firehose

SXSW Headlines is a Tumblr blog that compiles groan-worthy headlines related to the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. It is inspired by a short list of headlines compiled earlier by Andy Baio of Waxy.org.

via Andy Baio

Ann Nocenti, from Marvel’s 1984 Assistant Editor’s Month

“… I got back into comics because of stereotypes. I think there was some big controversy in some convention — I wasn’t in the industry because I was off doing other things — about how there were no women in comics, and then I got a call, ‘We need women in comics.’ So if I got back into the industry because I’m a token female, I say great! I’m all in! [...] They put me on Green Arrow, and I have to admit, I just didn’t get Green Arrow. I struggled with him. He was a rich playboy in an armored suit who was young. I liked the old Green Arrow, the wise guy who was stealthy and a social crusader — Denny O’Neil’s Green Arrow. This was a different Green Arrow and I didn’t connect with him. Now, doing Katana and Catwoman, I have no idea if there was a meeting where someone said, ‘Let’s give the girl writer the girl books,’ but I instantly related to those characters! It’s fun to write girls.”

– veteran writer and editor Ann Nocenti, discussing her recent return to comics in a fascinating conversation with Louise Simonson at Comic Book Resources that touches up their careers at Marvel, creations like Longshot and Power Pack, attitudes toward female creators in the ’80s, and much more

Chucks

Red State

Caterpillar P-5000 Work Loader

fredan sends word of a post at the Tesla Motors blog detailing how the company will be paying off its $465 million government loan 5 years early. Quoting: "This is a significant announcement both for Tesla and for the DOE. It is a marker of the successful launch of the Model S and the incredible market reaction to this award-winning car. And it is a tribute to the success of the DOE's Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program (ATVM), a program which was chartered by Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush, to accelerate the market for a broad range of promising automotive efficiency technologies — electric vehicles (EVs) principal among them. ... Following more than a year of thorough due diligence by commercial auditors, automotive consultants and lawyers, on January 20, 2010, Tesla became the recipient of one of three initial DOE loans announced by Secretary Chu, along with Ford and Nissan – good company for a start-up automaker. Tesla’s loan of $465 million was to be paid back over ten years following the start of production of the Model S. Months later in a separate announcement, an ATVM loan was announced for Fisker. It is worth noting that in comparison with these three other recipients, Tesla had the smallest loan. Ford’s loan was for $5.9 billion, Nissan’s was for $1.4 billion, and Fisker’s was for $529 million. ... We expect to generate sufficient cash and profitability in our business over the next five years that it gives us confidence to proceed with this early repayment of the loan. Moreover, it is also consistent with Tesla’s mantra of speed that we would, as Elon announced last week, accelerate the repayment of our loan, a full five years earlier than required under the original loan terms, making our last payment in 2017."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to make the Pentagon disclose whether military drones are being used in U.S. airspace to spy on U.S. citizens. This follows Rand Paul's filibuster on the floor of the Senate in which he demanded answers from the Obama administration as to whether drone strikes on U.S. soil were a possibility. (Senator Paul received an amusingly brief response (PDF) to his 13-hour question.) From the article: 'A requirement buried in a lengthy appropriations bill calls on newly confirmed Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to disclose to Congress what "policies and procedures" are in place "governing the use" of military drones or other unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) domestically. The report is due no later than 90 days after the bill is signed into law. The vote on the bill, which was overwhelmingly supported by Republicans and opposed by Democrats, comes as concerns about domestic use of drones have spiked. ...The House's language stops short of requiring Hagel to disclose whether he or his predecessor have taken the step of approving the targeting of any U.S. citizens for surveillance.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The team at 1A4 Studio condensed the 1999 sci-fi action film The Matrix into 60 animated seconds.

