Bewarethewumpus

Author : Gray Blix

“The universe is holographic? Surely you’re joking.”

“I am not joking, Dr. Feynstein. But I did not say THE universe. I said YOUR universe. Your universe is a simulation. Pay attention. There is not much time.”

The young man appeared jittery in the flickering light. Feynstein glanced at the overhead fluorescent fixture.

“OK. You’ve obviously wandered into the wrong building. This is Physics. Science fiction would be in English, across the quad.” Offering a campus map, “Or maybe you’re looking for Psychology? Student Counseling?”

“Shake my hand, professor,” the man said, extending it across the desk.

“I’m not touching you.” Pointing the map toward the open doorway, “Please leave. Now.”

“Just shake it. Then if you want me to leave I will do so immediately.”

The man went out of focus momentarily. An intriguing thought crossed Feynstein’s mind. He attempted to touch the man’s hand with the map, but it went right through. He swiped through the hand several more times.

“What the– You’re a hologram.” Slumping into his chair, “And not a very good one.”

“A crude avatar, so we could talk. For the record, Dr. Feynstein, would you agree that whatever flaws there are in the simulation of your universe, they have not interfered with the development of human civilization?”

“Huh?” Looking around his office, “Look, I don’t know how you’re projecting a hologram, but that doesn’t prove we’re in a holographic universe.”

Pointing to a laptop, “One of your colleagues is remote observing through the Gran Telescopio in the Canary Islands. Bring up the VPN.”

Feynstein logged in.

“What do you see?”

“WR 104. Could go supernova at any time. Dr. Gambel is trying to determine if the gamma ray burst is likely to hit Earth.”

“If Earth took a direct hit, what effect would it have on life?”

“It would cause a mass extinction.”

“Well then, fortunately for you, I am erasing WR 104 from the simulation.”

The star disappeared, leaving its larger binary companion strangely unaffected. Feynstein could neither speak nor breathe.

Finally, he gasped, “The other star, make it disappear.”

It disappeared.

“You’re just messing with the video feed.”

“In a few hours it will be dark enough here for me to take you outside and make more stars disappear, or entire galaxies and constellations, but I think you already know I am telling the truth.”

The phone rang and seconds later people ran past the door in the direction of Dr. Gambel’s office.

A graduate student poked his head in, said, “Dr. Gambel says he needs you right away,” and joined the others.

“So, I am a hologram?” Looking at a picture on his desk, “My wife and daughter? Everyone on Earth? Why?”

“You and they are what passes for ordinary matter according to the laws of your physics. But you are in a simulated universe.”

“But why did you do this? And why tell me?”

“You have always been skeptical that dark matter and dark energy make up 96 percent of the universe. You’re right, of course. I botched some of the physics.”

“But…”

“And you wrote a paper on the possibility that your universe is holographic, although I know you were not serious, Dr. Feynstein. You were just poking holes in quantum theory.”

“But…”

“And now you’re about to begin that Holometer study. It could ruin everything.”

“WHY?”

“You stood out from the others, Dr. Feynstein. You deserve to know the truth before I wrap up the experiment.”

Another intriguing thought crossed Feynstein’s mind. And again he was correct.

“My graduate thesis in anthropology depends on this simulation not being discovered by its subjects.”

In case you missed last week’s field days on 4chan and 8chan in the backlash against “Intimidation Games,”, a cringeworthy episode of Law & Order: SVU loosely based on #GamerGate, check out this epic montage of photoshopped parodies based on the especially memorable scene emulating the first-person-shooter point of view.

An important industry analyst who had previously placed decent odds on Comcast being allowed to spend $45 billion to acquire Time Warner Cable is now looking at the deal in a less-sunny light, downgrading the likelihood of the merger succeeding.

Variety reports that MoffettNathanson Research, which already reduced the odds of merger approval to 70%, has now cut that figure again to 60%, “to reflect stiffening political headwinds.”

“If anyone doubts the hostility of the regulatory climate in Washington now, imagine how clear it would be on the morning after a rejection,” writes analyst Craig Moffett. “These risks must at least be acknowledged.”

At the same time, the report downgraded the stocks of Comcast, TWC, and Charter — which stands to swap a few million customers with the other two companies if the merger goes through — to “neutral,” also because of cord-cutting customers and what Moffett sees as darkening regulatory clouds.

While the FCC has expressed no interest in regulating broadband pricing, Moffett appears to be spooked by the mere possibility that the feds may someday meddle with what ISPs can charge for service.

“It would be naive to believe that the imposition of a regime that is fundamentally about price regulation, in an industry that the FCC has now repeatedly declared to be non-competitive, wouldn’t introduce risk to future pricing power,” Moffett explains, according to FierceCable.com.

