Life, but nothing like it.

Oil and Apples.

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 16:54:20 +1100

The Day Apple Left The Tech World’s Collective Mouth Agape | TechCrunch.

Do you remember when Apple was, well. Kind of a joke? Fit only for fandorks and whatever-we-used-to-call-hipsters-back-in-the-90s? I do. What the hell happened?

Oh, that’s right. Apple starting making good shit. Fancy that.

Bad habits breed bad habits.

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 04:23:19 +1100

The idea of teens sharing passwords didn’t come out of thin air. In fact, it was normalized by adults. And not just any adult. This practice is the product of parental online safety norms. In most households, it’s quite common for young children to give their parents their passwords. With elementary and middle school youth, this is often a practical matter: children lose their passwords pretty quickly. Furthermore, most parents reasonably believe that young children should be supervised online. As tweens turn into teens, the narrative shifts. Some parents continue to require passwords be forked over, using explanations like “because I’m your mother.” But many parents use the language of “trust” to explain why teens should share their passwords with them.

danah boyd | apophenia » How Parents Normalized Teen Password Sharing.

My Inner INFOSEC Analyst shudders.

I started using the internet in, oh, probably around circa ’95/’96, when I was 13ish. I never gave passwords to my parents and they never asked. Actually, I was explicitly told never, ever to share them with anybody ever, on pain of Serious Parental Disapproval. If I lost them, it was my bad and I had to deal with the consequences.

Sharing a password the is a show of trust, but it’s a show of trust on par with Big Adult shows of trust like sharing finances and powers of attorney. It should never be coerced, especially between family members. A password allows whomever you’ve shared it with access to some very private aspects of your life — probably more than you realise, since I assume you use the same password for more than one service — and the ability to emulate you, nearly perfectly. You’d better trust whomever you’ve given it to not only not to hurt you now, but to never ever hurt you in the future.

Passwords also say something about you. If I know one of your passwords, I can probably guess the format the others will take; the sorts of words you’ll base them on, how and where you’re likely to pad them out to meet minimum complexity requirements. Are you a 12345678 person or a favourite movie person?

Passwords, in other words, are SRS BUSINESS.

I do like the piggy bank escrow idea, although I think there’s also merit in letting teens simply forget and recover their own passwords like adults. Little kids, maybe not so much, but I’d tend towards the opinion that a “password handover” should be part of growing up. “You’re old enough to manage your own passwords now, kid. From now on, I don’t want to know them.”

The flip side, of course, is that not knowing someone else’s password has merits too.

There really is something to be said for plausible deniability.

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The amount of “OMG IS IT REAL!!!!???” incredulity on...

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 01:20:52 +1100

The amount of “OMG IS IT REAL!!!!???” incredulity on this post is just mind-boggling.

Seriously, people. Google “india dakhma blood” for five seconds and find out this is a creepypasta.

The photo is also shopped, though not the bodies; this really is a real Zoroastrian funerary custom. You can see the originals, plus some other images of dakhma, here (warning for pictures of decomposing dead bodies), care of Tin Eye.

Oh look. Ten seconds of Googling and already we’re less afraid of fantasy boogeymen and have learnt some things about the customs of other cultures. Amazing.

Creepy is cool, but facts are awesome.

Christ mouse and keyboard controls are uncomfortable

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 19:52:16 +1100

randomredux:

How do you people stand it? I stopped playing that staircase game because after 45 floors the only thing of note that happened was my arm falling uncomfortably asleep on the trackball.

… Trackball? There’s your problem…

Evil is relative.

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 08:23:07 +1100

So why are we calling this evil? Because Google changed the rules that it defined itself. Google built its reputation, and its multi-billion dollar business, on the promise of its “don’t be evil” philosophy. That’s been largely interpreted as meaning that Google will always put its users first, an interpretation that Google has cultivated and encouraged. […] Google’s philosophy speaks directly to making money without doing evil. And it is very explicit in calling out advertising in the section on “evil.” But while it emphasizes that ads should be relevant, obvious, and “not flashy,” what seems to have been forgotten is a respect for its users privacy, and established practices.

Google’s Broken Promise: The End of “Don’t Be Evil”.

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Leaflet the local government decided to mail me. Thanks, local...

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:39:00 +1100

Leaflet the local government decided to mail me. Thanks, local government! (To be fair, we are like the Death Cap mushroom poisoning capital of the world, so… SRS BIZNESS.)