Put machines, dreams, Neo, dystopia, and more machines into a blender and chug it really fast – that’s the taste of this condensed version of the 1999 hit movie.

video via 1A4 Studio

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

Master of none

Seeing as how the Internet is pretty much a wasteland of stuff that’s simultaneously weird, neat, and a little fetishistic, it makes perfect sense that a Tumblr about the butts of prog rock band members exists. Prog Butts features photos of the southern end of northbound members of King Crimson, Genesis, Rush, Yes, and more, complete with commentary and hashtags about white pants. It’s a weird topic, for sure, but when the pictures are piled on top of each other like this, it’s fairly fascinating. Plus, there’s got to be someone out there who gets off on pictures of a sprinting, hairy Phil Collins, right? [via Jessica Hopper]

Read more

El Presidente knows how to capitalize on the mistakes of his enemies. The offline-capable Tropico franchise is taking advantage of the always-online SimCity debacle with a 75 percent discount on the entire series on Steam.

The best deal in all the discounts is that the excellent Tropico 4 in its "Collector's Bundle," which includes every piece of DLC, along with the Modern Times expansion (which includes another full campaign), is only $10.

The Tropico sale will last one week until March 15. That should be enough time for EA to figure out the SimCity servers. We really, really, really hope.

Gallery: Tropico 4 (7/20/11)

Tropico takes advantage of SimCity situation, on sale for 75% off originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 08 Mar 2013 14:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Los Angeles artist Vincent Tomczyk makes ultra realistic life-sized sculptures of everyday objects that are made almost entirely out of paper. The sculptures are detailed down to creases and wear marks, and remarkably the surfaces are hand painted, not digitally printed. Tomczyk’s sculptures will be on display at Gallery 825 in Los Angeles, May 4 to May 31, 2013.

via Colossal

William Wegman’s first animated gif

By Adam Smith on March 8th, 2013 at 4:00 pm.

I hadn’t played SimCity until the UK version unlocked at midnight and I’ve barely slept since then. Intravenous coffee, fresh from the bean, and a sumo wrestler’s weight of dry roasted peanuts have seen me through the night and now I shall convert the experiences of the last twelve hours into words. This is not ‘Wot I Think’, it’s just a step toward a closer study of the slickness of the systems as well as their shortcomings, and it’s also a minor chronicle of the European launch.

A quick side-note: the most expensive, lavish launch party in the world wouldn’t receive as much attention as the disastrous US release of SimCity. Parties are for the people with an invite but the game is for everyone. It’s the kind of publicity that nobody wants to buy and so much of it could have been avoided. Perhaps the next couple of days will bombard me with tasks and disasters that require me to interact with everybody else trying to play, but so far I’ve encountered absolutely nothing in the game that justifies the online requirement.

Edit: Since around two o’clock, when I finished the bulk of this feature, I’ve been unable to access the server that is storing my cities, even though it’s listed as ‘available’. The other European servers are ‘busy’, which means queuing to play. I can access one American server at the moment, which would involve starting from scratch and then either continuing with that or abandoning it at a later date and returning to my original developments. I remember keeping Amiga save games on floppy disks, all neatly labelled and stored within reach. This is like the time the dog ate the disks, except EA will probably regurgitate something in a few hours.

Judging by the pre-release trype, I expected to be shackled to four cretinous neighbours who would pump sewage into my most stately residential districts and steal all of my power to light up their crime-coddling casinos. My main import would be thieves and scoundrels.

But what’s this? Create a new game and there’s an option to set the region to private, invite-only, meaning you can leave the entry-ways closed and be the mayor of every plot in the area. All of the trading, sharing and sabotage is under your control, with no interference and a great deal more freedom. My first town – and they’re not cities, but more on that in a moment – has a coal-burning power plant but my greedy urchins quickly burned every natural resource they could find and the lights flickered. We were heading for a new dark age.

There were two large deposits of coal on the map but one was next to a thriving and high income residential district and the other was next to it. That wouldn’t do a great deal for house prices or my popularity rating, so I sought an alternative source. Heading to the region map, I discovered an area abundant in the black stuff nearby, so I zoomed in and set to work.