A Runescape player was recently swatted while 60,000 people watched. When he tried to record a video about it, he broke down crying. A 19-year-old in Las Vegas was arrested for coordinating a swatting in Illinois. What motivates someone to take this dangerous step? I tracked down a self-professed swatter to find out.

How I got to that point requires a little setup.

One of my first stories at Kotaku was about a couple recounting their terrifying experience of being swatted while their three children were home with them. Swatting, if you don't know, involves a call being made to police about a violent but imaginary crime. That incident shared a common thread with other swattings: the use of someone else's personal information without their permission. To avoid being swatted, you'd want to keep your personal info offline as much as possible. As a follow-up, I researched ways to learn what parts of our lives are already online, and I published a piece outlining how to remove those items from the Internet.

When that second swatting piece went live, it wound up on the Twitch subreddit. A commenter by the name of ZeroExFF spoke up and said he helped organize several swattings in the past. He then described how he and others had used various techniques to obtain detailed personal information about folks using the customer service departments of PayPal, Amazon, and others.

The techniques ZeroExFF claimed to use are more commonly referred to as social engineering, as it requires tricking a human being to reveal information. Everything he said lined up with what I'd reported about social engineering in the past, and his admission piqued my interest.

When we discuss swatting and other forms of harassment, we understandably focus on the feelings and reactions of victims. We often forget to question the motivations of the harasser. I wanted to know more about that, and I hoped ZeroExFF could explain.

I messaged this self-professed swatter, and he quickly got back back to me. He created a new account on Skype, and we talked for about 90 minutes. What he told me was surprising and revealing about the psychology driving those who spend their time tormenting others on the Internet.

I do not know this person's name, but he claimed to be 16 years old, and he sounded young to me. He said his descent into the Internet underground began when he was 14 years old. Due to, he said, fears over potential legal action for events he was involved in over the past few years, ZeroExFF would not reveal specifics about his actions or disclose details about his life. The irony is not lost on me.

So there's a big caveat to all that follows. I can't prove its true. I can't prove that the stories he told me about how he'd deceive people to get personal information are real. I nevertheless believe it's important to try to understand this murkier side of one of the most notorious and dangerous forms of modern harassment. What follows is an attempt to get a more clear picture.

I ran excerpts from this conversation by several cybersecurity experts, all of whom told me ZeroExFF very much sounded like an individual who knew what they were talking about.

In his own words, here's what he told me.

Warning: There is some strong, potentially offensive language ahead.

The Reason You Invade Someone's Personal Life

Being able to intimidate someone is really fun, whether someone will admit it or not.

I'd get bored and wanted to see if I could trick X service into giving me Z information by doing Y type of call. It was a game to me. I found it fun. I never really released doxxes. I didn't see the point of it. I didn't care. I found it fun tricking the system into giving me information. I felt all-knowing, which is a feeling that a lot of people crave. I felt like I was something special. Not everyone could do this. And it's true! Not everyone can. You're gonna get someone who's just got a fucking terrible knack for it that can't do it, but I'm definitely not special for being able to.

I had that craving of feeling like the smartest person on the call or the smartest person in the room. I had that craving for it. I'm like that in real-life. Honestly, I surround myself with people who are actually really smart. My best friend in the world right now is probably one of the smartest fucking people I know. Again, it's that superiority thing, that you want to be better than people. I thought that would make me better than them. When, in reality, it put me quite a few pegs down. I was this immature kid who wanted to be known. Someone's going to be like "Well, they got bullied in their own school." No. Most of these people were probably the fucking class clowns and loved in their school.

Becoming Part Of The Doxxing Scene

I was learning Python [a programming language] about two years ago, and I ended up in this IRC [channel]. I don't want to call it the scene because that's what everyone's calling it, and it's not a scene. If it's a scene, it's a scene full of retards—self-proclaimed retards, too.

I had a question about the streamer I was watching at the time. I forgot how long it was. This was when Twitch.TV still had their old site design. They just added me to this group call with a few other people, and they were calling an ISP [to get information]. And I went, "OK, that's cool. That's interesting how that happens." I was already aware of it, but I had never been in a call with someone who did it. Honestly, I didn't care. I thought it was petty and stupid, and it is petty and stupid.

I guess they needed another one called in, so they were like "Hey, wanna do it?" And I was like "Sure, I'll do it." It was really easy, and it was fine.

It's like asking a girl out when you don't care, which is also something I did in high school before I left. A lot. My friends would give me $10, and I would just run around asking girls out, who I know would say no. Or breaking up with girls that I'm not going out with publicly. That's funny.

Having the voice is a big part of it. You need to be able to have a representative voice, right? You need to have the proper voice inflection. And I was just-so-lucky to work for DirectTV [through an external third-party service] for a year or two. All I did was talk to retards all day. I don't know if you've ever had a job where you answer phones, but the inflections that you use in your voice are much different than your everyday talk. It's that you want to appear as though you give a shit. Once you have the inflection down, and once you have what tools they use—which are public—you do anything.

