The president of the United States did what appears to have been a surprise AMA (Ask Me Anything) session on Reddit today, following in the illustrious footsteps of such luminaries as the Mars Curiosity Rover team, Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings, Woody Harrelson, and someone who is currently passing a kidney stone.

Truth be told, it didn't seem like anything more than simple politicking. He didn't stray far from his usual platforms and didn't answer anything too weird, as Reddit can be known for.

He did make a point of answering a question about Internet freedom:

Internet freedom is something I know you all care passionately about; I do too. We will fight hard to make sure that the Internet remains the open forum for everybody—from those who are expressing an idea to those to want to start a business. And although there will be occasional disagreements on the details of various legislative proposals, I won't stray from that principle—and it will be reflected in the platform.

If you want to read it for yourself, take a look here.

Personally, I love Kickstarter—it and its crowdfunding brethren (IndieGoGo, RocketShare, GoFundMe, et. al.) are a fantastic way for worthwhile projects (such as those featured on The Range) to get off the ground while allowing for donors/backers/investors to feel as if they're part of the company's growth without mortgaging their lives.

But this story from Ben Kuchera at the Penny Arcade Report, a video gaming-centric blog, reveals a more cynical side to crowdfunding.

Eli Hodapp is the editor in chief of Touch Arcade, and he expressed skepticism of the viability of the Republique Kickstarter. This turned into a Twitter conversation with some heated arguments on both sides, and some rather snide comments from everyone involved, which led to a thread being opened on the NeoGAF gaming forum. Soon, things began to get ugly.

. . .

He claimed his personal information was shared on the site, and the harassment began in earnest. He said that his parents would come home to threatening messages on their voice mail. “Just calling to let you know your son is a fucking faggot,” one particularly pleasant message stated. There was an organized attempt to have him fired from TouchArcade.

“This guy better watch himself - he is starting to piss some people off that actually post here & enjoy NeoGaf whom are a part of the development community - myself included,” one poster stated. “That is not a professional way to demonstrate your thoughts on a project and dismiss readers publicly on twitter of the website. Might want to watch out for some people here that know who really control Touch Arcade’s fate and advertising revenue…"

For more, including the author's story on being offered what he felt was a bribe in exchange for media coverage, click on through to the Penny Arcade Report.

This article from Ars Technica should be terrifying for those who haven't learned good password habits for their online accounts — in other words, it should be terrifying for damn near everyone reading this.

From Ars Technica:

The ancient art of password cracking has advanced further in the past five years than it did in the previous several decades combined. At the same time, the dangerous practice of password reuse has surged. The result: security provided by the average password in 2012 has never been weaker.

. . .

At any given time, [Rick Redman, a penetration tester for security consultants KoreLogic and organizer of the Crack Me If You Can password contest] is likely to be running thousands of cryptographically hashed passwords though a PC containing four of Nvidia's GeForce GTX 480 graphics cards. It's an "older machine," he conceded, but it still gives him the ability to cycle through as many as 6.2 billion combinations every second. He typically uses a dictionary file containing about 26 million words, combined with programming rules that greatly extend its effectiveness by adding numbers, punctuation, and other characters to each list entry. Depending on the job, he sometimes uses a 60 million-strong word list and something known as "rainbow tables," which are described later in this article.

Considering that the Gawker network of websites had 1.3 million users' accounts exposed in late 2010, it's safe to say that your passwords for your accounts might possibly be at risk for a dedicated account cracker. For Ars Technica's advice from the experts on how to keep your accounts safe, you can read through to the end of the article — or you can click through below the jump.

Community fans (that includes you, Dan Gibson,) stop clutching your Community DVDs and check this out—though be warned, the narrator can be a bit hard to bear at times.

Yes, that is indeed a video of the fan-made game "Journey to the Center of Hawkthorne," based off of the Community episode "Digital Estate Planning."

The game is downloadable here, but be warned, it is a fan-made game that's currently in its beta stages—you can keep up with each update by subscribing to the reddit community that's been working on it here.

