The game is Nintendo doing what Nintendo does best—but at times its deference to history threatens to overwhelm it.
Source: Wired
Internet providers have refrained from blocking content or creating “fast lanes” while battles continue in the courts and among lawmakers.
Source: Wired
It seemed like 2018 was going to be the year when robots made a big leap toward the fabled Rosie from the Jetsons. Consumers, though, had other ideas.
Source: Wired
Working in video games might sound like a dream job to a 12-year-old Fortnight-loving kid but the day-to-day reality of grinding in the industry can be as unrelenting as fighting an end of level baddie.
Games devs are routinely corralled to ‘crunch’ to hit sequential release target deadlines to ensure a project gets delivered on time and budget. Unpaid overtime is a norm. Long hours are certainly expected. And taking any holiday across vast swathes of the year can be heavily frowned upon, if not barred entirely.
From the outside looking in it’s hard not to conclude people’s passion for gaming is being exploited in the big business interest of shipping lucrative titles to millions of gamers.
In the UK that view is now more than just a perception, with the decision of a group of video games workers to unionize.
The Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB) said today it’s setting up a union branch for games workers, the first such in the country — and one of what’s claimed as just a handful in the world — with the aim of tackling what it dubs the “wide-scale exploitation” of video games workers.
In recent years the union has gained attention for supporting workers in the so-called ‘gig economy’, backing protests by delivery riders and drivers for companies including Uber and Deliveroo. But this is its first foray into representing games workers.
As well as seeking to tackle issues of excessive and often unpaid overtime (aka “crunch”) — with the union claiming some workers have reported clocking up as much as 100 hours a week — it says it will focus on the use of zero-hour contracts in the industry, especially among Quality Assurance testers (aka game testers).
Zero-hour contracts refer to employment contracts with no minimum guaranteed hours of work.
The IWGB says the branch also intends to shine a light on the industry’s lack of diversity and inclusion — and what it couches as a failure to tackle a “pervasive culture of homophobia and sexism”. So, um, it’s about ethics in the games industry itself this time.
Commenting in a statement, game worker and founding member of the IWGB‘s Games Workers Unite branch, Dec Peach, said: “For as long as I can remember it has been considered normal for games workers to endure zero-hours contracts, excessive unpaid overtime, and even sexism and homophobia as the necessary price to pay for the privilege of working in the industry. Now, as part of the IWGB, we will have the tools to fix this broken sector and create an ethical industry where it’s not only big game companies that thrive, but workers as well.”
In another supporting statement, IWGB general secretary Dr Jason Moyer-Lee added: “The game workers’ decision to unionise with the IWGB should be a wake up call for the UK’s gaming industry. The IWGB is proud to support these workers and looks forward to shining a massive spotlight on the industry.”
The UK games industry employs some 47,000 workers, according to UKIE — making it one of the largest such sectors in Europe.
The IWGB‘s Games Workers Unite branch will hold its first meeting on December 16, which the union says will be open to all past, current and “soon to be” workers in the industry — including contract, agency and casual workers, plus direct employees (with the exception of those with hiring and firing power).
It says it’s expecting “hundreds” of games workers to join in the first few months.
Source: TechCrunch
There may not be any high-dollar, screaming exotica but the variety of powertrains on the list has never been greater.
Source: CNET
Over the past few years, Chinese automaker giant BYD has been on a partnership spree with cities across China to electrify their public transportation systems, and now it’s extending its footprint across the globe. On Thursday, BYD announced that it has shipped 100 electric buses to Santiago, the capital city of Chile.
The step marks the Chinese firm’s further inroads into the Latin American country where a green car revolution is underway to battle smog. BYD’s first batch of vehicles arrived in Santiago last November and the Warren Buffett-backed carmaker remains as the only electric public bus provider in the country.
Chile is on the map of China’s grand Belt and Road Initiative aiming to turbocharge the world’s less developed regions with infrastructure development and investments. “With the help of ‘One Belt One Road,’ BYD has successfully entered Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Uraguay and other Latin American countries. As the region accelerates its electric revolution, BYD may be able to win more opportunities,” said BYD in a statement.
President of Chile Mr. Sebastián Piñera rides the BYD electric bus. / Credit: BYD
The 100 buses embarked on a 45-day sea voyage from BYD’s factory in eastern China to land on the roads of Santiago. They sport the Chilean national colors of red and white on the exterior and provide USB charging ports inside to serve a generation who live on their electronic devices.
