Email provider VFEmail said it has suffered a catastrophic destruction of all of its servers by an unknown assailant who wiped out almost two decades' worth of data and backups in a matter of hours.
“Yes, @VFEmail is effectively gone,” VFEmail founder Rick Romero wrote on Twitter Tuesday morning after watching someone methodically reformat hard drives of the service he started in 2001. “It will likely not return. I never thought anyone would care about my labor of love so much that they'd want to completely and thoroughly destroy it.”
Yes, @VFEmail is effectively gone. It will likely not return.
I never thought anyone would care about my labor of love so much that they'd want to completely and thoroughly destroy it.
The ordeal started on Monday when he noticed all the servers for his service were down. A few hours later, VFEmail’s Twitter account reported the attacker “just formatted everything.” The account went on to report that VFEmail “caught the perp in the middle of formatting the backup server.”
Sony’s PlayStation Classic looks like a tiny version of the original PlayStation game console. It has a list price of $100, comes with two game controllers and features 20 games pre-loaded. Officially, that’s the end of the story. Sony does…
Sony’s PlayStation Classic looks like a tiny version of the original PlayStation game console. It has a list price of $100, comes with two game controllers and features 20 games pre-loaded. Officially, that’s the end of the story. Sony doesn’t officially offer support for loading any other titles or doing anything other than playing those 20 […]
Ein Präsidialerlass in den USA gegen Ausrüster aus China könnte auch einen Ausschluss von Ericsson und Nokia beim Mobilfunk zur Folge haben. Beide Ausrüster haben Fertigungen in China. (Huawei, Nokia)
Ein Präsidialerlass in den USA gegen Ausrüster aus China könnte auch einen Ausschluss von Ericsson und Nokia beim Mobilfunk zur Folge haben. Beide Ausrüster haben Fertigungen in China. (Huawei, Nokia)
This week, an advocacy group called The Solar Foundation released its ninth annual solar jobs report. In 2018 the industry contracted, shedding 8,000 solar jobs, or a loss of about 3.2 percent from 2017. The solar industry employed 242,343 people in 2018, the report said.
The solar industry is the largest renewable energy employer in the US and the second largest energy employer behind the oil and gas industry. Wind and coal trail far behind solar in terms of the number of people employed. (For comparison, coal mining lost 2,000 jobs between 2016 and 2017, although that industry employs only slightly more than 50,000 people.)
2018 marks the second year in a row that the solar industry has posted job losses. In 2017, The Solar Foundation's report showed that employment contracted by 3.8 percent. The foundation only counts solar jobs where at least 50 percent of a person's time is dedicated to solar energy.
The Lenovo IdeaPad 720s line of laptops are thin and light computers with some premium touches including aluminum bodies, backlit keyboards, Thunderbolt 3 ports, and fingerprint readers. But they’re also a generation old at this point — Len…
The Lenovo IdeaPad 720s line of laptops are thin and light computers with some premium touches including aluminum bodies, backlit keyboards, Thunderbolt 3 ports, and fingerprint readers. But they’re also a generation old at this point — Lenovo is pushing the newer IdeaPad 730S… which may explain why Lenovo is selling 13.3 inch IdeaPad 720s […]
Auf dem Land gibt es in den USA viele Mobilfunk-Netzwerke, die Huawei-Technik nutzen. Die Betreiber verlangen Beweise für Hintertüren statt Angstmache. (Huawei, Handy)
Auf dem Land gibt es in den USA viele Mobilfunk-Netzwerke, die Huawei-Technik nutzen. Die Betreiber verlangen Beweise für Hintertüren statt Angstmache. (Huawei, Handy)
In sozialen Netzwerken könnte es demnächst auffällig viele Bilder von Pikachu und seinen Freunden geben: Das Entwicklerstudio Niantic will in Pokémon Go eine neue Funktion für einigermaßen glaubwürdige AR-Fotografien einbauen. (Pokémon Go, Augmented Re…
In sozialen Netzwerken könnte es demnächst auffällig viele Bilder von Pikachu und seinen Freunden geben: Das Entwicklerstudio Niantic will in Pokémon Go eine neue Funktion für einigermaßen glaubwürdige AR-Fotografien einbauen. (Pokémon Go, Augmented Reality)
From the archives—Era’s best-selling adventure game, now available DRM-free at GOG.
Shot by Sean Dacanay and edited by Justin Wolfson. VFX by John Cappello. Click here for transcript. And if you want a close-up peek at the awesome Ladd-style logo Aurich cooked up for this video, you can get that right here.
Welcome back to "War Stories," an ongoing video series where we get game designers to open up about development challenges that almost—but not quite—derailed their games. In this edition, we focus on a genre particularly near and dear to my dead, black Gen-X heart: the adventure game.
And not just any adventure game—we were lucky enough to be able to sit down with Louis Castle, co-founder of legendary game developer Westwood Studios. Castle's hands were on some of the most famous titles of the 1990s, including Dune II, the Legend of Kyrandia series, and, most famously, the Command & Conquer franchise. But as wonderful as those games are—and as many hours as I spent lost in the woods of Kyrandia as a teenager—none of those mean as much to me as Westwood's 1997 cinematic adventure game, Blade Runner.
