis. That's supposed to be the draw of the OmBra, a new $150 "smart" sports bra that tracks your activity, heart rate, and breathing, and sends it to an app. It has sensors built directly into the fabric of the bra and a black plastic bluetooth box that snaps into the band of the bra.

Whether it's because people love the idea of having technology built into every fibre of their clothing and being or whether it's because CES turns us all temporarily into 15-year-old boys, OmSignal's smart bra was a hot topic this week. Even Conan O'Brien had a little fun with the bra. In the video above, OmSignal's...

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Once again, this is a news story: Member of Congress retires, bemoans the campaign finance system that he/she spent decades working. If it sounds like you've heard this before, you have. A bunch of times.

The latest to follow this pattern is Steve Israel, the Democratic New York congressman and chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (the Democrats' main fundraising committee for House races). By his own estimate in a New York Times op-ed, he "spent roughly 4,200 hours in call time, attended more than 1,600 fund-raisers just for my own campaign and raised nearly $20 million in increments of $1,000, $2,500 and $5,000 per election cycle."

But it was dreadful. Of course. It always is:

"I attended political action committee fund-raisers, which are like panhandling with hors d'oeuvres. There were hours of "call time" — huddled in a cubicle, dialing donors. Sometimes double dialing and triple dialing. Whispering sweet nothings and other small talk into the phone in hopes of receiving large somethings. I'd sit next to an assistant who collated "call sheets" with donor's names, contribution histories and other useful information. ("How's Sheila? Your wife. Oh, Shelly? Sorry.")"

Before Israel, there was Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), who gave us this wonderful aphorism when she announced her retirement last year: "Do I spend my time raising money, or do I spend my time raising hell?"

Also: Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD) complained about it when he announced his retirement at the end of 2014:

"Each party, rather than working cooperatively for the American people, is more and more focused on winning the next election. Today, days after the 2014 election, you can walk into the call center for either party and find members dialing for dollars for 2016...Tonight there will be fundraisers across DC where members will discuss policy, not with their constituents, but with organizations that contribute to their campaigns...Mr. President, we have lost our way."

And: Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-LA) complained about it in 2013 when he announced his retirement:

"The time has come for someone else to advance that cause now. I made that decision when one stops aggressively raising money, well then people start to ask questions. And that's an unfortunate part of the business that we're in. But it's the main business, and it's 24 hours a day raising money. It's not fair. It's not fair for the member, not fair for constituency to have to be approached every day or two or week ore two about campaign contributions. So it's just a grueling business and I'm ready for another part of my life."

And Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) complained about it memorably in 2012 on an episode of This American Life:

"I think most Americans would be shocked — not surprised, but shocked — if they knew how much time a United States senator spends raising money. And how much time we spend talking about raising money, and thinking about raising money, and planning to raise money. And, you know, going off on little retreats and conjuring up new ideas on how to raise money."

This list could go on and on. Extrapolating from a 2013 PowerPoint presentation to incoming freshmen by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (which Israel chairs), members are expected to spend a third of their time raising money.

Which, again, sounds absolutely miserable.

And here's the problem: Regardless of what you think about the influence of campaign contributions on policy outcomes, or about the free speech value of money, fundraising clearly takes up an awful lot of members' time.

This is time they could be spending reading briefing binders, attending hearings, getting to know colleagues — exactly the kinds of things you'd expect members of Congress to do. Instead, they spend countless hours depressingly dialing for dollars, listening sympathetically to wealthy and generally partisan donors.

Perhaps even worse, who the hell wants to sign up for this job in the first place? Who wants to self-telemarket for hours on end? It takes abnormal amounts of narcissistic hubris, which most thoughtful people just don't have. Frankly, Congress could probably use a little more self-doubt. It might open up members to more alternative viewpoints.

