Also, today is the 23rd anniversary of Hackers.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
Spider-Man: State Actor, Palantir Contractor
Sony's New Game Turns Spider-Man Into A Cop And It's No Fun
So far the primary objective boils down to Help The Cops. Not just any cops, either, but the NYPD specifically, because the game takes place in a true-to-life rendering of New York City. It's dumb to expect video games to be responsible reflections of real life, but it is also impossible, for me at least, to not feel some ickiness about the game forcing me into cahoots with even a fictionalized version of the NYPD, an organization that routinely oppresses some of the most vulnerable residents of the city I live in.
I'm not grasping for as many straws as it may appear. Spider-Man doesn't just help the cops by catching armed robbers and putting deranged super villains in jail, he helps them maintain a high-tech, citywide surveillance network. [...] But it isn't strictly a game mechanic, it's also a narrative choice, and one that comes with some pretty obvious real-life parallels. The NYPD buying cutting edge equipment and software from a shady tech company owned by a billionaire with, uh, maniacal tendencies so that it can monitor and collect data on citizens is a dystopian yet sensible video game plot point. It's also literally something that happened in the real New York City. [...]
Again, this is how the first few hours of the game works, and maybe there is a forthcoming plot twist in which Spider-Man realizes that he no longer wants to be an agent of the state. All I know is that it kind of sucks to play a game in which Spider-Man, in the process of beating up some drug dealers, taunts them by yelling, "If you just got real jobs you wouldn't have to work so hard at being criminals!"
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
Tags: comics, conspiracies, corporations, doomed, toys
Centaurpede
Tags: computers, mad science, mpegs, mutants, parts, perversions, tentacles
Can you rate sextortionists on Yelp?
Violet's asking the important questions:So, anyone else been following the low-key coverage on a wave of "sextortion" emails that hit the public a couple months back? I've been following these with a bit more interest than usual ... because I received one when they first went out.
And I loved it! I rate the extortionist 10/10, would be extorted by them again. The first thing I enjoyed about the extortion email was that they opened with "my" password ... which really was my password! Man, the memories it brought back. You know how passwords are like personal ice-core samples, going back through time? I mean before we all got password managers and made passwords we can't remember. Admit it: You look at old passwords and remember where you lived and what music you listened to and all those things that make you feel old now. Our old passwords carbon-date us.
Anyway, the sextortionist opened with a password that must've come from the 2001 Second Life hack and dump of Ye Olde Internet Days. I was hooked by their style! Then the sextortionist tried to shame me for masturbating to pornography on a computer and I was absolutely delighted. I mean, it's been so long since anyone tried to shame me for porn. I immediately wanted to email them back and ask which videos I watched! It never hurts to go retro, mix it up a little. I hoped it was something cool with my friends in it. What a bonus to introduce my sextortionist to some quality ethical feminist porn.
So, my extortionist said they'd taken dirty videos of me through my camera -- they weren't precise about which camera. I assumed it was the one on my laptop, which I always keep covered with a sticker. The extortionist said that if I didn't pay them in the coin of the realm, they would upload videos of me they recorded to some websites. That was when I knew I had to email them back. Which sites were they thinking of using? I have a few opinions on this. Also, I was going to have to let the sextortionists know that this might be a problem for them, considering the trademark on my name and all.
I got distracted by internet porn and never emailed them back.
Drop. drop... DROP!!
Amazon Cage Patent
US9280157B2: System and method for transporting personnel within an active workspace:Always mount a scratch monkey.
It depicts a metal cage intended for the worker, equipped with different cybernetic add-ons, that can be moved through a warehouse by the same motorized system that shifts shelves filled with merchandise. Here, the worker becomes a part of a machinic ballet, held upright in a cage which dictates and constrains their movement.
As we have seen time and time again in the research for our map, dystopian futures are built upon the unevenly distributed dystopian regimes of the past and present, scattered through an array of production chains for modern technical devices. The vanishingly few at the top of the fractal pyramid of value extraction live in extraordinary wealth and comfort. But the majority of the pyramids are made from the dark tunnels of mines, radioactive waste lakes, discarded shipping containers, and corporate factory dormitories.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
WebSockets
I've been playing around with WebSockets. Apparently they're the new hotness. They're basically a distributed whiteboard, think of them as a realtime command-and-control IRC channel that you can access from Javascript.But since this is the Stupidest Timeline, the received wisdom for how you spin up a WebSocket server involves installing libraries that will pull in 100k lines of code from whatever the singing-est dancing-est toolkit du jour is, and do you have time to audit that crap? I don't. All this just to let you burp out literally 20 lines of on-the-wire protocol.
Enter Net::WebSocket::Server, which gets my vote. It's tiny and very low level. The documentation was confusing and functional examples nonexistent. However, I eventually figured out how to make it go, and so now you can too:
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dna-websock.pl -- It runs separate rooms for each "path" part of the wss: URL. You have access to cookies, so you can plug in your authentication mechanism that way. -
websock-post.pl -- It lets you connect, post a notification, disconnect; or sit there and wait for a response for a little while.
Tags: computers, firstperson, lazyweb, security, www
