firehose

My go-to laptop buying advice has been the same for the last two years, at least for anyone who doesn't know their PRAM from their Linux kernel. Oh, you're looking for a new laptop? Buy a MacBook Air. Apple's cheapest and lightest notebook is the easy choice – it's fast enough, has a fantastic keyboard and trackpad, has solid battery life, and comes with few of the quirks and issues that plague nearly every Windows device on the market.

This year, every PC manufacturer is determined to change that. Toshiba's Kirabook offers the specs, size, and even service of Apple's best; nearly every other manufacturer has renewed its focus on quality as well. Rather than race to the bottom and leave Apple alone at the top, Windows-powered PCs are creeping back up to Apple's level.

Sony's not even pretending about its designs for the new VAIO Pro lineup. "We're going to war with the MacBook Air," VAIO product manager Travis First told me. Its weapons? 13- and 11-inch laptops that are lighter than Air — not to mention higher-res, with better specs and a near-identical price tag ($1,149 for the 11, $1,249 for the 13).

Major League Baseball is reportedly on the brink of suspending some of its biggest stars on allegations of doping. According to ESPN, the MLB is looking to suspend about 20 players who it believes took performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) they received from Biogenesis, a now-closed Miami clinic that was cited by the Miami New Times as a hub for athletes looking to gain an advantage on the field. The players ESPN said the MLB is eyeing include Alex Rodriguez, the highest paid player in baseball, and Ryan Braun, the 2011 National League MVP.

Tony Bosh, the founder of Biogenesis, has previously denied that his clinic helped supply PEDs to some of baseball's biggest stars. But ESPN is now reporting that Bosh has since changed his stance and is supplying the MLB's investigators with evidence that they'll use to place suspensions on the New York Yankee's Rodriguez, the Milwaukee Brewers' Braun and the rest. Biogenesis publicly billed itself as an anti-aging clinic, but it was reportedly able The latest scandal, but surely not the last to mask the drugs it was selling to athletes so they could use them without getting caught in drug testing. Baseball's players union will have the chance to appeal the expected suspensions. However, if they are upheld the players could miss as many as 100 games each — which would make the action the most sweeping in MLB history.

Still, Rodriguez, Braun, and the others are merely the latest superstars facing allegations of hacking their bodies in the never-ending pursuit of a win. A handful of baseball legends have sat in front of congressional panels over the years, many of them denying doping. And, of course, there's Lance Armstrong, the cancer survivor who won the Tour de France seven-straight times while on steroids. The reported suspension would be the latest sports drug scandal, but it surely won't be the last.

24 years ago today, hardliners within China’s government cracked down on student protests in Tiananmen Square with a hail of bullets, killing hundreds, possibly thousands. The event has been all but completely scrubbed from China’s historical record: today, words and phrases as benign as "today," "June 4," and even "May 35" are scoured from web services like Weibo. But dissidents have found one way to sneak references to the tragic event online: memes.

Quartz has posted a look at some of the best takes, including a photoshop of the classic ‘Tank Man’ image incorporating the big yellow duck from Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor, pictured above. ("Rubber duck" has since been removed as a search term by Sina Weibo.) Another take (above), spotted by BuzzFeed uses Lego. Yet another re-enactment (below) with a cow and bulldozers was spotted by South China Morning Post.

Dealing with the constant scrutiny and filtering of internet activity under China’s Great Firewall has led to some inventive solutions, like using code words to talk about political figures. As thousands gathered today in Hong Kong and Macau to hold vigils memorializing the 1989 massacre, dissidents in mainland China resort to protesting covertly, trading image links online. But as long as people keep policing China’s web services for references to the June 4th Incident, it only seems to harden people’s resolve. "At least the Sina [Weibo] censors remember," wrote film director Jia Zhangke.

Square, Google Wallet, Isis and plenty others are all working to grab the lion's share of the growing (but nascent) mobile payments market. But, so far, none of these options are as widely used in North America as Starbucks' simple mobile apps, according to new findings from the research firm Berg Insight. Across the continent, Berg claims that about $500 million worth of mobile payment transactions took place last year. "However, the vast majority of these payments were made using Starbucks' phenomenally successful smartphone app, whereas mobile wallets that can be used at multiple merchants have yet to gain traction," the research firm said.

Unlike mobile wallet apps, Starbucks' app works essentially as a digital gift card that can be reloaded and used only at the ubiquitous coffee chain. "In the longer term, universal mobile wallets such as those provided by Isis, Google and MCX will drive the majority of the mobile in-store purchase volume," the firm said, adding that it projects annual mobile payments will hit $44 billion by 2017 as services are more widely accessible and grow easier to use. It's going to take some effort to get there, though: Google Wallet has seen plenty of resistance from carriers, and Isis remains live in just a small handful of markets.

