The Old Reader

22 Oct 04:21

Boss Fight Books: Season 2 covers Metal Gear Solid, Spelunky, and more

by Danny Cowan

The second season of Boss Fight Books will feature in-depth analyses of Metal Gear Solid, Baldur's Gate 2, and other landmark games, independent publisher Gabe Durham announced this week. Boss Fight Books: Season 2 is a collection of six books that...

21 Oct 18:33

An Unresolved Issue: Evgeny Morozov, The New Yorker, and the Perils of "Highbrow Journalism" — Taming the American Idol

by hodad

Last week, The New Yorker published its October 13 issue. It contained an "A Critic at Large" piece by Evgeny Morozov, titled "The Planning Machine: Project Cybersyn and the Origins of the Big Data Nation."

Famed Tech Critic and History of Science Doctoral Student Evgeny Morozov

Within a few days, historians were chatting. Something was wrong. Morozov's essay clearly borrowed heavily from Eden Medina's book, Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile, a book that every reader should buy right now. Medina, who received her PhD from MIT, is an associate professor of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University and also co-editor of the volume, Beyond Imported Magic: Essays on Science, Technology, and Society in Latin America.

Indeed, Morozov's essay was ostensibly a review of Cybernetic Revolutionaries. Yet, Morozov only once mentioned Medina, and the mention came well into his text. To add insult to injury, citation was glancing at best: "As Eden Medina shows in 'Cybernetic Revolutionaries,' her entertaining history of Project Cybersyn, [Stafford] Beer set out to solve an acute dilemma that Allende faced." The placement of the mention as well as its wording could and did give many readers the impression that all of the ideas and the work that went into the essay were Morozov's, but they weren't.

Eden Medina, Associate Professor at Indiana University

Historians of technology, especially experts in computer history, and other scholars were angry. They took to Twitter and other social media platforms to draw attention to the situation and shame Morozov for his behavior. On the mailing list of SIGCIS, the world's foremost organization of computer historians, members hashed out the ethical lapses of Morozov's essay. Talk on the SIGCIS list became increasingly heated. On Twitter, Meryl Alper, a PhD candidate in Communication at USC's Annenberg School, pointed out that there was an additional irony: Medina's "work highlights power imbalances in knowledge production and circulation." In the Medina-Morozov situation, we have a well-known tech critic (Morozov) and a powerful periodical (The New Yorker) borrowing heavily from a young, female professor's work without due recognition. Don't mind her. She's merely "entertaining."

At some point during the week, Janet Browne, a professor in Harvard University's History of Science department (where Morozov is currently a graduate student), wrote the executive committee of SIGCIS. She asked its leaders to remove two posts from its "blog" that alleged plagiarism on Morozov's part. Furthermore, she claimed that the issue was "now resolved," that no one had found evidence of plagiarism, and that the paucity of citations to Medina's work was fitting with the genre of "highbrow journalism."

The mailing list isn't a blog, so there was nothing to be done there, but the issue of plagiarism is a difficult and murky one. I have not alleged that Morozov plagiarized, and I have had questions for anyone who has made that claim. But plagiarism has several definitions. The most narrow definition focuses only on the direct borrowing of language. I haven't seen anyone claim that Morozov's essay did that. Yet broader definitions of plagiarism include borrowing from an author's argument and research without proper attribution, and it is understandable that some people feel that the Medina-Morozov affair is a case of plagiarism (even if we ultimately believe that such feelings are misplaced).

An Image that Scholars Passed around on Twitter in the Context of the Medina-Morozov Affair

(I've been pleased to learn that the above image on plagiarism was put out by the Poynter Institute. You can find the original post, which contains several other insights, here.)

More troubling to me is the claim that this situation is "now resolved." It isn't. (After word of Janet Browne's communication was shared with the SIGCIS membership, one historian sent out an email to the list titled, "Nothing to See Here, Please Move Along . . . ") And I do not believe that we can invent new genres, like "highbrow journalism," to wiggle our way out of traditional ethical norms around writing. It is this issue that I want to focus on in this post because it is a real problem and it has every appearance of becoming a worse one.

At least since I entered graduate school in 2005, there has been increasing talk of and pressure for historians (and likely other academics) to write for mainstream publications and communicate via other popular media. For too long, the thinking goes, academics have been writing only for each other. It's time to reach out, to share our thinking with the general public. Blogs, Twitter, podcasts—so many tools have become a necessary part of the engaged academic's arsenal. And there is amazing stuff being done in the popular arena in the history of science and technology (HOST). NPR's Radiolab is probably the most famous case. But great pieces on HOST are also appearing at the Guardian, Slate, The Atlantic, and, yes, even The New Yorker.

But there's a question: what should historians produce for pop outlets? Academic historical works take years to research and write. You can pop one or two aspects of your research and maybe even write a book for a trade press, but in the end, if you want to produce regularly for popular venues, you are going to have to draw from other sources. Under such conditions, there is going to be a temptation to lean heavily on other people's work and present syntheses thereof.

Today, so much "news," online and elsewhere, is just rewritten postings of stories that were originally written elsewhere by others. In the first episode of the new television series, Gracepoint, a journalist character complains to her boss, "All I'm doing right now is polishing press releases." We live in a world of recycling. It would be sad if historians are willing to join others in forgetting ethical standards, especially ones about others' work and thoughts. It is a trend worth resisting.

Even before the Medina-Morozov case, we have already seen cases where pop writers have borrowed too heavily from academic historians. In September, Latif Nasser, who received his doctorate from the Harvard History of Science program, published a piece titled "Helen Keller and the Glove that Couldn't Hear" at The Atlantic. The article recounted the fascinating story of a visit at MIT between Helen Keller and Norbert Wiener, the "father of cybernetics." It's a good story, and Nasser's telling of it is clear and enticing. The problem was that the first version of it published did not make clear that it was almost wholly a retelling of Mara Mills' essay, "On Disability and Cybernetics: Helen Keller, and the Hearing Glove," which was published in the journal Differences. Mills also got her PhD from the Harvard History of Science program and is now an assistant professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU. As her webpage states, she is "completing a book (On the Phone: Deafness and Communication Engineering) on the significance of phonetics and deaf education to the emergence of 'communication engineer' in early twentieth-century telephony; this concept and set of practices later gave rise to information theory, digital coding, and cybernetics." (A list of her publication is here.)

One thing that separates the Mills-Nasser situation from the Medina-Morozov one, however, is that, as soon The Atlantic realized there was a problem, it responded.

It's worth pointing out, though, that some believe that there was still a real issue at hand.

The fact that Nasser and the editors of The Atlantic would use a scholar's research so cavalierly is troubling. Far more troubling is the response that so far has come from Morozov (hostility) and The New Yorker (to my knowledge, silence).

When scholars began questioning Morozov's essay on Twitter, Morozov went on the attack. He told Nathan Ensmenger, an influential computer historian and Medina's colleague as a professor at Indiana University, "As I said, you simply don't know what you are talking about." When Ensmenger suggested that maybe he (Ensmenger) needs to learn how to read a book review, Morozov responded, "Yeah, you do, actually."

