Researchers at UC Irvine uncovered a vulnerability that enables some gaming mice with polling rates of 4,000 Hz or higher — many of which are developed in the Bay Area — to be turned into spyware, capturing conversations through desk vibrations using AI.

As Tom’s Hardware reports, security researchers from the University of California Irvine found a way to use high-end optical gaming mice containing advanced sensors that can sample data up to 8,000 times per second, per Hoodline, to record users’ conversations via desk vibrations. They then used artificial intelligence to decode the vibrations with an accuracy of about 42 to 61%, as detailed in the group’s paper, aptly titled, Mic-E-Mouse.

Tom’s Hardware explains that the vulnerability can occur when a user connects their gaming mouse to a computer that’s been compromised, which frequently happens via infected free and open source software like creative apps or video games.

"With only a vulnerable mouse, and a victim’s computer running compromised or even benign software (in the case of a web-based attack surface), we show that it is possible to collect mouse packet data and extract audio waveforms," the researchers write.

As Hoodline reports, Sunnyvale-based PixArt Imaging manufactures some of the sensors used in the vulnerable gaming mice, many of which are developed by Bay Area companies, including Milpitas-based Cosair, San Jose’s Logitech, and Razer, which is based in Irvine but has offices in San Francisco, per Hoodline.

Hoodline notes that the researchers discovered the quality of the audio transmissions was degraded significantly when users’ conversations were kept below 60-80 decibels and if they utilized thick or rigid surfaces like signal-absorbing mouse pads. They also suggest security measures for companies, such as blacklisting vulnerabilities, compiling approved peripheral lists, and releasing firmware updates that limit data exposure, per Hoodline.

Image: Viper 8K Hz, one of the vulnerable mice tested in the research; Razer

SFist provided you with a rundown of the plethora of St. Patrick’s Day festivities, which started over the weekend and will continue through Monday.

Here are a few more things happening this week, March 17-23.

Free Tulips at Union Square

• Spring is almost here, and so are the free tulips at Union Square. The square will be decked out with 80,000 tulips grown from Dutch bulbs in celebration of American Tulip Day. Head on over on Saturday afternoon and grab a small bouquet of stems to take home. Last year there were six free tulips provided per person, but it’s unclear how many will be available this year. Expect long lines.

Screaming Queens Documentary

• The Tenderloin Museum and Frameline Film Festival are hosting a rare screening of the documentary, Screaming Queens, at the Roxie on Wednesday. The documentary chronicles the historic 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria riot, a pivotal moment in trans history that predates Stonewall. (The site of Compton’s at Turk and Taylor in the Tenderloin recently received two historic designations.)
  
  After the film, there will be a Q&A with the filmmakers, Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman. Advance tickets are sold out, but there might be tickets available at the door if you get there early.

Books and Bikes on Clement Street

• The SF Bike Coalition and Spokes + Folks are hosting a bike-centric event in front of Green Apple Books during the quarterly Clement Street Art Walk on Thursday. Beloved mobile library, Biblioteca Bicicleta, will be on location, and there will be giveaways and other activities.

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Bay Area Living Legends Burlesque Weekend

• The Bay Area burlesque community comes together for the annual Bay Area Legends Challenge, a weekend-long fundraiser for sending retired performers to Las Vegas’s big Burlesque Hall of Fame event in June. This weekend’s events include a variety of showcases, as well as a brunch and a workshop series.

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Free Bayview Game Fest

• Local gaming enthusiasts are invited to the first annual Bayview Game Fest on Saturday, which is free and open to all skill levels. Participants can compete for prizes by demonstrating their skills at NBA 2K25 and Mario Kart and learn about the world of gaming, including careers and content creation and streaming.

