SoylentNews

bradley13 writes:

As a gamer, I regularly read reviews of new games coming out. One of the best sources for a quick overview is metacritic, because you see an average score for the reviews in the media, as well as an average score (and usually good comments) from individual users. Usually, these are fairly close, although media reviews tend to be better - they are rarely overtly critical, even of poor games.

In any case, too many years ago I enjoyed the Baldur's Gate series, and an expansion has just been released: Siege of Dragonspear. On Metacritic, the only professional review so far gives a good score, while the majority of the user reviews give a score of 0 out of 10. WTF?

On investigation, it turns out that the producers have taken the opportunity to explicitly make some political points. For example, you encounter a cleric who insists on explaining her name to you, as in "my parents thought I was a boy, but...". Many gamers find this to be completely extraneous to the story - it's not the sort of thing a stranger normally tells you, nor something you want to hear from a stranger when you first meet. The players are offended and irritated at the crude way that a much-loved game franchise has been abused to make LGBT political points.

Amber Scott presents the side of the producers: "If there was something for the original Baldur's Gate that just doesn't mesh for modern day gamers like the sexism, [we tried to address that]," said writer Amber Scott. Elsewhere, she posts "I'm the writer and creator. I get to make decisions about who I write about and why. I don't like writing about straight/white/cis people all the time. ... I consciously add as much diversity as I can to my writing and I don't care if people think that's 'forced" or fake'" (emphasis mine).

Personal take: I haven't yet played the game myself, at least not yet. However, I sympathize with the reviewers, as I am also exhausted with in-your-face LGBT politics. I don't care what your sexuality is, unless we have some sort of very personal relationship. In Baldur's Gate, I'd rather hear more about "Boo the miniature giant space hamster" than about some NPC's struggle with their sexual identity.

Thoughts from the Soylentils?

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

The telephone call records comprise part of the evidence presented by a man appealing his conviction in 2012 for a murder committed in 1957 in the U.S. state of Washington. The DeKalb County, Illinois State's Attorney (prosecutor), according to the New York Daily News , believes that the man was wrongly convicted and said that the convict

made a collect call to his parents at 6:57 p.m. Dec. 3, 1957, from a phone booth in downtown Rockford around the time Ridulph was abducted 35 miles away in Sycamore — between 6:45 p.m. and 6:55 p.m.

An AP story in the Seattle Times says that the record of the call was obtained by subpoena. Slashdot commenter Trachman remarked upon the length of time that the record had been retained, perhaps longer than is commonly assumed.

Further information:

• 2013 video interview with the convict
• 2014 CNN story about the appeal
• current CNN story about the proceedings
• WNIJ-FM, multiple stories from 2012 to the present

Through the Hemisphere Project, call records from 1987 onward may be subpoenaed by law enforcement personnel.

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

"exec" writes with an article from RT:

A white dwarf discovered in the constellation of Draco is unique in having an atmosphere dominated by oxygen rather than hydrogen and helium, astronomers reported. The scientists are not sure how this could have happened.

[...] Located about 1,200 light-years away, its surface is 99.9 percent pure oxygen – a record for oxygen richness – with neon and magnesium coming as distant second and third. The composition of elements is what would be expected to be inside the core of a star with a mass between six and 10 times that of the sun.

But such a star would leave behind a white dwarf about as heavy as the sun, while the newly-discovered dwarf is about 60 percent as heavy. And a star corresponding to the size of the freak dwarf would not have been big enough to fuse its fuel into oxygen.

-- submitted from IRC

A white dwarf with an oxygen atmosphere (DOI: 10.1126/science.aad6705)

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

The European Union's interoperability page reports

France has officially opened the source code of the fiscal calculator used by the French fiscal administration to calculate the income taxes of individuals in France. Taxes for businesses are not included in the code.

The tax calculator code source is now freely accessible on the Framesoft's GitLab platform[1] and duplicated on GitHub. The OpenFisca Team, which supports the software on forum.openfisca.fr, developed modules to help developers use the applications, Emmanuel Raviart, from Etalab, in charge of the open data strategy in France, said.