I was calling COX for a friend. I called it in at four in the morning my time. The girl was like "COX chat support is currently closed, sir." I was like "Yeah, I'm residential, I take my work really seriously." And she was like "Oh, okay." And I got it [the info] anyways. It was so dumb.

I think COX or Time Warner started to implement this fraud protection, where if someone asks for any information over the phone, they'll just supervisor.exe, which is what we call getting a supervisor on you. If you get supervisored, you're fucked. You're not getting anything. You need to call back.

You can fuck with a supervisor. I got a Filipino supervisor once, and I fucked with him a little bit. I didn't get any information from him, but I offered to suck his dick for the account number. The guy started laughing. I basically fucked with him for 20 minutes about how I'd give him a hand job. I was just sitting there. Everyone was at my house and was just listening to me. "I will suck your dick for the account number." My brother's just looking at me going "What the fuck are you doing?" Maybe he wanted the dick sucking. I don't know.

Even With Fancy Passwords, We're Not Truly Safe

The exploits are anywhere you give your money. Those are the holes. Anyone you give your money, anyone who has your phone number, anyone who has your address—they're exploits. If their support line is based on human interaction, it's super easy.

I can call any ISP in the world, or I can get on chat support with any ISP in the world. We can get the tools they use. That's what you need to do before you call an ISP. You call them, and you say "Hi, my name is Richard, I work out of this region. This is my first day. I wasn't really listening to what my manager had to say. What is the tool to look up modems? Modem activity?" Stuff like that. Most of the time, they'll just give it to you. You ask them for their name and employee ID [EID], just to verify they're an actual employee is what you say. Most of them will believe it. "Oh, it's just this guy's first day. He doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. What's he going to do with my EID?" But then you call and say "Hi, my name is Elizabeth Wallace. My EID is 20657. Can I please get an IP lookup done? My workstation's having issues."

Most agents, I know more about the program than they do. I have to guide them through it in order to look up an IP. You don't need to be megamind, basically. That's the entire point of what I'm talking about. You can be retarded to do it.

People Think You're A Hollywood Hacker

It's really fun. Not to mention, to people who don't know any better, it's impressive. You can make money off it because they don't know they can just go and do it themselves. You can call any ISP left and right for $10 each. You can give them the information. I had a stipulation, though. If I called anyone's ISP and gave them their information and they had a SWAT team at the house within the next month and I was contacted by the police, I would give them their information—the person who bought it.

I didn't always condone swatting. I always thought it to be really immature and really kind of petty. That's why I didn't participate in it as much. The only times where I did—and I haven't done it in a while—was when I just had this uncanny hatred for them.

The first person ran around Minecraft servers getting kids on Skype, promising to give them items. Once he got them on Skype, he would dox them, get their parents on the phone, and basically try to trick their parents into sending them money. [pause] He was exploiting 8-year-olds for their parents' money. I didn't consider myself the fucking Batman of swat teams, but at the same time, he was getting recognition for it, which also bothered me. What's the police department going to do? No one knew his name at the time. Very few people actually go down. You don't get recognition for exploiting eight-year-olds. I'm sorry. You're not getting that, that's not gonna happen. There's no way. On top of that, you're exploiting eight-year-olds. That's so unfair.

Sure, it's one thing to mess with a teenager girl or a young, adult woman. That's one thing that's kinda fucked up. They're old enough to understand what's going on. They're old enough to understand that they can get past it. But an eight-year-old? Sometimes it was an eight-year-old girl. They're crying. That little kid thinks their life is over. They're done. Their Minecraft account's stolen. He would basically just exploit their parents—exploit them to exploit their parents to get money. It would work.

Your voice doesn't matter when you're swatting people. I mean, it matters to an extent, but the amount of shits police departments give is so fucking close to zero. Most people use the same story. "I'm in the basement with hostages at this address." If the place doesn't have a basement, just say in the master bedroom. "I have them tied up, back-to-back in chairs, I have bombs rigged to each window and door, I want a plane out of the country." You just create a hostage situation. Personally, I would say that and get the fuck out. That's how they catch people—people taking credit.

People argue that people can die when they're swatted. People can get shot. Which is true. People would say this on the call with the department: "If I see a police officer without the money, I will shoot him on sight." Once you start threatening police officers, they're more likely to fucking shoot someone. A swatting can work just the same when you say "I'm in the basement of this address with hostages. I'm done. Bye." That would work.

Will it get their door kicked in? Eh, maybe. But the SWAT team is gonna go, which is your main reasoning behind it.

A Few Safety Tips From Someone Who Knows Better

You have to get an ISP that people don't have methods for. And by methods, I mean what tools they use and what they're used for. People can get methods for it easily. Really easily. But a lot of people don't know how to get methods.

