Details on Riot Games' second videogame have surfaced after the company's CEO — Marc Merrill — had his Twitter account hacked. The hacker, referring to himself as 'Jason,' used Merrill's account to release images from what he termed "Riot's card game." They show a login screen for something titled League of Legends: Supremacy, and a set of card templates that suggest the unannounced game is a trading card game in the mold of Magic: The Gathering, or Mojang's Scrolls.
For the upcoming game Batman: Arkham Origins, voice actor Troy Baker is replacing Mark Hamill as the all-important voice of the Joker. Hamill voiced the Joker for both of the previous games in the Arkham series and is a big fan favorite, but any worries that Baker won't be able to capture the iconic supervillain's nature have been dispelled.
At the New York Comic Con, Baker took part in a panel on the game and used the opportunity to give us all a preview of what to expect. Voicing a one-minute monologue from Alan Moore's iconic one-shot Batman: The Killing Joke, Baker really brings the character to life. If there's one complaint to be leveraged against the performance, it's that Baker's interpretation of the classic character is...
This week BitTorrent Inc. surprised friend and foe with a brilliant marketing campaign.
The company, known for the popular file-sharing applications uTorrent and BitTorrent, put up shocking billboards in three major metropolitan areas.
One of the slogans displayed the spooky message “Your Data Should Belong To The NSA.” After a few days this billboard was updated, striking The NSA while adding You.
In a blog post BitTorrent’s marketing president Matt Mason later explained that the company wanted to wake the public up, alerting them to the fact that they have the power to do something about the gross rights violations that were all over the news lately.
“We’ve chosen to accept surveillance culture: the right of security agencies to violate the Fourth Amendment; to see and store data as they see fit. But these things are just that. They’re choices. And these choices belong to us,” Mason wrote.
According to Mason privacy is one of the core values of BitTorrent and a means to get away from nasty government surveillance.
“We’re a company founded on a few simple core values. Uphold user privacy, and user control,” he writes, adding that “BitTorrent is a secure, distributed response to the challenge of data surveillance.”
While these words are music to the ears of many Internet users, they certainly don’t apply to all BitTorrent products.
In fact, regular BitTorrent transfers through uTorrent or other clients lack any form of privacy. People who share files in public, including BitTorrent’s artist bundles, display their IP-addresses to the rest of the world and are tracked by dozens of monitoring outfits.
This was also picked up by David Lowery, a well-known musician and respected anti-piracy advocate in the music industry. Lowery was quick to highlight the privacy aspect in an article on the Trichordist where he slammed BitTorrent for not understanding their own technology.
“It seems to me that BitTorrent is suggesting that by using their product you are somehow safe from snooping by the NSA. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Nope you aren’t even safe from a so-called luddite musician,” Lowery writes.
Backing up his argument, Lowery goes on to list the IP-addresses of a few dozens downloaders who were sharing his work via BitTorrent, many using the software provided by the San Francisco company.
“Apparently BitTorrent doesn’t even understand how it’s own product works. Luddites,” Lowery notes.
BitTorrent does know its own technology of course, but we have to agree that the company’s messaging is confusing to say the least. Yes, BitTorrent released a great Sync application earlier this year, which allows people to run a private and secure backup service. But the general public associates BitTorrent with something entirely different – public downloads.
The billboard campaign and media commentary the company put out this week made no mention of this distinction. This is unfortunate, and perhaps a bit misleading. Not least because more than a quarter million torrent users have been sued in the U.S. alone because it’s so easy to monitor downloaders.
It becomes even more painful when we bring in the fact that BitTorrent refused to accept advertisements from a company that wanted to offer BitTorrent users a bit more privacy.
Earlier this year the company refused to run ads for TorGuard, because the VPN-service was considered to be “high risk”. The VPN service would only be welcome when it changed its name, logo, and removed all references to “BitTorrent,” “torrent” and uTorrent from its website.
For a business that claims to have privacy as one of its core values, this is a rather odd stance. But perhaps the privacy principle is only applied selectively, whenever it fits the company’s business interests.
