The Review of The Interview We Weren’t Going to Release

Sony Pictures

Editor’s Notes:

• I am the editor, it is Christmas Eve, and nobody else is working. Shouting into an open room in my father’s house,IS THIS A GOOD IDEA? WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE STORY yielded no answer, so I’m just gonna publish this and see what happens.

• I would warn you about spoilers, but no spoiler could be as awful as the one perpetrated by Sony in drumming up so much froth over this mediocre film that you now actually care about whether or not I am going to drop any details. I mean, this thing is riddled with more bad CGI and continuity holes than Fictional Kim Jong-un’s helicopter when James Franco shoots it down with a tank missile in the final battle scene. For example, when Seth Rogen safely returns to America after successfully taking part in the interview and assassination of Kim Jong-un, he gives someone a hug and you can see that his fingers, which were bitten off in a scuffle in the North Korean TV control room, are still there. Woops!

• My favorite movies are Man on Fire, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the Gene Wilder one), and Tokyo Drift—and I cried at the end of each. So I am probably not qualified to review this movie. Or maybe I am?

SCENE:

It was Christmas Eve, and many of us sat weightily around various homes, hoping our grub-pale skin would darken a shade in the blue light of some Internet amusement: We clicked through Twitter feeds and Facebook posts. We Tumbled. And then Sony shredded one more turn on this ridiculous mountain of free publicity around their controversial release-nonrelease-release of The Interview: They released it after all, and got streaming providers in on the act.

Can we all please take a moment to marvel at Sony’s luck? A month ago, The Interview was the cause of widespread shrugs in theaters across America. A few days later, we were reading emails from Sony execs bashing Angelina Jolie. And then last week, President Obama was talking about this crapbasket buddy film in a press conference during which he also discussed one of the most pressing environmental decisions facing our government. No legislators are talking about Whiplash, which is actually supposed to be great.

At best, most of us would have been dead-laptop excited to watch this movie on a plane, two weeks after its theatrical debut. THEATRICAL DEBUT INDEED, SONY.

I do not think North Korea hacked Sony on behalf of this movie. I do not think North Korea hacked Sony. After watching this thing, I kinda think Sony hacked Sony. Bravo, guys. Masterstroke.

And here’s the other thing: If I’m Kim Jong Un, I come away from that movie being like:

• “Sweet, Americans are actually terrified of me.”

• “Sweet, Americans think I am a savvy sociopath rather than just some fat and petulant boy king.”

• “Sweet, Americans think I party like a boss.”

• “Sweet, they got that awesome guy from Veep to play me.”

There is no way North Korea hacks Sony over this film—if anything, Pyongyang would be calling up whatever Sony exec didn’t just get fired for gross misconduct over email and offering to finance the sequel instead of feeding its people.

So yes, I watched this movie. But there is not a lot to say about it: It’s a comedy and it’s OK. I laughed a few times, and picked up on all the half-ass foreshadowing that excuses itself for moviemaking. If I had seen it in a theater, I would not have walked out, but I might have taken a nap.

But more importantly, this direct-to-digital distribution deal is the best possible outcome. Because if you went to a theater to see The Interview, you would have paid at least $10 a head for the privilege. On YouTube, it’s six bucks to rent, and you can gather the whole family around the Chromecast. It’s a Christmas Miracle.

The Review of The Interview We Weren’t Going to Release

Sony Pictures

Editor’s Notes:

• I am the editor, it is Christmas Eve, and nobody else is working. Shouting into an open room in my father’s house,IS THIS A GOOD IDEA? WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE STORY yielded no answer, so I’m just gonna publish this and see what happens.

• I would warn you about spoilers, but no spoiler could be as awful as the one perpetrated by Sony in drumming up so much froth over this mediocre film that you now actually care about whether or not I am going to drop any details. I mean, this thing is riddled with more bad CGI and continuity holes than Fictional Kim Jong-un’s helicopter when James Franco shoots it down with a tank missile in the final battle scene. For example, when Seth Rogen safely returns to America after successfully taking part in the interview and assassination of Kim Jong-un, he gives someone a hug and you can see that his fingers, which were bitten off in a scuffle in the North Korean TV control room, are still there. Woops!

• My favorite movies are Man on Fire, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the Gene Wilder one), and Tokyo Drift—and I cried at the end of each. So I am probably not qualified to review this movie. Or maybe I am?

SCENE:

It was Christmas Eve, and many of us sat weightily around various homes, hoping our grub-pale skin would darken a shade in the blue light of some Internet amusement: We clicked through Twitter feeds and Facebook posts. We Tumbled. And then Sony shredded one more turn on this ridiculous mountain of free publicity around their controversial release-nonrelease-release of The Interview: They released it after all, and got streaming providers in on the act.

Can we all please take a moment to marvel at Sony’s luck? A month ago, The Interview was the cause of widespread shrugs in theaters across America. A few days later, we were reading emails from Sony execs bashing Angelina Jolie. And then last week, President Obama was talking about this crapbasket buddy film in a press conference during which he also discussed one of the most pressing environmental decisions facing our government. No legislators are talking about Whiplash, which is actually supposed to be great.

At best, most of us would have been dead-laptop excited to watch this movie on a plane, two weeks after its theatrical debut. THEATRICAL DEBUT INDEED, SONY.

I do not think North Korea hacked Sony on behalf of this movie. I do not think North Korea hacked Sony. After watching this thing, I kinda think Sony hacked Sony. Bravo, guys. Masterstroke.

And here’s the other thing: If I’m Kim Jong Un, I come away from that movie being like:

• “Sweet, Americans are actually terrified of me.”

• “Sweet, Americans think I am a savvy sociopath rather than just some fat and petulant boy king.”

• “Sweet, Americans think I party like a boss.”

• “Sweet, they got that awesome guy from Veep to play me.”

There is no way North Korea hacks Sony over this film—if anything, Pyongyang would be calling up whatever Sony exec didn’t just get fired for gross misconduct over email and offering to finance the sequel instead of feeding its people.

So yes, I watched this movie. But there is not a lot to say about it: It’s a comedy and it’s OK. I laughed a few times, and picked up on all the half-ass foreshadowing that excuses itself for moviemaking. If I had seen it in a theater, I would not have walked out, but I might have taken a nap.

But more importantly, this direct-to-digital distribution deal is the best possible outcome. Because if you went to a theater to see The Interview, you would have paid at least $10 a head for the privilege. On YouTube, it’s six bucks to rent, and you can gather the whole family around the Chromecast. It’s a Christmas Miracle.

Have Online Payments Become Safer Than Offline?

Photo: Walmart

The long-standing narrative of credit card security is that offline transactions are more secure than online. Today, this narrative is more fiction than fact.

Online transactions are more popular and secure than ever before, thanks to advancements in digital payments technology, demographic shifts, and the evolving cyber-security landscape. At the same time, offline payments seem more insecure than ever before. The outbreak of high-profile security breaches at major retailers has shed light on the fact that offline transactions are vulnerable to attack.

These trends lead us to consider a number of important questions that affect every consumer and retailer — are online transactions more secure than offline, and will this realization propel ecommerce into its next stage of growth?

Offline and Off-Guard

The reality is that security concerns exist whether you are online, offline, or on a mobile device. They exist with credit cards, debit cards, and even cash. A common misconception is that offline is safer than online, but this is changing as a result of the massive security breaches that hit the headlines over the past year.

Target announced that hackers stole personal information from as many as 70 million customer accounts between November 27th and December 15th, 2013. Then, Home Depot announced that 56 million cards were compromised in a five-month attack on its payment terminals. 1.1 million credit cards were exposed in a three-month hack on Neiman Marcus. Hackers also hit grocery chain Supervalu multiple times, which has thousands of locations, and Asian bistro chain P.F. Chang’s saw data stolen from eight of its locations over the course of eight months. Even before these huge hacks took place, retailers were already losing roughly $3.5 billion in ecommerce sales a year due to credit card fraud, according payment processor CyberSource.

