Yahoo Chief Information Security Officer Alex Stamos announced today at Black Hat 2014 that starting in the fall of this year, the purple-hued company will begin giving users the option of seamlessly wrapping their e-mails in PGP encryption. According to Kashmir Hill at Forbes, the encryption capability will be offered through a modified version of the same End-to-End browser plug-in that Google uses for PGP in Gmail.
The announcement was tweeted by Yan Zhu, who has reportedly been hired by Yahoo to adapt End-to-End for use with Yahoo Mail. Zhu formerly worked as an engineer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that has consistently been outspoken in its call for the widespread use of encryption throughout the Web and the Internet in general.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Stamos acknowledged that the introduction of encryption will require some amount of education for users to make sure their privacy expectations are set appropriately. For example, he explained that PGP encryption won’t cloak the destination of your e-mail. "We have to make it clear to people it is not [a] secret you’re emailing your priest, but the content of what you’re e-mailing him is secret," Stamos said.
Hundreds of thousands of websites running a popular WordPress plugin are at risk of hacks that give attackers full administrative control, a security firm warned Thursday.
The vulnerability affects Custom Contacts Form, a plugin with more than 621,000 downloads, according to a blog post by researchers from Sucuri. It allows attackers to take unauthorized control of vulnerable websites. It stems from a bug affecting a function known as adminInit(). Hackers can exploit it to create new administrative users or modify database contents.
"The vulnerability was disclosed to the plugin developer a few weeks ago, they were unresponsive," Sucuri researcher Marc-Alexandre Montpas wrote. "The developers were unresponsive so we engaged the WordPress Security team. They were able to close the loops with the developer and get a patch released, you might have missed it."
The first special guest announcement for Emerald City Comicon 2015 (March 27 - 29) is: Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie.
If you’re a fan of say… Young Avengers, or Phonogram, or Journey Into Mystery, or the recent redesigns of Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel, you should know who kierongillen and mckelvie are. If not, have a brief bio for both:
Kieron Gillen is a comic book writer based in London. He is well known for his work on Young Avengers, Journey Into Mystery, Phonogram, and Iron Man. He is also currently writing The Wicked + The Divine, Original Sin, Essential X-Men, and Uber. Recent works include Origin II, Three, Smoke/Ashes, The Mighty Thor, A+X, Avengers vs. X-Men, AVX: Consequences, Revolutionary War: Dark Angel.
Jamie McKelvie is a London-based comic book artist known for his recent Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel redesigns, as well as his work on Young Avengers, Phonogram, and Suburban Glamour. He is currently working on The Wicked + The Divine, and has done recent covers for All New X-Factor, Loki: Agent of Asgard, Nightcrawler, The Fuse, Morning Glories, and Revolutionary War: Omega.
So there you go, our first special guest announcement for ECCC 2015. Admission pricing information will be available August 15, and passes go on sale September 1.
In case you missed the barrage of articles hyperventilating over Chris Pratt’s transformation from lovable schlub to shredded Cross Fit half-human half-machine, the man was once a little “wealthier” around the middle and is now healthier and loving it. But before he morphed into a human cheese-grater, Pratt felt his fitness (or lack thereof) held his career back—and almost prevented him from starring in Guardians of the Galaxy.
In an interview this month for Esquire, Pratt revealed that he originally passed on Guardians after being dismissed by a director during an audition years before:
When Guardians of the Galaxy was pitched to me, I said, ‘I don’t think so.’ I just didn’t picture myself getting the role. I didn’t want to go and embarrass myself like I did when I auditioned for G.I. Joe a couple of years previously. I went in there, and halfway through I saw the director’s eyes just glaze over. It made sense—I was a little heavy and out of shape. I was not gonna play someone from G.I. Joe. I did not look like a G.I. Joe action figure come to life.