Morozov's self-defense has been that The New Yorker's reviews, including "A Critic at Large" pieces, do not mention the authors and books that they are reviewing with great frequency. (In other words, a single mention gets the job done.) As Ensmenger and others have pointed out, though, a quick survey of New Yorker reviews, including "A Critic at Large" reviews, shows frequent mentions and, more important, early mentions of the works under review.

Moreover, Morozov wrote on Twitter "The main reason to mention the author more than once in that format is if you are arguing with them." Bull. See, for instance, Louis Menand's "The De Man Case," which is also "A Critic At Large" book review, in the March 24, 2014 issue of The New Yorker. Menand mentions the author he is reviewing, Evelyn Barish, early and often and in all kinds of circumstances. For example, "From what Barish found, it seems that this was wishful thinking." (Menand would have been a good person for Morozov to look to in writing his piece since Menand writes for the magazine and is a renowned scholar, as Morozov aspires to be.)

In response to people questioning his sourcing of Medina, Morozov put up a post on his Tumblr, titled "Some notes on my cybernetic socialism essay." He spent most of the piece describing all of the work he had done, which is utterly beside the point when it comes to proper attribution.

Morozov posted this picture to Twitter as evidence that he had done research

Yet, Morozov also admitted in his Tumblr post, "But it's a book review essay, and I do mention the book under review."

On his blog, Morozov writes, "It's probably not obvious to people who haven't read Medina's book AND all the materials that I've read but: I'm not actually drawing on her book when I'm summarizing quite a few things in my piece." True enough. But notice that, by definition, this makes Morozov nearly the only person on the planet who can judge when he was borrowing from Medina and when he was coming up with his own material. The fact is that his telling of the story was simply too close for scholars to tell it apart from Medina's. That's a problem, a problem avoided through citation.

Other historians have also suggested that Morozov drew on works that he did not cite at all, including Andrew Pickering's The Cybernetic Brain, which recounts the correspondence between Brian Eno and Stafford Beer, something that Morozov writes about in his essay. When the historian of computing, David C. Brock, a Senior Research Fellow at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, pushed Morozov on this point. Morozov replied, "Pickering's book was duly read when it came out and it failed to impress. Actually, I found it awful." Here, Morozov repeats a mistake that he also made in his Tumblr post, when he wrote, "Am I absolutely happy with Medina's book? No. In fact, I even have minor quibbles with it." We don't cite other authors because we agree or disagree with them but because the hard work they have done has taught us something.

Moreover, we cite because it often becomes unclear what are our ideas and what are the ideas of those we have read. Here Morozov is not reassuring. After Morozov put up his Tumblr post explaining his essay, a fan asked him a question.

Almost every study I have ever seen shows that we tend to overestimate the accuracy of our memory (just as we overestimate our ability to "multitask"). Morozov asks concerned readers to trust his blessings.

I have some sympathy for Nasser and Morozov. I am hard at work on my first piece of historical writing for a popular magazine. I know how hard it is to keep things tight, get the flow right, and avoid weighing the text down with academic bullshit. But I also know how my piece draws on others' research. I will cite them. If an editor would not let me give credit where credit is due, I would walk away. At least I hope I would.

On Twitter, the historian Patrick McCray, a professor at University of California—Santa Barbara, began discussing the Medina-Morozov affair with the hashtag #faust. (About a year ago, McCray wrote an interesting blog post on Morozov, which included reflections on Morozov's relationship to academic norms.) #Faust is right. We live in a world full of intense pressures, and writers sometimes face Faustian bargains. What will we choose?

The fact remains that no matter how much archival research Evgeny Morozov did, his essay drew heavily on Eden Medina's fine and award-winning book, Cybernetic Revolutionaries, and he did not make that at all clear.

READ THIS (AWARD-WINNING) BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If what I have said above makes sense—and I would be more than happy to hear that I am wrong—this situation is not resolved. Any suggestion that it is resolved might be interpreted (perhaps misinterpreted) as an attempt to quash this controversy. This situation is unresolved, but there are straightforward steps to resolve it:

• Evgeny Morozov must apologize. Publicly. It doesn't matter if he didn't intend to do anything wrong. He did. His essay failed to properly acknowledge its sources. The placement and wording of his mention of Medina give readers a false impression. Morozov should make his sources clear in a written statement and confess his wrongs. His apology must be public because the damages that result from these kinds of violations go beyond the personal to the level of communities of inquiry and, ultimately, to the level of creative humanity. He also needs to drop his defensive, arrogant, and hostile attitude. Morozov's Twitter handle is "There are useful idiots. Look around." How might that worldview have contributed to this situation? Did he find Medina useful?

• The New Yorker has not responded in any formal way. It must. This situation is partly a result of faulty editing at the magazine. The online version of Morozov's essay should be edited with the proper notations that changes were made because of this ethical problem. The magazine should issue an apology and correction in print.

• Academics should begin a process of discernment about their relationship with journalism. We must consider what norms will guide us no matter where we are working. Some historians have said that they are going to teach the Medina-Morozov situation in their classes as a case of ethical violations. A few have even suggested that they will teach it as a plagiarism case. One historian claimed that we must go further and think about how we will handle our graduate students if they break such ethical codes.

To begin with, however, we scholars must speak out when we see these kinds of violations happening. The Medina-Morozov situation scares some people. I had a friend say, maybe partly in jest, that he didn't want to speak up because he is "terrified of the Harvard Mafia." Others have said that they have no desire to upset editors at The New Yorker. (Oh, dreams of publishing in The New Yorker, you dissipate with each passing word.)

But we have to stand up for each other. If we don't, who will?

Original Source

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21 Oct 01:32

[Hiring] Sr. UX Designer @ Puppet Labs - Portland, OR

Apply Here

We're hiring a Senior User Experience Designer to do excellent user-centered design. One of our company values is “user delight,” and you will be responsible for this on your projects. You will assure that the the product accomplishes the job for which our customers hire it and work with our UX research team to verify this with real customers. You will interpret the results of these user engagements to improve the product in the right direction.

UX in Puppet is much more than the GUI: we also design APIs and command-line tools. Puppet is a very technical product and our users are commensurately so. You should have an affinity for technology and empathy for people who do technical jobs. As a UX team we work closely with engineering. We don’t create perfect specifications and then throw them over the wall; we create prototypes of increasing fidelity and use them to communicate.

You need to understand the architecture, implementation, and conventions of browser-based applications well enough to design for them effectively. You don’t need to be able to write or understand backend code. You should be able to understand and edit HTML and CSS, although you won't be responsible for producing it.

You must be fluent at communicating with users, customers, developers, and internal stakeholders. You will establish and foster communication with project stakeholders. You will concretely relate your design decisions to business goals and user needs. You will explain and evangelize UX to non-designers and help good designers improve and learn. You must be opinionated about design and development processes and passionate about improving them.

Qualifications

You must have the taste to tell good from great and the inability to leave something good. We expect the most qualified candidates to have at least 7 years experience in most of these areas:

Designing and prototyping UIs and workflows at multiple levels of fidelity.
Testing UX artifacts and in-development products with customers and using the results to improve.
Experience with and love for an agile, iterative environment.
Well-versed in the artifacts of our profession, their uses, overuses, and downfalls, e.g., user stories, workflows, wireframes, paper prototypes, interactive prototypes.
Excellent understanding of how browser-based applications work.
Working productively as part of a team that ships product.
Requires contact with others (face-to-face, by telephone, virtual meetings, VOIP or otherwise) and the ability to work and interact in a group or team.
Requires logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions or approaches to problems.