"Transparency is necessary to enhance trust in [the] fiscal system", Michel Sapin, Ministry of Finance said. The hackaton [sic] should be used to develop services "which strengthen trust between citizens and taxes", he added. For him, income tax in France is complex in terms of "citizens personalization". Opening the tax calculator intends also to help people better understand how taxes are calculated.

Axelle Lemaire, Secretary of State in charge of Digital affairs, said that opening the tax calculator is [...] "progress" in transparency and innovation.

[1] En Francés

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

A new law called HB 2 (PDF) has been passed by Republican legislators in the U.S. state of North Carolina and signed by the state's governor Patrick McCrory, who is also a Republican. Democratic members of the state senate, unusually, had walked out in protest, with their leader calling the session a "farce," hence the vote was unanimously in favor.

In February, the city of Charlotte had enacted (archived copy for Tor users) a measure, set to take effect 1 April, that would have permitted people to use any public restrooms, regardless of which gender the restrooms were intended for. Governor McCrory had written to the city council, objecting to

[...] this action of allowing a person with male anatomy, for example, to use a female restroom or locker room [...]

prior to passage of the measure.

The state law overrides that measure, requiring people to obey (with some exceptions) signage at "multiple occupancy" public restrooms and "changing facilities." The definition it uses is:

Biological sex.

The physical condition of being male or female, which is stated on a person's birth certificate.

The state law quickly drew opposition.

[Continues...]

This interesting summary came from an AC about an article from WardsAuto.com:

Brake-by-wire is coming to a light truck near you in a couple of years. This means no more pedal actuated hydraulic master cylinder and vacuum booster -- all replaced by an integrated unit that looks like the ABS "pump". The brake pedal will be fitted with a sensor and no direct mechanical or hydraulic connection to the vehicle brakes. Initially the price is higher than the equivalent standard system, but with volume the cost is expected to come to parity in 10 years or less. At that point, it will probably be fitted to many models of car and tied into driver assist / autonomous systems.

We've already seen problems with throttle-by-wire (for one, the Toyota unintended acceleration recall). Giving up a direct link to the brakes doesn't give me a good feeling. I kept my last car for 20 years and it finally died from salt corrosion (NE USA), but the good old hydraulic brakes always worked fine. The old, non-ABS brakes (antilock brake system) also let me lock the wheels when necessary to stop on slush and gravel, deformable surfaces where ABS typically prevents the car from slowing down as quickly as a locked-wheel stop.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

On the lighter side: YouTube star Colin Furze built a thermite launcher to destroy various appliances and household items. Entertaining video with lots of fire and explosions, Mythbusters style.

There's something very Fallout 3 about it all.

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

Red Hat, Inc. has announced that it is trialling a price reduction—to nothing—for its software, in an apparent effort to attract developers.

The Raleigh, North Carolina company is offering its Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system, formerly priced at $99, to those who provide their details at http://developers.redhat.com/. It is also offering its JBoss Middleware and other software at no charge.

When the submitter visited the site, the company was promoting an upcoming video stream showing a "sneak peek of .NET on Red Hat Enterprise Linux."

The story was reported by The Register (via CloudFlare, archived copy here), SD Times , Network World , BetaNews and ZDNet.

Related stories:

• Red Hat Becomes First $2b Open-Source Company
• Google Expands 'Open Cloud' with Red Hat Deal
• Microsoft Partners with Red Hat for Linux and .NET in the Cloud
• Red Hat is Buying Ansible
• Linux Security, Red Hat and Systemd Conspiracy

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

USA Today reports on a project by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), part of the Center for Public Integrity.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung received 11.5 million documents, comprising about 2.6 TB, from the files of "Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that sells anonymous offshore companies around the world." Among the firm's clients were heads of state and government ministers.

Original Submission

HughPickens.com writes:

Mark Gibson writes in the Washington Post that Virginia has a personal vehicle safety program overseen by the state police that cannot be shown to enhance public safety. The people who perform inspections are often the same people who fix any identified deficiencies. By contrast, neighboring Maryland requires only that a safety inspection take place upon transfer of ownership. The District does not require safety inspections at all. Pennsylvanians spend more than $600 million a year on mandated annual vehicle safety checks — one of 12 states requiring such. Mechanics look for indicators of problems with brakes, tires, suspensions and more.