Image: Larry Zhou/Ghetty Images

Add to the list of the too many things to do this week the groundbreaking annual queer gamer conference GaymerX in San Jose (Sept. 30 - Oct. 2). The world’s first LGBT gaming convention, GaymerX was founded in 2013 in San Francisco, solicited protest threats from Westboro Baptist Church (They never showed! Event organizers even made them a cake), made an appearance on Looking, moved to San Jose last year, and powers on for its fourth year this Friday through Sunday at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara. Below are the conference's most intriguing gameplay scenarios.

Image: GaymerX

Cosplay and Parties
The ‘grandperson of them all’ occasion at any gaming convention events is its cosplay contest, and the GaymerX Cosplay Pageant goes down Sunday morning at 11 a.m. Prizes will be awarded in the categories of Best in Show, Best Glam, Best Queer Character, Best DIY, Audience Favorite, and Best Indie Character.

“Everyone also gets a participation ribbon, because I'm from that generation,” head of cosplay Kitty Stryker told SFist.

The party scene at GaymerX is augmented with Kitty Powers' Fabulous Nerdy Game Show! Friday, the GaymerX Dance on Saturday, plus gigs of bits from chiptune violinist Aethernaut.

Image: GaymerX

Panel discussions will include How to Twitch Safely as a POC/LGBTQIA/Female ID'd Streamer, Reducing Unintended Bias Through Game User Research, and
Butts in Gaming - The Art of Characterisation, among many others.

GaymerX runs Friday, September 30 - Sunday, October 2 at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara. Tickets here.

Related: GaymerX Conference Organizers Debut Queer Gaming Documentary

Extremely disappointed @Microsoft and @Xbox hired women wearing these outfits to perform at @gdc. PLEASE RT. pic.twitter.com/JYFTTGdzQk

— Brianna Wu, Yeah! (@Spacekatgal) March 18, 2016

Microsoft had an archaic message for female gamers at this week's four-day 2016 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco—namely, TOGTFO. The tech mammoth made a reckless, albeit entrenched, move at Saturday's Xbox event wherein they featured women in barely-there costumes, dressed like prepubescent Catholic school girls, to greet their predominantly male partygoers. And not everyone was thrilled.

Several attendees took to Twitter to air their frustration. Most notably, Kamina Vincent posted a series of perfect tweets in response.

Vincent and others were quick not to place blame on the dancers, who were there to do a job. The fault here lies squarely with Microsoft, who planned the event. "[The dancers] introduced herself and asked if we were having fun," Vincent told The Huffington Post. "I asked what her role was at the party. She told me that they had been hired to speak with attendees and encourage them to the dance floor."

After receiving a rapid backlash, Microsoft went into spin control late Saturday. Xbox chief Phil Spencer sent an emil to The Verge, explaining that the GDC event in question "was not consistent or aligned to our values," and said Microsoft would do better in the future." His statement reads:

At Xbox-hosted events at GDC this past week, we represented Xbox and Microsoft in a way that was not consistent or aligned to our values. It was unequivocally wrong and will not be tolerated. I know we disappointed many people and I’m personally committed to holding ourselves to higher standards. We must ensure that diversity and inclusion are central to our everyday business and core values. We will do better in the future.

Oddly enough, that very same day Microsoft sponsored a Women in Games lunch.

As you should know, sexism in gaming is kind of a big deal right now. Women are underrepresented. The #gamergate movement's harassment of female gamers. Online gaming communities. Men dominating the game development arena. And on. And on.

After the Microsoft-Xbox fallout, Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin posed a wonderful question to Microsoft, asking, "What message should women take from fuckme schoolgirl dancers at your #GDC party?"

Microsoft has yet to respond to her.

This is an ad, circa the late-1980s, for the AdLib Music Synthesizer Card, geared toward video games made for the PC. The company would be out of business by 1992, as the YouTube uploader tells us, having been replaced by Creative Labs Sound Blaster. But oh, just look at the expressions on this young boy's face as he's introduced to the glories of rich, goofy, synthesized computer sounds. Hilarious.

