firehose

Portlandia and Transparent actress, Sleater-Kinney guitarist, NPR contributor, screenwriter, and all-around cool person Carrie Brownstein just doesn’t have enough going on in her life, so she will be publishing a memoir in October. Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl, which has been in the works for the past three years will be a “deeply personal and revealing narrative of Brownstein’s life in music,” from her early days in the riot grrrl scene and her first band, Excuse 17, to Sleater-Kinney’s rise to the top of the indie-rock world.

What the book won’t cover is the more recent years of Brownstein’s career, as the memoir will end shortly after Sleater-Kinney went on hiatus in 2006. So we’ll have to wait for a sequel to read about the band she formed during that hiatus, Wild Flag, Brownstein’s surprising leap from indie rock to sketch comedy ...

Despite being broken up, down one member, and not having released a proper album in four years, The Beastie Boys are still exceptionally popular. The group’s 1986 album Licensed To Ill just obtained RIAA Diamond Status, meaning it has sold more than 10 million copies in the States alone. Widely considered the first hip-hop album to ever top the Billboard charts, Licensed joins precious few other albums on the Diamond list, including Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP, 2Pac’s All Eyez On Me, and ZZ Top’s Eliminator.

The best-selling album of all time is still Michael Jackson’s Thriller, which has sold between 29 and 65 million copies in the U.S. to date, depending on who you ask.

30 people associated with Uber's operation in South Korea have been charged on suspicion of operating illegal taxi services in the country, Seoul police said this week. Among their number are Uber Korea's brand manager, the heads of six different car rental companies, and a number of drivers. Yonhap News says the people are suspected of connecting passengers with nearby drivers through the UberTaxi app without a license.

Additionally, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick was booked on suspicion of conducting illegal business. The charge is the second levelled against Kalanick — the Uber boss was indicted without physical detention in December last year for operating an illegal taxi service in the country. Kalanick has so far refused to enter Korea to stand trial, but a police official told Yonhap News that he was to be sent an official summons soon for further investigation into the case. "If Kalanick continues to disobey the summons," the official said, "we plan to seek an arrest warrant against him."

Uber suspended its services in South Korea earlier this month

ZDNet says that authorities also took 432 items as evidence, including handsets that Uber Korea distributed to its drivers. An Uber South Korea spokesperson said that the firm has been cooperating with the police fully, but denied any wrongdoing. The Verge has contacted Uber South Korea for further comment.

Police say that because Uber doesn't screen its drivers or insure its cabs, the service poses a risk for its users. Seoul city officials announced plans to ban the service in July last year, and earlier this month, the company took the step of suspending its Uber X ridesharing platform in the country. Uber vowed to come back, but the road ahead is tough. Seoul District Police said that the ridesharing service was banned because it disturbed the entrenched cab industry and because without proper laws in place, the company could get away without paying tax — both obstacles that will be tricky for Kalanick's company to shift.

Kanye West has gone from college dropout to earning a doctorate from one of the most prestigious art schools in the United States — and he didn't even have to take any extra classes. The rapper, singer, and producer will be awarded an honorary doctorate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago on May 11th, The Chicago Tribune confirmed, after West himself mentioned the the degree during an interview with French design blog Clique.

Lisa Wainwright, dean of faculty and vice president of academic administration at the SAIC, told The Chicago Tribune that she had secured West the honor after reading an interview in which he said he wished he'd attended the school. Wainwright said the Chicago-born West deserved an honorary doctorate because he was "a major figure in the cultural landscape" who said that "art school was cool." This isn't the first time the SAIC has given honorary doctorates to people outside of traditional art circles — the school has also conferred the honor on well-known musicians and writers Patti Smith, Jeff Koons, and David Sedaris — but some ex-students of the school have complained about turning Kanye into Dr. West.

