Bewarethewumpus

Author : James Anderson

They called us handicapped. Our bodies didn’t develop the way other people’s did. We were weaker than them, we tired more easily. Some of us thought it was God, others just thought it was genetics. We didn’t know we were being prepared.

Decades after the war ended, humanity thought they had finally gotten it right. There was plenty of space for the survivors, food was plenty. For the first time anyone could remember, there was hope.

But the war had an effect no one foresaw. The scientists called it subnucleonic atmospheric degradation, whatever that is. All we know is that the weapons which had finally ended the war, had also poisoned the air. It didn’t manifest itself immediately, but by the time we noticed the effects, it was too late.

We needed a new home, somewhere out in the stars. Our scientists had already solved several of the most difficult problems posed by interstellar travel. Nuclear propulsion came from advances in missile technology. The hardened shield to protect travelers from cosmic radiation came from a need for protection from those same missiles. But mankind had not yet solved the debilitating issues associated with prolonged weightlessness on the human body. That’s where we came in.

Those of us in the Exploration Corps have all been diagnosed with various muscle diseases when we were young. Muscular dystrophy, fibromyalgia, even soft tissue sarcoma. Experiments showed that our health actually improved in space. We had been dealing with atrophying muscles all our lives, and in the weightlessness of space, what hindered the young, strapping astronauts of yesteryear was daily life to us.

So we will leave, and we will search the cosmos. There isn’t much time, but there will be enough for our small group of explorers to find a new home.

They called us handicapped, but now they call us the future.

Author : Beck Dacus

September 17th, 2366 was the day that humanity used a massive particle accelerator to try and make another universe.

Arnold Fisby looked out at the small section of the accelerator he could see, granted that it had the diameter of the Solar System. The entire object was made of carbon nanotubes to hold it together, and was going to slam two five-kilogram masses together and, hopefully, create another universe.

A wormhole would then open, connecting the two, releasing all of that energy into our universe– most likely destroying the surrounding area. To avert this, a closed timelike curve (CTC) was created to send the damage back in time.

“But won’t that just kill something earlier? Or cause a paradox?”

“It doesn’t matter, kid,” Fisby told the intern Angelica. “We’re doin’ this. Deal with it.” Almost right on cue, the countdown to collision started. A CUP (compressed ultrafast photography) camera would watch the two masses collide, and a “gravity doughnut” would cycle the damage into the past. The countdown ended, and the CUP caught the stunning footage. Fisby and the intern watched.

“Wow!” Fisby couldn’t help saying. “Can you believe that?”

“I don’t know,” the intern pressed. “I really just don’t like the idea of shoving our problems to the past. It’s like inverse procrastination.”

“Too late now,” he replied. “It’s already pushed it back farther than the human race has existed.”

Another intern, Thomas, pondered this for a minute, and thought of something startling.

“We”re pushing the damage into the past, right? But how far?”

“Really far now,” a technician said. “If we deactivated the CTC now, it would come back one billion years in the past.”

“And how long before we can safely open the CTC?”

“About twenty minutes.”

Interesting. Almost exactly thirteen times the amount of time we’ve been here, Thomas thought.

“What are you getting at?” Fisby pressed.

“Well, if we’ve already been here for about a minute-and-a-half, and that equals a billion years, twenty minutes would put the damage from the new universe at 14 billion years ago.”

Fisby finally understood, but Thomas continued for everyone else’s benefit.

“Might we not be creating A universe, but THE universe?”

September 17th, 2366 was also the day humanity realized that it had created the universe.

Author : Jae Miles, Staff Writer

They say that Vikings never actually had horns on their helmets. Odd how that piece of trivia rises to mind at this moment of peril. I know why it’s arisen: the being attempting to end my existence has horns on his helmet – or his head looks like a knight’s full-face helm with quadruple horns set at ninety-degrees to each other. These horns are either aligned to one central on the forehead – or to ones extending forward and outward from the temples – from the examples of his race that I’ve seen.

A girder interrupts my musings: I run straight into it.

I come to lying on the ground with the helmed space barbarian looming over me, making noises like a short-circuiting loudspeaker. As my eyes focus, his head explodes and I see that there is no helmet involved – his head had horns. The spattering of alien gore snaps me fully conscious and I scoot backwards while spitting out gobs of xenobrain. I start to retch as the taste registers.

