Hasta La Gadget!

Yesterday we reported that thanks to a leak, it looked like 2K Games was getting ready to announce BioShock: The Collection. From the name itself it is clearly a collection of all the BioShock games released to date, although we were unsure if this included all the DLCs that have also been released since.

The good news for gamers and fans is that wonder no more. 2K has officially announced the game and that it will be seeing a release come 13th of September, 2016. It will also be making its way across multiple platforms which includes the PS4, Xbox One, and the PC, so it looks like just about everyone will be able to get in on it.

According to 2K, “Working with Blind Squirrel Games, we’ve remastered BioShock, BioShock 2, and BioShock Infinite for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC making them look better than ever. BioShock: The Collection brings the three titles together for the first time, complete with all single-player DLC and a never-before-seen video series, ‘Director’s Commentary: Imagining BioShock,’ which includes insights from Ken Levine.”

There are some things to take note of, such as how BioShock Infinite will not be remastered as 2K thinks it already meets current-gen console standards, and that the collection will not include BioShock 2’s multiplayer mode. Other than that, you can expect pretty much everything else. It will be priced at $60.

BioShock: The Collection Officially Announced, Coming September 13 , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Or at least they don’t need more apps.

That much is evident from the implosion of the “I Sea” app, which has sent waves through the “refugee tech” cottage industry.

It turned out that the prize-winning app, which claimed to lets users help save migrants crossing the Mediterranean by broadcasting real-time satellite footage of the ocean, was a sham. It didn’t scan in real-time, but rather used a static image of the ocean. After the revelation last week, it was pulled from the app store.

I Sea is not an anomaly but the most visible symptom of “app creep” in the humanitarian crisis du jour, that of Syrian refugees migrating to Europe.

Is there an app for that?
Ever since the Syrian refugee crisis crested to public attention, it has become a favorite subject of well-intentioned “hackers” and “disruptors.” For every vector of the monstrous crisis — housing, first aid, food, education — we were told, “There’s an app for that.”

The apps, entrepreneurs, and startups certainly filled some gaps created by governments and large nonprofits, which can be slow to act because of their size. But after the initial enthusiasm for these “miracle apps,” many peter out, both because the realities of helping refugees are so tough, but also, perhaps, because the media appeal has waned.

The “Refoodgee” app to connect Germany refugees with food has fewer than 500 downloads and hasn’t been updated since October, when it was written up in news outlets. A founder of the ClinicFinder app, which connects refugees to medical services, told HuffPost he had no idea how many people downloaded it or have successfully used it. Services Provider, a Canadian smartphone app that sought to connect refugees in Jordan to basic services, is currently in limbo as it waits for feedback from the UNHCR; no refugee is currently able to access it.

“We put roughly 75,000 volunteer hours towards the app,” Renee Black, a founder of Services Provider, told HuffPost. “And UNHCR gave us $3000 in funding.” These are the odds that even well-designed apps face on the ground.

The apps that have stuck it out face tough circumstances. One website that was widely heralded as “AirBnB for Refugees” faced growing pains after its glowing reception last fall. Refugees Welcome matches refugees with spare rooms or sublets in European countries.

“The demand is far, far higher than the supply,” Sophie Mirow, project manager of RW Germany, told HuffPost in April. In Hamburg, for instance, there were just ten room listings for over 1000 refugees seeking accommodation.

It’s a sharp turn from last fall, when it was reported that Refugees Welcome was “overwhelmed” with offers from people who wanted to house refugees. Mirow said they saw a “sharp decrease” in rooms offered over the past six months, perhaps as initial enthusiasm over the refugee crisis has waned. Plus, although their website states they will help “all refugees irrespective of their residence status,” i.e. whether or not they have a residence permit, the majority of refugees they have been able to help are the ones with official permits, said Mirow. It has been harder than they initially expected to figure out how to accommodate refugees without residence permits — who are perhaps the ones most in need of a place to stay.

Silicon Syria
The problem of refugee tech is exemplified in the hackathon series called TechFugees. The first hackathon took place in Sydney last November. But so far, not a single idea from the event has been enacted. A TechFugees representative said several “mentoring relationships” formed during the weekend.

TechFugees does have one visible byproduct, though: more hackathons. It has replicated in New York, London and Melbourne in recent months. Across the board, even the best hackathon ideas remain in development.

