Tadeu

Just one day after TIFF unveiled its 2015 lineup, the Venice Film Festival has done the same. This year’s slate includes the world premieres of Johnny Depp‘s Whitey Bulger biopic Black Mass, Tom Hooper‘s awards hopeful The Danish Girl, Thomas McCarthy‘s sex abuse drama Spotlight, Baltasar Kormákur‘s survival thriller Everest, and Cary Fukunaga‘s Netflix project Beasts of No Nation.

Also represented are directors Noah Baumbach (the documentary De Palma), Martin Scorsese (the short film The Audition), Amy Berg (the documentary Janis), Charlie Kaufman (Anomalisa), and actors Kristen Stewart (Equals), Robert Pattinson (Childhood of a Leader), Tilda Swinton (A Bigger Splash), and Gary Oldman (Man Down).

See the Venice Film Festival 2015 lineup announced so far after the jump.

Competition

Frenzy, dir: Emin Alper (Turkey, France, Qatar)

Heart of a Dog, dir: Laurie Anderson (U.S)

Sangue Del Mio Sangue, dir: Marco Bellocchio (Italy, France, Switzerland

Looking for Grace, dir: Sue Brooks (Australia)

Equals, dir: Drake Doremus (U.S)

Remember, dir: Atom Egoyan (Canada, Germany)

Beasts of No Nation, dir: Cary Fukunaga (U.S)

Per Amor Vostro, dir: Giuseppe M. Gaudino (Italy, France)

Marguerite, dir: Xavier Giannoli (France, Czech Republic, Belgium)

Rabin, The Last Day, dir: Amos Gitai (Israel, France)

A Bigger Splash, dir: Luca Guadagnino (Italy, France)

The Endless River, dir: Oliver Hermanus (South Africa, France)

The Danish Girl, dir: Tom Hooper (U.S)

Anomalisa, dirs: Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson (U.S)

L’Attesa, dir: Piero Messina (Italy, France)

11 Minutes, dir: Jerzy Skolimowski (Poland, Ireland)

Francofonia, dir: Aleksandr Sokurov (France, Germany, Netherlands)

El Clan, dir: Pablo Trapero (Argentina, Spain)

Desde Alla, dir: Lorenzo Vigas (Venezuela, Mexico)

L’Hermine, dir: Christian Vincent (France)

Behemoth, dir: Liang Zhao (China, France)

Out of Competition

Everest, dir: Baltasar Kormakur (opening film) (UK, U.S.)

Mr Six, dir: Guan Hu (closing film) (China)

Go With Me, dir: Daniel Alfredson (U.S., Canada, Sweden)

Non Essere Cattivo, dir: Claudio Caligari (Italy)

Black Mass, dir: Scott Cooper (U.S)

Spotlight, dir: Thomas McCarthy (U.S.)

La Calle De La Amargura, dir: Arturo Ripstein (Mexico, Spain)

The Audition, dir: Martin Scorsese (U.S.)

Winter on Fire, dir: Evgeny Afineevsky (documentary) (Ukraine)

De Palma, dirs: Noah Baumbach, Jake Paltrow (documentary) (U.S)

Janis, dir: Amy Berg (documentary) (U.S)

Sobytie (The Event), dir: Sergei Loznitsa (documentary) (Netherlands, Belgium)

Gli Uomini Di Questa Citta Io Non Li Consoco, dir: Franceo Maresco (documentary) (Italy)

L’Esercito Piu Piccolo Del Mondo, dir: Gianfranco Pannone (documentary) (Vatican City State, Italy, Switzerland)

Na Ri Xiawu (Afternoon), dir: Tsai Ming-liang (China, Taiwan)

In Jackson Heights, dir: Frederick Wiseman (documentary) (U.S)

Special Screening

Human, dir: Yann Arthus-Bertrand (documentary) (France)

Golden Lion for Career Achievement

Bertrand Tavernier, screening La Vie Et Rien D’Autre (France)

Horizons (Orrizonti)

Madame Courage, dir: Merzak Allouache (Algeria, France, UAE)

A Copy of My Mind, dir: Joko Anwar (Indonesia, South Korea)

Pecore in Eerba, dir: Alberto Caviglia (Italy)

Tempête, dir: Samuel Collardey (France)

The Childhood of a Leader, dir: Brady Corbet (UK, Hungary, Belgium, France)

Italian Gangster, dir: Renato De Maria (Italy)

Chaharshanbeh, 19 Ordibehesht (Wednesday, May 9), dir: Vahid Jalivand (Iran)

Mountain, dir: Yaelle Kayam (Israel)

Krigen (A War), dir: Tobias Lindholm (Denmark)

Visaarani (Interrogation), dir: Vetri Maaran (India)

Free In Deed, dir: Jake Mahaffy (U.S., New Zealand)

Boi Neon, dir: Gabriel Mascaro (Brazil, Uruguay, Netherlands)

Man Down, dir: Dito Montiel (U.S.)

