Roguelike games are a venerable genre of computer games that have entertained hackers for roughly 30 years, and had a major influence on gaming classics like Diablo and Torchlight. Roguelikes followed a somewhat unique evolutionary path in the world of computer games. Unlike commercial games that strive to be unique in a very large ocean of predatory competitors, roguelikes are more a labour of love. Each new generation was based on the games that came before, adding a handful (or more) of features that the author felt was missing from the generation before. This layering of new features is much like the way ancient cities such as Rome have built upon themselves, century after century. In a way, playing these earlier games is like an archaeological dig, giving us a peek at the evolution of the genre.
Android, the increasingly popular operating system (OS) for mobile phones, goes to great lengths to protect users’ data. From applications that run as their own userid, in their own group, to the permission mechanism that alerts users to the information an application can access, Android is a far more secure platform than any desktop OS. However, there is a significant difference between informing a user what an application can access, and what the application actually does with the information. An Android app downloaded from the Market may request access to the internet and to the user’s address book, for example, but beyond that the user has no idea what the application does with those permissions. How do we guarantee that a malicious app isn’t making a copy of a user’s private data, and sending it to a secret sever operated by the application’s author?
This beautiful arcade cabinet sat exposed to the elements in a back alley in Kitchener for months before being rescued by a team from Kwartzlab. The weather was not kind to this poor machine, and it was clear it would need some love to get it running again.