(Also, I forgot to turn of Path’s hipster “blur” effect. D’oh.)

Your side has propaganda too.

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:08:18 +1100

None of that is bad. But it does get bad when you get huffy and go, “Well, that’s not a message! That’s just the way things should be!” Which is exactly the same goddamned thing fundamentalist Christian parents say when they flood their kids with Veggie Tales and Davey and Goliath. They’re not trying to give their kids a message, they’re just showing them how the world works. Right?

Why The Muppets Are Propaganda.

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Photo

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 22:46:30 +1100

Apparently the people supporting Jennifer Hepler on Twitter are..

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 13:12:48 +1100

thessalian:

I want to support her. I just don’t know what I could possibly say in 140 characters. This is the problem with Twitter.

Personally, I think this entire lot of bullshit is a bunch of whining, immature fuckheads (all unfortunately male, but I don’t want to tar the whole gender with the same brush) who are having a complete hissy-fit at having guuuuuuuuuurls move into their clubhouse. They see the entire video gaming world as their sandbox and it should always be created to suit them and them alone. It’s the one place these socially inept turdwaffles can go to feel awesome because they can’t conceive of actually not being arseholes for five minutes so they can interact with human beings, and gods forbid it ever change. Because then it’s not as awesome that they can beat the game; they don’t have the bragging rights anymore because anyone can just skip the combat and reach the end. It’s like they think the difficulty of the game not only makes them special and awesome, but that it’ll keep out the ‘undesirable element’.

Well, y’know what? FUCK THAT. I use my cheat codes. I like ME3’s story mode. And you know what else? That doesn’t make me any less a gamer than these dipshits bitching about faggy storylines and other assorted bullshit like that. And if these people don’t like it? Well, tough nuggets; that’s how it is. Maybe they think it’s awesome to be the ones on the inside of the clique for a change - they were shunned to death in high school and now they can feel like the ones on the top of the totem pole and kick off anyone they don’t like, which includes any representative of any group that ever rejected them EVER IN THE WORLD - but it’s not, and that’s not how the world works.

So … to the immature dipshits: You are going to have to share your toys now. You are going to have to share your video games and your comic books. You are going to have to accept that we like these things, and that they will become more inclusive and not just cater to insecure, homophobic, insular fuck-knuckles on the basis of that liking. You are going to have to go back to fucking kindergarten and LEARN TO SHARE. And if you don’t like it? You can actually ignore the fact that it’s there and play it the same old arsehole way you want to. The potential for story-heavy or story-only play; the possibility of male LI for male Shepard; storylines that actually involve some depth and do not entirely rely on blowing people’s heads off and being lauded as a hero for it? THEY DO NOT HARM YOU BY EXISTING.

To summarise the summary: GROW THE FUCK UP.

No love whatsoever, but a great deal of pity,

Thess

Reblogging, minus bullshit pre-comments.

I don’t give a shit about “beating” game “combat” (you know, the one that’s been artificially tuned-down so you can beat it).

I like story mode.

I support Jennifer Hepler.

I’m a gamer and have been since I couldn’t spell well enough to play King’s Quest by myself.

And you know what?

If you don’t like it?

Fuck. Off.

This is my clubhouse. And you’re not invited.

randomredux: reanimatrix: likeabeelzeboss: municipal-cake: sl...

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:39:26 +1100

randomredux:

reanimatrix:

likeabeelzeboss:

municipal-cake:

slaytanica:

If more company leaders followed this example of selflessness instead of being so fucking greedy the economy wouldn’t be so shitty. I mean really, just how much money do you really need to have.

This dude is fucking awesome. \m/

THIS GUY

Now THIS is a CEO I can get behind.

Most CEOs are not this guy though.

Which is why I still expect them to be lined up against a wall in my lifetime, with the way things are going.

Unless they get a clue, and they haven’t been so far.

Agreed. One of the higher-ups at Nintendo did the same thing, IIRC - 3DS was tanking, losses were piling up; he slashed his own salary in half. If I remember right, anyways. But in North America? I don’t think I’ve heard a similar story.

And Warren Buffet “pays” himself an annual salary of US$100,000. Doesn’t stop him from being generally considered the world’s third richest man.