The school has also given an honorary doctorate to Patti Smith

Corinna Kirsch, SAIC alum and senior editor of art magazine Art F City, said she was "offended" that the school's fees would fund "this nonsense." Kirsch said that she wouldn't object to an honorary doctorate awarded to the star on his musical skills, but noted the SAIC didn't have a music program. She conceded the doctorate could be conferred on Kanye because of his dalliances with the fashion industry, but decided that made little sense, calling the move "a gimmick."

While West is most famous for his music, he did indeed go to art school — he attended Chicago's American Academy of Art, but left to study English at Chicago State University. His decision to leave higher education again, dropping out at the age of 20, was reflected in his first three albums: The College Dropout; Late Registration, and Graduation. Wainwright defended the award, saying that Kanye "would have been a perfect SAIC student" because "he likes to shake people out of complacency."

French police raided Uber's office in Paris this week, as part of an investigation into its controversial UberPop service. According to French media reports, 25 officers raided Uber's headquarters for six hours on Monday, seizing emails, documents, and cellphones used by Uber drivers.

"We see in this raid a disproportionate action."

The company's low-cost UberPop service has been at the center of ongoing controversy in France, where authorities deemed it illegal under a new law that went into effect on January 1st. The law requires all chauffeurs to be licensed and insured — conditions that, according to French authorities, UberPop does not meet. Uber insists that the service is legal under French law, and has filed appeals with the European Commission. UberPop, which connects clients with non-professional drivers, remains available in France, though some 250 chauffeurs have been fined since the beginning of the year, according to FranceInfo.

In statements provided to French media, Uber described Monday's raid as an "intimidation" tactic on the part of the French government. "We see in this raid a disproportionate action, carried out on shaky legal grounds," Thibaud Simphal, Uber France's general manager, tells French daily Le Nouvel Observateur.

Jotun is both the name of the game and the series of massive enemies you're tasked with killing in this action adventure romp through Norse mythology.

Players take on the role of Thora, a Viking warrior who died an inglorious death and must prove herself to the gods to enter Valhalla.

"She's a bad-ass Viking warrior who has a huge two-handed ax and is super strong," said Will Dube, the game's designer and founder of developer Thunder Lotus Games. "She faces monsters that are hundreds of times her size.

"It is a boss fight game primarily. There are five bosses in the game with exploration levels in between; hostile environments you have to get through."

The Jotun, a sort of giant drawn from Norse mythology, roam the purgatory in which Thora finds herself after death. She must wander the land looking for runes which she can then use to summon and fight the Juton.

I had a chance to check out one such battle, taking on the game's winter Jotun, a massive, blue-skinned giant, with gleaming white eyes, a shock of white hair and beard, and a fur pelt. The stocky giant towered over Thora. His big toe was about the size of the warrior.

While the gameplay is very basic — there are two types of attacks and a sort of rolling dodge — the premise of having to figure out exactly how to take out each Jotun was engaging. Much more compelling, though, is the game's hand-drawn 2D art, which brings a level of life to the game's animation and design that pulls you through the experience.

This particular Jotun delivered massive melee attacks. Once I weakened him to three-quarters of his health, he started blowing damaging arctic winds toward me. That frozen breath also spotted the snowy landscape with a sort of ice stalagmite. Hitting them sent chunks of ice into the creature, damaging him. Once he is knocked down to half his health, the Jotun summons a storm that freezes over the landscape, making it harder to move quickly and causing Thora to slide. Finally, if you can knock him down to a quarter of his health, he goes into an enraged mode and starts triple charging Thora. He also summons a huge blizzard that causes near-whiteout conditions and makes it hard to see where the Jotun is.

I never made it past the halfway mark.

"Each Jotun will have their unique themes, their unique mechanics, unique attacks, unique setting," Dube said. "We're always going for that huge sense of scale; David versus Goliath; You-against-the-mountain kind of thing.

"This Jotun uses melee attacks; there are others that use ranged attacks. There are different archetypes as well."

Fortunately, the game also allows Thora to find shrines to the gods, which will imbue her with special powers.

"So you'll find Thor's hammer, Odin's spear, things like that," Dube said. "You won't get different weapons, but you will get these god-like abilities. They are permanent upgrades for your character."

