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Why Street Sharks is the Most Underrated Cartoon of the ’90s

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The ’90s gave rise to numerous "too cool for school" cartoons with tubular protagonists, almost all of which tried to capitalize on the success of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and, later, Sonic the Hedgehog. Most of these shows came and went, becoming nothing more than the answer to a particularly difficult Saturday Morning Cartoon trivia question.

While most of this was deserved, some of these shows were definitely diamonds in the rough. Chief among these was Street Sharks, which was possibly the most blatant TMNT ripoff on paper. Despite this, the show used this to its advantage, featuring many of the same strengths as that franchise. As it reaches its 25th anniversary, let’s look back at one of the forgotten gems of the ’90s.

The basic premise of Street Sharks is that four brothers (John, Bobby, Coop and Clint) are mutated into humanoid sharks after being kidnapped by their father’s evil lab partner, Dr. Paradigm. Dubbing themselves the Street Sharks, they take on the tubular new nicknames Ripster (a great white shark), Jab (a hammerhead), Streex (a tiger shark) and Big Slammu (a whale shark). Together, they fight the monstrous mutant threats that Paradigm sends and defend the people of Fission City, despite being hated and feared by them.

The show had a basic monster of the week format more befitting cartoons of the ’80s. Many of the mutants, including the sharks, feel barely developed, if at all. Conversely, Dr. Paradigm is the quintessential Saturday Morning Cartoon villain, consistently embarking on inane, meandering quests and speaking in a bad accent that lands somewhere between German and Caribbean.

RELATED: Nostalg-ICK: 15 Classic 90s Cartoons That Are Unwatchable Today

When the show wasn’t by the numbers, it was outright weird. Episodes featured storylines involving underground crocodile societies, Cold War allegories in a country called Chernosium and a character named Moby Lick. There were also wolverine/centipede hybrids called wolverinepedes. What else made it stick out among the sea of Turtles wannabes? The fact that it ripped off the TMNT so well, of course.

Much like the 1980s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, Street Sharks was littered with colorful characters that begged to be bought in toy form. There were monsters like Slobster (a mutant lobster that had Genghis Kahn and Thomas Blood’s DNA), the poisonous squid Killamari and the mobster Maximillian Greco, who is a combination of a rhino and a tortoise. The similarities to Splinter, Bebop, Rocksteady and Baxter Stockman were obvious. Both shows even featured alien dinosaurs!

There was also the unique slang that both shows employed. The TMNT used surfer slang, namely "cowabunga." Meanwhile, the Street Sharks would shout out fish puns such as "Jawsome," or the ever clever "fintastic!" It was ironically a foreshadowing of the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles revamp and its predilection for using the word shell as a euphemism.

Both shows, even more than other cartoons of the time, were blatant vehicles for some jawsome action figures. The show came after the toys in Street Sharks’ case, and one of the promotional videos used to sell the concept to Mattel even featured a then unknown Vin Diesel!

Like most cartoons of the time, especially of the TMNT ripoff variety, Street Sharks was sure to inject a healthy bit of poorly done environmentalism. Season 1’s unseen narrator constantly mentions the planet’s worsening environmental conditions, with all of the unintended irreverence that viewers should expect from a contemporary of Captain Planet. It also makes some behind the scenes sense, as one of the series’ creators would use his royalties to become an environmental activist.

RELATED: 20 Incredible Cartoons That Only 90s Kids Will Remember

Despite this poor discussion of pollution and the psychedelic by way of MTV color scheme, the show did have some darker elements. This is namely seen in the sheer body horror of its constant mutations. The allusions to the damage being done to the Earth through man’s arrogance can also put a dour spin on what is usually a rather wacky show. There was also an episode that dealt with steroids hitting the streets, an obvious attempt to tell kids to just say no.

Given that the TMNT franchise was the obvious inspiration for Street Sharks, and that franchise has seen numerous reboots and relaunches, why hasn’t Street Sharks? For one thing, the TMNT franchise featured a lot more pliability, even in the ’90s. The original comics were notably darker than the toy commercial that it spawned, and the live-action movies that came out after the cartoon were a thematic halfway point between the two.

