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Comment Re:Think About It! (Score 1) 282

A new technology replacing human labor is nothing new. Mechanization has been "taking jobs away" from humans at least since the industrial revolution. For a large-scale change as you mention, it would more than just a few months, so if driverless vehicles were to take over, fewer and fewer people would become drivers anyway. The scary thing is not technology replacing humans, rather it's how despite technology humans still have bullshit jobs and why that kind of progress systematically benefits those already well-off instead of the masses.

Submission + - The Big Hangup at Burning Man Are Cell Phones

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: L. J. Williamson writes in the LA Times that with no running water, no plumbing, and no electrical outlets Burning Man isn't the kind of place to expect full bars on your smartphone and for many of the participants that's a big part of its charm. "If you want to partake in the true Burning Man experience, you should leave your phone at home," says Mark Hansen. In past years, the closest cellular towers, designed to serve the nearby towns of Empire (population 206) and Gerlach (population 217), would quickly get overwhelmed each August when Black Rock City (population 50,000 or so) rose from the featureless playa. Although Burning Man attracts a sizable Silicon Valley contingent including tech giants like Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin — the feeling of being "unplugged" has become an integral part of the Burning Man experience. But another part of the event is an intrepid, DIY ethos, and in that spirit, David Burgess, co-creator of OpenBTS, an open-source cellular network software, brought a homemade in 2008, an "almost comical" setup that created a working cellular network that routed a few hundred calls over a 48-hour period. In each subsequent year, Burgess has improved the system's reach and expects to have about three-quarters of this year's event covered. Burning Man proved an ideal test bed for development of Burgess' system, which he has since made available for use in other areas without cellular networks. "People who have a lot of experience in international aid say Burning Man is a very good simulation of a well-organized refugee camp," says Burgess. "Because there's no infrastructure, it forces us to contend with a lot of problems that our rural customers have to contend with in very remote places."

Comment Re:Whoa. /keanu (Score 2) 264

by herbalt (#44617643) Attached to: <em>Urban Terror</em> Code Stolen
If you haven't played it since the Q3 mod days, there's a bunch of new features and a rather lively competition community. The game is currently in version 4.2 with new game modes (e.g. a trickjump mode), animations and weapons, and most notably a cheat detection system which players have been awaiting for ever since Punkbuster was no longer supported. From what I read in the forums, the anti-cheat system is a good reason to be worried about the code leak because it will again give leeway to developers of wallhacks and whatnot, when the the dev team had just started getting a grip on the cheating issues.

Submission + - Urban Terror code stolen

Submitted by herbalt
herbalt writes: The code of the free FPS game Urban Terror (a standalone game based on a Quake 3 mod), has been stolen. The development team, Frozen Sand, at first stated their Git Repository had been hacked, but later issued an announcement stating the perpetrator of the leak was a member of the development team. Frozen Sand also states they have found chat logs indicating there had been "a plot to get B1naryTh1ef to steal the code so they could sell Urban Terror under a different name on Steam".

Submission + - Next Up: The Jamming Wars (itworld.com)

Submitted by chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: ITWorld has an interesting opinion piece on the next privacy battleground, which they say will be over citizens right to use jamming technology to (forcibly) opt-out of ubiquitous surveillance, as sensors pop up in more and more public spaces (http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/08/no-this-isnt-a-scene-from-minority-report-this-trash-can-is-stalking-you/) and private homes alike.

"Given the rapid pace of technological change, we don't know exactly what the future holds for us. But one thing is certain: personal privacy is going to turn from a "right" to a "fight" in the next decade, as individuals take up arms against government and private sector snooping on their personal lives."

The article mentions some skirmishes that have already occurred: employees using GPS jamming hardware to prevent employers from tracking their every movement, and the crush of new business for encrypted voice, video and texting services like SilentCircle (up 400% in the last two months). (https://securityledger.com/2013/08/anonymous-email-services-shutter-in-wake-of-snowden/)

"Absent the protection of the law, citizens should be expected to do what they do elsewhere: take matters into their own hands: latching onto tools and technology to give them the privacy that they aren't afforded by the legal system. However, there may not be an easy technology fix for ubiquitous, unregulated surveillance. Writing in Wired this week (http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/08/yah-surveillance-sucks-but-technology-isnt-the-only-solution/), Jathan Sadowski warns that the tendency for individuals to focus on securing their own data and communications and using technology to do may be misleading.

"The problem is that focusing on one or both of these approaches distracts from the much-needed political reform and societal pushback necessary to dig up a surveillance state at its root," Sadowski writes.

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