Collegiate Esports Is Uncharted Territory, So Smaller Schools Are Staking Their Claim
The esports collegiate scene is still in its Wild West phase, which means that smaller schools can capitalize on the trend and stand out. ESPN’s list of collegiate esports programs counts 85 institutions of higher learning in the US and Canada, including junior colleges and for-profit universities. Many of them belong to the National Association of Collegiate Esports (NACE), a varsity-level competitive league which is positioning itself as the NCAA of esports.
Full article on Kotaku's website.
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How a blind 'Call of Duty' player is racking up thousands of kills
One gamer took to Reddit last week to boast about scoring more than 7,500 lifetime kills in the first-person shooter Call of Duty: WWII -- entirely without eyesight. He goes by the handle 'tj_the_blind_gamer' and uploads gameplay to his YouTube channel, which he created after discovering there weren't any other sightless Call of Duty streamers. He plays for his own enjoyment -- but streams it to show the world that blind gamers are out there, racking up kills.
Full article on Engadget's website.
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A new generation of high school athletes will play eSports
In the last several months, a trio of local leagues have debuted that are fully affiliated with high schools and supported by education districts. Whether or not they're models other school districts can copy, they're certainly the most robust high school eSports associations in the US — if not the world.
Full article on Engadget's website.
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The ABCs of programming language migration
Mastering a programming language is one undertaking; collaborating with others to build a product with code is another thing entirely. And sometimes, the language in which you chose to build your product just doesn’t cut the mustard. It can be daunting to leave behind the familiar—especially if that means migrating your entire product over to a different language. So how do you know when it’s the right time to do it, and what does it entail?
Full article on Increment's website.
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Can Legislation Fix Gaming's Loot Box Problem?
Last year's gaming controversy has turned into this year's legislative battleground. Legislators in Hawaii, Washington and Illinois have introduced bills to either study loot boxes or restrict access to young players, but how effective will they be? What else can lawmakers do?
Full article on Engadget's website.
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Tomorrow's Power Grid
Electricity makes a long journey from the power plant to your light bulb thanks to a modern marvel: the energy grid, which ensures that power consistently flows to every home and business hooked up to it. The power grid of tomorrow stands to benefit from technological advances made today—but it still requires a host of infrastructure improvements to graduate beyond the aging grid of yesteryear...
Full article on Increment's website.
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What It Would Take To Create 'Blizzard World' IRL
Last week, the Overwatch team released a new map: Blizzard World. The multiplayer arena is a colorful amusement park filled with attractions and rides themed after Blizzard's stable of games. It's a delightful backdrop for the team-based shooter, filled with in-jokes and puns that make it look like a rapturous place for a gamer to visit. But what would it take to bring Blizzard World to life?
Full article on Engadget's website.
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KFC's Bizarre VR Game Won't Revolutionize Work Training
Fast-food franchise KFC is known for its oddball stunts, but its latest, a VR escape room cum work-training experience, is one of its oddest yet. I took the bait and donned a VR headset to run through KFC’s little game, which promises to teach anyone the chicken-frying basics. I walked out with a better idea how the heartland franchise makes its bones, so to speak. But as for turning this into a proper, franchise-scalable work-training tool, there are a slew of logistical roadblocks...
Full article on Engadget's website.
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A popular messaging app inspired Times Square’s latest tourist trap
Last week, Line Friends -- a standalone company dedicated to promoting the characters of the popular messaging service Line -- opened a storefront in New York's Times Square, its 73rd brick-and-mortar location worldwide and the first in America. But the shop isn't just an expansion into the US market. By planting itself in one of the most tourist-trafficked areas in the world, Line Friends hopes travelers will peek inside -- and take some of the cute characters back to their home country.
Full article on Engadget's website.
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The U.S. Government’s long road to adopting the cloud
On December 9th, 2010, U.S. Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra told his government peers that they would never work the same way again. Nearly two years after President Obama signed a pair of executive orders on his first day in office promising a new era of government transparency and disclosure, Kundra gave a presentation reinforcing a new “Cloud First” policy that sought to harness the increasingly powerful remote processing model to hew down bloat and increase efficiency...
Full article on Increment's website.
