Week in Review: Anonymous Attacks and Alternate Assassins

In this week’s edition, Anonymous locks horns with the American government, and the king of World of Warcraft lore is immortalized in the game.

Man Kills TV with Kinect

The “Kinect Curse” – or “Kurse” if you prefer – has claimed its first victim. Writer Phil Villarreal managed to destroy his 47″ TV while playing the volleyball portion of Kinect Sports. Villarreal went to spike the ball, but in doing so hit the pull string on the fan above his head, sending it flying into the screen. This resulted in a “rainbow waterfall” of ruined pixels, rendering the TV useless. Villarreal has described himself as “the first moron to break his TV with Kinect,” a title he will no doubt wear with pride. (Link)

Anonymous Cripples Copyright Site

As part of its ongoing “Operation Payback,” Anonymous launched a denial of service attack at the US government’s copyright website, taking the site down for around half an hour and leaving it sluggish and unresponsive for hours afterwards. Anonymous targeted the site because it believes the copyright office “[perpetuates] the system that is allowing the exploitative usage of copyright and intellectual property.” Other targets of Operation Payback have included the RIAA and MPAA websites, and outspoken rock star and businessman Gene Simmons. (Link)

Ezio’s Assassin Brotherhood Gets Unusual Addition

Warning: This section contains a minor spoiler forAssassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, skip it if you want to be completely surprised. Not a lot of people are aware of this, but Renaissance Italy was filled almost to bursting with cyborg ninjas. Naturally, this meant that including one in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood was a must. But not just any old cyborg ninja would do, so Ubisoft turned to celebrity ninja Raiden, he of Metal Gear Solid fame, to join Ezio band of assassins. It’s thought that Raiden hopes to find time to brood between various acrobatic moves and devastating swordplay. (Link)

Kinect Calibration Card is Kind of Cute

When a controller works on measuring distances and tracking objects, it makes sense that it would need calibrating every now and then. That doesn’t explain why Microsoft chose to give Kinect’s calibration card a face, but the little rascal is rather cute, so who cares? The calibration works by lining up the card’s eyes with glasses that appear on screen, thus allowing Kinect’s sensors to work more accurately. Just be careful you don’t get too enamored with his smiling face and start doing weird stuff like talking to him and giving him a name. (Link)

BlizzCon Red Shirt Guy Becomes Red Shirt Dwarf

After earning himself some internet fame for besting Blizzard on the finer points of World of Warcraft Lore, the “Winner of BlizzCon” has been immortalized in-game, as the official fact checker for the Wildhammer clan. Blizzard later confirmed that the pictures showing the latest addition to the Dwarven court were genuine, and not faked as many had believed. (Link)

(Image)