Taylor Swift

New album out soon. Happy Sunday

This is Yamaga, a cute 20-year-old student who we met in Harajuku. Her cute outfit, round glasses, and gray beret instantly caught our eye.

Yamaga’s cropped tweed pantsuit is handmade, and it features contrasting knee patches. Her backpack is a resale pickup and her Dr. Martens shoes have two buckles each.

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Kota is a stylish 22-year-old guy who we met in Harajuku. He’s active on Twitter, in case you want to look him up.

Kota is wearing a resale camouflage print jacket over a Limi Feu top and resale pants. His backpack is Y-3 and his white sneakers are resales. Accessories – some of which came from the Shibuya vintage shops Qosmos – include rings, a floral scarf and a resin flower necklace.

Kota’s favorite places to shop are Qosmos and Tarock with Ricco.

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pmset -g assertions | grep DisplaySleep

This makes no goddamned sense, of course. NoIdleSleepAssertion makes sense for audio, but NoDisplaySleepAssertion only makes sense if video is actively playing and not paused, not merely audio.

The only way to fix this is to gently apply the Stick of Correction to the binary:

sudo sh
perl -pi -e 's/N(oDisplaySleepAssertion)/_$1/g' /usr/sbin/coreaudiod

Then you have to replace the signature with your own or it won't launch:

codesign -vfs 'Your Name' /usr/sbin/coreaudiod

Then restart it:

killall coreaudiod

You'll probably have to do that again every time you upgrade the OS. "Hooray."

Previously.

Bipartisanship!

While a range of judges, prosecutors and public defenders have for years raised concerns about disparities in punishment, it is this alliance that may make politically possible the most significant liberalization of sentencing laws since President Richard M. Nixon declared war on drugs.

In 2010, Congress unanimously voted to reduce the 100-to-1 disparity between sentences for crack cocaine offenses and those for powdered cocaine, a vestige of the crack epidemic. Now, the Obama administration and its allies in Congress are pushing to go even further. Mr. Holder wants to make prisoners eligible for early release if they were sentenced under the now-abolished crack guidelines. And he wants judges to have more discretion when sentencing nonviolent drug offenders.

For Mr. Holder, addressing sentencing laws is central to a second-term agenda that also includes defending voting rights and same-sex marriage. Black Americans have disproportionately received lengthy prison terms and are extremely overrepresented in the inmate population.

Libertarian-minded Republicans see long prison sentences as an ineffective and expensive way to address crime.

“This is the definition of how you get bipartisan agreement,” Mr. Paul said in an interview. “It’s not splitting the difference. It’s finding areas of common interest.”

For once I intend no snark: this is a Good Thing, redressing one of the twentieth century’s most virulent examples of bipartisanship. For almost thirty years Democrats had to run on being Tough On Crime. Candidate Bill Clinton thoughtfully flew back to Arkansas to sign Ricky Ray Rector’s death warrant so that no Bushleaguer could accuse him of following in Michael Dukakis’ footsteps.

Ruko is a 19-year-old student and model who we often see around Harajuku. She’s always super-friendly with a big smile!

Ruko is wearing a vintage sweater over a white shirt, a red resale maxi skirt and a Gucci coat on top. Her tote bag is Foxy x Nike, and her velvet creepers are by Dr. Martens. She is also wearing an Upset Milk (by proto egg product project) pin, a black ribbon in her hair, red nails and lipstick.

Ruko told us that Vivienne Westwood is her favorite designer. Ruko posts pictures on Instagram as well as Twitter if you’d like to see more.

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“Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventure going once. Going twice. Sold! to SDN Invest for a stick of gum.”

SDN Invest, the parent company of Interceptor Entertainment, announced today its acquisition of Apogee Software Ltd, better known by its trade name 3D Realms. Interceptor is the studio that remade Rise of the Triad last year, and its chairman Mike Nielsen will now also serve as 3D Realms CEO. (Like Jim Kirk and Khan Noonien Singh, Nielsen has presumably read his Milton.)

Even though 3D Realms hasn’t functioned as a game developer since 2009–or 1997, depending on how charitable you’re feeling–it still held on to some of its IP. However the most celebrated 3D Realms properties have already been sold off. Some recent legal wrangling suggests that the Duke Nukem property is now controlled by Gearbox. Bethesda holds the rights to Prey and Wolfenstein. SDN Invest therefore may have acquired rights to Shadow Warrior, Rise of the Triad, and little else of note.

