Arnvidr

October, 31st

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Brevity by Dan Thompson for October 29, 2015

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After inventing a diesel engine that doesn't emit any harmful gases into the atmosphere, you'd think that VW would never run out of money ever again. Despite this, the German auto maker has just posted a quarterly loss of €3.48 billion ($3.84 billion) which, if we're honest, makes very little sense. After all, the financial documents reveal that the firm was making a pile of money up until September, and then everything drops off a cliff. The only thing that makes sense is if something totally implausible took place, like discovering that the firm was using software in a global system of emissions fraud. But, if we're honest, nobody in their right mind would attempt something so irresponsible as that, would they.

Via: Reuters

Source: VW Group

Legislation designed to protect net neutrality and abolish mobile phone roaming fees has been passed today by the European Parliament. These new rules -- hotly debated for two years by EU representatives -- are now finalised and will soon cover the entire continent, including the UK. While the end of expensive holiday phone bills won't take place until 2017, the updated internet protections should come into effect fairly quickly. Such a moment ought to be cause for celebration, however many in the technology industry are now concerned about loopholes that could enable internet "fast lanes." Today's vote included amendments that would've sealed up those weaknesses -- but it seems the Parliament was happy enough with the wording and pushed ahead regardless.

Source: European Commission

This project started as a simple experiment to see if I could create a "modern" looking graphical user interface for the commodore 64. Once I got the basic user interface working, I decided to add an optional touch screen. It pretty much works! Of course cOS can still be operated by a standard joystick or the cursor keys. These people are gods.

Time for my annual week of Halloween comics!

Boop

October, 22nd

dro-mo by dro-mo for October 22, 2015

Did you guys see the new Star Wars trailer? Me neither.

Only two months to telekinetic laser ninja action!

The post Space Wizards XII appeared first on Scenes From A Multiverse.

Hovertext: I'm just saying: TSA, you could be so much more.

New comic!
Today's News:

Wow! BAHFest west is already sold out. Sorry to those of you who didn't make it in time, but we should have some tickets held at the door on show day. Also, there are still some tickets for Discovery News, which is right after us, in the same building!

An anonymous reader writes: After decades of a gentleman's agreement to exempt them surveillance, UK MPs have discovered that GCHQ now deems them as legitimate targets of surveillance. Consequently, members of the UK Parliament have called for an emergency debate on domestic surveillance. Shadow Commons leader Chris Bryant said: "To all intents and purposes, it means that the Wilson doctrine is dead. It is the cornerstone of the bill of rights and it is one of the most ancient freedoms of this country. In another era, before the existence of telephones and emails it meant that MPs and peers, even in war, had a right for their written correspondence not to be intercepted or be interfered with."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes: As music distribution has flourished, the popularity of live performances in certain genres has begun to wane. Symphony orchestra attendance has been dropping for years. A new report says ticket sales have dropped by 2.8% annually for the past decade. The downward trend has caused many performing groups to experiment with ways to appeal more to modern audiences. One way they're finding success is by including music from video games. "Orchestral videogame concerts first gained a following in Japan in the mid-1980s and spread to parts of Europe in the early 2000s. They began appearing regularly in pops repertoires in the U.S. about a decade ago as orchestras sought younger, more diverse audiences. Unlike classical-music performances, videogame shows feature arrangements that blend looping tracks of music designed to match various moments in a game, such as a slow, eerie medley of piano, percussion and string as the videogame character navigates a castle dungeon. ... The story of The Legend of Zelda isn't a far cry from such classics as Mozart's The Magic Flute. Both tales involve a brave fellow in a quest to rescue a damsel from a villain's clutches

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It’s a bunnies kind of day. Have a good one!

The post Bunnies Debate appeared first on Scenes From A Multiverse.

We’d like to apologise to Naughty Dog for a massive mistake we published last month.

On September 30 we published an article titled “Is Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End too formulaic?” based on what we thought was a hands-on session with Uncharted 4 at the Tokyo Game Show.

We didn’t realise it at the time; what we’d played wasn’t Uncharted 4, but the remastered Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, from the recently released Uncharted Collection. We were not aware of this until after the article went live.

As soon as Sony notified us of our mistake we immediately unpublished the article as it was clearly based on one massive error on our part. TGS is busy and obviously the majority of signage isn’t in English, but none of that excuses the fact that we seriously fucked up.

It’s cute to say it’s testament to the skill and beautiful artwork of the Naughty Dog team that we mistook a remastered PS3 game for Uncharted 4. But none of that changes the fact that we have massively misrepresented a game to our readers, fans of the Uncharted series and the industry who read VG247.

The buck stops with the editor of the site, so I’m the one apologising. I should have done it sooner. I am genuinely sorry for this mistake, the misrepresentation of the game and the upset this has caused the development team.

Matt Martin

Editor, VG247

Airing footage from Russian-made game, Ahmed Moussa said the video shows Russia's "precision" assaults against ISIL.

An anonymous reader writes: Wikileaks has released the finalized Intellectual Property text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which international negotiators agreed upon a few days ago. Unfortunately, it contains many of the consumer-hostile provisions that so many organizations spoke out against beforehand. This includes the extension of the copyright term to life plus 70 years, and a ban on the circumvention of DRM. The EFF says, "If you dig deeper, you'll notice that all of the provisions that recognize the rights of the public are non-binding, whereas almost everything that benefits rightsholders is binding. That paragraph on the public domain, for example, used to be much stronger in the first leaked draft, with specific obligations to identify, preserve and promote access to public domain material. All of that has now been lost in favor of a feeble, feel-good platitude that imposes no concrete obligations on the TPP parties whatsoever." The EFF walks us through all the other awful provisions as well — it's quite a lengthy analysis.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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October 12th, 2015: This weekend (October 17th-18th) I'll be at MICE: the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo! It's totally free, totally great, and if you're anywhere around Cambridge, you should come. They asked if I'd do some comics themed around mice, comics, or expos, and that's what I did! I wrote out regular Dinosaur Comics scripts (I do actual scripts, now you know!) and instead of me laying them out, some of the terrific artists at MICE drew them instead. And they're super great! This comic is by Braden Lamb who is a great guy I've collaborated with a ton in the past. We did the Adventure Time comics (with Shelli Paroline!) and the three of us also did a comic called The Midas Flesh, from which you might recognize that very Cooper-ish utahraptor! – Ryan

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