firehose

Peanuts

Garry Newman's new game is a departure from his breakout creation, Garry's Mod, but it's still slightly familiar. Rust is a survival game that started off as a DayZ clone and transitioned into a STALKER-inspired world where players build their own buildings and defenses - and they can play however they want.

"So what's to stop you from going around killing anyone you want and taking their shit and becoming more powerful?" Newman asks. "Nothing. What's stopping it from becoming a PVP killfest? You. Our job should be to give the players the tools they need. If you're sick of getting killed - start a town. Build town walls. Give all the town members red clothes. Put warning signs up outside the town. Set up trip wires and alarms. Watch each other's back."

Rust is in alpha now, accessible here - just type in any series of numbers until the "Next" button appears in the right-hand corner of the registration box. Newman and his studio, Facepunch, are working on implementing their own assets in the game and fixing bugs, so it's still early in development.

Garry's Mod creator launches Rust in free alpha; think DayZ, STALKER originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 23 Jun 2013 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

An anonymous reader writes in with bad news for the Bitcoin Foundation. "California's Department of Financial Institutions has issued a cease and desist letter to the Bitcoin Foundation for "allegedly engaging in the business of money transmission without a license or proper authorization," according to Forbes. The news comes after Bitcoin held its "Future of Payments" conference in San Jose last month. If found in violation, penalties range from $1,000 to $2,500 per violation per day plus criminal prosecution (which could lead to more fines and possibly imprisonment). Under federal law, it's also a felony "to engage in the business of money transmission without the appropriate state license or failure to register with the US Treasury Department," according to Forbes. Penalties under that law could be up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Guo Yongxiang, chairman of the Federation of Literary and Art Circles in China’s Sichuan province, is the latest high-ranking official to face the Communist Party’s terrifying internal disciplinary system known as “shuanggui.” Party officials like Guo who are suspected of “disciplinary violations”—a euphemism for corruption—are held in extra-legal detention.

The facilities are often in converted hotel rooms, carefully screened to make sure that detainees can’t hurt themselves, with padded walls and barred windows. Some of the shuanggui facilitators are also getting creative with technology, with a little “Clockwork Orange” thrown in. A professor at the Central Party School, which trains officials, described a recent tour of one facility to the Telegraph:

“The rooms are divided symbolically into a light half and a dark half. On the light side, they show images of the official’s family and the highlights of their career. On the dark half they show surveillance photos of them committing crimes or behaving badly. The officials are supposed to reflect on why they decided to follow the dark path.”

Inside, a desk is provided for the officials to record their admissions of guilt. The consequences for refusing to comply can be severe; several officials have died in custody.

CowboyRobot writes "Local storage is a big change from HTML of the past, where browsers could only use cookies to store small bits of information, such as session tokens, for managing identity. HTML5 changes this with sessionStorage, localStorage, and client-side databases to allow developers to store vast amounts of data in the browser that is all accessible from JavaScript. An attacker could retrieve this data or manipulate the data, which would then get used again later by the application and may be uploaded back to the server to attack others, as well. Another risk comes from using 3rd-party code. Until HTML5, JavaScript was limited to requesting resources from the domain from which it was loaded, but with the addition of cross-origin resource sharing (CORS), this has been changed to allow JavaScript to request resources from different domains. This offers increased functionality but requires strict usage policies or risks being abused."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

myampgoesto11:

Noah Scalin: Skulledelic

The standard criticism is that using all-caps is akin to shouting. Why is that? Let's compare all-caps with some other forms of typographic emphasis.

A dark secret lurks in the northern forests. Over the last decade, Canada has not so quietly become an international mining center and a rogue petrostate. It's no longer America's better half, but a dystopian vision of the continent's energy-soaked future.

image by strychinine

Because fewer new customers are signing up for wireless plans, giants like AT&T and Verizon are looking everywhere they can for additional revenue, which means charging their existing subscribers more, Kuittinen wrote on BGR.

	rachel shared this story from drwnng:
	- You still can't comment on a share without an existing comment. I would be posting these comments on Firehose's share if I could. - I'm mostly happy with Newsblur, but if something comes along with a good search function, I'll probably switch. + I really like the iOS mobile app, although you can't hide comments by strangers yet.

---

PROS:

• BOOKMARKLET
• Imports and exports OPML
• Best solution to the use of wide monitors: a three-pane interface of subscriptions, then item titles, then the full items. All panes are collapsible, I believe.
• Extensive keyboard shortcuts, with navigation shortcuts using the GReader/vim-style standard.
• Social sharing with threading comments.
• Comments can be made directly on a sharer’s item, or publicly on any item. Public comments appear everywhere.
• Privacy controls let you limit comments on public shares, or allow only people you approve to see your shared stories at all.
• You can train the reader to “focus” on (promote) shares that match your reading preferences (allegedly; never seen it happen and don’t want/use it)
• Flexible mark-as-read tool lets you mark items older than x days
• Flexible avatar selection (upload unique to NB or use Gravatar, Twitter, FB)
• Public shares are published to a page with an RSS feed; page can be customzied with colors or custom CSS.
• Interactions list shows social activity at a glance.
• You can view other users’ followers and who they follow. Good for discovery.
• Good community of sharers and commenters.
• Dev is active and listens to feedback.
• Self-supported by paid subscriptions.