Moreover, even if campaign contributions don't translate neatly into votes or outcomes (and it's tough to show a clear correlation), all those donors on the other end of the telephone line and across the room at fundraising events are not exactly average people. They are usually very wealthy people, the kind of people who are in a position to write a $2,000 check and not think twice. And spending all this time around them leads to a weird kind of worldview osmosis.

As Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) described his experience raising money:

They [wealthy donors] have fundamentally different problems than other people. And in Connecticut especially, you spend a lot of time on the phone with people who work in the financial markets. And so you're hearing a lot about problems that bankers have and not a lot of problems that people who work at the mill in Thomaston, Conn., have. You certainly have to stop and check yourself.

In short, we have an absolutely ridiculous system of campaign finance.

Sure, it helps to have members of Congress saying this, over and over again, even if it's usually only when they're about to retire.

But what would be even better is if they said it more when they were not about to retire. Better still would be if they did something about it.

This post is part of Polyarchy, an independent blog produced by the political reform program at New America, a Washington think tank devoted to developing new ideas and new voices. See more Polyarchy posts here.

What do Pee-wee Herman, Jeff Nichols, Seth Rogen, and Slender Man have in common? They're all related to movies that will premiere at this year's SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. SXSW just announced its initial slate of 2016 film premieres, and among them are the Netflix comedy Pee-wee's Big Holiday, Beware the Slenderman, Seth Rogen's Preacher, and Midnight Special.

Big Holiday, produced by Judd Apatow, was confirmed as a Netflix exclusive last year, but it looks like it's going to hit the big screen in Texas first. Beware the Slenderman is based on the spindly meme of the same name that prompted 12-year-olds to stab a classmate in 2014. Preacher, an adaptation of the comic book series, is a dark comedy about a West Texan reverend named...

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This week, the Canadian company behind the Keystone XL pipeline made a move that activated progressives' worst fears about major trade agreements. Environmentalists won a major victory last year when they persuaded President Obama to veto construction of the pipeline, but now TransCanada has filed a claim arguing that under NAFTA it is entitled to $15 billion in compensatory damages for financial losses incurred as a result — a claim that will ultimately be decided by a private arbitration panel, not the American legal system.

Even if TransCanada wins, it doesn't mean the pipeline will get built — it will simply mean the US government has to hand over some cash. But a win for the company would have implications for future cross-border energy projects, undermining much of the underlying purpose of the anti-Keystone movement.

This has posed a bit of a dilemma for progressive leaders. On the one hand, they want TransCanada to lose, so they don't want to say the company is genuinely entitled to these monetary damages. On the other hand, this is exactly what progressives have been saying worries them about the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other new trade deals that contain investor protection provisions that could constrain America's ability to regulate business.

TransCanada says the rejection was arbitrary

The key to TransCanada's NAFTA claim is that, as the company said in a statement, it "had every reason to expect its application would be granted as the application met the same criteria the U.S. State Department applied when approving applications to construct other similar cross-border pipelines."

Indeed, any environmentalist in America would tell you that the rejection of the pipeline was the result of an intensive activist campaign rather than a simple case of business as usual operating smoothly. What changed between Keystone and Keystone XL, in other words, is that a president who is sensitive to political pressure from environmental groups took office, and those groups successfully pressured him.

Of course, noting that the political winds played a role in the decision shouldn't be enough on its own to let TransCanada prevail. But the company claims the decision to cancel the pipeline was merely a "symbolic gesture based on speculation about the perceptions of the international community regarding the Administration's leadership on climate change," rather than a bona fide environmental protection effort.

And it is true that in his statement rejecting the pipeline, Obama said approving the pipeline would undercut America's "global leadership" on climate change, and counterposed this to the fact that approving the pipeline "would not make a meaningful long-term contribution to our economy" and would not significantly lower US gas prices or improve energy security.

Putting it somewhat differently, Vox's David Roberts described the goals of the anti-Keystone campaign as a desire to delegitimize fossil fuel companies. The aim, in his view, was "creating a new default answer to fossil fuel infrastructure: no, unless a case can be made that the climate damage is worth it."

