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Dr. Curtis Cooper of the University of Central Missouri has found the new largest prime number, which has 17,425,170 digits. This is the third record-breaking prime number Dr. Cooper has discovered through software provided by the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search project, which was established in 1996 to find new numbers that can only be divided by 1 and itself. The mathematician will receive a grant of $3000 for his latest discovery.

Submitted by: Unknown (via Ars Technica)

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Nasa's Curiosity rover turned on its drill and bored into a rock on Mars early on 7 February, the first time humans have ever drilled on a planet other than Earth.

The results of this "mini-drill" operation can be seen in the image above: a tiny hole 1.6 cm across and 2 cm deep, a cavity just barely big enough for you to stick your pinky finger into. The event was in preparation of Curiosity's upcoming big-kid version of this drilling, when it will bore into a rock nicknamed John Klein and analyse the interior of Mars.

By: Adam Mann, Edited by: David Cornish

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It sounds outlandish now, but the United States went to war with Mormons in the late 1850s. United States troops descended on the Utah Territory in 1857 due to growing concerns about actions carried out by the religious group and worries of sedition. More »

Yesterday the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) announced its new brand ambassador: the HipHopGamer, aka Gerard Williams. This struck some as questionable, given that Williams is notorious for his frequent use of derogatory language toward women and homosexuals, his open use of plagiarism,and for threatening journalists at press eventswith physical violence.

According to the ECA website, the association was “founded to give gamers a collective voice with which to communicate their concerns, address their issues and focus their advocacy efforts,” and it commonly lobbies the government to make or prevent changes to video game-affecting legislation.

“Williams’s active engagement with fans and critics alike will provide a springboard for discussion, a catalyst for action that the ECA can help support,” reads a press release from the organization.

Since the announcement was made, some commenters have taken issue with Williams’ behavior.

“Our industry desperately needs to show the general public that we are composed of mostly rational, reasonable, mature adults,” reads the highest-rated comment from the ECA Facebook.”HipHopGamer/Gerard may well be a perfectly nice guy in person. However, the general public/press isn’t going to dig that deep or give the benefit of the doubt.

“They’re instead going to make note of his public usage of ‘rape,’ ‘faggot,’ his threats of violence, and his ‘what would they be like in bed?’ sections of his ‘Hot Girls in Gaming’ segments. Is this really the public face we want to put forth for an industry that struggles continually with the misconception that we’re all a bunch of offensive, immature deviants?”

Heather Ellertson, the ECA’s vice president of marketing, sent out the following message four hours after the announcement:

“Gerard approached us wanting to know what he could do to help the cause. He’s in the process of turning his life around, becoming more professional and inspirational to his friends and followers. It’s exceedingly rare that we have individuals approach the organization laying it all out there, offering to do whatever they can, and asking for nothing in return. While we weren’t aware of any of his perceived transgressions online, we choose to embrace his support, his efforts, and his selflessness. If we were all judged solely upon the negatives in our past, we would all be damned. We would like to give him the opportunity to be a voice for gamers and a positive role model for gaming.”

Pay special attention to that last sentence. Below is the second highest-rated comment on the ECA Facebook thread, which seems to perfectly echo the general sentiment on other sites that covered the news:

“So you’re saying you did little to no research on who your publicly facing brand advocate would be? Do you think any major company would hire a PR person without doing some preliminary research? This reaffirms my belief that the ECA is not an organization that accurately represents my interests as a member of the game industry.

“Being passionate and popular with your followers is great, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re the best choice to be the publicly facing personality to represent your ‘brand’.A desire to change is also fantastic, but I maintain my stance that most of the nongaming public isn’t going to see or care about that. Instead, they’re going to look at what’s already out there and see someone who equates rape to love, and uses faggot as a derogatory slur. That’s not me as a gamer, and it certainly isn’t me as a member of the professional game industry.”

Williams with his signature WWE replica belt that he won at a press junket.

A few hours later, the ECA responded one final time:

“Thank you all for your input. It is being taken seriously.Gerard is not employed by the ECA nor is he the ‘voice’ of the Gamers we are fortunate to represent. He volunteered his services, and wanted to help spread awareness about the message the ECA, and it’s [sic] members are constantly speaking of.

“Anyone can become a brand ambassador for the ECA. We hope that some of you are interested in becoming one.”

It might be too early to say what the actual fallout from this, but several of the ECA’s Facebook commenters have noted that they intend to leave the organization.

Top image via Destructoid

Filed under: Games

I have three fears. The first is the cataclysmic end to all life on Earth. The second is public speaking. The third is that X-Men: The Last Stand director Brett Ratner might ever get his hands on another property that I love.

