firehose

East Berlin, 1987

badger.foo writes "You thought you had successfully avoided the tiresome password guessing bots groping at your SSH service by moving the service to a non-standard port? It seems security by obscurity has lost the game once more. We're now seeing ssh bruteforce attempts hitting other ports too, Peter Hansteen writes in his latest column." For others keeping track, have you seen many such attempts?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This is one of many lovely quotes from Earthbound/Mother creator Shigesato Itoi featured in his company’s Hobonichi Techo 2013 planner, which we published a praising review for earlier this week.

Also published online earlier this week: a translated interview between Itoi and Sonya Park of Arts & Science, the company charged with localizing the popular planner. It not only provides insight on some design decisions behind the English edition, but also goes into the Techo’s origins and early challenges, as well as Itoi’s career switch from advertising to making/writing all the wonderful stuff he puts out now.

BUY Mother 3/Earthbound, Hobonichi Techo 2013

Uncanny X-Men #3 variant cover

An anonymous reader writes "NetBSD 7.0 will support the Lua scripting language within its kernel for developing drivers and new sub-systems. A Lua scripting interpreter is being added to the NetBSD kernel along with a kernel API so developers can use this scripting language rather than C for developing new BSD kernel components. Expressed reasons for supporting a scripting language in a kernel were rapid application development, better configuration, and "modifying software written in C is hard for users." In a presentation it was said that Lua in the kernel will let users explore their system in an easy way."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Netcraft confirms a recent increase in the number of malicious proxy auto-config (PAC) scripts being used to sneakily route webmail and online banking traffic through rogue proxy servers. The scripts are designed to only proxy traffic destined for certain websites, while all other traffic is allowed to go direct. If the proxy can force the user to keep using HTTP instead of HTTPS, the fraudsters running these attacks can steal usernames, passwords, session cookies and other sensitive information from online banking sessions."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Whisk yourself away into the Faniverse!

Submitted by: Unknown

Tagged: neil gaiman , twitter , wil wheaton Share on Facebook

charmingdeadpool:

zekem93:

By Jiro

And they’re all wearing red.

queerinserenity:

All female rescue party led by Uhura. No one died.

me at the function

aneba:

Trompe L’oeil

The artist recreates a realistic depiction of the torn paying card, paying attention to the right color and shadow definition of its counterpart.

“Realism Challenge: Playing Card” Artist. Mark Crilley

“

1. Linguistic Intelligence: the capacity to use language to express what’s on your mind and to understand other people. Any kind of writer, orator, speaker, lawyer, or other person for whom language is an important stock in trade has great linguistic intelligence.

2. Logical/Mathematical Intelligence: the capacity to understand the underlying principles of some kind of causal system, the way a scientist or a logician does; or to manipulate numbers, quantities, and operations, the way a mathematician does.

3. Musical Rhythmic Intelligence: the capacity to think in music; to be able to hear patterns, recognize them, and perhaps manipulate them. People who have strong musical intelligence don’t just remember music easily, they can’t get it out of their minds, it’s so omnipresent.

4. Bodily/Kinesthetic Intelligence: the capacity to use your whole body or parts of your body (your hands, your fingers, your arms) to solve a problem, make something, or put on some kind of production. The most evident examples are people in athletics or the performing arts, particularly dancing or acting.

5. Spatial Intelligence: the ability to represent the spatial world internally in your mind — the way a sailor or airplane pilot navigates the large spatial world, or the way a chess player or sculptor represents a more circumscribed spatial world. Spatial intelligence can be used in the arts or in the sciences.

6. Naturalist Intelligence: the ability to discriminate among living things (plants, animals) and sensitivity to other features of the natural world (clouds, rock configurations). This ability was clearly of value in our evolutionary past as hunters, gatherers, and farmers; it continues to be central in such roles as botanist or chef.

7. Intrapersonal Intelligence: having an understanding of yourself; knowing who you are, what you can do, what you want to do, how you react to things, which things to avoid, and which things to gravitate toward. We are drawn to people who have a good understanding of themselves. They tend to know what they can and can’t do, and to know where to go if they need help.