Apogee will live on in some form, as the separate company Apogee Software LLC remains independent. Though the company published Interceptor’s 2013 ROTT remake, it exists otherwise chiefly to farm old Apogee properties to GOG. With those properties now in the hands of SDN Invest, Apogee’s future is uncertain.

The press release follows.

Investment Firm Behind Interceptor Entertainment Acquires 3D Realms

Gero is a friendly Japanese student and Lady Gaga fan who is well known in Harajuku’s decora scene. She isn’t dressed in decora here, obviously, but she’s still sporting bright colors and patterns.

Gero is wearing a bold patterned top from a resale shop with ligher colored patterned pants which she also picked up resale, Trolls tights (or socks), and sparkling Tokyo Bopper platform shoes. Accessories – some of which she bought at toy stores – include a scarf, a monster ring, and a Scooby-Doo backpack with several SpongeBob Squarepants charms attached.

In addition to liking Lady Gaga, Gero is a fan of the Harajuku resale shop Panama Boy. For more info, find Gero on Twitter.

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A Twitter reader by the name of RavenWorks asked a question a while back about a line in the first Suikoden game for the PlayStation.

Basically, there’s a castle in the game called the Neclord’s Castle, and in the basement is a zombie who’ll give you information if you pay him. If you decide to pay the highest amount of money, he gives this bit of information in the translation:

You see, Master Neclord…..

…googly goo.

Naturally, this had gamers going, “WTF?”

So, what was this in the original Japanese script? After doing some technical wizardhackery I was able to check it out:

Literally translated, this is something like:

The truth is, Master Neclord has..
………..
…………

………an outie belly button.

In Japanese, saying someone has an outie belly button can also be taken as a really generic insult. So another possible translation might be:

The truth is, Master Neclord is..
………..
…………

………a big stupid-head.

Either way, I’m not really sure why the official translation wound up the way it did – it doesn’t even seem to be a proper sentence! My instinct tells me that maybe the translator thought the Japanese term, でべそ, was just some nonsense baby sound or something like that. I imagine that if you weren’t familiar with the term it might look that way, but that’s just my best guess.

Anyway, hopefully that helps solve the mystery of the jerk info zombie in Neclord’s Castle!

And although I doubt I’ll have the time for it until I’m 80, just playing a few minutes of Suikoden like this has really piqued my interest. I always heard great things about it back in the 90s but never got around to it. I need to hurry up and retire so I can play all these games!

Related posts:

Q&A: Why is Conversation Prohibited at the Well in Suikoden? Does Japanese Disgaea Have a Horse Wiener? Q&A: Is Syfa from Castlevania III Male or Female?

Forgot to post this! The WFMU 2014 Marathon is happening right now. I made some drawings that are going onto band-aids that come as one of the bonuses for pledging.

I’ve written about it before, but WFMU is one my favourite stations. I rely on it a lot, since I spend all day drawing in a room alone. Terre T, Dave the Spazz, Downtown Soulville, RIP Too Much Information, RIP Night People, RIP Best Show

Nalumi is 19 years old, and she’s a student. We noticed her colorful outfit and lilac hair on the street in Harajuku.

Nalumi is wearing a polka dot coat/sweater from Harajuku resale shop Kinji over a smiley face top from Nadia, and Kinji pants with Troll doll print. Her accessories are from Nadia: colorful bracelets, earrings, hair clips, a beret and crochet scarf. Her backpack features Disney princesses, and her panda sneakers (with loose socks) are Adidas.

Nalumi’s favorite shop is Kinji, and she’s a Kyary Pamyu Pamyu fan. Follow her on Twitter if you want to learn more about her.

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I see some real genius in your calculating, Maverick, but I can’t say that in there.

NinjaCrime’s one-of-kind arithmetic-battling collectible card game Calculords has been with us for a whole week now. Designer Seanbaby was kind enough to give us some strategies for beginners earlier this week, but if you’ve spent the last seven days glued to Calculords then you’re ready to graduate to some more advanced training. And probably a stronger glasses prescription. Nerd.

