Yes, it's apparently a hoax. But a good hoax:

There, in what appeared to be a 30s-era newsreel, was H.P. Lovecraft, uncomfortable and uneasy, gaunt and pasty, speaking in an educated 19th century New England accent, displaying socially awkward mannerisms, and sitting at a desk talking about his work. I'd read a lot about Lovecraft, and had never heard any mention of him ever having been filmed, but the illusion was so well done, that it had me thinking, just for a second, that somebody had dug up some long-lost footage of Lovecraft. It is part of this attention to detail, for example the use of material drawn directly from Lovecraft's voluminous body of letters in the newsreel monologue that really places this portion of the film a cut above.

It sure sounded like him. That's because the words were by him.

-the Centaur

Labels: The Dread Plush Cthulhu

If the world didn't have enough evil already, dedicated computer engineers have figured out how to put it on tap. Behold the terror that is the Lovecraftian Name Generator! Go on, click on it, see what I'm talking about.

Back? Ok, I admit, "Lolho" and "Ual'ke" aren't the scariest Lovecraftian names. But it's programmatic. You can create more than one. The current limit is 25, but by the unholy names of Anai, Bbhaaat, Bosaush, Cazagorarl, Ch-yos, H'eligthorteg, Han-dha, Ibhagugu, K'zaru, Kephoital, Mazazho, Mephangos, Mmililog,Nacharsar, Nali-yatl, Naquggo, Niquggolo, Phomasothugn, Ralellosaq, Rhub-harny, Rlakibha, Uga-urshu, Uggugakithu, Ygg-cyo and Yishotha, not even in Lovecraft's coldest visions of an indifferent universe could he have imagined you'd be able to create an entire pantheon with the click of a button!

Even worse, that limit is no doubt arbitrary, designed to protect their computing infrastructure if not the fabric of space-time. A truly evil black-hatter could use a sequence of queries to generate matched sets of Cthulukin at the upper limit of the QPS (queries-per-second) their servers could handle! Hopefully they have some kind of DoS (Denial of Shoggoths) throttling on their servers to protect humanity. If not-

the mind reels.
-the Centaur

Labels: Development, Hard Science, The Dread Plush Cthulhu