Voting machines

“State-sanctioned teams of computer hackers were able to break through the security of virtually every model of California’s voting machines and change results or take control of some of the systems’ electronic functions, according to a University of California study released Friday.”

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FTC Abandons Net Neutrality

Bad News

“The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has decided to abandon net neutrality and allow telecoms companies to charge websites for access.The FTC said in a report that, despite popular support for net neutrality, it was minded to let the market sort out the issue.This means that the organisation will not stand in the way of companies using differential pricing to make sure that some websites can be viewed more quickly than others. The report also counsels against net neutrality legislation”.

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Grand Theft Auto

interesting article about the boys behind grand theft auto and the billion dollar computer game industry

“That’s where Donovan and the Housers came in. The Londoners had attitude, style, and what Dan Houser later called a “culturally relevant, detail-obsessed approach” to game-making. They moved their core team to New York and assumed the name Rockstar Games. (The group of coders and designers in Scotland was eventually acquired by Take-Two and renamed Rockstar North.) The name hinted at their ambitions. “We admired record labels, obviously, and clothing companies, which were obsessed with details and with an integrity between design, product, and marketing,” Dan told the Design Museum of London in 2003. Rockstar wouldn’t just sell games — it would sell a lifestyle.”

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Teaching the machine

“I was trying to explain this stuff in the traditional paper format, and I thought, ‘This is ironic,’ I can illustrate this much better in a video.”

michael wesch, assistant professor of cultural anthropology and digital ethnographer