Feel free to PM with questions!

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21 Oct 01:30

Photo

firehose
aye aye starship captain saucie ma'am

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20 Oct 23:19

Celebrate Final Fantasy 6's birthday with... Wu-Tang Clan?

by Philip Kollar

firehose
"The Wu-Tang Clan, the legendary kings of rap, espers buried deep within their 36th chamber of skill, come forth into a land on the brink of destruction. The evil magic-abusing warlord Kefka holds legions of rappers and producers under his iron grip, using his Slave Crowns to make us work for him."

1. Those In Power 02:05
2. Magic Ruins Everything Around Me 05:00
3. Got Your Treasure 04:00
4. Figaro Kids 03:36
5. Shimmy Shimmy Strago 02:58
6. Beasts Under The Surface 04:47
7. R.E.C. The Opera 03:30
8. Rebel Daggers 03:10
9. Da Mystery of Shadow-Boxin' 04:28
10. Escape 03:57
11. The Returners 04:19
12. Battle Pit 03:23
13. Epitaph For The World 03:14
14. The Crew Is Back 05:20

On October 20th, 1994, one of the most influential role-playing games of the 16-bit era was released in North America: Final Fantasy 6 (originally released in the U.S. under the title Final Fantasy 3). To celebrate the anniversary of this momentous occasion, one fan has created the least likely memorial ever. And it is awesome.

Matt Hawkins is a composer and emcee from Lexington, Kentucky. He produces music under the name 2 Mello. His latest project, released today, is titled Final Fantasy - The 3-6 Chambers, a reference to Final Fantasy 6's dual names as well as 36 Chambers, the debut album of hip-hop collective Wu-Tang Clan.

Final Fantasy - The 3-6 Chambers is what's called a mashup album — something where an artist combines two separate pieces of music to create a strange, catchy hybrid. In this case, Hawkins has combined the in-game music of Final Fantasy 6 with tracks from Wu-Tang Clan, and they fit together shockingly well.

This isn't Hawkins' first game-influenced mashup. In early 2013 he released Chrono Jigga, which mixed music from Chrono Trigger with lyrics from Jay-Z. A follow-up project blended rapper Nas and the tunes of the Castlevania series. These projects proved incredibly successful; Hawkins calls the reaction from fans "unexpected and marvelous."

"My intention was just to see how many people would actually like these two things together," Hawkins told Polygon in an interview today. "I ended up hearing all kinds of stories, from a guy telling me that I helped him finally understand hip-hop through the perspective of games, to people saying that I brought their buried nostalgia for games out of the closet."

Hawkins noted that copyright issues surrounding mashups can be "very hazy."

"It's still a new idea, even though mashups have been going on for a while," he said. "They are usually released for free, which does not mean that mashup artists couldn't be prosecuted, but it is kind of a 'we'll overlook you' thing, like brownbagging with alcohol. Also they aren't keen to pay for a legal battle with someone who isn't making money."

Hawkins says he's run into a few sites pulling his mashups to "avoid copyright concerns," but otherwise he hasn't had any problems.

Despite the great success of these mashup projects, he plans to move on to something different next. Hawkins says The 3-6 Chambers is the conclusion of a trilogy, and it will be his last mashup work for a while.

"I'm definitely going to focus on original work," Hawkins said. "Everything I make will be somewhat tinged by my experience with game music, but I want to focus on pure hip-hop and more ambient work as well."

Hawkins' impressive mashups have also led to paying work. He's currently creating an original soundtrack for the upcoming Kickstarter-funded indie game Read Only Memories.

Whether you're a long-time fan of the Wu, a mashup enthusiast, or just a Final Fantasy 6 fan with no clue about music, you owe it to yourself to give a listen to The 3-6 Chambers. What a weird and wonderful birthday gift for a groundbreaking game.

20 Oct 23:18

GNU Emacs 24.4 Released Today

by timothy

firehose
"a built-in web browser"

New submitter Shade writes Well over one and a half years in the works, the latest and greatest release of GNU Emacs was made officially available today. Highlights of this release include a built-in web browser, improved multi-monitor and fullscreen support, "electric" indentation enabled by default, support for saving and restoring the state of frames and windows, pixel-based resizing for frames and windows, support for digitally signed ELisp packages, support for menus in text terminals, and much more. Read the official announcement and the full list of changes for more information.

Creating Auto-Size Speech Bubbles

by Mike Rankin

firehose
hmm

A while back, I answered a question on the InDesign User Forum about how to make rectangular speech bubbles that automatically resize to fit the text inside them. The person asking the question also had the requirement that the pointer part of the speech bubble not resize. Here’s the best solution that I could come up […]

20 Oct 23:12

'Injured' player magically recovers after being pushed off the field

by Ryan Rosenblatt

firehose
soccer sucks

Fun fact: Being disrespected can heal an injury.

Felipe Martins was hurt. He was so hurt. Until Joe Bendik was sick of him wasting time late in the match and pushed him off of the field so play could continue. Then Felipe was magically healed!

For years, doctors have been diagnosing injuries, giving anti-inflammatories, shooting people up with pain killers and even operating on them, but no more. Bednik has shown that all you need to do is lift him up and push him off the field.

Or Felipe is a faking, time-wasting pooface. Your choice.

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20 Oct 23:06

Slava Voynov's girlfriend reportedly hospitalized after alleged domestic assault

by Travis Hughes

firehose
'The NHL's collective bargaining agreement allows commissioner Gary Bettman the latitude to suspend, expel or terminate the contract of any player who is guilty of off-ice conduct which violates league rules or "is detrimental to or against the welfare of the league or the game of hockey."

In cases like with Voynov, where no guilt has yet been proven, the league has the right to suspend a player pending a criminal investigation in situations "where the failure to suspend the player during this period would create a substantial risk of material harm to the legitimate interests and/or reputation of the league."'

TMZ reports that Kings defenseman Slava Voynov's girlfriend was hospitalized following an alleged domestic violence incident early Monday.

TMZ is reporting details of the alleged crime that led to the arrest and suspension of Los Angeles Kings defenseman Slava Voynov. The report claims that the the victim, who says she is in a relationship with Voynov, was injured badly enough to require hospitalization.

The report states that Voynov was arrested at the hospital after accompanying the alleged victim. The arrest came after 1 a.m. local time and TMZ reports that hospital staff called police, who then arrested Voynov. He was released on $50,000 bail, TMZ says.

Police in Redondo Beach, Calif. are expected to release more information about the arrest at a press conference Monday afternoon. The NHL's indefinite suspension bans Voynov from any team activities including games and practices, but he is getting paid while the investigation and legal process moves forward.

The Los Angeles Kings organization released the following statement regarding Voynov's arrest:

These developments are of great concern to our organization. We support the NHL's decision to suspend Slava Voynov indefinitely during this process, and we will continue to take appropriate action as the legal proceedings and the investigation by the NHL take their course.