If you want to get some advice from Seanbaby on building a great deck from the cards you’ve collected, I’ve got it for you right here.

The Basics

Try to have a good mix of red (offensive) and green (push) cards. Push units are just like offensive units except that when they find themselves in a gunfight, they shove the enemy back one zone before firing. This technically lets them move an extra space each turn, and you get that bonus for every push unit in your column. Of course, the enemy can block each push with one of their own. The only problem is that most of them hit like wet kleenex. If you find a green card that can hit, rad– use it!

Try to also have a good mix of high and low cost cards. If every card in your hand costs 122, you will probably never be able to play them all. If every card in your hand costs 2, you will probably play them all and then watch them bounce harmlessly off an enemy tank’s treads.

Add tactic cards to your deck, but in small numbers. They are extremely powerful when you use them at the right time; consider them your ammo and your unit cards your guns. If you go to war holding only ammo, all that does is make you die more eventfully. Please note that some tactics summon troops just like unit cards because not a single aspect of this game is simple enough to explain without seven paragraphs.

Broderbund should sell the rights to Number Crunchers to Seanbaby.

Synergy

The basics of any deck building game is to have your cards work together. Almost any card in Calculords kills just fine on its own, but putting together combos is the key to avenging Earth.

There are 3 main “types” of units– vehicles, soldiers, and mutates. Soldiers are cheap and plentiful, vehicles are thougher to cast and tougher in a fight, and mutates hit hard and die easy. There are many exceptions to those rules, though. The main reason to know them is because most buffs only affect one type of unit.

For instance, you start with a MOTO REAVERS card. Like most motorcycles, its main job is support. Its INSPIRE ability pumps up the attack power of your soldiers. So the obvious combo is to drop a few soldiers into play, then bring the MOTO REAVERS in behind them. However, the MOTO REAVERS card also has the SQUAD ability, meaning you get two vehicles. This makes it just as valuable to put it into play first and follow it up with a card that buffs vehicles.

A great deck will have lots and lots of potential targets for each of its cards. For example, if you have a card that gives +1/+1 to all mutates and only one mutate in your deck, you blew it. Also think about the potential of combinations. Putting ARMOR on a tank with 10 HP is terrifying for your enemy. Putting it on a grunt with 1 HP is just kind of humiliating to everyone involved.

For beginners, the number of abilities in the game might be intimidating. However, here’s a hot tip: a wrench means it’s good for vehicles, a pill means it’s good for soldiers, and a mushroom means it’s good for mutates. Purple is a bonus to HP, red is a bonus to AP, and green means heal.

Deck Size

A deck has to have 30 cards. This might sound strange to non deck-builders, but your deck gets crappier and crappier as you add more cards. A deck with every card is not more versatile– it’s a pile of lottery tickets. The best way to think about it is this: pick out your dream hand. Every card you add to your deck that aren’t THOSE lowers your chances of drawing your dream hand.

The number editor is for closers.

Number Editor

This is some high-level star-nerding, but as you win number cards, you can add them to your number deck to lower the difficulty of frequently-used cards. For instance, if one of your favorite cards costs 39, that’s a bit of a fuss. Add a 13 to your number deck and then BAM– it’s only a 3 away.

Overall Strategies and Deck Themes

You can focus entirely on one of these themes or mix 2 or 3 of them together to create a more versatile deck. You’re allowed to save 3 decks, so you can make 2 highly specialized ones and one that’s sort of ready for anything.

Mutate Assault

Mutates hit very hard for their easy costs, and its common for them to buff each other. It’s one-dimensional, but if you hit first and hard enough, you don’t really need a second strategy. It’s important to note that your units in Calculords only attack when its your turn. Units move four zones each turn and won’t fire until they reach an enemy. So with clumsy planning or bad luck, a fragile mutate unit might be vaporized before he ever gets a chance to pull the trigger. So if you want success with this strategy, you need perfect timing.

• Cards to look for: MUTATE PRINCE and MUTATE PRINCESS make all of their spore cousins stronger, and the insane MUTATE MULTIBOX card puts 5 units into play.