In 1989, we saw the release of The Wizard, a road trip movie about video games starring child actor Fred Savage. But everybody knew that it wasn't really a movie about video games or road trips — it was a movie about selling Super Mario Bros. 3 and other Nintendo products. Nearly 25 years later, we have The Internship, a buddy comedy about two old guys trying to reinvent themselves for the 21st-century economy starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. But everybody knows (or will know) that it isn't really a movie about friendship or new beginnings — it's a movie about selling Google.

Not since The Wizard has a movie been so in the bag for a corporation. It’s incredibly difficult to watch The Internship as simply a movie and not as a two-hour long recruitment ad designed to congeal the vaguely warm feelings most people harbor for the company into a wet pap of "Googly" propaganda. You can watch The Internship as the classic buddy comedy it tries to be — but you shouldn't.

By Robert Florence on June 5th, 2013 at 12:00 am.

THE MIDNIGHT TABLE

I had a dream about a black, midnight table.

The table was big, not too big, but big enough. Big enough for what? Big enough for everything. And it was black. It was speckled with little stars and felt warm and smooth to the touch. I was sitting alone at it, and I can remember looking at the empty chairs and smiling.

I was waiting for people to sit down at this beautiful Midnight table.

I didn’t have this dream last night, or last week. I had it when I was a teenager and somehow only just remembered it a few days ago. I was in Disneyland, watching an incredible late-night light show over Sleeping Beauty’s castle, and suddenly I was back there at the midnight table, waiting for people to turn up. The memory shocked me, because I usually hold onto weird dreams and romanticise them, and I couldn’t believe that I’d forgotten this one. It was as if the memory had been unlocked for me during a moment of peace and joy, as I watched fireworks explode over a pink fairytale castle.

Was it a gaming table? It almost certainly was. When I was a teenager I was mad about board games and role-playing games. My life was planned around one question – “When can we all sit down and play?” At school I rushed to finish my work so that I could start constructing RPG ideas and planning home-made board games. My every waking hour, for that period before I discovered girls, was consumed by thinking about gaming. So the Midnight Table was a gaming table for sure.

Was it a fantasy then? Had I dreamed of an ideal future? I wasn’t a teenager in the dream. I was a man.

THE ROOM

The room was dark and small. The details of the room are a blur. As I try to look away from the table, to see where I actually am, all I ever see is the table. I don’t think the room matters. But there is noise. The room is silent, but there is noise outside the room. A chatter. As if I’m somewhere busy, but my Midnight Table is behind a closed door. Is this place my home?

I don’t think it is. And this detail is important.

THE TABLE

The table is a beautiful, black midnight table. “It’s a midnight table.” When the dream came back to me, the memory came with that description of the table fully formed. It’s not just a black table. It’s a “midnight” table. There are stars on it. It’s a beautiful thing. But why is it a midnight table? Is it midnight? No clocks in the dream, no way of knowing. Is it just a romantic name for the table, perhaps? That’s a very me thing for my brain to spit out.

ME

I wonder if, when my mind unlocked the memory of this dream after more than 20 years, it also aged me up inside it. Did it put an appropriately aged me at the table to make me connect better to the dream? Or did my 13 year old self really visualise this? I have hair in the dream, so there’s one tragic inaccuracy. I’m also wearing sunglasses indoors. That’s frighteningly right. I’m dressed all in black, and I look a lot like I do now. Not old yet, but nearly. Wrinkles round the eyes as I smile. I’m sure my mind is filling in these gaps. Why would my 13 year old self dream this?

One thing is certainly true – I always romanticised being in my thirties. I imagined that a man in his thirties would be fearless, collected, sure, calm and strong. Imagination is a hell of a thing. Maybe it was my 13 year old self who pictured this future version of me, sitting alone at the black table, happy and still and patient.

One thing’s for sure. The only thing that matters in the room is the table itself. Everything else is out of focus, faded, vague. The Midnight Table is constant, sharp, very real. Whatever the dream meant, or means, the point of it all was the table.

The Table.

BUILDING THE MIDNIGHT TABLE

A couple of weeks ago, in my very last Cardboard Children column here at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, I spoke about my need to find a new direction. I’m not tired of writing about games, but I’m a little bit tired of how we write about games. And I’m talking about board games and computer and video games here. I’m talking about the whole deal.

Imagine, if you will, that there is a beautiful, black Midnight Table.

Everything begins with that table. A game is placed on it. The box is opened and the game is laid out. The seats around the table are filled. The game is played. An experience is shared. The game is cleared away and the box is closed. The game is taken away from the table. And then there’s just the table again. A beautiful, black, Midnight Table in some unknown room somewhere.

