Chicago Tribune: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ ... 5808.story]Yahoo confirms 400,000 email addresses hacked

Quote:The company also said it is notifying other companies whose users may have been affected -- which may include people who use AOL, Gmail, Hotmail and many others.

Master Of All - 12/Jul/2012
Arthur felt a bit better in himself.  Since he completed 'Project Infrastructure'.  Maybe felt a little in control.  And he thought he sensed an air almost of respect, from Ms Jones, when she came and checked his accounts.
"You do seem a bit senior, Ms Jones, to be doing work like this" he remarked. When he thought about it later he realised she hadn't quite answered that, and shifted to inquiring where he got his accountancy training.  She wasn't completely believing when he mentioned a single college term, and, that after all, it was pretty straight-forward.
Looking back, he supposed Ms Jones wasn't his first manager.  That honour went to Kevin Wright, an 'investment manager', whose talent for taking small 'business development' loans and turning them into regular income streams was arguably impressive.  Arthur got his repair business, via him, as an elderly engineer retired due to ill health.  Called him the "Wright Stuff".  Where'd he gone?
Arthur had been reading his contract terms more carefully.  And, consulting a retired friend of his aunt, who'd taught the subject.  Yes, the retainer meant he couldn't work for competitors, but it specifically permitted his repair business.  That gave him some leeway, and work, seeing as Rod was still in college.
Making sure the Body Builder was his had helped.  Handwavium, particularly with the moral panic around it, scared a lot of people.  He supposed he was a bit fatalistic.  He couldn't stop himself dying, maybe tomorrow, in a car accident.  So, why worry?  If you treated it with respect you were probably OK, and wouldn't wake-up with a tail and a particular fondness for fish.
The humanoid robots made by the Body Builder were handwavium-free.  He'd got certificated proof of that, and, always checked it himself with a gadget he'd waved up.  Seeing as a hand and arm reportedly sold, on its own, for $100k to the space industry, selling his complete robots for $50k looked quite feasible.  He already had a number of enquiries.  Yes, conventional batteries didn't give much untethered running time, so they could fight their consciences about buying his waved Li-on ones, good for a few tens of hours.
The latest request from above seemed a bit... hurried.  It was also simpler than anything they'd previously asked.  Survey robots, for use in the asteroid belt, that could work with minimal supervision.  They didn't even need to look like cute girls.
It took him a little while, but he found out what happened to Kevin Wright.  The man was in his early fifties, but he'd had a stroke.  After a year and a half of recovery and therapy he could talk, reasonably clearly, again, and walk with the aid of a stick.  He might never regain full use of his hand.  He'd never had a pension, and was effectively retired.  While he didn't say so, Arthur was pretty sure his savings were running out.
Arthur saw red.  He pulled an all-nighter and built a custom nursing robot from scratch, using the Body Builder for the easy bits.  His time, his parts, his money.  Then, spent a few evenings looking at Mather's AI discs, or his copies of them, anyway (the originals were in a bank vault).  The man was a genius, but there were things about the file-names, even the directory structure, that disturbed him.  And there were PNG files of ritual diagrams, some of which hurt his eyes to look at.
Next, he bullied his way on board O'Neill Station, for an inspection tour. Checking the installed AIs, and the Hollywood Machine while he was there.  He found a few things to criticise, too.  Demanded new procedures to protect power systems from overloads, in case of faults.  Walked straight past Jane Dow and didn't even flinch.
He got his fifteen minutes with The Machine, unsupervised, to run his tests, and when it tried to intimidate him he growled back.  Interesting to watch it try and camouflage itself against the bulkhead.  Nurse Blake came out perfect.  He had a full set of readings of her glamorisation process.  When they complained he pointed out that he'd provided test materials at his own expense, and that it'd be on his invoice.
Arthur was shaking when he got back to his office.  The adrenaline was gone, and he was wondering if he'd ever work again.  But, he had proven skills.  The package from his lawyer was there, waiting for him.  "Wright Stuff Mechatronics" would soon be a going concern.  Nurse Blake seemed quite happy with the idea of working to assist Kevin Wright, and her AI core would live in Kevin's car.
Later, after the "Master Surveyor" was finished, which proved a reasonably trivial job (though he'd only waved up one complete set), he sat and thought.  He couldn't claim that the 'good guys' won.  He wasn't sure there were any good guys.  He wasn't one.  But, if they existed, Kevin Wright certainly was.
And now, Kevin'd have the money to get his lawyer to look really hard at his own new contract terms.  Arthur wanted him to be sure he wasn't being cheated.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