If this laundry list of major security breaches isn’t enough to convince consumers that offline payments are just as risky, if not more so, than online payments, I don’t know what is.

When you physically offer up your credit card in a retail store, that merchant still stores data on a computer; those computers are generally Windows PCs running old-school Point-Of-Sale software and storing data in environments that are inherently insecure and inadequate. To process transactions, the payment application has to communicate with the payment terminal, POS, and payment processor, which means sensitive data is constantly being circulated. This makes it vulnerable.

“You walk out of the store while the transaction continues to ricochet across the country — using technology from the 1970s,” Jason Oxman, CEO of the Electronic Transaction Association, told NPR.

“What we need to do in the U.S. is completely replace an architecture that has been deployed over the course of the last 40 years. That’s how long mag stripe cards have been on the market.”

The security guidelines put in place by the major credit card companies were designed for collecting data at rest. That is no longer the world we live in, and today these standards don’t do enough to ensure retailers are protecting consumers’ data. The guidelines don’t require credit card information to be encrypted while traveling through a private computer network, and so hackers can steal data as it moves. PCI data security standards are failing us.

Is Online Safer?

In general, big box retailers don’t make the same commitment to security as online retailers. Overhauling their entire system and taking extra security precautions is an expensive and time-consuming proposition, and so they neglect to take extra measures. This stands in contrast to online retailers, who are built from the ground-up with strict security in mind, because just one hack could destroy their business.

Online retailers also have a greater array of security tools at their disposal — tools that were created for the world we live in today, not the world of a decade ago. Square, for example, encrypts card data on the device. Stripe encrypts all card numbers on a disk with AES-256, and stores decryption keys on separate machines. PayPal’s security key offers a second authentication factor when you are logging in to your account. Online transactions from any reputable vendor are also protected by SSL certificates (to protect data in transit), firewalls, and regular systems scans. Furthermore, consumers are empowered to add extra security layers to online transactions. They can create strong passwords, sign up for identify theft protection services, and keep their anti-virus software up-to-date.

Perhaps the most exciting advancement in security technology is tokenization — described by Bain Capital Ventures managing director Matt Harris as “a system where you substitute a proxy set of identifying information for the real payment card data, so that merchants don’t have to handle this sensitive and regulated data and it isn’t exposed more than necessary.” Tokenization not only limits exposure, but also enable more rigorous identification features, such as a fingertip or picture of your face (as opposed to a pin number or signature). It will play a pivotal role in eliminating consumers’ fear of digital payments.

The Rise of Ecommerce

For all the reasons outlined above, online transactions can be more secure than offline transactions. Now let’s consider how that shift will affect the ecommerce industry as a whole.

Ecommerce is already experiencing significant growth. To put it simply, more people are buying more things online than ever before. Today, there are 191.1 million online buyers in the U.S.. and a whopping 80% of the Internet population has purchased something online. Ecommerce is growing fast at 9.5% a year, and is expected to outpace sales growth at brick-and-mortar stores over the next 5 years. eMarketer estimates that U.S. retail ecommerce sales will increase 15.5% in 2014 to reach $304.1 billion, up from $263.3 billion in 2013. That growth will represent more than 20% of the year’s $199.4 billion increase in total retail sales. Forrester estimates that by 2018, ecommerce will represent 11% of the market, which means a hefty 89% will still happen offline. Despite all this growth, we are still at the beginning of the shift to online.

There are a number of driving forces here, the first of which is the raw fact of Internet penetration. More people with access to the Internet means a greater pool of online shoppers. Secondly, we’ve got e-commerce innovation. Hordes of companies are creating exciting, new, and convenient online shopping experiences. Amazon (of course) puts anything you could ever need just a few clicks away, and offers bottom-of-the-barrel prices. Etsy makes it easy to browse and buy from millions of talented craftspeople you never would have encountered on your own. Wanelo makes online shopping social. Gilt and Zulily offer limited time sales for high-quality items at a steep discount. The list goes on, and there is an ecommerce experience out there to suit just about any preference.

Third, demographic shifts are driving the growth of ecommerce. Millennials were raised with online shopping and remain its key age demographic. This generation represents 80 million people in the U.S., who spend more money online than any other age group. Within this group, members of “Generation Z” (aged 18 to 24) spend almost one in ten of their dollars online, and a higher share of their income. As they age and make more money, these numbers will go up.

Ecommerce isn’t just growing in the U.S.. eMarketers project that global ecommerce sales will hit $1.5 trillion this year, driven by growth in emerging markets. Considering the astonishing rate that people in emerging markets are coming online, this growth is only going to get steeper. Further driving this curve is the fact that cash transactions are shrinking around the world as well.

Online payments are clearly the way of the future, but security concerns remain a barrier to its growth. Security is still one of the top reasons why people don’t shop online, or do it less than they might otherwise. Kapersky Lab found that 49% of participants worldwide felt vulnerable while shopping online or making online transactions, and 62% fear financial fraud on the Internet. These concerns all increase on mobile.

Millennials, however, are less worried about security, and more likely to make online purchases than older consumers. In addition, the high-profile nature of the offline security breaches have created much wider awareness about offline threats. A survey conducted by AP shortly after the breaches found that more than one-third of Americans are more likely to use cash instead of credit or debit cards.

Clearly, all-cash is not a long-term solution. Consumers have grown accustomed to the convenience of credit and debit cards, as well as the perks, and any changes in payment behavior will only be temporary. Even chip technology, which will help make credit cards more secure, is by no means a silver bullet for offline transactions.

What will change, however, is the attitude toward online payments. The move to online is happening, and I predict these breaches will accelerate the process. Older consumers, who were previously wary of paying for things on the Internet, will become less so. At the same time, millennials are increasing their spending power. Together, these trends will fundamentally tip the balance between online and offline payments.

Marc Summe is the Director of Product Management at 2Checkout.

Have Online Payments Become Safer Than Offline?

Photo: Walmart

The long-standing narrative of credit card security is that offline transactions are more secure than online. Today, this narrative is more fiction than fact.

Online transactions are more popular and secure than ever before, thanks to advancements in digital payments technology, demographic shifts, and the evolving cyber-security landscape. At the same time, offline payments seem more insecure than ever before. The outbreak of high-profile security breaches at major retailers has shed light on the fact that offline transactions are vulnerable to attack.

These trends lead us to consider a number of important questions that affect every consumer and retailer — are online transactions more secure than offline, and will this realization propel ecommerce into its next stage of growth?

Offline and Off-Guard

The reality is that security concerns exist whether you are online, offline, or on a mobile device. They exist with credit cards, debit cards, and even cash. A common misconception is that offline is safer than online, but this is changing as a result of the massive security breaches that hit the headlines over the past year.

Target announced that hackers stole personal information from as many as 70 million customer accounts between November 27th and December 15th, 2013. Then, Home Depot announced that 56 million cards were compromised in a five-month attack on its payment terminals. 1.1 million credit cards were exposed in a three-month hack on Neiman Marcus. Hackers also hit grocery chain Supervalu multiple times, which has thousands of locations, and Asian bistro chain P.F. Chang’s saw data stolen from eight of its locations over the course of eight months. Even before these huge hacks took place, retailers were already losing roughly $3.5 billion in ecommerce sales a year due to credit card fraud, according payment processor CyberSource.

If this laundry list of major security breaches isn’t enough to convince consumers that offline payments are just as risky, if not more so, than online payments, I don’t know what is.