Thankfully, none of these happened this week.

Ratner announced today that he is working on an adaptation of Zynga’s Farmville for television, according to The Wall Street Journal. The creative force behindTower Heist plans to make Farmvilleinto a half-hour animated sitcom.

Farmville is one of the most exciting brands out there today, and its cross-platform opportunities are endless,” Ratner said in a statement. “I am thrilled to be expanding the brand with existing fans and also engaging a whole new audience.”

Farmville is a social-gaming phenomenon. It has millions of players on Facebook and is one of developer Zynga’s flagship products.

Or to put it another way: It’s the opposite of Star Wars.

Perhaps this is the universe balancing itself out. J.J. Abrams keeps absorbing all of the amazing properties (Star Wars, Star Trek, Half-Life, Portal), which means someone else has to take on Farmville and a new Hercules movie starring The Rock … which Ratner is directing.

I’m just glad he’s busy with this and not something like The Legend of Zelda … hey, do you think we could get Michael Bay to adapt CityVille 2?

Filed under: Games

Steam, the online gaming platform and community from Valve, seems to have fixed a security issue today that allowed anyone to easily get information about games played, achievements, and stats from a private profile.

Kyle Orland of Ars Technica reports that he found the hole while poking around his own Steam profile. He found that you could manipulate the HTML address to unearth a number of different “private” pages associated with his profile, as well as find games he’d played in the page’s source code. According to Orland, he was able to “independently confirm” that this did not just affect his profile but others as well.

People in general should be concerned about these kinds of privacy snafus — not just gamers. Like most things on the Internet, what you believe to be personal or shared just with friends often appears in unexpected places. Thankfully, the information exposed in Steam’s case didn’t include highly sensitive data such as credit card numbers or home addresses. But it’s likely just as annoying as having a Facebook photo leaked.

Orland first tried to find a private user’s (which happened to be his own profile) list of games played by typing in “/games/?tab=all” after the profile’s URL. That didn’t work and instead brought him back to the private profile page. So he inspected the source code associated with the page, and there, in plain text, was the list he’d been looking for.

After identifying the games, he played with the HTML a little more, choosing to search for achievements in the game Portal 2. He added “stats/Portal2/?tab=achievements” to the end of the URL and was immediately taken to the Portal 2 achievements page associated with that profile.

Using the same method, he found the player’s stats for specific games, as well as badges. Orland noted that an observant snooper could find the times that person was playing a game, if their profile was connected to Facebook, and when the profile was created.

As is courteous and traditional, Orland reported the hole to Steam before going public with his information. The holes have seemingly been fixed, but Valve has not responded to the bug report.

Steam image via Shutterstock

Filed under: Games, Security

I can, at any given moment, tell you how long before BioShock Infinite releases in months, hours, and minutes. I keep that figure in my head at all times.

No lie, people in the gaming industry get to see and play some of the coolest, most anticipated games long before anyone else does, but generally speaking, that really only applies to the games they’re working on. Unless their desk is in the same building as the development team — and sometimes not even then — they have to sit around and wait just like everybody else.

So we polled a few famous names in the game industry and asked what they were waiting for. Specifically, we asked this: Aside from any project you’re involved in, what game are you looking forward to the most in 2013 and why?

Edmund McMillen, Team Meat (Super Meat Boy, Mew-Genics)

I’m most looking forward to playing The Witness. I was part of beta testing early on and actually asked to no longer be a part because I really wanted to experience the game how it was meant to be played.

Andy Gavin, author (Untimed) and retired cofounder, Naughty Dog (Jak and Daxter)

The Last of Us. I’m not personally involved, but call me twisted — the idea of a teen girl in a postapocalyptic world is pretty cool. And I’m not just talking sticking a girl in there gratuitously; Naughty Dog can be counted on to write a good story and actually deal with the visceral/emotional experience.

Dan “Shoe” Hsu, editor-in-chief, GamesBeat

BioShock Infinite, no doubt. Anyone who picks anything else for 2013 is simply crazy — don’t listen to any of the nonsense coming out of their mouths, ever. The original BioShock is one of the best games of all time, and I can’t wait to be immersed in another imaginative, dreamy (or nightmarish) world by the same developers.

Randy Pitchford, CEO, Gearbox Software (Borderlands 2, Aliens: Colonial Marines)

In just a few days, Ni no Kuni comes out, and I can’t wait! [Hey, Randy, it's out! --Ed.]

Jenova Chen, cofounder, Thatgamecompany (Journey)

I’m mostly looking forward to Grand Theft Auto V. I’ve seen some online in-game footage that really makes me fantasize about the things you can do in the game. I hope it delivers the fantasy.