Lama Azavtani (Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me), dir: Hadar Morag (Israel, France)

Un Monstruo De Mil Cabezas, dir: Rodrigo Pla (Mexico)

Mate-Me Por Favor, dir: Anita Rocha Da Silveira (Brazil, Argentina)

Taj Mahal, dir: Nicolas Saada (France, Belgi)

Interruption, dir: Yorgos Zois (Greece, France, Croatia)

The post Venice Film Festival 2015 Lineup Includes ‘Black Mass’, New Films By Charlie Kaufman and Cary Fukunaga appeared first on /Film.

Photo via Flickr user Steve Baker

This story was originally published by the Marshall Project.

When Eric Broyles was nine years old, recklessly riding a bike through his Hamilton, Ohio, neighborhood, he had a tense encounter with a police officer: He fell off his bike, sending it rolling into the street, nearly hitting a passing police car. In response, the officer chastised him, using a racial slur.

Broyles, now an attorney, wrote about the incident—one of two unpleasant police encounters that he details—in his new book, Encounters with Police: A Black Man's Guide to Survival. "I was stunned," he wrote. "I was so terrified because I did realize that I could have been run over and then I was mortified by the police officer's racial slur."

On VICE News: Sandra Bland "Previously Attempted Suicide," Jail Documents Littered with Discrepancies Say

Those experiences, as well as the recent spate of high-profile police shootings, inspired Broyles—who co-authored the book with his friend, Adrian Jackson, a 25-year veteran of an Ohio police department—to provide African-American men a guide for handling their own interactions with police. Below, he reflects on recent shootings, the reasons why police encounters escalate, and why his book's message, "comply now and contest later," couldn't be more relevant.

Carl Stoffers: What made you want to write this book?
Eric Broyles: There were three incidents that motivated me to write the book. The Eric Garner and Michael Brown killings, and John Crawford, the young man who was shot [by police] in the Walmart in Ohio. My college classmate is the family's lawyer in the Crawford case, and by talking to him and hearing the frustration from the family and community, I wanted to put together some information to help young people, of color in particular.

The book is subtitled, "A Black Man's Guide to Survival." Why focus on men?
The tools in this book can be used by anyone, but it's geared toward men of color, and the reasons why are obvious. I don't think I need to list the names of all the black men that have died in confrontations with police recently.

With the release of the Sandra Bland video, there has been a lot of confusion about a police officer's authority during a traffic stop. What are some of the things a police officer can and can't order you to do?
It really depends on the nature of the stop. Police officers are entitled to give certain commands to create a safe environment for themselves. If they feel there is a threat of some sort by a person they pulled over, they have the right to make certain requests to reduce their risk of being harmed. In terms of telling her to put her cigarette out, the only justification would be if the officer thought it posed some sort of threat, like if she were to flick it in his eye.

What, if anything, could Sandra Bland have done differently during that traffic stop?
Because you don't know what a police officer is doing at the time of the stop—whether they're investigating a homicide or looking for a suspect whose description you fit—we suggest you err on the side of complying with police demands. I don't know that I saw anything in her behavior that would raise the threat level to the officer. But as a general matter, citizens should comply with police requests. Even if the citizen is correct, they have a forum to address wrong behavior by police officers, and that's through the complaint process or litigation. It's certainly not something that you do at the time of the encounter.

Many people make it a point to know and express their rights when dealing with police. In the Bland tape, she tells the officer twice that he does not have the right to order her out of her car. Does familiarity with the law sometimes become a double-edged sword during police encounters?
I think that when [someone] knows his rights and encounters a police officer who is a true professional, I don't think you'll have any incident.

So would you say that knowing your rights helps more than hurts?
Yes. But I understand the frustration that African Americans, in particular, may feel at the notion that they have to subjugate their constitutional rights in order to survive a police encounter. But until we work through some of the cultural issues and training issues in police departments, my objective is to get people home safely. That's why the theme is "comply now, contest later." It's not about leaving an encounter with police without your dignity in place.