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Truly intelligent enemies could change the face of gaming
Live, die, repeat -- the tagline for the 2014 science-fiction film Edge of Tomorrow -- describes its protagonist, who "respawned" every time he died in the real world. Critics noted that the conceit resembled the cyclical experience of playing a video game, in which dying resets a staged arrangement of obstacles. Often these are enemies, and the most common way they're surpassed is by the player violently dispatching them. Some games have kept this as cartoonish as Mario jumping on a Goomba's head, but others strive for vivid action and more-lifelike foes to pit the player against. But we know what enemies look like today -- how will we treat them in the games to come?
Full article on Engadget's website.
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Rickard Nordin, Sweden's 'Hearthstone'-Streaming Politician
Many countries don't offer pro game players the same ease of travel as traditional athletes, leading lawmakers to continue debating just how much the state should support the local video game scene. Such is the case with Sweden, but national Parliament member Rickard Nordin is rallying his peers to embrace the financial and cultural benefits eSports can bring, and he's reaching out to fans (near and far) on a platform fitting his mission...
Full article on Engadget's website.
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The Bizarre History of Vibrating Controllers: VR Precursors, Occasional Sex Toys
Fire up any console video game, start playing, and within minutes your character will likely hit a wall or get attacked—and bzzzt, the controller rumbles in your hand. It’s not so exciting, now that virtual reality headsets blow our minds with total visual and audio immersion, but at one time vibration was king...
Full article on Playboy's website.
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How Virtual Reality Developers Try To Keep You From Puking
VR games have come a long way in tricking your brain to let the good immersive times roll, but keeping a few dozen enthusiasts from yakking at press events is a far cry from safekeeping the millions who will soon boot up their Oculus Rifts, HTC Vives, and PlayStation VRs...
Full article on Playboy's website.
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Transgender Models Have an Agency to Call Their Own
After striking out in San Antonio, transgender model Garnet Rubio moved to New York City, and it wasn’t long before the Texas native found an agency she could call home: Trans Models, the first transgender modeling agency in New York and one of only a few in the world.
Full article on NBC OUT's website.
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In Poetry and Hip-Hop, George ‘G’ Yamazawa Found His Self
George "G" Yamazawa is spending most of his spring on the road, traveling from show to show at college campuses across the country. His tour is rigorous, hitting 19 cities in 12 states in April alone.
But despite releasing his first hip-hop EP in February, the crowds aren't coming to see him rap. The 25-year-old Yamazawa is an award-winning slam poet who has performed his spoken word across the United States, Europe, and Dubai...
Full article on NBC Asian America's website.
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"Creative Control" Is A Look Into Your Creepy Augmented Reality Future
Director/writer/star Benjamin Dickinson’s Creative Control, out today, is a keen satire on the delusion and ennui suffered by folks living with tomorrow’s immersive tech...
Full article on Fast Company's website.
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How America's Biggest Cities Make Sense Of Their Data
Want to know what the state of Connecticut has spent money on in almost real-time? Or maybe you’d find visualizations for the White House’s recently released 2017 federal budget useful. Maybe you’d be into seeing health reports for every restaurant entry on Yelp, instead.
Socrata, creator of custom data systems for civic departments and federal agencies, is the company behind those possibilities...
Full article on Fast Company's website.
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How The Internet Of Things is Changing Work
We’ve seen gadgets and domestic appliances connect to the Internet and ping your smartphone with info, but it’s becoming more clear that these toys are a prelude to a vastly connected world. And yet, we spend most of our day at work. Here’s how technologists think the world of IoT will change the workplace–and how it’s already changing how we do business today...
Full article on Fast Company's website.
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“Feel Bad About Us”: Alex Garland Talks About The Real Questions Behind “Ex Machina” And Artificial Intelligence
Alex Garland’s screenplays (28 Days Later, Sunshine, Never Let Me Go, Dredd) confront audiences with body horror that is often visceral, sometimes existential, but always carefully written to flip filmgoers’ questions back on themselves. Garland’s latest script and his directorial debut, Ex Machina, is a science thriller asking the ultimate question about humans and our technology–namely, when will our technology become human?
Full article on Fast Company's website.
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