I'm working on a story with a friend and she wants to bring Lelouch to the party...  Thing is... I'm pretty sure this will prove to be setting the cat amongst the canaries.
But I guess you folks need a few more details...
A while back I had the zany idea of a metric ass-load of anime characters winding up in the real world with an SI as their caretaker.  The reason for it being that an experiment by Washu Hakubi went and screwed up the multiverse and landed them all in the guy's house... in a most destructive manner.  (Put it this way - lucky no one was hurt.)
Anyhow, the story has gone through a couple of permutations, and one co-author who has up and vanished into the aether.
The story in its current incarnation is pretty much the same, with some notable differences.
The home is now an apartment complex in the LA area.  The SI's are hired on to take a run-down complex with squatters and make it profitable.  And then Washu shows up with Tenchi and everyone else.  Skuld is the first Goddess on the scene and lays it all down.  The entire multiverse is under lockdown until things get straightened out.  Until then, the Tenchi Muyo gang are to suffer the hospitality of the two SIs.  But, as more people keep showing up (with the next batch followed by key members of the Nerima Wrecking Crew) it is decided that the situation has dramatically escalated and Belldandy, Urd, and even Marler are called in.  (Heaven and Hell are setting aside their differences in this time of crisis - it's that bad.)
And at this time, more details come out.  For an instant, the entire multiverse was all one universe, and now they're busy trying to 'unstick' everything... but some universes are being very stubborn about this.  Meanwhile, it seems that an indeterminate number of people are caught in flux within their local space-time.  They are popping out at random times and places.  Eventually, a detection system can be worked out... but it is a finicky thing in the making.
The worst part?  Their universe is being the most stubborn and it seems that the best they may be able to do is 'copy' everyone and put them back into their proper place... which means that copies will be left behind.  The only other option is to permit the realities that are trying to stick the most blend in with their own universe... but that could have disastrous consequences.
And somewhere in the middle of all this fracas, Lelouch shows up, along with an indeterminate number of cohorts and associations.
Lelouch would have no way of getting back to his home-universe.  Even if it were possible, he could not suborn the Goddesses or Marler.  His Geass is locked down and they're able to read his thoughts.  Washu isn't an option, either, for various reasons (just pick your favorite and run with it).  Therefore, his primary goal of destroying the Britanian Empire is no longer open to him.
Now, from what little I do know of Lelouch (I only watch the first season of Code Geass) he is incredibly ambitious and always looking for an angle on something.  I know he likes being in control of the situation, so being told that this random joe and doe (just good friends, not a couple) are looking after him probably isn't gonna sit well with him.  Even if Nunally is present and is given proper medical treatment by Washu.
So... I'm am trying to figure out exactly what he would do.  I'm not at all a great strategist and I couldn't even begin to put together one of Lelouch's grand Magnificent Bastard plans... so... HELP!

I figured it might be useful to try have one thread where we could talk about various Kickstarter projects, given that we seem to have a bunch of them floating around.
So, here's a Kickstarter for a group making a game console based on the Android OS.  The Kickstarter began on July 9th.  They have, as of this post, raised $3,626,171. 
Holy...
-----
Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.

Dissonant Seer:
Preconceived Notions
[Warning: there are spoilers here for a fair amount of First Ward Content]

I was really starting to hate the wards. It wasn't because of the apparitions, thought I had my fair share of conflicted feeling about them when I found out what they truly were. It wasn't because of the gigantic flying seed spawn, regardless of how creepy it was to have part of Hamidon just floating around. It wasn't even that strange way space twisted in on itself to form the shadowed paths. No it was because everyone was a backstabbing degenerate.

And they were dragging us down to their level.

We originally sent one of us to First Ward when we heard about seers there forming their own collective outside of Mother Tilman's control. While there I met Amy, another seer who had gotten out of the network. She was operating as "Mind's I", and for the first time in a long time I felt hope. I was outside of Tilman's control, with another free sister who didn't hate the concept of a making a new network, and looking for more of us to join up.

I should have known better than to believe that Tilman would allow such organized rebellion to exist. She kept pushing them harder and harder until they self destructed in a bid for enough power to survive. It made me feel sick inside, but I had to help Amy put them down. They had lost all semblance of control; or maybe they had more control than they could take under Mother Tilman, and decided that it wasn't something they needed any more. Either way, The things I saw in those buildings will certainly be visiting my dreams for some time to come. But as frustrating and gut wrenching as it was to kill other seers who had made it out from under Tilman's thumb, that wasn't the worst we did.

