Nerds Amalgamated

The UN has asked game developers to be more green. It would make a nice change from every brown military shooter of the early 2010s. Oh, wait. They want us to use less energy. The UKIE has written a Green paper on methods for developers to reduce their carbon footprint.

SMS is an awful, insecure method for 2FA, but we still use it because anything better is too hard. Maybe this latest string of hacks will help us move on.

Movies are still going straight to streaming even as vaccination rates increase. This used to be a sign of a bad movie. Now we’ll have to rely on Rotten Tomatoes, or, god forbid, talk to people about movies.

Game Development for Green Thumbs

- https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-08-17-games-london-to-discuss-the-environment-at-best-places-to-work-awards-uk

- https://whitepapers.gamesindustry.biz/green

Phone hacking taken to a new level

- https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-17/hackers-using-mirroring-apps-to-see-your-texts/100381366

Streaming Services Vs Cinemas : Who will win

- https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/sonys-hotel-transylvania-amazon-1234998312/

Other topics discussed

OnlyFans, a social media platform known for porn, is banning 'sexually explicit' content

- https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-20/onlyfans-banning-seuxally-explicit-content/100395154

NSW breaks COVID-19 case records with 825 infections, three deaths

- https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-21/nsw-records-825-covid-cases-three-deaths/100396208

Explicit content banned from OnlyFans but 'the show has to go on', say sex workers

- https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-21/only-fans-explicit-content-changes/100394776

Jimmy Rees - Meanwhile in Australia

- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLU0uDN_Bi_UoLnUkbeHFlZ9imdbI_AQDN

How Much Electricity Does My Game Console Use?

- https://www.redenergy.com.au/living-energy/appliances/how-much-electricity-does-my-game-console-use

How Much Electricity (Power) Does a PS5 Use?

- https://www.thehomehacksdiy.com/how-much-electricity-power-does-a-ps5-use/

Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children

- https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-climate-change-have-fewer-children

What is Embodied Carbon?

- https://www.carboncure.com/concrete-corner/what-is-embodied-carbon/

Halo: Combat Evolved (also known as Halo: CE, is a first-person shooter game developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It was released as a launch game for Microsoft's Xbox video game console on November 15, 2001. Halo is set in the twenty-sixth century, with the player assuming the role of the Master Chief, a cybernetically enhanced supersoldier. The Chief is accompanied by Cortana, an artificial intelligence. Players battle aliens as they attempt to uncover the secrets of the eponymous Halo, a ring-shaped artificial world.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo:_Combat_Evolved

Iron Sky, smartphone powered computer

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziVpqh9UXmI

Iron Sky, cell phone and computer

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv3fcwx2TUY

Iron Sky (a 2012 Finnish-German-Australian comic-science-fiction action film directed by Timo Vuorensola and written by Johanna Sinisalo and Michael Kalesniko. It tells the story of a group of Nazi Germans who, having been defeated in 1945, fled to the Moon, where they built a space fleet to return in 2018 and conquer Earth.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Sky

Skyrim 10th Anniversary Edition Announced for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S

- https://www.ign.com/articles/skyrim-10th-anniversary-remaster-ps5-xbox-series-x

Playing For The Planet (The Playing For The Planet Alliance was launched during the Climate Summit at UN Headquarters in New York. In total, the members of the Alliance have the ability to reach more than 1 billion video game players.)

- https://playing4theplanet.org/

Playing For The Planet Members & Commitments (The Playing for the Planet Alliance is a group of gaming-companies who have made voluntary, ambitious, specific, and time-based commitments for people and planet.)

- https://playing4theplanet.org/members/

Playing For The Planet Green Game Jam (Over 25 studios from around the world – with a collective player base of over one billion – have collaborated and committed to implementing green activations in and out-of-game such as new modes, maps, themed events, storylines and messaging. Guiding the studios is a theme centred around conserving and restoring forests and oceans.)