Source: BitTorrent Inc. Doesn’t Care About Your Privacy, Not Always
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
    
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In 2011, 43-year-old Army veteran Edwin "Trey" Gennette lived just outside Pensacola, Florida, with a pet possum and a talking Ford Mustang. One warm June evening, he began poking around the "Casual Encounters" section of Craigslist, where he found an ad promising a novel erotic situation. "2 sisters seeking a man that handle both [of] us," it said. "We are ready for a hot night, are you?"
He was. But when he e-mailed the address in the ad, Gennette received a quick response from a woman named Amber, making clear that only one of the sisters was 19. "My lil sis is in town visiting me for the summer," wrote Amber. "She is 14, you ok with that?"
"Well I think she is a bit young, lol but depends on what you have in mind," Gennette wrote back. He sent Amber a photo of himself with his pet possum. Amber sent back a photo showing two young women on a boat. Gennette and Amber chatted for a while over e-mail, sharing weekend plans. Gennette suggested the sisters come over to see the possum, which was recovering from veterinary surgery to her "female parts." He offered to give the two girls a ride in his Mustang.
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HAARLEM – De favoriete vakantiebestemming voor Nederlanders in de herfstvakantie is Spanje. Dat blijkt althans uit onderzoek een van Nederlands grootste van online reisagent Vliegtickets.nl uit Haarlem. Binnen Spanje staat het Zuidelijke Malaga op nummer 1. Het aantal reizigers naar Malaga laat een stijging van maar liefst 233 procent zien ten opzichte van 2012. Hiermee verslaat Malaga Barcelona.
Internet advertiser owns your photo
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Driverless cars are expected to come from technology companies
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Seulbi Kim, a graduate student at the Rhode Island School Of Design, wanted to create a more convenient way to carry fast food than the current bags and drink carriers for a class project.
The result is this brilliant package, which reduces waste by 50%.
We reached out to Kim, who agreed to share her project with us.
Here's a GIF of how it works:
The handles were created to firmly lock the carrier.
Kim also created sleeves for burgers and fries and a small insert for a straw.
The fries container hooks to a sleeve inside, creating an easy way to carry the items.
Here's a graphic fully explaining her logic:
SEE ALSO: 11 Dramatic Changes Wal-Mart Made This Year
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Is there anyone who doesn't love "Breaking Bad"?
After binge-watching all five seasons of the AMC series in two weeks, actor Anthony Hopkins enjoyed the show so much that he was compelled to write lead actor Bryan Cranston an email praising him along with the entire cast and crew on a "brilliant" show.
The series ended its its five-season run on AMC at the end of September with a record-high viewership.
"Breaking Bad" actor Steven Michael Quezada, who plays Gomez on the show, posted the letter in its entirety to his Facebook page.
Read the epic letter below:
SEE ALSO: The most jaw-droppingly shocking moments from every season of 'Breaking Bad' ranked
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The Smart TV revolution will not just be led by new TV sets manufactured with built-in Internet connections.
Consumer will also adopt less expensive game consoles and set-top boxes like Roku and Apple TV, which transform traditional TVs into Smart TVs with access to app stores.
At least 20% of U.S. consumers already have their TVs connected in one of these ways.
Dan Frommer and analysts from the BI Intelligence team looked at the latest data on how the Internet is upending the legacy broadcast and cable TV industries in their stronghold: the living room. We hope you enjoy the deck.
BI Intelligence is a new research and analysis service focused on mobile computing and the Internet. Subscribers can access the full report associated with this deck, download the deck as a PDF or PowerPoint, as well as any of the individual charts from the presentation. Please sign up for a free trial here.
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To the Western public the name Xunlei might not ring any immediate bells, but in China its software is used by hundreds of millions of people every month.
Previously the company’s BitTorrent client was crowned the most used BitTorrent software in the world, beating uTorrent and several other popular clients.
Xunlei’s website offers a searchable index of billions of media files which users can download with the proprietary Xunlei software. The company is partly owned by Google and in recent years has evolved into the leading player in the online file-sharing space.
Recently, however, the company ran into trouble when people spotted suspicious software on their systems signed with a Xunlei security certificate. A thorough investigation from ESET now reveals that Xunlei the company has been spreading malware to Windows and Android users.
