Bewarethewumpus

Author : Elijah Goering

It began with the invention of the tool. Perhaps that was our big mistake. We built a civilization. We survived the discovery of the power of the atom, and lived to develop a faster than light drive. Immediately, we raced to colonize dozens of systems, and began terraforming at least one planet in each system. Then we faltered, stopped expanding just long enough to populate our colonies. And then we created the weapon.

I will not describe the weapon in detail and help whomever might find this to destroy themselves. I will simply say that it had the power to scourge a planet of all life. The inventors meant to use it only once, and achieve a final victory over their enemies. The demonstration was effective, and soon the technology was bought, stolen, or copied by every planet, except those whose enemies got it first. But if we’re anything we’re vengeful. Homeless fleets of warships got their revenge.

No planets survived, but life continued among the asteroids. So did the war. Two of the most powerful nations banded together and destroyed the homes of every other fleet. I escaped before my home was destroyed, but I have not since seen any sign of my people. I roamed far from home through unexplored star systems and waited until I thought it was safe to return. I was right. The war was over. Nowhere that I searched was there any sign of life, only ruins of a lost civilization. Until I got to the home system.

Males were too rare in our society to risk in war, all were left safely at home, until our homes were destroyed. In orbit of a gas giant in our home system was a monument which said “Here was the final battle of the Oikosians. Whether by accident or design, this small moon was destroyed in the fury to combat, with the last of our males. Now our species goes to extinction”.

Perhaps some males survived, and a colony was formed in secret, far from the war. But if so, I have since roamed through hundreds, perhaps thousands of systems and have seen no sign of it. Some systems had life, but nowhere was there intelligence. I found only one planet truly bustling with life, orbiting a yellow star halfway through its life. I have placed my ship in the Oort cloud orbiting its sun. It is my hope that intelligence will evolve on the planet nearby, and develop a technological civilization. Before my escape I collected as much information as I could, and on board I have a library containing works of science, mathematics, and the history of the Oikosians up to the final war.. Perhaps they will find me, and with my working FTL drive I will be the key to the stars for some future civilization. To that end I will now disable life support to save energy so that my ship can send a message when another ship comes near. By the time the aliens get here they should be ready for the FTL drive. So ends the dominion of life from the planet Oikos, and so (I hope) begins a new era of life in the galaxy.

-The Last Historian

Author : J.D. Rice

June 7, 2105: Today, we switched on the communications array and confirmed what Dr. Keller’s team had previously detected. The signals we are detecting follow recognizable mathematical patterns, resembling the transmission encoding commonly used on Earth. We have yet to verify whether or not these signals are coming from some other government on our planet, but the sheer bulk of transmissions seems to support Dr. Keller’s hasty conclusion: We’ve stumbled upon an alien communication frequency. It may only be a matter of time before we can make contact.

December 14, 2105: Ongoing efforts to decode the alien signals have gone nowhere. We’ve brought in encryption experts from across the world to analyze the transmissions, but we are no closer to unlocking their secrets. Some on the encryption team believe the level of mathematics at work to be beyond our understanding. Others believe potential linguistic differences will make it impossible to understand the messages, even after we have decrypted them. Only time will tell.

May 3, 2106: Congress has voted to continue funding our project, despite ongoing dissatisfaction with our results. We are exploring the possibility of designing new decryption software to break down individual messages.

August 22, 2106: The communications array has fallen silent. All messages have stopped.

September 10, 2106: No new messages have been detected by the array.

November 17, 2106: We have decided to transmit a message out into the void. We will send the message in all Earth languages and pair them with mathematical sequences to demonstrate our intelligence. Perhaps we will get an answer.

January 11, 2107: Array still silent.

March 1, 2107: Long-range telescopes have detected thousands of large, metallic objects nearing our solar system. They are too far out to estimate their shape.

March 7, 2107: The metallic objects draw nearer.

March 10, 2107: The objects detected by our telescopes will not enter the Sol system, instead passing us by en route to some location farther out into the Milky Way.