When you dream about something like that Midnight Table, and you see yourself sitting at it, and you see yourself smiling… What are you smiling about? It’s the anticipation of the game, and the people you’ll be playing the game with on that night. The beauty of a board game is that it is an experience. The game changes, the people change, the experience changes. Only the table stays the same. Everything is out of focus too. Constantly shifting. There’s nothing you can give a score to. It is like smoke, or memory.

Look. There’s me at the Midnight Table. See me? But it isn’t me. That guy has hair. It’s a version of me, in dark glasses, smiling. Waiting. Only the table is in focus. I think I’m an observer at that table. I think that’s all I’m supposed to be.

It seems that games writing is all about ego these days. (This is the self-proclaimed God of Games saying this, so I know it’s true.) Almost everyone is saying the same thing, differentiated only by whatever projected personality is in the mix. Games writers want you to see them as your pal. The experience being recounted becomes secondary. It’s a popularity contest, a race, and there are too many runners. Can we move the focus back to the table, and try to make sense of that constantly shifting space around it? Can we detach ourselves from the experience and try to analyse the magic we’ve all fallen in love with.

I’m going to build a Midnight Table. I’ll take it from room to room and I’ll fill the seats around that table with interesting people. Things old and new will be placed on the table, and some things will return to the table again and again. And each time, I’ll try to make sense of the experience.

I won’t be talking about me. I won’t be doing reviews. I won’t be reporting any board game news.

I will be talking about the experiences I see other people having. Will all these experiences happen at midnight? I don’t know. Will I be taking my Midnight Table to somewhere near you? Will you sit with me at it someday? I don’t know. But I know that the Midnight Table has to exist in reality, and everything I write from here on in needs to be about that one, beautiful thing, and all the beautiful people who sit at it, and all the beautiful games they play.

It feels, in a way, like I’m leaving. Or at least fading into the background.

So, goodbye then.

Our table is waiting.

A Russian hacker who goes by "Barabus" created an unauthorized Windows PC version of Ska Studios' Xbox 360 game The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile and released it last week, characterizing his actions as a "restoration of justice" in a comment on Indie Statik.

Ska Studios released the side-scrolling beat-em-up The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile in April 2011 for Xbox Live Arcade. Barabus wrote (via Google Translate) in the GameDev.ru forums that the "authors are not very nice to publish the game exclusively for the Xbox 360, making it impossible for PC gamers to play in such a great game."

While acknowledging that piracy "is bad," Barabus denied that his actions constitute piracy because Ska Studios have ignored the PC and that the developers therefore weren't losing money.

"On the other hand, we do not steal the game for the Xbox 360, we release it for the PC port," he wrote (via Google Translate). "Given that developers ignore the PC platform, about any loss of profit for them is not out of the question. After all, if they wanted to earn money, then the game would be issued on all available platforms. If the game came out on PC officially, then this thread would not exist."

"This is not piracy. This is restoration of justice."

Earlier today, in the comments of an article on Indie Statik that pointed out that the unauthorized PC port could convince some to pirate the game on PC rather than purchase it on Xbox 360, Barabus characterized his actions as a form of justice.

"You say: 'There are lots of people who play on the Xbox and the PC as well! They can now choose from a payed Xbox version or a free PC version!,'" he wrote.

"I must protest. Users always have the option to pay for the game or not. This also applies to Xbox 360 which has the opportunity to play pirated games. It first."

He went on to write that the PC version doesn't include co-op modes, online play and achievements.

"This is not piracy," Barabus wrote. "This is restoration of justice."

James Silva, co-founder of Ska Software, told Indie Statik that his reaction to the news is a mixture of flattery and bewilderment.

"I'm flattered that there's this much interest in Vampire Smile on PC," Silva told Indie Statik. "I'm not mad about the crack itself; in fact, I'm actually pretty impressed. But I'm bewildered by the cracker's attempt to justify the morality of it. He assumes a lot about why Vampire Smile's not on PC yet, and he could have cleared up a lot of those assumptions by just emailing me. I get that piracy is a service problem, but that's a consequence, not a justification."

Ska Studios' artist Michelle Juett Silva took to Twitter to comment.

"IMO, calling the guy the developer is like calling the guy selling stereos out of the back of his car the product designer," SIlva wrote.

Earlier in the day, Silva compared the situation to the announcement that Halo: Spartan Assault is scheduled for Windows 8 devices.

"Halo: Spartan Assault only on Windows 8 devices! That Russian guy should port it FOR GREAT JUSTICE!"

The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile is available legally for 800 Microsoft Points ($10). You can also download a demo through XBLA for free.