Minutes later, I’m puking bile to the accompaniment of girly laughter. That’s not funny.

Using a crunch-and-spring move I come to my feet, ready to give the lady a piece of my mind. Spinning around, I stare her straight in the second nipple pair from the top and hastily reconsider my options. Tracking my gaze upwards, I encounter an angular face of surprising charm and the greenest eyes I have ever seen. I suffer a ‘lost moment’ only men will understand before I realise that her eyes are glowing from within and while her hands are on her hips, the tail – which I presume to be hers – is pointing a Kritoralian Eviscerator at me. No wonder my erstwhile attacker’s head exploded!

“You’d be what they call a Hooman?”
She’s got a voice that is almost ULF. I can feel her speak. Is she the source of that contralto laughter? I nod.
“Goodly. I’m Persim. That me name. I be a Fune. Always wanted t’meet a Hooman.”
Here goes nothing: “Why?”
She laughs and yes, she’s the owner of the laughter.
“It’s a big night with lots o’stars. Only you lot seem to want to go find what’s behind the next one.”
I smile: “You’d be looking for a berth?”
“Yup. Got to get me off this rock before next moonrise. Otherwise one o’him what I just headshot will be my new owner.”
“New owner? What happened to your old owner?”
She points at the headless corpse: “Was ’im. Better get me gone. Was thinkin’ you might ‘elp me after I ‘elp you?”
I’ve never heard of a Fune, but then again, humanity is still coming to terms with space being multi-dimensional and chock full of aliens. The only reason Earth got left alone for so long was that we were in what was considered an uninhabited sector of an obscure dimension.
My father got out of Australia as soon as he could. Said the stars were calling him to come walk among them. I guess I inherited that wanderlust. Like Persim said: ‘go find out what’s behind the next one’.
That thought settles my answer: “I’m Doobrie. You’re welcome to a berth. Let’s go see what’s behind that one.” I point to a star low on the horizon. She looks, laughs and I get a feeling we’re going to see the back of many stars before we part ways.

Author : Thomas Desrochers

Mao found it very curious, this third planet from the sun. Blisteringly hot and unbearably humid, shaken hourly by violent storms like a wind-up toy wound too tight. The only living residents left were clustered at the southern pole, hidden in the crags of the antarctic mountains and keeping an eye on the weather. Mao spent long days watching after them, cleaning and fixing their tools and labs, listening in on their conversations.

The weathermen were a superstituous lot, so naturally when a signal came stumbling in through from the old America del Sur the investigation fell to their stoic guardian and janitor: Mao.

A week into the journey to the old continent Mao found the third planet equal parts curious and frustrating. A dozen times his surface craft had rerouted itself around massive ferrous objects it believed were drifting across the ocean surface. Floating crypts, the weathermen had called them, but even with the enhanced optical suite Mao couldn’t see anything in the hazy orange mists. The pounding of the waves against the sides of the vessel never ceased.

By the end of the second week Mao had made landfall and, trailed by a pair of steel mules, began the trek inland. The soggy coastal swamps gave way quickly to mountains pitted and scarred by centuries of torrential rain. Waterfalls came and went in the haze – visibility never reached past 50 meters. Mechanically and pharmaceutically aided by a hefty exosuit, Mao’s progress was quick. He made his way up through a dozen upredictable canyons and across along a handful of flooded valleys, each step as steady as the splintered rock beneath it. The haze turned dark, then orange again as the hours passed. The mules always followed, gathering data, watching. At times Mao thought he saw them jump in surprise, but wrote it off as an artifact of the treacherous conditions.

On the 20th day, at the height of the daily thermocycle, Mao descended into a long dead caldera: the signal’s source.

He came out of the haze into a scene he remembered from a storybook from when he was growing up on Titan. A grotto. A clear pool of water too deep to fathom and surrounded, impossibly, by dwarf trees bearing golden fruit. Two fish, white and orange, circled eachother lazily, distorted by the ripples of flies on the water’s surface.

Mao turned to see if the mules were there to see what he was seeing, but he was alone. He turned back to find dust swirling lazily at the bottom of the caldera. The grotto – and the signal – were gone.