While it’s unclear how the application is distributed, the windows installer “INPEnhSetup.exe” that spreads the suspicious files is directly connected to the Chinese file-sharing giant. Besides the security certificate, the application also calls home to the Xunlei-owned domain kankan.com
Once the “dropper” is installed it loads an Office plugin which among other things downloads an Android application. This application is then installed on all Android devices that are connected to the computer, which subsequently installs several other seemingly harmless applications.
ESET looked at all the technical details of the software distributed by Xunlei and has categorized the application as a malicious program under the name Win32/Kankan.
“The use of a fake Office plugin to gain persistence, the ability to silently install Android applications, and the backdoor functionalities, confirm the validity of the concerns of Chinese users and explains why ESET detects this program as malicious, under the name Win32/Kankan,” ESET’s Joan Calvet writes.
“There are still some open questions, like the original infection vector and the exact reason the Android applications were installed,” he adds.
While it remains unclear whether Xunlei’s popular BitTorrent client was used to spread the malware, the company has admitted that its employees were responsible for the development and distribution of the suspicious software.
During a press conference Xunlei apologized for their mistakes. The company said that the personnel responsible were acting without permission and have since been fired.
For affected users Xunlei has released an uninstaller and according to ESET the number of infections has dropped significantly since its release, as can be seen in the graph below.
Source: Google-Backed File-Sharing Service Spreads Malware
Het Vaticaan heeft 522 mensen zalig verklaard die in de jaren 30 omkwamen tijdens de Spaanse burgeroorlog. Het gaat vooral om priesters en nonnen.
De zaligverklaring werd uitgesproken door kardinaal Angelo Amato tijdens een plechtigheid in de open lucht in de provincie Tarragona, in het noordoosten van Spanje. Onder de aanwezigen waren zo'n 4000 nabestaanden van de omgekomen geestelijken.
De meeste zaligverklaarde 'martelaars van het geloof' werden tijdens de Spaanse burgeroorlog (1936-1939) omgebracht door republikeinen, die de katholieke kerk beschouwden als een bondgenoot van dictator generaal Franco. Onder vorige pausen werden ook al honderden slachtoffers van de oorlog zalig verklaard.
De zaligverklaringen zijn omstreden. Nabestaanden van slachtoffers van het Franco-regime hadden paus Franciscus gevraagd de plechtigheid te schrappen. Zij verwijten het Vaticaan alleen oog te hebben voor de slachtoffers van de republikeinen en onvoldoende voor 'de andere kant'.
New York Times |
Statue of Liberty Reopens as Other Sites Stay Closed New York Times Some tourists said they had held out hope that the federal government would get its act together in time. Others admitted they had all but given up. After traveling to New York City from far-flung places, they feared they would be resigned to squinting from afar ... Statue of Liberty, closed by shutdown, reopens to touristsReuters Statue of Liberty reopensThe News International What National Parks Are Open? And What Does That Means For The Economy?International Business Times New York Daily News -fox6now.com all 259 news articles » |
Maxim Bangebyebye Acer (pls)
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High rent undercut the mainstream video game scene in New York in the 1980s and 90s. In its place, says Lantz, weirder, smaller communities — interested in stuff like web, mobile and downloadable games — took root.
Lantz is moderating the New York Comic-Con panel "The NYC Game Design Underground." He's joined by Naomi Clark, Doug Wilson, Zach Gage, Phoenix Perry and Syed Salahuddin, whom represent the city's independent game designers, scholars, promoters, educators, artists and curators.
Before beginning discussion of the New York game scene, Lantz provides some additional cultural context. Thanks to new distribution models (download storefronts) and platforms (cell phones), now there are all sorts of ways for someone living in...
Drie mannen in Utrecht hebben een boete van de politie gekregen omdat ze als overvallers over straat liepen.
De politie kreeg zaterdagochtend rond half tien verscheidene telefoontjes van verontruste mensen binnen. Zij meldden dat er mannen met bivakmutsen rondliepen bij een bank aan de Croeselaan.
De politie trof daar enkele mannen aan die een vriend van hen 'ontvoerden' tijdens een vrijgezellenfeestje. De vrienden in de leeftijd van 28 tot 30 jaar uit Zeist, Utrecht en Baarn begrepen niet dat mensen het alarmnummer 112 hadden gebeld.