Should police also be responsible for adjusting their behavior during these encounters?
It's always the police department's responsibility to act without bias, so I'm not giving a wink and a nod to bias or prejudicial behavior. I'm recognizing the reality that it's going to take time to change that. It's absolutely the police department and the police system's responsibility to root out bias, racism, and profiling, 100 percent. But during the time it takes to root that out, over the next 10, 20, 50 years, how many lives are you willing to sacrifice?

You wrote about an incident in which you were pulled over and surrounded by several cops. Eventually you found out they were looking for a murder suspect with a similar vehicle. There was a communication disconnect throughout the incident.
I was a black male in a two-door silver coupe. The officers were looking for a murder suspect who was a black male in a silver two-door coupe, but I didn't know that. So, if they would have told me that at the time of the encounter, I would have been upset but I would have understood.

Have you received feedback about the non-confrontational message of the book?
Some people take this as I'm asking them to be a coward or swallow their pride, and I tell them that it's a false equivalency. This book is about teaching young people how to position themselves to fight this battle.

Have people expressed a desire for more confrontational methods of dealing with police?
Sure. But what do you get from trying to beat up a police officer? You have no bragging rights for beating up a police officer. There are two types of people who beat up a police officer: Number one, the person's dead. Or, number two, they're talking about it in a prison yard.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

This article was published by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletter, or follow The Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter.

Hovertext: Fortunately, the Sheriff of Nottingham is subject to regulatory capture.

New comic!
Today's News:

Hovertext: This is as close as I plan to get to making cat jokes.

New comic!
Today's News:

Tickets for BAHFest are zooming! Please buy soon to guarantee a spot! 

As brevity in fiction goes, who can top “For sale: baby shoes, never worn”? That much-referenced six-word story, often attributed to Ernest Hemingway, certainly packs an impressive amount of human drama into its short length. But what about other genres? What would a six-word science- fiction story look like? i09 crowdsourced countless such works in 2014: responses, which tended toward the eschatological, included “The Universe died. He did not,” “New world. Cryogenic failure. Seeds dead,” and “Finally sentient, it switched itself off.”

Not bad, but what would we get if we went to the professionals? Alas, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, prolific author of such respected sci-fi novels as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Rendezvous with Rama, passed away just five years before i09 issued its challenge. Still, we have an idea of the direction his entry might have gone in from of “siseneG,” a story story — a very short story indeed — Clarke sent in to Analog magazine in 1984:

And God said: DELETE lines One to Aleph. LOAD. RUN.
And the Universe ceased to exist.

Then he pondered for a few aeons, sighed, and added: ERASE.
It never had existed.

“This is the only short story I’ve written in ten years or so,” Clarke wrote in the accompanying note. “I think you’ll agree that they don’t come much shorter.” We now know that they can come somewhat shorter, at least 25 words shorter than “siseneG,” but surely we can all agree that Clarke set a high standard for scientific (or perhaps technological-existential) flash fiction decades before the coinage of the term. But then, we always knew the man had a knack for looking ahead.

via Letters of Note

Related Content:

In 1964, Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Internet, 3D Printers and Trained Monkey Servants

Arthur C. Clarke Predicts in 2001 What the World Will Look By December 31, 2100

Arthur C. Clarke Narrates Film on Mandelbrot’s Fractals; David Gilmour Provides the Soundtrack

Free Science Fiction Classics on the Web: Huxley, Orwell, Asimov, Gaiman & Beyond

Colin Marshall writes on cities, language, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/read-arthur-c-clarkes-super-short-31-word-sci-fi-story-siseneg.html is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

%%POST_LINK%% is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

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Mark Wilson writes: Sundar Pichai is the new CEO of Google as the company undergoes a huge restructuring. Co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are moving to a new company called Google Alphabet which will serve as an umbrella company for Google and its various projects. Google itself is being, in Page's words, "slimmed down" and the change is quite an extraordinary one. Page quotes the original founders' letter that was written 11 years go. It states that "Google is not a conventional company", and today's announcement makes that perfectly clear. There's a lot to take in...Google Alphabet is, essentially, the new face of Google. Page chose to make the announcement in a blog post that went live after the stock markets closed. This is more than just a rebranding, it is a complete shakeup, the scale of which is almost unprecedented.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Warren attacks Nathan in 'Life Is Strange'

Early warning: this article contains story spoilers for episode four of Life Is Strange

The turmoil of teenage life can be a pretty sobering experience, young minds constantly scrambling to find their own sense of identity and self. With new, immediately alien feelings adding themselves into the mix, and basically ruining everything, teenage life is hard—and portraying that well is something that not a lot of video games have gotten right.

