As they emerged from the locker room, Grambling players were gutted. Sport coats and ties could not distract from their watery eyes. It is something you are not supposed to see, a private moment between these young men and the game they just played.
The celebratory pulse from the Southern band thumped around them. Their head coach had just told them it was okay to cry as long as they kept their heads up. He knew how they felt; he was once a Tiger running back who played in four...
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The bad news for Uber just keeps coming and today there's a trifecta of regulatory rebuffs to the web-based taxi company's drive for international expansion. In Madrid, a judge has ruled that Uber should cease all activities in Spain because its drivers are unregistered and thus act as unfair competition to existing taxi services. Affirming a complaint filed by the Madrid Taxi Association, the judge has explained that his ruling is a practical one, adhering to current laws, rather than a philosophical statement about free markets and the so-called sharing economy.
Authorities in Thailand have reached a similar conclusion, deeming Uber's operation of unlicensed and uninsured taxi services to be unlawful, and have also asked the company to cease business — at least until it starts using properly accredited drivers rather than private cars. India has already instituted a ban on Uber in Delhi following the rape of a female passenger, but now the country is broadening its prohibition and advising all its state governments to enforce it. It specifically bans the use of web-based taxi-hailing apps, meaning the ban will have an impact on others beyond Uber, but the focus on the California company is intensifying with the Delhi Police "also exploring the issue of possible legal liability of the taxi service Uber in the crime committed," according to Home Minister Rajnath Singh.
These measures are just the latest wave in an almost universal backlash among regulators to Uber's buccaneering practices and aggressive expansion. While the rulings are accompanied by tough talk of clamping down, none of them are final and none should come as a surprise to Uber. The countries in question are simply enforcing the rules they already have — and they all leave a window for Uber to bring its service within the realm of acceptable competition by properly registering and insuring its drivers.
Yik Yak pitches itself as an easy way to post anonymous messages to users in your area, but a new report suggests the popular app may have a real security flaw on its hands. Written by Sanford Moskowitz, a security research intern at SilverSky Labs, the report details how an attacker on the same Wi-Fi network as his target could take complete control over the target's Yik Yak account, using only a monitor-friendly network card and a packet analyzer like Wireshark. If Moskowitz's report holds up, it could present a real problem to the increasingly popular app, which has billed casual anonymity as one of its chief selling points.
A way to take complete control over a target's Yik Yak account
The heart of the vulnerability is Yik Yak's UserID, a string of characters used to authenticate each user to the service as a whole. Because the UserID is Yik Yak's only form of authentication, you can effectively masquerade as any user once you have their UserID. Communications between the app and the Yik Yak server are protected over HTTPS, effectively disguising the UserID, but the app also communicates with servers for various third-party ads and analytics tools, some of which are less careful about disguising the UserID.
Moskowitz seized on one particular tool called Flurry that transmits the UserID in plaintext, exposing it to anyone who might be listening in from the same Wi-Fi network. From there, taking over a user's account is as simple as launching a modified version of the program that subs in the new UserID, a process Moskowitz walks through in detail. Moskowitz doesn't say if he disclosed the bug to Yik Yak before publishing his report online, so it's possible this news is taking the app team by surprise. A similar vulnerability had been previously reported for the Android version of the app and has yet to be addressed. We have reached out to the Yik Yak team, and will update with any response.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
WIRED has a story on the emergence of the Bronx onto the tech scene, citing factors such as Fordham University and the low cost of living:
The Bronx isn’t often listed among the country’s tech hubs. But that may soon change, as the oft-forgotten borough plays an ever more active role in New York’s expanding tech scene.
Case in point: This weekend, Fordham University’s Foundry incubator, which launched two years ago, holds its first Hackathon in the Bronx. The event is sponsored by Evernote, whose founder and CEO, Phil Libin, was raised in the borough, and will offer winners cash prizes as well as free access to Evernote’s API. It’s the latest example of the recent surge in tech and business activity throughout the Bronx.
