There are many themed iterations of a specific famous real estate baron board game, but very few of them involve the horrors of the Lovecraftian mythos descending upon South Jersey and destroying the boardwalk. Behold The Doom That Came To Atlantic City, a satire by artist Lee Moyer, designer Keith Baker, and sculptor Paul Komoda (who worked on The Thing and Cabin in the Woods).

This fun-for-all-ages destruction of reality — which has been in the works for two decades — was “inspired by [Moyer's] love of the Cthulhu Mythos and disdain for a certain board game that shall not be named.”

Even though it bears a superficial resemblance to a certain Parker Brothers land grab, The Doom That Came To Atlantic City is more about destroying the dirty jewel of the Garden State using cultists and eldritch powers. As Baker explains in the rules rundown:

You begin with a happy community filled with houses, and then you and your friends arrive. Each of you is playing one of HP Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones, and your goal is to smash houses, open gates, and destroy the world. But you each want to destroy it in your own special way. As Cthulhu, you want to make sure that pesky Shub-Niggurath doesn’t sneak in and destroy it first!

The idea of Azathoth the Blind Idiot God trashing Park Place is pretty fantastic. If you’ve always hankered to combine Yog Sothoth and seaside fun in the sun, you can pitch in at their Kickstarter campaign.

[Via Coilhouse]

Source: io9. Hi-res images and video at link.

Because what fun is sitting back and enjoying a game, Korean gamer Yoshichan beat Diablo 3 in 12 hours and 29 minutes with “368 Lifetime Kills, 412 Elite Kills and 168,481 gold as a Barbarian on normal difficulty”. Since then, at least two other groups of Korean and Chinese gamers have done it in 7. Wow, this is NOT how you get your money’s worth. Just saying, I’m 52 hours into Skyrim and haven’t even made it to Whiterun yet. Are there really even dragons in this game?

Source: Geekologie.

As the association of Eastern European and Chinese IP addresses with cybercriminals has led to blacklisting of addresses from those countries, the crooks are moving their sites to North America — in droves.A new report from security firm Websense finds strong evidence of this alarming new trend.

“Things are getting worse, not better,” said Patrik Runald, director, security research, Websense Labs.In Canada, we found an 170% increase from last year in phishing sites being hosted on Canadian servers, making Canada number two in the world for hosted phishing sites.”But that pales in comparison to the U.S., which saw a 300% increase and is now the top country in the world for these sites, by far.

“A lot more malicious content is now based in western, first world countries today,” Runald said. “Typical suspects 2-5 years ago were in eastern Europe which is dropping off because they developed a shady reputation. So traffic to and from servers in say Ukraine, were simply blocked by some admins, and vendor security products took location into account, making traffic from these countries much more likely to be blocked. So the operators of these sites moved to countries where traffic goes commonly, like the U.S. and Canada, where it is much harder to block for security reasons.”

The same trend is also showing up with Bot networks, and with malicious URLs.Canada saw a 39% increase in Bot networks this year, which Runald said was pretty average, especially when compared to the U.S. jump of 450% in the same category.”This stat doesnt mention the scale of the Botnet being used, and we are finding that 8-12 servers is now about average,” Runald said.

Malicious website increase was also high this year — about 300% in the U.S. and 239% in Canada.

“This was an amazing jump across the board,” Runald said. “And its the most dangerous catagory because you dont have to click on anything to get infected. This is also a moving target, as are Bot networks, while phishing is more static in the way it works.”Runald said the security vendors are generally able to cope because they do have massive amounts of data to work with. Websense alone has 3.5 billion pieces of data they scan every day.

“But the fact the numbers are going up quite dramatically is a worrying trend because theres more to deal with,” he said. “This is new. In 2010 and 2011 we did not see this kind of jump.”

Runald suggested that increasing criminal penalties for these kinds of crimes could have a significant impact.

“I don’t know why we arent doing it, but to be fair, no one else is either. I don’t think we are sending the right message here. Very often, they just get a slap on the wrist and get to go home. The Feds are doing a good job in cracking down, but it’s a drop in the ocean compared to what’s going on.”

Source: eChannelLine.