Dontnod just might have, though. The Parisian studio's second game, Life Is Strange, is an episodically released point-and-click-like adventure, currently on its fourth episode of five, which mixes the drama and hormonal nightmare of being a teenager with a healthy dose of science fiction. It's set in the fictional Blackwell Academy, in the equally fictional Arcadia Bay, in the really-there-in-real-life (seriously-just-look-on-a-map) Oregon. It has me thinking back to my school days, and I see a lot of myself in the game's resident nerd, Warren Graham.

Warren's a secondary figure in the game's narrative, with Max and Chloe filling in the central protagonist positions, but he features in every episode and always leaves an impression. His cringe-worthy texts to Max, who he clearly lusts after, betray a general neediness that is something a lot of teenage boys (myself included) trap themselves in. Warren's behavior towards Max and his overall attitude to women is something that really piqued my interest: Is there more to Warren than we're being told? I asked Michel Koch, co-director of Life Is Strange.

"When we started to create every character, not only Warren, we really wanted to use known archetypes that people see in teenage drama and in movies." Koch tells me that Dontnod wrote episode one with the intention of introducing the typical high school stereotypes, before building upon them with every episode.

Maybe cool it there a little, Warren

"Warren started as the shy nerd who is in love with the main character. He has his issues and his feelings, and has to deal with things like the 'friend zone' and getting rejected. I think this appeals to a lot of players and gamers, as it's something we can relate to—we've all felt this way at some point. I see myself in Warren too, and a lot of people can also relate to his awkwardness. Like, his inviting of Max to see scary movies—that's maybe not a good thing to do, when you're trying to hit on a girl."

Especially given what Max is going through in Life Is Strange, not that anyone but those closest to her actually knows what that is. (Just Chloe, basically.) Warren's clearly into Max, but in true-to-life terrible nerd fashion, he struggles to express and deal with his feelings. I've seen comments amongst other Life Is Strange players saying that Warren is simply a "fuckboy that's trying to get into Max's pants," but I don't buy that. He's clearly besotted—check out his "Don't ignore this text" message in episode one, and some other pushiness—but I doubt that's the real deal, the whole Warren.

Article continues after the video below

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Related: Watch The Mystical Universe of 'Magic: The Gathering'

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"I think that he's a good guy," Koch says, "but, of course, a bit insecure with girls, so he tries to hide that underneath with some humor and bad jokes. He might seem a bit pushy, but he is in love with Max, and he cares about her. We didn't see [his actions] as a creepy way to hit on Max. But, yes there is this kind of awkwardness [to Warren]. He is really messing up sometimes because he isn't saying what he should say, but that's because he's shy and it's funny to see how he tries and sometimes doesn't get what he wants."

Warren's ham-fisted attempts at some sort of physical intimacy with Max did give me a bit of a chuckle. Koch tells me the inspiration behind the character. "I'm a huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is why I like looking at archetypes, like, uh, Xander. He has this kind of awkwardness in him and is always saying the wrong things, but he's a good guy!"

Spoilers definitely follow for episode four of Life Is Strange

Max and Warren's bond is genuine, as little moments like this illustrate.

There's a large character moment for Warren in episode four. He comes face to face with local bully (and so much more, but even more spoilers) Nathan Prescott, who'd given him a black eye just a few days earlier. Warren steps in when Nathan get violent towards Max, and we see Warren in a completely different light as he beats Blackwell's resident terror into a bloody mess in the boys' dorms. You, as Max, can step in and pull Warren back—but, equally, you can just let Nathan get what's been coming to him for a few episodes. Koch is eager to share the team's reasoning behind this scene.

"If you choose not to step in on the fight with Nathan, we start to see something a little different, a darker side of Warren. It's very violent and gets a bit out of control. It shows us that, even if we're good characters, we all have a side of us that can go out of control. Everyone has shades of grey, bits of darkness."

New on Munchies: Sushi Like You've Never Seen It

As Life Is Strange has progressed, so its tone has darkened and its influences widened, now encompassing internet culture with Warren, still pumped from his show of aggression, labeling himself a "white knight" and how he's become an "alpha." "I think when you're insecure, it's normal to show ourselves to others as something else using people, characters, and words," Koch explains. "I mean, we are looking at memes, 4chan, Tumblr, and all that, and we are using Warren a lot for this."