The game will be structured around a central hub. Players will go off in different directions collecting runes and can approach the Jotun in what ever order they want. But Dube said there will be a suggested order for taking on the giants.

The game raised $64,000 for a $50,000 Kickstarter last summer and is expected to hit Windows, Mac and Linux through Steam this September for about $20. Dube said they are in talks with platform holders about bringing the game over to consoles as well. That would be likely in 2016 if that happens, he said.

The idea for the game, he said, came about last January when he decided to quit his work on mobile games and try to come up with a PC title to develop with the help of Kickstarter.

"When we were going through different ideas for what the games should be, I stumbled upon Norse mythology," he said. "I've always loved really old, centuries-old stories like The Divine Comedy and Beowulf and things like that.

"The more you read about Norse mythology, the more interesting it gets. There are crazy, crazy stories like cows with poisonous rivers coming out of their udders, Thor dressing up as a bridesmaid to smash giants' skulls in. The more we delved into it, the more we knew we had to make a game in that setting."

A new update for Sid Meier's Civilization 3 brings Steam-based online multiplayer functions to the game, nearly a year after publisher 2K Games warned that GameSpy's closure would take the game offline temporarily.

According to an update notice on Steam, Civilization 3's multiplayer "functions identically" to the previous GameSpy version with one exception: the Direct IP option is no longer supported.

2K says that Civ 3 players who own a physical disc version of the game will need to submit a support request to receive the multiplayer update.

GameSpy Technology ended service in May 2014, taking a long list of games offline. Some titles, like the 2K-published Borderlands, had their GameSpy-based multiplayer services restored on console and PC through updates.

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Between high-stakes discrimination suits and the dubious behavior of so-called allies, there's a tempest of awful gender relations in right now in Silicon Valley. But the loudest storms that make headlines are only a small part of tech's sexism problem. It's not just bad weather, it's bad climate — lots of small patterns that add up to a persistent mess. And as Eric Schmidt demonstrated today at SXSW, even top executives are capable of fueling the storm.

In a panel today, The Wall Street Journal reports, Schmidt had lots of thoughts about gender diversity in the technology industry — and often interrupted co-panelist Megan Smith, the US's chief technologist and Schmidt's former colleague, to share them with the audience. At one point, WSJ reports, Schmidt "opined on which of two questions Smith should respond to," and interrupted Smith as she was speaking to talk about the Raspberry Pi.

The audience wasn't having it. One attendee asked the panel "how personalities biases in men and women affect workplace dynamics," calling out Schmidt's tendency to talk over Smith. As WSJ reports, the crowd went wild with applause for the observation.

That attendee, by the way, works for Google. Her name is Judith Williams, and she's the global diversity and talent programs manager at the company, who leads "unconscious bias" workshops that teach employees how to recognize and call out prejudice.

Schmidt really stepped in it.

After years of development, USB Type-C is making a very big debut. Last week, Apple announced its new MacBook would come with just a single Type-C plug for both power and data, a move that allowed for the slimmest MacBook ever. A few days later, Google unveiled the new version of its flagship Chromebook Pixel with the same Type-C port. To the extent that hardware components can have a moment, USB Type-C is having one.

Power is the one plug you have to use

But while the new port is powerful, it also comes with serious security problems. For all its versatility, USB-C is still based on the USB standard, which makes it vulnerable to a nasty firmware attack, and researchers are also concerned about other attacks that piggyback on the plug's direct memory access. None of these vulnerabilities are new, but bundling them together with the power cord in a single universal plug makes them scarier and harder to avoid. On a standard machine, users worried about USB attacks could simply tape over their ports, but power is the one plug you have to use. Turning that plug into an attack vector could have serious security consequences.