Conversely, as cheesy as the ’80s cartoon may have been, the 2003 Turtles cartoon was far more serious, and hued closer to the comics. Meanwhile, the Street Sharks only had their cartoon, which lasted 40 episodes. While the toys were very popular, this lack of media presence meant that the Sharks would be absorbed by the TMNT whirlpool like other would-be franchises.

When ’90s nostalgia takes off, and the inevitable Street Sharks live-action movie is made, let’s just hope that Michael Bay isn’t involved.

NEXT: Whatever Happened to… TMNT Cards and Turtle Pies?

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via ComicBookResources https://www.cbr.com

August 5, 2019 at 08:50PM

Why Banning 8chan Was So Hard for Cloudflare: ‘No One Should Have That Power’

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Early Monday, 8chan, the anonymous message board where the man accused of carrying out the El Paso massacre posted his manifesto, went offline.

The man most responsible for the outage wasn’t Jim Watkins, 8chan’s owner, or his son Ronald, the message board’s administrator.

Instead, the decision to take 8chan offline, at least temporarily, fell largely to Matthew Prince, the chief executive of the little-known San Francisco company Cloudflare.

Cloudflare provides tools that protect websites from cyberattacks and allows sites to load content more quickly. It is a critical tool for sites like 8chan where extremists gather. Without the kind of protection that Cloudflare offers, 8chan can be barraged by automated, hard-to-prevent attacks from its critics, making it nearly impossible to stay online.

Mr. Prince has become an unlikely focal point for critics of 8chan and other vile parts of the internet. Cloudflare’s service protects a large chunk of the internet, and for years, the decade-old company avoided making decisions about which sites deserved protection and which did not.

That changed in 2017, after white nationalists held a violent rally in Charlottesville, Va. After the rally, Mr. Prince was pressured to remove The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi hate site, from Cloudflare’s service. He eventually agreed to do so. It was a break from the company’s content-neutral stance, and Mr. Prince expressed reservations about his choice.

“I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the internet,” he said at the time. “No one should have that power.”

[8chan is a megaphone for gunmen. ‘Shut the site down,’ says its creator.]

But as one of several internet executives with control over the web’s most basic infrastructure, Mr. Prince does have that power. And in the wake of the El Paso shooting, the calls for him to exercise it by revoking 8chan’s security protections grew louder. I wanted to talk to him about how he thought through the decision, and about how he eventually chose to effectively kick 8chan off the internet, if only temporarily.

In two interviews on Sunday, Mr. Prince expressed a range of views about Cloudflare’s responsibility with regard to 8chan.

In a phone conversation in the early afternoon, Mr. Prince sounded torn: On one hand, 8chan was clearly reprehensible, and depriving it of the protection Cloudflare provides would rid him of a troublesome customer and a huge headache. On the other hand, banning 8chan could set a bad precedent, and it could make it harder for law enforcement authorities to monitor violent extremists. Cloudflare, like other tech companies with a window onto dark internet activity, can share information about crimes with investigators.

Banning 8chan “would make our lives a lot easier,” Mr. Prince said, “but it would make the job of law enforcement and controlling hate groups online harder.”

[Read the latest updates on the shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio.]

Among Cloudflare employees, there was disagreement. Some thought that banning 8chan was a clear-cut moral imperative; others thought it could create a slippery slope to censorship. Douglas Kramer, Cloudflare’s general counsel, spent much of Sunday afternoon telling news outlets that Cloudflare would not ban 8chan because of its content, saying, “We’re largely a neutral utility service.”

Hours later, Mr. Prince called me back. He had decided to cut off 8chan. He characterized the site as a “lawless” platform that had willfully ignored warnings about violent extremism. Its tolerance for hate, he said, made 8chan different from other sites where extremists gather, like Facebook or Twitter.

“They’ve been not only actively ignoring complaints they receive, but sometimes weaponizing those complaints against people who are complaining about them,” Mr. Prince said. “That lawlessness feels like a real distinction from the Facebooks of the world.”

Removing 8chan was not a straightforward decision, Mr. Prince said, in part because Cloudflare does not host or promote any of the site’s content. Most people would agree, he said, that a newspaper publisher should be responsible for the stories in the paper. But what about the person who operates the printing press, or the ink supplier? Should that person be responsible, too?

