Bandai’s classic Tamagotchi handheld pet has finally arrived on smartphones with a free app for iOS and Android. With the Tamagotchi L.i.f.e. app, users can feed, discipline, and play Rock, Paper, Scissors with their Tamagotchi, and, of course, clean up its poop. The app also has a classic mode, which allows users to interact with their virtual pet in the egg-like, three-button casing that Tamagotchi was originally sold with in the 1990s.
submitted via Laughing Squid Tips
Every morning in Berlin, an extremely dapper older gentleman named Ali walks by the workplace of photographer Zoe Spawton. Last August she began photographing his outfits, which range from three-piece suits to thuggish street style. Over the months she has gotten to know her mustachioed muse: Ali is a retired doctor from Turkey, he works as a tailor, owns 80 suits, and has 18 children. For more photos of Ali’s unique style, see Spawton’s photo Tumblr, What Ali Wore.
via Neatorama
Metanet Software is returning to its platforming classic N, one last time. Studio president Mare Sheppard announced a game called N++ during a GDC panel, intended to be "the final iteration of N." The impetus behind this reexamination of side-view minimalist ninja jumping isn't entirely happy, as Sheppard said Metanet has had difficulty working with non-N games since N+.
Metanet working on N++, 'the final iteration of N' originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 29 Mar 2013 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Multiple versions of Bowser's Castle are vulnerable to a plumber injection attack. An Italian plumber could exploit this bug to bypass security measures (walk through walls) in order to rescue Peach, to defeat Bowser, or for unspecified other impact.
This vulnerability is demonstrated by "happylee-supermariobros,warped.fm2". Attacks using this exploit have been observed in the wild, and multiple other exploits are publicly available.
Versions of Bowser's Castle as shipped in Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels are affected.
An independently developed patch is available:
--- a/smb.asm 1985-09-13 12:00:00.000000000 +0900
+++ b/smb.asm 2011-04-01 12:00:00.000000000 -0400
@@ -12009,12015 +12009,12015 @@
ldy $04
cpy #$05
bcc *+$09
- lda $45
+ lda #$01
sta $00
jmp $df4b
jsr $dec4
A binary hot patch to apply the update to an existing version is also available.
All users are advised to upgrade.
For users unable to apply the recommended fix, a number of mitigations are possible to reduce the impact of the vulnerability.
NOTE THAT NO MITIGATION IS BELIEVED TO BE COMPLETELY EFFECTIVE.
Potential mitigations include:
The vulnerability was originally discovered by Mario and Luigi, of Mario Bros. Security Research.
The provided patch and this advisory were prepared by Lakitu Cloud Security, Inc. The hot patch was developed in collaboration with Ksplice, Inc.
Bowser's Castle is King Bowser's home and the base of operations for the Koopa Troop. Bowser's Castle is the final defense against assaults by Mario to kidnap Princess Peach, and is guarded by Bowser's most powerful minions.
North Korea's unfinished Ryugyong Hotel has towered over the capital city of Pyongyang for over a quarter-century without opening, but late last year it looked like the 105-story pyramid's development hell was coming to an end. German hotel operator Kempinski swooped in and claimed it'd take the first reservations this summer for 150 of the hotel's planned 1,500 rooms. "This pyramid monster hotel will monopolize all the business in the city," said CEO Reto Wittwer at the time in comments reported by Bloomberg. "I said to myself, we have to get this hotel if there is ever a chance, because this will become a money-printing machine if North Korea opens up."
"This pyramid monster hotel will monopolize all the business in the city."
Unfortunately for prospective Pyongyang tourists, the structure variously dubbed "Hotel of Doom" and "the worst building in the history of mankind" by Esquire has had its opening put on hold yet again. Kempinski downplayed the initial reports in a statement to NK News, saying that "no agreement has been signed since market entry is not currently possible."