De vrienden zijn aangehouden voor het verstoren van de openbare orde. Alle mannen, behalve de vrijgezel, kregen een boete van 130 euro.
Een 77-jarige man uit Eelde is zijn rijbewijs kwijt omdat hij veel te langzaam reed. De politie zette hem op de snelweg A28 bij Haren aan de kant, nadat de man daar 40 kilometer per uur had gereden.
Gemiddeld rijden auto's daar 120 kilometer per uur. Door de slakkengang van de 77-jarige ontstond er een levensgevaarlijke situatie op de snelweg.
De man vertelde de politie dat hij wel eens wilde zien wat er zou gebeuren als je heel langzaam over de snelweg rijdt. De agenten besloten om zijn rijbewijs in te nemen. De man was het daar niet mee eens en reed achteruit op de vluchtstrook weg.
Dat was voor de agenten de druppel die de emmer deed overlopen en de automobilist werd aangehouden.
The head of Windows Phone at Microsoft, Joe Belfiore, took to Twitter today to announce the birthday of the company’s mobile platform. Windows Phone indeed turns 3 today. That’s not all, not only has it been three years since the first Windows Phone, but also since the Metro (or now “Modern”) UI was released into the world.
The post Happy Birthday, Windows Phone; Microsoft’s mobile platform celebrates its third year appeared first on AIVAnet.
It's October and if you live in the Tri-state area that means two things: Halloween and New York Comic Con.
[Click here to go directly to the photos]
The four-day convention celebrating comics, television, and film is taking place at the Javits Center in Manhattan from October 10-13.
While we got excited for the panels, screenings, and exclusives on the showroom floor, one of the main draws is for fans to show off their best costumes. This is their Halloween.
Referred to as cosplay (costume play), many attendees go dressed as their favorite comic, television, or movie character.
Some even head over in their own original, unique looks.
Here were the best costumes we saw as we made our way across the convention floor through a sea of Teen Titans, Deadpools, and Batmen.
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BRUSSEL - Het Belgische nationale voetbalelftal is zaterdagmorgen vroeg geland op Brussel Zaventem, nadat de spelers zich in Zagreb hadden gekwalificeerd voor de eindronde van het Wereldkampioenschap 2014 in Brazilië. Volgens doelman Thibaut Courtois was er tijdens de terugreis 'veel gezongen op het vliegtuig' door de 'Rode Duivels'.
Despite its humble name, the Homebrew Computer Club holds a special place in computing history. Started in 1975, the club was a place where hackers and hobbyists could get together, and it attracted some of the brightest minds in the industry, from Steve Wozniak to Ted Nelson. It's the place where Wozniak and Steve Jobs showed off the prototype for the Apple-1 for the very first time. Now, the old gang is getting back together, with a little help from Kickstarter. The group has successfully funded a reunion — raising more than $16,000 through the crowdfunding service — that will take place on November 11th at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
This is Liz Eswein.
You probably don't know her, but you might follow her on Instagram. She owns the handle @NewYorkCity, and she gets paid to Instagram the same things you take photos of every day. Food, people, places, and things.
Eswein took the name @NewYorkCity a few years ago because she wasn't sure she wanted to put her full name as her handle, and Manhattan's namesake was available.
Click here to see the photos >>
When she started taking regular photos around the Big Apple (she's a New York native and graduated from NYU in 2011), people started following her account.
Now she has almost one million followers on the social photography platform and is currently one of the most followed, non-celebrity Instagrammers.
Since then, Eswein and two other Instagrammers in New York, Brian DiFeo and Anthony Danielle started Mobile Media Lab, LLC, a company that brands can hire to help them create Instagram campaigns.
And Liz is at the center of it all.
If there's a big event going on in Manhattan, Eswein is there. She goes to Fashion Week. She was backstage at 12-12-12, the benefit concert for victims of Hurricane Sandy. She took a helicopter ride around Manhattan on behalf of Dos Equis. And work isn't just in New York City anymore. She just got back from Africa and London, and next week she'll be off to Singapore. Kate Spade, Coach, Burberry, and Estee Lauder are just some of the big name brands that hire Mobile Media Lab.