Put a lock on your account and make it so no one can call in about your account—at all. They can't call in, they can't even get your first name, they can't get the first digit of your account number, they can't call in about any issues. Once you have your ISP setup, call those motherfuckers every day until they do it. And if they say they've done it, make them do it again. You call them and say "I want to set up a password on my account and I want to verify my identity with the last four digits of my social security number whenever I call." They have a note section when they pull up the account on their tools that, in big bold letters, "get this fag's social security number." Do that.

On top of that, call your police department. That's pretty simple. If you're a streamer, if you have 500 followers, it doesn't matter. Call your police department and say "Hi, my name is so-and-so. I live at this address. This is my cell phone number. This is my home phone number. This is my email address. I do things on the Internet where it involves me being a public figure. My information might get released." Then, you politely ask them if they know what swatting is. If they say no, you're fucked. But they won't. Everyone knows what it is now.

The Cost Of Being A YouTuber

People think that getting swatted is the end game of the Internet. You're done for. It doesn't matter. As long as you don't have anything to hide, it really doesn't matter. If you have weed, put it under your bed or something. It doesn't end your life. You're fine. Are people gonna tweet at you and say "oh, your door got kicked in?" Yeah. Sure. But, I mean, you're still gonna go on about your day like you would have the day before. Once a month, are you gonna have to take take 30 minutes out of a Saturday night to make sure that your door's not getting kicked in? Sure. But that should be the cost of streaming. That should be the cost of being a YouTuber.

13 year olds can fuck up your night. Don't give a shit about it. Even if you care, pretend not to. That's gonna make you the joke. That's gonna make you someone they can go back to next Friday when they don't have to go to school in the morning. The best thing you can do, even if you're scared shitless—which, honestly, I'd call you a pussy for—but even if you're scared shitless and a SWAT team is going to come to your house, you need to play it off like you don't give a shit. A lot of people are put in this situation where they get tweeted at with "SWAT coming!" And their chat blows up. "You're getting swatted, holy shit!" You need to call the police right then and there, even if the team's already dispatched.

Sometimes, Even Swatters Grow A Conscience

Recognition and credit. That's the reason why it's done.

Can I steal your Netflix? Can I call in your Comcast? Can I break down your door? Yeah, sure. And? Should there be something special about that? No. It's [being] a glorified liar. It's all it is. I think a lot of people who are doing it understand it. I think they know, in their minds, they're nothing fucking special. But they have these people who follow them and they know who they are. They think they're special. Those people think that these people are really legitimate.

I have no doubt in my mind that, three years down the road, I'm still going to get questioned for shit I did this year. When I say this year, I do mean 2015.

I recently took a step back from all this from the big picture. I'm 16 years old, okay? I don't want to be risking my life. That's what I would be doing. I would be risking my life. I'm done with high school. That doesn't mean I'm smart—that means I did Internet school. Don't misconstrue that. All I have to do right now is save money and go to college. I can't go to college for another year or two, which is fine. That's all I have to do, and then I'm 20, I could literally fuck all of that up by continuing to do what I was doing. All of it. That just didn't seem reasonable to me.

It just didn't seem like I was getting enough pleasure from it. I was sitting there and this girl just got her door kicked down. She's crying.

I've been swatted before. All I have to say about it is that I didn't care. I told the police officers "This is his Twitter username, he tweeted at me. This is the IP I resolved from Skype. This is this, this is that." They wouldn't do anything with it, and they'd be on their own. I just didn't care. It was a minor inconvenience for me. It's not like they kicked down my door.

I explained this to my real-life friends, too. "What's swatting? Why are you in cuffs? Why are the police always at your house?" And I explained it to them. "Why do you do that?" That was when I questioned myself. My friends are like "What the fuck are you doing? Why are you doing this?" I was like "It's fun." "It's fun to ruin someone's night? What do you mean?"

At the time, I was like 15, and I was like "Yeah, I'm trolling 'em!" They're like "No, you're not. You're not trolling anyone. You're being a dick." And I was like "Damn, dude. Fuck. He's right."

I think trolling is a big part of this. That's this kind of era. It's just fucked up in [and] of itself. Is it fun to troll around with people and fuck with them in a video game? I'm not saying to drop [release] their dox, but is it fun to try and antagonize? Yeah, it can be. Is it fun to spam 8chan with Rick Astley? Sure, it's pretty fun. That's trolling. That's the innocent "Ha ha ha! Got you!" kind of shit. And these people, like I did, are considering this "Ha ha ha, your door's kicked down and your dog is dead! Gotcha!" type of thing.

It's just escalating. It's going to continue to escalate. It's stupid.

The reason why this is such an issue is because everyone seems to care about it on Twitter. These public figures, senators and stuff. They seem to give a shit, right? But what are they doing to stop it? Everyone needs to ask them. They aren't doing anything.