Since new cars are engineered to be safer, some people are again questioning the need for annual inspections. PennDOT commissioned a consultant, Cambridge Systematics, in 2009 to study the effectiveness of the state's inspection program. The study found that putting an estimated 11 million vehicles through garages costs motorists $267 million to $621 million. Without inspections, Pennsylvania would log between 127 and 187 more traffic fatalities each year, the consultants said.

According to a 2015 study the Government Accountability Office "examined the effect of inspection programs on crash rates related to vehicle component failure, but showed no clear influence." The safety inspection typically involves a driver bringing a car to an authorized shop for testing on the brakes, steering, suspension and headlights, among other factors. Drivers get a sticker on the windshield to show their car has passed. "Nobody can prove with any degree of certainty that spending the money, suffering the inconvenience of getting your vehicle inspected, actually produces desired results," says Mike Wright. According to Gibson a government program that requires the purchase of a good or service in return for a nonexistent public benefit is illiberal and anti-consumer. "Two-thirds of states see no need to impose the burden of annual personal vehicle safety inspections on their citizens; Virginia should end its inspection requirement."

Original Submission

AnonTechie wrote in with news of a story on Ars Technica :

A young academic with coding savvy has become frustrated with the incarceration of information. Some of the world's best research continues to be trapped behind subscriptions and paywalls. This academic turns activist, and this activist then plots and executes the plan. It's time to free information from its chains—to give it to the masses free of charge. Along the way, this research Robin Hood is accused of being an illicit, criminal hacker - tale of the late Aaron Swartz

In 2016, the tale has new life. The Washington Post decries it as academic research's Napster moment, and it all stems from a 27-year-old bio-engineer turned Web programmer from Kazakhstan (who's living in Russia).

Just as Swartz did, this hacker is freeing tens of millions of research articles from paywalls, metaphorically hoisting a middle finger to the academic publishing industry, which, by the way, has again reacted with labels like "hacker" and "criminal."

Meet Alexandra Elbakyan, the developer of Sci-Hub, a Pirate Bay-like site for the science nerd. It's a portal that offers free and searchable access "to most publishers, especially well-known ones." Search for it, download, and you're done. It's that easy.

How do you think this will turn out?

[Ed. addition] The Washington Post article elaborates:

Sci-Hub connects to a database of stolen papers. If a user requests a paper in that database, Sci-Hub serves it up. If the paper is not there, Sci-Hub uses library passwords it has collected to find a paper, provides it to the searcher, then dumps the paper in the database. The site can be clunky to use, often sending users to Web pages in foreign languages.

Elbakyan and her supporters have said the passwords were donated by those sympathetic to her cause. But she also acknowledges that some passwords were obtained using the kind of phishing methods that hackers use to dupe people out of financial information.

"It may be well possible that phished passwords ended up being used at Sci-Hub," she said. "I did not send any phishing emails to anyone myself. The exact source of the passwords was never personally important to me."

Original Submission

bitstream writes:

Computer security experts have found security gaps in the Consular Consolidated Database (CCD) a State Department system that handles visa applications that would have allowed hackers to doctor applications or copy sensitive data from the half-billion records on file, according to several sources familiar with the matter. Defenders of the agency say the vulnerabilities would be difficult to exploit. High-level officials that got briefed across government on the discovery that visa-related records were potentially vulnerable to illicit changes sparked concern because foreign nations are relentlessly looking for ways to plant spies inside the United States and terrorist groups have expressed their desire to exploit it too.

Government sources with insight into the matter that spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they were skeptical that the security gaps in the CCD have actually been resolved. A congressional source informed of the matter says "Vulnerabilities have not all been fixed," and "there is no defined timeline for closing [them] out,". Another concerned government source warns that "I know the vulnerabilities discovered deserve a pretty darn quick [remedy]," but it took senior State Department officials months to start addressing the key issues. The vulnerabilities identified several months ago stem from aging legacy systems that comprise CCD.

The Consular Consolidated Database (CCD) is one of world's largest biometric databases where everyone who applied for a U.S. passport or visa in the past two decades has a record. The CCD contains information such as applicant's photographs, fingerprints, Social Security or other identification numbers and even which schools their children attend. "Every visa decision we make is a national security decision," a top State Department official, Michele Thoren Bond, told a recent House panel. The CCD database contains more than 290 million passport-related records, 184 million visa records and 25 million records on overseas U.S. citizens.

