firehose

Yahoo is taking on yet another acquisition as it seeks to reinvigorate itself and — in this case — Flickr as well. GhostBird software has just announced that it will be joining the Flickr team after being purchased by Yahoo. The developer is notably the name behind PhotoForge 2, a popular and robust photo editing app for iOS. PhotoForge offered the type of powerful features, such as layers, masks, and curves, that are usually only found in desktop image editors like Photoshop. GhostBird also made a photo filtering app called KitCam, though both apps will be removed from the App Store today.

Yahoo has been making some big strides to bring life back to Flickr. Last month, the photo sharing site debuted a major visual overhaul and began giving users an entire terabyte of storage space for free. However, Flickr hasn't offered much in the way of photo editing just yet. It partners with Aviary to offer some basic options on the desktop, and it includes a handful of filters in its mobile apps. While it's not clear if Yahoo has acquired GhostBird's software in addition to its team, it's likely that more photo editing features will be coming to Flickr in one form or another.

The Microsoft customer-support employee who had a rape joke told at her expense in front of a massive audience at the E3 video-game conference and an even bigger crowd online has clarified that she did not take offense, which does not change the fact that Microsoft prominently featured a rape reference at the company's biggest presentation for one of its biggest products ever, the Xbox One. And it doesn't appear to be changing the gender roles in the gaming industry either.

"The demo included friendly ad-libbed banter and there was no ill intent," Ashton "Vulcan" Williams tweeted several hours after the Monday exchange on stage in California. "Torin and I are friends," she added, referencing her fellow player in a live demo of Killer Instinct, who, while beating her in the fighting game, said the following: "Just let it happen. It will be over soon." While Williams, a community coordinator for Microsoft, says she doesn't mind the rape joke — she even played along, returning a "Wow, you like this" from her male counterpart by saying, "No, I don't like this — the smear on Microsoft's year-long campaign for its new gaming console remains. 

At the very least, we're learning on the day after the incident that the rape references weren't written into Microsoft's run of show. "The comments during the KI demo were not scripted," Williams tweeted. Microsoft clarified further in a statement sent to The Atlantic Wire on Tuesday afternoon and attributed to a vice president named Phil Spencer, which reads in part: "[o]ne of our employees made an off the cuff and inappropriate comment while demoing 'Killer Instinct' with another employee. This comment was offensive and we apologize."

Microsoft may not have completely lost its sense of sensitivity — "Bullying and harassment of any kind is not condoned and is taken very seriously," the statement continued — but the nature of the exchange and the alarming reaction to it continues to reveal how rape "jokes" unfold in public, especially in the context of gamer culture, and why that problem is far from solved.

Yes, this is a rape joke. Many who picked up on the Xbox exchange, including commenters on an early story at The Atlantic Wire, still failed to see how the main phrase in question — Just let it happen — constitutes a rape reference. "Cannot see how this I was rape joke. I do believe you are reading way too much into this," wrote one of our commenters, Mighty Viking Hamster. Allow us to explain: One person trying to convince an unwilling person to have sex with them frequently tells the victim to "let it happen" and stay quiet — it's a common enough term that it's often used alongside the "Rape Sloth" meme. That reference, re-blogged again and again, features captions that often contain "alarming threats that are meant to disturb the reader," according to Know Your Meme, "on a similar vein to the Prepare Your Anus and You Gonna Get Raped image macros." In other words: it's linguistic sexual harassment put next to pictures. Here are some other classics from the sickening sloeth meme, including "you better stay quiet you slut." 

Yes, gamers talk like this all the time. Others responding to the Xbox exchange, particularly on Reddit, note that gamers — even girl gamers — tend to use similar phrasing all the time while playing, which by their logic makes the E3 incident acceptable. Redditor Delta_Hedge writes:

This is considered rape jokes now. they should hear me playing.

• "im gonna rape you so hard"
• "youre getting raped"
• "you just got raped small son"

no homo.

Another Redditor, also a woman, added: "It's a game... Am I actually planning on raping someone? No. Hopefully most people could fight off a 115lb girl if I decided to. Am I afraid of being raped? Absolutely not."

Again, allow us to explain: Just because people talk like this all the time does not make it okay — this kind of "smack talk" not only alienates female would-be gamers but also mimics the rampant sexual harassment in gamer culture. Even worse, the Xbox incident unfolded, however off-the-cuff, during a professional presentation for one of the biggest technology companies on earth at the gaming industry's biggest expo. One of the biggest names in gaming should not further alienate woman at a live, recorded event, which brings us to the next point. 