You know the score, pal
Adventure games were one of the two ur-genres of true computer games (with the other being the arcade-style shooter), and as a child of the '80s, adventure games were what got me into gaming. The genre reached its peak in the early to mid 1990s, with some of the best-remembered LucasArts and Sierra titles making their appearance thereabouts. But by the end of the decade the wheels had come off the cart, and it was clear that the genre was being eclipsed by the rise of the first-person shooter.
The latest beta version of the Google app for Android has a few lines of code tucked inside that hint at upcoming features, according ton an analysis by 9to5Google. Among other things, it looks like there may be Google Assistant could eventually add su…
The latest beta version of the Google app for Android has a few lines of code tucked inside that hint at upcoming features, according ton an analysis by 9to5Google. Among other things, it looks like there may be Google Assistant could eventually add support for some new devices, the Continued Conversation feature that debuted last year […]
As the Chinese blockbuster movie “The Wandering Earth” is breaking records at the box office, copyright holders and authorities are trying to crack down on piracy. China’s Copyright Administration is calling on the public to help report piracy and clean up the Internet. Reportedly, this strategy is having some results.
With more than a billion citizens, China is seen as both a great opportunity and a great threat to the entertainment industries, Holywood included.
While China has traditionally been very reluctant to show ‘western’ movies, it has opened up in recent years much to the delight of the American movie studios.
The problem, however, is that both physical and online movie piracy is rampant. Hollywood and the US Government have signaled this in the past, and with a booming local movie industry, China is now committed to taking action as well.
Last week was the Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival, which is generally a busy time at the box office. However, it’s also high time for pirates, which spurred the National Copyright Administration (NCAC) into action.
“In recent days, after the joint action of multiple departments and rightsholders, the piracy of Spring Festival movies has been curbed. We will refer the serious infringements and piracy cases to the public security department to take criminal measures,” NCAC announced on the local social media site Weibo
The Copyright Administration called on the public to help and report instances of piracy through direct messages on Weibo, WeChat, and email.
“Please provide infringement clues and clean up the online copyright environment. Let’s work together,” the Government outfit wrote.
Piracy is a growing concern among Chinese filmmakers, especially now that the local movie industry is booming. One of the widely pirated movies is the sci-fi blockbuster “The Wandering Earth.” The film premiered during the Spring Festival and broke records by grossing over 2 billion yuan (US$300 million).
The makers are obviously happy with this achievement. Over the past few days, however, they were preoccupied with taking down links to pirated copies. Gong Ge’er, who heads the movie’s anti-piracy unit, says that they complained to the Government as well, the South China Morning Post reports.
“In recent days, the staff of The Wandering Earth have not had time to celebrate the box office success, but have devoted almost all their energy to complaining to authorities about piracy and blocking pirated copies,” Gong told the Beijing Youth Daily.
Compared to last year there was a significant drop in moviegoers during the Spring Festival. This is partly due to online. In addition, leaked copies of The Wandering Earth and other blockbusters were also sold online, starting at one yuan per copy.
For sale
While piracy is certainly not a new phenomenon in China, it’s interesting to see that the authorities are calling on the public to help. And according to a recent update from the Copyright Administration, this has paid off.
“All the infringement and piracy reports received through Weibo, WeChat, email, and other channels will be sorted out and handed over to the relevant copyright law enforcement agencies. We hope that the majority of users continue to provide relevant clues,” NCAC wrote.
This will sound like music to the ears of the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), a trade group that also represents Hollywood’s interest. Just last week it informed the U.S. Government that China must step up its game to better protect the interests of copyright holders, listing some examples of problematic sites.
“Traditional website piracy remains a major issue in China, causing significant damage to rights holders. Notorious piracy sites that disrupt the music and audiovisual marketplaces include zimuzu.tv, dytt8.net, 666c.com, sacdr.net, yymp3.com, musicool.cn, dy2018.com, xh127.com, b9good.com, dygang.com, loldytt.com, piaohua.com, bttt99.com, 80s.tw, meijutt.com, ygdy8.com, dysfz.vip, panduoduo.net, btbtdy.net, and lbldy.com,” IIPA wrote.
Perhaps IIPA can address their concerns to the Chinese authorities directly as well, via Weibo, WeChat, or email.
Ein Präsidialerlass in den USA gegen Ausrüster aus China könnte auch einen Ausschluss von Ericsson und Nokia beim Mobilfunk zur Folge haben. Beide Ausrüster haben Fertigungen in China. (
Auf dem Land gibt es in den USA viele Mobilfunk-Netzwerke, die Huawei-Technik nutzen. Die Betreiber verlangen Beweise für Hintertüren statt Angstmache. (
In sozialen Netzwerken könnte es demnächst auffällig viele Bilder von Pikachu und seinen Freunden geben: Das Entwicklerstudio Niantic will in Pokémon Go eine neue Funktion für einigermaßen glaubwürdige AR-Fotografien einbauen. (
With more than a billion citizens, China is seen as both a great opportunity and a great threat to the entertainment industries, Holywood included. 
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