Of course, the business sector in the Bronx is minuscule compared to San Francisco, or even Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. Yet it’s hard to ignore the growth the area has seen in recent years. According to one state estimate, the number of businesses in the South Bronx grew 25 percent between 2000 and 2011. Meanwhile, there are ongoing initiatives throughout the Bronx to foster a tech talent pool that can serve the much larger business community in Manhattan.
Each Tuesday is EducationTuesday here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts about educators and all things STEM. Adafruit supports our educators and loves to spread the good word about educational STEM innovations!
firehosemeanwhile, back home
firehose'San Diego's Ballast Point Brewing Company, Long Island's Blue Point Brewing Company, Brooklyn's Brooklyn Brewery, California's Lagunitas Brewing Company and Stone Brewing Company, Massachusetts' Newburyport Brewing Company, and Atlanta's SweetWater Brewery. Plus, all domestic routes will also serve beer from Samuel Adams.'
On Sunday, we got the two-hour premiere of TNT's The Librarians, which is the series based on the made-for-TV movies starring Noah Wyle as a librarian protecting the world from magic artifacts. And, yes, it is based on that. It's also very Warehouse 13-y, but with much more John Larroquette.
firehose'though 36 Seasons is billed a Ghostface record, there’s something off-brand about it. Ghostface sits out four tracks and regularly cedes mic time either to Revelations singers or guest rappers Kool G Rap, AZ, and Nems, East Coast traditionalists who rap perfunctorily about how they have Ghostface’s back while making not one, not two, but three allusions to “C.R.E.A.M.,” which is extreme fan service even by the standards of a Wu-Tang project. These guests fill so much time here that 36 Seasons often feels like a backdoor pilot for a lame spinoff about Ghostface’s ragtag team of accomplices. ... 36 Seasons lacks the maniacal forward drive that propels Ghostface’s most electrifying works. This is a rapper who thrives on chaos, but here he’s trapped in a record that’s too neat and tidy.' C+
Here’s an idea: Take Ghostface Killah, pair him with a distinct producer or production team, assign him an album-length concept, then let him rip. That formula proved so winning on last year’s Twelve Reasons To Die, Ghostface’s collaboration with composer Adrian Younge, that nobody can fault his latest album 36 Seasons for trying to repeat it. This time production duties fall to The Revelations, a Brooklyn soul outfit whose original material could be mistaken for the soundtrack to a lost Blaxploitation film. In a storyline with shades of Dolemite, Ghostface returns to the streets of Staten Island after a mysterious nine-year absence (“That’s 36 seasons,” he notes) to confront the corruption that’s reigned in his absence.
That’s all promising on paper, so why does 36 Seasons sound so tired? Part of the blame falls on The Revelations, who are so committed to accurately recreating ...
firehose'After a few minutes of “uhhhh” on the other end of the phone, I got my third “we take your security very seriously at Apple, this account will be permanently disabled unless you can find the recovery key.” I argued my point that I had both my trusted devices and my password as required by the support page, but was told this was irrelevant because someone else had tried to get into my account.
I talked to a friend who knew people at Apple who told me that the security folks said the iForgot page is final. There’s nothing they can do.
Basically, I was locked out of my entire digital life, because someone had tried to hack me. The irony of the fact that my increased security had ultimately locked me out dawned on me, mixed with tiredness and frustration, so after taking a moment to scream internally, I started furiously searching ancient time machine backups.
...
Apple support told me that the security lock doesn’t expire, so there’s no way to get around requiring the key, even though its support site says you can use trusted devices. You’re simply not given that option when your account is locked.
What’s perplexing is it wasn’t even technically my fault. Someone tried to guess their way into my account and it was locked as a result; I didn’t do anything wrong, yet I was entirely locked out because I couldn’t find the key.
Apple’s support page had given me false hope, because I expected to be able to use a combination of my password and trusted devices to recover from being locked out if it ever happened.
This isn’t the case when your account is locked; what Apple doesn’t tell you is that when your account is locked (because of too many attempts) your password is not a valid recovery option and you’ll need your recovery key.'
firehose'all the actors are completely wasted in characters which the writers barely bothered to name. Actors who put in effort are left to completely fend for themselves, and there is no cohesion in terms of performance styles, which is especially problematic when you have actors acting very big right alongside those giving alongside minimalistic performances.'
