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Submission + - How HSL is taking eSports mainstream at high school (redbull.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Interesting interview with the creators of the High School Star League, an organisation dedicated to furthering eSports as a viable hobby and even a career for children and young adults. The HSL has been active in the US for a while but is now making a headway into Europe, where it's finding Counter-Strike is proving much more popular than RTS and MOBA games. There are also a significant amount of girls getting involved as well — as many as seven percent of competitors. It's a start, right?

Submission + - Arkansas Tornado Coverage with Drone Camera Raises Legal Questions (forbes.com)

Submitted by retroworks
retroworks writes: In the latest tornado and storm tragedy to hit the USA's south and midwest, small drone cameras steered by storm-tracker and videographer Brian Emfinger gathered stunning bird's-eye footage of the wreckage. Forbes magazine covers the [paywalled] Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's speculation that Emfinger has violated FAA rules which prohibit commercial use of small drones. The laws, designed years ago to restrict hobbyists use of model airplanes, may conflict with USA First Amendment free press use. So far, nothing in the article says that the FAA is enforcing the rule on the media outlets that may pay Emfinger for his video coverage, but interest in the footage will probably create a business economy for future commercial drone use if the FAA does not act.

Submission + - Don't Try To Sell a "Smart" Gun in the U.S. 3

Submitted by R3d M3rcury
R3d M3rcury writes: How's this for a good idea? A gun that won't fire unless it's within 10 inches of a watch? That's the iP1 from Armatrix. Of course, don't try to sell it here in the United States:

Belinda Padilla does not pick up unknown calls anymore, not since someone posted her cellphone number on an online forum for gun enthusiasts. Then someone snapped pictures of the address where she has a P.O. box and put those online, too. In a crude, cartoonish scrawl, this person drew an arrow to the blurred image of a woman passing through the photo frame. “Belinda?” the person wrote. “Is that you?”

Her offense? Trying to market and sell a new .22-caliber handgun that uses a radio frequency-enabled stopwatch to identify the authorized user so no one else can fire it. Ms. Padilla and the manufacturer she works for, Armatix, intended to make the weapon the first “smart gun” for sale in the United States.

“I have no qualms with the idea of personally and professionally leveling the life of someone who has attempted to profit from disarming me and my fellow Americans,” one commenter wrote.

Their complaint? The gubmint...

Submission + - Supreme Court Dims the Lights on Coal Power

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Bloomberg reports that in a 6-to-2 decision the Supreme Court has affirmed the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate air pollution from coal-burning power plants across state lines handing the Obama administration what is arguably its biggest environmental victory in its effort to use the Clean Air Act as a tool to fight global warming and reduce carbon emissions. “Today’s Supreme Court decision means that millions of Americans can breathe easier,” says Fred Krupp, president for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), which was a party to the case. At issue was whether the EPA could use what are known as good-neighbor rules to regulate emissions that cross state borders. In short, the Supreme Court ruled that a power plant in Ohio whose emissions blow east into New York is liable for the damage caused there, even if it’s hundreds of miles away from the source. Utilities must now weigh the high costs of cleaning up their coal operations against simply shutting them down and given the cheap price of natural gas, the decision is likely to push utilities into building new natural gas-fired power plants. By 2020, the Energy Information Administration estimates, 60 gigawatts of coal-fired power production will be retired—about 20 percent of the total amount of coal-fired capacity in the U.S. If anything, the Supreme Court will quicken that pace of retirements.

Coal is nonetheless expected to make up 32 percent of US electricity production in 2040 and coal's outlook is even better abroad, where China, India, and other rapidly expanding economies are eager customers for the inexpensive fuel. World coal consumption is expected to rise at an average rate of 1.3 percent per year through 2040, according to EIA. Republicans in Congress denounced the decision. “The administration’s overreaching regulation will drive up energy costs and threaten jobs and electric reliability," say Representatives Fred Upton and Edward Whitfield. "We cannot allow E.P.A.’s aggressive regulatory expansion to go unchecked. We will continue our oversight of the agency and our efforts to protect American families and workers from E.P.A.’s onslaught of costly rules.”