I'm of the opinion that you get extra nerd points if you play the game while watching the episode it's based off of. On a related note, I think you could now easily guess what my plans for this evening will be.

Can't get enough news about the high school classmate you haven't seen in 20 years? Or maybe you love reading about that Facebook friend you've never met, never talked to and wouldn't know if you passed them on the street. Good news, social media fanatics! There's another network for you to explore: www.nextdoor.com.

From a press release:

Nextdoor (www.nextdoor.com) is a private social network for the neighborhood. Using Nextdoor’s free online platform, neighbors create private neighborhood websites where members can ask questions, get to know one another and exchange local advice and recommendations. Nextdoor is specifically designed to provide a trusted environment for neighbor-to-neighbor communication. Hundreds of neighborhoods are already using Nextdoor to build happier, safer places to call home.

In an effort to look at "how wireless technology is affecting our lives" (Short answer: People can now find their news/smut/news about smut anywhere they want), Time has partnered with OpenSignalMaps to find which cities have the spottiest cell service in America.

Our fair pueblo came in sixth-worst, surprising only because it wasn't in the top (bottom?) 5.

From Time.com:

Signal strength is typically measured in decibels — but the same decibel reading will produce different amounts of bars on different phones. You and your friend might stand side by side, your iPhone showing four bars while his Android shows five—and in truth you’re both getting the same amount of juice. The average reading in Tucson, according to OpenSignalsMaps, would likely be around the three-to-four bar threshold.

Furthermore, OpenSignalMaps and Time have apparently decided that Tucson's best carrier is Sprint, while the worst is T-Mobile.

For more, check out Time's slideshow here.

Image pulled from Imgur, via Reddit

I've seen a number of false-tree cell towers back up in Phoenix (that palm tree with the vertical frond doesn't fool me), but the photo above is something new to me. Seen here and on Reddit's front page, the very mention of Tucson brought haters of the region out en masse, who were responded to by scores of Southern Arizonans coming to the Old Pueblo's defense. That lasted all of a few days, until Reddit was once again swept up by love of more cat pictures.

Fun bonus: The "cell tower in Arizona" brought forth a wave of more hidden towers throughout the world. My favorite? "How NOT To Hide A Cell Tower In Arizona," with aftermath photos here.

So how about this Nano Cache Kickstarter?

A project out of Tucson's Cybernetic Research Laboratories, a machining and engineering company just off of Aviation Highway and Alvernon Way, has been ridiculously successful with their travel-sized capsule container Kickstarter project. (For the uninitiated, Kickstarter is one of the original crowd-funding websites—users post projects and ask other users to pledge funds. If it gets off the ground, the donors get gifts related to the project; if it doesn't, nothing changes hands.)

How successful, you ask? The original target for the project was $2,500. Kickstarter users have, as of this writing, pledged $30,258—1,210 percent of the funding they originally wanted to get the project off the ground, making it the third-most-funded Tucson-based Kickstarter yet, with 18 days yet to go before funding closes.

From the Nano Cache Kickstarter page:

Nano Cache is a versatile, sturdy, sleek, protective metal case to be used for just about… well, anything! Nano Cache was the idea to somehow protect all those precious small items and keep them secure/close at all times on your person, backpack, pet, etc.

It's hard to understand how this happened or whether the person running Celeb Boutique's Twitter feed is making a wildly inappropriate joke (the winking emoticon makes it seem like they know what they're doing), but either way, today isn't the day.

UPDATE: The company pulled the tweet and apologized.

My experience has been more in making copy mistakes than in trying to fix them, but if you want to exercise your skills in spotting semi-obvious errors in fake college essays, First Person Tutor (get the joke?) is online and free for your enjoyment. I only made it through a few levels before getting bored, but based on our comment section and some tweets directed at the Weekly, some of our readers will likely get a real thrill from the game, so I thought it was worth mentioning.