The NHL's collective bargaining agreement allows commissioner Gary Bettman the latitude to suspend, expel or terminate the contract of any player who is guilty of off-ice conduct which violates league rules or "is detrimental to or against the welfare of the league or the game of hockey."

In cases like with Voynov, where no guilt has yet been proven, the league has the right to suspend a player pending a criminal investigation in situations "where the failure to suspend the player during this period would create a substantial risk of material harm to the legitimate interests and/or reputation of the league."

20 Oct 23:03

NFL.com: 'Maybe [the Atlanta Falcons] is the gig Nick Saban jumps at'

by Jason Kirk

firehose
fuck the Falcons

Saban seems set at Alabama for the time being, but the Falcons might be smart to seek someone similar to him. Maybe someone like the coach at Florida State.

Odds are good that Mike Smith will not be the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons much longer. He's one of the two best coaches in franchise history, along with one-time NFC champion Dan Reeves, and should be remembered fondly. But the 2-5 returns in 2014 suggest with fervor that the flaws Smith's teams showed in last year's 4-12 run and even at their 13-3 heights were not flukes.

I say all that to say that NFL.com's Adam Schein delivers this in a fair-minded column on the temperature of Smith's seat:

Maybe this is the job that attracts the next big-name college coach. Maybe this is the gig Nick Saban jumps at, with his ties to front-office folks in Atlanta. Maybe it's the next hot NFL assistant, or the currently-out-of-work coach with a Super Bowl ring.

The four-time BCS champion has already tried the NFL thing, going 15-17 with the Miami Dolphins in between his championship run at LSU and his current championship run at Alabama. (But if those Dolphins had landed Drew Brees... ) And he just signed an NFL-grade contract to stay with the Tide after Texas rumors, putting him at $7 million in salary annually, just shy of Sean Payton's deal. And he's said he doesn't want to go back to the NFL and that he's too old at 62 to start over elsewhere, for what that's worth.

That connection to the Falcons includes general manager Thomas Dimitroff's especially high opinion of Saban, a fellow member of the Bill Belichick tree. When Dimitroff decided to trade for Alabama's Julio Jones in 2011, he was taking a player Saban had praised well beyond usual Saban levels and declining to follow Belichick's personal advice not to spend so many draft picks. Dimitroff also picked a Saban lineman, guard Mike Johnson, in 2010.

Our sites on these teams

Atlanta Falcons blog The Falcoholic Alabama Crimson Tide blog Roll 'Bama Roll

So if Dimitroff were in full charge of the process, you could imagine Saban's agent getting a call. (Saban's agent gets a lot of calls, some of which make both him and Saban richer.) But owner Arthur Blank will also be involved, especially with Dimitroff's own performance in question after a "Hard Knocks"-publicized GET TOUGHER offseason campaign that appears to have gained no ground. And if Blank wants a tough coach who'd sell tickets in the Southeast and has won almost everywhere he's been, he'd also think about Saban.

Is Nick Saban likely to leave Alabama? No. He has a chance over the next few years to go down as the greatest Crimson Tide coach ever, which is about the highest acclaim a football coach could ever reach. He's got the country's most blue-chip-loaded roster for years to come. And, like he says, he's already tried the NFL.

But Saban is an example of a kind of coach that the Falcons, a team in a college-first market, would be wise to consider. Ideally, a younger one who hasn't already tried the NFL and would be more suited to the Falcons roster's biggest strength.

Since we're just thinking out loud here, Florida State's 49-year-old Jimbo Fisher is both a former Saban coordinator and a pro-style offensive mind who could do terrible things to defenses with Matt Ryan and Jones at his disposal, for example.

20 Oct 23:02

Referee abandons match after 5 players pretend to be hurt at same time

by Ryan Rosenblatt

firehose
3:20 on the video

Innovative tactics.

Defensor Bolivar were losing 4-1 to La Bocana later in the first leg of their Copa Peru semifinal and had two men sent off, so they were getting their behinds kicked with the potential for more behind kicking.

Their solution? Everyone pretend to be hurt.

Everyone might be an exaggeration, but they had five players fall to the ground and pretend to be hurt, which is more than they had players standing upright (four).

The goal was to the get the match abandoned. The rules require that teams have at least seven players playing and, after the "injuries," they only had four.

The referee did as they wished, abandoning the match with eight minutes left to play, but it may not have the payoff they hoped. The FA is debating what to do about the second leg, including making Bolivar forfeit it. Personally, I would make them play the match with just four players, while five others lay on the ground and if they get stepped on, they get stepped on.

As for La Bocana's opinion, they posted the video online simply to embarrass Bolivar.

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20 Oct 22:54

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20 Oct 22:45

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20 Oct 22:44

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autoreshare

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20 Oct 22:43

According to Scientists, Sex Was Invented In Scotland - Ooch aye.

by Victoria McNally

jamie

Not by Scotsmen, sadly—it was prehistoric fish. But a girl can dream.

A team of scientists in Australia believe that they’ve discovered the the very first species to ever reproduce via copulation—meaning they’ve uncovered the first organisms that ever had to rub their genitals against one another, which is the preferred method for most mammals. The culprits? An ancient, bony species of fish that lived near what is now Scotland some 385 million years ago.

While observing fossils of this fish species, called Microbrachius dicki (snerk), Flinders University professor John Long noticed a small L-shaped “appendage” coming off the side of one of the specimens. It’s probably a tribute to the respectability of Flinders University as a scientific institution that Long didn’t immediately think “well duh, that’s a penis” and instead investigated further. Of course, it was a penis, according to the research they published in Nature journal. But that’s not the point.

hSbE0

So how did these fish make the trip to bone town? With “bony claspers.” Oof, did it just get warm in here?

“These are the grooves that they use to transfer sperm into the female,” Long, who later found a corresponding set of grooves on the female specimen, told BBC News. “They couldn’t have done it in a ‘missionary position.’ The very first act of copulation was done sideways, square-dance style.”

But wait, it gets sexier! He continued:

“The little arms are very useful to link the male and female together, so the male can get this large L-shaped sexual organ into position to dock with the female’s genital plates, which are very rough like cheese graters.

“They act like Velcro, locking the male organ into position to transfer sperm.”

We can’t imagine what you’re thinking this fish looks like right now.—certainly not like Jamie Frasier, that’s for damn sure. Maybe start picturing this instead:

Now picture that, square-dancing.

But the real kicker is that the researchers think these historic fishy sexcapades were actually pretty short lived; eventually the species died out, and most fish continued to spawn (that’s when the eggs are fertilized outside of the body rather than inside it) instead. Copulation wouldn’t be seen again for another couple million years, in the ancestors of sharks and rays. Which, I mean, yeah—if modern human sex involved allowing a male’s grooves to dock into my cheese grater genital plates, I’d probably be more into the idea of leaving my eggs at home and letting some dude fertilize them at his leisure, too. Ick.

(via BBC News, fossil via South Australian Museum)

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20 Oct 22:42

In Ancillary Sword, There Are Worse Things Than War with the Empire

by Annalee Newitz

In Ancillary Sword, There Are Worse Things Than War with the Empire

Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice swept all the major science fiction awards last year, and made her legions of fans. Now, in her much-anticipated sequel Ancillary Sword, we have a chance to return to the incredible world she built.

