Mystery Flesh Pit National Park is a fictional project by Trevor Roberts, who having started on Reddit has for the past few years has been posting stories and artwork to his website, fleshing (sorry) out the tale of a huge creature that is discovered underground in Texas and…turned into a tourist attraction.
Source: Kotaku – Kickstarter Cancelled In The Most Brutal Way Possible
Soccer Story, out this week, is a new RPG from PanicBarn, the team behind Not Tonight. It is an RPG devoted entirely to the sport of football. It is not, as the combination of name and art style might have you initially believe, a sequel or successor to Golf Story.
Source: Kotaku – Soccer Story Is An RPG Where Football Is The Villain
Britain will not force tech giants to remove content that is “legal but harmful” from their platforms after campaigners and lawmakers raised concerns that the move could curtail free speech, the government said on Monday. Reuters reports: Online safety laws would instead focus on the protection of children and on ensuring companies removed content that was illegal or prohibited in their terms of service, it said, adding that it would not specify what legal content should be censored. Platform owners, such as Facebook-owner Meta and Twitter, would be banned from removing or restricting user-generated content, or suspending or banning users, where there is no breach of their terms of service or the law, it said.
The government had previously said social media companies could be fined up to 10% of turnover or 18 million pounds ($22 million) if they failed to stamp out harmful content such as abuse even if it fell below the criminal threshold, while senior managers could also face criminal action. The proposed legislation, which had already been beset by delays and rows before the latest version, would remove state influence on how private companies managed legal speech, the government said. It would also avoid the risk of platforms taking down legitimate posts to avoid sanctions. […]
The revised Online Safety Bill, which returns to parliament next month, puts the onus on tech companies to take down material in breach of their own terms of service and to enforce their user age limits to stop children circumventing authentication methods, the government said. If users were likely to encounter controversial content such as the glorification of eating disorders, racism, anti-Semitism or misogyny not meeting the criminal threshold, the platform would have to offer tools to help adult users avoid it, it said. Only if platforms failed to uphold their own rules or remove criminal content could a fine of up to 10% of annual turnover apply. Britain said late on Saturday that a new criminal offense of assisting or encouraging self-harm online would be included in the bill.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – UK Ditches Ban On ‘Legal But Harmful’ Online Content In Favor of Free Speech
This trend is so edgy, right? I guess if you want to satisfy your inner child who is into this sort of thing, The Mean One might be for you; it definitely looks to prove that the lowest forms of entertainment keep it “real” by bastardizing children’s IP without any real intention outside of making Bambi, Pooh, and now …
Source: Gizmodo – The Mean One Looks Like Yet Another Unnecessary Cynical Children’s Horror Parody
The US government must drop its prosecution of the WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange because it is undermining press freedom, according to the media organizations that first helped him publish leaked diplomatic cables. The Guardian reports: Twelve years ago today, the Guardian, the New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, and El Pais collaborated to release excerpts from 250,000 documents obtained by Assange in the “Cablegate” leak. The material, leaked to WikiLeaks by the then American soldier Chelsea Manning, exposed the inner workings of US diplomacy around the world. The editors and publishers of the media organizations that first published those revelations have come together to publicly oppose plans to charge Assange under a law designed to prosecute first world war spies. “Publishing is not a crime,” they said, saying the prosecution is a direct attack on media freedom.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Media Groups Urge US To Drop Julian Assange Charges
Following the example set by governments in places like Belgium and the Netherlands, an Australian politician has put forward a bill that would, if passed into law, massively restrict the use of loot boxes in video games aimed at children.
Source: Kotaku – Loot Boxes Would Be For Adults Only If Australian Bill Passes
Predicts version 6.1 will need an eighth release candidate. Linux kernel boss Linus Torvalds has warned contributors that the rhythm of the project’s development cycle will clash with Christmas, so developers need to make sure they ready their work before the holiday season.…
Source: LXer – Linus Torvalds to be ‘more hard-nosed’ as Linux 6.2 merge window meets Christmas
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Comcast “Broadcast TV” fee that isn’t included in the company’s advertised prices is rising again, tacking as much as $27 onto the monthly bills of cable TV users. Comcast’s Broadcast TV and Regional Sports Network fees combined could add nearly $40 to a customer’s monthly TV bill after next month’s price hikes, all while Comcast advertises much lower prices than people actually pay. “Comcast has started notifying customers and municipalities that it plans to raise video and Internet prices next month, including a whopping $7.35 a month increase for the Broadcast TV fee in one town,” a TV Answer Man article said on Saturday. The $7.35-per-month increase is in Taunton, Massachusetts, where Comcast said the Broadcast TV fee will rise from $18.65 to $26.