Pratt also says training for his unprecedentedly physical role as Peter Quill has given him Gamora-levels of badassness:
I can do 40-inch box jumps now. Action-hero physical stuff. Jumping that high feels really good. You see a giant hillside, and you think, I wanna get up that. You see a building, you think, I could climb that. When you get in shape, the world around you becomes things you wanna jump on and climb on.
I think media interest in an actor’s diet or exercise regimen can only be healthy up to a certain extent, but Pratt’s new-found athleticism is relevant since it could lead to even more blockbuster roles for him. You know, maybe like the one represented in that heart-stopping photoshop above? Professor Pratt speaks for himself—let’s just pin that pic to our vision boards and hope for the best.
Things have gotten dire in the Bronx, and they're turning to emoticons to fill out the rotation.
The Yankees have done their best with a piecemeal rotation this year: CC Sabathia, Masahiro Tanaka, David Phelps, Ivan Nova, and Michael Pineda are all on the disabled list, but with trades and strong rookie performances, they're still in the playoff picture. Tomorrow, they'll turn to this guy against the Indians (via Reddit)
Other players the Yankees considered for tomorrow's start:
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (doesn't have a winning attitude
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻) (still in minors due to anger issues)
(•_•) \( (> a starting pitcher
/ \
(Of course, this is just Paul O'Neill's way of having fun with the fact that the Yankees haven't yet picked a starting pitcher and thus had a silly-looking graphic, but, well, don't rain on our parade.
The Yanks have since announced that Esmil Rogers, a Blue Jays castoff who has thrown four innings for the Yankees since being signed in late July, will get the nod, ending a once-promising career for :-)
I’ve recently become obsessed with refrigerator oatmeal, or summer porridge if you want to be slightly more lyrical. It not only tastes darn good but it's also nutritious and super convenient. No matter how rushed you are, there won’t be any reason for skipping breakfast again, because the porridge is made (or assembled) the night before in a mason jar, meaning you can grab ‘n’ go as you dash out the door.
There’s a bunch of recipes on the ol’ internet, but over the last couple of months I’ve been experimenting and refining, settling on this as the best combination of ingredients. I find that the fruit provides enough sugar, but some people like to add coconut, maple syrup, jam, or honey for extra sweetness. You can use whatever fruit is in season (berries are particularly great), but frozen fruit works too as it defrosts overnight. The yogurt needs to be Greek as regular is too thin, while the milk can be any kind, including non dairy such as almond or coconut. The chia seeds are important not only for providing nutrients, but to soak up some of the liquid. The porridge is good for two days and there’s enough here for either two helpings or one very, very hungry person.
Take a 12 oz mason jar (with lid) and pour in:
1/4 cup old fashion rolled oats 1/3 cup Greek yogurt 1/3 cup milk 1 1/2 teaspoon chia seeds A dash of pure vanilla extract
Then shake it all up in the jar.
Top the jar with fruit of your choice, and shake again.
Leave in fridge overnight.
(You might also want to give it a quick shake before serving the next morning.)
Do you have a recipe suggestion for summer porridge? Let us know in the comments below.
yay, go beavers never forgiving this team for cutting Darren Sproles, tho
Brandin Cooks has been lighting up training camp and the Saints have big plans for his rookie year. We break down the fantasy implications.
New Orleans Saints wide receiver Brandin Cooks has been a shining star in training camp. The rookie has drawn nearly universal praise for his performances, the most recent coming from NFL Network's Ian Rapoport. Rapoport called Cooks a "lightning bolt" and noted that the Saints "already have a package of plays designed to unleash him."
Cooks was taken with the No. 20 overall pick in the 2014 NFL Draft after a sensational year at Oregon State, where he recorded 128 catches for 1,730 yards and 18 total touchdowns.
Fantasy impact: Cooks is expected to start off the year as the slot receiver with Marques Colston and Kenny Stills working on the outside. The Saints could utilize him in the same way they used Darren Sproles -- as a versatile pass catcher who can make plays from anywhere on the field.