Adobe has always been a software company, but last month it revealed it was tinkering with something new: hardware. Its first efforts are Project Mighty, a smart stylus with Creative Cloud integration, and Project Napoleon, a smart ruler that can create a variety of different shapes. The company is calling the tools "experiments" — not products — but it's clear that Adobe has put a lot of thought into them both. We've just gotten a chance to play around with their early prototypes to get a better sense of how they work.

Mighty and Napoleon remain 'experiments'

Mighty has iterated through a number of different prototypes, but the basic design remains the same: the pen has a small pressure-sensitive rubber tip, a single button, and three sides that gently twist as they reach the top. It's light but on the thicker side, made primarily out of aluminum, and has small plastic caps to house a Bluetooth LE antenna. While the pen may not look ergonomic, the spiraling shape does a really nice job of curving up from between your fingers to cradle beside your thumb and forefinger.

If you're not an artist, Mighty won't change that, but it does a good job of drawing naturally and accurately on the iPad. There can be a bit of lag, however, though the delay isn't really an impediment during use. Outside of drawing, just about every virtual feature of the pen can be controlled using its sole button. A single tap opens an on-screen menu that allows quick swapping of colors, brushes, and size. And a combination of long and short presses can be used to copy and paste different layers of your project.

To work its magic, Mighty has been tightly integrated with a modified version of Adobe's iOS drawing app, Ideas. Every time Mighty copies an image, Ideas will have the copy sent into your personal cloud, and you can almost instantly pull that back down onto any device you’d like — even if you’ve never used it before. The stylus uses a minuscule 8 kilobytes of storage to remember who you are, and by sending that bit of information over to a new device, Mighty can quickly find and display the files and color palettes you have stored up in Creative Cloud.

But some of the most useful aspects of Mighty don't actually exist on the pen itself. While the pen is active, tapping with your fingers on the display will either undo or redo an action, and swiping a finger around can erase content. All three are really convenient gestures, though in practice they tend to just make up for how time consuming it can be to navigate menus in Adobe's apps.

Right now, Mighty is only enabled in Ideas, but in the future its integration could come to all Adobe iOS apps, and even third-party apps. A software development kit is in the works, though the team is keeping it internal for now.

Adobe is also working on a number of chargers for Mighty. It doesn’t want to include any ports on the device, and it’s hoping that by making a stand with Apple-like aesthetics, the device can fit right into a designer’s workspace. There are a few different models right now, including a cube that elevates the pen and a bed that it can rest in.

Napoleon is just a prop

Adobe's newer project, Napoleon, helps to explain how these are still experiments. Napoleon is a short, plastic and aluminum tool that displays a digital ruler on-screen. It has a series of buttons on top of it that ostensibly can be used to swap between different shapes, like a square or a circle. But right now, Napoleon isn't much more than a prop with software integration — those buttons along the top don't work yet, and there's not actually any tech inside of the device.

Instead, Napoleon works because Adobe's app knows exactly how far apart its contact points are. When Napoleon is placed on an iPad or iPad mini, digital lines will shoot out from it, almost like an on-screen laser level that you’re forced to trace along. Even though there’s no tech inside of it, Napoleon activates immediately, and it really feels like you're using a physical tool to manipulate a digital image.

Until Napoleon's development advances, Adobe is using on-screen buttons to change the ruler into those different shapes, including a triangle, circle, and even a french curve. A little ball pops up along the shape's digital outline, and dragging that ball in or out will make the shape larger or smaller.

However, Adobe is considering leaving behind the multiple buttons altogether. A future model might have a single button, and pressing it would open up a tray of different shape options that could change based on the user’s preference.

When it comes down to it, Napoleon is a superfluous peripheral — all of its tricks could be recreated in software alone. But Napoleon evokes a certain nostalgia. There's a visceral feeling to using a physical tool, and while that may be unnecessary for some, it's easy to see how a lot of people could enjoy the convenience and aesthetics of it.

Development on both tools has all happened in just over a year. Since then, Adobe has teamed up with a pair of other companies to make both ideas a reality, and it’s put together something of a dream team. It's collaborating with both Ammunition, the company behind the design of Beats headphones and the Nook, and MindTribe, the company responsible for engineering on the Jawbone headset.

Despite the collaboration, Adobe was quick to stress that both Mighty and Napoleon are just investigations into hardware. They aren't saying whether the tools could one-day become full products, and certainly a lot of work still remains. But there are plenty of people who would enjoy the physical presence evoked by Napoleon, and Adobe's cloud integration could make Mighty a lot smarter than the average stylus. There's a good chance Adobe realizes that — and its experiments are evolving quickly.