“Deploying stuff on the ground is very hard because there’s multiple agencies involved and there’s almost certainly no internet access,” Mike Butcher, a TechFugees founder, told Londonist.

Well, sure it’s hard. That’s why it’s a crisis.

Refugee app creep reflects the Silicon-ificiation of the whole world, where every problem is a profit opportunity, words are robbed of meaning (RIP “disrupt;” “mobile;” “interface”) and phones are more reliable actors than humans.

The I Sea debacle throws this into sharp relief, but we almost can’t blame them. It was developed, tellingly, by an ad agency, Singapore-based called Grey Group, for a Maltese nonprofit that surely thought a buzzy app would raise its profile. And if even one person donated money based on that, wouldn’t it have been worth it? Tech entrepreneurs create app creep, but the media enables it.

Here’s a modest proposal: we don’t need more flashy refugee apps. Why not, instead, work on capacity-building for organizations that are already on the ground? The Red Cross, Oxfam, Amnesty International, and so many others. Or contribute tech knowledge towards state-led efforts, like Germany’s popular app for incoming refugees.

Excess goodwill towards the refugee crisis is hardly a bad thing. But turning the refugee trail into an arena for fame and unfulfilled glory — making Syria and the Greek islands stand in for Mountain View and Palo Alto — is a fool’s errand.

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Donald Trump argues that taking the nomination away from him now would be wrong. That he won the most Republican primary votes ever. That he beat 16 contenders. But Trump’s favorite argument against the campaign to stop him appears to be that it’s “totally illegal.”

Sadly for Trump, he’s almost certainly wrong.

Because while making that assertion is certainly to his advantage as the “Dump Trump” movement gains traction, a pair of decades-old U.S. Supreme Court cases make clear that a national political party is a private organization with wide latitude as to how it conducts its business.

“The delegates can do whatever they want,” laughed a Republican National Committee member who is deeply familiar with the convention rules, but spoke on condition of anonymity to be candid about the party’s internal matters. “This isn’t going to be a legal issue. This is going to be a political issue.”

Trump’s campaign did not respond to questions from The Huffington Post, but the candidate himself has made his view on the matter plain. On June 17, Trump said in a statement: “Any such move would not only be totally illegal but also a rebuke of the millions of people who feel so strongly about what I am saying.” On June 19, he told NBC News: “They can’t do it legally.”

But the celebrity businessman appears to be relying on state party rules and, in some cases, state laws that require delegates to support the candidate who won their state or congressional district during the primary season. Trump surrogate Scottie Nell Hughes, for example, sent out a tweet last week pointing to a Tennessee statute.

But the RNC member said the Supreme Court cases — one from 1975, the other from 1981 — dealt precisely with that issue. Delegates may face political retribution from local or state party officials, but given the case law, lawsuits or prosecution are highly unlikely to succeed, he said.

And while RNC rules do require convention delegates to vote according to the results of primaries and caucus results in their states, the preamble to the party’s rules states that they are only valid “until the next national convention.”

In other words, the rules governing the Cleveland convention haven’t yet been adopted, and they won’t be until the Convention Rules Committee drafts them and the full convention approves them.

If the anti-Trump “Free the Delegates” group can muster a majority of the 2,472 delegates, they can clearly get rid of Trump through a rules change, the RNC member said.

That nearly all states today even have “bound” delegates is the result of the 2012 primary season. In many of those contests, supporters of former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) swarmed local and state party conventions to win delegate slots to the Tampa convention — effectively undoing the results of some earlier primaries and caucuses that GOP nominee Mitt Romney won.

The RNC responded with new rules, requiring states holding elections open to voters to tie those results to actual bound delegates. Some states responded by avoiding primaries and caucuses altogether, allocating all their delegates through conventions open to party activists, but not necessarily to voters. Colorado was one such state, and is home to the two delegates leading the “Free the Delegates” movement.

“Anytime he doesn’t win, that’s his response: This is illegal, you’ve stolen it,” said one of the two, Regina Thomson. “The fact that he calls it illegal just makes me laugh.”

Yet as she speaks to other delegates, Thomson said, it’s clear that Trump’s statements and litigious history are causing some to worry that crossing him will lead to long, expensive court battles they cannot afford.

This isn’t going to be a legal issue. This is going to be a political issue.
Republican National Committee member

Anti-Trumpers hope to allay that fear of legal consequences. Steve Lonegan, with the formerly pro-Ted Cruz, now anti-Trump Courageous Conservatives PAC, told delegates on recent conference calls that the group is raising money to pay legal costs for those sued or prosecuted for not voting for Trump.