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“It’s dangerous for infrastructure companies to be making what are editorial decisions,” he said. “The deeper you get into the technology stack, the harder it becomes to make those decisions.”

Ultimately, Mr. Prince said, he decided that 8chan was too centrally organized around hate, and more willing to ignore laws against violent incitement in order to avoid moderating its platform. The realization, along with the multiple mass murders that the authorities have connected to 8chan, tipped the scale in favor of a ban.

“If we see a bad thing in the world and we can help get in front of it, we have some obligation to do that,” he said.

Mr. Prince, who announced the removal of 8chan from Cloudflare in a 1,300-word blog post on Sunday night, still worries about setting a bad precedent. He theorized that a repressive Middle Eastern government could cite the 8chan example when asking Cloudflare to remove security protections for an L.G.B.T. group inside its borders, since it might technically be “lawless” to promote homosexuality in that country.

“We have to make sure we’re setting policies where we can push back on those things,” he said.

He added that even if a hacker took advantage of 8chan’s lack of defenses, he did not expect the site to stay offline for long. Many companies now offer security services similar to Cloudflare’s, and it might be possible for 8chan to find another provider in short order. (8chan was down for hours on Monday morning, although its administrator said on Twitter that the site would soon be back up after moving to another security provider, BitMitigate.)

It is undeniably true that the underlying problem of online hate is bigger than one website, and that taking 8chan offline, even permanently, would not stop violent hatred from leaping off the internet and onto America’s streets. There will always be another message board, another hosting provider, another security service willing to give harbor to extremists.

But as he prepared to serve 8chan with an eviction notice, Mr. Prince sounded sure of his choice.

“We’ll see how this turns out,” he said. “I don’t think I’m going to regret this for a second.”

US News

via nytimes https://nytimes.com

August 5, 2019 at 10:45AM

Alejandro Bedoya Spoke Out on Gun Violence. Now He Is M.L.S.’s Player of the Week.

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Major League Soccer officials will not punish the Philadelphia Union midfielder Alejandro Bedoya for grabbing a field microphone during a national television broadcast on Sunday night and urging Congress to act to end gun violence.

The shouted statement, which came moments after Bedoya scored the opening goal in a Union victory, was not out of character for the player, who had expressed — in more explicit terms — a similar call to action on social media in the hours before the match. But it created a potentially uncomfortable situation for M.L.S., which has striven, often in opposition with its own fans, to keep political signs and banners out of its stadiums.

An M.L.S. official, speaking after a league meeting on the incident Monday morning, said Bedoya would not face a fine or a suspension. Hours later, the league issued a brief statement that acknowledged the right of players to express their opinions. The statement made no mention of Bedoya specifically, or his action on Sunday.

“The Major League Soccer family joins everyone in grieving for the loss of lives in Texas and Ohio, and we understand that our players and staff have strong and passionate views on this issue,” the statement said.

Bedoya, a former member of the United States national team, scored the opening goal in the Union’s 5-1 win over D.C. United on Sunday night and then peeled off toward the sideline, where he celebrated with his teammates. But as the gathering broke up, Bedoya headed to a microphone placed on the grass in the corner of the field and shouted: “Congress, do something now. End gun violence. Let’s go.”

The game was broadcast on Fox Sports 1, and Bedoya’s message into the microphone, several of which are positioned around the field at every game to pick up the sounds of the action, could clearly be heard by viewers. It could not be heard in the stadium however.

The message was vague, understandable given its brevity. But Bedoya’s social media made clear what kind of action he was seeking. Bedoya, the team captain, had tweeted earlier in the day about the weekend mass shootings that killed 29 people in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, saying “We can start with stricter background checks, red flag laws, making a registry for gun purchases, closing gun show loopholes, and taxing ammunition.”

Though his on-field message was brief, it nonetheless caused a stir. While some athletes have been outspoken on political issues, and have taken actions as varied as kneeling during the anthem and wearing shirts with printed messages during pregame warm-ups, that activity has seldom taken place on the field of play during a game.

In extended postgame remarks, Bedoya said: “It’s absurd man. I’m not going to sit idly and watch this stuff happen and not say something. Before I’m an athlete, a soccer player, I’m a human being first.”

