If you don’t know about the controversy surrounding this year’s Hugo Awards, this Wired article will get you up to speed. The upshot is that, of the 16 award categories where there could be a possible Hugo winner, only 11 were actually awarded. In the other five categories the Hugo voters chose not to give an award to any of the nominees.
This is a rare occurrence but has happened in the past because “No Award” (or “Noah Ward” as some people jokingly call it) is always an option for Hugo voters. I have voted No Award many times in the past, and each year Noah usually receives a smattering of votes in every category. It’s just extremely unusual for Noah to actually finish first. In fact, this year Noah “won” as many awards in one night as he previously had in the entire history of the Hugos.
This happened because two groups of disenfranchised fans (the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies) were upset that their picks never won Hugos and rarely even got nominated. So they bloc voted a slate of works onto the ballot to try and get their (and only their) preferred nominees an award. In response, the wider voting audience chose to hand out no award in any category where there were only Puppy candidates. In all the other categories, only non-Puppy nominees won. (This is why bloc voting, while not against the rules, is discouraged. When you try to force people to vote for things they don’t like, the results will predictably not be in your favor.)
According to various tweets I’ve seen, the Puppies have characterized their abject defeat by the wider voting audience as a sort of moral victory because, in their words, fans “burned down” and “nuked” the Hugos rather than have a Puppy win one. Larry Correia, the guy who started the Sad Puppies, wrote “Rather than let any outsiders win, they burned their village in order to ‘save it’.”
I attended the Hugos this year and so was at ground zero of the supposed village-destroying nuclear fire when the Puppy bomb went off. Far from being devastating and awful, it was an awesome, fun night where fans of all kinds came together to celebrate and have a good time. In fact, this was widely regarded by many attendees as one of the best Hugo ceremonies ever held.
I wasn’t expecting that to be the case. I thought the Hugos were going to be a grim, somber affair and wasn’t particularly looking forward to them at first. I hadn’t attended or voted on the Hugos in more than five years and came back into the fold primarily to register my displeasure with the Puppy’s tactics while getting caught up on all the reading I’d been missing out on. (Note: I voted No Award not because of the political ideology of the Pups but because I would vote No Award for any nominee bloc voted onto the ballot since it negates everyone else’s vote, which I believe is unfair. Bloc voting has happened in the past for individual nominees – though not for an entire slate – and the results tend to be the same. You may disagree with this POV and are of course free to vote as you like.)
But as I filed into the auditorium for the awards, there was a palpable atmosphere of good cheer and camaraderie. We all knew it was likely that nearly a third of the awards wouldn’t be given out, but that wasn’t the point. We weren’t there to celebrate what wasn’t happening, we were there to laud whoever won a Hugo (plus the John W. Campbell Award winner) and share their joy through their acceptance speeches. We also laughed and cheered as emcees David Gerrold and Tananarive Due hosted what turned out to be a rollicking ceremony.
Things started out on a high note when Gerrold and Tananarive praised ALL writers, artists and editors everywhere, not just ones of a particular political persuasion. They namechecked many nominees on the ballot, both non-Puppy and Puppy alike (noting that Puppy nominee Mike Resnick was one of the most nominated people in the history of the award). This was an obvious bid to pay tribute to fans of every kind and not to focus on the dividing lines between various factions.
Gerrold also quickly addressed the elephant in the room: the asterisk. Many people had been saying any winner or loser this year would forever have an asterisk attached to their award due to the controversy. But Gerrold and co. neatly turned that concept on its head by saying there would indeed be an asterisk, but because it was the largest Worldcon in history with the most voters, thereby focusing the asterisk on the positives and not the negatives. (He also had special wooden asterisks made that would be on sale after the awards, the proceeds of which would be given to a favorite charity of Terry Pratchett.)
In an especially smart (and kind) move, Gerrold asked the audience to applaud not for each individual nominee but for all the nominees in the category as a whole after all the names were read. That helped ensure no single nominee was ever booed despite the animosity of the voting process. The only time someone did let out a boo…during a No Award result…Gerrold politely asked them not to and it didn’t happen again.