There are ghosts in the old world, the weathermen had said as they huddled together and smoked spindly hand-rolled cigarettes. They would spend long nights in the community space, smoke blurring the sky-lights and mist beyond, and would whisper about the dead machines: Hawthorne hidden away in the Paris Underground; Melville tucked beneath the ruins of MIT; Thoreau chiselled into the Appalacians. Old places still haunted by an implaccable anger at the intrusion of the garden into the domain of the machine.

Mao found it, half buried in the dust. A metal skull polished by the weather, eyes filled with grit. An arm lay nearby, half buried, joints corroded and bundles of synthetic muscle frayed and useless. A single crystal egg was clutched in its hand, ancestor to the data storage devices the researchers used. Mao picked up the egg, cradling it in his hands.

He had spent decades listening to the weathermen whisper about ghosts, never wondering if the ghosts might whisper back.

“OS X is for those who don’t want to know why or how their computers work. Linux is for those who want to know why or how their computers work.”

This parody video makes light of the difficulty involved in buying any new game console. Why can’t gamers have a burrito, and eat it too!

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.

In the foothills of the Dolomites, an hour or so north of Venice, Italy lies Ai Pioppi, a restaurant that’s home to an astonishing, giant, human-powered, kinetic-art theme park playground.

A controversial Transportation Security Administration program that uses “behavior indicators” to identify potential terrorists is instead primarily targeting undocumented immigrants, according to a document obtained by The Intercept and interviews with current and former government officials.

The $900 million program, Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques, or SPOT, employs behavior detection officers trained to identify passengers who exhibit behaviors that TSA believes could be linked to would-be terrorists. But in one five-week period at a major international airport in the United States in 2007, the year the program started, only about 4 percent of the passengers who were referred to secondary screening or law enforcement by behavior detection officers were arrested, and nearly 90 percent of those arrests were for being in the country illegally, according to a TSA document obtained by The Intercept.

Nothing in the SPOT records suggests that any of those arrested were associated with terrorist activity.

Those results aren’t surprising, according to those involved in the program, because the behavior checklist was, in part, modeled after immigration, border and drug interdiction programs. Drug smugglers and undocumented immigrants often exhibit clear signs of nervousness and confusion, or may be in possession of fraudulent documents.

“That’s why we started rounding up all the Mexicans,” said one former behavior detection officer.

The detailed 13-page report, taken from the SPOT program’s database, shows the number of referrals made by behavior detection officers, the reason for referral, details about the particular incident, arrests and reasons for arrests, and a brief summary of the incident. The Intercept is redacting the name of the airport involved, the identities of the behavior detection officers and other law enforcement agents involved in the referral or arrest, and passengers’ personal identifying information.

The statistics, though a small snapshot from 2007, appear to buttress repeated criticisms of the program by government auditors and outside groups, which allege that the program is being used to profile passengers based on their race.

The Intercept also interviewed a dozen current and former behavior detection officers, TSA officials, law enforcement agents and other government officials who have been closely involved in the program or monitored it. All of them said the program appears to be designed to target undocumented immigrants and drug smugglers.

Many items on the SPOT checklist are traditional clues for human smugglers and the people they are smuggling, such as “individuals who are seemingly unrelated but display identical dress or luggage.”

One former behavior detection officer described homing in on a “group of Latino guys and gals” wearing brand new outfits that looked like they were bought from a discount chain, like Walmart or JCPenney. “They all looked like they were totally lost and milling around like zombies in fresh clothes and haircuts,” the former officer said.

The behavior indicators point to people who appear confused or nervous because they’ve never been to an airport, may be carrying fake identification or none at all, and are scared about their illegal status being discovered. “You’re essentially making [federal air marshals] profile people,” the former behavior detection officer told The Intercept. “That checklist is ridiculous.”

Still, it has continued, and the TSA has refused to release details on almost every aspect of the program: its behavioral indicators and arrest data, as well as evidence of success in spotting actual terrorists. In March, the American Civil Liberties Union, expressing concerns the program was being used to racially profile passengers, sued the TSA, requesting a variety of documents related to the program.

Last month, The Intercept published TSA’s closely held list of over 90 indicators that behavior detection officers use to identify terrorists. The list, which included “bad body odor,” “whistling” and “excessive grooming,” has been widely ridiculed. The latest document obtained by The Intercept appears to back up previous concerns that the program is aimed at undocumented immigrants more than terrorists.