Now that thousands of people have done Ubisoft’s job for them, players everywhere can finally get a look at the new gameplay lurking inside Assassin’s Creed III.

This new trailer lets us hear Ratonhnhaké:ton speak at length about his split Native American/European heritage and shows off loads of gorgeous snow-covered open-world action. Many of the 50 things detailed in Stephen Totilo’s preview show up in the video, including the movement over uneven terrain, Revolutionary War battlefields strewn with bodies and that big ol’ bear that you’re gonna have to take down. Sound off with what you see and are most excited for in the comments.

UPDATE: And here’s a version with audio commentary by Kotaku editor-in-chief Stephen Totilo who has seen a longer demo of the game that includes what you see in the trailer.

Source: Kotaku.

With Wolfenstein 3D celebrating its 20th anniversary this month, it’s fitting — if unexpected — to see a nearly 30-minute developer commentary track from industry legend John Carmack exploring his memories and recollections from the early days of id Software. Despite the march of time and technology since the game’s 1992 release, you can’t help but be charmed by the man’s enthusiasm for his early days in the industry.

As Carmack explains it, Wolfenstein 3D represents the “Wild West” days of development at id Software. You can hear in his voice his love of reliving those exciting times for the studio: A day and age where they were still “figuring it all out.” Back in 1992, id was a young studio in its prime, blazing a trail for the industry and the shooter genre the likes of which no one had seen before. Their work took center stage when it came to the cutting edge of gaming and controversy. They became an inseparable icon of PC gaming in the ’90s.

Times have changed, and in a lot of ways id’s reputation and clout have changed with it. In today’s world, the company is no longer seen as the alpha dog when it comes to shooters, an arrangement that upset their relationship with their previous publisher, Activision. If anything, their near-absence from the industry outside of last year’s Rage has relegated them to the back of the pack, with franchises like Halo and Call of Duty stepping up to define modern-day standards for shooters. Id may have created Wolfenstein and its even more notable follow-up Doom, but the two properties seem to exist as little more than reference points in today’s conversations about shooters.

After something of a fan revolt in response to Rage, and with constant mixed reports of whether“Doom 4″ is a troubled production or not, the future of id Software may rest very firmly on whether their next release can make them a relevant force in the market again. It’s great to hear Carmack talk about the glory days of old, and no one can understate the importance and influence id Software has had on gaming. It’s just surprising that one of the industry’s most iconic studios has turned into an underdog in the very genre it helped to create.

Source: 1up.

Deal of the Day: Companies will offer big savings to customers willing to be pitchmen on Facebook and Twitter.

Customers seeking the best deals may have to pester their friends.

Some of the latest coupons from retailers and other businesses can only be activated by sharing them with Facebook friends or Twitter followers. And the deals grow even more valuable when customers convince members of their network to buy in, too. Think of it as a new twist on the old-school referral discounts that businesses offer clients for bringing in new customers, says Deborah Mitchell, a clinical associate professor of marketing at Ohio State University.

CONTINUED at Smart Money.

Refuses to buy stock over privacy concerns.

In an interview with CNN, Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian said he would refuse to buy Facebook stock because of the company’s appalling attitude to privacy and its support for the CISPA bill.

“I’m not planning on it…I understand the business value to what Facebook is doing. We’ve never seen a company like this before–ever. And it knows things about our private lives that no one else does. And one of the big issues that a lot of us in the tech community have had of late has been their support for bills like CISPA that make it really easy for companies like Facebook to hand over private data about us without any due process. So that’s why I’ll be holding off,” said Ohanian.

Reddit joins Mozilla as the only other major tech company to decry CISPA, with firms like Facebook, Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Oracle, Symantec, AT&T and Verizon all backing the bill. Last week, Mozilla released a statement calling the legislation an “alarming” threat to privacy, adding, “The bill infringes on our privacy, includes vague definitions of cybersecurity, and grants immunities to companies and government that are too broad around information misuse.”

CISPA has been identified by many as a greater threat to privacy than SOPA, which was opposed by a deluge of major tech firms after a viral online opposition campaign, but because CISPA has received less attention, corporate giants have found it easier to stay mute.