No reason was given for the backtrack, but it's easy to see why operating a high-rise hotel in North Korea would be fraught with difficulty. The secluded country places strict limitations on visitors, and lately has been amping up its international rhetoric following a successful nuclear test. Earlier today North Korea placed missile units on standby in preparation for a strike against US military bases in the Pacific; Reuters reports that the move is in response to the US conducting a regional exercise with nuclear-equipped stealth bombers intended as a show of force.
firehoseattn: Overbey
I've reached a point where I keep Pinboard open all the time. But I get stymied by all of my Safari tabs and windows, so I decided to create a Fluid browser for Pinboard.
First, create a new Fluid application:
You can use the default Pinboard icon for the app or find a nicer one. Brett has a very nice one that I am using. This is the icon you will see in your dock.
Once the application has been created, it's time to make Pinboard look nice. Head back to Brett's place and grab his Pinboard.css. Open up the UserStyles panel.
Create a new Pinboard style and paste in Brett's CSS.
I modify the settings a bit so links open in new tabs and the URL bar is displayed.
Boom. A Pinboard app that is outside of Safari and responds to ⌘+TAB application switching and app launchers.
Graphic artist Yago Partal has created a series of Zoo Portraits featuring animals like sloths, otters, and pugs wearing sweaters, suits, and leather jackets. Prints and greeting cards of these Zoo Portraits are also available for purchase.
images via Zoo Portraits
Researchers Ed Manley and James Cheshire from University College London (UCL) have teamed up with John Barrat of Trendsmap to create Twitter NYC, an interactive online map detailing multilingual tweets in the New York City area. The map was created using 8.5 million tweets between January 2010 and February 2013. Tweets in English are marked in grey, while Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian, Korean, French, Turkish, Arabic, and Italian are denoted with bright colors.
images via James Cheshire
via Fast Co. Design
The last map from the Lands of Ice and Fire is the map of Journeys – all the paths taken by the characters in the novels of A Song of Ice and Fire (up to the end of Dances with Dragons). This map contains spoilers, so don’t look too carefully if you’ve not read to the end of A Dance With Dragons.
Journeys, © George RR Martin 2012, used with permission
The characters in A Song of Ice and Fire certainly cover some ground. In this map all the named characters get a path and we can follow their progress (and often their untimely end) by following their lifelines. Each line has a colour that corresponds in most cases to their house. So the Starks are in shades of blue, the Lannisters get golden yellows, and Melisandre of course is a deep red. The paths in these maps were all researched and charted by Elio and Linda at Westeros.org. This map could not have been created without their thorough and painstaking work.
If you’ve not read to the end of Dance with Dragons, don’t look too closely as this definitely contains spoilers.
Some locations act as natural hubs in the books. Obviously the Kingsroad looks like a multi-lane highway, and as I mentioned earlier in the week – everyone stops for a drink and a bite of food at the Inn at the Crossroads:
Harrenhal and the Inn at the Crossroads © George RR Martin, used with permission
I cheated a little here, and the parade of characters from Winterfell to King’s Landing that begins the books is a single golden yellow. However once things go south in King’s Landing, the lines burst forth in a multicoloured web of intrigue. You can also see here that when two characters travel together they get a dashed line. Can you guess the colours heading over the Mountains of the Moon?
Winterfell is another hub throughout the books, and the convergence of lines tells the story of the hands it passes through in the course of the books:
Winterfell © George RR Martin, 2012, used with permission
There was some discussion about adding a legend to this map with each of the character colours. It was decided to drop it, as the colours themselves give the hint as to the character, and there are labels on the lines regularly to help you pull out which character you’re following. The background on this map was faded intentionally to make it a little easier to pull out the lifelines.