To me, it seems like Warren is Dontnod's connection with online societies, and along with that comes the issues and problems that a lifestyle with web culture entails. He's not a weirdo, nor a woman hater who is simply hanging around Max to get his end away. He's merely going through his own changes, which might not be so life-or-death in design as Max's, but are traumatic nonetheless as all of these new emotions are stirred up. Warren, aged just 16, is a character who isn't black or white, but one that's a little bit more than the usual shy nerd stereotype.

Possibly the worst T-shirt I've ever seen

The fact that we can explore a supporting-role character in this much depth is a testament to how Dontnod has been writing Life Is Strange, to the studio's attention to detail in fleshing out their fantastical story with relatable real-life traits. And the series is only getting better with each episode, tackling some heavyweight themes and doing so with tact surprising for the games industry. The game's reception so far, and its commercial success, should be enough for its publishers, Square Enix, to give the green light on a second season.

"Well, that's up to them," is all Koch will give me. Assuming there's more story to tell come the climax of episode five, out later in 2015, they'd be crazy not to. Life Is Strange is building on the modern adventure format that Telltale helped to establish with The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us, but Dontnod is arguably doing it better than their Californian peers. This is a special game, and one that its fans are always going to want more of.

More information at the Life Is Strange website.

Follow Sayem Ahmed on Twitter.

ForgedArtificer writes: So we all know about the Pixels takedown on Vimeo, and that it was pretty bad in a lot of ways. But did you know that they took down the short film that inspired the movie? Turns out, the 2010 Pixels, which was taken off Vimeo due to copyright notice, was responsible for inspiring the entire Adam Sandler flick. Unlike Sandler's film, it's critically-acclaimed and has won awards. Talk about kicking someone when they're already down. First Patrick Jean gets to watch them violate his work and now they're claiming that his work violates theirs.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

podunkmouse:

highlandvalley:

RazerJPさんはTwitterを使っています: “橋を作るという単純ですが、奥が深くユニークなゲームPoly Bridge。 ただ単に橋を造っても上手くいかないらしく、Redditには色んな作品が投稿されてます。(¼) https://t.co/3onxjXL9Rs http://t.co/itCTLtyIKi”

“I tried it society’s way. I really did. And I was denied. Now, we do it my way.”

This post is a bit of a public service announcement, so I'll get right to the point:

Every time you use WiFi, ask yourself: could I be connecting to the Internet through a compromised router with malware?

It's becoming more and more common to see malware installed not at the server, desktop, laptop, or smartphone level, but at the router level. Routers have become quite capable, powerful little computers in their own right over the last 5 years, and that means they can, unfortunately, be harnessed to work against you.

I write about this because it recently happened to two people I know.

.@jchris A friend got hit by this on newly paved win8.1 computer. Downloaded Chrome, instantly infected with malware. Very spooky.

— not THE Damien Katz (@damienkatz) May 20, 2015

@codinghorror *no* idea and there’s almost ZERO info out there. Essentially malicious JS adware embedded in every in-app browser

— John O'Nolan (@JohnONolan) August 7, 2015

In both cases, they eventually determined the source of the problem was that the router they were connecting to the Internet through had been compromised.

This is way more evil genius than infecting a mere computer. If you can manage to systematically infect common home and business routers, you can potentially compromise every computer connected to them.

Hilarious meme images I am contractually obligated to add to each blog post aside, this is scary stuff and you should be scared.

Router malware is the ultimate man-in-the-middle attack. For all meaningful traffic sent through a compromised router that isn't HTTPS encrypted, it is 100% game over. The attacker will certainly be sending all that traffic somewhere they can sniff it for anything important: logins, passwords, credit card info, other personal or financial information. And they can direct you to phishing websites at will – if you think you're on the "real" login page for the banking site you use, think again.

Heck, even if you completely trust the person whose router you are using, they could be technically be doing this to you. But they probably aren't.

Probably.

In John's case, the attackers inserted annoying ads in all unencrypted web traffic, which is an obvious tell to a sophisticated user. But how exactly would the average user figure out where this junk is coming from (or worse, assume the regular web is just full of ad junk all the time), when even a technical guy like John – founder of the open source Ghost blogging software used on this very blog – was flummoxed?

But that's OK, we're smart users who would only access public WiFi using HTTPS websites, right? Sadly, even if the traffic is HTTPS encrypted, it can still be subverted! There's an extremely technical blow-by-blow analysis at Cryptostorm, but the TL;DR is this:

Compromised router answers DNS req for *.google.com to 3rd party with faked HTTPS cert, you download malware Chrome. Game over.

HTTPS certificate shenanigans. DNS and BGP manipulation. Very hairy stuff.