During a five-week period in 2007, behavior detection officers at this airport identified 429 passengers for secondary screening based on their behavior, after which 47 were referred to law enforcement. Thirty-four of those referrals were suspected undocumented immigrants or those traveling with expired visas.

Instead of terrorists, the officers often found undocumented immigrants who were trying to fly home and were nervous about being caught.

“Passenger spoke no English,” read the notes on several of the referrals.

“Passenger stated that she was in the country illegally and was returning home due [to] lack of work. She also stated that she was nervous due to her illegal status.”

Many of the referrals included statements like, “passenger stated he was nervous due to his illegal status.”

There were 16 arrests over the time frame covered by the report — and none of those arrested were terrorists. Fourteen of those arrested were described as “illegal aliens.” One of the arrests was of an intoxicated passenger who was denied boarding and assaulted an officer, and another person was arrested because suspected drugs and drug paraphernalia were found in his luggage.

Since its start in 2007, the SPOT program has been heavily criticized for its lack of scientific methodology, and even more importantly, its apparent lack of success in identifying would-be terrorists after almost eight years of operation. It’s a pessimistic assessment that even some within TSA share.

“If you’re looking for people who exhibit multiple criteria on the checklist to reach the point of secondary screening or law enforcement referral, you’re just looking for illegal immigrants,” said an aviation security official.

The embattled SPOT program has been the subject of numerous congressional, government and DHS investigations criticizing its effectiveness.

“The checklist misses so many signs of potential danger and really just shows signs of a nervous traveler,” said a current TSA employee involved with the program.

TSA did not respond to, or acknowledge, The Intercept’s multiple requests for comment.

Most of those interviewed supported the idea of deploying roving law enforcement officers at airports to search for potential terrorists, but were critical of nearly every aspect of the current program.

One senior homeland security official said the behavior checklist could work, but TSA’s behavior detection officers have not been properly trained to use it. “My guess is most of them wouldn’t have stopped bin Laden if he walked through their lane,” the official said.

Photo: Mark Lennihan/AP

The post Exclusive: TSA ‘Behavior Detection’ Program Targeting Undocumented Immigrants, Not Terrorists appeared first on The Intercept.

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

By June 1, Congress must decide whether or not to reauthorize certain sections of the controversial USA Patriot Act (aka the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act), but even though it’s been nearly two years since former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed the NSA’s massive and far-reaching data collection programs, many Americans either are only vaguely aware or don’t understand because it’s not easy to immediately see how things like PRISM and MYSTIC affect your daily existence. That’s why John Oliver not only went straight to Snowden for an explanation of these programs, but to have him put the snooping in terms many Internet-era perverts can understand: penis photos.

“It’s difficult for most people to even conceptualize,” Snowden admits in the above interview on HBO’s Last Week Tonight. He then starts to explain about the invisibility of the Internet and the complicated connections involved when Oliver interrupts.

“This is the whole problem,” says Oliver. “I glaze over. It’s like the IT guy comes into your office and you go, ‘Oh sh*t — don’t teach me anything. I don’t want to learn. You smell like canned soup.'”

In order to show Snowden just how bored an uninformed a lot of Americans are, he plays some man-on-the-street interview footage demonstrating how little, if anything, people understand about Snowden and the NSA snooping scandal.

Then, referring to a previous Snowden anecdote about people at the NSA sharing nude photos caught in their mass data collections, Oliver shows another video of those same Americans saying they’d be horrified if their dick pics were floating around government offices, but many of them don’t believe it’s happening.

“The good news is there’s no program named ‘The Dick Pick’ program. The bad news is they’re still collecting everybody’s information, including your dick picks,” explains Snowden.

“This is the most visible line in the sand for people — Can they see my dick?” Oliver declares, handing Snowden a folder that purportedly contains a photo of Oliver’s genitals. “So let’s go through each NSA program and explain to me its capabilities with regards to that photograph of my penis.”

702 surveillance (aka Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which authorizes the NSA to collect massive amounts of data on people “believed to be located outside the United States to acquire foreign intelligence information.”):

Snowden: “Section 702… allows the bulk communications of Internet communications that are ‘one-end’ foreign… so if you have your e-mail through Gmail hosted on a server overseas… if it at any time crosses outside the border of the United States, your junk ends up in the database.”

