I've just been informed that there's new Borderlands DLC out. I'll be getting that and posting a review in the next few days. Word has that it's good so I'm pretty psyched at the prospect of some kick ass gameplay. I just hope they address the one failing of the previous DLCs; no fast travel. Props to Philcore for letting me know :)

Looks like Anonymous didn't make enough of an example of ACS:Law. Another law firm is also sending nasty letters to people and trying to extort "compensation" from them. BBC article here. You'd think after ACS:Laws dumb fuckery that other firms would think twice before engaging in this kind of practice. I give them a week at best before Anonymous turns its hate machine on and takes them down.

The EU is suing the British Govt over its failure to take action against BT for its illegal trials of Phorms invasive ad tracking technology. Too right, it's about time someone did something about it. Anyone not up to speed about the rather nefarious system Phorm was trying to sell should check out El Regs analysis.

I'll be in London this weekend so I may or may not do any updates. I'm going to Slimelight on Saturday night with my better half as a part of a London-based birthday celebration for her. Next weekend we'll both be in Cambridge living it up at Massacre. So here's todays nerd news roundup:

• So now companies can use this to screen out potential job applicants. Perhaps there was more than a hint of truth in Eric Schmidts recent comments about young people having to change their names upon reaching adulthood in order to avoid being dogged by their reckless youths? Personally I think this whole progression into an information age where seemingly nothing is really private any more is a tad creepy. However if you put your life online then you can't really expect to avoid scrutiny.
• A potentially habitable planet has been detected orbiting in the Goldilocks zone of a nearby red dwarf star, article here. Seriously awesome.
• Oracle are dicks and the JCP is trying to get Java development made completely vendor independent. I hope they succeed. Ever since Oracle bought Sun Microsystems out they've been nothing but complete assholes to the OSS community. They've even gone and basically destroyed Open Solaris, goodness only knows what they'll eventually do to mysql. Seriously, fuck you oracle.
• El Reg has an interesting review of open source video editing suites over here. Some interesting stuff in there, I may even be tempted to try some of them out as I still have yet to do anything productive with the footage I took on my n900 at the last Duxford airshow I went to.

I think that's about it for this morning. I'm going to write the comments and user login systems soon, I promise.

It's always cute to see the US posture pointlessly about China. Cute bill guys but let's be honest here. China owns your ass. All China has to do is turn around and say

"Hey, nice trade deficit you got goin' on there. We feel like calling in some debts."

and that bill will get voted down faster than a proposition to legalise gay marriage in Texas.

HDCP is well and truly out of the bag and no amount of DMCA backed bullying is going to put it back in. Check this out for an OSS implementation, this should prove useful for research purposes ;)

In other news, Dead Rising 2 has received a fairly unflattering review from El Reg. Having played Dead Rising on the Wii, and been left fairly unimpressed, this doesn't really surprise me. Dead Rising never had the same kind of stomach churning urgency and awesome level of immersive gameplay found in better titles like Left 4 Dead (1 and 2). Ah well, better luck next time Capcom.

George, we know you've made a mint off the Star Wars franchise, but surely it's time to stop milking this particular cash cow? Have the marketing teats not run dry yet? no? aww shit.

So Lucas is going to re-release the entire sextuplet of Star Wars movies in 3D. I facepalmed hard at this news. I love Star Wars, don't get me wrong but FFS George, leave it alone! You did enough damage when you introduced Jar Jar Binks and almost ruined the entire franchise. Seriously George. Just stop.

Apparently Nintendos 3DS won't be out in time for Xmas. Sad face, I was looking forward to getting one to see how good the tech is. I'm especially intrigued by the method they use to give a 3d experience without glasses. Ah well, February it is then.

• Fresh woes for Andrew Crossleys firm ACS:Law as even more data is leaked that could lead to a massive class action lawsuit on top of the potential fine of around £500,000 that they're already facing. Truly epic win for Anonymous going on there. Don't fuck with the internet mr Crossley, don't fuck with the internet.
• The new Labour leader Ed Miliband (who? no, seriously, who the fuck is he?) is making a load of vacuous noise in a vague attempt to appear less of a civil liberty raping asshole than either of his predecessors.
• The Daily Mash is hitting it spot on as usual with some good satire about the nature of religious idiots.
• Might add a section to the site/links specifically for nerdcore and gaming. Haven't decided yet.