Coketown is the sort of industrial hellhole that would have provided a mighty line of business for William Blake, Amateur Engraver and Poet of the End Times. Look at it, he would have said, what a stinking pile of bobbins. I cannot argue. It’s bloody horrible there. It’s a productive pile of bobbins though. Trailer parks surround belching great factories and every day the mines claim another life. Occasionally an ambulance will pop over from Horaceburgh to pick a broken wretch up from the street, but they have no clinic to call their own. Eventually the whole place will probably burn down but, for now, it serves its purpose.

That’s the social element sorted then. I’m socialising with myself, which is great because I know how to satisfy my own needs. There’s a Woody Allen quote that’s relevant to my experience of SimCity ‘multiplayer’. I did plan to play with friends and we’d agreed on a server but they are in USA USA USA and by the time I was allowed to join them, I wasn’t allowed to join them. The server that their towns are on is full and the enforced social element has prevented me from playing with people I know. Blake would probably have written something dour about that as well.

The servers didn’t want me to play at all for about twenty minutes but by half past midnight, I was plopping down zones (that’s the game’s term, ‘plopping’) and saving up my Simoleans so that I could hire the beginnings of a police force. Since then, I’ve been able to access my regions at will, which isn’t something to celebrate, it’s something that I shouldn’t even have to mention at all. I do find that when I alt-tab out of the game, it’s often kicked me back to the menu when I return and I have to quit and restart to access my games. Perhaps it detects a slight ripple in the forces of Internet, one so minute that the rest of my computer fails to notice? I’ve never lost progress but it’s irritating and every single time I expect Horaceburgh to have upped sticks and vanished into the Cloud.

That would be distressing but it wouldn’t take long to rebuild. Each plot of land is quite small, something like a Sims 3 neighbourhood but with a little bit more leg-room. An entire region will eventually resemble a city but the individual sections, which are connected by magical highways that transport every essential urban ingredient, are boroughs at best.

The magic of roads is at the heart of the game. In their various densities, they fulfill every necessary function, from moving workers around the place to funnelling poo into landfills. They are the town’s pipes and powerlines. This can make SimCity seem like the Duplo to Sim City 4′s Meccano. Draw up the outline of a city, using roads and zones, and buildings will swiftly appear. The game begins with a tutorial but it’s a waste of time because each new beginning is a guided experience anyway. While you’re choosing the layout, the services and higher functions are unlocked over time, which makes for a lot of dead air. This isn’t helped by the (temporary?) removal of the speediest setting, another wound inflicted by the always-online requirement. Too many cities running at high speed would apparently cause the servers to burn up faster than a cramped, rubbish-strewn shanty town.

When fires did begin to break out in Horaceburgh I had to wait until I had enough cash to build a fire station, so expansion was on hold for a while as the money trickled in. Then the criminal element appeared and, conveniently, approval for a police station came through. I waited for my coffers to fill again and then built the police station. In the early stages, that’s how the game flows.

I’m taking considerable pleasure in watching my neighbourhoods evolve, planting parks and amenities to boost land value and upgrading roads to allow for higher density traffic, which leads to apartment buildings and larger department stores. Before I’d had a chance to play, I was excited by the idea of a simulated world, with all of the systems having an effect on one another. As towns grow denser, which is the alternative to an actual increase in scale, SimCity does become a more intriguing toy. Traffic jams can prevent fire engines and police cars from fulfilling their function, and bottlenecks often require extensive re-zoning and redevelopment, but those multi-functional magical roads make for a rather simple model.

More thoughts on the late-game details, global trading, resource management and any hidden complexities in the systems will follow. Even though the European launch has been stable in comparison to the troubles earlier this week, I’m yet to find one user-friendly reason for the online anchor and as I tab back into the game now, I see that I’ve been ejected once again. Spotify hasn’t stopped playing and my ghostly online presence in the RPS offices hasn’t been interrupted, but SimCity has decided that the tether between us is too flimsy.