Oliver: “It doesn’t have to be sending your dick to a German?”

Snowden: “No, even if you’re sending to someone within the United States, your wholly domestic communication between you and your wife can go from New York to London and back and get caught up in the database.”

Executive Order 12333 (signed Dec. 4, 1981 by Pres. Ronald Reagan; authorized intelligence community to expand data collection operations):

Snowden: “E.O. 12333 is what the NSA uses when the other authorities aren’t aggressive enough or aren’t catching as much as they’d like.”

Oliver: “How are they going to see my dick? I’m only concerned about my penis.”

Snowden: “When you send your junk through Gmail. That’s stored on Google’s servers. Google moves data from data center to data center, invisibly to you without your knowledge. That data could be moved outside the borders of the United States, temporarily. When your junk was passed by Gmail, the NSA caught a copy of that.”

PRISM (an NSA surveillance that uses orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to collect stored data from large Internet companies):

Snowden: “PRISM is how they pull your ‘junk’ out of Google, with Google’s involvement. All of the different PRISM partners — people like Yahoo, Facebook Google — the government deputizes them be sort of their surveillance sheriff.”

Oliver: “Their a dick sheriff?”

Snowden: “Correct.”

Upstream (an NSA data collection technique that gathers in-transit information via the backbone of the Internet):

Snowden: “Upstream is how they snatch your junk as it transits the Internet.”

MYSTIC (the NSA’s program to collect data on all voice calls in certain countries):

Snowden: “If you’re describing your junk on the phone, yes [they’re collecting it]”

Oliver: “But do they have the content of that junk call, or just the duration of it?”

Snowden: “They have content as well, but only for a few countries. If you were on vacation in the Bahamas, yes.”

215 Metadata (Sec. 215 of the Patriot Act details how the government can compel companies to hand over information with regard to intelligence. Oliver is referring to the mass collection of metadata — non-content information like phone numbers, duration of calls, identities of those involved in call — from telecom providers):

Snowden: “No [the government can’t see your penis], but they can probably tell who you’re sharing your junk pictures with. Because they’s seeing who you’re texting and who you’re calling.”

Oliver: “If you called a penis enlargement center at three in the morning and the call lasted 90 minutes?”

Snowden: “They would have a record of your phone number calling that phone number — which is the penis enlargement center. They would say they don’t know it’s a penis enlargement center but of course they can look it up.”

To end the interview, Oliver asks, “Would your takeaway from all this be: Until such time as we’ve sorted all of this out, don’t take pictures of your dick?”

“No… you shouldn’t change your behavior because a government agency is doing the wrong thing,” explains Snowden. “If we sacrifice our values because we’re afraid, we don’t care about those values very much.”

One of the most commonly-used pesticides in the world was recently declared a probable cause of cancer—but that doesn't mean what you think, and here are some stick figures to explain it to you.

This video by Andrew Maynard of the University of Michigan's Risk Science Center explains what exactly the word "probably" means in that context (it has a specific definition). It doesn't mean that the substance is a carcinogen and it will probably give you cancer; it means that it's probably a carcinogen that may or may not ever give anyone cancer. If that's confusing, don't worry; the stick figures will make it all clear.

Once you've watched that video, consider checking out the others from Risk Bites, including whether BPA is harmful, whether cell phones are frying your brain, and whether or not it's dangerous to eat green potato chips.

What Does "Probably Cause Cancer" Actually Mean? | Risk Bites

---

Vitals is a new blog from Lifehacker all about health and fitness. Follow us on Twitter here.

Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

They say lightning never strikes twice — but one observant onlooker did catch two separate lightning strikes hitting planes approaching Seattle’s Sea-Tac Airport as they were landing. Both flights landed without incident, though those onboard say the moment the lightning hit the planes was a rough, albeit very brief experience.

A University of Washington student was outside trying to catch lightning on film while a thunderstorm moved into the area, reports KOMO News. He managed to capture two huge bolts of lightning as they moved through the planes.

“I was stunned for a second because I couldn’t believe what I just saw,” he said. “After the second (plane) got hit, I knew I was on to something spectacular!”