Rolling Death

Focus on getting one massive unit in play, then buff it with everything you’ve got. Support him with units that can heal his “type” and he will never die. Add some push units behind him and he won’t even have to hit hard to win– the pushes will smear his enemies against their own base. Be sure to protect your other lanes, though– this is a longterm strategy.

• Cards to look for: Use ARMOR RESUPPLY to add armor to your units and MEDIC DISPATCH to add HP, but also look for units that come into play with more than 1 armor. They are instantly immune to a huge percentage of the enemy population. Look for more ROCKOIDs or the DEFENSOR MK3 tank.

Long Range Damage

One way to clear the way for your troops is to blast enemies from long range. Units with the SURPRISE ability get a shot off the second they enter the battlefield. There are also several tactics that will hit one or all enemies in the lane. A lot of times one or two cards can erase a commander’s entire column, but don’t put all your faith in it. Flying units will avoid most damage tactics and armored units will shrug them off.

• Cards to look for: You can blast every enemy unit for 3 with ARTILLERY BARRAGE or blast a single one for 4 with ORBITAL PHASER. Or you can just use UFO ABDUCTOR and immediately yank their weakest troop right out of play.

Control

A crafty player can stun all enemies, teleport them back to their own base, or even take over their minds. If your opponent has combined all his MUTATES into an unspeakably powerful MUTATRO, hit it with a MIND CONTROL and run it back into his own base.

• Cards to look for: BLOK’S SHOUT will destroy every red card in your opponent’s hand. AIRLOCK MISHAP does the same to their green cards. If you play them together, all your opponent can do next turn is complain.

Dash and Smash

Filling your deck with low cost soldiers and a bunch of cards that buff them is a risky and spazzy way to turn a fight into a race. There are a million ways that plan can end in tragedy, but if it works, it’s the fastest way to victory since you won’t be bothering to protect your other lanes.

• Cards to look for: Find cards with the DOUBLE TIME ability like COMBAT CYCLE or DARE DEVILS. These units move 10 zones instead of 4– that’s more than halfway across the battlefield in a single turn. Be careful not to put them behind slow units, though. It’s a single lane highway, and they can’t pass their friends.

It turns out that the British equivalent of the NSA, GCHQ, has been spying on Yahoo webcam users. And they're a bit upset by what their Optic Nerve program revealed. For starters, it turns out that 3-11% of Yahoo! webcam traffic involves "undesirable nudity". [...]

I am still trying to get my head around the implications that the British government's equivalent of the NSA probably holds the world's largest collection of pornographic videos, that the stash is probably contaminated with seriously illegal material, and their own personnel can in principle be charged and convicted of a strict liability offence if they try to do their job. It does, however, suggest to me that the savvy Al Qaida conspirators of the next decade will hold their covert meetings in the nude, on Yahoo! video chat, while furiously masturbating.

(Yup, that's pretty much what my weekly management meetings are like.)

What irony that so many now consider “pixels the size of boulders” a *good* thing. (April ’96)

Gamers of a certain age will remember fondly not just the magazines that once served as the industry’s lifeblood, but the garish ads that decorated them. In the late ’90s, Creative–the company of Sound Blaster, Nomad, and Aureal-destroying fame–bought years’ worth of unbroken PC Gamer back cover space. For this reason, and in virtue of their bright colors, hyperactive themes and absurd copy, Creative’s ads occupy a special place in my and many other gamers’ memories.

I pored through my PC Gamer back issues and scanned each distinct ad from April of ’96 through the end of ’99. If you’re tired of games that play in slow motion, pixels the size of boulders, and 8-bit cartoon colors, then come with me and together we’ll walk a path we’ve walked before.

The only ad to dabble in characteristic ’90s neon. The colors are dated, but look at those prescient browser tabs! (May ’96)

The AWE32 was arguably Creative’s best sound card. Its MIDI reproduction was way better than my SB16. (August ’96)

With royalties paid to Spielberg, I presume. (December ’96)

This ad for the AWE64 championed its 32 additional sound channels… while neglecting to mention they were achieved through software. (May ’97)

The list of sound effects reads as stream of consciousness. (August ’97)

Okay, whose idea was it to dress Robert Picardo as Tex Murphy? (November ’97)

I await rational explanation. (February ’98)

Riva TNT, made by a little company that grew up to be nVidia. (December ’98)