When the first trailers for Ridley Scott’s new epic, Exodus: Gods and Kings, hit, the initial reaction (rightfully) was outrage over the film’s whitewashing. Particularly off-putting were the character designs of Australian actor Joel Edgerton, and Americans Sigourney Weaver and John Turturro (seen prominently in the trailer), as the royal family. Add to that an off-putting character design for actor Ben Mendelsohn as the corrupt Governor, who has been outright hidden in the trailer, and the complaints are beyond justified. There was no good reason Scott had to hire white actors for these roles, but in applying a version of black-face is like putting a spotlight on his own mistake. It’s as if he knew he was doing something wrong in casting a nearly all white cast in leading roles, and this was his misguided attempt to remedy the situation and appease audiences. And Scott then dug an even deeper hole for himself, as did Christian Bale, when commenting on the casting decision, stating it was purely for financial purposes and feeding into the very old concept that Hollywood blockbusters can only star white actors; a pure form of professional discrimination.
Not only is the make-up racially insensitive, but it’s also very off-putting and completely inconsistent. For example, Joel Edgerton at times looks like he has been made up to look Middle Eastern, while at other times his fair skin seems just tanned. Likewise, Mendelsohn’s initial appearance features him in make-up far darker than the make-up he wears throughout the rest of the movie. Oddly, Turturro and Weaver retain their fair complexions and only wear heavy eye make-up and wigs. It’s clear that Scott is attempting to recall the actors who played these types of characters in studio-age cinema; but instead of campy Old Hollywood, we’re getting harmful stereotypes.
And this is the problem with the entire film: Scott didn’t fully commit to making a campy movie, so while the villainous Egyptian Pharaoh and his people are all playing it up, the actors playing the Hebrews have been asked to be completely naturalistic and serious. It makes for a completely fragmented film, in which the movie almost reaches the point of “so bad its good” when focusing on the villains; but ultimately ,Exodus: Gods and Kings fails to go far enough with old-fashioned cheese, so it remains a movie so bad it is just bad. So bad, it is one of the worst movies of 2014.
Exodus: Gods and Kings is, if you didn’t already know, a retelling of The Ten Commandments, and it is as much an adaption of the Bible story as it is a remake of the Cecil B. De Mille epic from 1956, which itself was a remake from 1923. Those films, despite their dated, ridiculous flaws, were at the very least made by a director who was passionate about the project on a personal level, which showed in the effort which went into their epics. That care gave their films a sense of perspective and purpose. I don’t know what it was about this story that made Ridley Scott want to make this movie, but he certainly didn’t find a new perspective to justify the time, money, and talent that went into this movie. And boy, is there a lot of talent wasted in this two-and-a-half hour epic.
Joel Edgerton is a really great actor – I loved him in Warrior and Animal Kingdom - but his attempts at “epic” movies haven’t been great. Between his role as Uncle Owen in the Star Wars prequels and last year’s The Great Gatsby, Hollywood really hasn’t figured out how to use Edgerton beyond playing muscular heavies. Sadly, I would say the same thing about the way Hollywood is using fellow Australian Ben Mendelsohn – heartbreaking, considering he gave this year’s best performance in Starred Up (see that, not this). Here, I suspect the only direction Mendelsohn was given was to be a campier, more problematically-effeminate version of the character he played in The Dark Knight Rises (because what this movie needed was an extra dose of homophobia!) There are a few moments when I was reminded of Ben Kingsley’s brilliance in films like Gandhi and Sexy Beast, but then Mendelsohn is jettisoned from the story.
Sigourney Weaver and John Turturro likewise make their all-too-brief appearances in roles which do not merit their effort; especially Weaver, who is slowly becoming a cliche in action films. And while Aaron Paul as Joshua has a lot of screen time, he seems to have about five lines total as he follows and watches Moses with almost no close personal connection to the man. The fact is, all the actors are completely wasted in characters which the writers barely bothered to name. Actors who put in effort are left to completely fend for themselves, and there is no cohesion in terms of performance styles, which is especially problematic when you have actors acting very big right alongside those giving alongside minimalistic performances.