One plane was an Alaska Air flight coming in from Orange County, while the other was another Alaska Air plane heading in from Houston.

A passenger on the latter flight said she was sitting in the ninth row on the right side of the plane when the bolt hit.

“We were flying in and out of clouds, sunshine then darkness, sunshine then darkness,” she said. “I was looking out the window when I saw this bright flash and this streak of lightning hit the top-middle of the right wing near the engine.”

It appeared that the bolt exited below the wing she says, as there was a loud crack, lighting up the cabin for a brief second.

“There was this loud gasp in the cabin after it happened. The people behind me were starting to worry if it was going to affect the landing. It didn’t,” she said, adding that it was “startling.”

A passenger on the other plane from California said the moment the bolt struck the plane was probably “the worst turbulence you’ll ever feel for two solid seconds. It got people pretty shook up.”

Other than that, the flight was totally normal.

Scary as it sounds, lightning strikes on planes are pretty normal. The Federal Aviation Administration estimates that each plane gets hit by a bolt once a year. Planes are also built to withstand the effects of a big zap.

“Airplanes themselves are prepared for this kind of stuff and have the mechanics to manage lightning strikes,” Sea-Tac Airport public relations manager Perry Cooper told ABC News. “We did not receive any reports of precautionary landing alerts from any pilots Wednesday night either.”

Still, two planes in one storm? That, and the National Weather Service reported only five lightning strikes with the storm on its radar in Seattle.

Watch: Lightning strikes two jets on approach to Sea-Tac Airport [KOMO News]

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Robots that do useless tasks compete, Battlebots-style, in Japan’s annual Hebocon.

[HuffPo] In an unprecedented move, the Boy Scouts of America’s New York chapter has hired an openly gay Eagle Scout as a summer camp leader.

The decision to hire Pascal Tessier, an 18-year-old Eagle Scout from Maryland, is a direct challenge to the Boy Scouts’ existing ban on openly gay adult participants,

Board member Richard G. Mason praised Tessier, who has been an outspoken advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues, as an “exemplary candidate” for the counselor role, and said members “did not want our policy of non-discrimination to be affected by the national policy”.

"New York City and New York State law clearly prohibit employers from excluding qualified men and women from employment based on sexual orientation," he noted, and said he and other board members welcomed Tessier and "look forward to his participation in our camp program."

i truly hope that this does lead to a change for BSA at the national level and a reversal on a discriminatory, ignorant, and hurtful ban.

and bravo to pascal tessier for his courage and general awesomeness.

In the wake of the FCC’s vote to adopt the new net neutrality rule, Americans of every stripe have bombarded their lawmakers with feedback. Some applaud the rule; others condemn the action. And that is all well and good: it’s the American system of democracy at work, exactly as designed.

Except there’s one big problem: a number of messages against the open internet rule seem to be coming from people who say they never sent them, or in fact from unverifiable “people” who don’t seem to be real constituents at all.

Politico reported this week on a flood of suspect letters reaching certain lawmakers’ offices. The messages all use the same form text, penned by anti-regulation group American Commitment.

American Commitment boasted this week that it has sent 1.6 million messages to lawmakers, from over half a million Americans (each of whom is a constituent of two senators and one representative).

And that’s fine. The issue isn’t that the message is a form letter. Plenty of people have trouble with words, and using a template or a form provided by an organization is, overall, probably more common than sending in an original letter. Organizations of every political leaning, representing every possible permutation of concerns, use the same approach.

The problem is that it doesn’t seem that real, verifiable people living in the actual districts they purport to be from sent the letters.

Politico points to Rep. Jackie Speier of California, who received a significant number of the anti-net-neutrality messages. Spier’s staff noticed the trend of nearly-identical form letters, and discovered that 98% of them came from constituents who had never communicated with her office before, on any issue.

So, the Congresswoman’s office did what representatives’ staffs do, and went to reply or reach back out to some of the senders. And that’s when some replied that, no, they’d never sent messages criticizing net neutrality.

Politico continues:

[Speier’s] aides pointed to a memo sent to members’ staff last week by Lockheed Martin, which manages the technology behind some lawmakers’ “contact me” Web pages. Lockheed initially said it had “some concerns regarding the messages,” including the fact that “a vast majority of the emails do not appear to have a valid in-district address.” In some cases, Lockheed also questioned the “legitimacy of the email address contact associated with the incoming message[s].”