- https://playing4theplanet.org/greengamejam/

Ubisoft (a French video game company headquartered in the Montreuil suburb of Paris, with several development studios across the world. Its video game franchises include For Honor, Assassin's Creed, Prince of Persia, Far Cry, Rayman, Rabbids, Watch Dogs, Just Dance, and the Tom Clancy's series.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubisoft

Green leap forward: China boosts renewable energy capacity

- https://www.upstreamonline.com/energy-transition/green-leap-forward-china-boosts-renewable-energy-capacity/2-1-1047867

The 20 most popular passwords stolen in Adobe hack

- https://www.smh.com.au/technology/the-20-most-popular-passwords-stolen-in-adobe-hack-20131106-2x03o.html

A crossword based on the Adobe password leak.

- https://zed0.co.uk/crossword/

';--have i been pwned? (This site came about after what was, at the time, the largest ever single breach of customer accounts — Adobe. I often did post-breach analysis of user credentials and kept finding the same accounts exposed over and over again, often with the same passwords which then put the victims at further risk of their other accounts being compromised.)

- https://haveibeenpwned.com/

SIM-Jackers Can Empty Your Bank Account with a Single Phone Call

- https://www.vice.com/en/article/3kx4ej/sim-jacking-mobile-phone-fraud

Yubikey (a hardware authentication device manufactured by Yubico to protect access to computers, networks, and online services that supports one-time passwords, public-key cryptography, and authentication, and the Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) and FIDO2 protocols developed by the FIDO Alliance. It allows users to securely log into their accounts by emitting one-time passwords or using a FIDO-based public/private key pair generated by the device.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YubiKey

RSA SecurID (formerly referred to as SecurID, is a mechanism developed by RSA for performing two-factor authentication for a user to a network resource. The RSA SecurID authentication mechanism consists of a "token" — either hardware (e.g. a key fob) or software (a soft token) — which is assigned to a computer user and which creates an authentication code at fixed intervals (usually 60 seconds) using a built-in clock and the card's factory-encoded almost random key (known as the "seed").)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_SecurID

Direct-to-video (refers to the release of a film, TV series, short or special to the public immediately on home video formats rather than a theatrical release or television broadcast. Direct-to-video release has also become profitable for independent filmmakers and smaller companies. Some direct-to-video genre films (with a high-profile star) can generate well in excess of $50 million revenue worldwide.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct-to-video

Piracy : Its a Crime TV Ad

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmZm8vNHBSU

The IT Crowd - Series 2 - Episode 3: Piracy warning

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg

Scarlett Johansson sues Disney over streaming of Black Widow

- https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58017445

Freelancer (a space trading and combat simulation video game developed by Digital Anvil and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It is a chronological sequel to Digital Anvil's Starlancer, a combat flight simulator released in 2000.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancer_(video_game)

Starflight™ 1+2 on sale at GoG

- https://www.gog.com/game/starflight_1_2

J. Robert Oppenheimer: "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb13ynu3Iac

Part of the Einstein exhibition. - The Manhattan Project

- https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/peace-and-war/the-manhattan-project

WB Kids - Looney Tunes | Duck Dodgers in the 24 ½th Century | Classic Cartoon| WB Kids

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukTuKnIZCUU

Cast Party : A Dungeons & Dragons Podcast

- https://thatsnotcanon.com/cast-party-a-dungeons-dragons-podcast

Shout Outs

• 15th August 2021 – 35th anniversary of Starflight - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starflight

Starflight is a space exploration, combat, and trading role-playing video game created by Binary Systems and published by Electronic Arts in 1986. Originally developed for IBM PC compatibles, it was later ported to the Amiga, Atari ST, Macintosh, and Commodore 64. Set in the year 4620, the game puts players in the role of a starship captain sent to explore the galaxy. There is no set path, allowing players to switch freely between mining, ship-to-ship combat, and alien diplomacy. The broader plot of the game emerges slowly, as the player discovers that an ancient race of beings is causing stars to flare and destroy all living creatures. The team coded the game mostly in Forth with a few key routines written in x86 assembler. Forth was chosen since it is easier to use than assembler and more compact. This was important because the game had to fit into 128K of RAM. It took "fifteen man-years" and three actual years to develop the game. The group designed what they called a "fractal generator", which took six man-years to develop and allowed them to increase the number of planets in the game from 50 to 800. The game was one of the earliest to use procedurally generated content for planets and everything on them. The techniques used created a type of roguelike environment on each planet, with the contents randomly distributed. The story network was also one of the earliest examples of a sandbox game design. They created a separate ecosystem generator over the course of two man-years of work. The alien names were created by randomly combining syllables until they had names they liked, and their code for simulating communications was rewritten four times before completion. The game has been widely praised by both contemporary and modern critics. The game has been widely praised by both contemporary and modern critics. It led to the development of a sequel, Starflight 2: Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula, and influenced the design of numerous other games for decades after its release