Reloading has brought me back to my citizens and Horaceburgh still stands, but every reminder that my these constructions exist elsewhere only serves to make them seem flimsy and disposable. It’s lovely to see a world grow and to nudge it in a new direction occasionally, but I haven’t formed a bond with SimCity yet, and I’m not yet convinced that there’s enough complexity or variety to make the attachment worth nurturing.

By Adam Smith on March 8th, 2013 at 5:00 pm.

A few weeks ago, I posted what I thought were Shadowrun Returns screenshots, only to be told that they were ‘concept pieces’. I consider that to be the worst thing that has happened to me in 2013 so far. The twenty minutes of alpha footage in the video below are definitely genuine though. I can tell because Jordan Weisman is one of the narrators and he has been running in the shadows since 1989. If you choose to watch, you’ll be treated to a great deal of handsome isometric cyberpunk combat and dialogue, with excitable and explanatory voiceovers.

Desirable. I sometimes forget how unlikely some of the early batch of Kickstarter projects seemed when they were first announced but watching this and seeing that Shadowrun is actually a cRPG again causes me to nod contentedly. That’s as close to a smile as I get on a Friday afternoon.

This is [Wpqrek's] Commodore 64 modified to go on the road with him. The elderly machine has a special place in his heart as it was what he learned to code on. He performed a series of hacks which house everything necessary to use the machine inside the original case.

Obviously the hack that has the most effect when it comes to portability was swapping a display for the small LCD mounted above the number keys. This was a pretty simple process because the screen, originally intended for a rear view camera in a vehicle, already had a composite video input. To emulate the floppy disc drive he’s using an SD card via an sd2iec board which he laid out himself. Rounding up the alterations is a stereo SID. The second channel uses the pre-amp circuit cut from a second C64. This audio hardware will let him do cool things like playing some classic Zeppelin.

You can get a video tour of these alterations after the break.

Filed under: classic hacks

Yesterday in New York City, Electronic Arts held a special event focused on queer issues in gaming. And it happened mostly because the company itself was willing to face its own stumbles in presenting gay characters in its video games.

The impetus for Thursday's Full Spectrum event—co-sponsored by the Entertainment Software Association and the Human Rights Council—began after the controversy surrounding the addition of Makeb, the so-called (not by EA) "gay planet" to the company's massive online game Star Wars: The Old Republic.

When I spoke to the folks from EA who were at the event yesterday, they all acknowledged that the publisher had "stepped in it" with Makeb.

"It," in this case, is the sudden controversy that erupted when they added same-sex romance options to The Old Republic.

From one corner of the internet, the publisher was getting blasted by anti-gay activists who felt offended by the inclusion of Makeb. And criticism came from gay advocates, too, who felt annoyed at having to pay for access to a place where those romance options were possible, though segregated from the rest of the game's universe.

According to VP of corporate communications Jeff Brown, it was the intensity and volume of the response that made EA decide to hold a forum where LGBT issues in both the creation and playing of games could be discussed.

Brown's colleague Craig Hagen was one of the organizers of Full Spectrum. While he acknowleged the pride he felt in EA creating a place like Makeb or allowing same-sex relationships to happen in their Mass Effect games, Hagen also said the company could have done better in crafting those options. Mass Effect didn't allow for male same-sex relationships until Mass Effect 3 and Makeb was added to The Old Republic more than a year after the online game's launch.

Hagen describes EA as a progressively tolerant workplace but a studio that still is learning how to do things right. "Ten years ago, it was very easy for me to move into the EA Sports studio [where Hagen works out of], to identify as a gay man, and to bring my partner to studio and company events without any experience whatsoever of homophobia. I saw the same sex relationship benefits that EA offered when I was hired."