Hard to believe, right? Well, there's a popular saying: "pics or it didn't happen". Good thing Eswein has all of the pics she needs.
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"We strongly want to get into Linux for a reason," Gustavsson said. "It took Halo for the first Xbox to kick off and go crazy — usually, it takes one killer app or game and then people are more than willing [to adopt it] — it is not hard to get your hands on Linux, for example, it only takes one game that motivates you to go there."
"I think, even then, customers are getting more and more convenient, so you really need to convince them how can they marry it into their daily lives and make an integral part of their lives," he explained, sharing that the studio has used Linux servers because it was a "superior operating system to do so."
Valve's recently announced Steam OS and Steam Machines are healthy for the console market, ...
After unleashing a slaughterhouse delivery truck filled with squealing stuffed animals on the streets of New York City, Banksy has followed up with an art piece called "Concrete Confessional."
The artwork is located in Manhattan's East Village on East 7th street and Cooper Square, according to Street Art News.
This the is the 12th work in the artist's month-long series in New York City.
See the rest of the works in the artist's series "Better Out Than In" here.
SEE ALSO: The Most Iconic Banksy Works Of All Time
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If you were in New York City this weekend, you may have seen Link in line at McDonalds or Sailor Moon on the subway. Maybe photographs of costumed individuals flooded your Instagram or Twitter feeds.
Surely by now you've heard the word cosplay tossed around, but do you really know what it is, or how much the hobby costs?
Literally speaking, cosplay is the combination of the words "costume" and "play." Cosplayers, the people who partake in cosplay, dress as their favorite characters from comics, video games, anime, manga, movies, and television.
The best supported origin story on the Internet says that in 1984, Nov Takahashi, founder and writer for the anime publishing company Studio Hard, was sent to Los Angeles to cover the World-Con science fiction convention. He was impressed by the fans' costumes and the elaborate displays at the masquerade, and when he returned to Japan, he coined the term to describe what he saw.
Today, cosplay is a favorite ritual of Comic Con attendees, and this weekend in New York, the fans came out in droves. We saw dozens of Batmen, Iron Men, and Wonder Women, in addition to niché costumes, like characters of the Japanese manga series "Attack on Titan" and '90s throwbacks like Freakazoid and Hey Arnold.
The costumes vary greatly in intensity. Some crafty cosplayers get resourceful and repurpose clothing and props they already own. For instance, to cosplay as Katniss Everdeen of "Hunger Games"—a popular choice this weekend—all you need is a black t-shirt, green cargo pants, lace-up boots, and hair tied into a braid. You can buy a Mockingjay pin replica for as little as $4 and use brown eye shadow for dirt and grime smears.
Other cosplayers may choose to purchase their costumes from an online store, like Milanoo or Cosplay House. On Milanoo, prices range from $21 for a Dragonball Z jumpsuit on clearance to $197 for a black latex catsuit.
For those who want to go above and beyond and create something entirely unique, they can commission costumes from specialists, many of whom operate their businesses on Etsy. You send a description of what you want, pictures of the character for clarity, your measurements, and any special customization requests.
In the world of cosplay, you frequently have to decide between three requirements: "Time, quality, or money. You can only have one," said Iggy Tissera, a professional cosplayer and panelist at New York Comic Con's "I Have No Sewing Machine, But I Must Cosplay!" presentation. "If you want it to be well made, it's going to take a while and it's going to cost you."
Lindsey Celak, who led the panel as Sexy Indiana Jones, described a "sticker shock" experience a few years ago when she wanted to be Giselle, of Disney's animated movie "Enchanted." She requested a price quote from a commissioner—asking for specific, high-quality materials and hand-embroidered flowers—and discovered it would cost $850.
"If you're going for accuracy [of the character], you're going to pay for it," Celak said. "Close enough usually suffices." She instead purchased a lace costume from "one of those 'Made in China' sites" and it's held up splendidly since.
For cosplayers, the experience is nearly always worth the stress of choosing a costume and dropping the dough. It's an opportunity to be a hero, princess, or otherworldly creature.
"It takes courage to put on a costume and go into public," Tissera said. "But we're celebrating the characters that we love and embracing our fandom."
SEE ALSO: NYCC: Every Teen Is Wearing This Costume To New York Comic Con
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