Just. Yanno. Sayin’. Salary is the least important (read: most taxable) part of an executive’s benefits package.

migscast: Outer Senshi Transformations If it weren’t for...

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 19:08:32 +1100

migscast:

Outer Senshi Transformations

If it weren’t for Sailor Moon, I wouldn’t have the ~~job~~ profession I have today.

True story.

Tolerance of intolerance..

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 14:27:59 +1100

Tolerance of intolerance..

Sadly we have them here, too.

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 19:54:16 +1100

Sadly we have them here, too.:

MARGARET COURT, TRANSLATED. | Mike Stuchbery.

Translating Evangelical Christish.

I’ll just be here, locked alone in my room…

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 04:24:47 +1100

I’ll just be here, locked alone in my room…:

Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale Test – SAS.

30 fear, 30 avoidance for a score of “moderate social anxiety”. Thanks, highly-accurate internet test!

A lot of these are weird questions for me, though, because they vary a lot as to whether I’m working in a personal or professional capacity. Like the one about meeting new people; fine at work, terrifying outside of it. Or the ones about working while observed; can’t (creative) write or draw while people are watching (mostly due to a pathological fear they’ll want to ask me questions about on make comments on what I’m doing; I’m okay in front of other writers/artists who Get It) but, again, work is fine.

The thing I loathe the most and will never, ever do unless almost physically forced to is talk on the phone, however. /shudder

It’s more of a guideline, really.

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 11:22:23 +1100

Most portals show their own content above content elsewhere on the web. We feel that’s a conflict of interest, analogous to taking money for search results. Their search engine doesn’t necessarily provide the best results; it provides the portal’s results. Google conscientiously tries to stay away from that. We want to get you out of Google and to the right place as fast as possible. It’s a very different model.

Google: Do Yourself a Favor and Just Come Clean Already | PandoDaily.

Larry Page, just prior to Google going public. Honestly, anyone who thought this was going to last… yeah. Sorry, no.

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Nails for the culture industry.

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 20:39:18 +1100

Nails for the culture industry.:

Dim Sum Thinking.

On iBooks, Author, and Amazon and Apple muscling in on the publishing world. Honestly, I welcome our new long-tail friendly overlords. Big Books will always be Big Books, but the current publishing industry (like most Culture Houses) is almost impossible to break into for small players. Reducing barriers to entry and increasing portability and accessibility? Not gonna complain about that, hey.

You know you’ve been blogging too long when:

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:31:28 +1100

You know you’ve been blogging too long when::

You end up writing a script to archive any posts or comments older than seven years in a separate database, in order to clean them out of your live blog.

This is actually the first time I’ve split my blog archive in that way in over a decade. I’m such a hoarder, but it got to the point where having posts still around from 1999 (no, seriously) was more embarrassing that it was cool.

So now there’s a script that gets run against the DB every… whenever-I-decide-to-cron-it that trims content out based on its age and level of engagement. So at various intervals of 3, 5 and 7 years posts get first flocked, then marked private, then finally shifted — along with all their comments, but not taxonomy or metadata which actually I should’ve done but oh well — into the “archive” table and off the site. Having comments gets a posted shifted “back” a removal increment, but in the end (i.e. after 7 years) everything goes.

Or I can give post a noarchive meta key to preserve them, if they’re really that great (hint: they’re not).

Isn’t SQL fun?

… man I’ve been doing this way, way too long.

It’s probably not just WordPress, to be fair…

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 05:24:04 +1100

The WordPress ‘setup-config.php’ installation page allows users to install WordPress in local or remote MySQL databases. This typically requires a user to have valid MySQL credentials to complete. However, a malicious user can host their own MySQL database server and can successfully complete the WordPress installation without having valid credentials on the target system. After the successful installation of WordPress, a malicious user can inject malicious PHP code via the WordPress Themes editor.

Multiple Bugs Haunt WordPress Setup | threatpost.

In short: Don’t leave webapps uninstalled on live servers.

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Okay. On the plus side, [game redacted] has finished downloading. On the minus side…...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 02:53:56 +1100

Okay. On the plus side, [game redacted] has finished downloading. On the minus side… It’s 2:30am, really? Must we be this loud? Damn beta.

randomredux: So, that’s the new Power Girl design. :\ Fucking...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:28:13 +1100

randomredux:

So, that’s the new Power Girl design.

:\

Fucking FINALLY.

Bet it doesn’t last, though…