Yoshinori Ono, producer, Capcom (Street Fighter IV)

I would have to go with Pikmin 3 for the Wii U! There hasn’t been a new release for this series in a while, so even if there aren’t many changes since the previous iteration, I am definitely looking forward to playing it. Nintendo must have some innovative ways to utilize the Wii U GamePad up their sleeves as well, so that is another thing I will be watching out for.

Filed under: Games

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Creepily-named publisher Slitherine send word that they’re going to be launching a space-project management game with Buzz Aldrin’s name on it later this year (and his advice was sought in researching the development, apparently). In Buzz Aldrin’s Space Program Manager you will be tasked with a sandbox management scenario in which you must train astronauts and their support staff, while at the same time doing R&D and dealing with politicians. It’s going to be heavy on the realism, of course, but there’s scope for fantasy too: “Develop the X-15 Space plane, the Sputnik satellite, the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo manned spacecrafts and in later episodes on to Mars! You are not limited to the missions that did launch – you can also try out many that were planned but that never left the drawing board. For example, instead of sending men to the Moon using the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR) approach used by Project Apollo in the late 1960s and early 1970s, you will be able to rewrite history and use either the alternative Earth Orbit Rendezvous (EOR) or Direct Ascent schemes.”

So basically giving us the space history we should have had. Sigh.

[For a view on gaming investing myths, read this guest post from YetiZen CEO Sana Choudary. -Ed.]

In 2012, investors were excited about the game market’s march toward billions of new users with the rise of smartphones and tablets. But that excitement fizzled as Zynga’s fortunes wavered, and it reported weak earnings starting in August. Consequently, game investments rose dramatically for a while, and then they tapered off.

The data for this story comes from GamesBeat’s own original research into fundings during the year,with contributions from Sana Choudary of YetiZen, Tim Merel of Digi-Capital,Internet Deal Book, Signia Venture Partners, and Electronic Arts.

The upshot is that game investors have been spooked and they aren’t making as many deals as they once were. That means that higher-quality startups will receive funding, but copycat ideas aren’t necessarily going to. And as weak as the year was in investments, nobody is changing any forecasts about the march of gaming into the stratosphere in revenues and player numbers over time. So the industry is facing a confidence contradiction. Game companies are growing, but the money they’re raising isn’t.

The number of game investments rose to 188 deals, compared to 145 a year ago. But the value of the announced deals was $901.3 million, compared with $1.540 billion in 2011. That represents a 29 percent increase in the number of deals, but a 42 percent decline in dollars invested.

By comparison, the value of game acquisitions rose 23 percent in 2012 to $3.47 billion, compared to $2.87 billion a year earlier. The number of game acquisitions fell from 77 in 2011 to 58 in 2012. According to Avista Partners, the value of publicly traded video game companies is about $153 billion, but 78 percent of the value is in the top 10 companies, with China’s Tencent leading the list.

A big gap exists in investor thinking, according to analyst Peter Warman of Newzooin a recent interview with GamesBeat. Fear kept investors from pouring money into a sector that was actually producing much better results in terms of cashing out through acquisitions. Since 1997, Avista Partners says that games have produced $44 billion in value for venture capitalists and private equity investors since 1997.

Tim Merel, the managing director at Digi-Capital, said that the collapse of social gaming investments in the wake of Zynga’s troubles accounts for almost all of the decline in the game investment deals. Investment capital continued to shift from traditional console games to social, mobile, and online games.

But the clear bright spot for the year was mobile gaming. Merel reported that mobile deals account for as many as 40 percent of the overall game deals. But a mobile game studio with 10 employees can produce a game and get it into the market. It doesn’t need the same kind of capital that earlier game startups required, so it makes sense that the average size of a game deal is getting smaller.

In 2012, the average size was $4.8 million, compared with $10.6 million a year earlier. Zynga’s crash in the stock market (it’s trading at 25 percent of its peak value) also deflated game investment valuations.

Another savior for many game companies was Kickstarter, the crowdfunding platform that raised $83.1 million for video games and board games from 520,000 backers (we’ve included Kickstarter deals in our list). Of that amount, $55 million went to 296 video game companies (we haven’t included most of those on our list). The average amount raised via crowdfunding was $186,000, as most projects raised money for games instead of trying to finance whole companies.

More than anything, Kickstarter changed the dependence of developers on major publishers for funding. Midsized game companies such as Double Fine Productions, which started a Kickstarter mania back in March, could turn directly to their fans for the first time to raise money to make games. The crowdfunding platform became an important place to test disruptive ideas such as the Oculus VR virtual reality goggles and the Ouya Android video game console for televisions.