Not only would CISPA mandate ISPs to share Internet data of users with government “notwithstanding any other provision of law,” it also empowers the Department of Homeland Securityto monitor the communications of the federal courts and Congress, and intercept tax returns sent to the IRS.

The bill “gives companies a free pass to monitor and collect communications and share that data with the government and other companies, so long as they do so for ‘cybersecurity purposes,’” the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has noted. “Just invoking ‘cybersecurity threats’ is enough to grant companies immunity from nearly all civil and criminal liability, effectively creating an exemption from all existing law.”

CONTINUED at Prison Planet. Written by Paul Joseph Watson. Video at link.

Common sense dictates that an IP address is just a number associated with a connection, and not a human being. Copyright crusaders aren’t exactly known for loads of common sense and rationality. Thankfully, a New York judge has ruled that an IP address alone is not enough to pin illegal downloads on a specific person.

The ruling comes in the context of mass torrent lawsuits that just dump thousands of IP addresses into the court and charge everyone associated with them. Cases like theHurt Locker suit filed against 5,000 people for downloading the movie. Judge Gary Brown’s ruling isn’t the first to point out that these cases are idiotic, since there is no practical way to efficiently tie that many address to the specific individuals doing the downloading, but it’s by far the most detailed. We’ve embedded the full ruling below. [TorrentFreak]

Judge Gary Brown IP Address Ruling

Source: Gizmodo.

There’s a story circulating that if you don’t ensure your computer is malware-free by July 9, 2012, the FBI will shut off your access to the Internet. Like most such alarmist claims, it’s only partly true, though if you’re a Windows or Mac user, you’ll want to pay attention.

The original story dates back to 2007, when a group of cyber-ne’er-do-wells launched malware dubbed “DNSChanger,” infecting millions of computers in hundreds of countries with code that allowed them to manipulate the way Internet ads appear in browsers, ultimately racking up millions in illicit fees.

How did the malware work? DNSChanger targets Windows or Mac systems (Linux, iOS and Android users are in the clear) by manipulating Domain Name Servers (DNS), which translate syntax-based URLs into IP addresses. When you type something like “www.yahoo.com” into your browser, for instance, your request hits your Internet service provider’s DNS server, which translates it into a numeric IP address. If you plug that IP address into your browser’s URL bar in lieu of the web address, barring any IP tricks, you’ll land on the exact same web page. The Internet’s underlying architecture is based on TCP/IP, in other words, not the more easily remembered words we type into our browsers.

DNSChanger fiddles with that DNS routing: Once a computer was infected, the malware redirected DNS-related requests to servers controlled by the fraud ring, which then piped web ads to users, ultimately putting millions of dollars in the cybercriminals’ pockets.

Working with Estonian officials, the FBI was able to track down the perps — six Estonian nationals were arrested for the crime last November — and seize their servers. But given the number of computers estimated infected, the FBI opted to leave the servers running, ad-neutralized, to avoid disrupting Internet functionality for those unaware their computers were compromised. And to give users more time to purge, the FBI secured a court order on March 12, 2012 that authorized the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) — a nonprofit corporation that supports the Internet’s infrastructure — to roll out and maintain temporary “clean” DNS servers. But since these servers cost money to operate, the plan has been to shut them off on July 9, 2012. When that happens, DNS-related Internet activity on infected computers, e.g. web and email, will cease to function.

To be clear, your Internet service itself will be unaffected by the change: If your computer is infected with the DNSChanger malware, your Internet router will keep routing and any commands sent by your computer that aren’t DNS-related will still pass. The FBI isn’t shutting off Internet service to impacted machines, it’s just pulling the plug on a stopgap measure designed to bandaid the broken process currently facilitating DNS communication on infected machines.

How do you tell if you’re infected? Simple: The FBI runs a DNS checker page, where you can type your DNS info into a box to check its validity. Easier still, you can click on a link that’ll automatically check and return either a green or red background, indicating “clean” or “infected” states, respectively. Alternately, the DNS Changer Working Group (DCWG), created to help remedy the malware, maintains a page with detailed information on the malware, how to detect it and how to remove it, including a table of links to popular antivirus company remedies.

Source: TIME.