Almost lost amidst such a diverse array of products: the Sound Blaster Live! makes its debut. (February ’99)

It accesses encyclopedias. (June ’99)

“Vroom! Vroom!”? Really? (September ’99)

Acknowledgment of the Internet? Spiky bleached hair? Feel those winds of change a’blowin’. (October ’99)

Last Thursday, I took my son to meet Lucia McBath, because he is 13, about the age when a black boy begins to directly understand what his country thinks of him. His parents cannot save him. His parents cannot save both his person and his humanity. At 13, I learned that whole streets were prohibited to me, that ways of speaking, walking, and laughing made me a target. That is because within the relative peace of America, great violence—institutional, interpersonal, existential—marks the black experience. The progeny of the plundered were all around me in West Baltimore—were, in fact, me. No one was amused. If I were to carve out some peace myself, I could not be amused either. I think I lost some of myself out there, some of the softness that was rightfully mine, to a set of behavioral codes for addressing the block. I think these talks that we have with our sons—how to address the police, how not to be intimidating to white people, how to live among the singularly plundered—kill certain parts of them which are as wonderful as anything. I think the very tools which allow us to walk through the world, crush our wings and dash the dream of flight.

Jordan Davis was also given a series of talks, which McBath believes ultimately got him killed. We were sitting in the bar area of the Millennium Hotel in Times Square. She had a water. I had a coffee. My son sat back and watched. She talked about Jordan's first days in public school after several years of home school. She talked about how he went from shy caterpillar amazed at the size and scope of his new school to social butterfly down with kids in every crowd. He had strong opinions. She thought he would be a politician or an activist. It was in the blood. Her father, Lucien Holman, was head of the Illinois NAACP and served on the executive board. Lucia McBath herself is now the spokesperson for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

"We always encouraged him to be strong. To speak out," McBath told me. "We tried to teach him to speak what you feel and think diplomatically."

She took a moment here. Her voice quavered but held. She said, "Even in that case with Jordan and the car, I think that he was not as diplomatic as he could be. That does not let Michael Dunn off the hook," McBath told me. "But I say to myself as a mother, 'I didn’t teach you and train you to do that. Adults are adults and you are still a child.'"

Agency is religion in black America. Benjamin Banneker made it. Harriet Tubman made it. Madame C.J. Walker made it. Charles Drew made it. Malcolm X made it. Barack Obama made it. You must make it too, and there is always a way. The religion of autoliberation is certainly not rebutted by the kind of graphs and stats that keep me up at night and that can easily lead to suicidal thoughts. Yours is the only self you will ever have. One must discover how to live in it or perish. 

She continued, "In my mind I keep saying, 'Had he not spoke back, spoke up, would he still be here?' I don't know. But I do know that Jordan was Jordan to the end. I think Jordan was defending his friends. 'We’re not bothering you. We don’t know you. You don’t know us. Why can’t we play our music as loud as we want?'"

I told her that I was stunned by her grace after the verdict. I told her the verdict greatly angered me. I told her that the idea that someone on that jury thought it plausible there was a gun in the car baffled me. I told her it was appalling to consider the upshot of the verdict—had Michael Dunn simply stopped shooting and only fired the shots that killed Jordan Davis, he might be free today.

She said, "It baffles our mind too. Don’t think that we aren’t angry. Don’t think that I am not angry. Forgiving Michael Dunn doesn't negate what I’m feeling and my anger. And I am allowed to feel that way. But more than that I have a responsibility to God to walk the path He's laid. In spite of my anger, and my fear that we won’t get the verdict that we want, I am still called by the God I serve to walk this out."

I asked if she'd considered that Dunn might never be convicted of Davis's murder. "It's a strong possibility," she said. "The minute we looked at the jury instructions, we thought, 'That right there is what will keep Jordan from getting a guilty verdict.' I was crushed but not surprised."

A thought came to me that had been swirling for days: Dunn might win on appeal. I considered the possibility of him walking free. I considered the spectacle of George Zimmerman walking free. I considered the great mass of black youth that is regularly interrupted without any real reckoning, without any consideration of the machinery of black pariahdom. I asked McBath how she felt about her country.

