(from TwitLonger)

The founder of Freedom Hosting has been arrested in Ireland and is awaiting extradition to USA.

In a crackdown that FBI claims to be about hunting down pedophiles, half of the onion sites in the TOR network has been compromised, including the e-mail counterpart of TOR deep web, TORmail.

http://www.independe...planet-29469402.html

This is undoubtedly a big blow to the TOR community, Crypto Anarchists, and more generally, to Internet anonymity. All of this happening during DEFCON.
...

So, we have two stories on Kickstarters- one that, in my opinion, was one of the best successes that I've backed, and one that was the worst failure that I've ever come close to backing.

First up, we have Shadowrun Returns.  A pretty ambitious game, and one close to my heart, Shadowrun was a SNES game back in the 90's that I played through several times.  It was based off of a PnP game, Shadowrun, that's recently released its 5th edition.  Shadowrun is basically what happens when someone wants to release a Cyberpunk game but gets beat out by a bit (and they have that info as a bit of an easter egg in the game)- a combination between Cybernetics and Magic based on the end of the Mayan Calendar.

The game just released, about 6 months behind schedule, and it's a great implementation, with the right mix of homage to the old game, introduction of the updated gameplay, and adherence to the game systems.  It's been getting great reviews, and is one of the best backings that I've done on Kickstarter.  It's available on Steam, and at only 6 months late with the amount of content that was added in the way of stretch goals, I'm impressed.

Next we have the The Doom That Came To Atlantic City!  It was touted as Lovecraftian Mythos meets Monopoly.  And that's just one of the things that got it in trouble by way of Hasbro.

The post is here (along with a clarification), and the post from the actual developer explaining that basically they don't know where the money went is here.

Several people have filed fraud charges, and things are getting ugly.  I guess the point is that Kickstarter is not a silver bullet- things can go well, and thing can go spectacularly bad.  I wonder how this will affect Kickstarter specifically, and crowdfunding as a whole?

Other media coverage
http://www.geekosyst...h-baker-kickstarter/
http://www.geekosyst...-board-game-failure/
http://www.geek.com/...y-collected-1563478/
http://www.gamepolit...refunds#.UfLlJtLOvW0
http://www.escapistm...laims-of-Malfeasance
http://penny-arcade....-released-refunds-mi

Now in 2013 I have been using the term Dopamine Driven Design (DDD) privately for the last year to describe the use of techniques to optimize dopamine delivery in interactive media products. It is my belief that DDD is being used on a very rudimentary level in most social network and many mobile games currently. One company, Riot Games, has been deploying DDD capable scientists to optimize their product on a level that is beyond rudimentary. Most if not all major studios have been creating business intelligence units to optimize engagement, which in my opinion is tremendously inefficient without the presence of an embedded DDD capable scientist.

Great Read:

http://www.gamasutra...6848/Game_Dosing.php

A nice discussion of (Open Source) licensing issues:

http://lucumr.pocoo....2013/7/23/licensing/

I’ve had an unusual number of interesting conversations spin out of my previous article documenting that mobile web apps are slow.  This has sparked some discussion, both online and IRL.  But sadly, the discussion has not been as… fact-based as I would like.

So what I’m going to do in this post is try to bring some actual evidence to bear on the problem, instead of just doing the shouting match thing.  You’ll see benchmarks, you’ll hear from experts, you’ll even read honest-to-God journal papers on point.  There are–and this is not a joke–over 100 citations in this blog post. I’m not going to guarantee that this article will convince you, nor even that absolutely everything in here is totally correct–it’s impossible to do in an article this size–but I can guarantee this is the most complete and comprehensive treatment of the idea that many iOS developers have–that mobile web apps are slow and will continue to be slow for the forseeable future.

http://sealedabstrac...e-web-apps-are-slow/[/center]

1. Newsletter Editorial

Greetings readers.  I've just returned to Illinois from a two-week family vacation in Florida, and it's already time for another newsletter.  Everything seems to slow down a bit during the summer so this month's newsletter is a little shorter than normal, and I don't have any big announcements to make.  Hopefully you'll still be able to find a few posts that are of interest...