TransCanada argues that this amounts to an arbitrary discrimination against its business. Activists happen to have seized on this project, and the president gave in to them, so TransCanada is entitled under NAFTA to compensation for the financial losses it incurred as a result.

This case touches on the biggest controversy in trade policy

TransCanada is pursuing a related claim to this in US federal court. But its NAFTA case will be adjudicated by a private arbitration tribunal convened under Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement — what is known as an investor-state dispute settlement process of a type that has become common in international trade deals.

The presence of ISDS provisions in an enormous multinational trade deal that the Obama administration struck with a range of Pacific Rim countries is the single biggest point of controversy around that treaty. ISDS provisions are common in trade agreements, and have been for a long time. They create what is, in essence, an alternative judicial system wherein foreign investors can argue that they're receiving unfair treatment and have the argument decided by an international tribunal rather than a local judge.

Writing about this controversy in November, Ezra Klein concluded that the ISDS threat was more theoretical than practical:

After reading a lot about ISDS provisions and hearing from both their supporters and detractors, I don't think ISDS is likely to matter much from the American point of view. Few ISDS cases are brought against America, and no one has ever won an ISDS case against America. The heat of this argument has more to do with the principles involved, and the larger passions over TPP and multinational corporations, than with ISDS itself.

A win for TransCanada in a high-profile ISDS case would obviously call that kind of thinking into question. The small amount of support TPP currently enjoys from congressional Democrats rests largely on Obama administration assurances that the kinds of things mainstream Democratic politicians would want to do would not be meaningfully constrained by ISDS rules. For the Obama administration to find itself on the wrong side of a multibillion-dollar ISDS ruling would be embarrassing, to say the least.

Conversely, a win for TransCanada would be a great "I told you so" moment for Elizabeth Warren and other liberals who've warned that this kind of thing might happen. Yet at the same time, TPP opponents are largely also Keystone XL opponents who don't really want to see the administration lose the case.

The odds are against TransCanada, but not impossible

Politics aside, financial analysts are skeptical that TransCanada is going to get its billions of dollars.

"Legally, the deck is stacked against them," Gary Hufbauer of the Peterson Institute of International Finance told Bloomberg News. Realistically, Hufbauer says, the company is more likely to get relief by hoping the next president rules the other way than by hoping a NAFTA panel rules in its favor.

A key issue is that TransCanada would have to demonstrate that its treatment was in some sense discriminatory, as if it had been denied approval under circumstances where a different company would have received it.

Experts consulted by the Canadian Broadcast Company said the TransCanada claim wasn't entirely frivolous and certainly might prevail, but notes that "the odds are historically against TransCanada, as the U.S. has a 100 per cent winning percentage in NAFTA claims."

The bond ratings agency Moody's concluded that the litigation is a modest positive for TransCanada's creditworthiness, but described the financial upside to suing as "very uncertain."

One twist that could help the United States is the current low price of oil. The State Department's official assessment of Keystone concluded that construction of the pipeline was unlikely to materially impact oil production or carbon dioxide emissions.

The thinking was that at the then-current price of oil, the oil TransCanada wanted to ship through the pipeline was going to be extracted one way or another. The issue at hand was whether it would be transported by rail or by pipeline, with the pipeline option being cheaper and more profitable but no worse for the environment.

But the State Department also noted that given a lower price of oil, things might change, and the presence or absence of a pipeline option could be the difference maker in whether it was worth pumping the oil at all. With oil having now fallen to below $35 a barrel, the case that the pipeline has a material impact on the environment is now stronger.

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Android 6.0 Marshmallow is coming to the Nvidia Shield Android TV, bringing with it a handful of small and useful updates. Nvidia hasn't said exactly when the upgrade will be available, but released a video yesterday outlining the new features. These include more customization for the home screen, greater control over external storage, and a hands-free, first time setup process that lets you add your Google account to the Shield just by telling your smartphone: "OK Google, set up my device."