That's really all I have to say about why it's done. They want everyone to know what they are and what they do, and they want people to be scared of them.

Illustration by Tara Jacoby

You can reach the author of this post at patrick.klepek@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @patrickklepek.

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“An old white lab thinks it's his responsibility to walk the dachshund.” (more…)

Tingle, map-seller in The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask, is a man in his mid-30s who wears a green fairy suit. Presumed by some—incorrectly, it turns out—to be gay, he is one of Nintendo's most unusual characters. I recently asked Nintendo's top Zelda creator what Tingle's origins were.

"I guess the heart of the character there is a little bit of a gag kind of feeling to it," longtime Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma told me through a translator during a New York-Kyoto telephone interview last week. We were talking about Tingle's debut in Majora's Mask back in 2000. The game has just been remade for the 3DS.

"The way the design of the character started is that we needed to think about how the character—the player—would get access to maps in this game. Of course, you could go with a situation where, as soon as he sees an area, you just open up your map and it fills in for you, but we wanted to do something a little bit different.

"So, we thought, what if you had to buy maps? Then suddenly we needed a character that you would be buying maps from. We ultimately ended up with a character here that had a little bit of humor to him that [came from] thinking of...'What sort of person would sell a map?' And, well, we decided it would be the kind of person who makes a map. And the way that he makes a map is by floating through the air so that he can see the contours of the land and draw them.

"But as soon as we got that far in the process, we realized anybody that would fly through the air making a map has got to be a really weird person. So at that point we decided, okay, we'll go with this and make him a really weird guy."

The Zelda Wiki notes that Tingle is more popular outside of America than in it. In 2004, IGN's GameCube site launched a "Die, Tingle, Die! Die!" campaign, dubbing the character far too annoying for the Zelda series. Tingle would star in his own game, the silly Zelda parody adventure Freshly Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, but that game never came to America—even though it was translated into English for its European release. (I played it, was fascinated by it and dubbed it the meanest game Nintendo ever made). In 2006, GayGamer named Tingle as the gayest character in video games.

He has shown up in several Zelda games since then and was most recently released as part of a downloadable character pack for the Wii U Zelda spin-off game Hyrule Warriors.

This is what Tingle says when you shoot him out of the air in Majora's Mask. So, yeah, as Aonuma said, he seems different and is pretty much portrayed as a man-child.

I asked about Tingle dressing up as a fairy and where all that came from.

Aonuma continued: "So when we made the character, we had this notion that one of the ways he might be a little bit weird is that he had this notion that he never wanted to grow up. And so I think, to that extent the clothes do fit this image of him. And the whole thing comes together as a very Peter Pan kind of visual. You know, if you think about it, it's this guy in his 30s in a green suit and is flying and never wants to grow up, it all sort of comes together around that."

All well and good, but I had to ask: Is he gay?

Aonuma: "He's not gay. He's just an odd person."

For more from my conversation with Aonuma, check out this story, which delves into how Zelda dungeons are made and how Majora's Mask was designed for adults.

To contact the author of this post, write to stephentotilo@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @stephentotilo.

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We want to trust our friends and family, but sometimes they lie to us. Sometimes, they troll us. What follows are the funny (and tragic) stories people shared with me about gaming gone awry. No one will be surprised to learn many happen to involve a big brother being a jerk.

This all started when I was scrolling through the Dark Souls subreddit and found this gem:

Immediately after sharing this story on Twitter, a follower shared a similar story of deception:

In Metal Gear Solid, smoking cigarettes slowly depletes your health over time. Poor guy!

The game was afoot. I put out the call for more of these stories and was rewarded by learning some of my followers are total monsters and others may need to look into therapy sessions.

I frequently stream horror games on the Internet, and one of my biggest fears is my wife will burst into the room and scare the crap out of me. So far, this hasn't happened, but she keeps the threat alive. One day, it will happen. One day, the Internet will watch me cry on a livestream.

This one's so cruel because it's so damn believable. In Eternal Darkness, players expected the game to mess with them. In fact, one of the sanity effects is where the TV appears to turn off!

Justin, you have bad friends, but I have to respect their commitment to the joke, especially since there's an implication this happened multiple times, and you went on hours of pointless quests.

You, sir, are one of history's greatest monsters. Thank you for doing what you do. That said, I'm surprised people had the dedication to head back to shore. Don't you have to tap a button to swim at full-speed, too? Does that mean people were tapping a button for eight minutes? Dude!

Truly a classic. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure I fell for that during Counter-Strike one time.

I believe I've saved the best for last, though it comes with a caveat. There are spoilers for Earthbound. If you haven't played one of the greatest JRPGs ever played, you might want to skip this one. Then again, it's so damn funny, I'd recommend you just keep on reading anyway.

Last warning! Spoilers for Earthbound are coming! Alert! Alert! I'm no longer at fault!