In 2014 the CCD system crashed. The CCD is one of the largest Oracle-based data warehouses in the world. In 2009 the PIA says the database contained more than 100 million visa cases and 75 million photographs, used billions of rows of data, and had a growth rate of about 35 000 visa cases per day.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Cadmium and lead are both very toxic, but because they are relatively inexpensive and they are very useful in making vibrantly colored pigments, they are widely used in many products. Numerous laws exist that restrict their concentrations in products such as paints and children's items. Measurements made on costume jewelry in the US and Canada found items containing very large amounts of these metals. In one case, an item labeled "lead free" was found to be 85% lead.

Recently an investigation by Washington state’s Department of Ecology tested 27 pieces of costume jewellery that came with young children’s dresses, including brooches, charms and necklaces, and found that five contained unsafe levels of cadmium or lead. One necklace was 98% cadmium – nearly 25,000 times the legal maximum of 40ppm set by Washington state. The state’s current law restricts levels of cadmium and lead in children’s products to levels of 40ppm and 90ppm, respectively. In addition, another piece contained lead at 50,100ppm.

Original Submission

c0lo writes:

River Front Times was the first to report on the "biggest jerk" in Missouri legislature, Rep. Tracy McCreery.

A state rep from St. Louis, unable to take it any longer, has filed a resolution asking her colleagues in the House of Representatives to please, please stop using the word “physical” when talking about Missouri’s fiscal needs.

“Whereas, on occasion, members of the Missouri House of Representatives have used the word ‘physical’ instead of ‘fiscal’ when referring to fiscal matters including, but not limited to, fiscal review and fiscal notes…” begins House Resolution 1220, offered by Rep. Tracy McCreery.

The not-so-subtle prod has begun making the rounds on social media, and lots of people are having a good laugh, but McCreery tells the Riverfront Times she didn’t push the resolution as a joke.

“I did it because I hit a wall,” she says in a phone interview.

The sound of lawmakers screwing up even basic terms as they debate critical financial decisions has become like “nails on a chalkboard” to McCreery and a few of her grammatically sound colleagues.

[...] And, no, she’s not naming names, despite our urging. Nobody has publicly taken offense yet, which is understandable — Who wants to admit to being an idiot?

McCreery is hoping the resolution serves as a “gentle nudge” to her colleagues in the chamber to take a little more care with their words.

We laugh until we cry.

Original Submission

HughPickens.com writes:

Chris Baraniuk writes at BBC that Brian Bates, known in Oklahoma as the "Video Vigilante," is taking credit for Amanda Zolicoffer's conviction on a lewdness charge after being caught on Bates' drone mounted camera in a sex act in a parked vehicle last year. Zolicoffer was sentenced to a year in state prison for the misdemeanor while the case against her alleged client, who was released following arrest in December, is still pending.

"I'm sort of known in the Oklahoma City area," says Bates . "For the last 20 years I've used a video camera to document street-level and forced prostitution, and human trafficking."

Bates runs a website where he publishes videos of alleged sex workers and their clients. "I am openly referred to as a video vigilante, I don't really shy away from that," says Bates adding that the two individuals were inside a vehicle and the incident occurred away from other members of the public. The drone dropped to within a few feet of the vehicle where it filmed 75 year old Douglas Blansett astride Zolicoffer in the front seat of the white pickup truck. The duo separated after Zolicoffer, who was identified by her tattoo saying "Baby Gangster", saw the drone hovering overhead.

Some question if it's legal to operate a camera-equipped drone in Oklahoma City limits. Oklahoma City police say it is. "We have yet to see how this is going to play out, but at this time, there is no city ordinance against flying a drone," says Capt. Paco Balderrama, with the Oklahoma City Police Department. Bates believes his drone is a valuable tool, but he says he will only fly it as a last resort because piloting the aircraft takes his attention away from what's going on around him. "I'd certainly caution other people who may be tempted to use drones to maybe fight drug activity or prostitution or gangs in their neighborhood," concludes Bates. "If one thing goes wrong, you will probably be the person facing criminal charges or civil liability."

Original Submission