October is here, and the baseball playoffs are near. Hit a home run with Late Night Computing for October 1, 2012.

My favorite baseball team, the Pittsburgh Pirates, clinched their 20th losing season in a row facing the Cincinnati Reds yesterday. It was a sad day for me, Shack. I knew it was coming. The collapse looked so distant in July - but most of us who follow the Bucs closely knew they were playing way above their talent level the middle-half of the season and so the collapse was inevitable. Maybe next year, we'll say. Maybe next year.

News bits:

• Remember BlackSpace, announced back in February by former EA Tiburon developers? It's now a Kickstarter project with a hefty video for your perusal. [via Kickstarter]

• Did you happen to see our coverage of the X-COM: Enemy Unkown interactive trailer? Yes? Good. Now, just how far can this type of media advance? [via Ars Technica]

• Hey, you. Do you teach programming? Here's why everything you're attempting to teach is possibly wrong. [via MIT Technology Review]

• Why containment, the decadent foreign policy from the Cold War, no longer works in the age of social media and modern technology. [via The Diplomat]

• Google surpasses Microsoft to become the "world's second-largest technology company". [via Bloomberg Businessweek]

Chatty posts of the moment.

Make sure you log-in and check your filters if you can't see the following:

• "Looper thread. Well, that sure was a good movie! I'm impressed with how little the trailers gave away. The internal logic was incredibly sound, as was the realization of the world. Fantastic detail." [by brickmatt]

• "My goodness Torchlight 2 is sooo much more fun than D3. It's just plain fun! So much more to do, secret areas, enchanting, gems, crafting, gobs of loot, mountains of coins, fun quests, gorgeous graphics, goofy stuff, MULTIPLAYER, great sound and music. What a winner, and you suck for thinking 20 meager bucks is too much." [by u sir name]

Nightly file.

• Defense of the Ancients (DotA) Allstars mod version 6.75. "Version 6.75 of the incredibly popular and addictive Warcraft 3 custom game Defense of the Ancients Allstars. 6.75 includes numerous tweaks to heroes, gameplay tweaks, and bug fixes too numerous to list here. In DotA you control, level up and equip a single hero unit in a large-scale battle between two teams supported by AI-controlled minions, with the ultimate goal of destroying the enemy's base. DotA offers some of the most satisfying victories and most crushing defeats you'll find in a multiplayer game today." Download the free mod here.

Media.

It's a slow media day, so you get nothing! Happy Monday.