When you physically offer up your credit card in a retail store, that merchant still stores data on a computer; those computers are generally Windows PCs running old-school Point-Of-Sale software and storing data in environments that are inherently insecure and inadequate. To process transactions, the payment application has to communicate with the payment terminal, POS, and payment processor, which means sensitive data is constantly being circulated. This makes it vulnerable.

“You walk out of the store while the transaction continues to ricochet across the country — using technology from the 1970s,” Jason Oxman, CEO of the Electronic Transaction Association, told NPR.

“What we need to do in the U.S. is completely replace an architecture that has been deployed over the course of the last 40 years. That’s how long mag stripe cards have been on the market.”

The security guidelines put in place by the major credit card companies were designed for collecting data at rest. That is no longer the world we live in, and today these standards don’t do enough to ensure retailers are protecting consumers’ data. The guidelines don’t require credit card information to be encrypted while traveling through a private computer network, and so hackers can steal data as it moves. PCI data security standards are failing us.

Is Online Safer?

In general, big box retailers don’t make the same commitment to security as online retailers. Overhauling their entire system and taking extra security precautions is an expensive and time-consuming proposition, and so they neglect to take extra measures. This stands in contrast to online retailers, who are built from the ground-up with strict security in mind, because just one hack could destroy their business.

Online retailers also have a greater array of security tools at their disposal — tools that were created for the world we live in today, not the world of a decade ago. Square, for example, encrypts card data on the device. Stripe encrypts all card numbers on a disk with AES-256, and stores decryption keys on separate machines. PayPal’s security key offers a second authentication factor when you are logging in to your account. Online transactions from any reputable vendor are also protected by SSL certificates (to protect data in transit), firewalls, and regular systems scans. Furthermore, consumers are empowered to add extra security layers to online transactions. They can create strong passwords, sign up for identify theft protection services, and keep their anti-virus software up-to-date.

Perhaps the most exciting advancement in security technology is tokenization — described by Bain Capital Ventures managing director Matt Harris as “a system where you substitute a proxy set of identifying information for the real payment card data, so that merchants don’t have to handle this sensitive and regulated data and it isn’t exposed more than necessary.” Tokenization not only limits exposure, but also enable more rigorous identification features, such as a fingertip or picture of your face (as opposed to a pin number or signature). It will play a pivotal role in eliminating consumers’ fear of digital payments.

The Rise of Ecommerce

For all the reasons outlined above, online transactions can be more secure than offline transactions. Now let’s consider how that shift will affect the ecommerce industry as a whole.

Ecommerce is already experiencing significant growth. To put it simply, more people are buying more things online than ever before. Today, there are 191.1 million online buyers in the U.S.. and a whopping 80% of the Internet population has purchased something online. Ecommerce is growing fast at 9.5% a year, and is expected to outpace sales growth at brick-and-mortar stores over the next 5 years. eMarketer estimates that U.S. retail ecommerce sales will increase 15.5% in 2014 to reach $304.1 billion, up from $263.3 billion in 2013. That growth will represent more than 20% of the year’s $199.4 billion increase in total retail sales. Forrester estimates that by 2018, ecommerce will represent 11% of the market, which means a hefty 89% will still happen offline. Despite all this growth, we are still at the beginning of the shift to online.

There are a number of driving forces here, the first of which is the raw fact of Internet penetration. More people with access to the Internet means a greater pool of online shoppers. Secondly, we’ve got e-commerce innovation. Hordes of companies are creating exciting, new, and convenient online shopping experiences. Amazon (of course) puts anything you could ever need just a few clicks away, and offers bottom-of-the-barrel prices. Etsy makes it easy to browse and buy from millions of talented craftspeople you never would have encountered on your own. Wanelo makes online shopping social. Gilt and Zulily offer limited time sales for high-quality items at a steep discount. The list goes on, and there is an ecommerce experience out there to suit just about any preference.

Third, demographic shifts are driving the growth of ecommerce. Millennials were raised with online shopping and remain its key age demographic. This generation represents 80 million people in the U.S., who spend more money online than any other age group. Within this group, members of “Generation Z” (aged 18 to 24) spend almost one in ten of their dollars online, and a higher share of their income. As they age and make more money, these numbers will go up.

Ecommerce isn’t just growing in the U.S.. eMarketers project that global ecommerce sales will hit $1.5 trillion this year, driven by growth in emerging markets. Considering the astonishing rate that people in emerging markets are coming online, this growth is only going to get steeper. Further driving this curve is the fact that cash transactions are shrinking around the world as well.

Online payments are clearly the way of the future, but security concerns remain a barrier to its growth. Security is still one of the top reasons why people don’t shop online, or do it less than they might otherwise. Kapersky Lab found that 49% of participants worldwide felt vulnerable while shopping online or making online transactions, and 62% fear financial fraud on the Internet. These concerns all increase on mobile.

Millennials, however, are less worried about security, and more likely to make online purchases than older consumers. In addition, the high-profile nature of the offline security breaches have created much wider awareness about offline threats. A survey conducted by AP shortly after the breaches found that more than one-third of Americans are more likely to use cash instead of credit or debit cards.

Clearly, all-cash is not a long-term solution. Consumers have grown accustomed to the convenience of credit and debit cards, as well as the perks, and any changes in payment behavior will only be temporary. Even chip technology, which will help make credit cards more secure, is by no means a silver bullet for offline transactions.

What will change, however, is the attitude toward online payments. The move to online is happening, and I predict these breaches will accelerate the process. Older consumers, who were previously wary of paying for things on the Internet, will become less so. At the same time, millennials are increasing their spending power. Together, these trends will fundamentally tip the balance between online and offline payments.

Marc Summe is the Director of Product Management at 2Checkout.

Microsoft Can’t Fix Its Halo: Master Chief Collection Fail

Halo fans play Master Chief Collection at HaloFest in November 2014. Courtesy Microsoft

For Adam McGuire, the hype surrounding Halo: The Master Chief Collection couldn’t have been higher. McGuire, a 33-year-old project engineer from Grand Haven, Michigan, saw it as a way to revisit his favorite game series, and rekindle a romance that started more than a decade before with Halo: Combat Evolved.

McGuire is a hardcore devotee of the franchise. As a student at Michigan State University, he sold an old guitar and bought an Xbox and a copy of Halo 2 to stay competitive with his friends. They played Halo 3 for years, devouring the map packs and using the game to stay in touch after graduation. Halo: Reach, Halo 3: ODST, Halo 4: He played them all.

And so he was beyond stoked to hear about The Master Chief Collection. It was to be a rabid fan’s dream come true, a one-and-done single-disc “box set” including high-definition remasters of Halo and Halo 2 and improved versions of Halo 3 and Halo 4. Best of all, the beloved online multiplayer of all four games would be served up in a mix-and-match sashimi platter of shotguns, snipers, energy swords, and battle rifles. Everything looked great, and the early word was Microsoft had done it right.

It was gonna be amazing. Except it wasn’t.

Microsoft’s launch of Halo: The Master Chief Collection was a disaster. The games were buggy. You couldn’t contact friends. Joining a party was a colossal pain in the ass. Matchmaking within a party was a nightmare. Even the most ardent fans of the game, the ones only too happy to shell out 60 bucks to buy a collection of games they already own, were left wondering: “WTF?”

“The launch of Master Chief Collection was really bad, and it still continues to have problems,” McGuire said. “And this is coming from someone with a Master Chief tattoo, so for me to say it’s disappointing is a big deal.”

Bugs, Bugs Everywhere

The Master Chief Collection is just one of the many online games in recent memory that stumbled out of the gate. Last year’s launches of SimCity and Battlefield 4 were seriously problematic, and this year’s releases of Assassin’s Creed Unity and Driveclub were also marred by serious problems. But The Master Chief Collection was particularly egregious, because it was Microsoft’s marquee series—and the problems were so pervasive.

