firehose

In an exciting development for people whose friends are all too broke to have HBO Go passwords they can share, AT&T is now offering a $39-a-month bundle through its website that includes broadband Internet and HBO Go. Oh, and Amazon Prime, who just kind of showed up. It was weird at first, but Amazon had a car and offered to drive, so everyone just shrugged their shoulders and went with it.

The new bundle is AT&T’s opening salvo in the cord-cutting wars, which soon will include Internet TV packages from Sony, Viacom, and Dish Network, as well as AT&T. Four providers, all mustering armies for battle against the corrupt, incestuous forces of Comcast so that the strongest among them may claim its rightful place as the One True King Of Streaming Content. If that analogy doesn’t make sense, don’t worry—it will once you ...

British actor and musician Idris Elba has announced that he’s releasing an album of music inspired by his experiences portraying South African leader Nelson Mandela. According to a promotional video posted by Elba, who sometimes raps and DJs under the name Driis, the album is an outgrowth of research he did while preparing to play the anti-apartheid activist and South African president for last year’s Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom. Working with both British and South African producers, Elba assembled Mi Mandela over the course of three weeks spent improvising and recording with musicians in Johannesburg after the film was completed.

We’re not going to lie: We honestly, sincerely hope this album is a huge success, solely because it might inspire Elba to make records about other people he’s portrayed over the years, and we desperately need Stacker Pentecost’s Stacked Party Jams and Stringer Bell ...

socialjusticekoolaid:

HAPPENING NOW (9.24.14): The situation in Ferguson is escalating quickly. Protests continue, following this morning’s burning of a Mike Brown memorial, and another frustrating Ferguson City Council meeting. Looks like the same “antagonize over de-escalate” tactics are back online. Prayers to all those out in the street of Ferguson right now fighting for their right to exist. #staywoke #farfromover (PT I, PT II, PT III)  

fearfield:

"anime is racially ambiguous" aka "these Asian characters with Asian names and Asian cultural markers made by Asian people don’t look like the hideously caricaturized narrow stereotypes of Asians that I’ve been used to seeing."

emilywk:

deducecanoe:

ourobousfamilia:

deducecanoe:

chickwithmonkey:

potootagath:

wingleader:

wakeupslaves:

the-goddamazon:

LOL man.

never forget white people did nothing first neither the best, they sleep and eat false propaganda,

Ugh, why the shit does that have to turn into a race thing? Why does EVERYTHING have to turn into a race thing?

because white people have made sure that everything is about race

as proved by the fact that when you say explorer, you think of a bunch of white guys walking the world and discovering it ~exotic wonders~ even though Zheng He travelled through Asia, to the Middle East, and even East Africa. But you’d likely never heard of him before.

Same reason you never heard of Ahmad Ibn Fadlan, an Arab traveller who, as early as the 10th century, went to the Volga area for diplomatic reasons. He wrote about it, much as Marco Polo would do later for his own travels, and is one of our sources on what viking were like (and by all accounts, he wrote about them more accurately than western scholars of the same period did)

Oh, or Ibn Battuta who travelled throughout Africa long before europeans did, and even went to Europe himself.

And that’s just some example of Muslim medieval travel writers

Everything is about race because white people keep telling everyone that their race is the only one who every got anything done.

i have heard of precisely zero non-european explorers ever in my life, and that fucking sucks. this exhibit is amazing and i need to learn more.

That boat is a frickin aircraft carrier comparatively. Holy crap. And no. Never heard a peep.

Zhenghe went to over 40 countries in Asia and Africa and probably went even further, but I didn’t encounter that in history books before. He brought gifts from China to every country he went to and everyone loved him. It was just like “Hey, I’m here with a water-helicarrier and a gift,” and the kings of every country were lilke “holy shit son well here have a giraffe.” There are paintings depicting him leading a giraffe as well. Check him out guys, he’s really cool

That is so awesome. Fuck western history. This is the real shit.

It was just like “Hey, I’m here with a water-helicarrier and a gift,” and the kings of every country were lilke “holy shit son well here have a giraffe.”

Tumblr, I love you. I love your history lessons. I love when I learn new shit. And I love when it is phrased like this. The nuance of that sentence is legit something to be impressed by, and the king of a country calling a visiting explorer “son”, and the gift of a really fucking hard to keep animal, and argh argh argh it is too perfect.

We've known for a few months now that Facebook wants to beam wireless internet access to unconnected parts of the world using solar-powered, laser-equipped drones. But now one of the leaders of the project has revealed more mind-boggling details, including the fact that Facebook envisions drones the size of a Boeing 474 commercial airliner and wants to keep them flying for months, even years, at a time.