Zoë Quinn Talks #GamerGate On MSNBC

by The Mary Sue Staff

Zoë Quinn has experienced two months of harassment at the hands of GamerGaters. Today, she followed in Brianna Wu’s footsteps and appeared on MSNBC to talk about the abuse she’s experienced and what it means for other women in the tech and gaming industries.

But remember: GamerGate is about ethics.

Just get a load of how little they care about @TheQuinnspiracy. “It’s not about her” yeah okay. pic.twitter.com/52eGyGKiJh

— miles m (@thrillith) October 20, 2014

Previously in a hate mob that harasses women on the internet

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20 Oct 22:38

Petit Computer and SmileBASIC: Program BASIC on Nintendo DSi & 3DS

by Tony DiCola

Petit Computer and SmileBASIC are two fun looking applications that let you program a Nintendo DSi or 3DS handheld in BASIC! Both were created by SmileBoom and are distributed in Nintendo’s eShop. You can check out Petit Computer on the DSi today, and SmileBASIC on the 3DS later in 2015. These bring back fond memories of programming games in QBASIC!

We have brought back BASIC, a programming language fondly remembered by anyone who programmed computers back in the day. In the golden age of BASIC, it was easy for anyone to write a program. Now we offer you this exact same capability, but this time with the advanced features of the Nintendo DSi™ system. Everyone can easily enjoy creating their own original programs, from those who ever dreamed of being a programmer when they were younger, to the young programmers of today. Many programs are included to ensure that you can fully enjoy using BASIC. The included programs were also written in BASIC, so you can add new features to them in order to enhance your games. You can also take the programs and data you create and convert them to QR codes that can be shared with friends who also have Petit Computer on their Nintendo DSi systems.

Petit Computer

SmileBASIC

20 Oct 22:38

Adafruit’s Ecosystem of Innovation @othermachine #manufacturing

by adafruit

Adafruit’s Ecosystem of Innovation @ Other Machine Co..

Roughly three months ago, Fried added an Othermill to Adafruit’s workshop and says, “Our testing procedure is much faster now. We can design and revise our circuit boards in-house within hours instead of weeks.” Adafruit backed Othermill’s Kickstarter campaign and promoted it to their community the very day it launched. Fried asserts, “This is the first high-precision PCB mill we’ve seen, with great software too!” She adds, “I can now make precision circuits and prototypes for manufacture without getting a vat of chemicals. It’s also allowed many Adafruit staffers to learn PCB design and manufacture because of the fast turnaround times and low barrier to entry.”

Chinese government launches man-in-middle attack against iCloud

by Sean Gallagher

A screen capture shows the warning of a fake iCloud.com certificate—signed by an official Chinese certificate authority.

GreatFire.org

GreatFire.org, a group that monitors censorship by the Chinese government’s national firewall system (often referred to as the “Great Firewall”), reports that China is using the system as part of a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack on users of Apple’s iCloud service within the country. The attacks come as Apple begins the official rollout of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus on the Chinese mainland.

The attack, which uses a fake certificate and Domain Name Service address for the iCloud service, is affecting users nationwide in China. The GreatFire.org team speculates that the attack is an effort to help the government circumvent the improved security features of the new phones by compromising their iCloud credentials and allowing the government to gain access to cloud-stored content such as phone backups.

Chinese iCloud users attempting to log in with Firefox and Chrome browsers would have been alerted to the fraudulent certificate. However, those using Mac OS X’s built-in iCloud login or another browser may not have been aware of the rerouting, and their iCloud credentials would have been immediately compromised. Using two-step verification would prevent the hijacking of compromised accounts.

Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

20 Oct 22:37

Does Yosemite have a privacy problem? Not exactly

by Russell Brandom

firehose
'There's already a public privacy policy for the new feature, as well as a more technical look at the protections in the most recent iOS security report. That document breaks down five different kinds of information transmitted in a search: the approximate location, the device type, the client app (either Spotlight or Safari), the device's language settings and the previous three apps called up by the user. More importantly, all that information is grouped under an ephemeral session ID which automatically resets every 15 minutes, making it extremely difficult to trace a string of searches back to a specific user. That also makes the data significantly less useful to marketers, since it can't track behavior over any meaningful length of time. And most importantly, the data is transmitted over an HTTPS connection, so it can't be intercepted in transit.

The biggest concern is that a user might accidentally search their own computer for a sensitive file — in Post reporter Barton Gellman's example, "secret plans Obama leaked me" — and unwittingly reveal that search term to Apple more broadly. But under the new scheme, there wouldn't be anything to tie the search to Gellman himself other than the ephemeral ID. More importantly, users who are concerned about such a scenario can easily disable Spotlight's Suggestions feature, effectively disabling the attack.'

This morning, The Washington Post called out an unexpected privacy concern in Apple's new Yosemite operating system. Apple's Spotlight application, previously used to index material on a user's hard drive, has added a new Suggestions feature that points to external sites relevant to a given search term. As the Post article points out, that means search terms have to be transmitted back to Apple with a lot of extra information, including location data that the Post found to be precise enough to pin down a specific building.

On closer inspection, many of the claims are less damning than they seem

But on closer inspection, many of the claims are less damning than they seem. There's already a public privacy policy for the new feature, as well as a more technical look at the protections in the most recent iOS security report. That document breaks down five different kinds of information transmitted in a search: the approximate location, the device type, the client app (either Spotlight or Safari), the device's language settings and the previous three apps called up by the user. More importantly, all that information is grouped under an ephemeral session ID which automatically resets every 15 minutes, making it extremely difficult to trace a string of searches back to a specific user. That also makes the data significantly less useful to marketers, since it can't track behavior over any meaningful length of time. And most importantly, the data is transmitted over an HTTPS connection, so it can't be intercepted in transit.

The biggest concern is that a user might accidentally search their own computer for a sensitive file — in Post reporter Barton Gellman's example, "secret plans Obama leaked me" — and unwittingly reveal that search term to Apple more broadly. But under the new scheme, there wouldn't be anything to tie the search to Gellman himself other than the ephemeral ID. More importantly, users who are concerned about such a scenario can easily disable Spotlight's Suggestions feature, effectively disabling the attack.

20 Oct 22:36

3D-printed gun maker in Japan sentenced to two years in prison

by Carl Franzen

A 28-year-old former university employee was sentenced today in Japan to two years in prison for manufacturing plastic 3D-printed firearms in violation of national weapons laws, according to The Japan News. Yoshitomo Imura is said to have created at least two plastic guns at his home in Kawaski, Japan, that were capable of firing bullets, according to the report. He appears to be the first person in world history to receive a jail sentence for making 3D-printed firearms.

"flaunted his skills and knowledge."

Imura was previously an employee at the Shonan Institute of Technology, according to The Japan Times. He was arrested in May after posting videos and blueprints of his 3D-printed weapons online. Police reportedly seized five plastic weapons from his home. A video uploaded to file-sharing websites almost a year ago, allegedly created by Imura, shows the creation and firing of a 3D-printed "Zig Zag" revolver capable of firing six .38 caliber bullets, as Wired previously reported. While the prosecution in Imura's case called for a three-and-a-half year prison sentence, the judge certainly didn't go easy on Imura, saying he "flaunted his skills and knowledge and attempted to make gun controls toothless."