Matchmaking rarely, if ever, worked. If you did manage to get a match going, bugs and issues abounded, especially with post-game stat-tracking. (One was the notorious “1th place” victory awarded to everyone at the end of certain matches.)

The Halo and Halo 2 parts of the collection seemed to be ported from the games’ PC releases, not the original Xbox versions, and they brought with them bugs that had only popped up on those PC ports. Even worse, the game’s pre-release marketing promised tons of dedicated servers, for stable games and to prevent matchmaking abuse or cheating. But those servers seemed nearly nonexistent. With matches running on peer-to-peer networks, they were again vulnerable to the cheaters.

“Part of the enjoyment of Halo is that, unlike Call of Duty, you have a skill-based rank that you achieved by good gameplay, skill, and teamwork,” McGuire said. “On a peer-to-peer system, the game isn’t protected against [cheating]. Without that competitive aspect, you start asking yourself ‘Why am I playing this? What am I going for?'”

courtesy Adam McGuire

Over the last month, the Halo community has found ways to make The Master Chief Collection playable. Tricks they devised included disconnecting from party chat, restarting or fully reinstalling the game, and not even bothering to play when Microsoft is having server issues. Users on forums like Reddit, NeoGAF, and Halo Waypoint compiled epic lists of bugs and issues, pleading with game developer 343 Industries to fix them.

“Most of the problems that The Master Chief Collection has are directly related to Xbox Live,” Microsoft’s online gaming service, McGuire said. “I threw a LAN party and it was a huge success. The issues arise with all the different individual applications—the dashboard, the party chat system, the friends system—that work together to give you the Xbox Live experience. When you throw The Master Chief Collection into that, and if one of those applications is having problems, it throws a huge wrench into the system.”

Developer 343 pushed out a patch soon after it launched the game. But as fixes came in, so did new problems. The horribly long waiting times were mostly taken care of… but now the game would mix up the players on your teams and start the matches with uneven numbers on both sides. Subsequent patches fixed things here and there, but overall the experience remained imperfect. Playing by yourself seemed to be a decent solution—but Halo is a game founded on its community, on shooting aliens and each other with your friends.

“We pay our $15 every month for people to make this work,” McGuire said. “[Xbox Live] is not a free service. The fact that it doesn’t work a lot of the time—that’s a big issue.”

By November 24, 343 finally apologized to players. “I personally apologize for this on behalf of us all at 343 Industries,” wrote 343 studio head Bonnie Ross. “Our team is committed to working around the clock until these issues are resolved.”

(Microsoft declined WIRED’s request to speak with a representative of 343 for this story.)

On December 19, with many problems still outstanding, 343 detailed a make-good gift that it would offer to Master Chief Collection owners: A free month of Xbox Live Gold, an exclusive in-game nameplate and avatar, and an upgraded version of the spinoff game Halo 3: ODST.

Many players seem genuinely excited about what they’re getting for their troubles. But it’s important to remember that for many, Halo: The Master Chief Collection cost much more than $60. This November, probably thanks to the release of a Halo game, Microsoft finally sold more Xbox Ones in a single month than rival Sony sold PlayStation 4 consoles.

That’s a big deal, and it’s probably thanks largely to Halo fans finally shelling out the $400 to upgrade their console. But that means Microsoft owes them a $400 apology.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection‘s release date was etched in stone—well, etched in metal, anyway. Courtesy Microsoft

Today, well over a month after its launch, Halo: The Master Chief Collection seems to be finally, mostly, playable.

The latest patch, released earlier this week, was touted as the great and mighty fix to multiplayer’s woes. But it seems the bulk of the patch takes the form of the previously-promised “Spartan Ops” mini-campaign from Halo 4—and only marginal improvements to the major problems.

The biggest multiplayer fix takes care of cheaters who were gaming the system, but, again, it seems to have created as many problems as it solved.

Reddit users are still reporting long queue times, and there seems to be a major disconnect between what 343 is saying and what players are experiencing.

“They claim to have fixed it to where the game won’t start without even teams,” McGuire said after the latest patch went live on December 22. “Yet this appears to have dramatically raised the amount of uneven teams. Lobbies of 8 players are being split into 5 on 3, 6 on 2, etc. Back to the drawing board, 343.”

Even the Spartan Ops campaign mode feels rushed and incomplete. It lacks achievements, leaderboards, and post-game lobbies. It’s the only mode in the collection that doesn’t award medals. Cutscenes don’t auto-play, and it doesn’t automatically progress to the next mission.

They just see it as a broken game, and they’ll go play something else.

Granted, these features weren’t a part of the original Halo 4 version of Spartan Ops, but without updating the game to fall in line with the rest of The Master Chief Collection, the mini-campaign feels hastily tacked-on, as opposed to part of a cohesive whole.

At this point, even guys like McGuire say they’re getting tired of waiting for Microsoft to fix everything for good.

“When this first came out and it had some problems, I said ‘Alright guys, slow the hate train. There’s some problems but they’ll fix them. No big deal.'” McGuire said. “I kept saying that week after week, patch after patch that failed to connect. And I’ve come to a point where I can’t defend it any more. Don’t get me wrong, I know there’s no magic wand to wave over the game. I know it takes hundreds of man-hours of coding and fixing and testing. But there’s no excuse. You had years to do this. You had plenty of time, and the fact that you released it in this state is unbelievable.”

The trouble for 343 and Microsoft is that, even once The Master Chief Collection is eventually fixed, the damage is done. This was Microsoft’s first real chance at a decisive victory in the console war. It was a perfect opportunity to sell a ton of Xbox Ones and draw new fans to its flagship franchise. And Microsoft screwed it up.

“Am I going to give up on the series? No, I love it to death,” McGuire said. “But there’s a lot of people out there who aren’t going to have this experience because they don’t have the love for the game, and the memories, to stick with it. They just see it as a broken game, and they’ll go play something else. A lot of people aren’t willing to suffer through it. They’ll just pick something else up. Back to Call of Duty.”

A Time-Traveling Graphic Novel and More Great Books We’re Reading This Month

There’s something about December that invites lots of reading. It’s like the phrase “curl up with a good book” was invented for this month. Even if you’re not in the reading spirit yourself, a well-chosen book always makes for a fine holiday present. But which books should you get or give? We’ve got several good suggestions, from a book about books to a story about a beginning to a graphic novel about beginnings through endings. So light your fake fireplace and enjoy.

The Remake: Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz

Release: December 9

After 2011’s House of Silk, Anthony Horowitz returns (with the blessing of the Arthur Conan Doyle estate) to the world of Sherlock Holmes. You’ll recognize the title as the iconic detective’s iconic nemesis, criminal mastermind Moriarty. Except, at the beginning of this book, both those guys have just tumbled over a waterfall. Read on to find out what happens after. Or just as a way to pass the time until the next season of BBC’s Sherlock: the definitive retelling of our time.

For discussion: Or is BBC’s show the definitive retelling of our time?

Because WIRED: Startupland by Mikkel Svane

Release: December 8

There’s no shortage of startup origin stories from inside Silicon Valley, believe you us. And often, these narratives are uh, how do we say, punched up so they sound cooler and more Hollywood-ready than they actually are (“kids drop out of prestigious institution to found world-changing company in their garage!”). Refreshingly, Mikkel Svane is not part of that world. Or at least, he wasn’t when he cofounded the software company Zendesk in a loft in Copenhagen. He and two buddies used an old kitchen door as a desk. Sure, Zendesk is now headquartered in San Francisco, but it’s the account of these unusual early days that satisfy our need for something a bit different.

For discussion: Did you read Gideon Lewis-Kraus’ story “No Exit” in WIRED 22.05? Because you should.