"I was involved with the development of the transgender policy that EA adopted," Hagen continued. "I was around when Sims [included] same gender content. I saw all of that. Then when something like Mass Effect or the latest episode of Star Wars occurs, I just stand back and go, even as progressive as EA is, we still make mistakes and we still have a long way to go."

I asked Hagen what he would say to LGBT players who feel embattled in an online game like Battlefield 3. How would he tell them to hold on? "I don't know that you tell them," he answered. "I think you have to demonstrate to them...by the encouragement and the continual development of additional LGBT storylines in our products. The reinforcement inside of EA that this is an environment where you need to feel comfortable, free, and open to develop the right kind of storyline, the appropriate storyline that not only reflects the developer community but reflects the gamer and the consumer community out there."

It's not an "it gets better kind of message" then, I posited. It's a matter of actively making it better?

"It's not about defending ourselves, it's about defining ourselves."

"Yeah," Hagen said. "That's the point of what [journalist and Full Spectrum panelist] Hilary Rosen made: it's not about defending ourselves, it's about defining ourselves. We recognize we're not perfect. No one is perfect. We're going to make mistakes. When we make a mistake let's learn from it and let's get better."

***

I threw a generalization about competitive online gamers at another Full Spectrum panelist Matt Bromberg, who helped found eSports company Major League Gaming before becoming general manager at BioWare Austin. Because of the hyper-aggressive nature on online gaming, it would seem that the players who spent the most time in the hothouses of FPS lobbies would be more likely to lob offensive epithets like "fag" to their opponents. But Bromberg said that wasn't the case. "My experience was the opposite," he countered. "I think the more skilled and hardcore a gamer is, when they get really good, their interest in spending time griefing people or doing really anything other than playing at a super high level drops to almost zero."

During the panel that Bromberg participated in, the idea was put forth that RPGs are a genre where progressive inclusion of gay characters and storyline possibilties can happen easily, because those games are all about options and crafting a virtual identity. I asked Bromberg if there was anything stopping a same-sex romance from being the main path, and not just a secondary option.

"I don't think anything does," he answered. "I think it goes back to, ‘What's the authentic story being told?' You're fighting off a race of machine creatures who are going to destroy the world? That's probably the main story. I think underneath that story, there's all kinds of combatants with all sorts of preferences. But I don't think anything stops it other than someone writing a game where it's authentic and meaningful and can sustain a whole game."

First time accepted submitter FearTheFez writes "Social Engineering and poor DNS Security lead to a Bitcoin heist worth about $12000. Bitcoin broker Bitinstant was robbed after thieves managed to take over ownership of their domains. While Bitinstant claims that no customers lost any money, without 2 factor authentication all it took was a place of birth and a mothers maiden name to gain access. This looks like poor security from everyone involved."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

gentryx writes "Newly found evidence supports earlier claims that Gustave Whitehead (a German immigrant, born Gustav Weißkopf, with Whitehead being the literal translation of Weißkopf) performed the first powered, controlled, heavier-than-air flight as early as 1901-08-14 — more than two years before the Wrights took off. A reconstructed image shows him mid-flight. A detailed analysis of said photo can be found here. Apparently the results are convincing enough that even Jane's chimes in. His plane is also better looking than the Wright Flyer I." (And when it comes to displacing the Wright brothers, don't forget Alberto Santos Dumont.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If Mozilla ever does make an iOS browser, it won’t just be a skin for Safari. Jay Sullivan, the company’s vice president, told an audience at SXSW that Firefox won’t be coming to Apple’s platform until Cupertino relaxes its stance toward third-party browsers. The news was reported by CNET.

