firehose

Posted by Laura June on June 15, 2013 01:02 am

"No damn cat, no damn cradle." - Newt Hoenikker

Upon their arrival to San Lorenzo, the group of travelers find a situation which is quite turbulent: the current president, "Papa" Monzano, seems near death, and Frank Hoenikker, who desperately wants to speak to our still unnamed narrator, is very late to dinner at his own home. The hotel where some of the group is to stay is unfinished, its owner putting toilet paper in the uninhabited rooms. The citizens of San Lorenzo appear to be starving and wholly out of work. In short, there is disarray.

But there are also revelations: the outlawed religion of Bokonon, whose practice seemingly results in death by "the hook," is less rare than it at first appears to be. There is much the narrator learns about the "invented" religion from the residents of the island, at least one of which want something from him.

Bokonon, who is constantly referred to and quoted throughout, has yet to make an appearance, his location apparently unknown.

You can join our Goodreads group here, and there are still a few days left to vote for July's book.

Google is unsatisfied with the deal that Microsoft and Facebook have made with the US government with regard to publishing how many requests for user information they both receive. Facebook and Microsoft released reports tonight detailing how many requests got from US government agencies in the second half of 2012 — including FISA requests. The deal, however, comes with strings. The main issue is that there were restrictions put on the companies' disclosures that make them fairly useless if you're interested in determining how many FISA requests have come in. As Microsoft says, it can only include the number of FISA requests is receives so long as it is "aggregated with law enforcement requests from all other U.S. local, state and federal law enforcement agencies; [and] only if the totals are presented in bands of 1,000." The same rules appear to apply to Facebook, as well.

Those restrictions mean that you wouldn't be able to tell how many of the 8-9,000 requests each company received were from local law enforcement or from the NSA. So Google is having none of it. Here's what a Google spokesperson said to The Verge (emphasis ours):

We have always believed that it's important to differentiate between different types of government requests. We already publish criminal requests separately from National Security Letters. Lumping the two categories together would be a step back for users. Our request to the government is clear: to be able to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures, separately.

To be fair, both Microsoft and Facebook have also been pushing hard for more transparency and more freedom to disclose what types and how many requests they receive.

Developing...

By Lewie Procter on June 15th, 2013 at 5:33 pm.

It’s time again for you to consider purchasing some games for a discounted price. Here’s my weekly bargain bucket, where I’ve compiled a roundup of what I think are the best offers available for games that you can play on your computer this weekend. On top of this, you can always find the fruits of my constant search for the best deals in gaming for all platforms over at SavyGamer.co.uk.

Saints Row: The Third: The Full Package – £6/€7.99/$9.99
Apply coupon “GMG20-6WUSQ-LBC4U”. Registers on Steam.
Here’s wot John thought of Volition’s third entry in their series of games about the people in one gang shooting the people in the other gangs:

It’s an astonishing game. It’s vast, idiotic, and brilliantly made. The pop-up on cars and the like is poor, and instantly needs fixing, but that’s really the only thing that excessively bothered me throughout. You’re so constantly rewarded with levelling up, new weapons, gang customisations, insanely powerful hovering aircraft that fire lasers, surprise mayors (that they insanely gave away in a trailer, despite its not being revealed until the last fifth of the game), ridiculous novelty hats and giant dildos.

More here.

Ace Combat: Assault Horizon: Enhanced Edition – £6/€11.99/$11.99
Apply coupon “GMG20-6WUSQ-LBC4U”. Registers on Steam.
It’s that game about flying planes. This was released on consoles a fair while before it came out on PC, and the PC version comes with extra graphics, a bunch of stuff that was DLC for the console version, and it support up to 16 players for multiplayer now. Is this any good then? I enjoyed one of the Ace Combat games I played on the original playstation, but I’ve not spent any time with any of the other ones since. Worth £6?

