Bewarethewumpus

Crowd Control Productions (CCP Games) was founded in 1997 in Reykjavik, Iceland. It is best known for EVE Online, its anarchic space MMO from which stories of intricately-plotted depravity emerge on a disturbingly but entertainingly regular basis. It has over 150 employees.

The Communist Party of China was founded in 1921 in Shanghai, China, by Chinese intellectual supporters of the then-recent October Revolution. It was victorious in a civil war against the Guomindang—Chinese Nationalist Party—and has governed the People's Republic of China since 1949. It has over 100 million members.

These organisations are difficult to tell apart.

So difficult to tell apart, in fact, that CCP Games recently announced it was jettisoning its name entirely. It's now Fenris Creations, putting an end to all our japes about the upcoming EVE version of the Yan'an Rectification Movement (it's possible only I was making those japes).

In a recent chat with GamesIndustry.biz, CCP—sorry, Fenris Creations CEO Hilmar Pétursson said that, yeah, the company pretty much took the opportunity to change its name because it was sick of all the Chinese Communist Party gags and misunderstandings.

"I'm not going to fight the Chinese Communist Party over who is the CCP," Pétursson said, wisely (China maintains over 600 nuclear warheads). And besides, "in the English-speaking world, we have increasingly had problems… reporters write stories about us where we are literally referred to as 'the other CCP'. We have CCP employees going to the US and being questioned over the name. These are not big things, but I can sense where this is going."

I am almost certainly one of the reporters who made that joke, so sorry about that one, guys. But it's also a slightly dispiriting indicator of the state of the world that company employees were getting the third-degree over its name at US border control.

In fact, Pétursson notes the mix-up between CCP (videogames) and CCP (vanguard of the proletarian revolution) is pretty much entirely a western phenomenon: "Obviously, the Chinese Communist Party doesn't think of itself as the CCP. That's a Western construct. They refer to it by a Chinese name. They're not called the Chinese Communist Party in Iceland either; we call it the Kommúnistaflokkur Kína in Icelandic."

So, our fault again. Still, at least it's all in the past now. At least unless and until Xi Jinping announces the funniest brand pivot in history at the next party congress.

For the banishment of all doubt, no, Google isn't scraping the contents of your email inbox in order to train its AI models. However, that doesn't mean Gmail is free of Gemini, and sooner or later you'll need to decide your own personal boundaries with AI.

Google announced at the start of the year that Gmail would be entering the Gemini era. This ushered in AI overviews for your inbox, as well as the Help Me Write feature that allows floundering users to draft emails with AI assistance. Gemini is used to sift through all the data in your inbox in order to summarise information or give relevant insights.

These features have been available for some time now, but the presence of AI in your inbox may have caught your attention again recently due to viral posts such as this one from Shark Tank's Lori Greiner (via Forbes). What you may have heard less about is 'Personal Intelligence'.

Personal Intelligence began to roll out around the same time as Gmail's Smart features, and allows users to link Gemini to various Google apps, like Gmail, Google Photos, and YouTube. You could ask Gemini 'Hey, why can't I stop thinking about low-poly rats?' and, in theory, Gemini could look through your YouTube watch history and messages, then say something like, 'It's because you rewatched Rat Movie: Mystery of the Mayan Treasure last week after your best friend sent it to you with the following caption: Rat squad 4 lyfe.'

Much like Gmail's smart features, when personal intelligence is enabled Gemini can search through all of the personal data held by Google's apps in order to answer your conversational queries. It can also scan all of your Google photos in order to "create more relevant, personal images using Nano Banana" (via Forbes).

It's worth reiterating that 'personal Intelligence' is an opt-in featureset. You can also opt-out of Gmail's smart features fairly easily if you'd rather Gemini didn't go rifling through your inbox. First, open Gmail and click the big cog icon in the top-right corner. On the Quick settings menu, click 'See all settings.' Now, scroll down to Smart features and untick the associated box. This does mean you lose access to a number of AI-assisted features, including automatic email categories in your inbox.

In the case of both 'Personal Intelligence, and Gmail's AI features, Google assured last month that its AI isn't snaffling up any of your data. This is in line with Google's assertion last year that it's not using Gemini's Gmail integration to train its AI.