His coach, Jim Curtin, and his team expressed their full support for Bedoya after the game.

“The Philadelphia Union support Alejandro Bedoya,” the team said in a statement. “He is taking a stand. The events that transpired this weekend across the country are deplorable. Our hearts go out to everyone affected.”

Curtin said after the game, “I’m on Alejandro’s team on the Philadelphia Union and I’m on Alejandro’s team in support of his comments on gun control.” Curtin called the number of mass shootings in the United States “outrageous.”

Bedoya, 32, is of Colombian heritage but was born in New Jersey and played college soccer in the United States. After spells in Sweden, Scotland and France, he joined the Union in 2016. He was a regular with the United States national team earlier in the decade and represented it at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

Last year, after a shooting at a school in Parkland, Fla., near where he grew up, he expressed solidarity with victims of that attack.

In the hours after the game, M.L.S. fans created several crowdfunding campaigns to raise money to pay any potential fine Bedoya received.

The league has sometimes struggled this year to deal with political statements by its fans, juggling supporting a right to free speech with taking action against hateful comments.

After news emerged that right-wing extremists had been attending New York City F.C. games, M.L.S. Commissioner Don Garber said the league would not bar them pre-emptively because “our job is not to judge and profile any fan.” His position was that the league would only attempt to police political behavior and fan misconduct inside stadiums, but after the comments drew widespread criticism Garber clarified his remarks, saying, “Major League Soccer condemns hateful groups, hateful actions and speech.”

The incident did little to cool a simmering feud between the league and the fan groups it has cultivated as the core of its matchday experience. Before this season, the Independent Supporters Council, a coalition of fan groups, and groups devoted to individual teams took exception to changes to the league’s code of conduct. The code barred using “political, threatening, abusive, insulting, offensive language and/or gestures.”

The supporters objected to the word “political,” and the council said in a statement, “We, as an organization, feel strongly on ensuring that displays of human rights are not mistaken for political statements.”

Fans in Seattle were barred in July from displaying a flag of the Iron Front, a group that fought the Nazis before World War II. The team said the flag was prohibited political imagery. It later apologized.

Many fans voiced their support for Bedoya. In response to a tweet from the league asking fans to choose a player of the week, the replies were nearly unanimous. Though he wasn’t one of the listed candidates, by far the most common response was a hashtag: “#VoteBedoya.”

More Coverage From The Times

Mass Shootings in Dayton and El Paso: Live Updates

Aug. 5, 2019

Acrimony F.C.: M.L.S. Teams and Fan Groups Navigate a Rocky Marriage

March 2, 2018

US News

via nytimes https://nytimes.com

August 5, 2019 at 07:03PM

A design firm is hosting a contest to encourage people to reimagine cybersecurity stock images

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Cybersecurity stock images are predictable at this point: a hooded man with a shadowy face in front of a keyboard or a mysterious person in front of binary code. A design firm called OpenIDEO thinks these images can be better, so it’s hosting a contest to entice visual creators to make images that are eye-catching, informative, and clear. “Cybersecurity,” which could mean data breaches, hacks, or policy changes, is a difficult concept to visually represent, so OpenIDEO is going to reward creators for their work. The group, in association with a private organization called the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, issued an open call late last month for cybersecurity-related image submissions with plans to award $7,000 to up to five people.

Contestants can submit their ideas until August 16th, and once that date passes, the organization will review submissions. A shortlist of winners will be announced on September 4th. Each of them will receive $500 and a mentorship period to finish up their plans and design a final submission. From there, the top ideas will be announced on October 24th, and the $7,000 prizes will be awarded. The images could show up in technical or policy reports, presentations, or news pieces. All winning submissions have to consent to free licensure through Creative Commons, which means anyone would have permission to use them. Here’s hoping someone submits incredible imagery, so we can move beyond the “hooded man behind a keyboard” trope.

Tech News

via The Verge https://ift.tt/1jLudMg

August 4, 2019 at 09:02AM

French inventor successfully crosses the English Channel on a hoverboard

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Photo by Aurelien Meunier/Getty Images
After a failed attempt at the end of July, French inventor Franky Zapata successfully crossed the English Channel early this morning on his Flyboard Air, a jet-powered hoverboard.