Lockheed Martin also noted that the source of the messages was not clearly or currently identified.

In plain, everyday English, the upshot seems to be: some entity has basically been working a scam on congressional contact forms, to make it look like many more people are pissed off about net neutrality than actually are.

Phil Kerpen, the head of American Commitment, denied to Politico that his organization had anything to do with sending the fraudulent communications — but did note that several other organizations could have borrowed American Commitment’s language.

As for messages said to be coming from people who never sent them, lists of contact information, including name, address, and e-mail address, are incredibly easy to come by. They are frequently bought, sold, rented, and traded in the world of politics and nonprofits. American Commitment has rented access to such e-mail lists in the past, but, Kerpen told Politico, did not do so as part of this particular 1.6m comment campaign.

No matter what the root issue, though, Rep. Speier, is not a fan of any of it.

“The idea that an outside group could use consumer data to impersonate constituents suggests an attempt to hijack the important feedback members of Congress need to truly represent their districts,” Speier said in a statement. “This is identity theft, but instead of impersonating for financial gain, the originators of this theft are striking at the heart of our representative democracy.”

Net neutrality emails raise suspicions [Politico]

Episode 3: When Knowledge Conquered Fear, Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey

Rumor: Netflix has released a series of videos urging their subscribers to "binge responsibly."

“You merely adopted the memes. Don was born in it. Molded by it. Fear him.” – George Washington, c. 1729

Included are friendly Creepers who are, arguably, a lot more creepy now. That smile.

Mojang just released a brand new development snapshot for the upcoming “1.10 Minecraft update” (they’re skipping 1.9, you see), and it’s absolutely filled to the brim with the kinds of things Minecraft players crave... like hearts, love and hugs.

Here’s a changelog, straight from Mojang’s devblog:

Gameplay

• We have removed the ability to directly harm other creatures. You should be rewarded for helping, not hurting.
• Removed Health and Hunger. We feel that these are not appropriate gameplay mechanics for a game about love, sharing and peacefulness.
• Added a new “Love” meter. This fills up the more you help others, and others help you.
• “Survival” mode has been renamed to “Existence”.

Animals

• Bats are now 20% cuter. Squeek.
• Chickens can now be ridden by any player less than two blocks tall.
• Cows will now alert you to important events that you may have missed by means of an audible notification.
• Pigs can no longer fly, but can now climb on walls.
• Rabbits are fluffy.
• Sheep will, if asked nicely, share their wool to keep you warm.
• Squid changed, but we’re still trying to figure out how or why.

Monsters Inhabitants

• “Monsters” are no longer named as such. The preferred term is “Inhabitants”, as they live in this world just like you or me.
• Steve and Alex have realized that the inhabitants are not evil, and just want to hug and get along.
• Creepers no longer explode. They have gotten over their nervous disposition and are much more friendly once you get to know them.
• Skeletons have revealed themselves to be very efficient farmers, having a permanent source of bone meal on them at all times.
• Blazes are actually pretty cool guys and will defend you from harm.
• Guardians have put aside the initial misunderstanding, and now welcome you into their home with arms… erm… eyes… wide open.
• Ghasts are no longer frightened so easily, and will offer you rides throughout the nether.
• Slimes are now pretty fun to hang around with, sharing their secret jumping abilities to those that will listen.
• Witches are super friendly and surprisingly knowledgable. They will help you by sharing their potions.
• Zombies are extremely cuddly and love to hug.
• The Wither has been replaced with his lovable pink counterpart, promoting vitality and nourishment to the environment around him.

Weather & Environment

• Removed rain as it upset a lot of players.
• Falling snow has a chance to make exposed chests mysteriously full of goodies at midnight.

Villagers & Villages

• Trading has been rebalanced. We felt that the previous incarnation wasn’t very fair, and believe the new system is a step towards helping fix this.
• Villagers will offer you help in picking up items or blocks, in exchange for a small fee for their services.
• Iron Golems can appear as a manifestation of the village’s love for you.

Blocks

• Lava has been replaced with liquid cheese. It’s delicious and much safer!
• TNT has been replaced with a much friendlier block: A love bomb.