Gerrold also took on the burden of announcing the categories with No Award himself instead of having a special presenter on stage to do it. The five times no award was given, Gerrold handled it expeditiously and with no fanfare so the audience (and the nervous nominees in attendance) could move past the moment quickly. This helped focus the night on the 11 winners and not on the controversy.
For its part the audience was in tearing high spirits, applauding and cheering, laughing at the jokes and fun little skits (including having an award announced by a Dalek), focusing on the positives and spending little time on anything negative. Since there were still a lot of awards that were handed out, the night didn’t seem particularly shortened or bereft. Indeed, by the end it was full of such acceptance and good cheer that it was hard not to leave with a smile and a feeling of good will.
So, far from being “nuked,” these Hugos turned into the biggest, most well attended and most fun awards in history. They not only brought new attendees into the fold but also enticed lapsed people like me back to come together in a fantastic night of celebration. While it was unfortunate that some categories had no winner, it wasn’t catastrophic. Indeed it was fandom’s way of saying, this award has merit and needs to be earned and will never simply be given out to a slate because some people got together and mustered a certain number of voters. And if at times that means an award won’t be given in a category, that’s okay. The integrity and spirit of the Hugos is more important than that. We are not burning a village to save it, we’re simply inviting more people to the village and celebrating.
A few notes:
I had several friends who ended up on the Puppy slate. My No Award vote was not given out of any animosity towards them or the other nominees or the nominators. Which is not the same thing as saying I have no animosity towards a few of the Puppies, just that my vote was about the process, not the people.
I have previously been active in making changes to the Hugo Awards when I was dissatisfied with how they worked. I participated in the process that split the Best Dramatic Presentation category into Short Form and Long Form (so TV shows were not competing with movies), and advocated for the inclusion of an online/Web award category. This same avenue is open to anyone who is likewise dissatisfied with some aspect of the awards process…attend the business meetings, suggest changes and see if you can make a positive impact.
I have been nominated for a Hugo Award twice, losing once (for Scifi.com) and winning once (for Sci Fiction, along with Ellen Datlow). The first thing I did on seeing the person who “beat” me for the first award was to congratulate them and admire their Hugo statue. It was indeed an honor just to be nominated and I have no quibbles with the voters who did not vote for Scifi.com. I do not feel wronged in any way.
I have never once agreed with every winner chosen by Hugo voters in any given year and have on many occasions voted “no award” in various categories. I nevertheless think the eventual winners should definitely have gotten the awards. Their wins were perfectly valid and the will of the majority of the voters.
Thank you, Janet Mock. This is what we need to be seeing. Right now, aside from Mock’s segments, violence against trans women of color doesn’t exist on cable news. And that’s simply unacceptable.
OAKLAND, Calif.—Weeks after Ars published a feature on the scope of license plate reader use, the Oakland Police Department unilaterally and quietly decided to impose a data retention limit of six months.
Prior to April 2015, there had been no formal limit, which meant that the police were keeping data going as far back as December 2010.
That puts the OPD in line with other jurisdictions, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, which decided in 2012 that it would reduce its license plate reader (LPR, or ALPR) retention period from two years to six months. The Silicon Valley city of Menlo Park only retains for 30 days, by comparison.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, people line up to view a home for sale, a contract cycle could take less than two weeks, all cash and no contingency offers are common and bidding wars are expected.
Housing in San Francisco is insanity. According to Redfin research, in July, the price of residential properties in San Francisco climbed by 15% year over year. Data from Zillow.com indicate that the San Francisco metro area saw home inventory drop by about 6.7% in the first half of 2015 compared to the same period the year before.
I’m well aware of the housing crunch, as my husband and I have been looking for a house for six months. But we discovered something surprising in how the bidding wars are unfolding.
In order to get a leg up on the competition in the million-dollar housing market, some hopeful homeowners are writing clever letters while others are making videos starring their dog and baking a batch of gluten-free muffins. Bay Area real estate agents say creativity works, but no one is going to walk away from more money.