Which leads me to believe that we really can’t blame any of the actors who have to work with this script. It’s like wrestling a grizzly bear; the attempt is ridiculous, ineffective, and ultimately proves fatal. The film was written by four different screenwriters, Oscar winner Steven Zaillian (Schindler’s List) Oscar nominee Jeffrey Caine (The Constant Gardener) and writing partners Adam Cooper and Bill Collage (New York Minute and Tower Heist). I don’t know who originated the script and what others added, but there wasn’t much cohesion in their writing style. However this project came about, this monstrous, expensive epic resists taking a new approach to the material, at times even using the 1956 film as a cheat sheet (I would love to find out what people who don’t know the story think of Exodus).
Even with its flaws, Darren Aronofsky’s other biblical epic this year, Noah, was at the very least a narratively ambitious film. Exodus’s screenplay can’t decide what kind of movie it is, or how to address the question of God. Is this an agnostic approach to a Bible story? A historical fantasy? Or is this a faithful adaption of a religious story? Exodus simply refuses to take any side, which is a large part of the reason it fails to make anything convincing or plausible. The only part of the film they actively seemed to re-imagine is with the casting of child actor Isaac Andrews as a petulant childish version of old testament God… a character who reminds me of Isaac in Children of the Corn. Seems a questionable choice, but at least there was some original thought and reason behind that decision.
Given all these problems with characters, narrative, and script, I would assume most people interested in seeing this film (or any Ridley Scott film) are going to see the visual spectacle and action. Unfortunately, even on that level, this movie fails to deliver, as it has major cinematic issues which are inexcusable for a movie on this level. There are a few visual elements which are pretty cool, like the montage of plagues starting with a bizarre Lake Placid kind of sequence to explain the river of blood. But for a movie with the parting of the sea, Scott really holds back the grandure. Sure, the big wave bringing the water back the sea is cool, but it is also very similar to what we just saw in Interstellar with the mountain of waves. I will say that there is one sequence I think Scott nailed: the moody sequence when Egypt’s first-born children are taken; however, it also doesn’t feel connected to the rest of the film, where Scott shows a considerable lack of restraint. I will also take detour to mention that the baby playing the Son of Edgerton’s Rhames is a really adorable, beautiful child, so whoever cast the kid gets a bonus point.
But for the most part, the movie looks predictable and, often, pretty bad. Scott doesn’t seem comfortable filming in 3D, and it shows. A good rule of thumb for 3D films is to avoid having characters walking into the frame from the foreground, because the first thing the audience sees (and what their eyes will be drawn to) is just the back of a big, prominent head. Scott makes this mistake often. Also, Scott doesn’t frame the film to take into account the number of times there are scenes of people on horseback, so the most dominant part of the screen in 3D is often the head or ear of a horse, which isn’t the most dramatic use of technology. I found myself almost getting a headache during some of the action scenes; and, once again, I have to beg directors: cool it with the shaking camera in 3D movies. It almost never works. And while I understand that J.J. Abrams made lens flairs cool again, lens flairs in period movies do not work the way they can in contemporary or futuristic features, and just read as nothing more than errors to the audience (especially when they are magnified in 3D).
If you’ve seen the movie trailers, you know the film has some technical achievements. The costumes are well made, the sets appropriately epic, and the scope impressively grand. Scott and his usual cinematographer Dariusz Wolski do a great job with those big, sweeping shots of landscapes, and – when they can – of showing a lot of digital people from a distance. But Lord of the Rings did it first and did it better, and there’s nothing new about Scott’s approach, so I’m not overly impressed or absorbed in watching that kind of tech. The movie is so often rather ugly, especially the battle and action scenes, during which it is incredibly difficult to piece together what is happening. The score by Alberto Iglesias is pleasant and operatic, but it is used in a way that ultimately detracts from the narrative and characters, rather than to enhance those elements.