Comment Slow leak ... (Score 1) 1

by davecb (#46885937) Attached to: PA Supreme Court rules no warrant needed for vehicle searches

Cars are no longer people's "effects" (ie, property) it seems, so that "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated" does not apply.

Canada still has "Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure.", where "unreasonable" is fairlt conservatively defined. At the moment.

Submission + - British Spy Chiefs Secretly Begged to Play in NSA's Data Pools (firstlook.org)

Submitted by Advocatus Diaboli
Advocatus Diaboli writes: Britain’s electronic surveillance agency, Government Communications Headquarters, has long presented its collaboration with the National Security Agency’s massive electronic spying efforts as proportionate, carefully monitored, and well within the bounds of privacy laws. But according to a top-secret document in the archive of material provided to The Intercept by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, GCHQ secretly coveted the NSA’s vast troves of private communications and sought “unsupervised access” to its data as recently as last year – essentially begging to feast at the NSA’s table while insisting that it only nibbles on the occasional crumb.

Submission + - A complete guide to the use of Steam Wallet code generator (x-codes.com)

Submitted by LorenzY
LorenzY writes: Behind this link you can find both the download for the Steam Wallet code generator and also a detailed guide on how to use it properly. This is a simple but yet powerful tool, as it is able to generate genuine and free codes for you. After you give it a try, you will never need to pay for new video games again. The funds can be used in any way that you want, and the tool can be used multiple times.

Submission + - The Million-dollar business of video game cheating (pcgamer.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: If you play games online against other people, chances are you've come up against somebody who's obviously cheating. Wall hacks, aimbots, map hacks, item dupes — you name it, and there will always be a small (but annoying) segment of the gaming population who does it. Many of these cheating methods are bought and sold online, and PCGamer has done some investigative reporting to show us rule-abiding types how it all works. A single cheat-selling website manages to pull in $300,000 a year. The people running the site aren't worried about their business drying up, either — game developers quickly catch 'rage cheaters,' and players cheating to be seen, but they have a much harder time detecting the 'closet cheaters' who hide it well. Countermeasures like PunkBuster and VAC are sidestepped quickly and easily.

Submission + - Google Stops Scanning Gmail Messages for Ads in Apps for Education (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Google will no longer scan the email messages of students and other school staff who use its Google Apps for Education suite, exempting about 30 million users from the chronically controversial practice for Gmail advertising. In addition, Google is removing the option for Apps for Education administrators to allow ads to be shown to their users. Until now, ads were turned off by default, but admins could turn on this feature at their discretion. A Google spokesperson called the move part of a 'continued evolution of our efforts to provide the best experience for our users, including students' and not a response to a recent lawsuit alleging that by scanning Gmail messages Google violated wiretapping laws and breached users' privacy.

Comment Re:Agreed (Score 2) 435

by davecb (#46882483) Attached to: C++ and the STL 12 Years Later: What Do You Think Now?

Anonymous

No one's forcing you to use those features.

Regrettably, you have to navigate around using them: It's like a control panel with the 40% of the buttons you push spattered among the 60% you don't.

Or, more precisely, the statements you know the grammar for are only 40% of what are in in the recognizer. The program that's trying to read your input and sort it into correct and erroneous now has a much greater chance of mistaking an error for a valid statement in the language.

Guess what happens when you say do 10 i=1.5 instead of do 10 i=1,5 in FORTRAN. Syntactically correct, but not what you meant to say!

Comment Re:Common carriers (Score 2) 338

by davecb (#46867003) Attached to: To Save the Internet We Need To Own the Means of Distribution

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance (variously attributed to Thomas Jefferson and others)

Besides being vigilant, you have to "petition the King for Redress of Grievance", well as pressure the commons (legislature) to strengthen the law, lean on the police to enforce the law that already exists, write amicus curia letters to the courts and burn the occasional monopolist at the stake (;-))

In Canada, the local hydro companies are regulated monopolies already, own half the poles on the streets and all the electrical cables on the poles. If they owned the fibre on the poles, we'd be in a distinctly better state, somewhat like parts of the EU.

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