8. Interpersonal Intelligence: the ability to understand other people. It’s an ability we all need, but is especially important for teachers, clinicians, salespersons, or politicians — anybody who deals with other people.

9. Existential Intelligence: the ability and proclivity to pose (and ponder) questions about life, death, and ultimate realities.

”

- Howard Gardner’s seminal Theory of Multiple Intelligences, originally published in 1983, which revolutionized psychology and education by offering a more dimensional conception of intelligence than the narrow measures traditional standardized tests had long applied.  (via explore-blog)

Ragnar Tørnquist founded Red Thread Games with one immediate goal in mind: to finish the story he has been telling for a great part of his adult life. As this interview is published, the Kickstarter for Dreamfall Chapters went live a couple of minutes ago. In readiness, I had a long conversation with Tørnquist, Dreamfall co-writer Dag Scheve and lead designer Martin Bruusgaard earlier this week. The studio is new, the premises are new, but the team are old friends and Dreamfall veterans. In this first part of the interview, we talked about cold hard cash, going indie, Kickstarter and the state of the industry.

(more…)

New submitter karijes writes "Evil is a new Emacs major mode intended to implement full Vim emulation for Emacs editor, and it's reached its first stable release. Evil implements many Vim features and has support for plugins, so there is port for rails.vim, NERDCommenter and mapleader among others. You can find details about this release on the mailing list."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

“When Google announced the Nexus 4, many were surprised that the phone didn’t come with support for 4G LTE. Fast forward to the launch and early teardowns indicated that the phone did have a 4G chip, it just wasn’t in use. However, back in November, one Canadian early adopter figured out a way to get that 4G chip up and running despite the fact that the Nexus 4 lacks a signal amplifier and filter. Xda-developers user a1jatt was able to force the phone to run on Telus 1700MHz and 2100MHz from the phone’s debugging menu. Unfortunately, it seems Google is shutting the party down. AnandTech reports that Google has killed off the band 4 support in Android 4.2.2. This means Canadians, and anyone else who managed to get the 4G working on their Nexus 4, will be out of luck once they update. Selecting LTE Only in settings is futile, as the phone reverts back to ‘WCDMA Preferred’ and won’t latch onto the LTE network the way it used to. Google never intended for the Nexus 4 to be a 4G device, so it’s not really surprising that the company has removed users’ ability to force the phone to utilize that 4G chip. Still, users will no doubt be disappointed to lose their 4G connectivity after just a couple of months.”

- Nexus 4 Update Removes Unofficial 4G LTE Support

How do you create a compelling movie based on a video game whose protagonist is a silent stand-in for the player? For his planned adaptation of "Portal," J.J. Abrams could start by looking at "The Hunger Games."

The Classics are must-see, must-read, must-play works revered by The Verge staff. They offer glimpses of the future, glimpses of humanity, and a glimpse of our very souls. You should check them out.

Despite the recent push for more nuanced and realistic narratives, some of my favorite story-driven games earned their place with grand gestures, and the recently re-released System Shock 2 is right at the top. Though the game follows 1994 Warren Spector title System Shock, it stands solidly on its own. It’s a first-person shooter set on a massive spaceship, trillions of miles from Earth, about godlike beings — but it’s also an evocative, rewarding, and personal piece of survival horror that feels more like myth than fiction.

System Shock 2 is undeniably crude in a way we haven’t yet learned to identify as retro. Even with community mods, the graphics are ugly in that peculiarly ‘90s gun-metal way. Voice actors read through lines like they’re giving a PowerPoint presentation, and you’re frequently bombarded with identical enemies marching in lockstep. But all these elements are essential. While its lush successor BioShock strived to evoke individual people and places, System Shock 2’s blocky sameness gives it a theatrical quality that fits its larger-than-life characters. I wouldn’t complain about its flat, empty rooms any more than I’d complain that a King Lear set doesn’t look like a real castle.