The Broadcast TV fee is rising from $24.95 a month to $27.25 a month starting on December 20 in Sandown, New Hampshire, a letter (PDF) from Comcast to town government officials said. In Sandown, the Regional Sports Network fee is rising from $11.85 to $12. The TV Answer Man report also said several towns in Michigan were “alerted that the Broadcast Fee will rise from $14.80 to $20.70 a month while the monthly Regional Sports fee will go from $9.50 to $10.15.” These are just a few examples as Comcast is raising prices nationwide.
The Broadcast TV charges added to customer bills vary by region. Comcast says the fees are based on the amounts that “broadcast stations charge us to carry them on our cable systems.” It’s true that Comcast has to pay retransmission consent fees to carry the stations, even though stations can be accessed for free over the air with an antenna. But the sneaky manner in which Comcast and other cable companies pass those costs on to customers can lead to bill shock and unexpected price increases. Comcast’s advertised prices do not include the Broadcast TV or the Regional Sports Network fees even though these fees account for a large portion of customers’ actual monthly bills. On Comcast’s ordering website, the base prices are listed along with a message stating that Broadcast TV and Regional Sports fees are “extra” and that the price is “subject to change.” The Broadcast TV and Regional Sports fees also aren’t included in how Comcast calculates promotional pricing and thus can be raised even when a customer’s promotional rate hasn’t expired. Comcast says it’s also raising the base prices of monthly service plans, saying the average increase nationwide is 3.8 percent.
Comcast’s statement on the price increases blamed the rising cost of video programming but said the overall increases are lower than the most recent inflation rate: “TV networks and other video programmers continue to raise their prices, with broadcast television and sports being the biggest drivers of increases in customers’ bills. We’re continuing to work hard to manage these costs for our customers while investing in our broadband network to provide the best, most reliable Internet service in the country and to give our customers more low-cost choices in video and connectivity so they can find a package that fits their lifestyle and budget. Our national average increase of 3.8 percent is about half of the most recent rate of inflation.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Comcast’s Sneaky Broadcast TV Fee Hits , Making a Mockery of Advertised Rates
Earlier this year the Open-Source Firmware Foundation was created to help advance open firmware development. Today the Coreboot project has officially joined the Open-Source Firmware Foundation…
Source: Phoronix – Coreboot Joins The Open-Source Firmware Foundation
As a grandfather clock tick-tocks past midnight, a young woman turns to her aunt and confesses: she’s certain there’s a malevolent presence in the room with them. Instead of trying to talk her down, the elderly woman reveals she’s quite aware of what’s lurking in the shadows… and how to deal with it. Or does she?
Source: Gizmodo – A Demon Comes Creeping in Horror Short Midnight Talk
More than 120 volcanic eruptions have occurred in the United States in the 42 years since Mount St. Helens erupted over Washington in 1980, killing 57 and inflicting over a billion dollars in property damage. While none have been nearly as destructive, their mere presence can impact human activities and even economies hundreds of miles away. Altogether the US Geological Survey (USGS) has identified 161 geologically active volcanoes in 14 states and territories, a third of which constitute “high” or “very high” threats to their surrounding communities, and another 58 volcanoes nationwide classified as being undermonitored. The agency operates five volcano monitoring stations along the west coast to keep an eye on all but the least dangerous as part of the Survey’s Volcano Hazards Program. On average, around 60 volcanoes erupt annually, as Hawaii’s Mauna Loa is doing right now.
Mauna Loa, which had stood dormant for the past 38 years, reawakened late Sunday night for the eighth time since 1843. “Lava flows are not threatening any downslope communities and all indications are that the eruption will remain in the Northeast Rift Zone,” reads Monday’s red alert update from the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO). “Volcanic gas and possibly fine ash and Pele’s Hair may be carried downwind. Residents at risk from Mauna Loa lava flows should review preparedness and refer to Hawai‘i County Civil Defense information for further guidance.” This week’s eruption is decidedly mild compared to 2018’s Kīlauea Volcano event that destroyed 700 homes and launched ash 3,000 meters into the atmosphere, where it disrupted air traffic patterns.