March 12, 2107: The objects are passing as close as they will come. Images from our high aperture telescopes verify our suspicions: Alien spacecraft are about to pass Earth. Who are these travelers? And why will they not communicate?

March 14, 2107: The last of the alien ships passed our system today, drawing close to the orbit of Pluto. As it passed, we received a single message through the communications array, transmitted in all Earth languages.

“They are coming. Run.”

Author : Jae Miles, Staff Writer

Chandra Fourteen is an archaeological mystery. Not regarding its lost civilisation, nor the history of that civilisation. What everyone who encounters it becomes desperate to answer is why they did what they did.

Imagine a society at a pinnacle only dreamt of by man. Disease all-but banished, global peace established, a society turning itself toward furtherance of the physical, philosophical and spiritual sciences. A bright, beautiful world, geologically stabilised by a marvellous series of vents and pressor systems – that we still don’t understand – around their equivalents of the ‘Ring of Fire’.

That society has over ten thousand years of recorded history, showing parellels with humanity that cease when they nearly destroyed themselves in a global biowarfare holocaust. From that point it was as if they had gained something from the event that man has yet to realise. If the records found are complete, they never made war after that near-apocalypse.

Take time to mentally voyage across a world resembling the finest of climes that Earth has to offer, from sub tropical to frozen poles. See the artificial volcanoes that stabilise the world and allow a measure of weather control.

Now turn your gaze eastward, looking out across a gigantic ocean, seeing the peaks of the volcanoes like fenceposts stretching for hundreds of miles, then pause as you see that one of the ‘fenceposts’ has grown.

Impossibly tall, the vent installation at the centre of their greatest ocean stretches into orbit, a feat of engineering that has human engineers scanning it with a mix of glee, awe and despair.

How long it took to accomplish that feat is unknown. What followed took a lot longer, was far more difficult and infinitely more puzzling. This enlightened, advanced civilisation channelled it’s energies into putting the magma from the planet’s core into orbit.

It is insane to see this hollow sphere of barely ten-kilometre thick pumice, wrapped about a framework of a ceramic/metallic alloy that is still deemed impossible by our science. That sphere encases a dead planet, dead in a way never before encountered. They shut out the sun and, as far as can be ascertained, waited for one of the various lingering deaths to claim them. A monstrous, planetary suicide.

Professors Eppes and Rhodensteen have only one tenuous explanation, which is causing an uproar that looks to increase before it settles. It is based upon the one inscription on the atmosphere-piercing spire. At the top, plainly etched after the insane pyrospire ceased belching magma, is and inscription that translates as ‘We have become polluted/unclean’. From that, the learned Professors have drawn a conclusion: the society fell foul of mass delusion prompted by religious dogma.

When everyone has stopped screaming at each other, maybe we can return to looking for the truth – be it heretofore unexpected reason, or sad proof.

John Brennan, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, went on “Face the Nation” last Sunday and did something weird: he acknowledged that U.S. foreign policy might sometimes cause terrorism. Of course, he didn’t word it exactly like that, but close enough:

BRENNAN: I think the president has tried to make sure that we’re able to push the envelope when we can to protect this country. But we have to recognize that sometimes our engagement and direct involvement will stimulate and spur additional threats to our national security interests.

This is notable because the people who run our foreign policy usually tell us that terrorists are like zombies, driven by some incomprehensible force to kill and kill and kill until we take them out with a head shot/drone strike. Brennan himself did this five years ago while “answering” questions from the late reporter Helen Thomas about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian man who tried to blow up a Northwest flight over Detroit:

THOMAS: And what is the motivation? We never hear what you find out on why.

BRENNAN: Al Qaeda is an organization that is dedicated to murder and wanton slaughter of innocents …

THOMAS: Why?

BRENDAN: I think this is a — this is a long issue, but al Qaeda is just determined to carry out attacks here against the homeland.

The next year Abdulmutallab explained at his sentencing what had motivated him:

I [attempted] to attack the United States in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel and in retaliation of the killing of innocent and civilian Muslim populations in Palestine, especially in the blockade of Gaza, and in retaliation for the killing of innocent and civilian Muslim populations in Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and beyond, most of them women, children, and noncombatants.