Now, Christian Bale’s performance as Moses. I’ve avoiding talking about it earlier in this review because there is a very big problem with it, both logically and ideologically. Bale is arguably the only true A-list movie star in the film, the actor Scott was talking about needing to get this movie made; and yet Bale is the only actor who seems to be completely phoning in his performance. Bale seems completely detached from the character of Moses, and never has chemistry with the other actors on screen. Even if he had gone a little too big or too intense, that choice would have been better than this lackluster performance. Bale told the press he watched comedies like History of the World Part I and Life of Bryan to prepare for the role, but even that light hearted approach doesn’t show through. For an actor praised for taking his work so seriously that he is willing to endanger his health, Bale showed none of that commitment here.
And ideologically, watching this film about slaves and freeing people, there is something incredibly unsettling about watching three young, white men leading thousands of slaves of color out of Egypt. Bale, Paul, and Andrew Tarbet (as Aaron) literally seem like the white saviors we talk about, and Scott really had every opportunity to do things differently. The problem with the film’s dogma is specifically the whitewashing among the Herbrew people. There is only one gay character in the film, which also happens to the film’s biggest and most ridiculous villain, despite the clearly influential 1956 Ten Commandments being more progressive by suggesting Joshua had a sexual infatuation with Moses. Women barely register as characters, but especially offensive is Moses’s wife Zipporah (Spanish actress Maria Valverde), who is important in the Bible, but here is nothing more than The Girl, the love interest, in this film (the two love scenes are laughable). And with the exception of Ben Kingsley, I don’t remember a single man of any color playing a Hebrew slave being given a line of dialogue, unlike the Egyptians which did cast some different ethnicities in small supporting roles.
So what is the point of Exodus: Gods and Kings? To make money by retelling a familiar story most people know and to which they already have an attachment? Alright, but more specifically, there has to be a grander reason than that to tell this specific story. Was it an attempt to retell the story of Moses as if historically accurate? Or to tell the message of power and freedom that still effects us today? If so, the film fails to do either effectively or with any nuance. I believed at one point the emphasis was on the nature of brotherhood, which would be a logical take on the story of Moses and Ramesses (especially considering Ridley Scott’s dedication to his brother Tony).; but if that were the case, doing nothing more than having Turturro telling us of this brotherhood, before Scott immediately cut their ties, fractures that aspect of the story completely. Bale and Edgerton have none of the chemistry to suggest such a bond of brotherhood in the few scenes they have together, and Bale especially seems completely unaffected by the loss of his brother.
I stand with the public saying they won’t pay to see this movie (I didn’t), but this also isn’t a movie worth the debate behind it. There are so many issues wrong with the film on a technical, structural level, that debating the big issues of this film should be saved for a movie which merits the debate and attention. There is nothing grand or epic here except the waste.
Lesley Coffin is a New York transplant from the midwest. She is the New York-based writer/podcast editor for Filmoria and film contributor at The Interrobang. When not doing that, she’s writing books on classic Hollywood, including Lew Ayres: Hollywood’s Conscientious Objector and her new book Hitchcock’s Stars: Alfred Hitchcock and the Hollywood Studio System.
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firehosethe eternal reward for becoming a meme is humiliating endorsement deals
firehose'nobody wants to direct it, nobody wants to star in it, and also it can’t get a signal if you hold your finger in the wrong spot'
After checking out the latest model of the Steve Jobs biopic at her local Universal store in November, Natalie Portman considered whether or not it was really the right movie for her. The salesperson assured her that it will star Michael Fassbender as Jobs for some reason, with Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak and a script from Aaron Sorkin. That sounded mostly good, but Portman keeps up with tech news, so she’s heard that the project is known for having issues. Like, for example, the fact that a poorly received Jobs biopic beat it to the market, nobody wants to direct it, nobody wants to star in it, and also it can’t get a signal if you hold your finger in the wrong spot.
The Universal employee she spoke with was very confident, though, and he claimed that Danny Boyle would direct, which also sounded pretty good, but ...
firehose"farts" goyer
Another D.C. television show is in the works: The Hollywood Reporter's saying that David S. Goyer's going to spearhead the creation of a Gotham-style origin story for Superman called, of course, Krypton.