Off to the West we have Pyke – another family seat, and once Theon goes home we get a lot of points of view from the Iron Islands:
Iron Islands © George RR Martin, 2012, used with permission
Finally, the paths aren’t just confined to Westeros. There’s a parallel tale taking place across the Narrow Sea. Daenerys gets purple, and her line travels East – followed by an ever increasing number of lines as the series progresses:
Daenerys © George RR Martin, 2012, used with permission
The routes are complex but they tell the story of intrigue, alliance, capture and ransom. And, like a transit map, often the end of the line means the service has terminated. The parallel to a transit map is unmistakeable, and for fun I quickly threw together a version of this in the style of the classic Tube map. It’s not the best parallel (this still places lines at their actual locations – more or less – rather than prioritising connections) but it’s amazing how much of the story you can tell just from the lines:
Character Paths
As with the other maps – you see the full resolution images in twelve 2 foot by 3 foot posters in the Lands of Ice and Fire map folio.
firehoseWashington state's adviser on pot legalization, Mark Kleiman
"Matthews: A political problem is that the main revenue source for alcohol companies isn’t you or me buying the occasional bottle of Johnny Walker Black…
Kleiman: Not that I’d be caught dead drinking a blended Scotch.
Matthews: No, of course not, single-malt all the way. But how much power do the spirits companies have? It seems like they’d fight any price increase.
Kleiman: Much power. The spirits guys are not really important because they’re not the real market. The real problem is beer. The beer guys are powerful. It’s two thirds of the market. Not only do they have heavy campaign contributions to politicians, because they’re state regulated and thus have a stake in state politics, but customers don’t dislike their beer company, so if they get a political message from the beer company, they’ll respond.
Contrast that with tobacco, with a smaller number of lower status users who hate their providers. The cigarette companies have absolutely no luck mobilizing smokers. Smokers hate tobacco companies. It’s easy to say it’s just a tax on responsible drinking until you do the math. It would cost a typical beer drinker $36 a year. The man who’d get hit is the 10 beer a day drinker, and he’s the guy we want to hit.
Taxation is just about the perfect way to control alcohol use. It’s not complete, because you need controls for the real problem drinkers. But if we tripled the alcohol tax it would reduce homicide by 6 percent. And you’re not putting anybody in jail. But instead we spend our time talking about doing marijuana testing for welfare recipients.
Matthews: I know you think the price should be much higher than it is now, but what’s the ideal price, do you think, for alcohol once you’ve taken all the social costs into account?
Kleiman: That’s a really really interesting and hard question. The idea of an externality, or specifically of a Pigovian tax, is based on the notion that the harms are homogenous. You figure out what the cost of each and every ton of carbon dioxide is and put a tax on it.
The external costs of drinking are heterogeneous because drinkers are heterogenous. The cost of the second wine you have every day is negative. It’s probably good for the world. The cost for the next drink for a mean drunk is going to be dollars, while the average price of the actual drink is about a buck. So there’s not a single tax that’s the right number both for the casual drinker and for the mean drunk.
So, you can’t do this solely with taxation. You need some regulation with the tax. But tripling the tax would add something like $17 billion a year in new revenue. When we were debating how to pay for Obamacare we talked about taxing soft drinks, about taxing tanning beds, taxing plastic surgery, and we actually tax medical devices. Taxing alcohol was never on the list."
firehoseJH Williams III seriously wrecks some shit autoshare (scroll down to Wonder Woman)
Mar 29th 2013 By: Andy Khouri
WANT TO CONTRIBUTE?
We're very much interested to see what you've dug up and think should be featured here in Best Art Ever (This Week). Please submit any great art links to andykhouri-at-comicsalliance.com. Artists, feel free to send in your own work or to request that your work be removed.
Please visit these artists' websites to see more of their work, buy their products or commission an original piece.