Focus on what you have in common
Charlotte Jones and Ryan Corces-Zimmerman(John Fenwick)
After searching for seven months, Ryan Corces-Zimmerman and Charlotte Jones found their dream home in Redwood City, California. The Mediterranean-style home with colorful accent tiles and a classic terra cotta roof was everything they wanted.
“We were told from the start that a good letter was the only thing (other than the offer price) within our control that could make or break a deal,” said Corces-Zimmerman. “Our realtor stressed that a good letter is part of the offer, not just something additional to put on top.”
Corces-Zimmerman, a PhD student at Stanford University, started working on a letter once they were ready to start the bidding process. In order to have a fighting chance at winning the bid for the three-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath home, they were forced to stretch their budget to the max and offer 20% higher than the asking price—and submit a heck of a letter.
“The seller really liked that we were a young couple, my fiancé is a veterinarian, she [owner] had four cats and one dog, so we hyped up the vet thing. We were told that there were a few other offers around the same time, but she chose our letter based on the animal connection.”
They won the bid with a closing price of $880,000.
Having cash doesn’t make you special
Losing a deal to a cash buyer isn’t uncommon.
“Cash isn’t special anymore, it used to be shocking, but the reality is in the Bay Area, a lot of people have that kind of money,” said Michelle Balog a managing sales director at Climb Real Estate.
Realtors say there is a lot of cash sitting on the sidelines with tech employees cashing out stock options and foreign money, which also plays a role in the increase of cash buyers.
“At one point there was Eastern European (like Russian) money, but that dried up, and now there is a great deal of Chinese and Indian money, but that money competes with the Google’s, Facebook’s, Linkedin’s and Apple’s,” said David Barca, regional vice president for Pacific Union Real Estate in Silicon Valley.
Barca says he sees around 40% of offers in all-cash.
If love letters don’t work, muffins and puppies might
Balog has seen what she calls “love letters” written from buyers to sellers since she started in the business 15 years ago. But in the tech savvy environment, letters might not be enough anymore. In fact, her clients John and Kate Fenwick who work for Google and Liftopia, decided to set themselves apart by making a video. Well, they made the video, but their dog Cooper does the talking.
“He is a 9-month-old puppy and the center of our universe, what else do we have that’s interesting? I can juggle and Kate has good memory. We played to our strengths,” John Fenwick told Quartz.
In addition to the video, the Fenwicks provided the seller with a letter and as an added bonus, baked a batch of gluten-free muffins. They were considerably outbid and didn’t get the house, but the seller was so impressed by the video that he came back with a video response explaining that the Fenwick’s bid wasn’t high enough. They repurposed the video for another house in San Francisco and eventually won the bid for a home in May.
On average, pages loaded 3.9x faster with Crystal and used 53% less bandwidth. Just by having Crystal installed, I saved a total of 70 seconds and 35MB of data on these 10 pages.
Microsoft released Windows 10 four weeks ago today, and now the company is providing a fresh update on its upgrade figures. 14 million machines had Windows 10 installed on them within 24 hours of the operating system release last month, and that figure has now risen to 75 million in just four weeks. Microsoft has been rolling out Windows 10 in waves, as a free upgrade for Windows 8 and Windows 7 users. While it's difficult to compare exact figures between Windows 10 and Windows 8, Microsoft "sold" 40 million licenses of Windows 8 a month after its debut. It took Microsoft six months to get to 100 million licenses of Windows 8, and it's clear the free aspect of Windows 10 is obviously driving higher adoption rates.
Microsoft's Windows marketing chief Yusuf Mehdi revealed the figure today, alongside some more interesting statistics about Windows 10. More than 90,000 unique PCs or tablet models have been upgraded to Windows 10 in 192 countries. That's nearly every country on the planet. Xbox One owners have streamed nearly 122 years of gameplay to Windows 10 PCs.
While Microsoft has been rolling out Windows 10 in waves, there are ways to avoid the wait. There's even methods to clean install Windows 10 if you want to remove the cruft of your previous version of Windows and wipe out the upgrade.
