firehose

Aurich Lawson

You all have persevered through quite a bit to get to this point: we have a functional and secure e-mail server that does a good job at ignoring or dumping off spam before it hits your inbox. We've got all the right pieces in place to ensure that the mail we send gets delivered; we've got OpenDKIM operational, and we've got DNS properly configured (including reverse lookups!).

We could stop here and declare success. After all, you can plug your mail account name and password into your mail app or your smartphone and send and receive e-mail. You can easily add new accounts. Even better, you can easily add aliases, so creating "idonttrustyounottospamme@mydomain.com" and using it at a skeevy website that requires e-mail registration and then deleting the alias takes only a few seconds.

But are there any extra steps we can take to increase security? What about one-time passwords or two-factor authentication? What about bolting on a webmail front end so we can access our e-mail from a browser? What about push notifications or calendaring? What about letting users set and change their own e-mail passwords? What else can we bolt onto our server, and what other configuration paths might we take to do things differently?

RiverRock is a marijuana company in Denver, CO, that was founded in 2009 by an enterprising medical malpractice attorney some four years before recreational weed become legal in the state. Today, RiverRock operates two dispensaries, grows its own, and makes edibles, extracts, and concentrates. It used to cultivate all its cannabis indoors — a quantity John Kocer, RiverRock's CEO, wouldn't specify, but says comprises between 3 percent to 5 percent of the state's $14 million monthly weed market.

A year and a half ago, the company shifted a large portion of its grow operations to a 27,000-square-foot greenhouse. In simple terms, a greenhouse is an outdoor, semipermanent structure with translucent ceilings and walls, through which light can filter. It's the same kind of thing that conventional farmers use to grow flowers and vegetables. RiverRock's is particularly state-of-the-art, with automated humidity and temperature controls and a special blackout system that can create pitch-dark conditions in the middle of a summer evening.

Pitch-dark conditions in the middle of a summer evening

The fact that RiverRock is using a greenhouse to grow pot may not seem that extraordinary, until you realize that until recently, most marijuana was grown indoors to stay hidden from view. But in a monumental shift in the cannabis industry, that's about to change.

"This is the trend for the future," Kocer says. "We're the only industry on the planet that grows indoor under light. Tomatoes, flowers, you name it, people don't grow indoors."

And there's good reason other industries don't: it's expensive to grow indoors, where powerful artificial lights — and massive air-conditioning systems used to counteract the heat from said lights — require massive amounts of energy. By harnessing the free power of the sun, growers can save as much as 90 percent on their electricity bills. RiverRock's monthly electricity bill is $25,000 a month, only $2500 of which is used in its greenhouse, versus its residual indoor grow operations which run up the bulk of that bill.

Not surprisingly, RiverRock isn't the only cannabis grower going "green." In Colorado, industry consultants and greenhouse suppliers estimate there are 10 marijuana greenhouse operations of similar scale to RiverRock's, with several even larger ones in development. RiverRock has plans to triple its greenhouse capacity in the coming months, which will double its weed production. (Although Washington state also recently legalized marijuana, Colorado has progressed much more quickly in setting up its legal cannabis marketplace.)

Until now, high-grade pot was almost exclusively grown indoors. "The reason why indoor cultivation became the cultivation technology of choice was because this was illegal for so long and indoor is easier to hide," says Kris Krane, a consultant for the marijuana industry who also runs an incubator for startup cannabis companies.

Patient, "Wade", inside RiverRock's greenhouse (RiverRock).

Now, even though pot is still federally prohibited, Washington and Colorado have fully legalized it, and 20 other states (and DC) have approved it for medical use. If Colorado is an example, a regulated, legal pot marketplace will mean growers are less concerned about shielding their plants from view, and more motivated to explore cost saving opportunities.

Carefully monitored conditions of light, temperature, and ventilation

Whether indoors or in greenhouses, growing top-grade cannabis with high THC content requires carefully monitored conditions of light, temperature, and ventilation. Cannabis thrives in warm, moist conditions: RiverRock's greenhouse is kept at 71 degrees, with 40 percent humidity, and is watered via a drip system from overhead plastic tubing. Although every factor in cannabis growth needs to be tightly controlled, humidity is arguably the biggest challenge, according to Zev Ilovitz, president of the Richmond, CA-based Envirotech Greenhouse Solutions, whose company has designed and installed many small greenhouse projects for cannabis growers, and is currently involved in some of the new, larger operations being developed in Colorado. "Cannabis is particularly susceptible to fungal disease," he says. "You have to have a good venting system."