The History Lesson: When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning

Release: December 2

No, it’s not about tiny books marching off to battle, though some children’s author should really pitch that. Molly Guptill Manning’s book is a bit more serious. During World War II, we sent millions of books—like The Great Gatsby and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn—to American troops fighting overseas. And, as Manning’s book points out, it wasn’t just to help pass the time—the freedom to read became symbolic in the face of Nazi propaganda.

For discussion: If you’re off fighting in a distant land, which book would remind you most of home?

Just Because: A Conspiracy of Ravens, edited by the Bodleian Library

Release: December 15

When birds of a feather flock together, they’re called by some pretty spectacular names. A group of ravens, for instance, is known as a conspiracy. Awesome, right? (Though, if you actually think about it, pigeons are probably the true government conspirators. They’re everywhere! I call them the FBeyes. Anyway…) Inside this compendium of collective bird nouns, you’ll discover all kinds of classics, like murder of crows, ostentation of peacocks, and murmuration of starlings. Sometimes, language soars.

For discussion: Other than birds, which groups of things deserve poetic collective nouns?

The Graphic Novel: Here by Richard McGuire

Release: December 9

As you sit here reading this, do you wonder who—or what—occupied the space you’re currently occupying, say, 100 years ago? 1,000? 100,000? That’s the premise of Richard McGuire’s graphic novel Here, which we wrote about earlier this month. It features snapshots of the same corner of a room over hundreds of thousands of years, both deep into the past and far into the future. Benjamin Franklin shows up. So do other dinosaurs.

For discussion: Would you rather see the world 1,000 years ago or 1,000 years into future?

Best of the Rest

If you get the pun in the title of Carlos Bueno’s Lauren Ipsum, out Dec. 14, you should probably read it. On the subject of jokes, Andrew Lawler alludes to the oldest one in Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?: The Epic Saga of the Bird that Powers Civilization. Finally, in Flicker, psychologist Jeffrey Zacks explains your brain on movies. That’s not an invitation to go to the movies—you have too much reading to do. Get going.

Tech Time Warp of the Week: In the ’90s, Apple Celebrated Christmas by Bashing Microsoft

An interactive CD-ROM. In the early ’90s, it was the perfect holiday gift—if you could actually get the thing to work.

That’s the story laid down by this classic holiday ad (see above). It’s Christmas Eve, and a typical American couple is struggling to install some sort of CD-based software they hope to unload on their kids the next day. They pore over one of those massive computer manuals. They hack away at the machine’s command line. But nothing seems to work.

“Maybe we got the wrong installation program,” the man says. “Maybe we bought the wrong computer,” his wife answers.

Yes, it’s an Apple commercial, though Apple products are never mentioned. “If you’re looking for a multimedia computer that actually works, there’s really only one way to go,” a narrator intones, before an Apple logo appears on the screen.

It was a typical play from the maker of the Macintosh. Instead of focusing on all things a Mac could do, the ad highlights what you don’t want out of a computer. It’s like the company’s iconic 1984 ad and the Apple Switch campaign from the early 2000s and the more recent “I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC” series. And it’s not at all like those jolly old Christmas commercials from 90s computer companies like IBM, which tried to sell us on the all the things computers could do:

The “us vs. them” mentality helped build Apple’s cult following for a good thirty years, but these days, it’s a different story. Apple is now at the top of the tech heap, and it runs ads like this:

In other words, Apple is now the IBM of our times.

Microsoft Can’t Fix Its Halo: Master Chief Collection Fail

Halo fans play Master Chief Collection at HaloFest in November 2014. Courtesy Microsoft

For Adam McGuire, the hype surrounding Halo: The Master Chief Collection couldn’t have been higher. McGuire, a 33-year-old project engineer from Grand Haven, Michigan, saw it as a way to revisit his favorite game series, and rekindle a romance that started more than a decade before with Halo: Combat Evolved.

McGuire is a hardcore devotee of the franchise. As a student at Michigan State University, he sold an old guitar and bought an Xbox and a copy of Halo 2 to stay competitive with his friends. They played Halo 3 for years, devouring the map packs and using the game to stay in touch after graduation. Halo: Reach, Halo 3: ODST, Halo 4: He played them all.

And so he was beyond stoked to hear about The Master Chief Collection. It was to be a rabid fan’s dream come true, a one-and-done single-disc “box set” including high-definition remasters of Halo and Halo 2 and improved versions of Halo 3 and Halo 4. Best of all, the beloved online multiplayer of all four games would be served up in a mix-and-match sashimi platter of shotguns, snipers, energy swords, and battle rifles. Everything looked great, and the early word was Microsoft had done it right.

It was gonna be amazing. Except it wasn’t.

Microsoft’s launch of Halo: The Master Chief Collection was a disaster. The games were buggy. You couldn’t contact friends. Joining a party was a colossal pain in the ass. Matchmaking within a party was a nightmare. Even the most ardent fans of the game, the ones only too happy to shell out 60 bucks to buy a collection of games they already own, were left wondering: “WTF?”

“The launch of Master Chief Collection was really bad, and it still continues to have problems,” McGuire said. “And this is coming from someone with a Master Chief tattoo, so for me to say it’s disappointing is a big deal.”

Bugs, Bugs Everywhere

The Master Chief Collection is just one of the many online games in recent memory that stumbled out of the gate. Last year’s launches of SimCity and Battlefield 4 were seriously problematic, and this year’s releases of Assassin’s Creed Unity and Driveclub were also marred by serious problems. But The Master Chief Collection was particularly egregious, because it was Microsoft’s marquee series—and the problems were so pervasive.

Matchmaking rarely, if ever, worked. If you did manage to get a match going, bugs and issues abounded, especially with post-game stat-tracking. (One was the notorious “1th place” victory awarded to everyone at the end of certain matches.)

The Halo and Halo 2 parts of the collection seemed to be ported from the games’ PC releases, not the original Xbox versions, and they brought with them bugs that had only popped up on those PC ports. Even worse, the game’s pre-release marketing promised tons of dedicated servers, for stable games and to prevent matchmaking abuse or cheating. But those servers seemed nearly nonexistent. With matches running on peer-to-peer networks, they were again vulnerable to the cheaters.

“Part of the enjoyment of Halo is that, unlike Call of Duty, you have a skill-based rank that you achieved by good gameplay, skill, and teamwork,” McGuire said. “On a peer-to-peer system, the game isn’t protected against [cheating]. Without that competitive aspect, you start asking yourself ‘Why am I playing this? What am I going for?'”

courtesy Adam McGuire

Over the last month, the Halo community has found ways to make The Master Chief Collection playable. Tricks they devised included disconnecting from party chat, restarting or fully reinstalling the game, and not even bothering to play when Microsoft is having server issues. Users on forums like Reddit, NeoGAF, and Halo Waypoint compiled epic lists of bugs and issues, pleading with game developer 343 Industries to fix them.

“Most of the problems that The Master Chief Collection has are directly related to Xbox Live,” Microsoft’s online gaming service, McGuire said. “I threw a LAN party and it was a huge success. The issues arise with all the different individual applications—the dashboard, the party chat system, the friends system—that work together to give you the Xbox Live experience. When you throw The Master Chief Collection into that, and if one of those applications is having problems, it throws a huge wrench into the system.”

Developer 343 pushed out a patch soon after it launched the game. But as fixes came in, so did new problems. The horribly long waiting times were mostly taken care of… but now the game would mix up the players on your teams and start the matches with uneven numbers on both sides. Subsequent patches fixed things here and there, but overall the experience remained imperfect. Playing by yourself seemed to be a decent solution—but Halo is a game founded on its community, on shooting aliens and each other with your friends.

“We pay our $15 every month for people to make this work,” McGuire said. “[Xbox Live] is not a free service. The fact that it doesn’t work a lot of the time—that’s a big issue.”