China is attempting to manipulate the outcome of the Nobel Peace prize for its own political convenience. Full article here. Personally I think it's disgusting and I hope the Nobel Peace Prize committee ignore it or possibly even award Liu Xiaobo the award just to snub the Chinese authorities.

Don't fuck with the internet, trust me, if you push it it pushes back much, much harder. This is the lesson being learned by ACS:Law Boss Andrew Crossley. Hard.

Much to the amusement of netizens everywhere Mr Crossley made the fatal mistake of taunting 4chan. It is my guess that he had no idea just what he was dealing when he made the rather ill advised comment:

"It was only down for a few hours. I have far more concern over the fact of my train turning up 10 minutes late or having to queue for a coffee than them wasting my time with this sort of rubbish"

This was said in reference to a DDoS attack by Anonymous on his and several other sites that have engaged in nefarious practices to attempt to blackmail filesharers into paying extortionate amounts in reparation for alleged (and untested in court) accusations of copyright infringement. More details here.

The US Government wants to be able to spy on all your encrypted communications, to the point where they're trying to legislate enforcement of such a policy on all tech companies that create such software (see the Register article here for more details). Now firstly I don't think this will make it into law over there. It clearly violates the 4th Amendment and is so ragingly unconstitutional that it's going to take some outrageous legal doublethink to pass. Won't happen. Even if it does it will only affect 'law-abiding' citizens. Were I a US citizen I would happily violate such an anti-human law, outlawing technology that you don't like doesn't make it go away. It certainly won't stop 'terrorists', (a largely imagined threat anyway).

Interestingly there is comment from the GNU Telephony Team on this and I'm glad to see that it is suitably defiant.

Speaking on behalf of the GNU Telephony project, we do intend to openly defy such a law should it actually come to pass, so I want to be very clear on this statement. It is not simply that we will choose to publicly defy the imposition of such an illegitimate law, but that we will explicitly continue to publicly develop and distribute free software (that is software that offers the freedom to use, inspect, and modify) enabling secure peer-to-peer communication privacy through encryption that is made available directly to anyone worldwide. Clearly such software is especially needed in those places, such as in the United States, where basic human freedoms and individual dignity seem most threatened today.

In the United States the 4th amendment did not come about simply because it was impractical to directly spy on everyone on such a large scale. Nor does it end simply because it may now be technically feasible to do so. Communication privacy furthermore is essential to the normal functioning of free societies, whether speaking of whistle-blowers, journalists who have to protect their sources, human rights and peace activists engaging in legitimate political dissent, workers engaged in union organizing, or lawyers who must protect the confidentiality of their privileged communications with clients.

However, to fully appreciate the effect of such surveillance on human societies, imagine being among several hundred million people who wake up each day having to prove they are not a ?terrorist? by whatever arbitrary means the government has decided to both define the terms of such a crime and whatever arbitrary methods unknown to you that they might choose to define you as such, and where even your prosecution is carried out under the immunity of ?state secrets? that all police states use to abuse of their own citizens. Such a society is one who?s very foundation is built on the premise of everyone being guilty until proven innocent and where due process does not exist. It is the imposition of such a illegitimate society that we choose to openly oppose, and to do so in this manner.

David Alexander Sugar
Chief Facilitator
GNU Telephony

I think that pretty much covers it.

This is important. The UKs coalition Government is proposing to cut science funding. This would be an immense mistake. The UK is currently a world leader in research and innovation and key to that success is continued funding for 'blue sky' research as well as economically driven work. To fight this a group of concerned scientists, engineers and supporters of science is attempting to harness the internet to build support for a petition to prevent what can only be described as a crime against knowledge.
You can register your support here: http://scienceisvital.org.uk/. Please do sign the petition and write to your MP. We need all the support we can get to prevent this travesty.
Thanks and here's hoping.
Thumbnail.

Yes indeed, thumbnail.org.uk is back after a year or so of not having any hosting. I've got Eriks hat back and I'm working on implementing a commenting and tagging system for content. At some point I'll get round to finishing an AJAX/CGI version of Hneftafl and we will have fully SSL protected user accounts and so forth. So here's celebrating the first post since the site's gone online. There's a lot of work to be done but at least a start has been made :)