Okay, here we go.

So, you know how the final battle requires you to finally use the "pray" option? It's a mostly useless battle tool for healing a few HP, but you quickly forget it even exists. Thing is, it's the key to finishing Earthbound, and part of why the ending's so touching. Please keep this in mind...

Please continue, Donald.

This is all I can think about while reading this tweet.

Step up, Kotaku! How have you been trolled? Or, more likely, how have you trolled others?

You can reach the author of this post at patrick.klepek@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @patrickklepek.

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In 1982, the much-loved and sadly now defunct BBC TV show Tomorrow's World took a look at "one ordinary finger and one rather extraordinary TV screen." The result are touching, in more than one sense of the word.

Marvel, as this chap's finger renders ASCII text onscreen before your very eyes (QPR, for what it's worth, are the initials of an English football club). In fact, as is explained in the video, this was one of the first IR touchscreens, which measured where your finger was using beams of light rather the resistance or capacitance within the screen. Remember them? Things get even weirder when he gets to possible applications, though—but I won't ruin that surprise (spoiler: it's not an iPhone). [BritLab]

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The new Jeff billboards posted at a bus stop in Montevideo, Uruguay.

In response to an L.A. Times article on the Oliver mocking — which not only introduced the new Marlboro Man, Jeff The Diseased Lung In A Cowboy Hat, but also the wildly popular hashtag #JeffWeCan — Philip Morris issued a statement that tries to minimize the seriousness of the claims made in the story while simultaneously acknowledging that the company’s products kill people.

First off, the statement takes the approach of trying to negate the 18-minute, thoroughly researched report by pointing out that it dares to come from someone with a sense of humor:

“’Last Week Tonight with John Oliver’ is a parody show, known for getting a laugh through exaggeration and presenting partial views in the name of humor. The segment includes many mischaracterizations of our company, including our approach to marketing and regulation, which have been embellished in the spirit of comedic license.”

Okay… so this should be where the very serious folks at Philip Morris go point by point and explain where Oliver exaggerated and embellished, but they don’t. It’s a classic non-response in which the accused tried to undercut the accuser’s argument by claiming he can’t possibly be providing the truth.

Philip Morris does not deny using threats of lawsuits to keep countries Uruguay from enacting tougher regulations on cigarette packaging.

It does, in an after-note, link to a 2014 explainer post from Philip Morris International saying that Uruguay was violating a trade agreement with Switzerland by requiring a warning label that covered 80% of the packaging.

Then there’s this brief gem from the statement:

“While we recognize the tobacco industry is an easy target for comedians, we take seriously the responsibility that comes with selling a product that is an adult choice and is harmful to health.”

The tobacco industry is an easy target for comedians because it has a long history of risible behavior. And how can Philip Morris expected to be taken seriously when it readily admits that the products it sells are “harmful to health”?

Philip Morris doesn’t need to blame comedians when it makes statements like this:
“We support and comply with thousands of regulations worldwide — including advertising restrictions, penalties for selling tobacco products to minors, and substantial health warnings on packaging.”

First off, the tobacco industry doesn’t support these regulations. It only supports the ones it can’t fight in a courtroom. Once it loses a battle — or realizes a battle can’t be won — then suddenly Big Tobacco, just like every other heavily regulated industry, claims to support and abide by the rules.

For example, Big Tobacco went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to fight graphic warning labels — which were mandated by the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act all the way back in 2009. And even after SCOTUS rejected the industry’s appeal, Philip Morris’ partner-in-carcinogens Lorillard stated that “there will obviously be a good deal more litigation to come on this topic.”

It’s been nearly two years since that rare tobacco industry legal loss and we still have no idea if or when the labeling provision of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act will be enacted.

So no, the tobacco industry has absolutely no respect for attempts to educate and inform consumers. They just have respect for the few regulations they haven’t been successfully able to defeat in court.

Philip Morris would also have you believe that after more than a century of selling cigarettes, it suddenly cares about customers’ health:

“We’re investing billions into developing and scientifically assessing a portfolio of products that have the potential to be less harmful and that are satisfying so smokers will switch to them.”

Finally, in its closing sentence, Philip Morris gets into some actual specifics of why it takes such drastic actions to protect its products — aside from the billions it makes by giving people cancer and lung disease:

“And, like any other company with a responsibility to its business partners, shareholders and employees, we ask only that laws protecting investments, including trademarks, be equally applied to us.”

That’s honestly the best Philip Morris and Big Tobacco can come up with — We’ve spent a lot of money and have a lot of investors so please don’t mess with our packaging because it might cause us to earn smaller profits.

It’s an argument that might be tenable if cigarettes did anything other than poison the people who buy them — or live in the same house with them.