She paused, then gave an answer that perfectly summed up the spirit of African-American patriotism. "I still love my country. It's the only country we have. This is the best that I've got," she said. "And I still believe that there are people here who believe in justness and fairness. And I still believe there are people here who don’t make judgments about people based on the color of skin. I am a product of that. But I am disheartened that as far as we've come it doesn't matter that we have a black president. It doesn't matter how educated we’ve become. It doesn’t matter because there still is an issue of race in this country. No, we have not really arrived. If something like this can happen, we have not arrived. And I ask myself, 'At what point are we going to get there?' And I have no answer. And I want to be able to answer."

She wanted you to know that Jordan Davis was an individual black person. That he was an upper-middle-class kid. That his ancestry was diverse. That he had blacks in his family. Mexicans in his family. Panamanians in his family. That his great-grandfather was white. That some of his ancestors had passed. 

She wanted you to know that Jordan Davis was not from the "Gunshine State." That he was from Atlanta—Douglasville, Georgia, to be exact—where black people have things, and there is great pride in this. She wanted the world to know that Jordan Davis had things. That he lived in a three-story home in a cul-de-sac. That most of the children there had two parents. That original owners still lived in the development. That she was only the third owner. That Jordan Davis had access to all the other activities that every other kid in the neighborhood did, that he had not been deprived by divorce.

And she wanted you to know that Jordan Davis had a father. That this was why he was living in Jacksonville, where he was killed. That she was battling a second round of breast cancer and Davis's father said to her, "Let me raise him, you get well." She wanted you to know that she never ever kept Davis from his father. That she never put Jordan in the middle of the divorce, because she had already been there herself as a child—placed as a go-between between her mother and father. She said that this had wreaked havoc on her as a young woman. That it had even wreaked havoc on her own marriage. That she had carried that pain into relationships, into marriage, and did not want to do the same. She wanted you to know that Davis's father, Ron, is a good man.

She wanted you to know that what happened to Jordan in Jacksonville might not have happened in Atlanta, where black people enjoy some level of prestige and influence. That Jordan believed the level of consciousness in Jacksonville was not what it was in Atlanta, and that this ultimately played into why Jordan spoke up. That this ultimately played into why he was killed. I thought of Emmett Till, who was slaughtered for not comprehending the rules. For failing to distinguish Chicago, Illinois, from Money, Mississippi. For believing that there was one America, and it was his country.

She stood. It was time to go. I am not objective. I gave her a hug. I told her I wanted the world to see her, and to see Jordan. She said she thinks I want the world to see "him." She was nodding to my son. She added, "And him representing all of us." He was sitting there just as I have taught him—listening, not talking. 

Now she addressed him, "You exist," she told him. "You matter. You have value. You have every right to wear your hoodie, to play your music as loud as you want. You have every right to be you. And no one should deter you from being you. You have to be you. And you can never be afraid of being you."

She gave my son a hug and then went upstairs to pack.

John Henry’s finally met his match.

Today Keen Software House sends word that since the game’s Early Access debut last October, Space Engineers has sold over 250,000 copies. By my count that’s one sale for every atom in the universe, with a margin of error approximately equal to the number of atoms in the universe. Who could have predicted such a strong market for freeform indie mining/crafting games?

In a recent post to his devblog, Keen founder Marek Rosa explained that the game’s sales tripled after the implementation of multiplayer in January. “The interesting lesson from multi-player release is that it was the first update that had visible impact on sales. [...] Not all features are born equal and this applies especially to multi-player.” Not even the cold vacuum of space can quell the need for human companionship.

You can join in the fun for $15 either on Steam or the Space Engineers store. The game receives updates on a nearly weekly basis, the latest of which arrived today. See the new additions in the development video below.

If name tags and headbobs don’t quite rev your motor, maybe the original trailer full of destruction will.

Since that video was made, the devs have added sound effects, multiplayer mode, custom colors and much more.

Cracking Cpl. Krak.

Arithmetic/comedy card game Calculords busted down the doors to my brain this weekend and is still holding it hostage. Calculords gives you a set of numbers and three mathematical operators (add, subtract, and multiply) which you use to summon cards of different costs into a lane-defense battle — and it’s completely engrossing. I’m obviously a true believer, but the game is bound to be divisive — at base it’s about remembering your multiplication tables from third grade, which is no doubt the gaming equivalent of a broken glass-eating contest to many. No matter what, it’s inarguably the most original game we’ve seen around these parts in a long time.