The company also says that Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance — a port from the PlayStation 3 — will finally be available on the Shield from January 7th. This should make full use of the Shield's Tegra X1 processor (after all, the device is supposed to...

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If you’re a homeowner, you’re probably always thinking of ways you can increase your home’s resale value. Here are the best additions you can make to your home if you want to increase your return on investment.

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An anonymous reader writes: When Apple made its Swift programming language open source in early December, it opened the floodgates for suggestions and requests from developers. But the project's maintainers have their own ideas about how the language should evolve, so some suggestions are rejected. Now a list has been compiled of some commonly rejected proposals — it's an interesting window into the development of a language. Swift's developers don't want to replace Brace Syntax with Python-style indentation. They don't want to change boolean operators from && and || to 'and' and 'or'. They don't want to rewrite the Swift compiler in Swift. They don't want to change certain keywords like 'continue' from their C precedents. And they have no interest in removing semicolons.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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An anonymous reader writes: A new year, with old systems. It is time to break bad old habits and develop good new ones. This list talks about new years resolutions for Linux and Unix sysadmins. List includes turning on 2FA on all services, making peace with systemd, installing free SSL/TLS certificates, avoiding laptops with horrible screens or wireless whitelist in BIOS, building Linux gaming rig and more. What resolutions are on your list regarding sysadmin or IT work in 2016?

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hol writes: Linode has been getting hit with DDoS attacks since Christmas Day, and it looks like their pain is set to continue. The attackers are rotating DDoS traffic through various regions of Linode's service. They say, "All of these attacks have occurred multiple times. Over the course of the last week, we have seen over 30 attacks of significant duration and impact. As we have found ways to mitigate these attacks, the vectors used inevitably change. As of this afternoon, we have mostly hardened ourselves against the above attack vectors, but we expect more to come. ... Once these attacks stop, we plan to share a complete technical explanation about what has been happening." See their status page for updates.

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Farts are weird. It seems perfectly fine when we let one rip, despite the stink bomb it may be. We can tolerate our own, but if someone else cuts the cheese? Aw, heck no. Theirs is unbearable.

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens has only been out a week, but it's already tearing some fans apart.

Depending on whom you talk to, director J.J. Abrams's update has either brought the franchise roaring back to life, or echoed the original Star Wars in useless and derivative fashion. But there's another argument raging among fans — one that is perfectly representative of some of fandom's most insular and insidious instincts. That argument centers on this question: Is Rey, the new movie's protagonist, too perfect to be a good hero? Is she, in fandom speak, a "Mary Sue"?

The short answer? No.

For the long answer, we'll have to dive into what exactly makes a "Mary Sue," and why the term has such a loaded connotation within fandom.

Strap yourselves in. It's about to get real nerdy.

Where did the term "Mary Sue" come from, and why is it so controversial?

"Mary Sue" comes from the world of fanfiction, where fans write stories within existing properties that they love. You can find fanfiction for anything from Star Wars, to Harry Potter to just about any television show. Every subsection of fanfiction has its own priorities and grievances, but the derision toward so-called Mary Sue characters is nearly universal. The Mary Sue, a feminist "geek culture" website, took the term on as a way of identifying itself with fanfic culture, unabashed and defiant in its geeky roots.

The term came out of a short, satirical piece of Star Trek fanfiction that Paula Smith published in Menagerie, a Star Trek fanzine, in 1973.

KnowYourMeme.com

In "A Trekkie's Tale," Lt. Mary Sue grabs the attention of both Captain Kirk (who falls in love with her immediately) and Spock (who admires her logic). Mary Sue, just 15-and-a-half years old, takes over the ship and receives "the Nobel Peace Prize, the Vulcan Order of Gallantry and the Tralfamadorian Order of Good Guyhood." Mary Sue reveals that she is half-Vulcan, then dies tragically, causing everyone to mourn the loss of her "beautiful youth and youthful beauty, intelligence, capability and all around niceness."