The biggest concern is the BadUSB vulnerability, first published last year. The attack lives in the firmware of a USB device and infects computers during the earliest stages of the connection, long before users get a chance to see what's on the device or decide whether to open it up. We know how to protect peripherals against the attack — certain USB sticks have already built in protections against firmware infections — but computers are much harder to secure. USB is built for compatibility, so there are very few peripherals a computer won't accept, even if the peripheral ends up spreading malware. Apple's reportedly allowing for third party chargers and battery packs under its Type-C implementation, opening even more vectors for infection. (Apple did not respond to a request for comment.) In the case of BadUSB, that means it's easy for a bad actor to put together a USB device that will spread the virus every time it's plugged in.

"No solution for BadUSB is in sight even with this new standard."

Type-C has a lot of advantages over previous models, but security experts say it does little to fix the core problems of BadUSB. "The additional openness and flexibility of USB Type-C comes with more attack surface," says Karsten Nohl, one of the researchers who first discovered BadUSB. "No solution for BadUSB is in sight even with this new standard." In part, that's by necessity. USB is an open standard built on backwards compatibility and easy third-party access. You'll need an adapter to plug in old USB devices to Type-C ports, but the old software protocols still work, leaving open the same vulnerabilities. Even giants like Apple and Google need to abide by the rules of the USB standard, which rule out some of the tough sacrifices necessary to securing the standard overall. The result for users is a major security flaw with no easy fix.

In practical terms, that means MacBook and Chromebook Pixel users are now exposed to what you might call a "borrowed charger" attack. The new chargers don't have the firmware needed to carry the BadUSB virus, but it would be easy for an attacker to install it herself, then spend a day in a coffee shop waiting for some unsuspecting target to plug in. From there, the bug would spread to every compatible device the target plugged into. Nearly everyone with a laptop has shared a power cable at some point — compared with the much smaller number who have plugged in a stranger's USB stick — so the attack could reach a lot of otherwise protected computers.

The best protection is avoiding any chargers or devices you didn't buy yourself

Fixing the vulnerability at an ecosystem level is surprisingly difficult. No single company can change the way USB works, so the only real fix is to move away from the standard at large. In the past, Apple has built authentication chips into connectors like Lightning — primarily to protect Apple’s lucrative licensing business, but with stronger hardware security as a nice side effect. That's not possible on an open standard like USB. Even if Apple somehow required all power cables to have an authentication chip tied to tamper-proof firmware, the port would still be vulnerable to older devices. A bad actor could simply masquerade as a last-generation USB device like a wireless keyboard for long enough to pass along the virus.

The best protection is simple: just avoid any chargers or devices you didn't buy yourself. But it's a serious downgrade in device security, set against major upgrades in power transfer and data speed. Combining data and charger ports had made the new MacBook and Pixel faster and more powerful, but the price is an ongoing concern over what devices you trust enough to plug in. In short, we may need to get a lot more protective about our power cords.

If you're buying a new phone and your old phone still works fine, a good way to defray the cost is to sell the old phone to any one of the many secondhand phone retailers. If you're trading in an old iPhone for a new one, for example, Apple will offer you some credit for the old phone directly. According to a report from 9to5Mac, the company will soon begin offering money for Android phones as well, incentivizing some of the platform switchers that Apple talks about during its product events and earnings calls.

The report doesn't have much other information about the extension of Apple's trade-in program, noting only that retail store employees are currently being trained and that it will begin "in the coming weeks." Employees will help new iPhone buyers transfer their contacts from their old phones to their new ones, but "other data will have to be moved by customers." Apple has several guides to facilitate the move available on its site.

The drawback of Apple's existing program is that what the company gives you is rarely competitive with market rates on eBay and other phone reseller sites. Apple would give $35 for a working and relatively pristine unlocked 32GB iPhone 4S, but a look at completed eBay listings shows those phones going for between three and four times that amount (minus whatever fees the service charges). The official Apple program won't accept anything older than an iPhone 4, either, so there may be other restrictions based on the specific model you're attempting to trade in.

The Association of College and Research Libraries's biennial conference will be at the Oregon Convention Center the end of next week.

Locals should use caution when discussing knitted hand-warmers, debating the Dewey Decimal System vs Library of Congress, or Googling in public during this time.