• 17th August 2021 – Panda gives birth in Singapore - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-17/giant-panda-gives-birth-in-rare-event-for-endangered-species/100385386

A Chinese giant panda at a Singapore wildlife park has given birth to a cub — the first born in the South-East Asian country and a rare event for an endangered species. Pandas Kai Kai, 13, and Jia Jia, 12, entered their seventh breeding season in April this year with the aid of artificial insemination, after arriving in Singapore in 2012 on a decade-long loan from China. Weighing about 200 grams, the cub was born on Saturday but the sex has yet to be determined, Wildlife Reserves Singapore (WRS) told Reuters, adding mother and cub were doing well. WRS said female giant pandas can display hormonal and behavioural signs of pregnancy even when not pregnant, but the organisation detected signs last month that a cub was on the way and Jia Jia's pregnancy was confirmed on August 10. China has been sending its black and white ambassadors abroad in a sign of goodwill since the 1950s as part of what is known as "panda diplomacy".

• 17th August 2021 – Creator and 'godfather' of Sudoku passes away at 69 - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-17/sudoku-creator-dies/100385554

Maki Kaji, the creator of the popular numbers puzzle Sudoku whose life's work was spreading the joy of puzzles passed away. Known as the "Godfather of Sudoku," Mr Kaji created the puzzle to be easy for children and others who didn't want to think too hard. Its name is made up of the Japanese characters for "number" and "single," and players place the numbers one through nine in rows, columns and blocks without repeating them. Originally, Sudoku was called "Suji-wa-Dokushin-ni-Kagiru," which translates to, "Numbers should be single, a bachelor." It wasn't until 2004 that Sudoku became a global hit, after a fan from New Zealand pitched it and got it published in the British newspaper The Times. In recent years, Sudoku, believed to be the world's most popular pencil puzzle, has come out in digital versions. He was 69 and had bile duct cancer.

• 18th August 2021 – 15th anniversary of Snakes On a Plane - https://gizmodo.com/snakes-on-a-plane-15-years-of-expletive-snakes-and-exp-1847474744

Snakes on a Plane was released on August 18, 2006, which means it’s celebrating its 15th anniversary this week. However, the film’s legacy begins a little before that; in July 2006, Snakes on a Plane took its hilarious title and premise into San Diego Comic-Con and blew the roof off the place. There, fans and bloggers alike were wowed by the gory, fun footage. The event created huge buzz all over the internet and, as a result, people who got their film news online expected it to be an instant cult hit. Then it opened. While it did hit number one on its opening weekend, it barely grossed $14 million on its way to $34 million domestic (and $62 million international), which was way under expectations. The story is credited to David Dalessandro, a University of Pittsburgh administrator and first-time Hollywood writer. He developed the concept in 1992 after reading a nature magazine article about Indonesian brown tree snakes climbing onto planes in cargo during World War II. He originally wrote the screenplay about the brown tree snake loose on a plane, titling the film Venom. He soon revised it, expanding upon the premise to include a plague of assorted venomous snakes, then—crediting the film Aliens—revised it once again to include "lots of them loose in the fuselage of a plane." More than 450 snakes were used for filming to represent 30 different species of snakes. The different species include a 19-foot (5.8 m) Burmese python named Kitty (which the crew called Kong for film purposes), scarlet kingsnake (the non-venomous double for the eastern coral snake), milk snake, corn snakes, rattlesnakes, and mangrove snakes. The scarlet kingsnake and Pueblan milk snake stood in for coral snakes, while another species of milk snake and Florida kingsnake filled the role of the venomous Australian taipan (which attacks the couple having sex and the man using a restroom respectively). About two-thirds of the snakes seen throughout the film were either animatronic or CGI. The snakes that were real were mostly the non-venomous ones that are never seen attacking anyone. The scenes where someone is clearly bitten were often done with a mix of animatronic and animation. According to the DVD, all the snakes had production names, but only Scarface (an animated pit viper), Peanut (a cobra), and Kong are mentioned by name in the audio commentary. During filming, Samuel Jackson did not come into contact with any live snakes, due to a contract clause preventing snakes from being within 8 m (25 ft) of the actor. When the film was released in theaters, "pranksters" released two live western diamondback rattlesnakes at the AMC Desert Ridge 18 theater in Phoenix, Arizona during a showing of the film on August 22, 2006. One snake made its way into the lobby of the theater on its own, the other was found in the parking lot. No one was harmed and the snakes were released back into the desert.

