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 ]
Far from making programmers an endangered species, AI will release them from the grunt work that stifles innovationWhen digital computers were invented, the first task was to instruct them to do what we wanted. The problem was that the machines didn’t understand English – they only knew ones and... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2024-05-11 15:00:29 UTC ]
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How to prepare for Pride month in the library, both as library workers and library lovers. That, plus this week's book censorship news roundup. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2024-05-10 11:30:00 UTC ]
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Among the headlines this week: John Oliver weighs in on book bans and libraries (and so do his viewers); more library drama in Alabama; and how to prepare for Pride month. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-05-10 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Mayor Eric Adams’ administration is mounting a push for state lawmakers to pass a set of bills loosening some of the rules that govern the city’s notoriously slow capital process, which city leaders say would allow major projects to get done more quickly and cheaply.The city needs permission... Continue reading at Crains New York
[ Crains New York | 2024-05-09 10:03:04 UTC ]
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Libraries in B.C. have been targeted by a hacker who threatened to release user data if a ransom was not paid. The B.C. Libraries Co-operative said it was contacted by a hacker "attempting to extort payment" using private information taken from its servers. Continue reading at CBC
[ CBC | 2024-05-03 18:55:02 UTC ]
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Dozens of books have disappeared from Warsaw to Paris. Police are looking into who is taking them, and why — a tale of money, geopolitics, crafty forgers and lackluster library security. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2024-05-01 09:01:24 UTC ]
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Last week over 100 cops from the EU’s police agency fanned out over Georgia and Latvia to bust a group of criminals who stole around 170 antique books from libraries across Europe. Over two years, the gang is suspected in the robbery of “rare books mainly written by Russian writers—including... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2024-04-30 17:42:09 UTC ]
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One of the great embarrassments of New York, the richest city in America, is how money can’t be found to keep public libraries open every single day.It is, truly, a matter of priorities. Other far-reaching, progressive policy proposals can come with enormous upfront costs — municipal or... Continue reading at Crains New York
[ Crains New York | 2024-04-29 15:50:14 UTC ]
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Mayor Eric Adams’ nearly $112 billion executive budget, released Wednesday, includes more than $5 billion for health care initiatives, a figure that has grown by $172 million since his January preliminary budget.The revised plan avoids new spending cuts for city agencies and paints a rosier... Continue reading at Crains New York
[ Crains New York | 2024-04-25 09:33:07 UTC ]
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Mayor Eric Adams announced a revised $111.6 billion budget plan on Wednesday that avoids new spending cuts and increases estimates of the city’s tax haul, reflecting his administration’s increasingly sunny view of New York’s finances. But the proposal rebuffs the City Council’s request to undo... Continue reading at Crains New York
[ Crains New York | 2024-04-24 16:53:57 UTC ]
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Beautiful bookstores, finalists for the NYPL's Young Lions Award, and more of the day's most interesting bookish news. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2024-04-19 16:41:47 UTC ]
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It’s 2015. My partner and I are in Moab, Utah, for the summer, far from our home of Philadelphia. He is doing research for his dissertation. I am struggling to rewrite a novel that my editor says—and I agree—isn’t working. The desert landscape in southwest Utah is magnificent and to us wholly... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2024-04-19 08:53:24 UTC ]
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Children of the Sun burst onto the indie scene like a muzzle flash on a dark night. Publisher Devolver Digital dropped the game’s first trailer on February 1, showcasing frenzied sniper shots and a radioactive art style. A Steam demo highlighting its initial seven stages went live that same day... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2024-04-18 19:45:11 UTC ]
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With a solar eclipse recently plunging parts of the world in darkness—and the #1 show on Netflix highlighting the chaos caused by multiple celestial bodies in motion (3 Body Problem)—it’s safe to say that the stars have captured the popular imagination yet again. Astronomers, physicists, and... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2024-04-17 20:00:00 UTC ]
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Diana Goetsch spent months visiting red-state libraries to do presentations on the freedom to read. Would she be recognized, or clocked as transgender? Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2024-04-17 10:00:08 UTC ]
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Among the headlines this week: ALA releases the 2024 State of America's Libraries Report; PLA reports strong attendance at its annual conference; and Idaho passes a "harmful to minors" bill. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-04-12 04:00:00 UTC ]
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I suspect many writers spend hours and hours at their local library and, if they’re anything like me, they can often feel like they’re swallowed up in a grandiose, if not downright mythological reservoir of knowledge. I remember living in Los Angeles, going to the Los Angeles Public Library,... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2024-04-11 11:00:00 UTC ]
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The Pretendo Network, an open-source Nintendo Network alternative, no longer requires a hacked Wii U console. With Nintendo’s servers for the obsolete console shutting down on Monday, the Pretendo Network shared a new workaround that provides (limited) access to its homebrew servers without... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2024-04-09 19:27:49 UTC ]
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A Louisiana bill would criminalize membership in the American Library Association with fines, jail time, or hard labor. No, this isn't a joke. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2024-04-03 16:22:38 UTC ]
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The City Council said it has found an additional $6 billion in newly identified city dollars to undo many of Mayor Eric Adams’ spending cuts and make new investments in affordable housing construction and education.Lawmakers on Monday released their official response to the mayor’s $109 billion... Continue reading at Crains New York
[ Crains New York | 2024-04-01 17:27:55 UTC ]
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