Items

• As we no longer have a hunger system, food items now give Happiness instead of Saturation.
• Carrot on a Stick has been removed. It was just cruel to pigs and we are very sorry for this.

Combat

• Bows no longer require arrows.
• Shooting things makes them fall in love with the first thing they see.
• Removed combat.

World generation & terrain

• Dungeons have been replaced with homes, offering a much more inviting and comfortable experience for everybody.
• All caves have been checked by the Minecraft Safety Committee to ensure a safer experience for players.
• Desert temples no longer contain TNT traps, and come with a nice, safe way to access the bottom floor.
• Some cliff edges may be lined with fences to avoid accidents by the unwary traveller.
• Jungle temples are no longer trapped, containing instead a new rare Golden Creeper to reward exploration.

Potions

• Some potions such as Strength or Harming have been removed, as we no longer have a place for them in the game.
• Added four (4) new potions:
  • Love Potion
  • Happiness Potion
  • Potion of Sharing
  • Potion of Caring
  • Fun Potion

Transportation

• Horses can no longer be ridden as this was deemed unfair to the horses.
  • In compensation to the horses, they can now ride on your shoulders.
• Minecarts now have a fluffy pink interior.
• Added obsidian boats which are impossible to break.
• Improved regular wooden boats.
• Added dirt bikes.
• Ender pearls no longer transport you to the target, but instead the target to you.

Weather & Environment

• Added rain back as it soothed a lot of players.
• Falling snow has a chance to make exposed chests mysteriously full of goodies at midnight.

Game Settings

• Not everybody had the same experience playing Minecraft under different configurations, so we decided to remove all the graphical settings.
• You may now only have one world, in order to reduce fragmentation and to treat all worlds as equals.
• Some resource packs were prettier than others, giving some players an unfair advantage in the amount of fun they were having. This has been fixed.

And a few screenshots illustrating the new features:

The main menu is now greatly simplified, since there’s only one world available.

Graphics settings? What graphics settings?

World generation—well, “generation.”

Swords are Hearts now, to help facilitate the Happiness-based gameplay.

Squids float gracefully through the air.

Nether portals are much more inviting.

The Nether itself didn’t change much, but Zombie Pigmen are a lot less threatening with their little heart wands.

There’s a lot to see here—to check out the April Fools update for yourself, open up the Minecraft launcher, click Edit Profile, enable experimental versions, and choose snapshot 15w14a from the drop-down menu, like so:

Dayshot is an image-based feature that runs every morning, showcasing some of the prettiest, funniest game-related screenshots and art we can find. Send us suggestions if you’ve got them.

Questions? Comments? Contact the author of this post at andras-AT-kotaku-DOT-com.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.

Smosh Games takes on the most anticipated game in history in this satirical edition of Honest Trailers.

Remember when extreme toy car drifting was a thing?

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.

There’s nothing like that first day at the amusement park, when it feels like spring is maybe, possibly, finally on its way, when you get to climb into that roller coaster for its very first ride of the season… and then you’re stuck high up in the air, wondering how it all went wrong. That’s the tale of yesterday’s Coney Island visitors who scored a free ride on opening day yesterday.

The Cyclone roller coaster is 88 years old, and as such, beloved by visitors to Luna Park in Brooklyn’s Coney Island area. The first 100 people to enter the park yesterday were offered the first ride of the season for free, reports CBS New York, in what was supposed to be a gloriously happy event.

Instead, riders were forced to climb down from the coaster when it got stuck near the summit during its opening cruise, about 10 feet from the highest point. About two dozen riders were helped down and along a walkway next to the tracks by staff members, after 15 minutes of being stranded on the train.

Though officials say a safety mechanism keeps the train from rolling backwards on an upward climb, riders say it wasn’t fun.

“We could feel that there was something wrong,” one woman told CBS New York. “It started slowing down.”

It’s unclear what caused the train to get stuck, but a spokeswoman said it was likely a small mechanical glitch. The ride will remain closed until an inspection finds that it’s safe to reopen.

Coney Island Cyclone Gets Stuck On First Public Ride Of Season [CBS New York]

These two George Washington University Students figured out a new way to fight fires: by pumping up the bass.