The characters themselves are just as archetypal. There’s the captain desperate to avoid becoming his power-hungry father, the scientist whose work is hijacked for political gain, the lovers who brave death to be together, all observed through the lens of a cyborg who speaks precisely once. The stakes are even more stark, but it’s hardly good against evil. Your enemy is The Many, an apparently alien hive mind that reveres the serenity of its assimilated hordes. Your ally is SHODAN, a chaotic, genocidal AI from the first System Shock who prizes the sharpness of her own mechanical intellect over the weakness of flesh. The difference between them is not as great as it may first appear.

Better the target of someone’s disgust than more raw material for utopia

All this could be theoretically compelling but functionally boring, except that it’s backed up so perfectly by System Shock 2’s harrowing atmosphere and gameplay. Especially in the early stages, the game is punishingly difficult: weapons start degrading within a few shots, and early parts of the skill tree are all but useless. As options open up, you’re forced to specialize relentlessly: expect to make tough choices about whether you’d rather be able to set enemies on fire, hack anything you want, or fire beakers of worms out of a hand cannon. You’re grateful for any help you can get, regardless of where it comes from, and the feeling of being trapped is overwhelming — hemmed in by the void of space and an ever-tightening web of creatures who used to be your shipmates.

Every creature in the game may be trying to kill you, but the truly scary thing is how indifferent most of them are about it. Though you’re as inordinately powerful as any shooter protagonist, System Shock 2 makes you feel tiny, caught between massive entities who operate on principles no human could sympathize with. The monstrous people you fight apologize as they strike, or muse mechanically about the "little ones" they’ve been tasked to protect by a weird, womb-like overmind. SHODAN may once have tried to blow up, mutate, and take over the world, but no matter how often she rails against your human frailty, her hatred is almost preferable to the alternative. Better to be the target of someone’s disgust than more raw material for utopia.

System Shock 2 set the stage for two of the biggest horror franchises today. BioShock further developed Ken Levine’s ideas about extreme ideologies but dramatically cut down on gameplay, and Dead Space drew on its dark, cramped spaceships and adapted its hive mind religion. But neither can match the original for sheer staying power. Go on, join the crew of the Rickenbacker, and have fun developing a pavlovian aversion to footsteps and monkey cries.

• Related Items system shock 2 video game game ken levine survival horror horror science fiction fpsrpg first person shooter

— P.G. Wodehouse

Best Buy had originally instated a price-match guarantee for the holidays, a program designed to combat the practice of treating the store like a show room before completing the actual purchase online. Best Buy has announced it's making the program permanent, beginning on March 3rd. Last October, the company had said that "showrooming" was "blown out of proportion," This time around, however, Best Buy is embracing the comparison, writing in its press release that the new program signals "the end of 'showrooming.'"

As before, Best Buy won't match any online retailer's price, but instead has a list of 19 retailers it will match. Those retailers include Apple.com, Amazon.com, Crutchfield.com, and Walmart.com. The usual caveats of identically matching the product apply, and customers will need to actively ask for the price matching before purchase in order to qualify. To do so, you'll need to bring in the URL from the competing retailer and have Best Buy definitively match it to the product you want to purchase.

• Via BloombergBest Buy
• Related Items best buy amazon retailer price match

The leak of a confidential memo detailing the US government's justifications for drone strikes on American citizens opened the floodgates for new criticism of the Obama administration's secretive counterterrorism program. Now members of Congress have outlined a bill that would ban the use of weaponized drones within the United States, and put restrictions on law enforcement's ability to use them in surveillance operations.

The proposed bill, called the "Preserving American Privacy Act" (PDF) comes from Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX), and is being co-sponsored by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), a privacy-minded Congresswoman and noted SOPA opponent who is also leading the latest attempts to reform draconian computer crime laws in the wake of Aaron's Swartz's death. As written, it would ban police from operating unmanned aerial vehicles armed with weapons of any kind, and any drone surveillance operation would require a warrant notifying the target within 10 days, except when the notice would "jeopardize" an investigation. It also requires they make efforts to "minimize" the amount of data collected or shared, to avoid violating privacy unnecessarily. Poe attempted to pass similar legislation last year which limited surveillance to investigating felonies, but the bill died in committee with 26 co-sponsors.

