Vegard Skjefstad | www.vegard.net

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Black The Fall

Sand Sailor Studio’s dystopian puzzle game reminds me a lot of INSIDE, but does it also have some ideas of its own? Here’s my Black The Fall review.

Black The Fall is yet another one of those Kickstarter games I’ve thrown money at. The campaign promised a “a sharp, modern action game set in a post-communistindustrial world.” Being a total sucker for any fictitious dystopian setting, I happily backed Bucharest-based Sand Sailor Studio‘s campaign.

Not long after the campaign ended, I received my Steam key. But I’ve stopped playing games that are in alpha, beta, Early Access, or similar stages of development. I spent way too much time doing that with Star Rules 2. Time is a scarce resource these days, so I’d rather play a finished product instead. Then, in July last year, Black The Fall was released. But for no particular reason, I didn’t play it then either.

It wasn’t until a week ago that I finally took the plunge, and booted the game for the first time.

Screenshot from Black The Fall. — Black The Fall by Sand Sailor Studio.

October 17, 2018 / 0 Comments

Let’s Hack A City!

If medical equipment isn’t a big enough target for you, why not hack a city?

A while ago I went on one of my familiar rants. The subject was how ridiculously easy it is to hack medical equipment, with medical device maker Meditronic’s pace maker programming devices being the concrete example. Even though I wrote the post in August, it’s still very relevant. Just a couple of days ago, Meditronic made headlines again when they issued a statement saying that their CareLink line of pace maker programming devices is actually vulnerable to attacks.

The first news of vulnerable Meditronic equipment dropped during the annual Black Hat conference in Las Vegas. But medical equipment was not the only Black Hat target. Far from it. Another interesting subject of hacking was “smart” cities.

October 11, 2018 / 0 Comments

Short Stories

How Twitter’s new 280 character limit can actually be used for good.

Earlier this year, Twitter extended its tweet character limit from 140 to 280 characters. Many users, including myself, thought it was a bad move. My argument was that it wouldn’t lead to more content, but rather more overhead. Turns out I was wrong. While it might be the case for a few of the accounts I follow, some Twitter accounts have found a glorious way of using the 280 characters limit for good: Short stories.

When writing short stories, 280 characters give the author a lot more leverage than 140 characters.

October 6, 2018 / 0 Comments

Press Play On Tape

The Internet Archive’s free Commodore 64 games collection is open for business.

If you’ve heard of the Internet Archive, there’s a good chance it’s because of their Wayback Machine. Since 1996, it’s been slurping up every site it has come across on the internet. The sites are archived, and everyone can browse through historically accurate versions of all the archived webpages. Wonder what Google looked like in 1998, when it only did internet searches, and wasn’t evil? The Wayback Machine’s got you covered.

But the Internet Archive is more than just the Wayback Machine. A lot more. In addition to websites, the archive contains millions of videos, audio files, images, TV shows, eBooks, text, and a whole lot more. My favorite, though? The Internet Archive Software Collection.

The software collection has close to three hundred thousand files, covering every platform from MS-DOS to the Apple II. The real gems in the collection, however, are the games. You’ll find classic arcade games, and games for platforms like the ZX Spectrum, Atari 2600, Sega Genesis, Amstrad GX-4000, and many more.

Now, the Internet Archive has also started archiving games for the computer that broke the European home computer market wide open: The amazing Commodore 64.

October 3, 2018 / 0 Comments

Podcasts: What I’m Listening To Now

A shorter work commute means a picky podcast list.

When I changed projects a month ago, my work commute was cut down by about 30 minutes. While that is great, it also means 30 minutes less each day for podcast listening. My backlog started to grow, so I decided to get rid of the least interesting podcasts in my library.

The podcasts I removed turned out to be some of the more popular ones. This American Life, Freakonomics Radio, and Radiolab were all booted from the playlist. Instead, I’ve made room for a few less-known gems from the podcast jungle. There really are a lot of great podcasts out there. But the because of the shear number of podcasts on the internet, they often drown in the noise.