With Drew Brees and Sean Payton still going strong, Cooks is an early favorite to lead all rookie receivers in fantasy points. He has a more stable quarterback situation than Sammy Watkins, who is being drafted in the seventh round while Cooks is going a full round later. Buy low on him while you still can.
followup; this is the idiot who #notallmen'd the thread about women being scared of tabletop games because of how every event and con tolerates at least one creepy guy
User: DeathbyDoughnut
Infraction: 17) Permanent Ban
Points: 1000
Administrative Note:
Quote:
Direct legal threat to the admin inbox.
Message to User:
Quote:
For making a direct legal threat to the admin inbox, you are now permanently banned with no chance for appeal.
(Yes, this is a different correspondence from the other permaban, which was in response to something not a direct legal threat. That's why that one was reversed.)
WASHINGTON—An alarming report released Thursday by researchers at the Economic Policy Institute confirmed that, following a generation of dwindling economic opportunities and stagnant wages, the American middle class is now running dangerously low o...
Here’s a really quick and easy 3D-printable screw-in front lenscap design, set-up as a customizer application. Less than $0.15 worth of materials are used to make a typical size lenscap, yet they work well and can even double as color references.
An Instructable gives the details.
If you’re into photography, you may have lost a lens caps or two. Although not too expensive for a replacement, the cost can add up and shipping next day delivered can be pricey. A fully customizable lens cap you can make on your 3D printer is a great solution to a photographers common problem.
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!
Officials at Yellowstone National Park told reporters on Wednesday that a tourist had crashed a small drone into the iconic Grand Prismatic Spring last Saturday.
The incident marks the latest in a string of drone-related episodes in this region of Wyoming. A drone went down into Yellowstone Lake near the Grant Village Marina. Officials in nearby Grand Teton National Park have already issued one citation to a visitor for flying a drone within the park—it later got trapped in a tree and was then stolen, according to the Associated Press.
Yellowstone National Park did not immediately respond to Ars’ evening request for comment by phone or e-mail.
American military forces bombed at least two targets in northern Iraq on Thursday night to rout Islamist insurgents who have trapped tens of thousands of religious minorities in Kurdish areas, Kurdish officials said.
Word of the bombings, reported on Kurdish television from the city of Erbil, came as President Obama was preparing to make a statement in Washington.
Kurdish officials said the bombings targeted fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria who had seized two towns, Gwer and Mahmour. Residents who had fled those areas by car were heard honking their horns in approval. But Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said on Twitter that the reports of the bombings were false.
“Wait… women like sci-fi movies? And they want to be able to buy things with their favorite female characters on them? I thought they make less money than men… don’t they only have enough in their sparkly pink change purses for makeup and sandwich-making implements? I am shocked.” Disney, Disney, Disney. They’ve done it again, folks.
After seeing Guardians of the Galaxy, blogger (and friend of TMS) Amy Ratcliffe noticed something weird about the movie’s glut of merchandise: It doesn’t feature a lot of Gamora. Which is weird, seeing as she’s 1/5 of the title team and is pretty dang important to the film as a whole, yanno?
In a post on her site, Ratcliffe explains the tower of merchandise at Wal-Mart with Gamora on the display but not on any of the actual items you can buy. The shirt that features the other four members of the Guardians on it, but not Gamora, I guess because Disney thinks men have a mortal fear of turning into a woman if they wear something with a female character on it? And the Guardians minimates line, where the two packs with female characters (Gamora and Nebula) also happen to be the ones available only at specialty stores. A search of the official Disney Store yields only this Disney Infinity two-pack with Star-Lord.
There is a small amountGamoramerch to be found on Amazon, and she appears on some groupshirts, but all too often it’s merch with some combination of Star-Lord, Drax, Groot, and Rocket, with no Gamora at all. Like this backpack. Marvel, I know you think of this as a “boy’s item”—though what’s inherently gender-specific about a fricking backpack I don’t even know—but even if you work off the premise that this is necessarily and exclusively a male item, there’s nothing to say you can’t put a girl on it. I don’t think young boys will freak out it all that much. You’ll be fine.