Yes, sexism is still a huge problem in the gaming world. Gamers and the game they play already alienate, harass, and exclude women, something Williams herself acknowledges:

It was an honor to be one of two females on the stage today at the Microsoft briefing. Excited and pumped for the show tomorrow! :) #E3

— Ashton(@ashtonisVULCAN) June 11, 2013

Williams was one of two women both physically and virtually present at the Killer Instinct demo. Not a single Xbox game featured a female protagonist, as Feminist Frequency pointed out. What's more, a tweet saying as much drew the responses like "stop being retarded and bitchy," "in general men are better at battle rolls and other type battle stuff that (sic) why tomb raider sucked," and "stop pushing your feminist agenda on video games." So maybe Ashton Williams doesn't mind the rape joke; maybe she doesn't mind it because she's so used to putting up with that kind of stuff just to make it in the gamer world. 

Microsoft has touted the Xbox One's cloud-computing capabilities, promising that the system's hardware resources can be freed up by accessing remote servers that handle AI and physics calculations. Those remote computations, Microsoft says, will allow the Xbox One, unlike the Xbox 360, to become more powerful over time.

Sony Computer Entertainment's Shuhei Yoshida says that the PlayStation 4 can tap into similar technology, offloading processes that are typically handled locally to the cloud.

Yoshida said that "of course" PS4 developers will be able to take advantage of cloud-based computing for their titles.

"Linking, matchmaking... there are already many computations being done on the cloud side," Yoshida said, adding that there are limitations to what processes can be offloaded to a remote computer, due to latency and bandwidth.

Asked whether cloud-based computing technology would face issues of adoption, since Sony does not require an online connection for PS4, Yoshida said, "No."

"We don't believe every title needs that," he said. "But if your title needs [an] online connection to provide some online features: Go for it."

When Sony unveiled the PlayStation 4, it focused on using cloud-based technology for the delivery of streaming games, instant-play demos and the ability to let a friend on the internet take over gameplay on your PlayStation 4. Microsoft's implementation of cloud-based computing emphasized tapping into "variable number of transistors in the cloud."

Gaikai's cloud service is coming to PlayStation 4 sometime in 2014 after the console's initial launch.

"Absolutely nothing compares to the sheer scale and scope of Battlefield 4," touts the game's official website. "Your actions physically change the battlefield in real-time, providing interactive game environments that react to your every move." If only that were the case.

At E3 2013, Electronic Arts made me a believer, with a stunning gameplay demo that had 64 players duking it out over downtown Shanghai. The soldiers moved as a cohesive unit, by land, air, and sea, blasting their way through foes, barricades, and buildings alike with rifles, boats, helicopters, and tanks. With little cover out in the open, a squad made its way through an underground mall, and took down a support pillar to send part of the building — and an enemy tank — crashing down. It looked as compelling as a single-player story experience, but with real people making it happen.

dramatically parachuting through the scenic Shanghai sky

Then, jumping into a waiting patrol boat — and from boat to jetski — they carved a path through the waterfront to a giant skyscraper, dodging helicopter fire all the while. An elevator ride to the top of the building, and our heroes were battling their way across the top of a skyscraper... and then more frantically as the skyscraper, bombarded by enemy artillery, started falling apart.

They leapt off the edge of the building, dramatically parachuting through the scenic Shanghai sky just in time to watch the skyscraper crumble to the ground. The message seemed clear: Battlefield 4 will be a nonstop, action-packed multiplayer experience where there are pathways above, below, and through, and where you can carve your way through the terrain itself to achieve your objective.

Unfortunately, it's a facade. I got to play the very same "Siege of Shanghai" map as one of those 64 players at E3 2013, and my experience wasn't nearly as fun. Where it seemed like perhaps there'd be paths through every building, only a few actually have interiors. While the main skyscraper certainly has an elevator, my soldier couldn't get up to the top of even the building where my team's helicopter was stationed. The building had no doors. Downtown, I found an entrance to another building entrance and dashed inside, hoping for a moment's respite, only to find that the interior was completely bare, just a set of walls. Rather than move as a cohesive unit, my team ran and gunned willy-nilly around the map. When I jumped into that patrol boat, my driver decided to take us clear off the map, sending us to our doom. And though you can destroy that support column and blow up that skyscraper, they're set pieces at best. I spent five solid minutes in a Abrams tank, shelling everything in sight, and only managed to break glass.

In other words, Battlefield 4 multiplayer is much like the multiplayer in every Battlefield before it, only prettier and with a few neat set pieces to battle around. Don't get me wrong, the game could be fantastic with the right teammates in tow. But once the novelty of destroying a skyscraper wears off, it's still up to the players to pull the zany stunts that make a Battlefield experience worth remembering.