Certain sectors saw a boom, as hardcore game companies such as Kabam and Kixeye saw huge demand for free-to-play hardcore games. And social casino games debuted by the dozens on Facebook and mobile game platforms.More disruptions are happening as game companies adopt new business models such as free-to-play games, where you play for free and pay small amounts for virtual goods.Gaming also has its own version of the war for talent as big companies acquire smaller ones. Green Throttle Games raised $6 million on the hope that its Android game controller and app could disrupt $60 console games on the television. Such trends serve as grist for the bigger investments.

Signia Ventures (which did eight deals in games in 2012) noted that about 80 percent of investments in 2012 were in North America, with a lot of excitement continuing in mobile gaming, analytics, distribution and the larger consumer mobile ecosystem.

Investors probably shied away from the sector because of the almost total absence of initial public offerings. China’s YY and Zattikka staged a couple of small IPOs, but no one grabbed the attention or the investment dollars like Zynga and Nexon did in 2011, when both companies raised $1 billion each. Zynga raised $515 million in a secondary offering not long before its stock collapsed. And Tencent completed a $598 million fixed income offering. If the IPOs return, you can bet that the investors will as well. But perhaps the only trend to count on is further consolidation with a continued acquisition boom.

Here’s a cautionary note about these numbers. Ifwe knew the value of every deal, the numbers would be much higher this year. We’d love to know how much money Tencent invested in Epic Games, but we don’t. But we have the same problem every year as the majority of the dealmakers keep their values secret.

Heres a look at the deals of the year below. Weve organized them by dollar value of the transactions. For those deals where the value is unknown, we have listed them in reverse chronological order. We have linked to our own VentureBeat/GamesBeat stories where we covered them. For deals we didnt cover, we have linked to other publications or press releases.

The total game investment number for 2010 was $1.05 billion raised by 91 companies, based on GamesBeat’s own research. By comparison,115 game companies raised a total of $663.1 million in 2009. And in 2008,112 game companies raised $936.8 million.

Major VC firms such as Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital, DCM, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers,Andreessen Horowitz, and others all poured money into big game companies this year. Google Ventures continued its role as an active strategic investor. Check out the GamesBeat game investments list in the following pages.

Filed under: Games, Mobile, Social, VentureBeat

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Love: Video Games, Girls & Cats by Kyle Fewell

You can see more from the series here and here. And you can watch my famous cat Hemingway killin’ it at Ouendan here.

BUY Nintendo 3DS and 3DS XL consoles, upcoming releases

Super Mario Kimono

And a Blooper scarf! Hiyoko-G has a neat round-up collecting snapshots of people in Japan wearing video game apparel.

BUY New Super Mario Bros. 2, New Super Mario Bros. U

Oh No, I’m Falling! Help! Help! …Just Kidding!

More at today’s Daily Otter post; via Das Otterhaus

Our Tipton chapter is coming to a close.

This batch was a fast one. They only had a few ounces to gain to make weight. Mostly, they just needed a little TLC to get them past their scaredy-cat ways.

Well they did it, and now it's time to move on.  We've already said goodbye to dear Jimmy an Floyd, and now we need to find a place for Royal.

Royal is an exceptional boy. He so very sweet and affectionate and has so much love to give. He's 2.5 pounds of pure kitten delight.

Did I mention he loves to purr?   He LOVES to purr.  And chirp and squeak.  He's very vocal.


His ideal home would have a kitten or an active younger adult cat to keep him company.  And maybe a few cardboard boxes too - he loves those.  Oh, and some paper bags.   Those are always fun for Royal. 
If you're on the hunt for a floofy, sweet kitten, please give us a holler and tell us a little bit about yourself.  If you're not, but know of someone in our neighborhood (Seattle/Tacoma) who might be, please send them our way! 

We'll be here, waiting for your call.

Thanks! 

The Fashion Week Blues

Suit Jacket:  Paul Smith  |  Button-Up Shirt: Gitman Bros.  |  Tie: Vintage (Richard James alternative)  |  Tie Bar: The Tie Bar  |  Hankerchief: Levi’s

not shown:  Suit Trousers: Paul Smith  |  Belt: Torino Leather  |  Double Monks: Saint Laurent  |  Leather Briefcase: Gucci  |  Sunglasses: Persol  |  Watch: IWC Portuguese

Silent and deadly accurate! The Quiet Pro keyboard is the quietest mechanical keyboard on the market. It offers sculpted keytops, laser-etched letters and symbols, anti-ghosting technology, three extra USB ports and audio/media controls right in reach. $149.99

Etsy recognized that their engineering team was not as gender diverse as they wanted it to be, even after recognizing the issue and attempting to fix it. Here's how they made some real progress.