How is this possible? Let's start with the weakest link, your router. Or more specifically, the programmers responsible for coding the admin interface to your router.

They must be terribly incompetent coders to let your router get compromised over the Internet, since one of the major selling points of a router is to act as a basic firewall layer between the Internet and you… right?

In their defense, that part of a router generally works as advertised. More commonly, you aren't being attacked from the hardened outside. You're being attacked from the soft, creamy inside.

That's right, the calls are coming from inside your house!

By that I mean you'll visit a malicious website that scripts your own browser to access the web-based admin pages of your router, and reset (or use the default) admin passwords to reconfigure it.

Nasty, isn't it? They attack from the inside using your own browser. But that's not the only way.

• Maybe you accidentally turned on remote administration, so your router can be modified from the outside.

• Maybe you left your router's admin passwords at default.

• Maybe there is a legitimate external exploit for your router and you're running a very old version of firmware.

• Maybe your ISP provided your router and made a security error in the configuration of the device.

In addition to being kind of terrifying, this does not bode well for the Internet of Things.

Internet of Compromised Things, more like.

OK, so what can we do about this? There's no perfect answer; I think it has to be a defense in depth strategy.

Inside Your Home

Buy a new, quality router. You don't want a router that's years old and hasn't been updated. But on the other hand you also don't want something too new that hasn't been vetted for firmware and/or security issues in the real world.

Also, any router your ISP provides is going to be about as crappy and "recent" as the awful stereo system you get in a new car. So I say stick with well known consumer brands. There are some hardcore folks who think all consumer routers are trash, so YMMV.

I can recommend the Asus RT-AC87U – it did very well in the SmallNetBuilder tests, Asus is a respectable brand, it's been out a year, and for most people, this is probably an upgrade over what you currently have without being totally bleeding edge overkill. I know it is an upgrade for me.

(I am also eagerly awaiting Eero as a domestic best of breed device with amazing custom firmware, and have one pre-ordered, but it hasn't shipped yet.)

Download and install the latest firmware. Ideally, do this before connecting the device to the Internet. But if you connect and then immediately use the firmware auto-update feature, who am I to judge you.

Change the default admin passwords. Don't leave it at the documented defaults, because then it could be potentially scripted and accessed.

Turn off WPS. Turns out the Wi-Fi Protected Setup feature intended to make it "easy" to connect to a router by pressing a button or entering a PIN made it … a bit too easy. This is always on by default, so be sure to disable it.

Turn off uPNP. Since we're talking about attacks that come from "inside your house", uPNP offers zero protection as it has no method of authentication. If you need it for specific apps, you'll find out, and you can forward those ports manually as needed.

Make sure remote administration is turned off. I've never owned a router that had this on by default, but check just to be double plus sure.

For Wifi, turn on WPA2+AES and use a long, strong password. Again, I feel most modern routers get the defaults right these days, but just check. The password is your responsibility, and password strength matters tremendously for wireless security, so be sure to make it a long one – at least 20 characters with all the variability you can muster.

Pick a unique SSID. Default SSIDs just scream hack me, for I have all defaults and a clueless owner. And no, don't bother "hiding" your SSID, it's a waste of time.

Optional: use less congested channels for WiFi. The default is "auto", but you can sometimes get better performance by picking less used frequencies at the ends of the spectrum. As summarized by official ASUS support reps:

• Set 2.4 GHz channel bandwidth to 40 MHz, and change the control channel to 1, 6 or 11.

• Set 5 GHz channel bandwidth to 80 MHz, and change the control channel to 165 or 161.

Experts only: install an open source firmware. I discussed this a fair bit in Everyone Needs a Router, but you have to be very careful which router model you buy, and you'll probably need to stick with older models. There are several which are specifically sold to be friendly to open source firmware.

Outside Your Home

Well, this one is simple. Assume everything you do outside your home, on a remote network or over WiFi is being monitored by IBGs: Internet Bad Guys.

I know, kind of an oppressive way to voyage out into the world, but it's better to start out with a defensive mindset, because you could be connecting to anyone's compromised router or network out there.

But, good news. There are only two key things you need to remember once you're outside, facing down that fiery ball of hell in the sky and armies of IBGs.

1. Never access anything but HTTPS websites.

   If it isn't available over HTTPS, don't go there!

   You might be OK with HTTP if you are not logging in to the website, just browsing it, but even then IBGs could inject malware in the page and potentially compromise your device. And never, ever enter anything over HTTP you aren't 100% comfortable with bad guys seeing and using against you somehow.