The site was likely targeted, as in March, because of software projects hosted on the site that have allowed Chinese Internet users to bypass the Great Firewall's packet filtering and inspection tools, keeping their traffic hidden from surveillance. This round of DDoS attacks comes as a number of Chinese software developers who used the site to share software capable of bypassing their country's national Internet filters apparently were forced to pull their projects from GitHub. In one case the move was reportedly mandated by law enforcement in China.
That project was Shadowsocks, a secure SOCKS5 proxy plug-in protocol for Internet users and one of the most popular Great Firewall circumvention tools in China. The developer, who posted under the username clowwindy, reported on GitHub on August 22, "Two days ago the police came to me and wanted me to stop working on this. Today they asked me to delete all the code from GitHub. I have no choice but to obey. I hope one day I'll live in a country where I have freedom to write any code I like without fearing." He later deleted that comment, leaving only a statement, "I believe you guys will make great stuff with Network Extensions." However, the code for Shadowsocks has been mirrored elsewhere on GitHub.
[NaSC is] an app where you do maths like a normal person.
It lets you type whatever you want and smartly figures out what is math and spits out an answer on the right pane. Then you can plug those answers in to future equations and if that answer changes, so does the equations its used in.
Walmart hires vampires. This explains why it’s open 24 hours a day, why working there is often described as ‘soul-sucking’, and why there’s almost always no windows.
Most damningly, Walmart is one of the few stores that specifically hires a ‘greeter’ with no other job than to welcome every person into the store.
The decline of Angry Birds maker Rovio continues, as today the game developer announced another set of layoffs, with plans for up to 260 job cuts totalling more than 30 percent of the studio's workforce. According to the company, the decision was made so that it could "restructure and concentrate" on its core business of "games, media, and consumer products."
The Finnish game developer said something similar last October, when it announced the layoffs of up to 130 employees amid slow growth and declining revenue. The current round of layoffs will apply companywide, excluding those employees working on the upcoming Angry Birds animated movie, which is due to hit theaters next year.
"We did too many things."
"Fundamental changes are needed to ensure Rovio succeeds in its global ambitions to be the leading entertainment company with mobile games at its heart," CEO Pekka Rantala said in a statement.
Rovio came to prominence in 2009 with the success of the first Angry Birds game on iOS, and has since tried to build on that with a near-overwhelming amount of Angry Birds merchandise and spin-offs. Most recently, the developer released Angry Birds 2, a free-to-play game that saw more than 50 million downloads in its first month of availability. However, that success wasn't enough to make up for the company overextending itself.
"Rovio's growth and eagerness to explore new business opportunities over the past few years has been exceptional," Rantala said. "As a result, we did too many things. In our current financial condition we must now put focus on where we are at our best: in creating magnificent gaming experiences, in producing an amazing animation movie and in delighting our fans with great products."
Two members of a local TV station's news team were fatally shot Wednesday during a live TV broadcast near Roanoke, Va., WDBJ7-TVsaid.
A manhunt was underway in Franklin County, Va. Gov. Terry McAuliffe said told WTOP radio that police know who the shooter is and are pursuing him. (Permalink)
Heather Ar’ite, a photographer and friend of the Incredible Things blog, sent them an incredible picture of a spider web with the letters “LOL” woven into it. It’s unclear from the photograph exactly how the spider worked in the letters, or exactly what it was laughing it at the time.
Founded by Facebook engineers Erin Summers and Zainab Ghadiyali one year ago, Wogrammer wants to break Silicon Valley's "brogrammer" stereotype — a mentality made prevalent by the homogeneous group of white men who work in tech in Silicon Valley — by focusing on, featuring, and celebrating women's technical accomplishments.
The organization has "featured more than 50 engineers from around the world — like Regina Luki, who built an educational arcade machine made of e-waste and recycled materials, and Mary Lou Jepsen, who built the world’s first $100 laptop for One Laptop Per Child and now drives display technology at Oculus," Sandberg said in her Facebook post.
The ongoing love affair between ABC and Shonda Rhimes’ production company Shondaland shows no signs of abating, with the network gobbling up shows as fast as Rhimes and her cohorts can pitch. The most recent manifestation of ABC’s Rhimes addiction is an untitled Shondaland project it’s picked up from Fringeand The Flash producer Alison Schapker, centering on the drama behind the doors of a convent full of nuns. (Rhimes and Betsy Beers will also serve as executive producers on the project.)