Mary Sue, in other words, is perfect.

But "A Trekkie's Tale" doesn't just make fun of fanfic authors who create unbelievably perfect characters. It's a direct parody of fanfic authors who insert themselves into the narrative as the aforementioned perfect characters, living out their fantasies of impressing all their favorite characters and changing all their favorite fictional worlds for the better.

To give you an example of a Mary Sue from Harry Potter fanfiction, and more specifically the wish-fulfillment fanfic I wrote as a 13 year-old (why not! we're all friends here), I once wrote myself into the halls of Hogwarts as "Raven," who was a mysterious new student who moves to England from America, causes possessive fights between Harry and Draco Malfoy, and suddenly realizes she has dormant powers that enable her to turn into — wait for it — a raven.

With Raven, I hit all the major Mary Sue requirements. She was mysterious, and she was beautiful. She was inexplicably intriguing. She was the object of everyone's desires. She had hidden abilities no 13 year-old, witch or otherwise, could possibly have. She was the me I wished could crash Harry Potter's adventures.

If you look up the definition of a Mary Sue now, you might notice a footnote that says some version of, "The male version of a 'Mary Sue' is called a 'Marty Stu' or a 'Gary Stu.'" This, to be frank, is a false equivalence.

The idea of the Mary Sue carries with it an inherent gender bias. As fanfiction is predominantly written by girls and women, "Mary Sues" tend to be female. More important to the current Rey conversation, however, is that the trend of writing characters off as Mary Sues has made its way outside of fanfiction to become a derisive description of flawless characters in general — and very rarely does a male character get called out as a "Gary Stu."

The most current and well-known example of a Mary Sue outside of fanfiction is Twilight's impossibly magnetic Bella Swan. Not coincidentally, the most current and well-known example of a Mary Sue inside fanfiction is 50 Shades of Grey's Anastasia Steele — who began her life as E.L. James's S&M fanfic version of Bella.

But let's make one thing clear: not every seemingly perfect heroine deserves to get written off so quickly — especially because it is so incredibly rare that a seemingly perfect male hero gets the same dismissive treatment.

The question of whether Rey is a Mary Sue or not is inspiring controversy

The criticism went from quiet fan grumblings to a full-out Twitter war when Max Landis, screenwriter of 2012's superhero flick Chronicle, posted a series of tweets tearing down Rey as "the worst fucking Star Wars main character ever." Using "fanfic" as a pejorative for The Force Awakens — a movie that does, indeed, call back to its original source material with gleeful abandon — Landis posted a picture of Rey and wrote, "they finally did it. They made a fanfic movie with a Mary Sue as the main character."

The arguments for Rey being "too perfect" go as such: she's super skilled as a mechanic, a combat fighter, a pilot and, apparently, a Force user. All the characters — both established and new — are impressed at her natural skills. She even holds her own against Kylo Ren, a more trained Jedi who nonetheless falls in a lightsaber battle to her by the movie's end.

Landis isn't a stranger to the internet, so he anticipated the responses he might get to this critique. First, he insisted that "Mary Sue" isn't an inherently sexist term, writing "WAKE. UP." next to a screenshot of the definition including "Gary Stu." Then, he acknowledged that some may like Rey because there are precious few good female action or fantasy stars, though Harry Potter's Hermione and Mad Max: Fury Road's Furiosa are "a good start." Finally, he went after the "straw men" arguments sure to come his way: "Luke was a Mary Sue"; "action films have Mary Sue men all the time"; "you wouldn't say that if she was a man."

If Landis wanted to make his point, he would've done himself a service by not including these latter arguments, because here's the thing: even if Rey does have shades of being a Mary Sue character, that doesn't make any of those "straw men" arguments less true.

So, okay, let's get down to it: is Rey too perfect?

To be perfectly honest: yes, and no.