At first I had thought that there was a small silver lining in having to kill our out of control sisters. We had managed to take down the local node of the seer network. But then Amy and I learned what was happening to the freed seers. Confused, angry, and hurt, they were perfect recruits for the Talons of Vengeance. And if that wasn't bad enough they had managed to entice Katie Douglas as well.

Left with nothing but bad choices we did something I never thought I could do. We restarted the seer network. Shoving them back under Tilman's thumb was only slightly preferable to killing them. And if they were still alive then someone else might be able to free them again. But I don't think that person could be me. I had gone to the First Ward with the hopes of making or joining a free network. And instead I had ended up killing them and having to put Katie Douglas back into Mother Tilman's grasp.

We had done it stop the Talons of Vengeance, and in doing so we had 'saved the day'. But if I knew then what I know now, I'm not sure if I could bring myself to make the same decisions.

I note that you seem to have moved the rotating titles (or at least some subsets thereoff) to the sub pages for each section.  However, the 'top' page for DW 2 does not, from what I could see, seem to be generating its semi random quote/quip correctly.  Not sure why, but thought I'd let you know (might also just be that whatever is happening is only happening in Firefox)
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

Uncanny Valley - 11/Jul/2012
Arthur thought they might leave him alone.  They'd taken the Hollywood Machine. They'd hired a HR professional, now they'd got good employee criteria.  He ran Lagrange Recruitment.  Rod was in college.  Arthur was on a retainer.
Maybe they were afraid he'd work for Stellvia?  Fat chance!  They'd much better people than him.  He'd been shown the dossiers.  It'd be fun to work alongside some of them...  But, retainer.  Then, the latest demand.
They'd found the logistics limits of the Hollywood Machine.  Which was partly about how hard it was sensible to ask Mrs O'Hare to work.  Arthur wasn't happy about the addictive side of the machine.  He hadn't planned it.  In fact, he hadn't planned any of it.
Actually, they wanted AIs.  The brief was for more attractive women who could run the infrastructure, 24/7.  But the skill requirements were quite unreasonable.  No, he refused to try and make more 'Angels'.  They were a disaster waiting to happen.
Hmm.  The trick would be to make them heterogeneous, three different processor architectures running compatible software.  That'd give some protection from crude instruction-set specific attacks.  He'd need to read some more security stuff.
If the AIs had remote control of humanoid bodies, that'd satisfy the need for 'attractive women'.  But, he didn't trust his ability to navigate the Uncanny Valley, never mind manage 'attractive'.  Also, with their own bodies they could unplug their processors and leave the station, if they really wanted to.  He'd been reading about AI slavery - nasty.
Ms Jones wasn't currently watching him, but he expected she'd want to see all the receipts.  He knew some computer recyclers, and he was sure they'd have something good.  And, those ex-school RISC PCs he'd tucked away.  Then, there was that Mac fanatic, he knew, who'd kept those Power PC boxes, his design firm got rid of.  Old x86 boxes would be trivial.  Then, he just needed something really weird for emergencies.
Just for fun, he'd put them in colour-coded boxes.  Red, white and blue - should be good for even colour-blind technicians.  Though, seeing as he expected female staff, much less risk of that.  Black for the tenth one.  When he'd been poking around in the occult, to get the bits for the Angels, he'd made a few interesting contacts.  'Dave Mathers' he called himself.  Mad as a hatter, but a genius at making sane AIs.
Mathers came through, with ten install discs, one per AI, four processor architectures.  He'd had the boxes soaking in some special handwavium, left over from the Hollywood Machine project; 'paisley'.  He was pretty sure that'd got things going, and his discipline in saving samples of all handwavium strains he'd made paid off.  Pity he didn't have the paint mixer any more.
His science fiction friends had filled him in on real world robotics.  Air muscles were apparently the thing.  Fibre optic fibres for touch and temperature sensors.  Medical latex skins for realism.  Human hair if you could afford it.  But, there was no way he could construct ten humanoid bodies, all with 640+ muscles, on any realistic time-scale.
Hence, the Body Builder.  Constructed in his own time, with his own paid-for materials, seeing what happened with the Hollywood Machine.  He didn't like it, it scared him.  But, he'd built it, and they'd taken it off him.
He fed-in all the raw materials and parts.  This was a wonderful example of a waved device doing a complex task that could in theory be done by hand, and not contaminating the result with handwavium.  The link from AI cores to remote robot bodies was paired hacked cell/mobile phones, which if he'd got it right were doing all the anti-jamming and hacking tricks possible.  Waved Li-on batteries for AI and robot power supplies.
So, he had ten robot bodies, all slightly different, untouched by handwavium. Credible appearance, but still well in the Uncanny Valley.  He ran test routines, using a jury-rigged VR system, and fixed the few glitches.  But, he was reluctant to boot the AIs.
Brain wave. (No pun.)  No handwavium, no mods, so, maybe...  Would the Hollywood Machine glamorise them?  Worth trying.  Ten days later, he had them all ready. Perfect.  Maybe not movie-star quality, but better than average.
Apparently didn't even need Mrs O'Hare in the seat, took five minutes each.  The rest of the time was shipping and admin.  And, reading between the lines, a reluctance to ship them 'back down' to him.  Pity he'd kept the AI end of the remote links.
They were now in neat uniforms, presumably morphed versions of the sports wear he'd shipped them in (with underwear, of course!).  While he was curious what the underwear might have morphed into, it seemed unwise to check.  Their latex flesh looked human, even down to fine hairs on the arms.
Final checks.  The VR rig ran even smoother than before, and he couldn't hear even a faint hiss from the compressors.  He could see breathing, and when he looked closely, a pulse in the throat.  Wait a minute.  He hadn't fitted the waved Li-on batteries.
Ah well.
Simultaneous AI Boot!
AI Crew
These are ten humanoid robot bodies capable of running 24/7 with very high quality secure radio links to ten AIs designed to plumb-in to the systems of O'Neill Station.  The AIs are in three linked groups of three, with a heterogeneous processor architecture (ARM, PPC, x86) within each group.  The tenth AI is a weird non-standard architecture (SEAforth, if you're interested) and in a total emergency, where everything else fails, might keep a minimal system working.
Under normal circumstances any one AI processor from a group of three is capable of running about a third of O'Neill Station's facilities, and which third this is is hard-wired for each group.  Normally each triple of processors votes as to what is done, and if voting isn't unanimous then warning alarms start.  If one processor crashes and there is a tie, the tenth AI is given control; otherwise the tenth AI only gets control if an entire triple of processors has crashed.
The humanoid robot bodies all resemble attractive young women, and are fully functional in almost all ways: eating, drinking, excreting, bleeding; except they cannot get pregnant and bear (or nurse) children.  At core they are hardware, and their bones for example need repair rather than being capable of healing. You'd need an x-ray (or an RF monitor, to spot the link to their AI) to tell they're not human.
The AI link is good for up to 50 miles range, less if there is some shielding which it can't work around (wide band, frequency switching, etc.).  Upgrading to a better comms tech, say FTL, would most sensibly involve the AI and robot designer (Arthur).  And surgery.
Most of them go about their duties normally, as well-integrated numbers of the crew.  All have different appearances and personalities; all have hobbies.  The tenth is a roving troubleshooter, and is always poking around looking for problems.  She's also a dedicated amateur astronomer.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