Ratcliffe suggested the hashtag #wheresgamora to bring awareness to this particular issue, and so far it’s taken off:
Hey @Marvel and @Disney, 44% of your opening week audience for Guardians were women… so where’s my Gamora merch??? #wheresgamora
Gamora deserves equal amounts of merch and exposure for both girls and boys. Same goes for Black Widow. @Marvel@DisneyStore#wheresgamora — Diego Armando (@phanta5magoria) August 7, 2014
As anyone who’s ever who’s ever screamed unto the heavens, “Why doesn’t this shirt come in a women’s cut?!,” the lack of awareness that geeky women actually spend money on merch, holy shit, is hardly new. There was that controversy in May when the Disney store said they had no plans to make new Leia merchandise; people got pissed, and Disney changed their tune. There was similar frustration surrounding a lack of Black Widow items when The Avengers came out. Companies like WeLoveFine and Her Universe are working on evening the gender gap, and of course there are individual sellers on sites like Etsy who have adopted the “If there official merch doesn’t satisfy, I will make what I want my own damn self” attitude.
But the official studios need to step up to the plate, too. After all, so much of the success of these big-budget superhero movies is judged based on how many toys they sell. And people can’t spend money on female superhero merch if you don’t flipping give it to us.
TED.com editor Emily McManus tweeted a pretty disturbing screengrab this morning. After searching Google for “english major who taught herself calculus” Google stupidly asked, “Did you mean: english major who taught himself calculus?”
It’s not photoshop job either, I just duplicated the result for myself:
My in-browser spellcheck built into Chrome even highlighted “herself” as being incorrect.
This three-legged decorated war hero had one leg lost to surgery after taking four rounds from an AK-47.
Bad. Mother. Fucker.
Those eyes say “Pretend to throw the tennis ball. I dare you to only pretend.”
I think those eyes say a lot more than that. He’s seen more than I ever will, done more than I’ll ever do, and his war will never be over.
He’s got Ranger scrolls on his collar. That dog is a god damn hero.
I just noticed the Purple Heart and that Scroll. Wow. Just wow. The picture alone, in all it’s detail says a lot of things. god damn.
I can’t not reblog this dog… his you Eyes say so much
I’ve never seen a dog with such a face like that. Like an old man who went to war and if you ask him about he just stiffens up and face turns to stone.
Now, it’s an understandable problem - our socialization instantly encourages us to see this rugged, sleek, military animal as a male. Three-legged hero dog with military decorations and stern-appearing eyes? TOTALLY A DUDE DOG, JUST LOOK AT HIM. It’s a programmed response, and nothing to be ashamed of - let’s just be accurate and note that Layka’s a female.
I’ve highlighted all the reblogs above where Layka is described as a hero, an old man, with male pronouns - rather than the fierce, charming heroine she is. It’s kind of a teachable moment: how does an image of an animal, displaying absolutely no secondary sex characteristics, instantly give us these fictional headcanons about its gender and gender performance? It’s an impressive demonstration of our ability to translate body language.
The photographer who took this compelling shot noted that Layka’s playful, bouncy energy made it nearly impossible for him to get a shot with her mouth closed! He ended up having to stop using the tennis ball he was using to get her attention, because it made her too excited and smiley. Based on the photos below, I think she’d have quite a sense of humor about the “where’s the tennis ball?” game!
Of course, the photographer did end up connecting with a fundamental aspect of Layka’s nature in the cover photo; her serious, soldier side. But that’s not all the animal is. Does the dog in the unused shots still resemble an “old man?” Is the dog in the unused shots male or female? Is it still a hero with its tongue out? Is it still admirable without a “face like stone?”
This is what I mean when I say that we have to examine the lenses of culture and society that we are always, always looking through when we talk about science biology.
