Gather ’round, children, and let me tell you a story about the old bugaboo we used to call DRM. Digital Rights Management was the beast under every gamer’s bed in the mid-2000s, an invisible bit of software baked into game discs that dictated and tracked player behavior under the guise of preventing piracy. DRM software, like SecuROM, limited the times a game could be downloaded and forced players to regularly connect to the internet for authentication checks, at a time when less than half of American adults had reliable broadband connections. DRM features soured the releases of BioShock, Mass Effect and Spore, and by 2010, anti-piracy software had rendered Assassin’s Creed 2 and Splinter-Cell: Conviction unplayable. When Microsoft attempted to release the Xbox One with always-on DRM features in 2013, intense vitriol from fans forced the company to reverse its plans at the 11th hour. There were lawsuits. DRM was a curse word. Meanwhile, Valve was building out Steam. When it landed in 2003, the digital PC storefront was designed to streamline the patch process for games like Counter-Strike and make it easier for Valve to implement anti-piracy and anti-cheat measures. Steam was made to be a DRM machine. In 2004, with the release of Half-Life 2, Valve made Steam a requirement for every player, and even those who’d purchased new, physical copies of the game had to boot up the launcher first. There was some low-level grumbling, but PC players were used to being lab rats, and... Continue reading at 'Engadget'
[ Engadget | 2024-03-04 16:30:21 UTC ]
California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed AB 2426, a new law that requires digital marketplaces to make clearer to customers when they are only purchasing a license to access media. The law will not apply to cases of permanent offline downloads, only to the all-too-common situation of buying... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2024-09-26 20:30:54 UTC ]
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If you’re a Gen Xer or Millenial who used to listen to music on your Windows XP computer back in the 2000s, you probably have fond memories of the llama-whipping Winamp. Though it was discontinued back in 2013, it was picked up by new owners a few years ago and re-released for a... Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2024-09-26 18:52:06 UTC ]
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The metal boxes, used formerly as newspaper receptacles, house Naloxone free of charge. For decades, Jeff Card’s family company was known for manufacturing the once ubiquitous tin boxes where people could buy newspapers on the street.Today, reach into one of his containers and you may find... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2024-09-26 14:21:28 UTC ]
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News that GOG.com has delisted 29 games this month is a sobering reminder that at any moment the games you own could vanish from your PC game libraries at any time and there’s not much you can do about it. Admittedly, GOG’s games include titles that many gamers may not have heard about.... Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2024-09-26 10:30:00 UTC ]
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Jan-Bart van Beek, Guerilla Games' art and animation director, has officially announced that a remastered version of Horizon Zero Dawn is arriving on October 31. The game will feature over 10 hours of re-recorded audio, mocap, as well as improved character models, animation, lighting and... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2024-09-25 05:24:07 UTC ]
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From revoking tenure to cutting an entire library staff, academic libraries are losing—so are students. That, plus this week's book censorship news. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2024-09-13 12:00:00 UTC ]
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More than one hundred children and adults walked through metal detectors and past bomb-sniffing dogs to attend Drag Queen Story Hour at a community church in northeastern Ohio in December 2022. Drag Queen Story Hour began in San Francisco in 2015 as an effort to encourage literacy and provide... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2024-09-09 08:55:57 UTC ]
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Little Free Library has debuted a new interactive map on its website that charts the locations of Little Free Libraries across the United States, alongside the number of book bans that are in place in each state. The organization built the tool as a way to quickly find the nearest free library —... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2024-09-05 18:27:15 UTC ]
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Google’s AI-powered Photos upgrades are beginning to trickle in. Ask Photos, the Gemini-powered chatbot that lets you get ultra-specific and conversational with your photo searches, is launching in early access for select users in the US. In addition, the improved search for more descriptive... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2024-09-05 16:00:41 UTC ]
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Hundreds of titles from Judy Blume to Mark Twain purged from school libraries following rightwing challengesSix major book publishers have teamed up to sue the US state of Florida over an “unconstitutional” law that has seen hundreds of titles purged from school libraries following rightwing... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2024-08-30 17:40:29 UTC ]
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From a library worker strike to the upcoming 'SALEM'S LOT adaptation, catch up on all the news relevant to libraries this week. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2024-08-30 16:00:00 UTC ]
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The August 29 complaint over H.B. 1069 argues that the statute is vague and overbroad, and that it has led to the improper removal of hundreds of books from school and classroom libraries in the state. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-08-29 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Greenville County Library System will remove all trans books from their young adult sections and restrict access to those under 17. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2024-08-27 14:45:00 UTC ]
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Since it started offering subscribers access to mobile games in 2021, Netflix has built up one of the best gaming libraries around. With a balanced mix of titles built for the service and exclusive rights to the mobile versions of several popular indies (and a few blockbusters), Netflix has... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2024-08-26 12:00:42 UTC ]
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Why libraries are often deliberate targets during war: “For book lovers, there is something profoundly, almost viscerally disturbing about a library on fire.” | Lit Hub Libraries Why there might still be hope for the Earth’s oceans: “A worse version of today’s ocean is not inevitable, but... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2024-08-24 10:30:19 UTC ]
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Windows, Microsoft, and third-party software makers supply numerous useful tools for the command line — but these are not always easy to use. Graphical user interfaces (GUI), on the other hand, usually offer a more intuitive experience. Instead of developing a program from scratch,... Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2024-08-23 10:30:00 UTC ]
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Book authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson are accusing Anthropic of copyright infringement. A group of authors is suing artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, alleging it committed “large-scale theft” in training its popular chatbot Claude on pirated copies of... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2024-08-20 12:37:17 UTC ]
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Why libraries are often deliberate targets during war: “For book lovers, there is something profoundly, almost viscerally disturbing about a library on fire.” | Lit Hub Libraries “On paper, Enoch’s travels don’t sound that dissimilar to reported nonhuman encounters.” Luis Elizondo on beings from... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2024-08-20 10:30:55 UTC ]
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Sarajevo, 1992. My mother’s uncle, Dobrivoje Beljkašić, or Dobri for short, was 68 when the siege of his hometown began. He was a landscape painter renowned for painting Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Ottoman bridges. His magnificent studio was above the National Library in the old City Hall in... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2024-08-20 08:56:15 UTC ]
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What is weeding in libraries and when is it a disguise for banning books? That, plus this week's book censorship news roundup. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2024-08-16 12:30:00 UTC ]
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