Bewarethewumpus

TEEN GIRL SQUAD! Cheerleader! So-and-So! What's Her Face! The Ugly One! Exchanging Decemberween presents! Fondly recalling kindergarten! Battling it out with the bands! Coping with grievous tragedy! In twenty-four great-smelling colors! Off to camp! Valentime's! Sitting on the babies! Exempting those exams! Attending Teen Girl Prom! Meanwhile, Sci-Fi Greg, DnD Greg, Open Source Greg, and Japanese Culture Greg step into the Apple Store robotic dragon's lair...

Join the INNER HIVE for early access to @RubenBolling's Tom the Dancing Bug comics and more fun stuff.

"I used to spend 20 dollars a year on TOM THE DANCING BUG collections… Happy to support him and pass the word." -Neil Gaiman, Charter Member of the INNER HIVE

Please click HERE for information.

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A gentleman in Texas briefly became an involuntary drunk (at one point ending up in the hospital with a blood alcohol concentration of .37, despite not having imbibed all day) when a colony of brewer's yeast took up residence in his gut and started converting every starchy food he ate into booze.

rurone:

biologizeable:

I can relate to this on every level

I fucking loved this.

The hoopy froods of Cyanogenmod -- a free/open replacement for Android, with lots of privacy- and security-oriented features -- have raised capital and are going commercial. They're going to productize Cyanogen with the motto "available on everything, to everyone." This is great news. Cyanogen isn't just a great OS -- it's also a huge force pushing Google into adding more features, even when the carriers hate them (for example, the addition of a tethering service to Android, which followed on from Cyanogen).

You have probably seen the pace of development pick up drastically over the past few months. More devices supported, bigger projects such as CM Account, Privacy Guard, Voice+, a new version of Superuser, and secure messaging. We vastly improved our infrastructure. We’re doing more bug fixes, creating more features, and improving our communication. We think that the time has come for your mobile device to truly be yours again, and we want to bring that idea to everybody.

Our goals today are straightforward:

* Organize, lead, and support our community
* Create amazing user experience centered around how YOU work
* Security solutions that really work
* Stay committed to building the features our users need
* No junk
* Constant updates
* Available on everything, to everyone

A New Chapter (via /.)

Several writers from Portland wrote this sci-fi thriller while completely drunk. When it came time to film, they challenged themselves further by coming to the set under the influence.

Last week, pornographic video sharing website Pornhub released data breaking down the top three search terms for each state. Yesterday, a Redditor turned the data into an interactive map.

John Scalzi's posted ten points about free speech, conversation, debate and related subjects. There's lots of good stuff there: "8. If people do not engage you, it is not necessarily because they are afraid to engage you. Maybe they don’t have the time, or interest. Maybe they think you’re too ignorant to engage, either on the specific topic or in matters of rhetoric. Maybe they don’t want to either implicity or explicitly let you share in their credibility. Maybe they think you’re an asshole, and want nothing to do with you. Maybe it’s combination of some or all of the above. They may or may not tell you why."

1. As a general concept, freedom of speech includes the right to decide how and when to speak, and to whom.

2. This freedom of speech also includes the right to choose not to speak, and not to speak to whomever, including to you.

3. No one is obliged to have a conversation with you.

4. If they are having a conversation with you, they are not obliged to give you the conversation you wanted or expected to have.

Speech, Conversation, Debate, Engagement, Communication

(Image: shout!, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from suneko's photostream)

It is my sincere hope that this is a real obituary, written for a real person, by their real family. Because it's AMAZING. "Freddie loved deep fried Southern food smothered in Cane Syrup, fishing at Santee Cooper Lake, Little Debbie Cakes, Two and a Half Men, beautiful women, Reeses Cups and Jim Beam. Not necessarily in that order. He hated vegetables and hypocrites. Not necessarily in that order."

A new bridge in Dresden, Germany, was deemed so hideous that the UNESCO has delisted the entire city from its World Heritage index. The removal, protesting the construction's marring of historical city views, makes Dresden the first city to exit the United Nations' tally of the world's beautiful and important places.

Since, to my surprise, a whole bunch of people requested a poster of the comic about teaching things to your kid, we've set up a short run on teespring. Enjoy!

Tuesday, September 10 — 1:00 PM

EarthBound comic!  Sorry to those of you that haven’t played EB yet–this comic might be a little hard to get with the photographer falling from the sky.  It’s slightly on the spoilish side, but not too much since this scene plays out in the first half hour of the game.  And like the Diamond Dog comic from a couple weeks back, this one was inspired by watching Sarah play through EB.  Her sisters noticed how surprising it was that the photo man drops in and takes a picture right after this tragedy, and we all had a good laugh about it then too.  Thanks, Mari and Emily, for allowing me to extend that dark humor to the rest of the world!

It’s that time again–time for a new podcast!

But before we begin, please direct your attention to the header.  As you can see, we’ve added our podcasts into their own little easy-to-access section!  We’re still ironing out the kinks, but that’ll be the go-to spot to easily find them from now on.

Download link

[Act 1] Introduction (00:01) - Matthew got the intro music back.  Welcome to the show!

[Act 2] The Daily News: 2DS Announcement and Wii U Price Drop (01:28) - It’s a new section!  It’s a news section!  Matthew and Chris use this section to warm up the show and discuss the latest events in Nintendo news.  Naturally, they also drop their own opinions on everything, whether you like it or not.