Japan has notoriously strict gun regulations, but Imura's case is not the first time in the world that authorities have tried to crack down on the burgeoning 3D-printed gun movement: police in the UK seized suspected 3D-printed gun components almost exactly a year ago, only to find out that they were likely just spare parts for the printer. The first 3D-printed firearm with firing capabilities was unveiled and demonstrated in early 2013 by Defense Distributed, a cohort of anti-establishment gunmakers from Austin, Texas, who previously expressed support for Imura.

20 Oct 22:30

Attorney Denied Hearing Delay Appears With Baby - ABC News

by hodad

firehose
"Ehrisman-Mickle, an immigration lawyer, brought her 4-week-old baby to court after Immigration Judge J. Dan Pelletier Sr. denied her request to delay a hearing that fell during her maternity leave. During the hearing, her baby began to cry, and Pelletier scolded her for inappropriate behavior."

In this Oct 7, 2014 photo released by Stacy Ehrisman-Mickle, Ehrisman-Mickle poses for a photo with her daughter, in Atlanta. Ehrisman-Mickle, an immigration lawyer, brought her 4-week-old baby to court after Immigration Judge J. Dan Pelletier Sr. denied her request to delay a hearing that fell during her maternity leave. During the hearing, her baby began to cry, and Pelletier scolded her for inappropriate behavior. (AP Photo/Stacy Ehrisman-Mickle) Close AP

An immigration judge in Atlanta denied an attorney's request to delay a hearing that fell during her six-week maternity leave and then scolded her in front of a packed courtroom when she showed up with her 4-week-old strapped to her chest and the infant began to cry, the attorney said.

When Stacy Ehrisman-Mickle took on two young brothers as clients in early September, she immediately filed a request to postpone their next hearing, which was set for a month later, she said. In an order denying her request, Immigration Judge J. Dan Pelletier Sr. wrote, "No good cause. Hearing date set prior to counsel accepting representation."

Reached by phone Thursday, Pelletier said immigration judges can't make public comment and referred questions to the public affairs office of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the branch of the Department of Justice that oversees immigration courts. That office said in an email it couldn't comment on the judge's action and that a complaint had been filed and was being processed.

Ehrisman-Mickle's clients came to her in early July for a consultation, but they couldn't afford to hire her right away, she said. They went to their first immigration court hearing on Sept. 2 without a lawyer and then came to Ehrisman-Mickle's office with their mother four days later, on a Saturday, to hire her.

Ehrisman-Mickle told them she would take their case but that their next hearing on Oct. 7 fell during her maternity leave. She told them she'd have to file a motion to delay the hearing but that it shouldn't be a problem because two other immigration judges had already granted similar motions based on letters from her doctor, she said.

She filed the motion Sept. 8 and it was received by the court the following day, she said. Pelletier ruled on the motion Oct. 2 and Ehrisman-Mickle's office received the decision the following day, the Friday before the Tuesday hearing, she said.

At home in bed, Ehrisman-Mickle was shocked when her secretary called to tell her the motion had been denied. Her truck driver husband was out of state, her 4-week-old daughter was too young for day care and she has no family in the area, she said.

"I was in a state of panic. I didn't know what to do with my baby," she told The Associated Press on Thursday.

She called her daughter's pediatrician to ask if it would be safe to bring the baby with her to court. The doctor told her it would be OK as long as she kept the infant in a carrier on her chest facing her body and didn't let anyone touch the baby.

During the hearing, her baby began to cry, and Pelletier scolded her for inappropriate behavior and commented that her pediatrician must be appalled that she was exposing the baby to so many germs in court, she said.

"I was embarrassed. I felt humiliated," she said.

Another lawyer who was present in the courtroom confirmed the details of Ehrisman-Mickle's story. He asked that his name not be used because he doesn't want the judge to retaliate against his clients.

Pelletier finally agreed to delay the hearing until after Ehrisman-Mickle is cleared by her doctor to return to work, she said.

Ehrisman-Mickle said she filed a formal complaint against Pelletier the same day as the hearing. An investigating judge called to get her side of the story after the complaint was filed but she hasn't heard anything further, she said.

Georgia State University College of Law associate professor Tanya Washington said it was reasonable of Ehrisman-Mickle to believe the judge would delay the hearing to accommodate her maternity leave. Furthermore, Ehrisman-Mickle demonstrated a real commitment to her clients by showing up with her baby, Washington said.

"I think the judge yelling at her for being unprofessional by appearing with her child is unreasonable, insensitive and unprofessional," Washington said.

Original Source

20 Oct 22:29

maryjopeace: JEAN-BAPTISTE MONDINO | TILDA SWINTON | POMELLATO...

firehose
TILDA

maryjopeace:

JEAN-BAPTISTE MONDINO | TILDA SWINTON | POMELLATO COLLECTION | 2014

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20 Oct 21:15

Great Job, Internet!: Rachel Maddow really likes Fugazi, Bad Brains

by Alex McCown

There’s something undeniably fascinating about seeing what kind of music celebrities listen to. Occasionally, it reveals something about their personality that you wouldn’t have guessed, like when Brian Williams revealed himself to be a massive Deer Tick fan, exposing his late-night listening habits in the process.

Other times, however, it’s delightfully on the nose, with the person professing a fondness for artists or genres you could’ve seen coming a mile away. Such is the case with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, who was asked during a visit to Late Night With Seth Meyers to compile a list of “angry punk songs to get you through the midterms” (elections, that is, not college exams), and was only too happy to comply. The resulting video demonstrates a true fondness for each artist selected, along with Maddow offering up extensive, politically relevant explanations for why she chose each song. While ...

20 Oct 20:57

Jughead Jones

firehose
HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII JUGGIE

Link (thanks, Ryan!)

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20 Oct 20:54

WikiLeaks is winning over Gamergate with a confusing Twitter campaign

by Adi Robertson

firehose
'Someone else pointed out that the wording made it sound like social justice warriors inside Gamergate wanted to assassinate Assange. "This is the most tenuous link to GamerGate and 'SJWs' I've seen yet," said another commenter. "The threat image that Assange links to comes from a small conservative paper writing in 2010. No link to games, feminism or even corruption."

As of this writing, WikiLeaks has not yet issued a statement on whether or not gamers are dead.'

It's far from an organized protest movement, but Gamergate — which ostensibly opposes unethical journalism and "social justice warriors" in video games — has managed to launch an undeniably political internet culture war. Its most outspoken celebrity supporters are associated with conservative politics, from Firefly and Full Metal Jacket star Adam Baldwin to Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident scholar at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. But they're both dwarfed by a somewhat more surprising group: WikiLeaks, which has spent the past week exhorting Gamergate to look at media corruption that goes "all the way to the top."