Although there’s no information about which specific flavors of nun—singing, Flying, Katy Perry-hating, On The Run—the show will center on, Variety describes the main characters as “a group of Catholic nuns fighting the closure of their Bronx-based convent, who must suddenly deal with three young novices whose arrival unearths long-buried secrets.” So yeah, even if this wasn’t coming from The House That ...
It’s old hat now that women are paid less than men, even if they’re at the very top of their industry. The latest confirmation comes from data in the UK showing that women in senior management or at director level in the country earn 11% less than their male counterparts, and are awarded with slightly more than half the average bonus given to men each year. The Chartered Management Institute, an industry group for managers, commissioned a survey of 72,000 UK managers in a broad set of public and private sector companies of various sizes,to compile the 2015 data.
The pay disparity between men and women is even bigger further down the corporate food chain. The average pay gap across all the survey respondents, which included positions ranging from junior executives to directors, was 22%, meaning women were paid an average of £8,524 ($13,374) less each per year.
“Having more women in senior executive roles will pave the way for others and ensure they’re paid the same as their male colleagues at every stage of their careers,”said Ann Francke, the CMI’s chief executive in a press release that accompanied the findings.
That will require more work. Women in the UK continue to outnumber men in junior management, the survey found, making up 67% of that cohort. But by the time they hit senior management their representation drops to 43%.
A UK government-backed report in March found that the number of women holding board positions in FTSE 100 companies was just shy of the country’s 2015 target of 25%, a goal set in 2011 by the previous government when the proportion was closer to 12%. Of those companies’ board seats, 23.5% are currently held by women.
So far, the UK hasn’t instituted specific policies to promote its goal. For countries like Germany11 and Norway, imposing quotas on companies has helped boost the proportion of women on corporate boards.
MEDFORD, OR—Recoiling at the sight of the two coworkers waiting for them in the lobby, employees from local company Core Analysts stated Monday that their invitation to head out and grab lunch had somehow trickled down to the office weirdos. “Crap, how did Joel [Seltz] and Matt [Heiser] hear about this?” said office manager Evan Coss, mentally recalibrating his expectations for a pleasant midday meal at Buffalo Wild Wings with friends to now include a series of labored asides in which he would make cursory attempts to engage his two bland, awkward colleagues over mozzarella sticks. “I sure as hell didn’t tell them about this—they must have heard Craig say we were meeting in the lobby at noon. Well, lunch is ruined. I wonder if I should just call it a bust, claim I have some work that needs to get out, and head back upstairs.” At ...
Elizebeth Smith Friedman was a cryptanalyst and author, and a pioneer in U.S. cryptography. She has been dubbed “America’s first female cryptanalyst”…
At Riverbank Laboratories Friedman found one of the first such facilities in the US to seriously study cryptography and other subjects. Through the work of the Friedmans, much historical information on secret writing was gathered. Until the World War I creation of MI8, the Army’s Cipher Bureau, Riverbank was the only facility in the US seriously capable of solving enciphered messages. Military cryptography had been officially deemphasized after the Civil War. During World War I, several US Government departments asked Riverbank Labs for help or sent personnel for training. Among those was Agnes Meyer Driscoll who came on behalf of the Navy.
Among the staff of fifteen at Riverbank was the man Elizebeth would marry in May 1917: William F. Friedman. The couple worked together for the next four years or so in the only significant cryptographic facility in the country, save Herbert Yardley’s ‘Black Chamber’. In 1921 Mr. and Mrs. Friedman left Riverbank to work for the War Department in Washington, D.C.
Mrs. Friedman’s employment as a cryptanalyst for the U.S. Navy followed in 1923, which led to her subsequent positions with the U.S. Treasury Department’s Bureaux of Prohibition and of Customs. Her career at both is quite significant and embraces cryptography against international smuggling and drug running in various parts of the world. The smugglers and runners resorted to encrypted radio messages to support their operations, presuming they would be able to communicate securely. This became a mistaken notion after Mrs. Friedman came to Washington.
