by Aaron Colter

Goddamn people are dumb. It’s getting old.

I was reading a news article about Anonymous in which some supposed expert, Gabriella Coleman, made sweeping generalizations about the motives of the loose collective. While discussing the skill sets of those involved, she talked about how some are programmers or security researchers, while others “are skilled at video editing and design.”

My fucking eyes rolled so hard I thought the right one was going to pop clean-out of the damn socket. O RLY? Like fucking iMovie and Photoshop? Like that shit is super hard to figure out?

Embarrassing. The government is arresting kids for playing what is the equivalent of a high school prank on a mass scale (if you’re phishing for a Mr. Big in the hacker world – I hear Rupert Murdoch’s a pretty soft target these days). And it remains to be seen if they’re even arresting the correct people. (In response to the FBI’s arrests, hackers have released loads of data that was obtained from ManTech – a security firm paid over $100 million by our government for clearly failing to protect NATO information.)

But regardless of whether they’ve got the right Guy (pun intended), they’re doing it wrong.

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by A.J. Focht

It was the comic world that ruled geek news this last week as San Diego Comic Con was in full swing. Major players from all realms of nerdom gathered to share their latest updates. With such a huge event, I can’t possibly cover all the announcements, but here’s a full recap for your convenience.

Marvel Studios made a good call releasing Captain America: The First Avenger along with all the con hype. It took the box office this weekend making $65.1 million, but still shy of Thor’s $65.7 million opening weekend. And while Comic Con may have helped boost Captain America’s sales in America, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 continues to enchant the rest of the world.

Out of all the videos released at this year’s Comic Con, the trailer for The Last Airbender: Legend of Korra was one of the most anticipated (see above). The brand new video gives just over a minute’s look at the world of Avatar some 70 years after Aang.

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by Aaron Colter

The bulk of this blog post isn’t about San Diego Comic-Con, I’m just using it as an excuse to get you to click on the title. And it worked. Fooled you, motherfuckers! You might as well stick around though, I mean, you did already click on the title, and you are already reading this sentence. The next one’s pretty good, you should read it too.

Comic-Con can actually be a lot of fun, but it’s expensive as hell and crowded as five pounds of shit in a four pound bag. If conventions are your type of party, there are smaller conventions around the country that are legitimately well-attended, where you’ll have the opportunity to meet with other fans and actually speak to creators about their work. If, however, you’re looking to blow a few thousand dollars, and can get a decent group of your friends to do the same, plan a year in advance, and set aside hundreds in cash for stuff on the show floor, then yes, San Diego Comic-Con is fucking awesome. If attending, my top three picks for things to get at SDCC are Mr. Hipp Strikes!, Any Empire by Nate Powell, and the 2011 Color Ink Book.

But, if you’re like me, and don’t really want to deal with all of that noise this year, next, or ever, unless absolutely necessary, then here’s some cool stuff that you can do this weekend that will still be pretty fun.

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by A.J. Focht

Muggles made Hollywood magic last weekend as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 took the weekend box office, and made box office history. Deathly Hallows had the largest midnight release ever, with $43.5 million earned that night, shattering The Twilight Saga: Eclipse‘s previous record of $30 million. Sparkly vampires suffered further at the hands of the wizarding world as Deathly Hallows also broke The Twilight Saga: New Moon‘s opening day record, raking in $92.1 million in the US. It doesn’t stop there; Harry Potter nabbed the opening weekend record from The Dark Knight with $168 million. The entire world showed its approval as it collectively shelled out $475.5 million to see the Harry Potter series – putting it one-sixth of the way to James Cameron’s Avatar lifetime gross record in just one weekend!

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by Bob Suicide

A study which purported to highlight the equality among the sexes when it comes to computer gaming was recently published in the uber-reliable Daily Mail. The survey was funded by the scientifically-minded, and above-bias team at Doritos, which lends further credence to the findings.

That’s right, Doritos. Now why would the chip company — known philanthropically funding scientific discovery in key areas such as how to make ranch “cooler” — waste it’s time researching women’s interest in computer games when it could be curing cancer, you say? Well, it doesn’t have anything to do with the recent launch of their own online computer game: Doritos Dip Desperado. No sir.

I’m honestly surprised that the survey didn’t find that “women say that computer games taste great and are less filling than the leading chip brand,” it’s that blatantly obvious this is a sad marketing ploy. But what the press release of an article did say was:

That while 50 per cent of men readily admit to frequent online gaming, a surprising 49 per cent of women confess that they too are addicted to Internet games.

And while men spend 22.3 per cent of their time online playing games, women trump them, whiling away 23.2 per cent of their time online playing games.

Revealingly, the study showed that not only are women just as keen on gaming as men — but that the majority would rather spend time playing on their gadgets than having sex.

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by A.J. Focht

After fourteen years, the Harry Potter series is coming to an end. The first book was published in 1997, and with the release of the final film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, the journey comes to a close. Deathly Hallows premiered in London on July 7, and then in New York City on July 11. The internet has all but blown up since as fans avidly await the world wide release on July 15. The film is currently holding a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, and shows no signs of falling. The video game by the same name and the official film soundtrack were released on July 12, 2011.

Harry Potter might be the biggest news of the week, but it wasn’t the only news. Yesterday, the first teaser poster for the Dark Knight was revealed. But that was only the second most exciting news surrounding the Caped Crusader in the past 7 days, as it was announced that Adam West will have a cameo in the upcoming film.

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by Aaron Colter

If you weren’t aware, a group called LulzSec has been causing mischief around the web for the past month or so, most notably unveiling the insanely lax security policies of Sony’s user accounts and dumping the email logs of the Arizona Police Department, which, like the diplomatic cables uncovered by Wikileaks, weren’t shocking so much as they confirmed negative assumptions – that the American government does, in fact, work with countries around the world for the benefit of multination corporations, and that too many police officers are egomaniacs with a hatred of anyone other than clean-cut white men.

LulzSec hit the websites of governments around the world, including Italy, Spain, and England, dumped the names of right-wing secret police in Columbia, accessed parts of the FBI, the CIA, AOL, and AT&T, and posted the image below on the PBS website for airing a biased documentary about Wikileaks and accused soldier Bradley Manning.

Before disbanding last weekend, LulzSec partnered with the Anonymous campaign to target institutions that restrict freedom of speech on the Internet, like the U.S. Senate, which caused them to become a target for others in the hacker community, as well as the topic of debate in the news. The group, reportedly made up of only six core members, recently called it quits on their 50 day sail of laughs, some say due to increased scrutiny from law enforcement agencies around the world, and the revealed identities of some members, potentially stemming from IRC chat-room leaks.

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