X-Men/Spice Girls mashup by Guilherme Gonçalves
The Iron Giant by Jordan Kotzebue
The Black Beetle by Denver Brubaker
"Robot City" by Jeff Gibbons
Jack Nicholson Joker by Lee Howard
Dark City by Romik Safarian
Final Fantasy XIII concept art by Yoshitaka Amano
"Visitor" by Toby Cypress
Invincible by Mike Morrocco
My Neighbor Totoro by Andy Poon
Batman Family by Adam Thompson
Powerpuff Girls/DC Comics mashups by Mandy Andrie
Cowboy Bebpop by Daniel Krall
Art by Rudcef
Batgirl and Robin by Sam Liu
Princess Leia by John Staton
G.I. Joe Special Missions by Jim Rugg
Wonder Woman by JH Williams III
Drive by Tyler Stout
Art by Thomas Perkins
Art by Charles Holbert, Jr. and Joey Zero
Speed Racer by Keron Grant
Hawkman and Hawkgirl by Alex Ross
Madman and everybody by Michael and Laura Allred for the International Comic Arts Forum
Batman by Kelsey Shannon
The Little Prince by Erik Krenz
Grindr by Frank Stockton
Captain America by Kevin Nowlan
Young Avengers' Miss America by Joe Hunter
The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller
Kill Bill by Ale Giorgini
Batman ghost-riding the whip by Jon Wolter
Spider-Man by Michael Allred and Laura Allred
Thunderball by Robert McGinnis
Art by Robert Sammelin
A Clockwork Orange by Dave McKean
Daredevil by Livio Ramondelli
Art by Marco Cazzato
Mage by Matt Wagner
 NDTV |
US Market Buzz DigiTimes has reported that shipments for iPad mini to retailers will supposedly be reduced to 10 million for the second quarter. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) will reportedly trim shipments for iPad Mini for the upcoming quarter. DigiTimes claimed that shipments ... Apple cutting iPad mini shipments to prepare for next generation version: ReportNDTV Suppliers Claim 2nd Gen iPad mini Ready to Ship by 3Q13PadGadget all 65 news articles » |
By Alec Meer on March 28th, 2013 at 5:00 pm.
It’s not actually called Host Harder, but it should have been, right? All I’m saying is Double Fine, if you want to pay me thousands of dollars to spend my days writing lazy comedic subtitles based on the names of 80s action movies, you know where I am. Call me. Any time. Any time at all. Wait, I had to step out for a minute – you didn’t call while I was away, did you? Call again now. I’m right here. Right by the phone. Waiting.
And while I wait, I shall be playing Host Master Deux: Quest For Identity (see what I mean? For God’s sakes, Double Fine), the sequel to the 2009 adventure game-ette about Schafer preparing to host the GDC Award Ceremony.
The free, browser-based game is in fact the work of one Major Bueno, who was also responsible for the wondrous recent mini japeathon Caesar’s Day Off. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to get Schafer to the church of game creator recoginition on time, in spite of multiple impediments. There are multiple endings too. It’s basically Mass Effect with an unshaven 45-year-old in San Franciso.
Play it for free here.
Wait, was that that phone? Oh, no, just a bee.
firehose"Meanwhile the console gaming industry is in a right old flap about declining sales. Does that mean we win? Don’t be silly, there was never any war."
By Alec Meer on March 28th, 2013 at 6:00 pm.
I’ll start this by saying that, to date, I’ve not been at all impressed by the PC Gaming Alliance, an organisation which seems to have been charging its members large sums to do God only knows what in near-silence, while PC gaming has busily got on with resurging dramatically all by itself. So I’m not entirely inclined to take their report on the current state of PC gamingland at face value, especially given that Steam famously doesn’t share sales figures, but at the same time it’s always nice to hear a big, positive number. By their and their analysts’ reckoning, PC gaming is now a “$20 billion global market with record revenues of $6.8 billion,” up 8% from last year.
At a complete guesstimation, I’d actually be surprised if the growth wasn’t higher. But I’m no analyst, I have no sales figures and I’m terrible at keeping tabs on my own money, let alone someone else’s.
Another claim is that there are over 1 billion PC gamers planet-wide, some 250 million of which are core gamers – i.e. the sort that would buy a BioShock, rather than the sort that would play FarmVille or perhaps even Minecraft (which is very much its own grey area these days).
