May 2016
Newsbytes archive for April 2016
Posted by crossaffliction on Sun 1 May 2016 - 08:15Contributors this month include Acton, brian577, crossaffliction, dronon, Fred, GreenReaper, Huskyteer, InkyCrow, Kakurady and RingtailedFox.
So which version of 'Star Fox' is the best version of 'Star Fox'?
Posted by crossaffliction on Sun 1 May 2016 - 08:26'Star Fox: Zero': Shiny new controls, same old story
Posted by Sonious on Tue 3 May 2016 - 08:28
It's time to return to the Lylat System and step into the Arwing cockpit as the latest Star Fox game, Star Fox: Zero comes out for the Wii U system. After a decade absence from the Nintendo console game lineup, will this reboot of the franchise give new hope to the fans, or will disappointment strike it back? Here are my thoughts on the latest adventure of the space faring mercenaries.
Furbid.ws for sale?
Posted by imago on Wed 4 May 2016 - 16:09
When people are bored, they may begin to dig through old bookmarks, go through old emails, and rustle through things with a slight sense of nostalgia. This is what brought about the discovery that the domain Furbid.ws was for sale.
Older furries may have used furry auction sites such as this site from years ago. Furries used auction sites almost exclusively for many years before many found that announcing commissions on FurAffinity got noticed more than an auction. FurBid was founded in 1999 when it was owned and run by Aatheus.
No information on why it is being sold is available, though WikiFur suggests it stopped its run December 5 of last year.
Interview: 'Fursonas' documentary director Dominic Rodriguez (Video the Wolf)
Posted by JoeStrike on Wed 4 May 2016 - 22:02
Joe Strike: Is Fursonas about lifestyler furries?
Dominic Rodriguez: Kind of. People get concerned when they see there are so many fursuiters in it, because not all furries are fursuiters.
I wanted to talk to people who are passionate. That was a good line to draw: if you’re going to go so far as to make or buy a costume, you’re passionate about furry. When I asked the people in the film if you consider furry a lifestyle, half of them said no.
JS: Other than the badges of the furries interviewed, there’s no furry art in the film. Do you think you should’ve included some art?
DR: The thing I knew when I went into this is everybody has a different way of experiencing and appreciating furry. There’s no way to please everybody or to accurately do justice to everything unless the movie was six hours. I had to be selfish and focus on what really mattered to me which is furry as an identity and as a community. I love art and you can show footage of people drawing; but I wanted to do something different, something I cared about. I wasn’t going to spend four years on something I didn’t care about.
When people say furry isn’t a lifestyle I understand that, but when they say it’s just a hobby I think they’re almost giving it a disservice. There’s so much wrapped up in it, and I think people in it take it seriously. I don’t want people to think [the fandom is] just freaks obviously, but it was important people cared about what they were talking about.
So, who's your horse at the Kentucky Derby?
Posted by crossaffliction on Thu 5 May 2016 - 21:00So how many animal genitalia based sex toys do you own?
Posted by crossaffliction on Sat 7 May 2016 - 17:25What animal stereotype in media do you (take most offense to, think should continue, find confusing)?
Posted by CassidyTheCivet on Mon 9 May 2016 - 18:05Trailer: 'Pokémon Sun' and 'Moon'
Posted by crossaffliction on Tue 10 May 2016 - 23:30Nintendo has released a trailer for the previously announced Pokémon Sun and Moon pair of games, the latest generation of Pokémon games. The games are set for a November release, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the franchise. The trailer, like the one for last generation (X and Y), features the three new "starter"; a Grass-type owl, a Fire-type cat and a Water-type seal. The trailer also includes two as yet unnamed legendary Pokémon that, perhaps disappointingly, aren't winged unicorns.
Of the three new Pokémon, Litten, the fire type cat, seems to be the most popular with furries so far; it's already racked up 67 tagged pieces on e621.net (NSFW, so you can do your own research to verify), compared to Rowlet's 25 and Popplio's 24.
A conversation piece about furries: 'Fursonas'
Posted by Sonious on Wed 11 May 2016 - 00:03
Fursonas has certainly already stirred the fandom up with its announcement. This independent documentary film made by Dominic Rodriguez was developed over 4 years from 2012 to 2015. It follows a handful of furries from different walks of life and their take on their identity and the identity of this crazy little group they find themselves within.
The film is broken up into two main parts. The first half introduces the fur fans that we'll be getting perspectives from, and the second half gets into topics that are typically the main controversies of the fandom: sex, the media, and the conflict between individual identity and complying to societal norms.
TRIGGER WARNING: If you a major fan, or personal friend, of Uncle Kage then this film may prove difficult to watch. Oh yeah, and there is a scene with dildos as well, so viewer discretion and such.
Fur charged with first-degree kidnapping of minor
Posted by Equivamp on Tue 17 May 2016 - 11:48On May 1, 16-year-old Kiera Inman left home in Spokane, Washington to meet 30-year-old Zachary Jones, known as Kelo on Fur Affinity, where Inman's grandmother believes they met.
The two were found at a rest stop in Columbus, Ohio, where Jones was arrested and charged with first-degree kidnapping, a federal law punishable by "not less than 20 years of imprisonment" when a minor is the victim. Kelo's Fur Affinity account has been suspended; he also has accounts on Inkbunny, Weasyl and SoFurry.
Inman, whose grandparents describe her as "developmentally delayed", was said to have been groomed online by Jones for several weeks according to entries in her diary, and she left a note reading, "by the time you read this I'm gone...or dead".
Fur Affinity restoring from six-day-old backups after server compromised; site source code distributed at BLFC
Posted by GreenReaper on Tue 17 May 2016 - 12:28I'm hoping @furaffinity's data is still safe. Just before it went down, every submission I tried to view said "submission not in database"
— Alioth Fox (@AliothFox) May 17, 2016
Fur Affinity has been "pulled offline temporarily" after users' accounts and submissions went missing.
Update (21 May): FA returned for a day, but is now in read-only mode. Passwords were said to be hashed and salted, but if you've used the same one elsewhere, now is the time to change it to be unique per-site.
Update 2 (23 May): Fur Affinity has returned; however, all passwords have been reset, which is causing problems for those with an old/invalid email address.
It has been confirmed that an exploit was used to copy Fur Affinity's source code, later distributed at Biggest Little Fur Con. A subsequent attack deleted user profiles, submissions, and watches.
FA users took to Twitter and the Fur Affinity Forums looking for answers – which appeared to have been preemptively provided by a post asking "What would you do if you found an exploit on FA?", posted last Sunday on the Phoenixed Forums. However, more recent posts by the original poster disclaim responsibility.
The recent "ImageTragick" vulnerability in widely-used processing library ImageMagick was soon turned into an exploit and has been identified by FA as the original attack vector.
Fur Affinity community manager Dragoneer reports that backups exist, but are six days old:
The majority [of the site's data is secure], yes. The backup we have is 6 days old. We're still going through and trying to determine the extent of the issue, and once we have more information, we'll post it publicly and give a full, transparent run down of what happened.