That said, no inbox is really an island. Google says in support documentation for Gemini apps, "When you interact with Gemini, summaries, excerpts, generated media, and inferences from your relevant media, emails, and files may be used to help us answer your prompts. To make our responses relevant, helpful, and high quality, we train our generative AI models off of these summaries, excerpts, generated media, and inferences."

In other words, Gemini won't steal your photos or emails for training, but it will retain the conversations you've had about them and elements of that data may then be used to train the model. Even with this degree of separation, I still wouldn't want to allow any AI model to rifle through my personal data—especially not to create personalised, AI-generated memes based on my phone's photos. My digital memories are worth more than that—or, at the very least, they're worth an authentically terrible Photoshop attempt.

After around a year and a half in early access, Blindfire—a multiplayer FPS whose main thing is that its arenas are all incredibly dark, forcing you to rely on your other senses (and tech, naturally) to catch enemies—got its full release.

Which was something of a bittersweet event for its devs at Double Eleven, who wrote in a message to players that "We failed on our terms, and we're proud of that."

Blindfire had, quite simply, failed to set the world on fire. Despite mostly positive reviews, it never caught on, meaning its release was more of a Viking funeral than anything else. But—in a time where online games suddenly becoming unplayable is more of a hot-button issue than ever—the devs said that they were going to make the game free rather than shutter it, and committed to keeping the servers up for years to come.

"Blindfire didn't blow up. It didn't top charts. But it meant everything to the team who made it," wrote the devs. "Instead of shutting it down, we've made Blindfire free for everyone. Not as a marketing stunt. Not as a desperate last push. But because we believe creative work matters, even when it doesn't go viral."

Not only is the game now free—you can add it to your Steam library right now, should the mood strike you—but Double Eleven is seemingly committed to keeping it going for a good long while yet: "We're keeping the servers up. We're preserving what we built. No tricks. No shutdown countdown. Just the game, as it is, ready for anyone who wants to jump in—now or years from now."

Development on the game has ended. In fact, in a blog post accompanying the transition to free-play, the devs say "active development" has been finished for about a year. But the game has gotten one final update to mark its 'full' release: "We have added two new weapons: the Desolation, an explosive sticky-slug shotgun, and the Tempest, a precision burst rifle. There are also achievements to hunt down, a big batch of new skins and full haptic support to make every shot feel a little more real."

Most interesting of all, the game now has an "Audio Aim Assist" feature for blind and partially-sighted players. "We heard from blind and partially sighted players that Blindfire was one of the first shooters they could truly compete in. This new feature adds audio cues to help keep you oriented and let you know when an enemy is in your sights. To us, it feels like a fitting final addition to a game about fighting in the dark."

I'll admit that part of me wonders if this move isn't at least a little bit of a marketing move, but I don't doubt that devs' passion for the thing they've built is genuine. And at the end of the day, it's nice to see a game not immediately sink beneath the waves the second it was clear it hadn't made it big. Now we just need some self-hosting options for when the official servers go off, and we'll really be cooking.

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Based almost entirely on something Tomer Ullman told me, and I hereby nominate him as First Dean of Shenanigans.

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Triple the median would of course be 50% more inner peace.

Limited-edition versions will place US president’s portrait inside cover alongside declaration text and flag motifs

• US politics live – latest updates

The United States government, marking 250 years of independence from a monarchy, will this summer issue passports featuring a large photograph of its most senior leader’s face.

The limited-edition documents, billed as a commemoration of the US’s 250th anniversary of independence, will display Donald Trump’s photograph on the inside cover, surrounded by the text of the Declaration of Independence and the US flag, with his signature rendered in gold. A separate page features the famous painting of the founding fathers signing that very document.

The Free Universal Construction Kit is a 3D-printable set of adapters that allow you to connect 10 popular construction toy systems, including Lego, Duplo, Fischertechnik, Gears! Gears! Gears!, K'Nex, Krinkles (AKA Bristle Blocks/Stickle Bricks), Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoys, Zome, and Zoob. — Read the rest

The post Free Universal Construction Kit: 3D-printable adapters to connect Lego, Duplo, K'Nex, Stickle Bricks and other systems appeared first on Boing Boing.

Facepunch Studios' new game creation platform s&box will release next week on April 28 on Steam. Built on Valve's Source Engine 2, s&box is the "spiritual successor to Garry's Mod," a physics sandbox and toolkit users can build their own games in.