In fact, the government’s own sentencing memorandum for Abdulmutallab cites this statement, and points out that trying “to retaliate against government conduct” is part of the legal definition of terrorism.

So Brennan well understands that our foreign policy causes attacks against Americans. And our legal code specifies that attempting to retaliate against U.S. actions is what makes you a terrorist. Nonetheless, this obvious reality is almost never said out loud by government officials.

On the other hand, comedians can say it (though not on TV). Immediately after 9/11, George W. Bush famously asked “Why do they hate us?” and answered: “They hate our freedoms.” On David Cross’s 2004 “It’s Not Funny” stand-up album, recorded at the DC Improv Club, Cross said:

CROSS: I don’t think Osama Bin Laden sent those planes in to attack us because he hated our freedom. I think he did it because of our support for Israel and ties to the Saudi family and all our military bases in Saudi Arabia. You know why I think that? Because that’s what he fucking said.

(I learned about Brennan’s “Face the Nation” statement from Micah Zenko.)

(This post is from our blog: Unofficial Sources.)

Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

This post has been corrected to say that Brennan was appearing on “Face the Nation” rather than “Meet the Press.”

The post CIA Director John Brennan Admits U.S. Foreign Policy Could Spur Terrorism appeared first on The Intercept.

You know that Minecraft is massive. But, did you know it is transforming learning?

Geeky teachers have brought Minecraft to subjects ranging from history to biology to probability. The game is being rolled out to every secondary school in Northern Ireland this month. If you're a parent, you've noticed Minecraft offerings spawning in your local summer camp listings. The Chicago Architecture Foundation offers a Minecraft camp for budding builders. Ninety-two libraries participated in the International Games Day Minecraft Hunger Games tournament, and crowned a 13-year-old girl as its champion. And, I've helped launch Connected Camps' Summer of Minecraft, a new in-game online camp.

Progressive educators have been advocating for games-based learning ever since Carmen Sandiego, Oregon Trail, and Reader Rabbit opened up a new market for consumer children's software in the '80s. SimCity demonstrated how a building and tinkering game could be embraced by parents, kids, and educators. And, Scratch shows how kid-centered learning communities can thrive online.

Minecraft is part of this lineage of learning games, but it fundamentally rewrites the playbook. Why?

1. It's the first massively mainstream learning game. We've seen other learning-ish games become big commercial successes, like SimCity or Civilization. But, Minecraft is the first title to compete with the biggest entertainment names. This means it successfully steals kid mindshare from Mario and Bejeweled. This is a historic first.

2. Kids build stuff together online. Most educational platforms and games seek to convey content, whether it is math, science, history, or another school subject. Minecraft is more like Legos or the Logo programming language. In Seymour Papert's terms: children programming the computer rather than being programmed by it. Sure, you can put school content in a Minecraft world, but at its heart, Minecraft is about constructing and problem solving in a networked social world. The blocky indie vibe just contributes to the culture of DIY creativity in Minecraft and kids feel empowered to make it their own.

3. Endless ways to level up. Minecraft has something for everyone, regardless of age or interest. Kids as young as 4 and 5 can start with the pocket edition, gradually moving up to the PC version and connecting via multiplayer mode. Players can battle zombies, build a circuit system, or a beautiful palace. Or, they can admire the achievements of other players and builders in the Minecraft YouTube ecosystem. This means that there is always something to be inspired by, a mentor to seek out, and a way to level up or branch out.

4. Servers are player-operated. Minecraft isn't the first virtual world to value player creativity. Remember Second Life? But, what makes the DNA of Minecraft fundamentally different from Second Life or WoW is that any player can set up and administer their own server. This makes the Minecraft scene a breeding ground not only for digital creativity, but social innovation. Players are building their own server-based communities in Minecraft governed by the values and rules that they develop and enforce. No corporate overlord dictating the rules of property and play here. The mod world in Minecraft is teeming with social engineering tools, ranging from chat moderation add-ons to systems that assign plots and different privileges to players to minimize griefing. Lessons in digital citizenship anyone?

