Nuclear Monster

  • Emanuel Maiberg:

    Just now, Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan told Polygon that Razer isn’t obligated to follow through on the payments developers are still owed through Ouya’s Free the Games Fund, but that it will make good on those payments anyway.

    “This is purely being done out of goodwill,” Tan said. “I think this is going to be great for the developers. I think they’re going to be able to get the games done and gamers will get access to games for free. Then those games will spread through word of mouth.”

    Developers who want to get the rest of the Free the Games Fund payments from Razer will have to agree to a new deal that’s different from the original in some key ways.

    Nothing says obscene fat-cat businessmen like fucking over smaller developers and then coming up with yet another terrible contract for them to agree to in order to receive the funds your business partners screwed them out of.

    Hats off to Polygon for not linking to Emanuel Maiberg’s original scoop. That’s why they get no link from me today on this follow-up.

  • Martin Backes:

    “What do machines sing of?” is a fully automated machine, which endlessly sings number-one ballads from the 1990s. As the computer program performs these emotionally loaded songs, it attempts to apply the appropriate human sentiments. This behavior of the device seems to reflect a desire, on the part of the machine, to become sophisticated enough to have its very own personality.

  • Emanuel Maiberg:

    On Monday, gaming peripheral company Razer announced that it acquired the software and part of the team behind Ouya, which infamously raised $8.5 million through crowdfunding in 2012 to build an Android-based microconsole. It was a desperate move for the struggling small console maker–and now some indie developers who worked on Ouya games say they’re being screwed by the acquisition.

    Multiple independent developers who wish to remain anonymous have told Motherboard that contracts they had originally signed with Ouya, which promised to pay them thousands of dollars, will not be honored as a result of the acquisition.

    For a console that was crowdfunded on the idea that independent game developers needed a way to put their games onto a TV when Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo weren’t doing the job, they sure managed to screw up every part of the project. From the controller to paying developers what they were promised.

    After the failure of the Ouya it will now be more difficult for independent developers and gamers to trust small businesses. Where did the trust go? Back into Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo who now have better places for independent developers.

  • Esther Kaplan:

    Every aspect of an office worker’s life can now be measured, and an increasing number of corporations and institutions – from cosmetics companies to car-rental agencies – are using that information to make hiring and firing decisions. Cramer, for one, is bullish on the idea: investing in companies like Cornerstone, he said, “can make you boatloads of money literally year after year!”

    A survey from the American Management Association found that 66 percent of employers monitor the Internet use of their employees, 45 percent track employee keystrokes, and 43 percent monitor employee email. Only two states, Delaware and Connecticut, require companies to inform their employees that such monitoring is taking place. According to Marc Smith, a sociologist with the Social Media Research Foundation, “Anything you do with a piece of hardware that’s provided to you by the employer, every keystroke, is the property of the employer. Personal calls, private photos – if you put it on the company laptop, your company owns it. They may analyze any electronic record at any time for any purpose. It’s not your data.”

    I wrote a research paper about this a few years ago while taking some online classes. Beyond not being required to tell you that monitoring is in place, American employers can outright lie to you and tell you that they are not monitoring when in fact they are.

    Thanks to the internet’s @vogon for the heads-up that you can now read one article from Harper’s a month without a subscription and for pointing this one out.