[Act 3] Game Discussion–Pikmin 3 (07:32) - Matthew goes through a brief history of the Pikmin series, then the guys give their thoughts on the latest Miyamoto title to hit the Wii U.

[Act 4] Why Did They Do That? Complaints About Difficulty (23:34) - Hot on the heels of the new DuckTales rerelease, a review surfaces that lambasts the game’s difficulty.  And that just doesn’t sit well with Matthew, who feels games have gotten way too easy lately.

[Act 5] Music Break: Pikmin Medley (30:29) - Now moved to the middle of the podcast!  Today’s song combines a few themes from Pikmin.

[Act 6] Comic Talk: 501-507; 161 (32:06) - Would Wii Fit Trainer kiss Pit?  Will Whispy live again?  These questions and more answered in today’s Comic Talk!

[Act 7] Digital Deconstruction: Nintendo’s Next System (44:43) - Matthew has seen the future!  All the signs are pointing to his theory on what the next Nintendo system will be.  Not only that, but he can guarantee that this will either happen, or not happen.

[Act 8] Closing Comments (52:04) - That wraps it up for a quicker podcast!  Hope you enjoyed it, and happy gaming.

 

…

SURPRISE MUSIC TRIVIA CONTEST!  Let’s see how well you guys know your obscure NES titles!  Snuck into the podcast is an NES song from one of my favorite overlooked gems of the system.  You can hear it as the intro the the Daily News section.  If you can recognize the game it’s from, then post in the Podcast Discussion thread on the BitForums!  The first listener who can correctly identify the song will win themselves a free deck of BitF playing cards!

-By Matthew

Before you get mad, I'm a vegetarian. Just like Einstein. Also Hitler.

Security guru Bruce Schneier has posted a typically pragmatic and passionate overview of why you can, and should, follow practices that improve your odds of being able to communicate privately in the face of the NSA's vast surveillance programs.

"I understand that most of this is impossible for the typical internet user," he admits, and even Schneier doesn't use "all these tools for most everything I am working on."

The NSA may have converted the internet into one big surveillance platform, he says, "But they are not magical. They're limited by the same economic realities as the rest of us, and our best defense is to make surveillance of us as expensive as possible."

"Trust the math. Encryption is your friend. Use it well, and do your best to ensure that nothing can compromise it. That's how you can remain secure even in the face of the NSA."

[theguardian.com]

“Let me be clear,” he said in an interview on CNN. “Our goal will not be to effect régime change, or alter the balance of power in Syria, or bring the civil war there to an end. We will simply do something random there for one or two days and then leave.” Andy Borowitz at The New Yorker.

Comrades! The Marxist shirt is BACK!

Daniel Ellsberg, with what may be the quote of the year, in David Carr's New York Times piece today:

By no means was I treated as a hero when I first came forward. I was indicted and spent two years in court,” Mr. Ellsberg said in an interview. “But in those days, journalists were not turning on journalists. With Snowden in particular, you have a split between truly independent journalists and those who are tools — and I mean that in every sense of the term — of the government. Toobin and Grunwald are doing the work of the government to maintain relationships and access.

Carr himself has some pretty great lines here:

If the revelations about the N.S.A. surveillance were broken by Time, CNN or The New York Times, executives there would already be building new shelves to hold all the Pulitzer Prizes and Peabodies they expected. Same with the 2010 WikiLeaks video of the Apache helicopter attack.

(via Freedom of the Press Foundation)

The Guardian's editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, explains that he is now forced to work on stories about the US National Security Administration from New York City, because UK intelligence officials went into the Guardian's headquarters and destroyed hard drives that had copies of some of documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The mood toughened just over a month ago, when I received a phone call from the centre of government telling me: "You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back." There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures. The demand was the same: hand the Snowden material back or destroy it. I explained that we could not research and report on this subject if we complied with this request. The man from Whitehall looked mystified. "You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more."

During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian's reporting through a legal route – by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government's intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK. But my experience over WikiLeaks – the thumb drive and the first amendment – had already prepared me for this moment. I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations and the way in which, these days, media organisations could take advantage of the most permissive legal environments. Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that Greenwald lived in Brazil?

The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian's long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian's basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. "We can call off the black helicopters," joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro.

Read: "David Miranda, schedule 7 and the danger that all reporters now face."

Related reading at Freedom of the Press Foundation: "Investigating Acts of Journalism Under 'Terrorism' Laws Is A Hallmark of Authoritarian Regimes."

BeastWreck's CTHUL-AID illo is just one of many fabulous monstrous designs for sale on Society 6, available as prints/laptop bags/shirts/etc.

Don't miss GRRRILLA,

and FRAKKIN' BERRY.

(via JWZ)

Work on the MOTHER remake hack continues, and one of the most recent developments is the game’s ending music! lucas_raphael has been working hard on recreating the song in EarthBound’s special music format, and here’s the latest version of it:

Download audio file (The_End.mp3)
(download)

Keep in mind it’s not finalized yet (or at least I don’t think so), but even so, I’m really impressed and can’t wait for this hack to get released eventually

If you want to keep up with all the little details and progress of the project, keep an eye out here!