Similarly, anti-Trumpers point to a new federal class-action lawsuit challenging a Virginia state law that, under the threat of criminal penalties, requires both parties to give all their delegates to the winners of their respective primaries. Not even the state parties paid any attention to it: Both Republicans and Democrats allocated their Virginia delegates in proportion to the votes each candidate received.

The judge in the case has scheduled a hearing for next week. If the judge finds the Virginia law unconstitutional, anti-Trumpers hope, it will show delegates all over the country that not even state laws, let alone state party rules, can overrule the will of a national party.

“With this fresh precedent, delegates will note and understand that Mr. Trump’s protests of illegality are without merit,” said Beau Correll, the Virginia delegate who filed the class-action suit.

Yet even if anti-Trumpers persuade delegates that they won’t risk jail time or a lawsuit for changing the rules, they still face the challenge of lining up 57 votes in the Convention Rules Committee and 1,237 among the full delegation.

The RNC member said it’s possible they could do so — if Trump’s campaign continues to falter. “I think you’ve got to have a combination of bad poll numbers and bad conduct. Meaning something that shakes up the fundamentals at the convention,” he said.

But short of that, he added, the rules that “bind” delegates are probably safe. “The question is: Are there enough votes to do that? I don’t think so. It so goes against the fundamental idea of fairness to change the rules after the fact.”

And Sharon Day, co-chair of the RNC, said Trump has nothing to fear. “Donald Trump is our presumptive nominee, and we’ll go to the convention and make him our candidate,” she said. “People have voted in primaries and caucuses across the country, and he overwhelmingly won.”

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Authorities say they seized more than $20 million in cash during an alleged drug bust at a Miami home and business Tuesday in what’s being touted as one of the largest single cash seizures in Miami-Dade police history.

The astonishing haul was mostly found in buckets hidden behind a wall inside a home belonging to Luis Hernandez-Gonzalez, 44, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by The Huffington Post.

In all, 24 five-gallon containers packed with bundles of cash were located behind the walls. In other parts of the home, two separate bundles each labeled as $150,000 were found. There was also a loaded Tec-9 pistol with an extended clip and several packages of steroids, the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office reported.

Authorities say Gonzalez raked in the money by growing and selling marijuana through the cover of an indoor gardening business called “Blossoms Experience.”

An earlier search of the store, which authorities said was a legitimate business, additionally recovered a safe believed to contain $180,000, as well as around 16 grams of marijuana, according to the charges.

Gonzalez allegedly confessed to advising customers via phone calls and text messages on how to grow marijuana, but denied being directly involved in the drug industry.

Prosecutors claim that conversations Gonzalez had with confidential sources prove otherwise.

Back in 2010, when Miami’s division of the Drug Enforcement Administration first started investigating him, they say he discussed growing and transporting marijuana with a source inside his store, according to the affidavit.

At one point Gonzalez allegedly boasted of having “multiple grow houses that produced 167 pounds of cannabis.” He said “it took several guys about eight hours to process the product.”

Prosecutors say two accused marijuana growers who were recently busted in Tennessee for illegal grow houses were among the customers he’s accused of selling equipment to.

During Gonzalez’s bond hearing Wednesday, his attorney argued that prosecutors had overstepped their bounds and that the money recovered from his home and business were legally earned from his gardening company, the Miami Herald reported.

A judge reportedly ordered him held on $4 million bond regardless.

“For a man with $20 million in his walls, an elevated bond is clearly necessary,” Miami-Dade prosecutor Adam Korn said during the hearing.

Gonzalez faces a slew of charges, including money laundering, cannabis trafficking, conspire to traffic cannabis, unlawful use of communication, possession of cannabis, possession of a weapon while committing a felony, and possession of a place used for trafficking.

His sister, Salma Hernandez, who authorities say worked at his gardening store, was also arrested and charged.

“The amount of the currency seized represents one of the largest money seizures ever in this jurisdiction,” Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said in a statement following Gonzalez’s arrest.

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Even though it took place three seasons ago, the Red Wedding in Game of Thrones is still probably one of the most shocking things to ever happen on the series. And though George RR Martin is wildly imaginative in creating the world of Westeros, the inspiration for the Red Wedding actually comes from history. We did this to ourselves before Game of Thrones did it.

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