Together these four dimensions of Minecraft make my progressive digital educator heart go pitter patter. My career is devoted to seeking out ways to mobilize digital technology and networks for learning that empowers kids to be problem solvers, creators, and civically engaged. Minecraft is game changing in my corner of educational reform and the movement for connected learning.

So, I can't help but join the growing ranks of educators running programs in Minecraft. After a successful pilot with 250 kids last summer, I've launched a new start-up with two fellow girl geek educators, Tara Tiger Brown (co-founder of LA Makerspace and KitHub), and Katie Salen (founder of Institute of Play). On July 6, we will be opening the doors to a new online summer camp in Minecraft that runs on our homegrown servers, and campers from all over the world are welcome to sign up. Our servers are tricked out with mods designed to make the environment kid and learning friendly, and will be staffed by high school and college counselors who are longtime Minecraft nerds. Our weekly challenges are open to everybody on our server or elsewhere and we're hoping to draw even more kids to the learning potential of Minecraft.

Minecraft Resources for Educators:
* Connected Camps Summer of Minecraft Educator Program
* Connectedlearning.tv Minecraft webinar series
* MinecraftEdu offers teacher-friendly Minecraft packages
* Edutopia's ideas for using Minecraft in the classroom

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Author : Bob Newbell

“Captain Ree’Eer’Ak reporting as ordered,” said the alien who, from a human perspective, might have been described as some nightmarish character from a Picasso painting made flesh, as it seemingly just appeared in the room that lacked any visible means of ingress or egress.

“Be comfortable, Captain,” said the other equally surreal creature. Part of what might have been one of the thing’s arms appeared to be missing. The alien looked in the direction of where the remainder of the arm should have been. “Ree’Eer’Ak, your report is…”

“Difficult to believe,” the Captain finished for its superior. “I’m aware of that, Admiral. But as the old philosophers said, when evidence and belief are in conflict, belief must change.”

“Quite a bit will change,” the Admiral replied, settling back. The missing hand that held the Captain’s report abruptly snapped into existence as the back of the Admiral’s head disappeared like a poorly executed split-screen effect in an old movie. “In fact, it’s no exaggeration to say that very few aspects of life will remain unaffected if your ship’s log entries are correct.”

“They are correct, Admiral.”

“Make no mistake, Ree’Eer’Ak. When this is made public, every biology textbook will have to be rewritten. And it’s an open question how the major religions will accommodate this discovery, if they can accommodate it at all.”

The Captain leaned forward. Its body seemed to break in two, its proximal half sliding forward on its distal half. “Every word of every log entry is true, Admiral. What I and my crew documented is an accurate description of life on Earth. And we have brought back biological samples for study.”

“And ‘Earth’ is the name by which the inhabitants of Dellor 3 call their world?”

“Yes, Admiral.”

“And the…” The Admiral referenced the report. “The ‘humans’ as well as all life on that world are…”

“Three dimensional,” said the Captain.

The Admiral leaned back further. Its head now seemed to vanish entirely. “It’s long been theorized that simple microscopic life might exist in three dimensions. But complex, higher life forms? That was always thought impossible. And you claim these humans are intelligent?”

“They are, Admiral. Their science is somewhat confused because their sensory organs can’t detect a fourth spatial dimension. For example, they imagined some strange and undetectable material called ‘dark matter’ existed to try to reconcile their 3-D perception of what is a 4-D spatial universe.”

“How do they appear?”

“They’re bipeds. They’re…it’s difficult to describe. They’re ‘flatter’ than we are.”

“And how do we appear to them?”

“Very unnerving. Parts of our ship and the crew are not visible to them. And the parts that are or are not visible change as we move. And their architecture is likewise limited to three dimensions meaning we can enter or exit what to them is a totally enclosed structure by simply walking around the walls. I’m glad we were able to make first contact without incident. To them, we must be terrifying.”

“And yet you conclude your log entry with the suggestion that we establish full diplomatic relations?”