The largest market is claimed to be China, but then again China’s the largest market for pretty much everything these days. PC gaming audiences in Korea, Japan, the US, Britain and Germany all grew last year too. all showed growth in 2012. Together these markets also increased revenue by percent in 2012, to $8.4 billion. Take all those numbers with a pinch of salt, but right now we don’t have a lot else to go on.
The PCGA are still on about trying to improve their PC Gaming Certification and Logo Program, and acknowledge “that much work remains to be done.” It’s never going to take off, let’s be honest, but hopefully not too many organisations are paying the PCGA’s eye-watering membership fees in the hope it will.
Meanwhile the console gaming industry is in a right old flap about declining sales. Does that mean we win? Don’t be silly, there was never any war.
Read the whole report here, if you like. There are a few more not entirely substantiated numbers in it.
firehoseskeptical but optimistic on this one
By Adam Smith on March 28th, 2013 at 7:00 pm.
It’s odd how much I want to indulge in futuristic corporate espionage and to be a bionic business-bastard. If you gave me a game about being the sort of violent attack stooge that A Popular Generic SmartFruit company undoubtedly hires to burn down Samuel Sung’s Telephonic Emporiums, I’d go ‘tsk’ and return to the important task of playing Super House of Dead Ninjas (splendid; words soon). However, if that attack stooge and his bosses live in the future and have metal nostrils, count me in. Net Gain is a strategy game in which the player controls a nefarious company in the near future. The Kickstarter ends in two days, there has been plenty more information released since it launched and the final possible stretch goal sounds fantastic.
At first I thought the final stretch goal, voted for by the community, was for a mobile version of the game. ‘Boo’, I thought and maybe even said. Turns out, even though it’s called Mobile Ops and has a cleverphone component, it’s about much more than that:
Mobile Ops makes the operatives mobile, increasing their autonomy and gives them more options for what to do outside of work (and during!). They can engage other operatives to hang out, have more options for activities to engage on (preferences determined by their traits), get involved with their circles, can go “deep cover” and operate independently, and possibly do some work of their own on the side…
With this, Mobile Ops also increases your interactions with the operatives, instead of simply directing their training and picking gear, you can set policies on night-jobs, offer raises or pay cuts, set up procedures for deep cover, and a whole new set of events that trigger between the broker and operatives like company retreats, requests for help, cutting you in on side deals, and more!
There’s more and you can read it all here.
It’s extremely unlikely that the stretch goal will be hit but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a few people who missed news of this one the first time around and find themselves keen to know more, so consider this a friendly reminder. A friendly reminder from a man with metal nostrils who also wishes to let you know that Net Gain is lurking on Greenlight.
By Alec Meer on March 28th, 2013 at 8:38 pm.
Only a short post, because it is only a short trailer. One of those trailer for a trailer singularly 21st century things, in fact. But it’s a chance to see the new Thief’s engine in action, sort of, and find out a date on which we’ll hopefully see and hear rather a lot more of Nu-Garrett and his light-fingered reinvention.
I tried that once. It really hurt.
firehosegreat
It’s rumored to be an HTC phone running Facebook’s custom fork of Android full of Facebook apps to do everything. Your Facebook news feed will live in your pants all the time. Who wouldn’t want that?
With deeper control of a modified operating system would come huge opportunities to collect data on its users. Facebook knows that who you SMS and call are important indicators of who your closest friends are. Its own version of Android could give it that info, which could be used to refine everything from what content you’re shown in the news feed to which friends faces are used in ads you see.
Sign me up!
Microsoft has made a subtle change to its minimum hardware requirements for Windows 8 tablets recently. The alteration, spotted by ZDNet's Ed Bott, allows hardware makers to create Windows 8 tablets with a minimum resolution of 1024 x 768. Windows 8 has long supported this resolution, but specific tablet hardware requirements from Microsoft have prevented device manufacturers from adopting it on strictly tablet devices.