Mike Schur, executive producer for shows like Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, dove into the Twitter fray with palpable annoyance and exhaustion at the "Rey is a Mary Sue" critique. Insisting that many of Luke's bigger flaws like impatience and shaky self-confidence didn't present themselves until Empire Strikes Back, Schur wrote:

I've certainly never heard anyone -- in the 9000 conversations I've had about [A New Hope] -- say that Luke learned too much too quickly ... Luke picks up a lightsaber, hears about the Force, and 26 minutes later he is angry at Han for not believing in it ... no one bats an eye at that.

Tellingly, Alan Dean Foster's novelization of The Force Awakens hints at a similar anger in Rey. As she stands over Kylo Ren at the end of their lightsaber battle, having won the upper hand, she has to fight the voice within her that's telling her to kill him — a conflict Luke Skywalker would intimately understand.

Herein lies the main issue. If fans like Landis want to accuse The Force Awakens of creating a character who's too good at what she does, too quickly, they need to face up to the fact that the Star Wars franchise was already brimming over with similar moments.

In The Force Awakens, Rey, a young scavenger with mysterious origins, becomes entangled with the Rebellion, flies the Millennium Falcon without prior experience, discovers that she can tap into The Force, and uses it to her advantage to best a more experienced Jedi. Any additional skills Rey has — mechanical work, hand-to-hand combat, climbing — are explained when we first meet her. She's been fending for herself on Jakku for years. If she hadn't picked up those skills, she'd probably be dead.

In A New Hope, Luke Skywalker, a teenage farmhand with mysterious origins, becomes entangled with the Rebel Alliance, discovers he can tap into The Force, and gets a couple days of training to focus his ability. He then leads a squadron into the trenches of the Death Star before blowing the whole thing up, despite having no established prior pilot experience.

The question of how easily Rey wields The Force is a key point of the arguments against her. She gets a Stormtrooper to release her, then fights back and almost wins in a lightsaber duel with the more experienced Kylo Ren.

Luke, at least, had some training. The Washington Post's Sonny Bunch, in a piece that he calls "sympathetic" to Landis's Mary Sue accusations, writes that Rey knows how to use the Force because The Force Awakens is "the greatest, most expensive piece of fan fiction that has ever been created," and so of course she knows what a Jedi mind trick is.

The Star Wars universe grapples with the idea that everyone has a "dark side," but its vague definitions of The Force and who wields it make for heroes with equally vague justifications. What Bunch and Landis's arguments both ignore is the fact that The Force is an incredibly convenient story device in and of itself. Whether we're talking about Luke or Rey, Darth Vader or Obi-Wan, people know how to use The Force because they just do.

An argument of "because genetics" doesn't even work here, because while Leia has some knowledge of the Force, her natural talent for it doesn't match Luke's — and they're twins. The Force is one of the most prominent uses of "because I said so" in modern storytelling. In that case, who's to say Rey can't be just as powerful as Luke?

Thus, the most logical conclusion is this: Their stories aren't exactly the same, but Rey's sudden realization of her powers isn't necessarily more impressive than Luke's. If Rey is a Mary Sue, then so is Luke.

Search your feelings. You know it to be true.

The ugly question at the core of the Mary Sue debate: is asking whether Rey is perfect an inherently misogynistic question?

In an excellent essay over at The Verge, Tasha Robinson pointed out the hypocrisy of a fandom that isn't quick to call out its male heroes for having the same issues:

[Rey is] a fantasy wish-fulfillment character with outsized skills, an inhuman reaction time, and a clever answer to every question — but so are the other major Star Wars heroes. Are they all getting the same level of suspicion and dismissal?

...Back in 1977, were we wringing our hands over whether Han Solo was too suave and funny and cool, or whether Luke's access to the "powerful ally" of an all-connecting, all-seeing, all-powerful Force that "binds the galaxy together" made him way too overpowered?