As it stands, all third-party browsers on iOS render websites using Apple’s UIWebView component, while Apple itself uses a different, faster JavaScript rendering engine called Nitro. Apple doesn’t expose the Nitro engine to third-party developers, and it doesn’t allow them to write their own, giving Safari a built-in speed advantage against other browsers on the platform, including Google’s Chrome. That just won't do for Firefox, says Mozilla, which wants to bring over its own code, like the new IonMonkey engine found in the desktop and Android versions of Firefox. Mozilla isn't swearing off the platform completely, though. Last year, the company showed off an iPad browser prototype codenamed Junior that used Apple's UIWebView, saying ""there are a lot of reasons we should be on iOS even though we can't bring our rendering engine there."

The situation echoes the problems Mozilla is facing on Microsoft’s Windows RT, which prevents third-party browsers from accessing Win32 APIs. As a result, it’s prevented from building its own fast JavaScript engine for the platform, or offering the same kind of security and stability that it can on other desktop platforms like Windows 8 or OS X.

• Source CNET
• Related Items firefox nitro mozilla gecko javascript fennec jay sullivan Microsoft Apple

Seriously, what am I supposed to do that’s original with orcs?  They’ve been invented and reinvented 30,000 times.  Gaz10 The Orcs of Thar, the very first D&D Gazetteer I ever bought (which started my lifelong adoration of Bruce Heard, kicked off my obsession with nonstandard PC races, introduced me to shadow elves, and began my deep fascination with world design) introduced us to yellow orcs and red orcs.  Spelljammer gave us the militaristic scro.  Eberron gave us noble demon-hunters and druids.  Even the decision not to use orcs (as in the case of Dragonlance) is revelatory. 
And with Classic Monsters Revisited and the Pathfinder Bestiary, Paizo brought the threat of orcs back to the table.  According to CRM, they’re mask-wearing raiders and looters in small groups, torturers in their lairs, and a tidal wave of fury breaking against civilization in large bands.  If you get the drop on them, you can go all Legolas/Gimli and hew through them pretty easily (at about 6 hp a pop).  But if they get the drop on you, they hurt.  Being on the receiving end of an orc crit (note the 18–20 threat range on what is already 6–12 points of damage) nearly killed one of my low-level characters in one blow, and she was a plate-wearing paladin!  (These books also brought the threat of the orc horde back, with encounter numbers that can hit triple digits and orc battle standards as morale boosters.)
So orcs have been reinvented and revisited already.  Orcs are done.
But wait!...
Over there…in the back of the cave, under that pile of skulls and sleeping furs…there’s a tiny corner of orcdom still left to talk about.
The first regards half-orcs.  In most games, half-orcs are the product of rape, raiding, and other violence.  (See below for an article that critiques that stance, by the way).  But we forget that in Tolkien’s works, half-orcs were the products of science: the results of Saruman’s experiments.  Perhaps to change things up, half-orcs can be the same in your campaign: elite troops that are the results of a wizard’s (or a whole magocracy’s) experimentation…or a mutation…or a willing experiment by two peoples against an external foe…or any number of other reasons.  The “bandit’s bastard” doesn’t have to be the default.
The second I already mentioned in the ogre entry: That orcs stand in contrast to elves and dwarves.  (Indeed, if you go back to Roger E. Moore’s article, “The Half-Orc Point of View”—very worth Googling or tracking down in print—there’s even some suggestion in Tolkien’s legendarium that the first orcs were corrupted and twisted elves, which explains why they are opposites (short-lived, fecund, bestial, loathe beauty, etc.) in almost every way.)  If elves and dwarves are the lords of the forests and mountains, orcs are the rot at the root and the rust in the metal.
Notice, though, that orcs don’t stand in contrast to humans.  They loathe civilization, yes, absolutely…but humans don’t represent the opposite of all that is orc.  In fact, to elder races like the elves and dwarves, humans and orcs have many disturbing similarities: short life spans.  Fertility.  Grasping for territory and influence.  A disregard for and fouling of their environments.  A love of weapons more for the damage they cause than for the skill in the craftsmanship.  The list goes on.
That is the secret of orcs…and of humans…  And while it may never affect your gameplay, keep it as a thought lurking in the back of your head: that to many of the wise races, the only real difference between orcs and humans is which side of the wall they’re on…
Orcs love masks of all kinds.  One of their treasures is a magical mask, a kind of witch doctor fetish capable of casting disguise self and many other spells.  Non-orcs wearing the mask find they cannot take it off—and worse yet, it subtly draws all orcs within fifty miles toward the wearer.  Inevitably, these orcs form warbands in an effort to reclaim what is theirs.  The chaotic artifact is a gift of the orc trickster god, often known as the Horde Caller for his skill in getting orcish armies to mass (while leaving the generalship to someone else).
The orcs of the city-state of Ramblen dwell in the bowels of the giant citadel-city (a many-leveled complex as large as a barony), where they mine, stoke the giant smelters and furnaces, and engage in blood sports.  Their gladiators are famous for sporting the Flames of Ferocity.  These brands are awarded to orcs who have won their bouts while in the thrall of “the living death” (fighting below 0 hp due to ferocity).  These orcs are healed by their shamans, then branded to show their fortitude.  They also join a brotherhood secretly dedicated to overthrowing the city-state and wetting the streets with blood.
Elves and dwarves have always labeled orcs and other evil races durche’wyth—a portmanteau that combines Dwarven and Elven speech to mean “foulers of the waters.”  When humans begin producing firearms, the Conclave of the Elders pronounces them durche’wyth as well—especially after orcs begin creating grenades and bombards, apparently with human aid.
—Classic Monsters Revisited 52–57 & Pathfinder Bestiary 222
Regarding orcs in Golarion, I would love to see more about the Quest for the Sky.  There were lots of hints about it early on, but we haven’t gotten much new info recently—it’s just a phrase to explain where dwarves and orcs and the Sky Citadels came from.  I want details.
Obviously, the people who really love orcs are the Games Workshop and White Dwarf folks.  Their (Cockney?) greenskins and cobbled-together machines are a lot of fun—and just browsing the models is a good source of inspiration.  Orcs with falchions are all well and good, but if your Pathfinder characters start slinging guns, you should make darn sure the orcs get cannons.
Also on the subject of orcs, this article is really thoughtful and well done—and even more thoughtful and well done are James Jacobs and Wes Schneider’s responses (included in the article).