Anyway, here is the full Last Week Tonight piece that has already been seen watched nearly 2 million times since yesterday morning:

4gifs:

Be sure to rotate your owls every 6,000 miles. [video]

In this very special edition of Celebrity Jeopardy for the 40th anniversary of Saturday Night Live, Alex Trebek (Will Ferrell) tries his best to keep contestants Sean Connery (Darrell Hammond), Justin Bieber (Kate McKinnon), Tony Bennett (Alec Baldwin), Burt Reynolds (Norm Macdonald) in line.

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Re/code's Kara Swisher interviewed President Obama for 25 minutes, and asked him good questions about online security and government spying.

He said he understands why people want strong encryption, but he is "sympathetic to law enforcement's" needs to collect data when it has a legitimate court order. He doesn't mention the fact that the NSA, CIA, and DEA have been given the green light by Obama's administration to conduct illegal massive surveillance with impunity, which is one reason people demand strong encryption in the first place.

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I don’t make these things up, people. They make themselves up.

If you like bonus cartoons by Jonathan Rosenberg, maybe you should sign up for The Nib mailing list! I’ll be publishing an exclusive cartoon there every day this week.

Okay bye now.

And you thought the lightsaber from the Episode VII trailer was dangerous. Announced today at Toy Fair in New York City, Hasbro's Star Wars Bladebuilders line finally allows fans of the series to invite new ways to chop their damn hands off.

Fans of toys and Star Wars have been waiting for this to happen for as long as the two things have existed simultanously, and we finally get them this fall, just in time for some new movie. Star Wars Bladebuilders will allow players to take apart and reconfigure sabers to their hears' content. Want to slice off your own arm? No problem. Take out a leg and someone else's eye? Done.

According to StarWars.com, the Bladebuilders sets will be available at a variety of price points. There's the Jedi Master Lightsaber for $50, which gives players access to the main weapon, extension hilts and all the lights and sounds. For $20 the Bladebuilders Classic Lightsabers will be styled after iconic weapons from the franchise universe, with components that can be removed and combine with others to make weird stuff. There'll also be extendible blade versions of the classics and foan blade versions, all compatible with the system.

I am so ready for these. I cannot wait to craft my very own lightsaber trident.

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6dogs9cats:

sandandglass:

Bassem Youssef, anchor for the Egyptian satire show Al Bernameg, on The Daily Show.

AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN until if fucking sinks in.

There are so, so few opportunities to throw a hadouken unironically. "During an MMA fight" is one of the preciously rare moments to channel your inner Ryu and feel like a total badass—as long as you're actually in the fight. Shane Campbell saw such a window during a recent bout with Derek Boyle.

Here is the excellent moment in action, which I discovered thanks to Uproxx:

Is this the IRL version of Smash Bros. taunting?

Yes. Yes it is. I'm very jealous that I'll never be an MMA fighter and get to throw a hadouken so triumphantly myself.

To contact the author of this post, write to yannick.lejacq@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter at @YannickLeJacq.

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When a 79-year-old Comcast customer accidentally included her rent check with her Comcast bill, not only did the cable company cash the check — which was more than 10 times the amount of her bill and was made out to someone else — but it also refused to issue her a refund when it acknowledged the goof.

Instead, the woman tells KRQE-TV, Comcast offered to credit her the $235 rent check to her account. Since her monthly cable bill is only $20.69, that amounts to more than 11 months of service.

But that won’t help the elderly customer on a fixed income who had to scrape together another $235 to make her rent payment.

A rep for Comcast explained to KRQE that this happened because no humans at Comcast actually look at the checks they receive. The payments are just processed automatically. She admitted that similar mistakes have occurred before but claims the company has remedied those situations quickly.

Of course that doesn’t explain why that didn’t happen in this case or why Comcast — which can afford to spend $45 billion to acquire 10 million Time Warner Cable customers — couldn’t simply send the customer a check for $235.

Comcast says it has reached out to the customer to apologize and rectify the situation. The company is also planning to talk to the employee who told the customer she couldn’t get a refund.

Hey, at least that employee didn’t change her name to “A**hole.”

In the end — and once again, only after the media got involved — Comcast issued the customer a refund check and kept the $235 credit on her bill.

Maybe the customer should have just called the Comcast CEO’s mom.

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"My friend’s mailbox was buried so far under the snow they couldn’t dig it out…. so he improvised." -delawaregal

From karate chops to roundhouse kicks, cinema has seen its share of martial arts fights. Now, it's time to look at the ones that come out on top when the others went down for the count. The best, if you like.

Obviously, making a list like this is quite a task. Saying one fight is better than another is subjective. And it would be so easy to make a laundry list that consists only of Jackie Chan, Donnie Yen, and Jet Li fights. That I have not done. Sorry!

Instead, this is comprised of a variety of different fights from over the years from different actors and directors in order to distill these scenes into a larger, all-encompassing best list. The scenes included show either a high level of martial arts skill, or in the case of some (I'm looking at you, Tarantino), an unabashed love of the genre itself.