...We wouldn't be worrying about Rey's excessive coolness if she were Ray, standard-issue white male hero with all the skills and all the luck.

At IndieWire, Samuel Adams argued that people calling Rey hyper-competent are resting on a "sloppy reading" of The Force Awakens, as they fail to acknowledge how surprised and delighted Rey herself is at said hypercompetence. There's a bigger story here. As Vox's Matt Yglesias wrote earlier this month, we might not know how to properly critique The Force Awakens until Episode VIII clarifies some of its key points — especially on Rey's background.

At this point, though, it seems as if a couple of things on both sides of the argument are true. As both Robinson and Adams concede in their pieces, Rey is incredibly good at a great many things — and very quickly. And as even Landis concedes, pop culture is generally starved for decent action and fantasy heroines who don't stand wanly on the side, rooting for their respective heroes, which may drive some of the overly enthusiastic responses to Rey's character.

Both, however, hold firm on one point: we would not be analyzing Rey so closely, if she were a male hero.

While my kneejerk reaction to criticism of Rey was that it's absolutely in the wrong, I have to admit that questioning her merits isn't inherently misogynistic. The real problem is that there's an undeniable false equivalence at play. Many who question female heroes don't just question them, but instinctively dissect them in a way that they usually don't for male heroes.

We won't know what's truly up with Rey for another couple of years, at the very least. Until then, I have no interest in tearing down her entire character by virtue of her being too good, too fast. Rey is very good, in a universe that divides its characters into factions that literally define themselves as the "light" and "dark" sides. It makes no sense to question why some of her good qualities may be exaggerated in the context of Star Wars, because let's be honest: Star Wars is many things, but it is not, and has never been, subtle.

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It's a testament to the enduring visual design of the original Star Wars trilogy that in order to make "modern trailers" for The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, all YouTuber Tom F had to do was employ some clever cuts and overlay the haunting music used in The Force Awakens' trailers. The results are slick two-minute teasers that look like they could genuinely be used as the opening salvo in one of Hollywood's modern hype campaigns — but there's one key difference.

Most modern trailers lay out the movie's entire story in just a few seconds — looking at you, Batman vs. Superman, Captain America: Civil War, and especially you Terminator: Genisys. If those movies can spoil their biggest secrets months before they hit the big...

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GoPro published this 5-minute-long “year in review” compilation video that shows off all the crazy and heartwarming things that people used the company’s action camera for over the course of 2015.

“Take an epic journey that looks back on some of the best moments captured on GoPro in 2015, from high up in the sky to deep below the sea and everything in-between,” GoPro says. “Shot 100% on the HERO4 camera.”

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I manage websites and recently one client faxed me some hand-written copy to add to the news section of his site.

In the article he laid into a rival company who had recently appeared in court and been acquitted of supplying faulty goods. Describing the company concerned as “cheats” who got off because “their sleazy lawyers lied”, was one of his milder claims.

Me: I’ve read your copy and I have come concerns. Under the “contentious content” clause of our contract, I’m going to hold off on putting this on the website until your lawyers approve it.

Client: Fine! I’ll put them in touch.

Later that day I got an email from his lawyer asking for a copy of the article in question. I sent it and twenty minutes later got their response. It turns out that his lawyers were the same that had defended his rival company.

Client’s Lawyer: We have considered the copy you forwarded to us regarding a recent court case in which we successfully defended one of our clients against a wholly false claim of supplying defective goods. We have advised <client> that his article is, in our opinion, factually flawed, libelous and unsuitable for publication, and we are consequently unable to indemnify it in line with your contract.

Client’s Lawyer: Please note that we no longer act for <client> in any capacity.

When I wrote the client to tell him that his (former) lawyers said that he should IN NO WAY have this article published, he wrote me back.

Client: Run it! I’m not going to be bossed about by sleazy lawyers.

Me: No.

That ended our business relationship, except that two days later he accidentally faxed me some new copy. In it, he rails against “sleazy website managers.”

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