WikiLeaks' involvement in Gamergate dates back to mid-September, when founder Julian Assange participated in a Q&A session on Reddit to promote his latest book. Amidst questions about surveillance, terrorism, and Google's corporate power, one site user asked for his opinion on the removal of Gamergate-related comments on Reddit. "It's pathetic," Assange responded. "But censorship by companies controlling privatized political space is now almost a norm." Then, a connection was forged. The user, it turned out, had been "shadowbanned" by administrators, hiding their posts from other users. Reddit's admins soon said this had nothing to do with the question. In fact, moderators had approved it in spite of the ban (though the user said he had been banned for upvoting something Gamergate-related, which Reddit could not confirm with us.) But the meme didn't die: an anti-corruption movement had been silenced for speaking to a controversial figure with a known disdain for the press.

After the AMA, WikiLeaks' Twitter account officially came out in support of Gamergate... and promptly told its members to "level up" and look for problems outside gaming. "#GamerGate'ers should know that the pattern of censorship & cronyism they see is mirrored at the very top," it said alongside a link to a set of leaked diplomatic cables.

"Calls to assassinate #Assange? Just fine with #GamerGate's "SJW"'s."

For the next few weeks, WikiLeaks seems to have been silent, as Gamergate slowly festered within the enthusiast press. But in mid-October, two violent, credible threats put it on the mainstream radar. Developer Brianna Wu and her husband left home after receiving threats that appeared linked to Gamergate, making her the third woman since August to have done so. Wu's story got broad news coverage from outlets like the BBC, and soon after, feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian canceled a talk at Utah State University due to threats of a mass bombing and shooting. According to Twitter searches, that's about when WikiLeaks decided to rejoin the fray. "So you found out your media is corrupt. It is. Now go all the way to the top," it wrote on October 14th, linking to a recent Pando Daily interview with Assange.

Linking Gamergate, whose major grievances include games journalists contributing to crowdfunding campaigns and reviewers dinging games for sexist character design, to coverage of one of the biggest document leaks of the young century is a bit of a stretch. But it's maybe the most plausible of WikiLeaks' assertions. Its next tweet warned that "corrupt journalism has led to the deaths of millions," linking to a video where journalist John Pilger eviscerates his industry for publishing false reports about Hiroshima and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Over the past day, though, it's focused on accusing media outlets of hypocrisy for covering death threats against Sarkeesian in 2014 but not Assange in 2010. "Calls to assassinate #Assange? Just fine with #GamerGate's "SJW"'s," said one tweet, which has been retweeted nearly 600 times.

This tweet was, to be clear, extremely confusing. It linked to a 2010 pro-assassination piece by the Washington Times, a conservative newspaper that no one would describe as harboring social justice warriors. The other link was to a video called "Assassinating Assange," a supercut of politicians and pundits condemning Assange — from people calling for his actual death to what could probably be described more accurately as "character assassination." WikiLeaks clarified that it was trying to attack "pseudo 'liberal' papers" like the New York Times, which published a front-page story on Sarkeesian. "Lame anonymous tweet threats? An outrage. Broadcast assassination demands from senior figures? Just fine." Continuing in the social justice warrior vein, it said that "#Sweden's government funded "SJW"'s" and linked to a YouTube video in which young "radical feminist" women stage a Valerie Solanas-inspired assassination of a man. While this video stirred up controversy on men's rights blogs in 2011, it's not immediately clear why it's supposed to be "government funded," except that Assange is facing arrest in Sweden for alleged sexual assault.

"'Gamergate' is not interesting."

If you hadn't already guessed, WikiLeaks isn't particularly concerned with video games. "'Gamergate' is not interesting," it said when I asked about its views on the movement. "That highly apolitical youth suddenly awaken to broader censorship, media ownership is." More cynically, Assange's book came out last month, and Gamergate supporters and antagonists alike are checking the hashtag zealously. This is the best marketing opportunity anyone could hope for.

So how are members of Gamergate receiving it? "This is beautiful," wrote a Redditor who posted it to Kotaku In Action. "Wonder how they'll explain this one. 'Fighting for global freedom of information is now misogynistic!'" said another. But as with everything in Gamergate, not everyone was on board. "Can someone explain to me what these calls for assassination have to do with SJWs or GG?" one person asked. Someone else pointed out that the wording made it sound like social justice warriors inside Gamergate wanted to assassinate Assange. "This is the most tenuous link to GamerGate and 'SJWs' I've seen yet," said another commenter. "The threat image that Assange links to comes from a small conservative paper writing in 2010. No link to games, feminism or even corruption."

As of this writing, WikiLeaks has not yet issued a statement on whether or not gamers are dead.

20 Oct 20:47

Photo

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20 Oct 20:44

Joss Whedon, Boston Globe Journalist Smack Down “But GamerGate Is About Journalistic Ethics!” Argument - Really? Realllly?

by The Mary Sue Staff

gamergate

And GamerGate just keeps on churning. The last time we wrote about it, mainstream news organizations like CBS, PBS, and The New York Times were starting to get in on the action. One such publication is The Boston Globe, which ran a piece called “Gaming’s summer of rage” in late September. In it, author Jesse Singal identified the core of GamerGate as not concern over journalistic integrity, but instead “insecurity—profound insecurity—on the part of some male gamers reacting to their hobby of choice becoming more diverse and nuanced and, I dare say, emotionally intelligent.”

Surprisingly, GamerGate took this frank assessment of the hypocrisy of their movement to heart. Nahhhh, just messing with you. Singal was told that, to see what “the real GamerGate” is all about, he’d have to check out the subreddit KotakuInAction. Which he did. And then.

Ohhhh, and then.

The takedown to end all takedowns. That’s reposted below—I tried to snip some of the best bits from it, but honestly, it’s all so on-point—but to get you in the mood, here’s a little aperitif from Joss Whedon and some other excellent internet people:

Many good people think #GamerGate is about journalism & artistic freedom. That’s like working at #KlanDayKare. The name means hate, guys.

— Joss Whedon (@josswhedon) October 20, 2014

@Nelsormensch @kirkhamilton A cliched bloodthirsty roaming gang from post-apocalyptic fiction seems to be ruling gaming fandom right now.

— Felicia Day (@feliciaday) September 4, 2014

@AdamBaldwin please stop supporting this stupid cause.

— Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen) October 15, 2014

.@assclit I'm not a gamer. The misogyny of "GamerGate" sickened me, which you could have learned with two clicks of research.

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) October 14, 2014

Methinks it’s time to share this comic again:

Literally how #GamerGate looks to the rest of the world today. #StopGamerGate2014 http://t.co/5P1rYt0KzA pic.twitter.com/004qmto1ei — Donna The Dead (@MildlyAmused) October 15, 2014

Take it away, Singal. This in response to his Boston Globe piece being linked-to on KiA as “another poorly-researched hit-piece” [sic]:

Uh huh. That’s why at this very moment three of the top six posts on KIA—the subreddit I was explicitly instructed to visit if I wanted to see the real GamerGate—are about Wu and Sarkeesian (oh, I’m sorry, LW1 and LW3 [or is Wu 2? I can't keep track]) and social-justice warriors.

So, to recap:

Me: I don’t think this is really about corruption as much as it’s about discomfort with feminism. After all, a lot of the heat seems to be aimed at small female devs/commentators of a feminist bent.

GamerGaters on Twitter: Not true! So unfair! Go to KIA!

[Goes to KIA. Suspicions appear to be mostly confirmed.]