Leading up to the launch, Facepunch Studios stated its community-forward vision, highlighting features like payments to game developers and the ability for devs to export their games from s&box and add them to Steam—without Facepunch taking a percentage.

"We're not guided by commercial milestones, we're not going to do an IPO," says Facepunch. "We do this because we love it, we want to give the community the same opportunities we've had. We want to do that as fair and generously as possible. Without any corporate mischief."

Part of that philosophy is paying developers who make games using s&box, and Facepunch says it has already paid out over $500,000 to game makers on its platform. "This isn't as extreme as others but it'll grow and is sustainable, since we don't have to fire 1000 people to keep it working," Facepunch says.

The payments come from "The Play Fund," a pool of money which at the moment is generated from Garry's Mod's profits, though "Our hope is that one day s&box will be able to stand on its own two feet, and the fund will grow with its success." The Play Fund pool is distributed among developers with the most popular games and maps—you can learn more about it on s&box's monetization page.

Developers who build their games with s&box will also retain full control over them, and can even take them off the platform. Due to a deal Facepunch struck with Valve, "s&box games can be exported as standalone games on Steam," the studio says.

"We don't ask for any royalties for this. No hidden percentages, no rug pulls, your work is yours. This means that if you make a popular game on our platform, you're not stuck—if you can make it standalone, you should."

"We're trying to give people the same chances that we've had… we do everything not for ourselves, but for the community," says Facepunch Studios CEO Garry Newman. "By elevating the community, we elevate ourselves naturally. We have faith in that because that's what happened to us. Everyone can win."

After draping a white sheet over himself to baffle surveillance cameras didn't exactly go to plan, YouTuber Chris the Producer has taken a different tact: slapping a giant TV on his back.

"This is the only device," he says, "that allows you to legally evade America's surveillance system." For my part, I can neither confirm nor deny that statement.

The setup involves a chest-mounted action camera, a tactical backpack with frame mounting system, and a "massive TV" which is fitted to the backpack in front of an industrial battery pack that sits between the two. The camera streams to the TV at the back, displaying just whatever is in front of you:

"It's essentially a giant backpack with a camera on one side that live streams to the TV mounted on my back, therefore obscuring my body and face, making me entirely invisible."

I'm not sure about that "entirely invisible" part, but if it "works pretty well on dogs" which are "basically the same thing" as surveillance cameras, then who am I to say?

If you want to make one yourself, he does break down the cost:

• GoPro with chest mount and cords: $400
• TV (stolen from family): $250
• North Face backpack: $110
• Super-heavy New Yeti 1500 battery pack: $1,500

According to the appropriately succinct video description, this "kinda set me back a bit but I did evade surveillance cameras for a few hours." The YouTuber does note the ideal setup would be to have it double-sided, however, so you don't have to keep your back to the cameras. That's what bumps up the cost to about $3,000.

What do you think, worth the money? I'll probably stick to just avoiding leaving my apartment instead—the big brain solution. Cameras can't see what isn't there. Just doing my part to combat the ever-encroaching panopticon. Wait, what do you mean they're encroaching digitally, too? To the fields we go, I guess.

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Brought to you by the All Theodicy compilation of SMBC, coming 2035.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed an order Wednesday moving FDA-covered cannabis products and state-licensed medical marijuana from Schedule I — the same federal classification as heroin, reserved for drugs with "high potential for abuse" and "no currently accepted medical use" — to Schedule III, where it joins Tylenol with codeine. — Read the rest

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Wild Gunman '74 was an electromechanical arcade game designed by Nintendo legend Gunpei Yokoi. Unlike its 1985 digital sequel, Wild Gunman, the original immersed the player in full-motion film footage of the opposing gunslinger. Shoot fast, and he goes down. — Read the rest

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The ads on your phone aren't just selling you sneakers. They're a feed for anyone with a budget.

Tucson cops wanted to nail a suspected cigarette-store thief who had been hitting the same chain. So they pulled up the location pings of every phone near each robbery, noticed one device that kept showing up, and followed it home. — Read the rest

The post Tucson cops cracked a cigarette case using a tool tracking 500M phones appeared first on Boing Boing.

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She immediately starts building a child-size oven in a house made of candy.

robertreich:

Remember: There is nothing natural or inevitable about extreme inequality; it’s the result of an economic system that values wealth and power over human dignity and justice. It doesn’t have to be this way.