   We've made tremendous progress in HTTPS Everywhere over the last 5 years, and these days most major websites offer (or even better, force) HTTPS access. So if you just want to quickly check your GMail or Facebook or Twitter, you will be fine, because those services all force HTTPS.

2. If you must access non-HTTPS websites, or you are not sure, always use a VPN.

   A VPN encrypts all your traffic, so you no longer have to worry about using HTTPS. You do have to worry about whether or not you trust your VPN provider, but that's a much longer discussion than I want to get into right now.

   It's a good idea to pick a go-to VPN provider so you have one ready and get used to how it works over time. Initially it will feel like a bunch of extra work, and it kinda is, but if you care about your security an encrypt-everything VPN is bedrock. And if you don't care about your security, well, why are you even reading this?

If it feels like these are both variants of the same rule, always strongly encrypt everything, you aren't wrong. That's the way things are headed. The math is as sound as it ever was – but unfortunately the people and devices, less so.

Be Safe Out There

Until I heard Damien's story and John's story, I had no idea router hardware could be such a huge point of compromise. I didn't realize that you could be innocently visiting a friend's house, and because he happens to be the parent of three teenage boys and the owner of an old, unsecured router that you connect to via WiFi … your life will suddenly get a lot more complicated.

As the amount of stuff we connect to the Internet grows, we have to understand that the Internet of Things is a bunch of tiny, powerful computers, too – and they need the same strong attention to security that our smartphones, laptops, and servers already enjoy.

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Hovertext: I don't care that we're barely out of a recession, start maxing out your credit cards!

New comic!
Today's News:

BAHFest East tickets are still available! 

"From the dog's point of view, his master is an elongated and abnormally cunning dog." – Mabel Louise Robinson

Paradox’s internal development studio, responsible for Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Victoria and Hearts of Iron, is deep into development on a space strategy game. We’ve already seen it, and picked the brains of CK II maestro and project lead Henrik Fåhraeus and EU IV designer Tomas Johansson about this giant leap for the studio. The project, which the company announced at their Gamescom fan gathering moments ago, goes by the name Stellaris and it’s shaping up to be one of the most exciting games in recent years.

Below, you’ll find everything we know, including how randomised alien species will ensure that each new galaxy is mysterious, and why the commitment to an intelligent and subversive end-game could make this one of the smartest interpretations of 4X strategy ever made.

… [visit site to read more]

Hovertext: Your move, people who aren't reductionists.

New comic!
Today's News:

“Traffic was disrupted for a time in north Dublin today after a giant inflatable Minion flew onto the Swords road. The Minion was part of a nearby funfair that was taking place.” Full Story (photo via djmadscone)

“RAWRRRRR!!!!”

fatecomplex:

naturalsceneries:

“This dog just appeared out of nowhere and followed us for an entire week during our trekking trip in the Himalayan outback…When I decided to get up at 4 a.m. to climb the next 5000 m peak…he accompanied me as well. On the top he was sitting for the entire 30 minutes on this place”

This dog knows some shit 

video:  ChamPAIN

“One of the most important things is to recognize that we do have this mounting violence in us, and then to find the reasons.”

More than half a century after Tolstoy’s little-known correspondence with Gandhi on violence, human nature, and why we hurt each other, as the civil rights movement was being built on a philosophy of nonviolence and Leonard Bernstein was making his moving case for the only true antidote to violence, twenty-something Hunter S. Thompson (July 18, 1937–February 20, 2005) became fascinated by a subculture that seemed to embody the most violent and vengeful aspects of human nature and society: Hell’s Angels. Although Thompson was on his way to becoming a counterculture icon himself and would struggle with addiction for the remainder of his life, he was at heart an idealist — from the remarkably precocious letter of life-advice he sent to a jaded friend at the age of only twenty to his unrelenting advocacy of integrity in the media. He viewed lawlessness, violence, and vengeance not as an intelligent and productive act of political dissent but as a moral failing and a vile indulgence of our basest nature, and saw Hell’s Angels as a grotesque microcosm of society’s larger tendencies toward such pointless, lawless violence.

In the mid-1960s, Thompson took a magazine assignment profiling the infamous motorcycle gang of proud “outlaws” and, true to the integrity code of the gonzo journalism movement he founded, he embedded himself with the Angels for more than a year, all the while being upfront with them about his intentions as a journalist. The resulting article became the basis for his first book, Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (public library), published in 1966, which launched his career as a writer.