“Yes, Admiral. As you noted, this will change who we are and how we perceive ourselves. And it will have the same effect on the human race. Isn’t that the ultimate goal of exploration? I believe we should extend the hand of friendship even if our new acquaintances can’t see it all at once.”

Supreme Court Ruling Not Enough To Prevent Debtors Prisons

Judge Robert Swisher, a Superior Court judge in Benton County, says he'll make judgments based on how people present themselves in court.

"They come in wearing expensive jackets," he says referring to defendants who wear NFL football team jackets, "or maybe a thousand dollars' worth of tattoos on their arms. And they say, 'I'm just living on handouts.' "

If the jacket or tattoos were a gift, he tells the defendants they should have asked the giver for the cash to pay their court fees instead.

Human Rights Watch

The United States Supreme Court has ruled that a person sentenced to probation cannot then be incarcerated simply for failing to pay a fine that they genuinely cannot afford. Yet many misdemeanor courts routinely jail probationers who say they cannot afford to pay what they owe—and they do so in reliance on the assurances of for-profit companies with a financial stake in every single one of those cases.... In Mississippi, a middle-aged woman was fined $377 for driving without a valid license. Months later, she called the court in tears because her company probation officer was threatening to have her jailed over $500 in unpaid supervision fees she said she could not afford. At the time she was trying to make ends meet working the night shift at a local gas station. Court officials told Human Rights Watch that she had already paid off her entire fine to the court, but still owed money to her probation company—and that the court had in no way authorized the probation company to threaten her with arrest.

NBC - Collections companies as for-profit probation companies

In these instances, courts and municipalities contract with traditional debt-collection agencies, often the same firms that collect on credit card or health care debt. The companies, in turn, often tack additional one-time or monthly service fees onto debtors' bills.

Other companies have moved beyond collections work to become a part of the criminal justice system itself by overseeing probation. Over the past 15 years, these for-profit probation companies have emerged as important players in court systems across the country, particularly in the South.

NPR (also the link above the fold)

GUILTY AND CHARGED: KEY FINDINGS

NPR's yearlong investigation included more than 150 interviews with lawyers, judges, offenders in and out of jail, government officials, advocates and other experts. It also included a nationwide survey — with help from NYU's Brennan Center for Justice and the National Center for State Courts — of which states are charging defendants and offenders fees. Findings of this investigation include:

• Defendants are charged for a long list of government services that were once free — including ones that are constitutionally required.
• Impoverished people sometimes go to jail when they fall behind paying these fees.
• Since 2010, 48 states have increased criminal and civil court fees.
• Many courts are struggling to interpret a 1983 Supreme Court ruling protecting defendants from going to jail because they are too poor to pay their fines.
• Technology, such as electronic monitors, aimed at helping defendants avoid jail time is available only to those who can afford to pay for it [emphasis mine]

A state-by-state survey conducted by NPR found that defendants are charged for many government services that were once free, including those that are constitutionally required. For example:

• In at least 43 states and the District of Columbia, defendants can be billed for a public defender.
• In at least 41 states, inmates can be charged room and board for jail and prison stays.
• In at least 44 states, offenders can get billed for their own probation and parole supervision.
• And in all states except Hawaii, and the District of Columbia, there's a fee for the electronic monitoring devices defendants and offenders are ordered to wear.

ACLU

"Pay-or-serve" warrants authorize a debtor's arrest. Once in custody, the debtor must either pay the full amount of the fine or "pay down" the fine by serving time in jail at a daily rate set by the court. Wheat Ridge and Northglenn set the rate at $50 per day, while Westminster converts all unpaid fines into ten-day sentences. None of the three cities has a process to determine whether the debtor has the ability to pay, as federal and state law require. [emphasis mine]

In For A Penny: The Rise of America's New Debtors' Prisons
This ACLU report presents the results of a yearlong investigation into modern-day "debtors' prisons," and shows that poor defendants are being jailed at increasingly alarming rates for failing to pay legal debts they can never hope to afford. The report details how across the country, in the face of mounting budget deficits, states are more aggressively going after poor people who have already served their criminal sentences. These modern-day debtors' prisons impose devastating human costs, waste taxpayer money and resources, undermine our criminal justice system, are racially skewed, and create a two-tiered system of justice.