Remembrances

• 17th August 2012 – Victor Poor - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Poor

An American engineer and computer pioneer. At Computer Terminal Corporation (later renamed Datapoint Corporation), he co-created the architecture that was ultimately implemented in the first successful computer microprocessor, the Intel 8008. Subsequently, Computer Terminal Corporation created the first personal computer, the Datapoint 2200 programmable terminal. Poor continued his research and development, trying to develop a method for sending photographs and pictures wirelessly. In 1969 while working his notice period from Frederick Electronics, during the Thanksgiving holiday, Poor and fellow amateur radio colleague Harry Pyle produced the underlying architecture of the modern microprocessor on a living room floor. They then asked fellow radio amateur Jonathan Schmidt to write the accompanying communications software. Pitching the idea to both Texas Instruments and Intel, the partnership developed the Intel 8008, the forerunner of the microprocessor chips found in today's personal and computing devices. In late 1969, Poor joined start-up computer company Computer Terminal Corporation as Technical Director in San Antonio, Texas. Founded by two former NASA engineers, Phil Ray and Gus Roche, they asked him to approach Intel to see how much of his design could fit onto a computer chip. Pitching a $100,000 proposal to place the architecture onto silicon and into production, the project became the Intel 8008 master chip, the world's first 8-bit microprocessor. Poor and Pyle then developed the instruction set architecture which enabled Ray and Roche to design and develop the mass-produced programmable Datapoint 2200 computer terminal. As a result of the success of this product, the company changed its name to Datapoint. Datapoint remained one generation ahead of Intel until the Intel 80286. Overseeing the development of ARCNET by lead ARCNET architect John Murphy, an early local area network, Poor stayed with Datapoint until 1984, after they had lost their technical microchip lead to IBM and been bought out by corporate raiders. Poor died at the age of 79 in Palm Bay, Florida.

Famous Birthdays

• 17th August 1896 – Leslie Groves - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Groves

Lieutenant General Leslie Richard Groves Jr. a United States Army Corps of Engineers officer who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon and directed the Manhattan Project, a top secret research project that developed the atomic bomb during World War II. In September 1942, Groves took charge of the Manhattan Project. He was involved in most aspects of the atomic bomb's development: he participated in the selection of sites for research and production at Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Hanford, Washington. He directed the enormous construction effort, made critical decisions on the various methods of isotope separation, acquired raw materials, directed the collection of military intelligence on the German nuclear energy project and helped select the cities in Japan that were chosen as targets. Groves wrapped the Manhattan Project in security but failed to prevent the Soviet Union from conducting a successful espionage program that stole some of its most important secrets. After the war, Groves remained in charge of the Manhattan Project until responsibility for nuclear weapons production was handed over to the United States Atomic Energy Commission in 1947. He then headed the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, which had been created to control the military aspects of nuclear weapons. He was given a dressing down by the Army Chief of Staff, General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower, and told that he would never be appointed Chief of Engineers. The Manhattan Engineer District (MED) was formally established by the Chief of Engineers, Major General Eugene Reybold on 16 August 1942. The name was chosen by Groves and MED's district engineer, Colonel James C. Marshall. Like other engineer districts, it was named after the city where its headquarters was located, at 270 Broadway. Unlike the others, however, it had no geographic boundaries, only a mission: to develop an atomic bomb. He was born in Albany, New York.

