The European Speedster Assembly 2013 starts today, and while the schedule is full of great games, I wanted to point everyone to some particularly good and interesting things to catch this week. Note that all events will be broadcast in English on the free Team Ludendi stream. It should be visible on the free Twitch.tv app on iOS and Android.
The marathon is taking donations for Doctors Without Borders. All donations will go directly to the charity, with no middle man.
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Woof. This week I had my worst cold in years, the worst I had since the first CPAC I attended. Boy was that a miserable trip home, let me tell you, sick as a dog, with insufficient Claritin Ds to get me through it. I was lucky the middle seat was empty for me on both flights I had to get home! At least this week I could stay home, and sleep.
I’ve got a ton to cover, and I’m not really at 100% yet, so apologies for making this a bit scattershot tonight. Especially since the victory in Texas distracted me from finishing this promptly! (Edit: It’s also help if I remembered to hit Publish…)
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What do you do when a computer has been hijacked by a virus? Take it to professionals for cleaning? Sure. Secure your network? Absolutely. Extract your data or fall back to backed up data, check it carefully, and then erase your computer and install software fresh? In an extreme case, that could be necessary.
However the technological terror that is the Obama administration had a different idea, when the Economic Development Administration’s terribly insecure systems were infected with run-of-the-mill viruses. These alleged geniuses who are supposed to be everything in technology that Republicans are not literally blew their budget destroying hardware, including mice and printers, as a response to the viruses.
And these people want massive regulatory powers over all American computers, in the name of cybersecurity.
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Tone deaf, or simply apathetic? Even as Americans are unhappy about government data collection, Obama wants to do more big data work on private citizens. Mike Crapo is looking in the other direction, though, and wants to investigate the data gathering the government is already doing.
China didn’t want Edward Snowden. Russia didn’t want Snowden. Ecuador apparently didn’t want him, either. Not even Cuba wanted him, so he was left trying for fascist Venezuela, and unsurprisingly they dislike America so they like Snowden. Again and again, Snowden allies with America’s opponents against America.
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Remember “Don’t be evil?” Even as Twitter plans to honor Do Not Track, even on MS Internet Explorer, Google apparently won’t. I mean, I don’t think I buy that Google is a criminal organization, but Google is also violating European privacy law still. Sure, Eurocrats are showing open bias against Americans, but selling information about you is their business.
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It is done. The Final Fantasy Five Four Job Fiesta 2013. Great stuff. This game is by far my favorite Final Fantasy, and I was glad of the reason to play it again. I’d only played it once before, 8 years ago, so it was a challenge doing this. But stream chat helped me get through.
Here’s my Omega victory, and my Shinryu victory, and my Neoexdeath victory.
See below the fold for my final party.
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Regular readers know I’ve been hard on Google for wrongdoings, and think Google got off way too easy for the Safari spy hack, and for the WiSpy situation, but some of these attacks right now are silly. Youtube is a user-generated content service. As such, Google doesn’t produce what’s on there, and can only take things down if they’re breaking the law to be posted. The fact that some grandstanding Attorneys General are trying to bully Google into censoring the service, is the real troubling issue here.
This is completely different from the Adsense situation, where it was shown that people at Google were seeing sites for illegal drugs and approving them for ad revenue It’s not even comparable, and people are hoping you don’t realize that. Stop making me defend Google here!
Further, if it’s “coercive” for Google to put conditions on the inclusion of Youtube on a television, including a) correctly implementing Internet standards and b) giving it prominent placement, then trademark rights themselves are coercive, people. Again, quit making me defend these guys. Get better complaints.
Like advertising services. People are acting outraged that AT&T is going to sell aggregated, anonymized data, but this is the sort of thing Google has been doing for years, and look at all the people still using Gmail.
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Ed Snowden continues to harm America with his treason, embarrassing Barack Obama by getting Europe mad at him. Snowden is also harming cybersecurity efforts which are important since we’re not ready for serious attacks.
Meanwhile Snowden’s co-conspirator after the fact Julian Assange’s Wikileaks is suing Visa in Iceland. I say Visa should make him testify.
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Wow. Even as it comes out that Apple is going to pay more than Pandora for its coming radio service (which is probably going to be a windfall for small publishers), here’s a great set of answers from Marsha Blackburn on IRFA for conservative activists.
Good news: it only took $5,000 to get a Wikileaks person to… leak information. Ha. More of this, please.
Remember when I shook my head at all those digital libertarians stupid enough to vote for Obama? Well, heh. Now we find the Obama IRS is targeting open source software groups for tax repression. Heh. Told you so.
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