CONS:

• NO SEARCH
• No user-definable tags; the author’s tags come through but are only used for training. You can’t sort or filter by tags.
• Interface is still slower than nearly all other reader webapps. As slow as tOR for me in Chrome and Firefox, sometimes slower.
• Interface uses standard concepts in non-standard ways, and the author is vocal that this is intentional.
  
  Biggest, oldest example: mousing over a folder shows an icon with a triangle pointing right, which replaces the folder to the left of the folder name. Mousing over the triangle points it downward. Clicking it DOES NOT collapse/expand the folder: it pops up a drop-down full of options, and none of them are collapse/expand.
  
  So then how do you collapse/expand the folder? A right-justified plus-sign icon that appears on mouseover, which by reflex makes me think it should actually add a feed to that folder.
  
  So then how do you add a feed to a folder? It’s in that drop-down menu under the collapse/expand psychout arrow! DUH!
  
  This sort of wackiness is all over the interface. Let me know when you need help figuring out why stories are (or aren’t) getting marked as read, aka that stupid triangle floating on the left edge of shares, aka why you have to hit j twice to navigate down past the first item in a feed. Or why you can’t mark all as read while viewing the All Shared Stories feed. Or why you can’t add a comment to an item that was shared without comments.
  
  All of the interface problems predate the May 20 redesign, which was mostly shuffling existing elements and colors around but fixed very little in terms of UX.
  
  
• No anti-troll controls on any commenting (block/ban/hide/mute/moderation)
• Site is not mobile friendly; mobile apps required
• Still the only reader that uniquely can’t handle numerous feeds. Paizo feeds constantly fall over. Comic Book Resources shows each post twice.
• Privacy options don’t allow for friend-of-friend GReader-style discovery.
• Even when you crank the privacy options as far as they go, it’s not clear whether others can still see your recent interactions, followers, and who you follow.

CON, MAINLY TO FIREHOSE:

• Took VC funding via Y Combinator (startup culture influence).

j - open next story k - open previous story n - select next story p - select previous story o/enter - open/close currently selected story s - star story 1 - switch to full view 2 - switch to list view v - view original story m - mark story as read/unread l - like currently selected story S - share story (no notes) A - mark all as read u - collapse/expand sidebar

“It is unfortunate that Hong Kong inappropriately failed to take action on our requests of them and permitted a fugitive to simply leave their country in an obvious attempt to escape justice,” a senior administration official said Sunday evening. In a statement earlier Sunday, the Hong Kong government said it had been provided “no legal basis to restrict Mr. Snowden from leaving.”

The foreigners who were killed included five Ukrainians, three Chinese and one Russian, said Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan. One Chinese tourist was wounded in the attack and was rescued, he said. The local branch of the Taliban took responsibility for the killings, saying it was to avenge the death of a leader killed in a recent U.S. drone strike.

The dead man, who also has not been identified, was killed after allegedly trying to rob a group of people waiting in line to buy the new, $180 LeBron James sneakers. Witnesses told one man in line outside Wish, a clothing and shoe store on Moreland Avenue, pulled out a gun and shot the would-be robber. The shooter then got back in line, according to Channel 2 Action News. Police have not charged anyone and for now consider the shooting to be self-defense. No additional information was being released Sunday morning, said Officer John Chafee, an Atlanta Police Department spokesman. “He [the shooter] really stood up for all of us,” said Taylor White, who told Channel 2 that he was in line when the shooting happened. “I salute the homie that did that.”

"I did Kick-Ass 2 a month b4 Sandy Hook and now in all good conscience I cannot support that level of violence,” he Tweeted Sunday. “My apologies to others involve[d] with the film. I am not ashamed of it but recent events have caused a change in my heart.“

Zoe Lofgren and Ron Wyden:

Vagueness is the core flaw of the CFAA. As written, the CFAA makes it a federal crime to access a computer without authorization or in a way that exceeds authorization. Confused by that? You’re not alone. Congress never clearly described what this really means. As a result, prosecutors can take the view that a person who violates a website’s terms of service or employer agreement should face jail time.

So lying about one’s age on Facebook, or checking personal email on a work computer, could violate this felony statute. This flaw in the CFAA allows the government to imprison Americans for a violation of a non-negotiable, private agreement that is dictated by a corporation. Millions of Americans — whether they are of a digitally native or dial-up generation — routinely submit to legal terms and agreements every day when they use the Internet. Few have the time or the ability to read and completely understand lengthy legal agreements.

Sharon Terlep, Dennis Berman, and Shira Ovide, reporting for the WSJ:

Microsoft Corp. was recently in advanced discussions with Nokia Corp. about a purchase of the Finnish company’s device business, according to people familiar with the matter, in a marriage that could have reshaped the mobile-phone industry.

The talks have faltered, they said. One person said talks took place as recently as this month but aren’t likely to be revived.

(More coverage from Techmeme.)

peachpup:

it finally happened

sisenegoxe:

I took a photo of my dog down a tube and he looks like the moon

deniceabled:

OH!! Luffy’s Logic HAHAHAHA

The company that went bankrupt after an acrimonious fight with its unionized workers last year is back up and running under new owners and a leaner structure. It says it plans to have Twinkies and other snack cakes back on shelves starting July 15.