"roughly the size of a commercial aircraft, like a 747."

As Yael Maguire, the engineering director at Facebook's Connectivity Lab, said in an interview at Mashable's Social Good Summit on Monday: "In order for us to fly these planes — unmanned planes that have to fly for months, or perhaps years at a time — we actually have to fly above the weather, above all airspace." Maguire also further said that the drones should be thought of as planes because they will be "roughly the size of a commercial aircraft, like a 747." He later compared one drone design in Facebook's lab to the length of "six or seven [Toyota] Priuses" but said it only weighs as much as four of the car's tires.

It's unclear just where and when Facebook will be launching its first internet connectivity drones. Maguire said that he hopes the will be able to test one in the US in 2015. India and 21 additional countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia are being looked at. It's also unclear just how Facebook will be able to comply with the various aircraft restrictions in any of these countries.

Facebook is working on bringing internet connectivity, and of course, its namesake social network, to developing countries through its Internet.org nonprofit organization launched last year (it already launched an app to provide basic web services over cellular in Zambia). It's also recruited Ericsson, Nokia, Qualcomm, Samsung for that effort, but a spokesperson for Facebook said that the company wasn't working with others on its drone project. Meanwhile, Google is also separately pursuing wireless internet using drones and balloons through Project Loon, but has only performed a few tests of its systems so far. For now, the idea of beaming a useful, reliable internet connection to people from an unmanned aircraft an ambitious blue-sky proposal.

Apple's latest update to iOS 8 is keeping some iPhone owners from being able to use their iPhones as a phone, or use Touch ID. Users on multiple cellular networks are reporting the connectivity issue unfixed after restarting their devices, toggling airplane mode, and by resetting all networking settings. The same goes for Touch ID, which can be used to unlock the phone, and validate a user's identification in Apple's stores and inside apps as part of iOS 8. That feature has been disabled system-wide, and attempts to remove and re-add fingers result in a "failed" message.

Apple's working on a fix, but it's not here yet

Apple's already said it's investigating the issue, but if you're one of the unlucky souls who downloaded and installed it, there's a simple trick (via iMore) for getting your phone back up and running, without wiping anything.

Things you'll need: Your broken iPhone, a PC or Mac with iTunes installed, a Lightning to USB cable, and an internet connection.

Step 1. Go download a fresh copy of iOS 8.0. You can get it from ipswdownloader.com. Pick your device and model, which is super easy if you're on an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, since there's only one firmware for each (direct downloads for: iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus).

Step 2. While that's downloading, go to Settings > iCloud > Find My iPhone on your iPhone and turn the service off. You'll need to enter your Apple ID and password to do this.

Step 3. Fire up iTunes with your iPhone plugged in, then click on the "iPhone" from the source menu on the top right.

Step 4. Click the "Check for Update" button while holding Option (on a Mac) or Control (for Windows users) key.

It will pop up with a file menu where you pick the firmware (which will be an .ipsw file), then hit OK.

Your phone will proceed to install iOS 8.0 as an "upgrade," but won't actually change any of your settings or affect your data. Checking the iOS about menu once it's done will also confirm that you're actually running iOS 8.0, and not 8.0.1.

If you're having issues getting the install to start, one option is to do a full restore, which requires setting your iPhone into recovery mode. It also means restoring from a backup, which could be a problem if you're trying to restore from a backup of 8.0.1 on a phone running 8.0. If you can wait, it might be worth seeing if Apple pushes out an update for the update sometime later today. For everyone else, enjoy making phone calls again — on your phone.

Mac OS X Mavericks is also a *nix, and also vulnerable to the Bash bug.

Sean Gallagher

UPDATE, 9/25: The Bash vulnerability, now dubbed by some as "Shellshock," has been reportedly found in use by an active exploit against Web servers. Additionally, the initial patch for the vulnerability was incomplete and still allows for attacks to succeed, according to a new CERT alert. See Ars' latest report for further details, our initial report is below.

A security vulnerability in the GNU Bourne Again Shell (Bash), the command-line shell used in many Linux and Unix operating systems, could leave systems running those operating systems open to exploitation by specially crafted attacks. “This issue is especially dangerous as there are many possible ways Bash can be called by an application,” a Red Hat security advisory warned.

The bug, discovered by Stephane Schazelas, is related to how Bash processes environmental variables passed by the operating system or by a program calling a Bash-based script. If Bash has been configured as the default system shell, it can be used by network–based attackers against servers and other Unix and Linux devices via Web requests, secure shell, telnet sessions, or other programs that use Bash to execute scripts.