A slight caveat means that OEMs must disclose that devices at 1024 x 768 do not support Windows 8's new Snap View feature, to run apps side-by-side. Despite the forced disclosure, Microsoft's real intentions are in preparation for its Blue update later this year. A leaked build of Windows Blue has revealed that Microsoft is changing its Snap View support to let 1024 x 768 users take advantage of a 50 / 50 Snap View. The changes are all part of improved support for 7- and 8-inch form factors and Microsoft's official guidance notes that "partners exploring designs for certain markets could find greater design flexibility helpful."
The New York Police Department this week issued new social media guidelines, outlining in detail what its officers can and cannot post on Facebook, Twitter, and other sites. As the New York Daily News reports, the three-page internal memo was published Monday, forcing many of the department's 35,000 officers to revise and edit their various social media profiles.
Until now, officers were allowed to use social media with relatively free reign; many openly identified themselves as NYPD employees, and posted photos of themselves in uniform. Under the new guidelines, though, officers are "urged not to disclose or allude to their status," as doing so could "undermine their credibility" and make them ineligible for more secretive positions.
"exercise good judgement and demonstrate professionalism."
The rules also warn officers against tagging photos of their colleagues, though they are allowed to post photos taken at police ceremonies. Among the edict's more obvious provisions is a stipulation that prohibits officers from posting photos of crime scenes, or information about witnesses. Police are prohibited from engaging with witnesses or defense lawyers on social media sites, and cannot friend or follow minors. Violating any of these rules, the NYPD says, could result in disciplinary action or termination.
"Members of the service utilizing personal social media sites are to exercise good judgement and demonstrate the same degree of professionalism expected of them while performing their official duties," the order reads.
This week's move comes more than a year after the NYPD disciplined 17 officers over offensive comments posted to a Facebook page called "No More West Indian Day Detail." On the page, some commenters referred to participants in the West Indian American Day parade as "savages" and "animals." The New York Fire Department also came under scrutiny last week, when it disciplined two employees over racist tweets. The NYFD tells the Daily News that it's currently reviewing its guidelines to incorporate rules on social media.
While some have expressed concern over the guidelines' broad scope, Edward Mullins, head of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, openly supported the NYPD's move. "We have to be held to a higher standard," Mullins told the Daily News.
firehose"to an Indian buyer"
"The news follows the September bankruptcy of Digital Domain, the VFX studio founded by James Cameron, and its subsequent acquisition by India-based Reliance MediaWorks, in partnership with China’s Galloping Horse."
hrm
Following weeks of speculation, the bankrupt VFX house behind many of the effects in Oscar winner Life of Pi has reportedly been sold to an Indian buyer. The Los Angeles Times reports that Rhythm & Hues has been sold to a company affiliated with effects and animation company Prana Studios, which beat out other potential buyers like Prime Focus, also based in India, to acquire the company. The news follows the September bankruptcy of Digital Domain, the VFX studio founded by James Cameron, and its subsequent acquisition by India-based Reliance MediaWorks, in partnership with China’s Galloping Horse.
Despite winning numerous awards and accolades for its visual effects over the years, Rhythm & Hues fell into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February, laying off some 250 employees. Later that month, hundreds of VFX workers took to the streets in protest on the day of the Oscars, in the hope of drawing attention to industry working conditions. Former Rhythm & Hues employees also filed a class action complaint against the studio, claiming their contracts were terminated without the proper notice.
Hollywood studios are increasingly outsourcing visual effects work
In order to lower costs, Hollywood studios are increasingly outsourcing visual effects work, leading to a rising number of studios in countries like India, Malaysia, and China. According to The LA Times, the acquisition still needs legal approval, but if it goes ahead, Prana Studios will likely take over a nearly $16 million debt owed by Rhythm & Hues to Universal Studios and 20th Century Fox as part of the deal.
firehoseWired blogger; Louisiana (SELU) science professor; the words are "theory", "hypothesis", "scientific law" hey that's four