Because they've just taken out an ad asking the Academy to consider the movie about giant robots blowin' shit up for Best Picture, as well as pretty much every other available Oscar. Transformers 4 was the least egregiously awful movie in the franchise, but does that achievement make it Oscar-worthy? I say thee nay.
firehose' The child-support system as we know it dates to the 1970s. It was originally a bipartisan policy reform, designed primarily to serve a population of parents who were divorced and steadily employed. Divorce meant there had been a marriage in the first place, and that custody agreements had likely been worked out. Steady employment meant the system could garnish wages directly from a parent’s paycheck if necessary.
Today, however, the lives of many low-income parents look dramatically different. Marriage rates among the poor have plummeted, so there often is no divorce to provide a formal structure for parents’ responsibilities. And employment prospects for men with low education are dismal. “We have a 1970s narrative about a 2010s reality,” Edin said.
...
Though mothers undoubtedly have benefited from the child-support system, there’s also a case to be made that they are its victims in a way, too. Unlike parents themselves, the formal system assumes that the custodial parent is the only one with real authority. “If we give in to the notion that the mom ‘owns’ the child, if that’s the default position, then the mom is also responsible for the child,” Edin said. “Moms just end up holding the bag for everything, and men are cast out of society. That is a very bad deal for women.” ... more than $100 billion in child-support payments are still in arrears, and research suggests that most of that is essentially uncollectible because the fathers simply do not have the money. (About a quarter of that money is owed to the government.)'
As seen in a video uploaded by bd594, a sweater claiming the title “World’s Ugliest Christmas Sweater” features lights and a fully operational toy train set. The video includes tips for wearing the sweater, like using it to serve drinks or to use caution when wearing it while walking a dog.
firehoseaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Corporate empires are built through strategic migrations into natural adjacencies. No one knows this better than Mark Wahlberg, the former Funky Bunch proprietor who has since extended his footprint into acting, television production, fast-casual dining, and soon, if he has his druthers, law enforcement.
According to TMZ, that’s the end game of Wahlberg’s recent filings with the Massachusetts Parole Board seeking the expungement of his felony assault conviction, stemming from a 1988 incident in which a 16-year-old Wahlberg attacked two Vietnamese men, leaving one partially blind. Wahlberg has since cleaned up his act and is now the sort of agreeable fellow who aggressively sends his regards to your mother, but the felony conviction remains on his record, precluding him from becoming a police reservist in Los Angeles.
Wahlberg’s interest in law enforcement comes as no surprise given his multiple acting roles playing cops in The Departed and ...
firehosevia multitasksuicide
people who got indicted and convicted
His victim was an elk. "Sending a cop to prison is a very tricky thing," said Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett. Read the rest
firehosevia ThePrettiestOne
drst:
If you’re protesting abortion, the Supreme Court says you can get right in women’s faces and scream at them on their way into the clinic. Because freedom of speech.
But if you try and protest the murder of a black man, you get tear gas fired at you.
While standing in your own backyard.
firehosevia ThePrettiestOne
#BlackLivesMatter has gone global
It’s not just Americans that care about racist policing practices across the U.S. In protests held worldwide this week, thousands of people showed up to demonstrate solidarity with their counterparts in the U.S. protesting the deaths of Ferguson teenager Mike Brown and New York man Eric Garner.
firehosevia ThePrettiestOne
Ramsey Orta, who filmed Eric Garner being put into a chokehold that led to his death. Orta has since been indicted on weapons charges stemming from an arrest by undercover officers earlier that month.
Police alleged that Orta had slipped a .25 caliber handgun into a teenage accomplice’s waistband outside a New York hotel. Orta testified that the charges were falsely mounted by police in retaliation for his role in documenting Garner’s death, but the grand jury rejected his contention, charging him with single felony counts of third-degree criminal weapon possession and criminal firearm possession.
firehoseI don't know if "smart" is the right term for Bostonians who wound up in San Diego