Breakfast Champion

Martin O’Hanlon from Stuff About Code (you might recall Thursday’s post about his adventures in Minecraft) has written a Scratch game that made us laugh. Hard.

Wherever you are in the world, you’ve probably heard something about the recent horsemeat adulteration scandal in Europe, where cheap beef mince products like lasagna and frozen burgers turned out to be anything up to 100% horse. In Abattoir! you’ll be making sure that only delicious cow makes it into the mincer. Have a look at this video for some gameplay.

Get the code at Stuff About Code.

The US Department of Justice has filed a brief in a Maryland court case defending citizens' rights to photograph and record police officers in the course of their duty. The DOJ, in fact, goes beyond what it had said in a previous case by arguing that citizens are protected by the First and Fourth Amendments. In fact, the DOJ argues that using "discretionary charges, such as disorderly conduct, loitering, disturbing the peace, and resisting arrest" to try to stop people from recording police actions "chills protected First Amendment speech."

The court cases involves an incident that occurred in 2011. Photo journalist Mannie Garcia was taking photographs of police officers who were arresting two other men. The officers then arrested Garcia and seized the memory card from his camera — in the process putting Garcia in a choke hold and injuring him. The result was a disorderly conduct charge, for which he was acquitted, but before he went to trial Garcia temporarily lost his White House press credentials due to the charges. After his acquittal, Garcia went on to seek damages for the incident. The court case the DOJ is responding to is this latest one, where it is arguing that it should not be tossed out.

Courts have viewed and should view discretionary charges brought against individuals engaged in protected speech with considerable skepticism.

