Fed2 Star - September 2, 2018 - page 1 (of 2)

[Fiona Craig]

Fed2 Star
Earthdate September 2, 2018


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Official News part one


A SAD ANNOUNCEMENT: FEDERATION 2 WILL BE CLOSING IN A MONTH

by Hazed

It is with great sadness that Alan and I have decided that after having
run continuously for over 30 years it is time to close Fed2.

The game will run until the reset on Monday October 1, at which point it
will not fire up again.

We hope that ex-players who are reading this will take the opportunity
to return for a Fedxit Party on the final weekend. I’ll give you more
information about the party closer to the End of the Universe As We Know It.


Why We Are Closing Fed

There are technical reasons why it’s time to close Fed down. The
environment for running services on the internet has changed enormously
since we moved off AOL in 1997.

For example, security requirements have changed. Google’s new insistence
that all websites should be HTTPS sites mean we need to sort out a
security certificate otherwise the site will be labelled as “unsafe” for
users of the Chrome browser. The European Union’s new GDPR rules also
add complications to any organisation holding customer data.

In addition, we have been informed by the hosting company, Melbourne,
that they are closing their current operations and migrating their users
over to a new server at the end of the year. So we are faced with the
problems of having to set everything up again on a new server.

Those problems require someone with system admin skills. Alan doesn’t
have those skills – in the past we’ve found somebody else to help when
we’ve needed them, but now we don’t have anyone available.

The game’s networking and security needs a thorough overhaul. It was
originally designed to run on a hosted system – eg Compunet, Genie, AOL,
etc – where the host system handled passing already validated players
through to the game. Fed’s networking and security was added afterwards,
under time constraints, and since then internet threats have multiplied
and changed. In addition, now that new IPV4 internet addresses have
effectively run out we would need to start supporting the new IPV6
addresses.

Now, none of these problems are insurmountable – they may be hard, but
it would be possible to solve them, if it wasn’t for one more issue.

And that’s Alan’s health. As regular readers will know, he contracted
shingles early this year and while he has mostly recovered from it, he
is left feeling exhausted. He’s also now suffering from other health
problems that will take their toll on his ability to do much programming
work. Since in the game, Bella and Hazed are ageless, you probably don’t
know that we are all getting on a bit: Alan will be 70 next year, and
I’ll be 60, so neither of us has the stamina that we used to.

The game itself has been slowly fading: from its peak on AOL where it
had thousands of players online all at once, the move to the internet
coincided with text games going out of fashion and graphical games
taking over.

And so, with sorrow in our hearts, we have had to make the decision that
it is time to draw the Federation era to a close.


What About Subscriptions?

Yesterday I turned off the subscriptions for all those buying slithies
every month to help keep the game running. None of you will be charged
during September.

We have just enough left in the kitty to pay for the final month’s
bills, give or take a few groats.

Thank you to everyone who has donated to Fed over the years. Without you
we wouldn’t have been able to keep the game running for as long as we did.


Saving Your Planets

We are giving you a month’s notice before we close the game so you have
a chance to save details of your planet, or any other favourite parts of
the game. You can use the logging function of FedTerm to walk around and
capture a tour of your planet.

In addition, you can ask us to send you the planet files if you want
them. When the game closes down we’ll save a copy of all the planet
files, so even after Fed is no more, if you suddenly decide you don’t
want to lose all your hard work, you can email and ask us to send you
the files.


What About the Website?

I will move the website to a new host, and I’ll keep the domain
addresses (ibgames.com and ibgames.net) for the foreseeable future. I’ll
make the move during the week after the shutdown; over time I’ll remove
from the website anything that relates to the game being live, and leave
the information as an archive.

We will keep our email addresses so you will be able to contact us at
f...@ibgames.com, al...@ibgames.com and feed...@ibgames.com.


The End of the Fed2 Star

The end of Fed means there won’t be any need for the Fed2 Star in the
future. I will publish a couple more issues between now and shutdown
just to repeat the information about what’s happening, and to use up any
real life news stories I have in reserve, but that’s all.

The purpose of the Fed2 Star was always to tell you about what’s
happening in Fed. In the latter years, not very much was happening, so I
bulked out the news with interesting real life stories, but I have been
finding it hard to keep up with the publishing schedule.

I will probably set up a blog and continue to write stories when I find
something that interests me. When I do so, I will send one final email
to the Fed2 Star mailing list, pointing you to the blog.


Winding Down Will Continue

Good news for those that enjoy Alan’s technical news: it will continue
to be published every week (barring one week off each month). If you
have been reading it via the Fed2 Star mailing list, then you will need
to subscribe to the separate Winding Down mailing list.

To subscribe to the mailing list, send an email to:

winding-dow...@googlegroups.com


Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Fish

Alan, Barb and I would like to offer our sincerest thanks to everyone
who has been involved with Fed over the years. From its first faltering
steps on the UK’s Compunet network, its move to the US to Genie, then to
AOL and finally onto the internet, we’ve been blessed with an
exceptional class of players.

Many of you went on to join the team in various staff roles, and without
all your help and dedication the game would not have survived.

Thank you, all of you.


REAL LIFE NEWS: NEW HORIZONS DETECTS ITS NEXT TARGET

by Hazed

The New Horizons spacecraft has been able to identify the Kuiper Belt
object it is heading towards, called Ultima Thule.

Having buzzed around Pluto and its moons, the craft has been travelling
to the very edges of the Solar System and in four months time it will
arrive at its destination. A few weeks ago, it used its Long Range
Reconnaissance Imager to see the small, dim object against a dense
background of stars, despite being over 100 million miles away.

Images have been sent back to Earth and you can see them at the link
below. There’s not much to see, it’s just one white blob amongst many,
but the fact that New Horizons has managed to find it with its own
camera is significant.

Hal Weaver, New Horizons project scientist, said: “The image field is
extremely rich with background stars, which makes it difficult to detect
faint objects. It really is like finding a needle in a haystack. In
these first images, Ultima appears only as a bump on the side of a
background star that’s roughly 17 times brighter, but Ultima will be
getting brighter – and easier to see – as the spacecraft gets closer.”

Now New Horizons has got Ultima Thule in its sights it will help the
mission team to refine its course.

It will arrive in the early morning on 1 January 2019.

Source:
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ultima-in-view-nasa-s-new-horizons-makes-first-detection-of-kuiper-belt-flyby-target


REAL LIFE NEWS: SURFACE ICE FOUND AT MOON’S POLES

by Hazed

Patches of frost have been found around the north and south poles on the
moon.

Astronomers spotted the telltale signature of frozen water by examining
infrared measurements taken by the moon mineralogy mapper, which was
onboard India’s Chandrayaan-1 mission ten years ago. The newly-analysed
data shows that water ice appears on the ground in a number of spots
that are permanently in shade.

The ice patches form where the surface temperature stays below -163C.
However, that constant low temperature isn’t enough for ice to form
because only 3.5% of the shadowy areas checked had signs of ice.

The presence of ice on the surface is significant because it could be
used as a source of water by future missions to the moon.

Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/aug/20/ice-found-on-moon-surface


REAL LIFE NEWS: IN-GAME PURCHASES USED TO LAUNDER MONEY

by Hazed

Many online games are free to play but require players to make in-game
purchases of things in order to progress. In many games you can spend
real money to speed your way through the game.

Fed doesn’t do things that way – our slithy toves give you interesting
goodies but none of them are necessary so you can play without ever
paying anything, nor can you buy your way up the ranks with slithies.
We’d probably have made a lot more money if we’d found a way to make
advancement genuinely depend on buying slithies!

But anyway… those other games have found themselves the targets of money
launderers, according to a report. Credit card thieves use stolen cards
to buy items in games such as Clash of Clans and Marvel Contest of
Champions, and then resell the resources to other players.

The report describes how it’s done. By setting up multiple email
accounts the miscreants can then automate the creation of accounts on
the games, then try multiple credit cards until a valid one is found.
You can read more details about how it works at the source link.

The companies that run the game have policies meant to prevent the
third-party selling of game items such as gems or gold, but they don’t
seem to work very well against this kind of systematic abuse.

Maybe it’s just as well Fed’s slithies are not that valuable!

Source: https://kromtech.com/blog/security-center/digital-laundry


REAL LIFE NEWS: I’M TELLING YOU THE TRUTH, GODAMMIT!

by Hazed

People who swear are more honest, according to a new psychology study.
Those who don’t filter their language are also less likely to filter the
stories they tell.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge, Maastricht University,
Hong Kong University and Stanford studied 276 people in a lab, as well
as the social interactions of 73,789 people on Facebook, and measured
their average profanity scores against the integrity index for each US
state.

The study concluded, “a consistent positive relationship between
profanity and honesty; profanity was associated with less lying and
deception at the individual level and with higher integrity at the
society level”.

So next time someone tells you off for swearing, you can just tell them
you are being honest.

Source:
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/swear-wearing-honesty-lie-more-honest-facebook-psychology-cambride-university-maastricht-hong-kong-a7512601.html