Gmoke sez, "Two years ago, two Bedouin women, Rafea Al Raja and her aunt Seiha Al Raja (Um Bader), returned from a six-month solar engineering training at the Barefoot College in India as 'solar engineers' to start a training center for other women. Although they solarized 80 houses in their village, the government of Jordan, NGOs and international organizations have shown little or no interest in their work. Even with a documentary on their training and projects at home, 'Solar Mamas', there hasn't been enough funding to sustain their work and their dreams.

“We are still not working and the training has not started either,” Rafea told The Jordan Times in an interview on Saturday.

They came with hope, she said, but this hope is fading away. The government, NGOs and international organisations are showing little or no interest, according to FES officials, leaving the project stranded in the desert.

“Now even our fellow villagers have started to make fun of us because they see nothing is happening on the ground,” said Rafea, who with her aunt were received with festive firing and an “official” ceremony upon their arrival from India.

The situation took a dramatic turn for both Rafea and Um Bader. Although they provided solar energy to 80 houses in the village, they are now facing the darkness of personal problems that have plighted them since they completed their training in India.

Hopes fade for two bedouin ‘solar engineers’ [Gaelle Sundelin/Jordan Times]

(Thanks, Gmoke)

Mike Mika's five-year-old daughter wanted to play Donkey Kong as Princess Toadstool, so he hacked the ROM to effect the genderswap (see the Damsels in Distress episode of "Tropes vs Women in Video Games" for more). He's even posted a patch (ZIP) for the original ROM so you can play it yourself, or with your kids.

My three year old daughter and I play a lot of old games together. Her favorite is Donkey Kong. Two days ago, she asked me if she could play as the girl and save Mario. She's played as Princess Toadstool in Super Mario Bros. 2 and naturally just assumed she could do the same in Donkey Kong. I told her we couldn't in that particular Mario game, she seemed really bummed out by that. So what else am I supposed to do? Now I'm up at midnight hacking the ROM, replacing Mario with Pauline. I'm using the 2010 NES Donkey Kong ROM. I've redrawn Mario's frames and I swapped the palettes in the ROM. I replaced the M at the top with a P for Pauline. Thanks to Kevin Wilson for giving me the lead on the tools and advice.

Donkey Kong: Pauline Edition (via Waxy)

Nate Anderson's long Ars Technica piece on RATters -- men who use "Remote Administration Tools" to spy on others, mostly women, via their laptop cameras, and to plunder their computers for files and passwords -- is a must-read. Anderson lays out the way that online communities like Hack Forums provide expertise, tools, and, most importantly, validation for the men who participate in this "game." Anderson explains the power of software like DarkComet, which allows for near-total control of compromised computers (everything from opening the CD trays to disabling the Start menu in Windows); the dehumanizing language used by Ratters (they call their victims "slaves"); and the way that these tools have found their way into the arsenals of totalitarian governments, like the Assad regime in Syria, which used these tools to spy on rebels.

For many ratters, though, the spying remains little more than a game. It might be an odd hobby, but it's apparently no big deal to invade someone's machine, rifle through the personal files, and watch them silently from behind their own screens. "Most of my slaves are boring," wrote one aspiring ratter. "Wish I could get some more girls with webcams. It makes it more exciting when you can literally spy on someone. Even if they aren't getting undressed!"

One poster said he had already archived 200GB of webcam material from his slaves. "Mostly I pick up the best bits (funny parts, the 'good' [sexual] stuff) and categorize them (name, address, passwords etc.), just for funsake," he wrote. "For me I don't have the feeling of doing something perverted, it's more or less a game, cat and mouse game, with all the bonuses included. The weirdest thing is, when I see the person you've been spying on in real life, I've had that a couple of times, it just makes me giggle, especially if it's someone with an uber-weird-nasty habit."

By finding their way to forums filled with other ratters, these men—and they appear to be almost exclusively men—gain community validation for their actions. "lol I have some good news for u guys we will all die sometime, really glad to know that there are other people like me who do this shit," one poster wrote. "Always thought it was some kind of wierd sick fetish because i enjoy messing with my girl slaves."

Everything we do today involves computers and everything we do tomorrow will require computers. It's imperative that computers be designed to reveal themselves to their users and owners -- every program and process accessible to users and owners by design. But we continue to erode this fundamental through bans on jailbreaking and unlocking, and through the governmental trade in "zero-day" exploits intended for use in so-called cyberwar.