Super Hexagon – 66p/€0.99/$0.99
Lots of people scream out swear words when they die in high octane arcade games like Super Hexagon. I mostly stay completely silent. Totally engaged on the task at hand, there is nothing else, there are only hexagons. The only times that I make a sound when I die is after a fairly successful run. Once you’re pushing 120 seconds, a death is more than just a failure, it’s opportunity for greatness thrown away. You were on the cusp of ascending to the higher ranks in The Order of The Hexagon, but you fluffed it and now you have nothing to show for it. It’s these moments that I involuntarily let out a scream at the top of my voice. I think that this means that Super Hexagon got under my skin. Here’s wot Adam thought.

Depth Hunter, Derrick the Deathfin, Dungeon Hearts, Garshasp: Temple of the Dragon, Guns of Icarus Online, Mutant Mudds, SpaceChem, Ticket to Ride, Tower Wars & Toy Soldiers – £6.26/€7.49/$9.99
Dungeon Hearts, Guns of Icarus Online, SpaceChem, Ticket to Ride, Tower Wars & Toy Soldiers register on Steam. From Amazon US, so you need to enter a US billing address.
Shedloads of games here for not very much money. I’ve been noticing that Amazon are currently going after the indie bundle market incredibly aggressively. My understanding is that in bundles like these, it’s $10 for 10 games, with the revenue being split evenly between all the devs and/or publishers (so $1 per sale per game). So Amazon are not taking a cut, but they are still paying for hosting, distributions, transactions costs and affiliate comission out of their pocket, so Amazon are losing money on each bundle sold. I wonder whether that’s just an introductory policy since they started pushing their indie game storefront, or whether it’s a more long term strategy to just get people using their site (for full price games, not just discounted games). With their (of the surface) relatively simply/open submission process, and aggressive capacity for discounts (and ability to get by on tiny margins), I think Amazon are setting themselves up to be a major force in PC digital distribution. I think it’s potentially good for customers, but I don’t really see much evidence of them particularly caring about developers or gaming in general. Business is business and corporations are corporations, I suppose.

Deal of the week
Deus Ex: Human Revolution [Augmented Edition], Hitman Absolution [Professional Edition], Just Cause 2 & Sleeping Dogs – £12.73/€14.99/$19.99
Registers on Steam. From Amazon US, so you need to enter a US billing address.
Back to Amazon again, for a set of games from Square-Enix. DHXR: Good. Hitman Abolution: Bad. Just Cause 2: Good. Sleeping Dogs: Pretty good. That was easy, although if you want more detailed explanations, allow me to direct you to these RPS wordthinks: DHXR, Hitman Abolution, Just Cause 2 & Sleeping Dogs. Deux Ex: Human Revolution is great, but Just Cause 2 is my top pick out of this lot. It’s an open world game that feels like an open ended hollywood blockbuster action movie. Gotta be played.

Also of note:
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings – £5.09/€6.79/$6.79
Paranautical Activity – Pay What You Want
11 bit studios bundle
Arcen Games bundle
Nording Games promo at GOG
Cell HD: Emergence, Dungeon Hearts, Jones On Fire, Major Mayhem, Omegalon, SpaceChem, Syder Arcade, The Adventures of Shuggy, Tiny & Big in: Grandpa’s Leftovers & War of the Human Tanks – £6.26/€7.49/$9.99

For more cheap games throughout the week, pop along to SavyGamer.co.uk.

Microsoft has slowly been catching up on filling the Windows Phone store with big-name apps, and according to Bloomberg Businessweek, that may be thanks to some financial encouragement. Microsoft is reportedly paying some companies $100,000 or more to build apps for its mobile OS. Though no specific apps are named, Microsoft has landed a number of favorites in just the last few months, including Pandora, Temple Run, and Jetpack Joyride. Of course, Temple Run's arrival came five months after Temple Run 2 hit iOS.

Presumably, Microsoft's payment offer would be focused toward specific, high-profile developers only. The company is still running a separate program that offers each and every developer $100 per app submitted to the Windows Phone and Windows 8 stores. And while those efforts are beginning to pay off, Windows Phone's limited app offerings have continued to hamper it even as devices get better and better.

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