After almost two decades of trying to make a Don Quixote movie, while simultaneously talking about the difficulties of trying to make a Don Quixote movie, Terry Gilliam is at last ready to bring it full circle with a Don Quixote movie about the difficulties of trying to make a Don Quixote movie. Not Lost In La Mancha; other directors already did that, hence its completion. Instead, Gilliam tells The Wrap the financing has finally come together to take another run at his beleaguered The Man Who Killed Don Quixote after this Christmas—and this time it’s a movie that is, in part, a meta-commentary on how hard it was to do.
“I keep incorporating my own life into it and shifting it,” Gilliam says of the project that long ago became a real-life meta commentary on Don Quixote, with the director repeatedly tilting at windmills that were occasionally ...
Authorities in Japan are investigating the claim that Square Enix uses copyrighted SNK characters without permission in the manga High Score Girl. SNK filed a lawsuit against Square Enix in May, and police visited Square Enix offices on August 5 to...
Google is releasing a preview version of the Google Fit SDK, the company's cloud-powered fitness tracking service. Google Fit, like Google Play Games, is a back-end set of APIs that Google wants developers to plug into.
The service aims to be a one-stop shop for fitness data. Google Fit gives developers high-level access to sensors from Android devices and wearables, allowing them to save fitness data to the cloud and read back that data. The cloud component isn't ready yet, so for now only local fitness history is available.
Danish architecture studio Bjarke Ingels Group unveiled plans in July for Zootopia, an intriguing zoo where animals would be permitted to roam free and humans would be confined to enclosures. The zoo will feature a central plaza for visitors that will be encircled by open areas for animals. Visitors will be able to enter the habitats through underground passageways and aboveground aerial trams. Viewing areas will be carefully concealed by natural cover, and trams will be covered in a reflective material, all to allow the animals to be observed undisturbed. The Zootopia project is part of a redesign and expansion of the Givskud Zoo in Denmark.
what kind of mage can cast GENTRIFY? white, right?
Square Enix
There are worse things to worry about in Final Fantasy than where your character sleeps. Leveling up, obtaining materia, battling Good King Moggle Mox XII: These things take time and energy. Still, establishing your player's quest pad is a nontrivial part of the gameplay in Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, the latest installment in the epic RPG series. Some players even see it as one of the best parts of the game.
All that could be changing. With a new patch that developers may introduce any day now, in-game housing could come to look more like the IRL quest so many of us are struggling to complete. Almost a year into the launch of the FFXIV ARR universe, a housing crisis that game-makers have worked to avoid might be inevitable.
Back in December, Square Enix advanced patch 2.1, which in addition to adding new dungeons and other features implemented the game's Player Housing feature. Whatever the roughly 2 million players of this massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORP) were doing before, now they could cohabitate.
Lovely, low-density, fictional single-family housing in Lavender Beds. (Square Enix)
Right now, in-game housing revolves around three residential districts: The Mist, The Goblet, and Lavender Beds. Each one corresponds to one of the game's three main regions. For example, The Mist is a growing neighborhood in Limsa Lominsa—you know, the thalassocratic city-state on the coast of the island of La Noscea, just off the Rhotano Sea.
Players who are members of Free Companies of a certain size can build a hall in the residential district of their choosing. Some of the steps sound beyond boring: First you need to obtain a Land Acquisition entitlement, then you need to buy the land, then you need to buy a Housing Permit in order to proceed with construction, and on and on—stab me with a mythril dagger, already. (All the while, you are presumably trying to develop your character class and be supportive of the other members of your Free Company. Can a White Mage ever have it all?)
Limsa Lominsa, as seen from the exurbs (Square Enix)
For some players, the housing system is where FFXIV ARR takes off. Although owning a hall is critical to all sorts of Free Company endeavors—from raising chocobos (in a stable, of course) to building an airship (that's what the crafting workshop is for, obviously)—the draw is the interior customization, which is enough to rival The Sims.
So far, the developers have been careful to safeguard the game's housing system against speculators. Buying land through real-money trading is prohibited, meaning you can't use dollars to buy gil that you plan to use to buy land or an estate hall. (Not that you can't actually buy gil: The Internet's chock-a-block with sites where you can trade in fictional currencies.) Free Companies who buy land but don't develop it will see its value fall by a set devaluation timer—a bit like a city that taxes an owner for a vacancy.