By November 24, 343 finally apologized to players. “I personally apologize for this on behalf of us all at 343 Industries,” wrote 343 studio head Bonnie Ross. “Our team is committed to working around the clock until these issues are resolved.”

(Microsoft declined WIRED’s request to speak with a representative of 343 for this story.)

On December 19, with many problems still outstanding, 343 detailed a make-good gift that it would offer to Master Chief Collection owners: A free month of Xbox Live Gold, an exclusive in-game nameplate and avatar, and an upgraded version of the spinoff game Halo 3: ODST.

Many players seem genuinely excited about what they’re getting for their troubles. But it’s important to remember that for many, Halo: The Master Chief Collection cost much more than $60. This November, probably thanks to the release of a Halo game, Microsoft finally sold more Xbox Ones in a single month than rival Sony sold PlayStation 4 consoles.

That’s a big deal, and it’s probably thanks largely to Halo fans finally shelling out the $400 to upgrade their console. But that means Microsoft owes them a $400 apology.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection‘s release date was etched in stone—well, etched in metal, anyway. Courtesy Microsoft

Today, well over a month after its launch, Halo: The Master Chief Collection seems to be finally, mostly, playable.

The latest patch, released earlier this week, was touted as the great and mighty fix to multiplayer’s woes. But it seems the bulk of the patch takes the form of the previously-promised “Spartan Ops” mini-campaign from Halo 4—and only marginal improvements to the major problems.

The biggest multiplayer fix takes care of cheaters who were gaming the system, but, again, it seems to have created as many problems as it solved.

Reddit users are still reporting long queue times, and there seems to be a major disconnect between what 343 is saying and what players are experiencing.

“They claim to have fixed it to where the game won’t start without even teams,” McGuire said after the latest patch went live on December 22. “Yet this appears to have dramatically raised the amount of uneven teams. Lobbies of 8 players are being split into 5 on 3, 6 on 2, etc. Back to the drawing board, 343.”

Even the Spartan Ops campaign mode feels rushed and incomplete. It lacks achievements, leaderboards, and post-game lobbies. It’s the only mode in the collection that doesn’t award medals. Cutscenes don’t auto-play, and it doesn’t automatically progress to the next mission.

They just see it as a broken game, and they’ll go play something else.

Granted, these features weren’t a part of the original Halo 4 version of Spartan Ops, but without updating the game to fall in line with the rest of The Master Chief Collection, the mini-campaign feels hastily tacked-on, as opposed to part of a cohesive whole.

At this point, even guys like McGuire say they’re getting tired of waiting for Microsoft to fix everything for good.

“When this first came out and it had some problems, I said ‘Alright guys, slow the hate train. There’s some problems but they’ll fix them. No big deal.'” McGuire said. “I kept saying that week after week, patch after patch that failed to connect. And I’ve come to a point where I can’t defend it any more. Don’t get me wrong, I know there’s no magic wand to wave over the game. I know it takes hundreds of man-hours of coding and fixing and testing. But there’s no excuse. You had years to do this. You had plenty of time, and the fact that you released it in this state is unbelievable.”

The trouble for 343 and Microsoft is that, even once The Master Chief Collection is eventually fixed, the damage is done. This was Microsoft’s first real chance at a decisive victory in the console war. It was a perfect opportunity to sell a ton of Xbox Ones and draw new fans to its flagship franchise. And Microsoft screwed it up.

“Am I going to give up on the series? No, I love it to death,” McGuire said. “But there’s a lot of people out there who aren’t going to have this experience because they don’t have the love for the game, and the memories, to stick with it. They just see it as a broken game, and they’ll go play something else. A lot of people aren’t willing to suffer through it. They’ll just pick something else up. Back to Call of Duty.”

A Time-Traveling Graphic Novel and More Great Books We’re Reading This Month

There’s something about December that invites lots of reading. It’s like the phrase “curl up with a good book” was invented for this month. Even if you’re not in the reading spirit yourself, a well-chosen book always makes for a fine holiday present. But which books should you get or give? We’ve got several good suggestions, from a book about books to a story about a beginning to a graphic novel about beginnings through endings. So light your fake fireplace and enjoy.

The Remake: Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz

Release: December 9

After 2011’s House of Silk, Anthony Horowitz returns (with the blessing of the Arthur Conan Doyle estate) to the world of Sherlock Holmes. You’ll recognize the title as the iconic detective’s iconic nemesis, criminal mastermind Moriarty. Except, at the beginning of this book, both those guys have just tumbled over a waterfall. Read on to find out what happens after. Or just as a way to pass the time until the next season of BBC’s Sherlock: the definitive retelling of our time.

For discussion: Or is BBC’s show the definitive retelling of our time?

Because WIRED: Startupland by Mikkel Svane

Release: December 8

There’s no shortage of startup origin stories from inside Silicon Valley, believe you us. And often, these narratives are uh, how do we say, punched up so they sound cooler and more Hollywood-ready than they actually are (“kids drop out of prestigious institution to found world-changing company in their garage!”). Refreshingly, Mikkel Svane is not part of that world. Or at least, he wasn’t when he cofounded the software company Zendesk in a loft in Copenhagen. He and two buddies used an old kitchen door as a desk. Sure, Zendesk is now headquartered in San Francisco, but it’s the account of these unusual early days that satisfy our need for something a bit different.

For discussion: Did you read Gideon Lewis-Kraus’ story “No Exit” in WIRED 22.05? Because you should.

The History Lesson: When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning

Release: December 2

No, it’s not about tiny books marching off to battle, though some children’s author should really pitch that. Molly Guptill Manning’s book is a bit more serious. During World War II, we sent millions of books—like The Great Gatsby and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn—to American troops fighting overseas. And, as Manning’s book points out, it wasn’t just to help pass the time—the freedom to read became symbolic in the face of Nazi propaganda.

For discussion: If you’re off fighting in a distant land, which book would remind you most of home?

Just Because: A Conspiracy of Ravens, edited by the Bodleian Library

Release: December 15

When birds of a feather flock together, they’re called by some pretty spectacular names. A group of ravens, for instance, is known as a conspiracy. Awesome, right? (Though, if you actually think about it, pigeons are probably the true government conspirators. They’re everywhere! I call them the FBeyes. Anyway…) Inside this compendium of collective bird nouns, you’ll discover all kinds of classics, like murder of crows, ostentation of peacocks, and murmuration of starlings. Sometimes, language soars.

For discussion: Other than birds, which groups of things deserve poetic collective nouns?

The Graphic Novel: Here by Richard McGuire

Release: December 9

As you sit here reading this, do you wonder who—or what—occupied the space you’re currently occupying, say, 100 years ago? 1,000? 100,000? That’s the premise of Richard McGuire’s graphic novel Here, which we wrote about earlier this month. It features snapshots of the same corner of a room over hundreds of thousands of years, both deep into the past and far into the future. Benjamin Franklin shows up. So do other dinosaurs.

For discussion: Would you rather see the world 1,000 years ago or 1,000 years into future?

Best of the Rest

If you get the pun in the title of Carlos Bueno’s Lauren Ipsum, out Dec. 14, you should probably read it. On the subject of jokes, Andrew Lawler alludes to the oldest one in Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?: The Epic Saga of the Bird that Powers Civilization. Finally, in Flicker, psychologist Jeffrey Zacks explains your brain on movies. That’s not an invitation to go to the movies—you have too much reading to do. Get going.

Tech Time Warp of the Week: In the ’90s, Apple Celebrated Christmas by Bashing Microsoft

An interactive CD-ROM. In the early ’90s, it was the perfect holiday gift—if you could actually get the thing to work.

That’s the story laid down by this classic holiday ad (see above). It’s Christmas Eve, and a typical American couple is struggling to install some sort of CD-based software they hope to unload on their kids the next day. They pore over one of those massive computer manuals. They hack away at the machine’s command line. But nothing seems to work.