Zapata departed from Sangatte, France and arrived in Dover, England 22 minutes later, reaching speeds of up to 106 miles per hour during the 22-mile trip. “We made a machine three years ago,” he said after landing, “and now, we’ve crossed the Channel, it’s crazy.”

The Guardian reports that the trip wasn’t a continuous one: because he only carried a 10-minute supply of fuel on his back, he had to make a pit stop at the halfway mark to refuel.

This was Zapata’s second attempt to cross the Channel: his first attempt at the end of July ended in failure when he fell into the water while trying to land on the refueling platform. He and his team chalked up the crash to the size of the waves during the landing attempt, forcing him to miss the edge of the platform by centimeters. After the crash, he said that they would make the attempt once again, this time using a slightly different route and a larger refueling platform.

Zapata invented the Flyboard in 2011, a device that uses a water jet to propel the rider through the air behind a boat. He later invented the Flyboard Air, a board powered by four turbo jet engines that allows a rider to fly through the air untethered, using a computer to keep it stabilized. In 2016, Zapata set a world record for the farthest hoverboard flight after he flew the Flyboard Air along the south coast of France for 2,252 meters (About 1.4 miles).

The inventor made headlines in the middle of July when he appeared over crowds during France’s Bastille Day celebrations carrying a gun, a demonstration of some of the uses that the device could have. There has been some interest from the defense industry in the vehicle: defense contractor Implant Sciences had planned to acquire Zapata’s company, Zapata Industries (although that deal later fell through) and France’s defense and procurement agency granted Zapata a €1.3m grant in 2018 to help with the development of the vehicle.

Zapata isn’t the only person working on this sort of jet-powered personal transportation: English inventor Richard Browning developed a jet suit that allows the wearer to fly with six turbo-engines strapped to their arms, something he’s demonstrated to with everyone from the British Royal Marines, to Adam Savage.

Tech News

via The Verge https://ift.tt/1jLudMg

August 4, 2019 at 09:30AM

French inventor successfully crosses the English Channel on a hoverboard

https://ift.tt/2Kl2JkQ

Photo by Aurelien Meunier/Getty Images
After a failed attempt at the end of July, French inventor Franky Zapata successfully crossed the English Channel early this morning on his Flyboard Air, a jet-powered hoverboard.

Zapata departed from Sangatte, France and arrived in Dover, England 22 minutes later, reaching speeds of up to 106 miles per hour during the 22-mile trip. “We made a machine three years ago,” he said after landing, “and now, we’ve crossed the Channel, it’s crazy.”

The Guardian reports that the trip wasn’t a continuous one: because he only carried a 10-minute supply of fuel on his back, he had to make a pit stop at the halfway mark to refuel.

This was Zapata’s second attempt to cross the Channel: his first attempt at the end of July ended in failure when he fell into the water while trying to land on the refueling platform. He and his team chalked up the crash to the size of the waves during the landing attempt, forcing him to miss the edge of the platform by centimeters. After the crash, he said that they would make the attempt once again, this time using a slightly different route and a larger refueling platform.

Zapata invented the Flyboard in 2011, a device that uses a water jet to propel the rider through the air behind a boat. He later invented the Flyboard Air, a board powered by four turbo jet engines that allows a rider to fly through the air untethered, using a computer to keep it stabilized. In 2016, Zapata set a world record for the farthest hoverboard flight after he flew the Flyboard Air along the south coast of France for 2,252 meters (About 1.4 miles).

The inventor made headlines in the middle of July when he appeared over crowds during France’s Bastille Day celebrations carrying a gun, a demonstration of some of the uses that the device could have. There has been some interest from the defense industry in the vehicle: defense contractor Implant Sciences had planned to acquire Zapata’s company, Zapata Industries (although that deal later fell through) and France’s defense and procurement agency granted Zapata a €1.3m grant in 2018 to help with the development of the vehicle.

Zapata isn’t the only person working on this sort of jet-powered personal transportation: English inventor Richard Browning developed a jet suit that allows the wearer to fly with six turbo-engines strapped to their arms, something he’s demonstrated to with everyone from the British Royal Marines, to Adam Savage.

Tech News

via The Verge https://ift.tt/1jLudMg

August 4, 2019 at 09:30AM