The Volstead Act of 1919 forbade the manufacture, sale, import, or export of intoxicating liquors. Prevailing conditions during those days, however, encouraged illegal activity. Further, as radio equipment became less cumbersome, less conspicuous, and more sophisticated, it afforded the criminal element another means to circumvent the law. To avoid taxes, etc., criminals smuggled liquor and, to a lesser degree, narcotics, perfume, jewels, and even pinto beans. Related enciphered communications were passed by persistent anti-prohibitionists to protect their operations.
Anti-prohibitionists provided Mrs. Friedman and her team of cryptanalysts with innumerable opportunities to hone their cryptanalytic/codebreaking skills during her employment with the U.S. Treasury Department. She led the cryptanalytic effort against international smuggling and drug-running radio and encoded messages, which the runners began to use extensively to conduct their operations. Even though early codes and ciphers were very basic, their subsequent increase in complexity and resistance to solution was important to the financial success and growth of their operations. The extent of sophistication seemed to pose little problem for Mrs. Friedman; she still mounted successful attacks against both simple substitution and transposition ciphers, and the more complex enciphered codes which eventually came into use. While working for the Coast Guard and the Bureau of Foreign Control during the Prohibition era, she solved over 12,000 rum-runners’ messages.
Mrs. Friedman also perceived the need for a more dedicated effort against suspected communications. By 1931 she had convinced Congress of the need to create a headquartered, seven-man cryptanalytic section for this purpose. As her cryptanalytic responsibilities began to mount, Mrs. Friedman sensed the need to teach other analysts cryptanalytic fundamentals, including deciphering techniques. By relieving her of a part of the burden, this allowed her time to attack the more atypical new systems as they cropped up and expedited the entire process from initial analysis through to solution. It also allowed her to stay one step ahead of the smugglers.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump repeated his claim Tuesday evening that he would stop eating Oreos, citing the cookie maker's decision to close a plant in Chicago and move it to Mexico.
"I'm never eating Oreos again," Trump said, before adding that he would consider it if he could find some that were made in the U.S.
Trump's claim is partly true.
Oreo's parent company Mondelez International Inc. said last month that it decided to invest $130 million in building four new production lines at a plant in Mexico, which will replace nine older production lines at its Chicago plant.
That will mean the number of jobs at the Chicago plant will go from about 1,200 to about 600, said Laurie Guzzinati, a Mondelez representative. But the plant in Chicago will remain open.
Guzzinati said the decision to invest in the Mexico plant came after discussions with union representatives for workers at the Chicago plant. She said the company determined that the new production lines would cost $46 million less per year in Mexico than in Chicago, and said labor was "one of many factors."
Guzzinati noted that Oreos continue to be made in some U.S. plants, including in New Jersey, Oregon and Virginia.
The Portland Game Store is having a GRAND OPENING WEEKEND - September 4, 5, and 6! We have a weekend full of events, as well as a D20% OFF SALE on nearly everything in the store (you actually get to roll a 20-sided dice for your discount)!
Here is our schedule of events: Friday 9/4 - 6:30pm - FREE MTG Draft! (Yes, FREE - including booster packs!) Sign-up in-store anytime before 9/4, arrive early on 9/4 for check-in Great prizes!
Saturday 9/5 11:00am - FREE Warmachine Tournament Sign-up in-store anytime before 9/5 35 points $75 Store Credit for 1st, $25 Store Credit for 2nd
11:00am-1:00pm - FREE Paint & Take Workshop Come learn miniature painting techniques from a PRO! Models and paints provided! You get to keep the model!
1:00pm-6:00pm - VYE Demo, Raffle, and Meet the Designer
6:00pm - FREE Splendor Tournament! Sign-up in-store anytime before the event. Great prizes!
6:00pm-Midnight - Dice & Drinks with RAFFLE PRIZES!
Sunday 9/6 Noon - FREE Star Wars X-Wing Tournament Sign-up in-store anytime before 9/6 100 points Great prizes!
1:00pm - SOL: Last Day so of a Star - DEMO and Meet the Designer
Super Opinionated.
