Robert Penney created a pixel-perfect animation of Stranger Things as a turn-of-the-1990s adventure game a la Secret of Monkey Island. Turns out that he's got a knack for these displaced artifacts, each pulled from a parallel universe where 20th century game systems still received rushed, sloppy games based on inappropriate movies and shows.
Here, for example, is an 8-bit game of Stephen King's IT made by a team that perhaps got to watch one trailer, on mute, before getting cracking in time for Christmas...
And here's Alejandro González Iñárritu's Gravity as a dismally bad genre platformer. Watch out for snakes!
Here's Scarif Resort Simulator, a Sim City clone crudely tied-in to the Star Wars universe.
Penney's Fictional Bad Games YouTube channel looks like a good one to follow. It's such incredible work I wondered if he had to code quasi-games to get such a convincing replica of bad, glitchy gameplay, but Penney writes that he makes each animation in Photoshop:
Yes it was incredibly laborious! But AfterEffects and Flash etc can’t really get that clunky awkward feel that a frame by frame animation can!
I also created all the music and sound effects. It was all inspired by an older project I created in a similar vein, but just box art - http://penneydesign.com/retro-games-with-modern-themes
We use our Echo Dot and Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote multiple times a day. The Dot is in our kitchen and we use it to get news updates (NPR), play podcasts and audiobooks, and to get the weather forecast. I also like to ask it the price of bitcoin. The Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote is great if you are an Amazon prime member. It also streams HBO, YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Showtime and most other streaming services.
Now we've also learned that Trump uses blood as an excuse for his sociopathic behavior. In one of the tidbits we got from the Howard Stern Show archives this week from Bill Frischling at Factbl.og , Trump talks about how an 80-year-old man fell at Mar-a-Lago and started bleeding all over the marble floors. Trump, who thought the man had died, was upset about his marble floors turning red, but expressed no sympathy for the man. He said he forgot to call the man the next day to see how he was doing. "It's just not my thing," he said about the blood.
“I was at Mar-a-Lago and we had this incredible ball, the Red Cross Ball, in Palm Beach, Florida. And we had the Marines. And the Marines were there, and it was terrible because all these rich people, they’re there to support the Marines, but they’re really there to get their picture in the Palm Beach Post… so you have all these really rich people, and a man, about 80 years old—very wealthy man, a lot of people didn’t like him—he fell off the stage.
“So what happens is, this guy falls off right on his face, hits his head, and I thought he died. And you know what I did? I said, ‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting,’ and I turned away.
"I couldn’t, you know, he was right in front of me and I turned away. I didn’t want to touch him… he’s bleeding all over the place, I felt terrible. You know, beautiful marble floor, didn’t look like it. It changed color. Became very red. And you have this poor guy, 80 years old, laying on the floor unconscious, and all the rich people are turning away. ‘Oh my God! This is terrible! This is disgusting!’ and you know, they’re turning away. Nobody wants to help the guy. His wife is screaming—she’s sitting right next to him, and she’s screaming.
“What happens is, these 10 Marines from the back of the room… they come running forward, they grab him, they put the blood all over the place—it’s all over their uniforms—they’re taking it, they’re swiping [it], they ran him out, they created a stretcher. They call it a human stretcher, where they put their arms out with, like, five guys on each side.
“I was saying, ‘Get that blood cleaned up! It’s disgusting!’ The next day, I forgot to call [the man] to say he’s OK,” said Trump, adding of the blood, “It’s just not my thing.”
A Russian government-affiliated troll farm called Internet Research Agency bought a Black Lives Matter ad on Facebook targeting Ferguson and Baltimore, reports CNN, with "the apparent goal of the Russian buyers to amplify political discord and fuel an atmosphere of incivility and chaos."
Facebook refuses to release the ad publicly, citing issues of privacy, even though ad ran publicly in late 2015 or early 2016.
Snip:
Facebook did not comment for this story but did point to a statement from Facebook's chief security officer, Alex Stamos, who said earlier this month that "the vast majority of ads run by these accounts didn't specifically reference the U.S. presidential election, voting or a particular candidate."
"Rather," Stamos said, "the ads and accounts appeared to focus on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum -- touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights."
Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said this week that the aim of the ad-buyers "was to sow chaos."
"In many cases, it was more about voter suppression rather than increasing turnout," he told reporters.
The Senate Intelligence Committee will also hear from Twitter on Thursday about how foreign nationals may have used its ad service to influence the 2016 election. Twitter has declined to shed any light so far on what information it plans to give to Congress.
Watch how this adorable little girl reacts when she finds out that she's going to have a baby brother. Not what she wanted. I've never seen a face go red so fast! Good thing there were sweet treats on hand.
Racine, Wisconsin's Reefpoint Brew House is dealing with quite a lot of outrage. Co-owner John Valko's moronic statement suggesting NFL players who do not feel the way he does about our national anthem be killed has not been well received.
A co-owner of a popular lakefront restaurant advocated for the killing of kneeling NFL players in a Facebook comment posted Monday, according to multiple screenshots circulating on social media.