The developers introduced gardening to the game with patch 2.2. Personal rooms came to the game with patch 2.3, allowing for individual chambers for each member of a Free Company. With the highly anticipated patch 2.38, players have access to personal housing.
A mixed-use development in Ul-Dah. (Square Enix)
In discussion forums about personal housing, players worry that the system may cause Free Companies to fight over the rights to buy land. Or else that personal housing will be put out of reach for any player who doesn't devote his or her whole life to acquiring gil. Some players are complaining about how hard it is to acquire land as it is. "We saved like everyone else and estimated within a week of a new ward we would be able to afford the small plot of our dreams," posted one BroodingFicus. "Its now a land race, not an achievable goal one can get through hard work."
Players estimating what personal housing will cost them are guessing anywhere from 800,000 gil to several million for a small house. I'm with Yuki_Tokita, who pegs a private home closer to 100 million gil. "Obviously the prices should be extremely high because it has to be something that can only be enjoyed by the elite few who know how to work the market and have a [Free Company] that can farm for rare loot on a daily basis."
In other words: An entire universe is about to switch from a model dominated by multifamily housing to one characterized by singe-family housing options for the extremely wealthy. I'm not a gamer and bowed out of Final Fantasy a long time ago—but this is a development that I might have to watch firsthand.
The Internet is no longer in English, even if the coding on its back end still largely is. That’s what MIT’s Ethan Zuckerman has concluded as online language diversity has increased over the past decade, from Facebook posts in Afrikaans to tweets in Zulu. But the typographical design world that brings online text to life has lagged behind, producing endless variations on the Latin script used in English (like the documentary-inspiring Helvetica and the font you’re reading right now, Georgia) but far fewer for other languages.
The result is an increasingly bilingual, but visually clunky, Internet that looks like this:
Google is looking to streamline that with its Noto project (so named for its goal, “no tofu,” a reference to the tiny squares that pop up for unsupported scripts). A new, free font family that “aims to support all the world’s languages” for use in web pages and URLs, Noto already supports over 100 scripts (and the 600 written languages they facilitate) from Cherokee to cuneiform. Some of the project’s efforts have been applauded, such as their rejection of Han unification, which detrimentally conflates chunks of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean scripts.
Noto’s inclusion of endangered languages like Inuktitut (an indigenous Canadian languages which has under 40,000 speakers) and Tlingit (an Alaska Native language with just about 1,000 speakers) has also won praise. But since Noto has thus far failed to tackle far more widely-used languages, some are questioning Google’s priorities. For instance, Noto cannot yet be used to type in Oriya, an Indian language with over 30 million speakers, or the nastaliq script used by Urdu speakers.
Ali Eteraz, a Pakistani-American writer campaigning for the online inclusion of nastaliq, has summarized concerns with Noto by saying, “Language is the building block of people’s identities all around the world, and Google is basically saying that, ‘We got this.’ …Whether that strikes you as hubris or whether it’s noble depends on whether they pull it off.”
When it comes to hubris, Google can learn from its own past exploits, as Kevin Roose recounts Google’s struggle to design a suitable universal font for its Android products. The main challenge, Roose notes, is that “unlike most innovations in computing, typeface design doesn’t succeed by grabbing your eye.” Writing all the world’s languages in one style is challenging enough, but doing it in a way that looks good across the Internet—no matter what size screen, or with what resolution, it is accessed—compounds the design challenge.
Noto won’t turn the web’s words uniform overnight. But it is a sign of a permanently multilingual Internet, and the challenges of creating a truly global product.
Authorities in Japan are investigating the claim that Square Enix uses copyrighted SNK characters without permission in the manga High Score Girl. SNK filed a lawsuit against Square Enix in May, and police visited Square Enix offices on August 5 to...