Meet the men who spy on women through their webcams [Nate Anderson/Ars Technica]

Lakelady sez, "In an ad for cold cream facial cleanser they use 'slightly' radioactive dirt on a young woman's face to test which cleanser works the best. Complete with geiger counter clicks. Gotta love the innocence of the 50s."

Before anyone protests that the level of radioactivity is very low -- like, lower than a brick wall -- the astounding thing isn't that they're spreading "radioactive" stuff on a model's face, but rather that "radioactivity" is being presented as a health benefit and beautifying agent.

Shocking 1950's Commercial!

Anita Sarkeesian has released the long-awaited first installment in her new, improved "Tropes vs Women in Video Games" series. Sarkeesian sought $6,000 on Kickstarter to produce slicker versions of her earlier, DIY series, and she was smeared by vile, angry gamer-dudes who created games where you could beat the crap out of her for the sin of identifying as a feminist and daring to question the portrayal of gender in games. The happy ending to this shameful episode is that her Kickstarter became a good-people vs goons plebiscite, and would up raising $158,922.

The first installment is "Damsels in Distress," and is a smart, well-researched, wonderfully presented history of the woman-waiting-for-a-hero trope through gaming history. It's just in time for International Women's Day, and is a wonderful kickoff for a new series.

Damsel in Distress: Part 1 - Tropes vs Women in Video Games

Toronto's living shitshow of a mayor, Rob "Laughable Bumblefuck" Ford, is back in the headlines. Sarah Thomson, the publisher of The Women's Post, who ran against Ford in the last election, claims that he came onto her at a Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee affair, grabbing her ass and saying, "[she] should have been in Florida with him last week because his wife wasn't there." According to Thomson, Ford was drunk and "out of it." He appears worse for wear in a soon-to-be-infamous photo with Thomson, in which he sports a stained shirt and a rather unflattering expression.

"He grabbed my ass and I'm thinking what the heck is going on with him? I was so mad about it because this is somebody who knows how much I do for this city," Thomson told radio host John Moore.

She said she told Ford's staff to remove him from the room.

"I went to his handlers and said, 'Get him out of here,'" she said.

Thomson said Ford "completely crossed the line" Thursday night.

"He needs help if he's doing that to someone like me," she said.

"What he said to me and what he did is wrong."

Rob Ford blasted by Sarah Thomson for alleged crude comment [Don Peat/Toronto Sun]

Charlotte sez,

It's International Women's Day today and the London Feminist Network (to whom I proudly belong) have organised the most awesome fundraising event for our conference later this year, a film launch for "Banners and Broad Arrows." In 1832 the women of the United Kingdom were excluded from the Parliamentary franchise. After 71 years this injustice remained. In 1903 the Women's Social and Political Union was formed. This is the story told through their own eyes.

A lecture by writer/director Nigel Shephard, who will be presenting his work so far on the film Banners and Broad Arrows. He tells the story of the Suffragette Movement from its inception in 1903 to its demise at the outbreak of war in 1914, using original still photographs taken by the Suffragettes themselves. The really cool thing about this lecture is that there will be a whole load of pictures on display that have only recently been released from the Official Secrets Act. These never previously published photographs were smuggled out of Holloway prison by campaigners.

This is a great opportunity to discover the history of the suffragettes through their own photographs and to meet the director and share in developing ideas for the film. Please, please come along to demonstrate your support at this first fundraising event to take the film into full production. It's only £10 a ticket and all profits are being split equally between the film producer and the London Feminist Network."

THE KINGS HEAD THEATRE UPPER STREET ISLINGTON 7.30PM SUNDAY 24TH MARCH 2013

Banners and Broad Arrows - never before seen photographs of the suffragettes in Holloway prison (Thanks, Charlotte)

Alan sez, "The makers of Dove have taken their 'Real Beauty' campaign against P-shopped models into the realm of hacktivism. As the video explains, they sneaked out a Photoshop plug-in (called an Action) that supposedly added a fake skin glow but in fact restored the initial appearance of a model prior to the usual sort of Photoshoppification."

Dove: Thought Before Action

Nina sez, "This video features celebrated science fiction authors speaking about the role of women in their writing. The video was created as part of a celebration for Women's History Month this March."

Women Writers on Science Fiction and Fantasy