[h/t: Laughing Squid]

Can Miss Coco Peru make this a regular thing? The world (gaming or otherwise) needs more Peru commentary while playing video games — especially one as violent (and fun) as GTA 5.

The gaming world is full of dicks, and not in a good way. Gay guys and women (especially women) aren't typically welcome within this fascinating world of digital dorkdom. (Your SFist editor's own experience trying to play Halo back in the day with a bunch of straight dudes didn't go over well, either. Alas.) But this weekend in San Francisco, GaymerX, the world's first ever LGBT gamer convention happens on Saturday and Sunday.

"There's a lot of bullying and homophobia in the gaming community," GaymerX cofounder Matt Conn tells Mashable. "Part of our mission is to help that change."

This weekend's kickoff will boast gaming panels, booths, concerts cosplay, parties, and more. Noted supporters include EA, Xbox, GLAAD, The Trevor Project, dot429, and Straight But Not Narrow.

More than 2,000 tickets been sold. Tickets run $45 online or $60 at the door.

It was a bloody Monday for Zynga, the San Francisco-based gaming company with the friendly dog mascot. Yesterday the company announced massive layoffs which cut 18% of Zynga's workforce and totalled 520 employees. And some employees had to find out via Facebook. Brutal.

The ax fell especially hard on Zynga's satellite offices. The company has reportedly shuttered its Los Angeles, Dallas and New York offices--the latter home to OMGPOP, the company behind the mobile app Draw Something (our app memory is foggy, but even we remember when everyone and their mom was playing it). Zynga gutted OMGPOP yesterday after acquiring it for $180 million last year.

Some employees heard the bad news the hard way:

San Francisco's offices were not left unscathed, as the layoffs extended across pretty much every department in the company. Mars Bar played host to a gaggle of newly laid-off worked yesterday afternoon, as they did the only thing logical after getting the news: drinking heavily and commiserating over their severance envelopes.

Meanwhile, NY Post had a rare moment of brilliance with this headline.

[Mashable]
[Buzzfeed]

According to a new report, tribal gaming resorts in California saw a 6% drop in revenue in 2008, and the report's author, Alan Meister, foresees a similar drop across the local industry in 2009. The states 65 casinos generated $7.3 billion in '08, compared to $7.8 billion in '07. California represents 27% of the nation's total tribal gaming sector, and almost half the states saw decreases in gaming revenue over the last two years. So we suppose this means that in times of economic trouble, people actually gamble away less of their social security and unemployment checks! Kudos, gamblers.

It's probably not news to anyone who's played an internet-enabled, multi-player video game in the last few years (or anyone who's ever met a teenage boy, for that matter) that LGBT gamers often face name-calling and harassment in the game-o-sphere when they advertise their sexual orientation. The Bay Area Reporter just published this investigative report in which they speak to several people in the industry -- including Flynn DeMarco of gaygamer.net and Caryl Shaw, a senior producer for the Sims and Spore -- who discuss things they've heard and seen. The takeaways: The Sims welcomes all kinds of sexual proclivities, gender identities and whathaveyou, but the multi-player environment of Xbox Live -- which is particularly rife with children and teens -- does not allow players to display their sexual orientation in their profile, gamertag or elsewhere.

Around 2 p.m. Friday on the 800 block of Southwood Drive in South San Francisco, an 18-year-old man was robbed of his PlayStation 3. (Mean!) According to KNTV, "he was sitting on a bench when a man approached him and demanded his backpack. The bag contained a PlayStation 3 system, three games and a controller." Initially the victim told his mugger to fuck off, more or less, but after one of the men pulled up his sweatshirt to reveal a black handgun tucked in his waistband, he relented. The suspect is described as "a white man around 20 years old, with short, dark hair and a medium build. Police reports estimate his height as between 5 foot 7 and 6 feet tall," who got into "a four door, silver vehicle parked on Haven Avenue." Alas, not all armed robberies have a happy ending.