This has happened over and over and over again (I also looked into the 8chan board and some other “approved” places). As a journalist trying to be fair-minded about this, you can’t fucking win. If I’m arguing with someone from the NRA or the NAACP or some other established group, I can point to actual quotes from the group’s leadership. With you guys, any bad thing that happens is, by definition, not the work of A True GamerGater. It’s one of the oldest logical fallacies in the book.

So what is GamerGate “really” about? I think this is the kinda question a philosopher of language would tear apart and scatter the remnants of to the wind, because it lacks any real referent. You guys refuse to appoint a leader or write up a platform or really do any of the things real-life, adult “movements” do. I’d argue that there isn’t really any such thing as GamerGate, because any given manifestation of it can be torn down as, again, No True GamerGate by anyone who disagrees with it. And who gets to decide what is and isn’t True GamerGate? You can’t say you want a decentralized, anonymous movement and then disown the ugly parts that inevitably pop up. Either everything is in, or everything is out.

Anyway, faced with this complete lack of clarity, all I or other journalists can do, then, is journalism: We ask the people in the movement what they stand for and then try to tease out what is real and what is PR. And every every every substantive conversation/forum/encounter I’ve had with folks from GamerGate has led me to believe that a large part of the reason for the group’s existence is discomfort with what its members see as the creeping and increasing influence of what you call social-justice warriors in the gaming world.

I’m not just making this up based on the occasional Tweet or forum post. After my HuffPost Live appearance, I was invited into a Google Hangout about GamerGate by Troy Rubert, aka @GhostLev. I accepted, and when I got in just about everyone who spoke openly talked about how mad they were that progressive politics and feminism were impinging on gaming, which they saw as an area they had enjoyed, free of politics, forever. They were extremely open about this. A day or so later, another GamerGater, @Smilomaniac, asked me to read a blog post he’d written about his involvement in the movement in which he explicitly IDs as anti-feminist, and says that while some people claim otherwise, he thinks GG is an anti-feminist movement.

I believe him; I think GamerGate is primarily about anger at progressive people who care about feminism and transgender rights and mental health and whatever else (I am not going to use your obnoxious social-justice warrior terminology anymore) getting involved in gaming, and by what you see as overly solicitous coverage of said individuals and their games. And that’s fine! It’s an opinion I happen to disagree with, but “at least it’s an ethos.”

But this is only going to be a real debate if you guys can cop to your real-life feelings and opinions. You should have a bit more courage and put your actual motives front and center. Instead, because some of you do have a certain degree of political savvy, as is evidenced whenever GamerGaters on 8chan and elsewhere try to rein in their more unhinged peers, you’ve decided to go the “journalism ethics” route.

Unfortunately, that sauce is incredibly weak. There was no Kotaku review of “Depression Quest,” and fair-minded journalists will see through that line of attack right away since ZQ was receiving hate for DQ long before her boyfriend posted that thing. Journalists donating to crowdfunding campaigns? I bet if you asked 100 journalists you’d get 100 different opinions on whether this should be inherently off-limits (personal take is that it isn’t, but that journalists should certainly disclose any projects to which they donate). Collusion to strike at the heart of the gamer identity? Conservatives have been arguing that liberal journalists unfairly collude forever—I was on the “Journolist” that people wrongly claimed was coordinating pro-Obama coverage when really what we were doing, like any other listserv of ideologically like-minded people, was arguing with ourselves over everything. What happened was Gamasutra ran a column, that column went viral, and a lot of people responded to it. That sort of cross-site collusion doesn’t happen the way you think it does. When everyone’s writing about the same thing, that’s because the thing in question is getting a lot of discussion, which LA’s column did.

You guys know as well as I do that a movement based on the stated goal of regaining gaming ground lost to feminists and (ugh) SJWs would not do very well from a PR perspective. But you’re in a bind, because the ethics charges are 1) 98% false; 2) complicated to follow for the layperson; and 3) pretty clearly a ruse given the underlying ideology of the folks pushing this line forward.

(Important side note: A lot of the people calling for “journalistic ethics” quite transparently don’t know anything about journalism — to say that sites should clearly label what is and isn’t opinion, for example, is just plain weird, because a) that distinction is less and less relevant and is mostly a relic of newspaper days; and b) it’s a basic reading-comprehension thing; anyone who reads on a daily basis can tell, pretty simply from various cues in the narrative, whether they’re reading a work of “straight” journalism [outdated, troublesome term], “pure” opinion [again, bleh], or some combination of the two [which is what a lot of games coverage is].) [Editor's note: Emphasis mine, because booyah.]

So I’d make a call, one last time, for honesty: Stop pretending this is about stuff it isn’t. Acknowledge that you do not want SJWs in gaming, that you want games to just be about games. Again: I disagree, but at least then I (and other journalists! you do want coverage, don’t you?) could at least follow what the hell is going on. If your movement requires journalists to carefully parse 8chan chains to understand it, it gets an F- in the PR department.

You guys need to man and woman up and talk about what’s really on your mind, or stop whining about “biased” coverage and/or blaming it on non-existent conspiracies. And that’s my overlong two cents about your movement and why I’m having a lot of trouble taking it seriously.

(Edited right away to fix some stuff; more edits surely to come given that I wrote this quickly and in an under-caffeinated state. Feel free to snap a screenshot—I won’t be making any substantive changes.)

The comments are filled with a predictable number of screeds about how GamerGate really is about journalistic ethics, “my intellectualy dishonest friend.” But it’s Monday, and Monday doesn’t need my help being bad for the soul, so I’m not going to share any of that crap with you. At this point, you know what it says. I will, however, share my favorite comment, posted by glassspiider:

One thing about this that keeps causing little parts of my brain to die is the idea that the special snowflakes of the GG activist front claim to want objective reporting about video games. Doesn’t like 95% of VG “reporting” consist of reviews? I.e. critical reviews? Don’t those require the writer to take a position and/or state an opinion on the quality of the thing they’re reviewing? How do you make objective something that by its very definition is subjective?

It’s like people don’t even think about what they say befo— oh, wait.

(via Twitter, photo credit Levent Konuk via Shutterstock)

Previously in GamerGate

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20 Oct 20:44

local coffee roaster office robbed by real life con man [pics, video]

firehose
Portland Roasters

Hey redditors, my workplace was the victim of a pretty suave and cunning con man. It's a long shot, but if anyone has any info, please pass it on to us or the cops.

It was at the end of the workday on Saturday, September 20th. We were midway through a multi-week renovation of our front office and the con man posed as a painter to my boss while simultaneously posing as an IT guy to the real painters. He parked at the front of the building, strolled in casually dressed, shook hands with my boss and even got some coffee from the break room. He snuck into the server room and attempted to break the surveillance system, but he mistakenly left a large section of the system running. This is how we ended up having video of his methodical casing of our office.

He stole computers, monitors, keyboards, cell phones - pretty much anything and everything of value, even including Star Wars Pez dispensers. (That last one being a particularly irritating offence.)

You can reach our front office at 503-236-7378. Anonymity requests eagerly respected.

Police Contact and Case number forthcoming (thanks).

Vimeo Video Link

submitted by pdxroast
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