While lava receives a majority of the public attention, volcanoes have myriad methods for ruining your week with fire and (literal) brimstone. Volcanic ash can travel miles into the stratosphere before raining back down where it exacerbates chronic lung diseases like asthma and emphysema; carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide collect in low-lying areas to suffocate the unwary and seismic shifts resulting from the initial explosion can trigger landslides, tsunamis, floods, and large-scale power outages.
“Unlike many other natural disasters … volcanic eruptions can be predicted well in advance of their occurrence if adequate in-ground instrumentation is in place that allows earliest detection of unrest, providing the time needed to mitigate the worst of their effects,” David Applegate, USGS associate director for natural hazards, told a House subcommittee in 2017.
As Eos magazine points out, nobody died as a result of the 2018 Kīlauea eruption, in large part due to the efforts of monitors at the HVO. But, a 2018 threat assessment found that, out of the 18 volcanoes listed as “very high” threat, only three — Mauna Loa, St Helens and the Long Valley Caldera — were rated as “well monitored” when that eruption was happening.
On the same day that Kīlauea blew its top, the US Senate unanimously passed S.346, establishing the National Volcano Early Warning and Monitoring System (NVEWS). The following March, the House of Representatives passed its version, PL 116-9/S.47, dubbed the John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act. Not unlike California’s new ShakeAlert early earthquake warning scheme, the NVEWS works to combine and standardize the existing hodgepodge of (often outdated) volcano monitoring hardware operated by both government agencies and academic organizations into a unified system, “to ensure that the most hazardous volcanoes will be properly monitored well in advance of the onset of activity.”
“Improvements to volcano monitoring networks allow the USGS to detect volcanic unrest at the earliest possible stage,” Tom Murray, USGS Volcano Science Center director, said in a 2018 USGS release. “This provides more time to issue forecasts and warnings of hazardous volcanic activity and gives at-risk communities more time to prepare.”
The NVEWS Act, which was sponsored by Senator Lisa Murkowski (R – AK), earmarks $55 million annually between 2019 and 2023 to provide more accurate and timely eruption forecasts by increasing partnerships with local governments and proactively sharing data with the volcano science community. It also seeks to increase staffing and systems — from broadband seismometers, infrasound arrays, and real-time continuous GPS receivers, to streaming webcams, satellite overwatch and volcanic gas sensors — for 24/7 volcano monitoring and establishes a grant system for furthering volcanology research.
The USGS ranks volcanic threats based on the risk they pose to public health and property — essentially how potentially destructive the volcano itself is in relation to how many people and things might be impacted when it does erupt. The USGS assigns numerical values to the 24 various hazard and exposure factors for each volcano, then combined to calculate the overall threat score which is divided into five levels (like DEFCONs!). High and Very High get the most detailed monitoring coverage because duh, Moderate threat volcanoes still receive real-time monitoring but don’t have Tommy Lee Jones standing by to intercede, and Low (and Very Low) get checked on as needed. As of May 2022, when the USGS submitted its second annual NVEWS report to Congress, the USGS had spent just under half of the money appropriated for FY 2021 with the funds going to activities like installing a net-gen lahar detection system on Mount Rainier, upgrading the telemetry for more than two dozen observation posts throughout Alaska, Oregon, Washington, California and Hawaii.
Source: Engadget – The USGS warning system that knows when rumbling volcanoes will blow their mountain tops
So you’ve aced the interview so far: You had the perfect anecdote for every question, you honestly but tactfully admitted your weaknesses, and you made the interviewer laugh. You’re ready to ride off into the sunset with this job, but then the interviewer gives you the floor to ask your own questions. What should you…
Source: LifeHacker – The Best Questions to Ask a Hiring Manager During an Interview
The past two years have seen a wave of people quitting their jobs—the phenomenon that came to be known as the Great Resignation. This year we also learned of the Great Reshuffle, which refers to workers hopping occupations or industries altogether. The message is clear: Never before have so many people quit what they…
Source: LifeHacker – Three Things to Do When You Can’t Quit Your Job
The Philadelphia Eagles currently have the best record in the NFL, with 10 wins and only a single loss. And while you might expect this great record is the result of hard work, lots of practice, talented players, and some luck, you might be surprised to discover that Grand Theft Auto and online roleplaying are also a…
Source: Kotaku – NFL Team Does A Lot Of GTA Online Roleplay Together
Coinsquare, one of Canada’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, may have been breached, but the company claims customer assets are “secure in cold storage and are not at risk.” CoinDesk reports: The exchange, which touts itself as “Canada’s trusted platform to securely buy, sell and trade Bitcoin, Ethereum, and more,” emailed customers Friday to report a “data incident” in which an unauthorized third party accessed a customer database containing personal information. According to the email, the breach exposed “customer names, email addresses, residential addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, device IDs, public wallet addresses, transaction history, and account balances.” Although the email was sent Friday, Coinsquare discovered the breach last week and notified customers via Twitter. “No passwords were exposed. We have no evidence any of this information was viewed by the bad actor,” the email stated.