The director of the US National Security Agency, General Keith Alexander, told senators in a public hearing today that the agency "intends" within the next week to release the exact number of terror plots that were foiled by its sweeping surveillance of US phone records. The secret program, which has been collecting call data such as phone numbers and length from all Verizon customers for at least a few months, and likely customers of other carriers for years, was revealed in leaked documents published by The Guardian last week.

"I don't have those figures today."

"I don't have those figures today," Alexander said when asked point-blank by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) if the NSA kept an exact account of terror plots it stopped thanks to its blanket phone records surveillance. "We're going to make those figures available," Alexander said. "Over the next week it would be our intent to get those figures out." Alexander told Leahy that he gave an "approximate number" of foiled terror plots to lawmakers during a classified hearing on Monday, but wanted to check back with the NSA and the Defense Department to ensure he could release the number publicly without compromising security.

"It's dozens of terrorist events that these have helped prevent," Alexander said. Several lawmakers and US officials have said in recent days that the NSA's phone surveillance, and a separate internet surveillance program known as Prism, were used to stop terror plots and arrest suspects, but have also declined to provide many specifics on how or why such surveillance was critical in these cases. Alexander took a similar position during the hearing, pointing back to the 2009 arrest of a suspect who was later charged with plotting to bomb the New York City subway system. The law behind the NSA's internet surveillance program, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), "was not just critical, but the one that developed the lead on" the 2009 terror plot, Alexander said.

"It's dozens of terrorist events that these have helped prevent."

Meanwhile, a separate law allows the NSA to surveil phone records of millions of innocent people, Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which was not invoked in the 2009 case. Nonetheless, Alexander said both of these laws contributed to the agency's ability to break up multiple terror plots in the years since the September 11th, 2011 terror attacks. "They compliment each other," Alexander said. "What you're asking me to do is to state 'A or B contributed solely to that.' The reality is they work together."

"clearly this authority is being used for something other than phone records."

Other senators prodded Alexander to further explain just how much data the NSA was collecting from both phone and internet surveillance, how it handled that data, and the way it interpreted the laws that gave it these seemingly broad surveillance powers. "Last year the government filed 212 Section 215 orders," Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL), "So clearly this authority is being used for something other than phone records." Alexander pushed back: "All we use this today is for the business records," and brought up September 11th, 2001 hijackers, saying a lack of such surveillance tools was what prevented the government from "mak[ing] those connections." Alexander said the way the NSA's phone surveillance program worked was that it put "to-from" records into a "secure environment," which it could only search after the agency obtained a court order to get specific information on a suspect.

Senators Durbin and Collins (R-ME) also brought up Edward Snowden, the admitted leaker of the NSA documents to The Guardian, asking how the NSA could allow such a young private defense contractor to have so much access to information on classified government programs. "I do have concerns over that," Alexander said, vowing to "go back and look at these processes." Collins asked about Snowden's claim that as a defense contractor, he could have read the phone calls or emails of virtually any American. "False, I know of now way to do that," Alexander said.

Xbox One won't arrive in Asia until late 2014, a full year after the console's November 2013 launch in select regions, Microsoft's Alan Bowman, regional vice president for sales and marketing in Asia, told the Wall Street Journal.

Only select, "high growth" markets in Asia would be supported when the console comes to the region, Bowman told the Wall Street Journal, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and India.

Alongside Bowman's announcement, Microsoft posted a disclaimer to its official site listing the countries which would have access to Xbox Live on Xbox One at the console's launch — assumedly the 21 markets the console will launch in this November. The disclaimer also carries a puzzling warning about the console's region-locking policies, which may be tied to its cloud-based online licensing DRM policy.

"Xbox One games are for activation and distribution only in specified geographic regions," the disclaimer reads. "See game package and/or retailer product information, for each game's specific geographic regions."

Regions which will support Xbox Live on Xbox One at launch include:

• Australia
• Austria
• Belgium
• Brazil
• Canada
• Denmark
• Finland
• France
• Germany
• Ireland
• Italy
• Mexico
• Netherlands
• New Zealand
• Norway
• Russia
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• United Kingdom
• United States

Notably, Japan is not mentioned either in this list or in Bowman's list of "high growth" Asian regions where the console will come late next year. Microsoft told Engadget that it "does plan to launch Xbox One, the ultimate new-generation all-in-one entertainment system, in Japan -- we look forward to confirming timing and other details at a later stage."