I asked internet comedy sage and Calculords designer Seanbaby to give us novice Star Nerds some advice to take on our path to vengeance against Hate-Bit. Here’s what he sent us.

Adhere to the Codex Seanbaby and you, too will be bringing the fight to Hate-Bit.

This is a deep and unusual game, so here is some help with the basics.

The most important thing to do each turn is get the first CALCULORD BONUS. Even if you only deploy one or two cards, be sure you can clear all your numbers. If you don’t do this, you’ll probably get overrun and atomized. The most basic way to Calculord is to make the number you need, then turn the rest of your numbers into a 1 or a 0.

The big numbers are intimidating, but less so when you break them up. 115 may seem stupidly impossible to math together, but it’s just 23 times 5 and anyone can calculate their way to those numbers. I doubt anyone needs my help with the number stuff, though. We all went to third grade– it’s pretty amazing how quickly your times tables come back to you when they’re all that stand between you and cosmic death.

Cosblast doesn’t have any idea how garish his levels are — look at his choice of eyewear.

Tactically, WHEN you deploy your guys is as important as WHERE– if a unit buffs people, you want him to go in last. If a unit has DOUBLE TIME, you don’t want him getting jammed up behind your slow units. If a unit has lots of HP, you should probably play it first so he ends up on point and blocks bullets for your fragile guys.

A lot of players have been getting annihilated by the game’s second boss. If that’s not happening to you, I’m proud of you, Star Nerd. If not, here are some hot tips.

• KRAK sends exploding lunatics out every turn in lane B. So unless you want your units to also be exploding lunatics, forget about mounting an offense in lane B. Instead, drop a unit there every few turns. It will die spectacularly, but it should also set off a chain-reaction of explosions that will kill her entire column. Don’t wait too long to do this. If they’re close enough to your base when they pop, they can kill you.

• Push units (green cards) are vital, and she has none in her deck. A single brave unit of yours can block a dozen of hers. Your guy will go out hard, but his sacrifice will prevent any of those enemies from damaging your base that turn. The way combat works is that you don’t hit your opponent’s base if they have a unit protecting it. Push units shove enemies back before a fight, hopefully squashing them against their base and leaving it wide open to your lasers.

• Focus on lane A or C and put every unit you can there. Each unit you put into play will shift others to the right to make space for itself. If the lane is completely full, you can actually kill enemy units this way. So the more space you take up, the better. Vehicles are perfect for this since they often take up two zones. Cards that have the SQUAD ability are great too.

• Whichever lane you pick to put your army, protect the other two with the bare minimum of resources. Turn disposable trash units into heroes by throwing them in front of KRAK’s men. GUERRILLA STRIKE is a tactic card you start with that will hit all enemy units in a lane for 1. With her fragile, fast soldiers, this can sometimes wipe out a huge chunk of her army.

• Hope that she doesn’t counter your brilliant strategy. Her deck isn’t exactly built for cleverness, but at any time she may double the speed of her troops, turn them all into push units, or instantly blast a column of your men for major damage. So I guess my tip here is that a single-minded battle plan only works until it spectacularly doesn’t. Supplement your deck with tactic cards to add some versatility.

There’s no shame in crawling back to FANCYBOT to beef up your deck.

• If you’re still having trouble beating her, go back to FANCYBOT and pound on him until you’re a higher level and have better cards. Despite him being a terrible fighter, he drops some good stuff like SMC P1 TANK, NEUTRON SNIPER, and TURBO SAUCER.

• Calculords is the philosophical opposite of a pay-to-win game, but if you’re still having trouble, the store has some pretty crazy powerful cards you can just buy. Each of the five mini-collections ($1.99) are designed to power up a different deck-building style. I’m personally into spazzy, risky, rush decks, but a defensive deck where you armor and buff the hell out of one push unit is probably the best way to take out CPL KRAK. Each commander has a few holes in his or her game that clever players will be able to exploit, so my main advice is to believe in your brain and let it lead you to space victory.