A little something that's been stuck in my head for a while that finally decided to come out.
Any form of review is welcome, especially from rob & bob, as I want to make sure I have both characters' voices correct.
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
I woke up in my bike’s seat for once.

For those who have been following my travels, you already know how uncommon that is. For those who have only this chapter of my tale, I am Douglas Quincy Sangnoir, Colonel, security chief of the United Nations Metahuman Peacekeeping Force Warriors Alpha, based in London, England. I am a metahuman, which is someone with all the abilities of humanity and more beside. I have been kicked out of my home dimension through no fault of my own, and have been going from dimension to dimension hoping my next stop will reunite me with my wife Maggie and my comrades.

And for your information, my mode of travel through worlds has always made me unconscious, and as such I have been more often than not ejected from my bike’s seat.

Shaking my head to remove the last remaining cobwebs of unconsciousness, I took a first look at my current world.

Modern, by the looks of it, with skyscrapers all around. It was night, and late night at that if the number of lights meant anything. The road I was on was asphalt, which might be why my bike’s AI managed a good landing this time, and by the looks of it not well maintained.

A quick look around saw no threats, and more signs of shoddy maintenance bordering on actual damage. A closer one revealed what I expected: This city had experienced an earthquake or something of the sort recently, and the damage was everywhere. I checked from high that there was no fire or other such danger to the people here, and when I found none I decided the find a place to stay for the night.

I would look for whatever passed for leadership or law enforcement during the day, and offer my services. In times of crisis like this, there was surely some work I could do

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

I ended up borrowing a boardroom in a building of a company called Amagasa Corp., which looked quite abandoned if one were to judge by the dust. The building still had power and water, so at least I wouldn’t be forced to survive on my water rations.