When growing in the wild, Cannabis plants produce buds as the days become shorter. To get plants to bud, a grower must simulate 12-hour "nights," by blacking out some of the daylight. This is relatively easily achieved in a warehouse, but to do it in a greenhouse, you need a retractable blackout curtain. Some blackout curtains are automated, and can be rolled over the greenhouse like a garage door, while others are manually hung.

Indoor growers' greenhouse gas emissions are equivalent to that of 3 million cars.

Beyond saving money, marijuana greenhouses impose a smaller environmental footprint — an issue that's become an increasing concern in the cannabis industry. One independent study published in 2011 by Evan Mills, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, looked at the yearly energy consumption of indoor pot-growing operations (based on federal estimates of total national marijuana production, from legal and black-market sources). He estimated that annual energy expenditures were $6 billion — six times that of the entire US pharmaceutical industry. Indoor growers' greenhouse gas emissions, he reported, are equivalent to that of 3 million cars.

Although marijuana greenhouses eliminate the need for many energy sucking lights, some growers opt for a hybrid approach, using some grow lights to manipulate the plants' cycles. Marijuana, for instance, will grow higher during longer daylight hours, as opposed to budding during shorter daylight hours. So growers who want to encourage the plant's initial growth phase in the middle of winter, say, may artificially produce more "daylight" hours through the use of lights. In February, residents of the southern Colorado town of Penrose complained: "Neighbors in the town said the smell from the plants is too strong and the bright lights from the greenhouses are too invasive at night," according to the Denver-based local CBS news affiliate.

A $5 million pot 'superstore' has been proposed for the small town of Eagle, CO.

Still, any reduction in energy cost is likely to make greenhouse cultivation an attractive option in the competitive world of weed farming. "Eventually a lot of these warehouses where people are paying top dollar for rent will get squeezed out by greenhouses," says Jay Czarkowski, managing partner of the Boulder, CO-based cannabis business consultants, Canna Advisors. "Greenhouses allow producers to ... have more competitive pricing, too."

Nexus Corp., a traditional high-end greenhouse designer, fabricator, and supplier that has worked for clients including the University of California at Berkeley, reports that it's receiving an increasing number of inquiries from the marijuana industry. "As long as it's a legal crop, we'll do it," says Craig Humphrey, vice president of engineering at Nexus. "They just need to prove where they are located. We're not selling to a customer who lives in a state that doesn't have it legalized in some manner."

Meanwhile, Colorado is already in full expansion mode. A $5 million pot "superstore" has been proposed for the small town of Eagle, CO, which would incorporate a 45,000 square foot greenhouse (in addition to a 6,000-square-foot retail store, and a 3,750-square-foot "prohibition museum"). Silverpeak Apothecary, a ritzy dispensary in Aspen, CO, in January erected a 25,000-square-foot greenhouse, called High Valley Farm.

On a national scale, marijuana greenhouses, like wind turbines or giant satellite dishes, may one day transform cheap land that sits on the outskirts of cities. And Ilovitz of Envirotech, envisions a time when there may also be "microbrewery style" greenhouses attached to marijuana stores in cities. "Greenhouses," he says, "really reflect the fact that the industry is stepping out into the light."

Skywind, the fan-made project rendering the world of The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind with the engine from The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, has renamed itself the The Elder Scrolls Renewal Project, and released this second development video detailing the progress made so far.

The video discusses how crafting (and the tailoring customization option) will be introduced into Skywind, as Morrowind (released in 2002) did not feature crafting. The development team also is seeking volunteers to help rewrite dialogue, and is looking for voice actors with suitable talent and equipment to record lines to make characters less robotic. Volunteer composers have also created more than two hours of original music to form Skywind's soundtrack.

To see the team's first developer diary, released in January, see here. Other, shorter videos have covered the rendering of the Ashlands and the preview of a quest.

For more information on Skywind's progress, or how to volunteer, see the official site for the The Elder Scrolls Renewal Project.

dannydevites:

silversarcasm:

When watching a show I don’t think ‘Well politically correctly there should be two more minorities’

I’m thinking ‘This is suffocating, this isn’t what life is like, why do i not exist, why do my friends not exist, what the fuck is with this idealisation of one type of person?’