If there are scenes I have missed, forgotten, or simply ignored, add them in the comments section below. Also note that some of the descriptions contain spoilers, so if you see a movie you haven't seen yet but plan to, you might wanna keep scrolling.

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

This was one of the first times American mainstream moviegoers, who were used to cowboy saloon brawls, had seen a karate fight scene like this. The scene blew people's minds, inspiring some cinemagoers to take up karate, much like The Karate Kid would decades later. Sure, it doesn't compare with the martial arts acrobatics of the years that followed, but it's brutal and rough. So much so that Frank Sinatra ended up with a broken hand.

Zatoichi Challenged (1967)

The incomparable Shintaro Katsu as the character he made famous, the blind swordsman Zatoichi. Sure, Beat Takeshi did a commendable job in his 2003 take on Zatoichi, but here, Katsu shows why the character will always be his—and his alone— in this elegant samurai showdown.

Fist of Fury (1972)

Geez. Can you really pick Bruce Lee's best fight? Is that possible? In his short career, Lee left a series of iconic fights. There's everything like the the Chuck Norris duel to that time Bruce Lee tangoed with Kareem Abdul Jabbar—the last of which isn't really a great fight per se, but hey, it's got Kareem in sunglasses. But the Fist of Fury dojo fight lives up to its English language title. It's Bruce Lee uncorked and let loose. Jet Li did a damn fine job in the 1994 remake Fist of Legend, which proved him as a worthy successor.

Executioner (1974)

Most men could not pull off fighting in a frilly shirt-bowtie combo. Then again, Sonny Chiba is not most men. He fights bears. He throws X-ray punches. Here, he kicks paint off dudes' faces and rips out their bones. Sonny Chiba is a karate warrior. Sonny Chiba is the Street Fighter. Sonny Chiba is fucking badass.

Master of the Flying Guillotine (1976)

That's writer-director Jimmy Wang Yu as the One-armed Boxer, facing against a character that inspired Dhalsim from Street Fighter in one of the 1970's most inventive martial arts flicks.

The Magnificent Butcher (1979)

This was supposed to be Sammo Hung's breakout film a la Jackie Chan's Drunken Master. While it didn't surpass Jackie Chan's original, the film left us with some of Sammo Hung best fight scenes. That shouldn't come as a surprise seeing that iconic martial arts choreographer Yuen Woo-ping directed the film.

Wheels on Meals (1984)

As with Bruce Lee, picking Jackie Chan's best fight sequence is difficult, if not impossible. While Chan has done bigger stunts, the Wheels on Meals fight scene with Benny Urquidez is so relentless that even watching can be exhausting. Unlike other Jackie Chan fight scenes, this one doesn't rely heavily on props and instead lets viewers marvel at Chan's and Urquidez's skills. Honorable mention to both Drunken Master II and Who Am I, among a lifetime of spectacular work.

Once Upon a Time in China II (1992)

This isn't only one of the greatest movie marital arts fights, it is the greatest martial arts fight with bamboo poles. Bar none. Here, Jet Li and Donnie Yen are at the top of their game.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

Who knew the guy who made Eat Drink Man Woman and Sense and Sensibility could film a fight scene like this? Until the year 2000, no one.

Hero (2002)

Without a doubt, one of the most beautiful fight scenes ever filmed.

Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003)

Okay, so the scene is heavy on special effects, wire-work, and camera tricks. But it's such a stylish love letter to martial arts films that the scene comes together in a kinetic and satisfying way. Fun fact: Sonny Chiba's daughter is one of the Crazy 88s.

The Matrix Reloaded (2003)

While not costing $40 million dollars like the Agent Smith fight apparently did, Matrix Reloaded's chateau scene is the better for it. There's no badly aged CGI, and instead, there's a well-paced, easy to follow, and brilliantly choreographed fight—something that most Hollywood movies are unable to do.

The Protector (2005)

While Ong-Bak has Tony Jaa kick ass WHILE ON FIRE, The Protector showcases his martial arts talent in a four-minute long take that took a month of preparation. The shot was so complex that it was only possible to do two takes per day—in order to fix the set between takes. The result is the Touch of Evil or the I Am Cuba tracking shot of marital arts movies.

IP Man (2008)

A mix of over-the-top gonzo act and superb technique. This scene shows Donnie Yen using wing-chun to knock the crap out of a horde of black belts. So much skill. So much ouch.

The Raid: Redemption (2011)

The Raid's big hallway setpiece might evoke comparisons with Old Boy's big fight. But the key difference is that Old Boy's feels like a tooth-and-nail (and hammer) brawl. The Raid's is also a down and dirty brawl, but with more of a martial arts flair.

The Bests are Kotaku's picks for the best things on (or off) the internet.

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