“Maybe we got the wrong installation program,” the man says. “Maybe we bought the wrong computer,” his wife answers.

Yes, it’s an Apple commercial, though Apple products are never mentioned. “If you’re looking for a multimedia computer that actually works, there’s really only one way to go,” a narrator intones, before an Apple logo appears on the screen.

It was a typical play from the maker of the Macintosh. Instead of focusing on all things a Mac could do, the ad highlights what you don’t want out of a computer. It’s like the company’s iconic 1984 ad and the Apple Switch campaign from the early 2000s and the more recent “I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC” series. And it’s not at all like those jolly old Christmas commercials from 90s computer companies like IBM, which tried to sell us on the all the things computers could do:

The “us vs. them” mentality helped build Apple’s cult following for a good thirty years, but these days, it’s a different story. Apple is now at the top of the tech heap, and it runs ads like this:

In other words, Apple is now the IBM of our times.

8 Free Privacy Programs Worth Your Year-End Donations

Getty Images

Free software isn’t free. Someone’s got to shell out for the expensive development, maintenance, bug fixes and updates for programs that so many of us who live online have come to see as almost natural resources. And increasingly, those taken-for-granted tools have become vital for the privacy and security of millions of people.

So as the end of 2014 approaches, this might be the time to add a few free software security projects like the ones we’ve listed below to your annual tax-deductible donations. “There’s no way around it. If we want tools that are secure and usable, then these projects need funding,” says Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a non-profit that has run fundraising campaigns for encryption software. “They don’t have a business model. They’re not doing this to make money. Their first priority is the security of users.”

A year of Snowden-fueled privacy interest, Timm adds, has driven a new crowd to cash-strapped free software privacy projects for whom every new user often represents a new demand on resources. “When a lot of these projects started, there wasn’t a giant user base. Now so many people depend on these tools for privacy,” says Timm. “If we’re going to use them, it’s important to give back to the projects that created them.”

Here are a few of WIRED’s suggestions for your yuletide crypto philanthropy:

Tor

Tor, whose name comes from the acronym The Onion Router, remains perhaps the world’s most effective tool for evading surveillance online. By encrypting a user’s traffic in layers and routing it through randomly chosen computers spread around the world, Tor makes it nearly impossible to track down a user’s identity or censor his or her Web browsing. In the wake of Snowden’s revelations, the tool has nearly doubled in usage to around two million active users, straining its infrastructure.

Tor receives much of its funding from the U.S. military and the State Department. But Freedom of the Press’s Timm says that government funding shouldn’t dissuade individuals from donating. “One part of the US government may the biggest funder of an encryption project, while at the same time as other parts of the government want to see it outlawed,” says Timm, referring in part to the FBI director James Comey’s recent statements about encryption’s dangers. “If people really want to support projects like Tor, they should help them become less reliant on that government funding.”

Tails

The operating system Tails, or The Amnesiac Incognito Live System, has all the properties of the ideal private operating system. It boots from a USB drive, leaving no trace on the computer it’s running on. And it routes all the user’s traffic over Tor, foiling even malware attacks that might be designed to cause a Tor user’s computer to leak identifying data.

Edward Snowden himself has praised Tails as a means to strengthen vulnerable communication endpoints. And filmmaker Laura Poitras used Tails when communicating with Snowden for months to arrange his unprecedented leak of NSA secrets. Despite all of that, Tails has received little mainstream support and may be the security software most in need of users’ donations.

SecureDrop

SecureDrop, which started with some of the last code written by free information activist Aaron Swartz, aims to turn every news organization into a potential WikiLeaks. The software integrates Tor to allow sources to anonymously upload secret documents. The Freedom of the Press Foundation has adopted SecureDrop, manages its fundraising, and has now helped more than a dozen news outlets to install it, including The Washington Post, The Guardian, and The Intercept. It promises to become a crucial investigative journalism tool that allows reporters to stay a step ahead of any surveillance that would seek to identify their most sensitive sources.

GPG Tools

When privacy conscious users think of the venerable encryption software PGP, they think of Phil Zimmermann, the folk hero cryptographer who first released PGP in 1991. Less heralded is the group known as GPG Tools, which now maintains the open-source version of PGP known as Gnu Privacy Guard. (The original PGP became the product of a private company and ended up being acquired by the security giant Symantec.) GPG Tools makes an enormous swathe of strong encryption use cases possible, particularly for email. In a sign of its tight resources, it began charging for downloads of its Mail plugin for Mac last month. But other versions of the software remain free, and could use a little financial support.

Open Whisper Systems

Open Whisper Systems, created by the hacker and privacy activist Moxie Marlinspike, is quickly becoming the world’s most widely implemented tool for encrypting smartphone messaging. The project began in 2010 with the Android apps Redphone and Textsecure, which allow end-to-end, strongly encrypted voice calls and text messages. Then earlier this year, OWS added Signal, which enables the same encrypted calls from iPhones, too. And then, in a landmark move last month, the ultra-popular messaging app Whatsapp announced that it would be integrating Textsecure into its Android app installed on hundreds of millions of phones, with an iPhone implementation to follow. With that kind of mass adoption, Textsecure is on its way to becoming the go-to protocol for anyone who wants to add surveillance-breaking protection to their smartphone messaging program. You can donate to the project through the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

Cryptocat

Cryptographer Nadim Kobeissi has made it his mission to create the world’s simplest crypto applications; Cryptocat makes Web-based encrypted messaging so simple a five-year-old can use it. Despite early criticism for security flaws, the ultra-usable program now gets strong reviews from the cryptography community, and has been downloaded more than 750,000 times. Kobeissi’s newer project is Minilock, a public key encryption program designed to be so simple that it doesn’t even require creating an account or storing a key on the user’s machine. You can donate support Cryptocat via Paypal here.

Off The Record Messaging

Cryptocat and Textsecure have both integrated Off-The-Record (OTR) messaging, the gold standard protocol for encrypted instant messaging. (Though Textsecure has recently shifted to using its own code instead.) Created by Ian Goldberg and maintained by his research group at the University of Waterloo, (which also hosts its fundraising) OTR’s plugins for Jabber clients like Adium and Pidgin have made it popular for everyone from WikiLeaks to Russian drug dealers.

OpenSSL

OpenSSL provides the crypto protocol used by two thirds of the web’s SSL-encrypted websites. And until last summer, it had only four core programmers and a single full-time employee. The lack of love for such an important open-source project only came to light in April, when the flaw in OpenSSL known as Heartbleed made it possible to compromise millions of servers around the world that implement the protocol. OpenSSL has since received more development help and funding from major tech firms. But the project is still seeking more donations (though not tax deductible ones, unfortunately) and corporate sponsorships.

13 of the Most Amazing Things Discovered in Space This Year

In April, astronomers discovered the first Earth-size planet within a star’s habitable zone, the region where liquid water can exist. This artist’s concept shows the planet, dubbed Kepler-186f, which is 1.1 times the size of Earth. The ultimate goal is to find another planet just like Earth, and this one—although more like a cousin than a twin—is close. NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech

In April, astronomers discovered the first Earth-size planet within a star’s habitable zone, the region where liquid water can exist. This artist’s concept shows the planet, dubbed Kepler-186f, which is 1.1 times the size of Earth. The ultimate goal is to find another planet just like Earth, and this one—although more like a cousin than a twin—is close.

NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech

In June, astronomers revealed that this newly discovered star is a white dwarf so cold (for a star---it’s still almost 3,000 degrees) that its carbon atoms have crystallized into a diamond and it hardly shines at all. It also orbits a pulsar (on the left in the illustration), a spinning star as dense as an atomic nucleus. B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF)

In June, astronomers revealed that this newly discovered star is a white dwarf so cold (for a star---it’s still almost 3,000 degrees) that its carbon atoms have crystallized into a diamond and it hardly shines at all. It also orbits a pulsar (on the left in the illustration), a spinning star as dense as an atomic nucleus.