In its brief, the government also said that seizing Garcia's memory card constituted not just a violation of his Fourth Amendement rights, but also his First Amendment rights. The government argues that "action intended to prevent the dissemination of information critical of public officials, including police officers" is an attack on First Amendment rights. The DOJ was clear that Garcia's status as a journalist had no bearing on its arguments, but that instead they applied to all citizens.

• Via PoliticoArs Technica
• Source US DOJ brief (Politico PDF)
• Related Items department of justice doj rights mannie garcia

tastefullyoffensive:

The main difference between cats and dogs.

[via]

New submitter phenopticon writes with this nugget from an intriguing piece at Gamasutra that adds another voice to the slow-burn debate on the psychological effects of video games: "For nearly thirty years we've been having this discussion, asking the question: do violent movies, music or video games make people violent? Well according to Brad Bushman and Craig Anderson of Iowa State University, yes. Based on the results of their research they concluded in 2001 that video games and violent media can make people aggressive and violent. Based upon their data and their conclusions, however, it's safe to say that photos of snakes, crispy bacon, or a particularly rigorous game of chess can also make people aggressive and violent."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Comics shops are like any other retail establishments, I guess, in that there are good ones and bad ones. The difference between comics shops and coffee shops, though, is that people seldom accuse coffee shops of being unwelcoming to women. The food may be bad, but everyone’s money is the same color to them.

Comics shops, on the other hand, have developed a reputation for being uncomfortable places for anyone who isn’t a straight white male. I used to live down the street from a place like that, and I quit shopping there because of it—but that was in 1986.

That’s why I have mixed feelings about the Tumblr Safe Spaces for Comics Fans. On the one hand, I think it’s great to have a place for people to recommend (or warn against) particular shops. On the other hand, just by its very existence, it perpetuates the notion of comics shops as unfriendly to women, gay people, and people of color, and I’m not so sure that stereotype is true any more. Are there bad stores? Yes there are, but if you look at the blog, most of the comments are positive, with people giving shout-outs to local comics shops that treat them well. I think—I want to think—that this reflects reality. I want to think that the default is a friendly comics shop with good customer service for all its customers, and that places like this are the exception. The problem is that the bad places are more visible—that photo in the link has been reTweeted and reblogged all over the place—while the good places get taken for granted. So I guess in the end I am glad that the Safe Spaces Tumblr exists, if only as a place to recognize the retailers who get it right.

The Garry's Mod PC utility has earned creator Garry Newman $22 million in seven years, as revealed in a recent developer mailbag. Newman noted that the team got "less than half of that though. Then the tax man gets a bunch of that. Then when we take money out of the company the tax man gets a bunch of that too." The PC/Mac tool is often used in conjunction with any Source engine game to create Machinima videos.

Newman added that Facepunch Studios is beginning development on a new PC game. "It's a game I've wanted to start work on for ages," he said. "I'm trying to get a team together in office to build it this time."

Garry's Mod made $22 million, Facepunch working on new PC game originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 09 Mar 2013 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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theodp writes "When it comes to tales of fake girlfriends, Manti Te'o can't hold a candle to theoretical particle physicist Paul Frampton. In November 2011, writes the NY Times' Maxine Swann in 'The Professor, the Bikini Model and the Suitcase Full of Trouble,' Frampton met who he says he thought was Czech bikini model Denise Milani on Mate1.com. A Yahoo Messenger romance bloomed, at least in the 68-year-old Frampton's mind (Frampton's ex-wife was a self-described 'physics groupie'). But before starting their perfect life together, fake Denise asked Frampton for one little favor — would he be so kind as to bring her a bag that she had left in La Paz, Bolivia? Yep, bad idea. The UNC Louis D. Rubin, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy soon found himself in a Buenos Aries prison, charged with transporting two kilos of cocaine into Argentina. Currently serving a four years and eight months sentence under house arrest, Frampton reportedly continues to supervise his two current PhD students by phone, and still finds time to post to the Physics archive."

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