Kellan Elliott-McCrea (@kellan), a former architect at Flickr and co-author of the OAuth spec, is now the CTO at Etsy, the world's most vibrant handmade marketplace. During his tenure, he's played a critical role in the company's restructuring of its engineering organization; now, Etsy hires for diversity, particularly gender diversity. After witnessing first-hand how challenging it can be to attract women engineers, Kellan shares lessons in building a process and culture to attract female engineers. All the good stuff below belongs to him.

Etsy's decision to pursue women engineers is indicative of a broader change: making diversity a core value. But even after a number of concerted efforts to bring more women talent onboard, the company achieved almost no progress; in fact, one year, they actually saw a thirty-five percent decline in gender diversity even when this was a priority.

Tags: Etsy   Kellan Elliott-McCrea

A few weeks ago we predicted that the day is fast approaching when a machine will be able to write a scifi novel or a short story. Well, despite the short film presented here, we're still sticking to that prognostication — though it's now painfully clear that we're going to have to wait a while before an AI can produce something that's actually watchable. Check out the video to see what we mean. More »

madebyabvh:

Animated Patrick Gleason

Original Illustration by Patrick Gleason Batman & Robin #14

(A quick one before bed.)

meme4u:

http://memeblock.com/

pi4nobl4ck:

I don’t like watermelon anyways.

kim-jong-chill:

oh my god

 

The work of Matthew Picton is something more than a map, even something more than a model city.  He meticulously builds cities from paper.  Each buildings wall is built from a strip of paper leaving its interior empty.  In a way his three dimensional maps get at the personality of a city.  Speaking about cartography Picton says,

“There is some intrinsic quality to cartography that goes beyond the scientific document – a beauty of form and detail, a record of past times and places, something that lives as a world in which imagination can flow; places to re-visit, places to re-imagine, a world to re-make itself in the imagination.”     [via]

Several of his pieces depict cities before and after a natural disaster or war.  The charred strips of paper mark burnt or crumbled buildings.  Pockets of burnt paper seem more like injuries than a cold record of a past fact.

 

Diane Meyer distorts sections of personal photos resulting in compositions that comment on memory. In her own words: “This series is based on photographs taken at various points in my life and arranged by location. Sections of the images have been obscured through a layer of embroidered pixels sewn directly into the photograph. The embroidery deteriorates sections of the original photograph forming a new pixelated  layer of the original scene. The project refers to the failures of photography in preserving experience and personal history as well as the means by which photographs become nostalgic objects that obscure objective understandings of the past.” (via)

The ‘carcasses’ of Tamara Kostianovsky are made entirely of her own clothing.  She ‘cannabalizes’ her clothes to create life size racks of meat, fat, and bone.  Using unwanted  clothing, Kostianovsky emphasizes the human body and its constant physical demands.  The work becomes a kind of parable for the nearly violent cycle of consumption.  She says of the series:

“My intention is to confront the viewers with the real and grotesque nature of violence, offering a context for reflecting about the vulnerability of our physical existences, brutality, poverty, consumption, and the voracious needs of the body.”

 

Elvira ‘t Hart is a fashion designer who creates garments directly from the preliminary process of the sketch. Using a laser cutter she allows the intricacies of a simple line sketch to be realized in a physical garment. In her own words, “A lot of details contained within the first sketches are lost during the process of designing and executing clothing. By literally creating clothing patterns from the lines of sketches or sketching the patterns of clothing and cutting this out by laser, new shapes or suggestions of shapes are created. The clothing takes characteristics from the sketches: outlying lines, lines that trail off into nowhere and empty or unfinished areas. An image is reduced to lines, planes and areas which do not have to be fully formed or finished in order to portray ther ultimate meaning…” (via)

ROUND ROCK, TX—The tech world reeled Tuesday on reports that personal computer powerhouse Dell had been acquired by competitor Gateway 2000 in a $24.4 billion buyout that unites two of the industry’s top players as they look to take on perenni...

Drone That Destroyed Wrong Target Casually Flying Away Like Nothing Even Happened

Ramcy Wama with the Post-Courier:

A TRAGIC and brutal sorcery-related murder took place in full view of hundreds of onlookers in a Mount Hagen City suburb in Western Highlands Province yesterday morning. The relatives of a six-year-old boy doused petrol on a woman whom they had suspected of killing the boy with sorcery and burnt her alive.

The newspaper ran the bonfire as its cover photo today (gore). [Via the BBC]