YouTuber Peter Gilroy does an impressive impersonation of every platitude-spewing inspirational video uploaded to the site.

Former Republican Lincoln Chafee announced his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination on Wednesday, and immediately set a new marker in the race by calling for National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden to be allowed to come home.

Coming only a day after the Senate passed the first limits on U.S. surveillance in four decades, Chafee’s call was another reflection of how Snowden’s startling revelations about the intrusiveness of the U.S. government’s electronic spying dragnet two years ago have changed the nation’s political climate on questions of security and privacy.

Snowden nevertheless remains marooned in Russia and charged with espionage by U.S. government officials who seek his arrest and long imprisonment.

Chafee served as Rhode Island’s governor and as one of its U.S. Senators. He broke from the GOP over the Iraq war.

His remarks about Snowden came as he outlined a foreign policy considerably more in line with historic American norms than the ones pursued by either the current or immediately past president.

“I want America to be a leader and an inspiration for civilized behavior in this new century,” he said. “We will abide by the Geneva conventions, which means we will not torture prisoners.

“Our sacred Constitution requires a warrant before unreasonable searches, which includes our phone records. Let’s enforce that and while we’re at it, allow Edward Snowden to come home.”

He continued: “Extrajudicial assassinations by drone strikes are not working. Many blame them for the upheaval in Yemen. And Pakistan is far too important a place to antagonize with these nefarious activities. They are not worth the collateral damage and toxic hatred they spread. Let’s stop them. ”

Watch his announcement here:

Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

(This post is from our blog: Unofficial Sources.)

 

The post Chafee, Running for President, Calls for Snowden to Be Allowed Home appeared first on The Intercept.

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No such thing as impossible.

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YouTube RBM enthusaist Jelle Bakker brings the Blue Ball Machine into reality by rolling over 11,000 marbles down an elaborate apparatus using German kinetic toy sets.

Last week, the soccer world was rocked when numerous current and former FIFA officials were arrested and charged with accepting illegal kickbacks and bribes. Only days later, FIFA President Sepp Blatter, under whose oversight these alleged crimes have occurred for nearly two decades, was reelected. That’s why John Oliver has called on FIFA’s high-profile sponsors to use their financial leverage to effect some change in the most powerful soccer organization in the world.

In addition to last week’s corruption allegations, FIFA and Blatter have been criticized for awarding the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, a nation with a horrendous human rights record where more than 1,000 migrant workers have already died working on Cup-related projects. Others have complained about having their passports and visas taken away from them by bosses, while also not being paid for months at a time.

Sponsors like Visa and Coca-Cola have already responded to concerns about the Qatar event, but have thus far not given any indication of backing out of their sponsorships.

There’s also the upcoming Women’s World Cup event being hosted by Canada. Not only is FIFA okay with all of the games being played on artificial turf that can shred players’ bare skin, but Blatter has publicly suggested that female soccer players show more flesh in order to drum up more interest in the sport.

“It is rare to find a non-fired boss who will openly say, ‘I would like to make it easier for me to masturbate to my employees,’” says Oliver. “That is pretty much the full extent of Blatter’s care for female player’s legs.”

In the run-up to last week’s FIFA presidential election, Blatter offered a rather weak defense of the scandals that have occurred on his watch.

“I know many people hold me ultimately responsible for the actions and reputation of the global football community,” he explained. “I can not monitor everyone all of the time.”

Oliver likened this to “basically Charles Manson saying, ‘Listen, I’ve got a big family. I don’t know what Squeaky gets up to half the time.’”

Ultimately, Blatter’s continued presence at the head of FIFA comes down to money.

“The last group to get rid of [Blatter] is in the hands of the only group even more powerful than world governments,” explains Oliver. “Barring an indictment, the only people powerful enough to get rid of Sepp Blatter are FIFA’s sponsors.”