The fleet arrived through a partnership between BYD and Enel, a European utility juggernaut that claims to make up 40 percent of Chile’s energy sales in 2017. Enel has purchased the fleet from BYD and leased them to local transportation operator Metbus while the Chilean government set the rules and standards for the buses, a BYD spokesperson told TechCrunch.
Local passengers graded BYD’s electric vehicles at 6.3 out of 7, well above the 4.6 average of the Santiago public transportation system, according to a survey jointly produced by Chile’s Ministry of Energy as well as Ministry of Transport and Telecommunications. Respondents cited qualities such as low noise level, air conditioning and USB charging that the buses deliver.
Santiago currently has 7,000 public buses running on the road, among which 400 get replaced every year. A lot of the new ones will be diesel-free as the Chilean government said it aims to increase the total number of electric vehicles by tenfold in 2022.
Source: TechCrunch
While it’s not as polished as its competition, the WRX remains one of our favorites, because it’s just so much fun.
Source: CNET
Turbocharged power, all-wheel-drive grip and upgrades like Recaro seats continue to make the WRX a joy for enthusiasts.
Source: CNET
Responding to criticism from his recent trip to Myanmar, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said he’s keen to learn about the country’s racial tension and human rights atrocities, but it has emerged that both he and Twitter’s public policy team ignored an opportunity to connect with a key civic group in the country.
A loose group of six companies in Myanmar has engaged with Facebook in a bid to help improve the situation around usage of its services in the country — often with frustrating results — and key members of that alliance, including Omidyar-backed accelerator firm Phandeeyar, contacted Dorsey via Twitter DM and emailed the company’s public policy contacts when they learned that the CEO was visiting Myanmar.
The plan was to arrange a forum to discuss the social media concerns in Myanmar to help Dorsey gain an understanding of life on the ground in one of the world’s fastest-growing internet markets.
“The Myanmar tech community was all excited, and wondering where he was going,” Jes Kaliebe Petersen, the Phandeeyar CEO, told TechCrunch in an interview. “We wondered: ‘Can we get him in a room, maybe at a public event, and talk about technology in Myanmar or social media, whatever he is happy with?’”
The DMs went unread. In a response to the email, a Twitter staff member told the group that Dorsey was visiting the country strictly on personal time with no plans for business. The Myanmar-based group responded with an offer to set up a remote, phone-based briefing for Twitter’s public policy team with the ultimate goal of getting information to Dorsey and key executives, but that email went unanswered.
When we contacted Twitter, a spokesperson initially pointed us to a tweet from Dorsey in which he said: “I had no conversations with the government or NGOs during my trip.”
However, within two hours of our inquiry, a member of Twitter’s team responded to the group’s email in an effort to restart the conversation and set up a phone meeting in January.
“We’ve been in discussions with the group prior to your outreach,” a Twitter spokesperson told TechCrunch in a subsequent email exchange.
That statement is incorrect.
Still, on the bright side, it appears that the group may get an opportunity to brief Twitter on its concerns on social media usage in the country after all.
The micro-blogging service isn’t as well-used in Myanmar as Facebook, which has some 20 million monthly users and is practically the de facto internet, but there have been concerns in Myanmar. For one thing, there was been the development of a somewhat sinister bot army in Myanmar and other parts of Southeast Asia, while it remains a key platform for influencers and thought-leaders.
“[Dorsey is] the head of a social media company and, given the massive issues here in Myanmar, I think it’s irresponsible of him to not address that,” Petersen told TechCrunch.
“Twitter isn’t as widely used as Facebook but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have concerns happening with it,” he added. “As we’d tell Facebook or any large tech company with a prominent presence in Myanmar, it’s important to spend time on the ground like they’d do in any other market where they have a substantial presence.”
The UN has concluded that Facebook plays a “determining” role in accelerating ethnic violence in Myanmar. While Facebook has tried to address the issues, it hasn’t committed to opening an office in the country and it released a key report on the situation on the eve of the U.S. mid-term elections, a strategy that appeared designed to deflect attention from the findings. All of which suggests that it isn’t really serious about Myanmar.
Source: TechCrunch
The iPad Pro is a powerful tablet that’s perfect for creatives and professionals. How does it fare when traveling with it as a laptop replacement? We took it on a two week trek in Japan to find out.
The post Leave the laptop at home, the iPad Pro is the travel buddy to take on vacay appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends