firehose

BBC News

Egypt Morsi: US seeks end to ex-president's detention BBC News The US has called on Egypt's army to free deposed President Mohamed Morsi, amid ongoing protests on the first Friday of Ramadan. The appeal echoed a similar call hours earlier from Germany. The Islamist Mr Morsi, who was ousted last week after the ... and more »

Of course it took place in Aberdeen, Washington.

According to Thomas Drake, a former National Security Agency senior executive who blew the whistle on the agency’s reckless spending and spying in 2006, a previously unknown NSA surveillance program known as FAIRVIEW aims to “own the Internet.”

We would probably never have heard of her. The lives of black women are valued little by white society or the black community

Original Source

The Kremlin is returning to typewriters in an attempt to avoid damaging leaks from computer hardware, it has been claimed.

Original Source

In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well—some inspired by a weekly theme and some not, but always songs worth hearing. This week: songs about food.

Although the man accomplished so much over the course of his legendary career, my favorite Louis Armstrong era is early. I’ll take anything from the Hot Fives & Sevens compilation over pretty much everything else, particularly “What A Wonderful World” or “Hello, Dolly!” Though known more for his distinctive voice, Armstrong was also an incredible player, and those early Dixieland songs really show his skill, both as a musician and a bandleader. 

Armstrong recorded “Struttin’ With Some Barbecue” in Chicago in 1927 with his Hot Five combo. (Interestingly, he didn’t write it—his then-wife and pianist, Lil Hardin, has the composer credit.) But a vocal version with lyrics by Don Raye was recorded in the ...

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WASHINGTON—FBI officials announced Friday that even though they have enough evidence to make an arrest, they just can’t bring themselves to bust a man who recently downloaded all four seasons of the 20-year-old TV drama Picket Fences fr...

The Iowa Supreme Court on Friday stood by its ruling that a dentist acted legally when he fired an assistant because he found her too attractive and worried he would try to start an affair.

There may not be eSports stadiums popping up in American cities just yet, but competitive gaming has gotten one step closer to official recognition. Specifically, the US government has begun issuing visas to international League of Legends players, designating them "professional athletes."

Speaking to GameSpot, Riot Games eSports manager Nick Allen discussed the new development. "The United States government recognizes League of Legends pro players as professional athletes, and awards visas to essentially work in the United States under that title," he said, calling the visas "groundbreaking for eSports." Organizing international tournaments is now "a much easier process, because [players] are actually recognized by the government. This is a huge thing."

Getting the visas issued was a "lengthy process," Allen said, with Riot going back and forth with the government until enough proof was provided and the visas were finally issued.

Oh, and about those stadiums, the League of Legends Season 3 Championship finals will be taking place October 4 at Staples Center in Los Angeles.

Continue reading Pro League of Legends players are professional athletes, says US government

Pro League of Legends players are professional athletes, says US government originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 12 Jul 2013 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gay rights activists in Costa Rica are fighting for a right they’ve already won–by mistake.

Last week, Costa Rican legislators passed an amendment to the country’s family code meant to allow couples who have been living together for three or more years to be recognized as having a common law marriage, which would grant them the benefits of legal partners such as alimony.

This week, the language of the amendment, which was signed into law by president Laura Chinchilla, was published in the government’s official bulletin, La Gaceta, stating “recognition of the right, without discrimination…to social and hereditary benefits of civil unions.” Gay rights activists are seizing on the language, inserted by liberal lawmakers and unwittingly approved by conservative lawmakers, to pry open the door to same-sex civil unions. (Gay marriage is not legal in Costa Rica.)

Whether the law can be interpreted to support gay civil unions now depends on Costa Rica’s courts. Last week, a lawyer filed an appeal with Costa Rica’s highest court asking for legal recognition of a civil union with his boyfriend. According to the Tico Times, a Costa Rican newspaper, other couples were waiting to file their petitions until the law was published. Some legal experts doubt that the language will apply to gay civil unions given another article in the country’s family code, which says civil unions are “between a man and a woman.” Also, civil unions aside, couples of the same sex are listed as ineligible to marry in another article of Costa Rican law.

In recent years, acceptance of gay unions has been spreading across Latin America, where conservative Catholic social values have long dominated. Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil ranked high on a recent travel guide of the world’s most LGBT-friendly countries. Same-sex marriage was recently legalized in Argentina and Uruguay. Colombia, Ecuador and Brazil now recognize same-sex domestic partnerships, and gay couples can marry and adopt children in Mexico City. If gay rights activists prevail, Costa Rica will be the first Central American country to hop on the regional bandwagon.

Politico

Justice Department tightens rules on reporter investigations Chicago Tribune WASHINGTON — The Justice Department will revise the guidelines prosecutors use in investigations that involve journalists, imposing a higher burden for the approval of search warrants and subpoenas directed at the news media. Attorney General Eric ... UPDATE 3-US government to limit ability to seize journalist recordsReuters Atty. Gen. Eric Holder to tighten rules on seizing reporters' dataLos Angeles Times Justice Department proposes curbing power to seize reporters' recordsFox News Politico -Bloomberg -Newsmax.com all 68 news articles »

Ashley Davis curating Kirby’s Dream Zine

The artist responsible for Earth’s cutest drawings is putting together a zine about Dream Land’s cutest pink sphere. Ashley Davis is accepting submissions for Kirby’s Dream Zine until August 31.

You can draw or write about any of your favorite Kirby characters, moments and memories! If it’s Kirby related, it fits. Yes, you can even do something about Escargoon. In fact, I encourage it.

Find full guidelines and submission instructions at Ashley’s site. I’ll just be here thinking. I always, always want to contribute to projects like these, but I never do because everyone involved is an amazing artist or writer and I’m just some guy. Like, what am I going to do.

BUY Kirby's Dream Collection: Special Edition, upcoming releases

Voice activation, one-touch cooking, web controls, cooking settings based on UPC… have you ever seen a microwave with all of these features? We sure haven’t. We thought it was nice that ours have a reheat button with three different settings. But holy crap, what if you could actually program your microwave to the exact settings of your choice? You can, if you let a Raspberry Pi do the cooking.

This hack run deep and results in a final product with a high WAF. Nathan started by taking apart his old microwave. He took pictures of the flexible sheets that make up the control button matrix in order to reverse engineer their design. This led him to etch his own circuit board to hook the inputs up to a Raspberry Pi board and take command of all the appliance’s other hardware. Because it also drives the seven segment display you’ll never see the wrong time on this appliance again. It’s set based on NTP.

We mentioned you can tweak settings for a specific food. The best way of doing this is shown in the demo video. The web interface is used to program the settings. Recalling them is as simple as using the barcode reader to scan the UPC. Amazing.

Now you can keep that old microwave working, rather than just scraping it for parts.

[Thanks Tom]

Filed under: cooking hacks, Raspberry Pi

As of right now, Deus Ex: The Fall won't let you fire any guns when played on jailbroken iOS devices. Square Enix has confirmed to Joystiq today an upcoming update will allow all devices, jailbroken or not, full access to the game. The Square Enix statement sent to Joystiq reads:

"We have not been clear in our communication earlier this week when we launched Deus Ex: The Fall. We did not state clearly that the game would not support jailbroken devices and so we will be switching this off via an update, so that all the supported iOS devices will be able to play the game in the near future. We feel it's the right thing to do in this situation and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. No customer should be out of pocket when we were not clear from the start, so we'll get the game updated as soon as possible so that everyone who wants to play Deus Ex: The Fall can do regardless of whether their device is jailbroken or not. As soon as this update is live we will communicate this via the Eidos Montreal Community channels"

Deus Ex: The Fall is available on the App store for $6.99 and is compatible with iPhone 4S and above, fifth generation iPod Touches, iPad Mini and third generation and above iPads.

Deus Ex: The Fall update will unjam guns on jailbroken iOS devices originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 12 Jul 2013 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Everybody was talking about the premiere of Syfy's TV movie Sharknado on Twitter last night. But as it turns out, apparently no one actually bothered to watch it. The movie was seen by just over a million people, unequivocally making it a complete bomb (...that was then launched into a Sharknado).

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bestlols:

barking bad

Rhythm Heaven GBA translated

I’ve always heard from a few people that the series’ first game had the best Rhythm Tengoku/Heaven experience, which I can believe since the Japan-only GBA release is the only one you can play on a Micro.

So while it’s not a game that you don’t really need to understand the text to play, it’s nice that someone’s translated most of it to English seven years later. You can grab the Rhythm Heaven patch here — presuming you have a legally ripped ROM of the GBA game to apply the patch to.

The text in Rhythm Heaven is completely translated, but the graphics are still in Japanese — the translation team is seeking capable hackers and pixel artists to help them with those remaining updates.

BUY Rhythm Heaven games, upcoming games

Barbie Dream Dumpster

popular shared this story from Boing Boing.

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darthcamaro writes "Earlier today it, Slashdot had a story about DEF CON's position on not allowing U.S. Federal agents to attend the annual hacking conference. We're now starting to see the backlash from the hacker community itself with at least two well respected hackers pulling out of the DEF CON speaking sessions so far: "'The issue we are struggling with, and the basis of our decision, is that we feel strongly that DEF CON has always presented a neutral ground that encouraged open communication among the community, despite the industry background and diversity of motives to attend,' security researcher Kevin Johnson wrote. 'We believe the exclusion of the "feds" this year does the exact opposite at a critical time.'" Meanwhile, Black Hat welcomes Federal attendees; this year's conference will feature as a speaker former NSA head Keith Alexander.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

mediavengers:

The Economist - December 4th, 2010

After the destruction of their main office on Third Avenue, The Economist puts out its first issue from their Virginia office, and isn’t afraid to voice what the world is thinking.

…

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MediAvengers is an MCU media blog.  Magazine spreads and newspaper articles made by fans, for the fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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All non-Marvel headlines are from the original real-world issue of the publication.

not photoshopped crudely enough

this would be a Time cover, if it still existed

W*USA 9

Harry Potter Series Favorite at CIA Black Site W*USA 9 WASHINGTON (AP) -- Confined to the basement of a CIA secret prison in Romania about a decade ago, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the admitted mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, asked his jailers whether he could embark on an unusual project: Would ... and more »

As part of Fox's effort to create "event series"—limited-run dramas that will have people tuning in and then talking around the water cooler, assuming people still quaintly cling to the outmoded 20th-century concepts of "tuning in," "water coolers," and "talking"—the network hired M. Night Shyamalan to executive produce Wayward Pines, a 10-to-12-part series about a mysterious disappearance in a bucolic small town, that's is in no way based on Twin Peaks.

Instead, it's based on Pines, Blake Crouch's 2012 novel that is... based on Twin Peaks. And now Matt Dillon is set to star as Secret Service agent Ethan Burke, who visits Wayward Pines, ID, looking for two missing federal agents. Carla Gugino will play Kate Hewson, Dillon's former partner, former lover, current resident of Wayward Pines, and avid coincidence enthusiast.

As you may have guessed, Agent Burke's search for answers uncovers ...

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Here is one recent report of falling salaries in public institutions, and, on the bright side, universities are having trouble filling some of those slots:

Public university professors don’t enter the profession to get rich. But some faculty are having trouble paying bills, and have even qualified for foods stamps, Olson said. “For somebody to go five to seven years beyond college to obtain a Ph.D. degree and to realize that you are in need of federal assistance to make ends meet — and that’s for a tenure-track position –” is devastating.

Adding what some view as insult to injury, a recently published database of public employee salaries shows that some professors earn less than their colleagues at local high schools without doctorates.

Yet how would they feel about actual poor people?  The article focuses on University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, and serves up the following numbers:

Faculty salaries averaged $67,000 for full professors; $57,100 for associate professors; and $51,900 for assistant professors during the 2012-13 academic year.