To these advertisers — Budweiser, McDonald’s, Kia, Hyundai, Adidas, Coca-Cola, Visa — Oliver begged, “Please, make Sepp Blatter go away. I’ll do anything.”

To Adidas: “I’ll wear one of your ugly shoes, that make me look like the Greek god of aspiring DJs.”

To McDonald’s: “I will take a bite out of every item on your dollar menu, which tastes like normal food that was cursed by a vindictive wizard.”

To Budweiser: “I will even make the ultimate sacrifice… I will put my mouth where my mouth is and I will personally drink one of your disgusting items. I’m serious. It can be a Bud Light. I will even drink a Bud Light Lime, despite the fact that all the lime in the world can not disguise the fact that this tastes like a puddle beneath a Long John Silver’s dumpster… If you get rid of the Swiss demon that has ruined the sport I love, this will taste like f*cking champagne.”

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If it feels like we hear a whole lot of stories about retail data breaches here in the U.S., well, that’s because we do. Americans are super duper popular targets for card hacks and fraud, and it’s for one simple reason: our credit card security is bad and should feel bad.

Quartz reports this week on a new report from British-based international megabank Barclays, and it’s bad news for consumers on this side of the Atlantic.

American credit cards represent about a quarter — 24% — of all cards in use in the world. But when it comes to fraud, American cards represent nearly half — 47% — of cards that have been subject to fraud.

The main culprit is one we’ve covered many times before: in the U.S., where magnetic stripe technology is still the dominant way payment cards are accepted, we are vulnerable to software incursions and theft. Simply put, we are low-hanging fruit. Intruding into a system like Target or Home Depot and making off with usable data for tens of millions of payment cards is easy as pie, at least as compared to other nations.

And that is, of course, because other nations have long since switched to more secure, EMV (chip-using) credit and debit cards. The EMV system doesn’t completely eliminate the potential for card fraud, but it does make it much harder to do.

Worldwide, Barclays reports, chip-card adoption sits at about 43% — but that doesn’t include the U.S. In Western Europe, most nations have long since gone through the conversion process and the adoption rate sits at almost 82%. Since starting the transition to chip-and-PIN cards in 2003, the U.K. has seen an over 70% reduction in payment card fraud.

Here in the states we are finally on our way to joining the rest of the world, but it’s a slow process happening one bank and one retailer at a time, rather than something with a firm, government-imposed deadline. MasterCard and Visa will require merchants to upgrade to having chip-enabled payment systems by October of this year, but many banks are unlikely to make it before another two years into the future*.

One only wonders how many 50 million card megabreaches American consumers will see between now and then.

*Correction: This article originally incorrectly stated that the MasterCard/Visa liability shift for merchants to upgrade to chip-enabled card readers had changed to 2017. That date is still in 2015; it may take banks until 2017 to issue the cards.

Americans are, by far, hackers’ favorite credit-card fraud targets [Quartz]

Welcome to Horse Week! We’ve delved into the subject of horses before, but they’ve often left us with more questions than answers. Who are these mysterious creatures? Where do they come from? What do they want? Do they want candy?

The post Large Horse Collider appeared first on Scenes From A Multiverse.

A high-octane speed race between a Porsche 911 GT3 and a Nissan 350Z on Autobahn gets interrupted by an unexpected challenge from a “sleeper” Volkswagen Golf.

There’s only so much Seth Rogen a sane person can take. When the stoner humor gets mad, apply this handy little catchphrase.

You’ve probably heard the saying before that “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” Another way to look at it: “Art is 99 percent robbery.”

Steal Like an Artist author Austin Kleon created the image above as one of his newspaper blackout poems. The idea that creativity is basically about remixing previous ideas and there’s nothing new under the sun might sound dismal, but it’s actually pretty freeing. Your art and your ideas don’t have to be 100% original (and probably can’t be). After stealing from the best, the one percent that you put into it that’s yours is enough.

Keep on creating.

99 percent robbery | Austin Kleon

by Cheer Up Emo Kid