The owners of Reefpoint Brew House, 2 Christopher Columbus Causeway, acknowledged the comment from fellow co-owner John Valko in a statement released on their Facebook page Tuesday evening.
In the comment, which has been deleted but appears as a screenshot multiple times in the comments on the statement, Valko advocates for the killing of NFL players who kneel during the national anthem before games, something more than 200 players did Sunday.
“Kill the idiot players,” Valko wrote. “Execute them. They are nothing but garbage. The league is screwed up if they think it is their right. It is their duty to respect our country and our flag. They should go kneel in front of a freight train. Shame on these stupid misfits of society. They need to die.”
While the United States was monkeying about, the Soviet Union was sending dogs into space! Laika, Belka and Strelka were strays that became daring cosmonauts. Soviet Space Dogs shares their stories through the vast collection of art and objects that were made to commemorate and celebrate their adventures.
For people who want to believe the NFL protests are against the National Anthem, this video of Fox Sports 1 and First Things First host Nick Wright's explanation won't mean anything. For everyone else, it's worth watching.
Wright went on to clarify that it is not true that the players are protesting the anthem, flag, country, or military. They are protesting systemic racism and police brutality.
“What I will engage on is what is actually happening, because I can’t walk past a television screen without seeing this on the bottom line: ‘NFL players protest anthem,’” he said. “It is amazing to get a fact error in a four-word headline.”
He added, “When people march, they are not protesting traffic. The players have been uniform that they are using the anthem as a vehicle to protest inequality, police brutality, and racial injustice. And this story — by the president and others, many well before the president ever chimed in — has been hijacked to making it about the anthem when in reality the anthem was always just the vehicle.”
The protests have been hijacked by folks with an agenda. I tried to set the record straight this morning. I think this is worth your time. pic.twitter.com/p5xmmjeeYY
Ethical hackers are a critical part of cybersecurity. By actively probing their own (or clients') systems for exploitable vulnerabilities, they can help minimize the potential attack surface and patch holes before malicious actors can get inside. To help you learn to think like a cybercriminal, this White Hat Hacker Bundle is currently being offered in the Boing Boing Store for a price of your choosing.
This collection includes eight courses to introduce you to the tools and techniques of ethical hacking. Aside from learning about IT system architecture and common security equipment, you’ll discover how to perform penetration tests on networks, inspect websites for known weaknesses, and administer a Linux environment.
Here’s the full course list:
The Complete Ethical Hacking Course for 2016-2017
Learn Ethical Hacking From Scratch
Networks From Scratch to Advanced Implementation
Certified Information Systems Security Professional
Information Security Management Fundamentals
Web Security: Common Vulnerabilities & Their Mitigation
Python For Android Hacking Crash Course: Trojan Perspective
Wi-Fi Hacking with Kali
Everything included in the White Hat Hacker 2017 Bundle is available as long as you beat the average price.
I was going through my copy of Stewart Brand's 1974 book, II Cybernetic Frontiers (1974) when I came across this sketch by computer scientist Alan Kay, who conceived of a tablet computer in 1972 called the Dynabook. Although it used a stylus and a keyboard, his 43-year-old sketch of two kids sitting in the grass playing video games on their Dynabooks looks like kids today playing games on their iPads.
America's great stagnation includes a hardening of class divisions, with fewer and fewer poor and working class people raising children who rise to the middle class or even the one percent -- a fact that strikes at the heart of the cherished American notion of rags-to-riches meritocracy where you rise to prominence on the basis of your contributions to society, not the accident of your birth.
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It is clear from his work that Awdry disliked change, venerated order, and craved the administration of punishment. Henry wasn’t the only train to receive a death sentence. In one episode, a manager tells a showoff engine named Smudger that he’s going to “make him useful at last,” and then turns Smudger into a generator, never to move again. (There are several “R.I.P. Smudger” tribute videos on YouTube.) In another episode, a double-decker bus named Bulgy comes to the station and talks about revolution—“Free the roads from railway tyranny!” he cries. He is quickly labelled a “scarlet deceiver,” trapped under a bridge, and turned into a henhouse. A recurring storyline involves the “troublesome trucks,” which are disciplined into fearful obedience through public, symbolic punishments. Their leader, S. C. Ruffey, is pulled in two different directions until he breaks into pieces—“I guess the lesson is that if someone is bullying you, kill them?” a YouTube commenter writes—and, in another episode, a “spiteful” brake van is crushed into bits.
By the time Awdry wrote “The Railway Series,” the railway industry had shifted away from steam and toward diesel and electric. But on the Island of Sodor steam locomotives are permanently on top.
Equifax CEO Richard Smith announced his voluntary retirement yesterday, two months after the catastrophic breach that permanently leaked 140,000,000 Americans' most compromising financial data.
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This short documentary about Korean fashion is on its surface about the many looks cultivated by Korean designers, but it's especially interesting as an analysis of what late-stage capitalism looks like in a homogenous culture. (more…)
The American Geophysical Union reports that a long-term study of major shipping lanes indicates that ship exhaust is dramatically altering lightning patterns. It's not clear what the long-term effects might be. (more…)
I was going through my copy of Stewart Brand's 1974 book, 