B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF)

This illustration depicts MY Camelopardalis, a system of two young stars orbiting each other so closely that they’re touching. They will eventually merge into a single star 60 times heavier than the sun. Astronomers think that most extremely massive stars form in this fashion. The finding, published in December, could be the first known example of such a scenario. Javier Lorenzo (Universidad de Alicante)

This illustration depicts MY Camelopardalis, a system of two young stars orbiting each other so closely that they’re touching. They will eventually merge into a single star 60 times heavier than the sun. Astronomers think that most extremely massive stars form in this fashion. The finding, published in December, could be the first known example of such a scenario.

Javier Lorenzo (Universidad de Alicante)

This illustration shows comet Siding Spring zipping by Mars in October. The comet ventured within 87,000 miles of Mars, the closest anyone has ever seen a comet get to a planet without crashing. The comet’s trail of debris fell onto the Martian atmosphere, generating a meteor shower. The meteors created ions in the atmosphere, which were detected by several spacecraft in orbit around the red planet. NASA/JPL

This illustration shows comet Siding Spring zipping by Mars in October. The comet ventured within 87,000 miles of Mars, the closest anyone has ever seen a comet get to a planet without crashing. The comet’s trail of debris fell onto the Martian atmosphere, generating a meteor shower. The meteors created ions in the atmosphere, which were detected by several spacecraft in orbit around the red planet.

NASA/JPL

Over the summer, astronomers were eager to watch a mysterious glob of gas called G2 get gobbled up by the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center. But then the glob, the orange object in this illustration, escaped digestion. To explain its surprising survival, astronomers have proposed that it’s actually a star. Others disagree, and still say it’s gas. ESO

Over the summer, astronomers were eager to watch a mysterious glob of gas called G2 get gobbled up by the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center. But then the glob, the orange object in this illustration, escaped digestion. To explain its surprising survival, astronomers have proposed that it’s actually a star. Others disagree, and still say it’s gas.

ESO

Rings aren’t just for planets like Saturn anymore. In March, astronomers announced that an asteroid-like object called a centaur has a ring system, seen in this artist’s concept. The 154-mile-wide object, named Chariklo, orbits between Saturn and Uranus. Its rings are dense and full of water ice, making them relatively bright, like a miniature version of Saturn’s. ESO/L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser/Nick Risinger

Rings aren’t just for planets like Saturn anymore. In March, astronomers announced that an asteroid-like object called a centaur has a ring system, seen in this artist’s concept. The 154-mile-wide object, named Chariklo, orbits between Saturn and Uranus. Its rings are dense and full of water ice, making them relatively bright, like a miniature version of Saturn’s.

ESO/L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser/Nick Risinger

Almost all big galaxies are believed to have a supermassive black hole at the center, as in this galaxy, NGC 1275. But this summer, astronomers described another galaxy that seemed to have three black holes. Further observations have cast some doubt on the triplet, however, suggesting two of the black holes are just one. NASA, ESA, NRAO and L. Frattare (STScI)

Almost all big galaxies are believed to have a supermassive black hole at the center, as in this galaxy, NGC 1275. But this summer, astronomers described another galaxy that seemed to have three black holes. Further observations have cast some doubt on the triplet, however, suggesting two of the black holes are just one.

NASA, ESA, NRAO and L. Frattare (STScI)

In January, the Herschel space observatory discovered watery plumes spewing from Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt. Seen in this artist’s concept, Ceres is big and round, making it a dwarf planet like Pluto. Scientists think jets of water vapor sprout when Ceres nears the sun---perhaps due to sublimation of surface ice. Ceres is thought to be rock, covered in ice so thick it would account for more fresh water than there is on Earth. ESA/ATG medialab

In January, the Herschel space observatory discovered watery plumes spewing from Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt. Seen in this artist’s concept, Ceres is big and round, making it a dwarf planet like Pluto. Scientists think jets of water vapor sprout when Ceres nears the sun---perhaps due to sublimation of surface ice. Ceres is thought to be rock, covered in ice so thick it would account for more fresh water than there is on Earth.

ESA/ATG medialab

In March, astronomers announced they found what’s likely a dwarf planet with the most distant orbit known, ranging between 7 billion miles and 42 billion miles from the sun. The object’s official name is 2012 VP113, but it has been dubbed “VP” or “Biden,” in honor of the vice president. The only other object with a similar known orbit is Sedna, discovered more than 10 years ago. Scott S. Sheppard/Carnegie Institution for Science

In March, astronomers announced they found what’s likely a dwarf planet with the most distant orbit known, ranging between 7 billion miles and 42 billion miles from the sun. The object’s official name is 2012 VP113, but it has been dubbed “VP” or “Biden,” in honor of the vice president. The only other object with a similar known orbit is Sedna, discovered more than 10 years ago.

Scott S. Sheppard/Carnegie Institution for Science

The ALMA telescope in Chile snapped this baby picture of a planetary system. A star forms from a collapsing cloud of gas and dust, which flattens as it spins. Dust particles eventually stick together to form planets, which can carve out rings and gaps in the disk. This image, released in November, is the most detailed yet of an infant system, revealing the structure that previously had only been depicted in artist concept drawings. ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

The ALMA telescope in Chile snapped this baby picture of a planetary system. A star forms from a collapsing cloud of gas and dust, which flattens as it spins. Dust particles eventually stick together to form planets, which can carve out rings and gaps in the disk. This image, released in November, is the most detailed yet of an infant system, revealing the structure that previously had only been depicted in artist concept drawings.

ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

For the first time, astronomers saw an asteroid in the midst of falling apart into as many as 10 pieces. The Hubble space telescope captured these images of the asteroid P/2013 R3 as it crumbled away over the course of several months from October 2013 to January 2014. The four largest pieces are up to one-eighth of a mile wide. NASA, ESA, D. Jewitt (UCLA)

This series of images shows the asteroid P/2013 R3 breaking apart, as viewed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in 2013. This is the first time that such a body has been seen to undergo this kind of break-up. The Hubble observations showed that there are ten distinct objects, each with comet-like dust tails, embedded within the asteroid's dusty envelope. The four largest rocky fragments are up to 200 metres in radius, about twice the length of a football pitch. The date increases from left to right, with frames from 29 October 2013, 15 November 2013, 13 December 2013, and 14 January 2014 respectively, showing how the clumps of debris material move around. The 14 January 2014 frame was not included in the science paper and is additional data.

NASA, ESA, D. Jewitt (UCLA)

In September, scientists announced they found a black hole that appears too big for its galaxy, an ultra-compact dwarf galaxy called M60-UCD1. The black hole, depicted in this artist’s concept, weighs 21 million times the mass of the sun, more than five times the black hole in the Milky Way. But its host galaxy is a mere one-six-hundredth of the Milky Way’s diameter. NASA, ESA, STScI-PRC14-41a

In September, scientists announced they found a black hole that appears too big for its galaxy, an ultra-compact dwarf galaxy called M60-UCD1. The black hole, depicted in this artist’s concept, weighs 21 million times the mass of the sun, more than five times the black hole in the Milky Way. But its host galaxy is a mere one-six-hundredth of the Milky Way’s diameter.

NASA, ESA, STScI-PRC14-41a

And, of course, there’s comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The discoveries are just beginning, but scientists are expecting a lot of exciting finds from the Philae lander and the Rosetta spacecraft now following the comet toward the sun. So stay tuned in 2015. ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM

And, of course, there’s comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The discoveries are just beginning, but scientists are expecting a lot of exciting finds from the Philae lander and the Rosetta spacecraft now following the comet toward the sun. So stay tuned in 2015.

ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM