Heavy gunfire, explosions reported inside Nairobi's Westgate mall

At least three Westerners were among the militants that perpetrated the Nairobi mall siege, Kenya’s foreign minister said Monday. “Two or three Americans” and “one Brit” were among the perpetrators, Amina Mohamed said in a Monday interview with PBS Newshour. The Americans of Somali or Arab origin were 18 to 19 years old and resided “in Minnesota and one other place.” The British extremist was a female who has “done this many times before,” Mohamed said.

Obama's 'independent' NSA review board staffed with administration insiders

Among the most significant results — seemingly, at least — came in early August when Pres. Obama said he was tasking an “independent group to step back and review our capabilities — particularly our surveillance technologies.”

The agency would consider for the White House ways the administration can “maintain the trust of the people,” “make sure that there absolutely is no abuse in terms of how these surveillance technologies are used” and “ask how surveillance impacts our foreign policy, particularly in an age when more and more information is becoming public,” the president said.

However, Stephen Braun wrote for the Associated Press over the weekend that the review board established after that Aug. 9 address is raising almost as many questions as the NSA operations they were put together to investigate.

“But with just weeks remaining before its first deadline to report back to the White House, the review panel has effectively been operating as an arm of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the NSA and all other US spy efforts,” Braun wrote.

Boston Festival of Indie Games

Boston Festival of Indie Games hosted almost 130 unique independently developed games, drawing submissions mostly from New England and nearby Montreal. Veteran development teams from sponsor companies were easy to spot, with polished graphic displays and multiple machines for festival attendees. Others brought little more than their game, with nothing but a laptop and a hand drawn sign to indicate their presence. Indies invited the Boston gaming community to spend time with their untried ventures, asking for critical feedback and (hopefully) a digital vote in the Figgies Award competition in return.

In order to support the growing BFIG demand for 2013, the festival's staff turned to Kickstarter. The project asked for $15,000 to support necessities like larger space rental, and travel expenses to attract stronger keynote speakers. At the same time organizers also promised that no funds would go towards paying event staff.

source polygon.com

Uruguay First To Fully Legalize Marijuana

The President of Uruguay, Jose Mujica, has been on a mission to deal with the rise in illegal drug trade and trafficking which has plagued the region.

An Institute for Regulation and Control of Cannabis would be created, with the power to grant licenses for all aspects of a legal industry to produce marijuana for recreational, medicinal or industrial use.

The government will purchase marijuana from licensed growers and distribute it to pharmacies, while private citizens will be permitted to grow the plant for personal use.

Uruguay is now at the forefront of globally reforming our ever costly, and perpetually failing archaic drug policies. If this endeavor succeeds, Uruguay will become the first nation that will allow its citizens to legally grow and consume marijuana for non-medical purposes.

Meet Steam OS, a Gamer's Alternative to Windows 8

The first announcement was made today as Valve unveiled Steam OS, a new custom Linux distribution, with a focus on gaming and Windows compatibility.  Valve says that much of the recent Windows software and game catalog will be supported writing:

You can play all your Windows and Mac games on your SteamOS machine, too. Just turn on your existing computer and run Steam as you always have - then your SteamOS machine can stream those games over your home network straight to your TV!

Access the full Steam catalog of over nearly 3000 games and desktop software titles via in-home streaming, for the TV streaming Valve has partnered with Miracast, the WiFi coalition for wireless HDTV transmission.

The Rising American Police State

The United States of America, a nation born of liberty, a nation whose citizens have the constitutionally guaranteed right to protect themselves and their property with arms, turn into the police state that it has. Police raids have been increasing in frequency, 40,000 per year by one estimate in 2001, more than 50,000 in 2005, according to Peter Kraska, a criminologist at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, and likely more raids in the years since. Common targets of these raids are nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians. Many victims of these wrongful raids have their homes invaded in the middle of the night, and it is a common claim that the police do not identify themselves correctly, or at all, before entering