#important#i dont exist canonically in the media

Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock

Demonstrating yet another way the catastrophic Heartbleed vulnerability threatens users, malicious hackers were able to exploit the bug to successfully bypass multifactor authentication and fraud detection on an organization's virtual private network (VPN), security researchers said.

When the critical flaw in the OpenSSL cryptographic library came to light 11 days ago, it was best known as a dangerous hole that allowed attackers to siphon out user names, passwords, and even private encryption keys processed by vulnerable Web servers. More recently, researchers confirmed that Heartbleed could be exploited to steal the private keys underpinning the widely used OpenVPN application and likely software for other VPNs that rely on a vulnerable version of OpenSSL.

On Friday, researchers with network security firm Mandiant said Heartbleed had been used to subvert a customer's VPN concentrator, an appliance that typically provides a secure way for people to access a network from outside the organization. The devices frequently require multiple forms of authentication before granting access to an end user. Passwords, previously set authentication cookies, and other types of security tokens are frequently used. That's where Heartbleed came in handy for the hackers, who went to work exploiting the bug less than a day after it became public knowledge. A separate researcher theorized such an attack was possible the same day.

gailsimone:

the preeminent gail simone of our time

One’s too many and a hundred ain’t enough.

Can I get a short-run on some of those “Whedon Is My Master Now” shirts with “GAIL SIMONE” spray painted over the “Whedon” because y’know. I would like to own and wear that. Everywhere nerds are.

One of the first mainstream brands to make wearable fitness electronics is getting out of the game. Nike confirmed to CNET this afternoon that the company is laying off people in its hardware division, which makes the FuelBand line of fitness trackers. "As a fast-paced, global business we continually align resources with business priorities," Nike spokesman Brian Strong told CNET in an email. "As our Digital Sport priorities evolve, we expect to make changes within the team, and there will be a small number of layoffs." Strong did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Verge.

Citing an unnamed source, CNET reports that as many as 55 people on Nike's 70-person hardware team were laid off on Thursday. (A rumor of the layoffs first surfaced on Secret, the anonymous social network.)  In addition to the FuelBand, Nike's hardware division makes the Nike+ sportwatch and other peripherals. The original FuelBand launched in 2012, but Nike was slow to iterate on it. Last fall, the company released a new version that added Bluetooth support and new color options but little else. Around the same time, Apple reportedly hired Nike's design director for the FuelBand to come work on its own wearable technology. CNET reports that a new FuelBand project was scrapped along with the other projects in Nike's Digital Sport division.

A big shift to software

Moving forward, Nike will reportedly shift its focus to fitness software, including its Nike+ API, which other hardware makers can integrate into their own wearables.  The company also launched a software incubator in San Francisco last week called Fuel Lab that will help companies integrate NikeFuel, its fitness measurement system, into their own products.

Nike's move comes as the first wave of fitness wearables has failed to gain widespread mainstream adoption. At the same time, Nike's close partner Apple is expected to enter the market as early as this year. Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, is a longtime member of Nike's board. Given the expense and difficulty of making world-class hardware, along with the lukewarm reception these products are getting from customers, Nike appears to have decided that it's better off letting others build the next generation of devices.

Skullgirls Encore — a relaunch of 2D fighting game Skullgirls — will get its first male character, Big Band, for free on April 22, Lab Zero Games CEO Peter Bartholow announced today via the PlayStation Blog.

Big Band, formerly known as Ben Birdland, was a beat cop who "got on the wrong side" of a corrupt police force. After a brutal attack, Dr. Avian and the ASG Lab 8 fixed him up and armed him with pneumatic weaponry. According to Bartholow, Big Band is a high risk, high reward character with power and versatility. He's also the only character capable of parrying incoming attacks. Although he'll still take some damage, Big Band's parry allows him to counter-attack his opponents with combos and special moves.

"Many of his attacks will leave you vulnerable if you miss or misjudge your opponent," Bartholow wrote. "Big Band's 'Bagpipe Blues' taunt actually powers up two of his supers: Super-Sonic Jazz and Tympany Drive. So if you can end a combo and squeeze in a taunt while your opponent is knocked down, the next time you hit could lead into some really huge damage."

For a look at Big Band, check out the trailer above.

The developer also announced that Fukua — a palette swap of an existing character announced on April 1 — will be available as a free update for the PlayStation 3 version of the game "in the coming weeks." The next free downloadable character will be Eliza, an Egyptian-themed lounge singer.