I went back to the room where I had stashed my panniers to find that Eimi had finished booting. “Not home I suppose ?”

I was by now quite used to the directness of my digital partner. “Doesn’t look like it. Unless something huge happened while I was gone, this isn’t my world.”

“Fake id then ?”

“Wait on that. This place seem to have gone some kind of earthquake recently so it might not be…”

That’s when the windows cracked from a wave of air pressure. A sound had just preceded that, but I haven’t yet found the right onomatopoeia for it. Suffice to say that it was the sound of a sizable part of a building crashing down, something that I have unfortunately caused at least once. It was also very close.

Acting on instinct I grabbed both Eimi and my paniers only to run back outside to my bike. I wasn’t going to take a chance on having the roof crumble on me. I might survive but I wasn’t going to risk my equipment on it.

Once in the air, I noticed the fallen building. Behind and to the left of the Amagasa Corp building, it was evident that the structure had not fallen naturally. It had been visibly cut in half nearly horizontally.

Getting closer, I quickly noticed a fight going. On the highway right next to the fallen skyscraper two figures were duking it out. I instinctively did a tactical analysis on both figures and was surprised to find that these weren’t ‘crunchies’. It was surprising because both figures were at most four foot something.

Turning Eimi to point her webcam at the battle, which seemed to have paused for an instant, I couldn’t help but ask. “Anyone you know ?”

Before she even could answer, a circle of energy started drawing itself in the air right above the downed building, followed by a six-pointed star within the circle. Inside that appeared the one of the most bizarre creatures I ever had the misfortune to encounter.

Its body was that of a fish, and easily taller than me with a dorsal fin (which looked quite sharp) that doubled that height. It had the requisite fins of similar size on both sides of its center, along with something like tentacles protruding from the area above the fins. These were bizarrely colored differently from the body, with those on one side a pinkish red while those on the other were a deep blue.

And, most visibly, it had the face of an Asian girl with pink hair (including hair band) instead of that of a fish.

The shock of such a bizarre thing stunned me for a second.

“Whee! I’m a cute florist! I sell pretty flowers! Pretty, pretty! Do you want flowers? Do you, do you?” It said out loud, with the voice of an eight year old schoolgirl.

I kept watching as one of the two combatants, the flying one, teleported out, while the other jumped off the highway. The fish-like thing followed the latter after a short conversation, I supposed, some form of telepathy or electronic means.

I turned towards Eimi. “Any idea what that might be ?”

“Some.”

“Transfictional ?”

“Yes.”

I thought for an instant. Transfictional information meant that she had read the events here as a story somewhere in another dimension. It was a little bit like future knowledge, but from an outside point of reference. “Anything I should know ?”

“The one who just jumped off is a good guy, and could probably use your help. Either that or taking the miracle goop and building a space habitat in the next few hours.”

“That bad ?” I raised an eyebrow at her words.

“Not sure… But if it goes bad it can go very bad.”

“So… follow the fish ?”

“Follow the fish.”  
-People may die, but ideas are forever. Je suis Charlie.

Possibly, given the lyrics, the Final Gatesong (though I suspect you already have that picked out, Bob):
"Already Home" by Marc Cohn

I can see the sunshine
Coming through my room
Breaking down the winter of my discontent
Looking out my window
At the people passing by
I keep wondering where my old companion went
On the steps of the museum
I wrote a line or two
But it took a while to find my way
Back to something true like
This is where I lay my hat
This is where they know my name
This is where they show me that
A man's not so alone
Maybe I'm already home
(Sometimes you've got to go back)
Maybe I'm already home
(Sometimes you don't know why)
Rolling down the window
Burning up the daze
Cutting through the veil that keeps on blinding me
I was only sleeping
Waiting here for you
Waiting for your touch that keeps reminding me
Well I've seen the world of wonders
Been underneath it too
But it took a while just to find my way
Back to something true like
This is where I lay my hat
This is where they know my name
This is where they show me that
A man's not so alone
Maybe I'm already home
(Sometimes you've got to go back)
Maybe I'm already home
(Sometimes you don't know why)
Why it had to take me so long
Just to find a place that really feels
This must be where I belong
Thinking about it
All I had to do was click my heels
This is where I lay my hat
This is where they know my name
This is where they show me that
A man's not so alone
Maybe I'm already home
(Sometimes you've got to go back)
Maybe I'm already home
(Sometimes you don't know why)
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."

Chapter one of Fred "Pyeknu" Herriot's The Loon and the Ladies from Avalon is now up on the site.  It's indexed on the Fic^2 page, if anyone was wondering.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.