My colleague Myke pointed out this New York Times column about the Commodore 64, which waxes nostalgic and also points out how the computer opened up possibilities for new programmers to explore and learn. Myke also pointed out, quite aptly, that the photo, which is supposed to be of a Commodore 64, is actually of a 1541 disk drive. Alas, the Grey Lady, in reference to the rainbow-logoed computer, nods…

UPDATE: I guess Apple has released a statement explaining that they’re not going to explain this issue, including how big of a deal it is. Ok, then I will.

UPDATE 2: Well, looks like Chad beat me to posting the file to Hacker News. Heh.

Tonight my friend Chad Brubaker[1] pointed me at an interesting problem.

Apple has been rolling out an iOS update to fix a critical flaw in their SSL implementation. His challenge to me: figure out the problem with the SSL stack. (I think he’d already figured it out but he went to bed before I could ask him.)

Unfortunately, people have been really tight-lipped about it. One researcher remarked that “It’s as bad as you could imagine, that’s all I can say.” So far no one has stepped forward to explain.

Well, after some snooping, it turns out to be a typo in the function SSLVerifySignedServerKeyExchange in sslKeyExchange.c. Specifically, near the bottom of the function we see the following code:

if ((err = SSLHashSHA1.update(&hashCtx, &serverRandom)) != 0)
    goto fail;
if ((err = SSLHashSHA1.update(&hashCtx, &signedParams)) != 0)
    goto fail;
    goto fail;
if ((err = SSLHashSHA1.final(&hashCtx, &hashOut)) != 0)
    goto fail;

err = sslRawVerify(ctx,
                   ctx->peerPubKey,
                   dataToSign,              /* plaintext */
                   dataToSignLen,           /* plaintext length */
                   signature,
                   signatureLen);

Notice anything weird? That second if has two goto fail statements underneath it. So:

• The function SSLVerifySignedServerKeyExchange is supposed to verify the key exchange.
• But, the second goto fail causes us to always jump to the fail label, no matter what. Even if the SHA1 update worked.
• In particular, this means that we always bypass the call to sslRawVerify, which would normally occur just beneath the if statements.
• And therefore, the error code err doesn’t get set in the event that the verification fails.
• As you can imagine, this is a pretty bad flaw. This makes it very easy to execute man-in-the-middle attacks on iOS users.

This has got to be the bug of the year. Needless to say, I recommend you upgrade your Apple products as soon as the patch is available.

[1] Chad works at a large, famous, and prestigious CS company. Fun fact about Chad: due to his background as a security researcher, he has developed pretty intense trust issues, and hence works on the only team in the industry that consists entirely of ponies. He is also one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.

A galaxy far, far away.

There was stirring today in the fell fortress in the ruins of Nova Jersey where Gilded Skull Games have been labouring over Galactic Keep. A new development update on the game’s website details advancements made in enemy AI and the game’s map system. It was eons ago that we declared the pen-and-paper RPG-inspired iOS game on of our most keenly-awaited games of 2012, and we’re still a-waiting.

I’m perfectly content to wait, myself. I love the setting: a far-flung galaxy where a band of displaced humans are leading a multi-species rebellion against their alien captors. I love the graphics, which look like they might have popped out of a garage-printed ‘zine. I love the tabletop RPG-style dice battles. I don’t see any other games on the horizon like it, so Galactic Keep might as well take its time.

Gilded Skull have done for-hire app development jobs before, including a SpongeBob game for Nickelodeon. I asked producer Rob Lemon if Galactic Keep’s protracted development was due to contract work competing for time.

“For now it’s ‘all Galactic Keep, all the time’”, he told me. “It’s a big idea. We are still using a game design doc that was written when the project re-started. We’re fine working on it, at our own pace, until our vision has been made a reality.”

That said, the impatient among us might just have a chance to get early access to Galactic Keep somehow. “We’d also like to get it out there, into people’s hands already,” says Lemon. “We’re thinking of ways to get it out sooner… maybe an Alpha/Beta program. We’re speaking to some people who might partner with us on that.”

If you want to make your own mark on the Galactic Keep universe, Gilded Skull are running a promotion on the forums of an obscure games website called Touch Our-Cade where you can design an alien creature that will appear in-game.

You can follow Galactic Keep’s progress on Twitter. You won’t be overloaded with tweets, trust me. There’s a relatively recent trailer after the jump.