Events of Interest

• 17th August 1978 – Double Eagle II becomes first balloon to cross the Atlantic Ocean when it lands in Miserey, France near Paris, 137 hours after leaving Presque Isle, Maine. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Eagle_II

Double Eagle II, piloted by Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson and Larry Newman, became the first balloon to cross the Atlantic Ocean when it landed 17 August 1978 in Miserey near Paris, 137 hours 6 minutes after leaving Presque Isle, Maine.It can be regarded as a successful crossing at the point that the Double Eagle II crossed the Irish coast, on the evening of 16 August, an event that Shannon Airport notified the crew about when it happened. Newman originally intended to hang glide from the balloon to a landing, while Anderson and Abruzzo continued to fly, but the hang-glider had to be dropped as ballast earlier on 16 August. While flying over France, they heard by radio that authorities had closed Le Bourget Airfield, where Charles Lindbergh had landed, for them. The crew declined the offer as they were running out of ballast and it would be too risky (to themselves and anyone below) to pass over the suburbs of Paris. They landed in a field of barley, owned by Roger and Rachel Coquerel, in Miserey, 60 mi (97 km) northwest of Paris. Television images showed a highway nearby, its shoulders and outer lanes crowded with stopped cars, people sweeping across the farm field to the landing spot. The gondola was protected, but most of the logs and charts were stolen by souvenir hunters. The flight, the fourteenth known attempt, was the culmination of more than a century of previous attempts to cross the Atlantic Ocean by balloon. Some of the people who had attempted it were never found. Larry Newman won a draw among the three to sleep in the same bed at the United States Embassy that Lindbergh slept in. British balloonists Don Cameron and Christopher Davey feted the trio at a party that included a balloon shaped like the Double Eagle II. The trio and their wives planned to return to the United States aboard the supersonic Concorde. Upon the successful crossing, the trip was accommodated by Air France at no charge to the trio and spouses.

• 17th August 1939- Buck Rogers premiered in Portugal - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032290/

On this day in 1939 (in Portugal), Buck Rogers took a trip into the future after waking up from a long sleep. Here's the plot summary: "A 20th Century pilot named Buck Rogers and his young friend Buddy Wade awake from 500 years in suspended animation to find that the world has been taken over by the outlaw army of Killer Kane." In the original comic strip, Buck Rogers is actually a former World War One pilot who was working as a mine surveyor at the time he came to fall into his long (500 years long) sleep. For some reason, the regulations would not allow the screenwriters to use the comic strip's continuity, so the serial is actually a completely original story with the comic strip characters added. The character of Killer Kane was changed, too: in the original strip, his real name was Oba Kane, he had a twin brother named Nova and a pistol called "Baby". He also had a girlfriend named Ardala Valmar. The regulations would not allow any of this background to be used, either: instead, Oba "Killer" Kane is presented as the despotic ruler of a future Earth. This serial is probably based on an unofficial Flash Gordon story in which Flash Gordon travels to Saturn; this story was not and has never been part of the original Flash Gordon universe (it was illegally published in 1936). After the serial came out, a second origin appeared in the comic strip in which Buck fell into a crater while looking for a meteor made from impervium, an indestructible metal used in the making of spaceships. Due to having hit the meteor when he fell in, Buck released the gas from inside and it put him to sleep for 500 years, only to be found by scientists and awakened. Again, this origin took place on Earth and not in space. There was a character in the strip who was in stasis in a satellite for 500 years, but his name was Dr. Laika; the story was inspired by the launch of Sputnik II. This is the origin story used in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979). Henry Brandon hoped to play chief villain Killer Kane but was cast as Kane's henchman Captain Laska instead. When Brandon complained to his agent about this he was told, "The lead heavy works for one day, the henchman works for three weeks. Which part did you say you wanted again?" The film takes place in 1938 and 2440.

Artist – Goblins from Mars

Song Title – Super Mario - Overworld Theme (GFM Trap Remix)

Song Link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GNMe6kF0j0&index=4&list=PLHmTsVREU3Ar1AJWkimkl6Pux3R5PB-QJ

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