Coinsquare suspended activities on its platform after detecting the vulnerability last week, triggering speculation of possible liquidity issues, given the momentous implosion of multi-billion-dollar crypto exchange, FTX, earlier this month. Full service was restored on Friday, according to a tweet. “We want to reiterate that 100% of client funds are safely held in cold storage and are not used for business activities,” the company tweeted.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Major Canadian Crypto Exchange Coinsquare Says Client Data Breached
An Apple Watch showing dive metrics. [credit:
Apple
]
In September, Apple announced a new wearable called the Apple Watch Ultra, and one of the company’s key pitches for the device was its use as a diving computer. Now Oceanic+, the app that makes that feature possible, launched exclusively for the Ultra, Apple announced today.
The Watch Ultra has depth gauge and water temperature sensors that drive some of the features in the app. To access a few of those features—such as decompression tracking—you’ll have to subscribe to the app’s premium version for $4.99 per day, $9.99 per month, or $79.99 per year. There’s also a family plan at $129.99 annually. If you don’t subscribe, you can still use some key features like dive logs, depth tracking, and so on.
The app—which was developed in partnership with Apple by a company called Huish Outdoors, lets you track dive conditions like tides, water temperature, and more. Here’s a quick summary from Apple’s blog post announcement:
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Source: Ars Technica – Apple Watch Ultra becomes a diving computer with launch of Oceanic+
A little more than a week ago AMD quietly released their Radeon Pro Software for Enterprise Linux 22.Q4 driver, also advertised more recently as the AMD Software: PRO Edition 22.Q4 for Linux driver package. With most Linux enthusiasts and gamers happily using the upstream open-source components in the mainline Linux kernel and Mesa, the new quarterly release slipped under the radar until now…
Source: Phoronix – AMD Software: PRO Edition 22.Q4 for Linux Released
Enlarge / Call it a hunch, but something tells me these two players are working together…
Do you ever feel like your opponents in a free-for-all online game are trying to get you, specifically? It might not just be paranoia; it might be collusion among your opponents. And in a newly published patent application, Electronic Arts details some potential tools and data points—both inside and outside the game—that it could use to detect and root out this unfair practice.
EA’s simply titled “Detecting Collusion in Online Games” patent, published earlier this month, defines collusion as when two or more players/groups that are “intended to be opponents” instead “contribute to a common cause” to “gain an unfair advantage” over others. In battle royale shooter, for instance, a small group of players communicating outside the game could stay together and gain a decided firepower advantage against their single opponents.
Many of the patent’s potential methods for discovering this kind of collusion use simple and obvious in-game data. If two or more ostensibly opposed players or teams show abnormal amounts of “time spent in proximity… without engagement,” for instance, there’s a good chance they’re working together. Even if those players show some cursory opposition at points, metrics like damage per second can be compared with the average to see if this is just opposition “for appearance sake.”
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Source: Ars Technica – Patent detects in-game “collusion” by tracking “external connections”
Every Yakuza game has some kind of weird side hustle going on where players can sink hours of their time into what’s essentially a management sim. In Like a Dragon is was a confectionary store. In Yakuza 6 it was a baseball team. In one of the series’ two upcoming games, though, it’s going to be something more…
Source: Kotaku – Yakuza’s Cabaret Minigame Is Making A Triumphant Return
Outdoor holiday lighting displays are an essential part of the season for many people, bringing a little extra brightness to the long winter nights. Stringing together multiple strands of lights is often the best way to achieve the look you’re going for, but connections made outdoors are open to the elements, allowing…
Source: LifeHacker – Make a DIY ‘Drybox’ to Protect Your Holiday Lights From the Elements