In 1967, legendary broadcaster Studs Terkel interviewed Thompson — who was about to turn thirty — about his experience with the Hell’s Angels and the deeper themes in the book. Nearly half a century later, the always delightful Blank on Blank has brought a particularly poignant segment of this interview to animated life:

One of the most important things is to recognize that we do have this mounting violence in us, and then to find the reasons — and then once you find that, it’s like curing a boil… The same venom that the Angels are spitting out in public, a lot of people are just keeping bottled up in private.

I think this technological science of obsolescence — the fact that people are becoming obsolete — the people who are most affected by this technological obsolescence are the ones least capable of understanding the reasons for it. So the venom builds up much quicker — it feeds on their ignorance. Until you recognize what’s happening, what makes you do these wild things … it’s like an albatross around your neck.

Complement with Thompson on living a meaningful life and this graphic biography of the famed gonzo journalist, then revisit some favorite Blank on Blank masterpieces: Ray Bradbury on storytelling, John Lennon and Yoko Ono on love, David Foster Wallace on ambition, Jane Goodall on life, and Richard Feynman on the most important thing.

Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.

Norway started out as a kingdom in 872 and has existed ever since. It has also saved quite a bit of its traditional architecture. Traditional Norwegian architecture makes it look like a land out of a fairytale. Stave churches – so named because of the Norse words for their load-bearing poles – were extremely popular back in the 12th century, and their unique shape matched with all-wooden construction make is simply spectacular.

Norvegian vernacular (as in, built to local requirements and using local materials) architecture is wonderful. Moss and even trees grow on the roofs of wooden or stone buildings, making Norway a sort of Norse Shire. Have a look, and plan your next holiday accordingly!

(h/t: boredpanda)

Borgund Stave Church

Source: Tnarik Innael

Source: Robert Cross

Barn In Valldal

Source: thornews.com

Renndølsetra

Source: reddit.com

Ancient Road Vindhellavegen

Source: youtube.com

Bridge Over Låtefossen Waterfall

Source: Max Rive

Under The Aurora

Source: Hans Marius Mindrum

Kvednafossen Waterfall In Norway

Source: Lars Neumann

At The End Of The World, Tjome

Source: Allan Pedersen

Old Farmhouses

Source: SoyabaraJohnny99

Natural Swimming Pool In The Forest

Source: Strezz69

Old House

Source: Slemulv

A House In Norway

Source: Robert Snow

Old Village

Source: imgur.com

Fjord Houses

Source: AdMixStar

A Bridge In Norway

Source: Will Zhang

Rogaland, Gullingen

Source: dmitryprofi

Lake Bondhus

Source: Jindra Rotscheid

Fairy House In Hunderfossen, Lillehammer

Source: Ester Ayerdi

Fisherman Hut, Undredal

Source: Ester Ayerdi

No related posts.

“Now that I have a reasonable-resolution global color view of Pluto,” writes Emily Lakdawalla, “I can drop it into one of my trademark scale image montages, to show you how it fits in with the rest of the similar-sized worlds in the solar system: the major moons and the biggest asteroids.”

The solar system contains dozens of objects that are large enough for self-gravity to make them round, and yet are not considered planets. They include the major moons of the planets, one asteroid, and many worlds in the Kuiper belt. The ones that we have visited with spacecraft are shown here to scale with each other. A couple of items on here are not quite round, illustrating the transition to smaller, lumpier objects.

It's just an accident that Pluto wound up next to Iapetus and Triton, which I think are the two best analogs for what we can see on Pluto's surface. Yet Pluto stands out for its uniquely ruddy color. Charon, too, is unique, for its dark pole, but there are similarities to the similar-sized worlds on the left side of the diagram: Ariel and Dione in particular.

These are the not-planets. Their non-planetary status is a handicap because these are the worlds that we need to get Earthlings excited about exploring. Titan's strange hydrology -- Enceladus' geysers -- the subsurface oceans of Europa and Ganymede -- the dynamic surfaces of Triton and Pluto. And beyond all the worlds pictured here, there are hundreds of Kuiper belt objects that I would include on this montage if we had ever visited them up close. But we haven't yet. So much undiscovered country yet to explore -- but they're all worlds that much of the public is not familiar with.

Full size here [PNG].
“The not-planets” [planetary.org]

Montage by Emily Lakdawalla. The Moon: Gari Arrillaga. Other data: NASA/JPL/JHUAPL/SwRI/UCLA/MPS/IDA. Processing by Ted Stryk, Gordan Ugarkovic, Emily Lakdawalla, and Jason Perry.

Video: Nick Offerman Shows Off His Pizza Farm