Fears over the use of drones have increased lately as both President Obama and his counterterrorism chief John Brennan refused to answer whether lethal strikes could be used against American citizens on US soil. Last week, Charlottesville, Virginia became the first US city to pass a resolution banning the use of drones. The city of Seattle was also forced to scrap its own drone program after a massive public outcry.

President Obama refused to answer whether lethal strikes could be used against American citizens on US soil

Members of law enforcement have long argued that drones could be helpful in rescue operations and extreme situations. Earlier this week, a report suggested — but did not confirm — that the LAPD had deployed drones in the manhunt for spurned ex-cop Christopher Dorner. Meanwhile, other police departments in counties of Florida, Texas, and elsewhere have already received authorization from the FAA to fly drones as part of a Department of Homeland Security initiative to expedite their adoption among law enforcement.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been diligently tracking these authorizations from crowdsourced data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests sent to local authorities. Their latest list raises the total to 81 public entities who have requested authorization, all of whom would subject to the restrictions outlined in Lofgren's draft bill. Check the source link below to see the full text of the proposal.

• Source Zoe LofgrenThe Hill
• Image Credit Omer Fast
• Related Items drones zoe lofgren surveillance national security

It hasn’t been a week since Minecraft for the Raspberry Pi has been released, and already we’re seeing some cool builds that bridge our analog world with Minecraft voxel land. [Martin] got his hands on the Raspi version of Minecraft and decided to take advantage of the API Mojang threw into the build by making a huge analog block clock that keeps real world time in the Minecraft universe.

Basically, [Martin] created a small Python script that draws the face and hands of a clock in a Minecraft world. The Minecraft API comes with neat functions such as drawCircle, and drawLine, so making a real clock face is as simple as getting the system time and doing a bit of trig.

After the break you can check out [Martin]‘s Minecraft clock in action. If you’re running the Pi version of Minecraft, you can also get this running on your machine with the code on [Martin]‘s git.

Filed under: Raspberry Pi

Feb 16th 2013 By: Lauren Davis

The joyful cartoon tone of Sam Rennocks' illustrations often belies the sinister things going on inside them. Sure, he does a sweet rendition of his Commander Shepard or a happy-go-lucky astronaut, but his illustrations inspired by The Legend of Zelda, Castlevania and other games are filled with dismembered bodies. And that's before we get into the horror the Mario brothers encounter when they stumble across a team of ghostly Boos. You can follow Rennocks' art at his blog, but if it's his video game work you dig, head over to 16bitfury, the Tumblr he maintains with fellow gaming fan artist James Loram. They post a new piece of gaming fan art each week, and they seem to always have something fun up their sleeves.

Getty Images

Vatican: Cardinals could meet sooner to choose new pope CNN International Rome (CNN) -- The cardinals who must pick a successor to Pope Benedict XVI after he steps down on February 28 could meet to make the decision sooner than thought, a Vatican spokesman said Saturday. The conclave, the meeting which will bring together ... Pope's leaked papers show fractured VaticanWashington Post Twittersphere, blessed by Benedict, loses its first popeUSA TODAY Pope calls on Catholics to come back to GodTelegraph.co.uk Voice of America -CNN -Fox News all 493 news articles »

siskyisoutofbusiness:

omfG SO TODAY IN PHYSICS THIS GIRL’S PHONE WENT OFF AND HER RINGTONE WAS SHINE BRIGHT LIKE A DIAMOND AND MY TEACHER STOOD UP AND SAID TURN THAT THING OFF IF I HEAR IT AGAIN I WILL PERSONALLY TRACK DOWN RIHANNA AND EXPLAIN TO HER THAT DIAMONDS DO NOT SHINE THEY REFLECT

The coolest 3 minutes you will spend today:

make full screen

Information & research will be updated here: http://www.djsadhu.com/the-helical-model-vortex-solar-system-animation/

No, this was not made with Universe Sandbox, but with 3DsMax.
Yes, I messed up two orbits.

Published on Aug 24, 2012