Category Archives: Computing

The Circle of Archaeology: Veterans Processing Finds by Other Veterans

A Mimbres pottery image from the center's collection.
A Mimbres pottery image from the center’s collection.
(Photo courtesy Center for Digital Antiquity)

An Arizona State University program this semester will use veterans to archive digital archaeological data from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The four veterans will train and work at ASU’s Center for Digital Antiquity, which houses the nation’s largest archive of digital archaeological data.

Read/listen to my full story at KJZZ’s Arizona Science Desk:
ASU Taps Veterans To Archive For US’s Largest Digital Archaeology Database

ASU Lab Takes Deep Dive into Dark Web

So 133t

The time to fix a security flaw is before it’s exploited — just ask the Clinton campaign or the World Anti-Doping Agency. So Arizona State University’s Paulo Shakarian tracks cyber threats to their origins: In the hard-to-access deep web and the secretive dark web.

Read/listen to my full story at KJZZ’s Arizona Science Desk:
ASU Lab Tracking Cyber Threats On Deep Web, Dark Web

eSports: So Maybe You Can Make a Living at That

League of Legends Championship Series. Photo by Gabriel Gagne.
League of Legends Championship Series. Photo by Gabriel Gagne.

Yep, after decades of false starts, it is now possible – for the few, the young and the obsessive – to make  a living playing video games. Sprung from LAN party tournaments played for beer money stakes, eSports has today evolved into full-blown sporting franchise, complete with teams, groupies, college athletic programs, dedicated media, arena-filling crowds and tournament prize pools ballooning into the tens of millions of dollars.

For many, this development raises a number of questions. Are these really athletes? (Hint: the U.S. government thinks so.) Why was Amazon willing to pay almost a billion dollars for Twitch.tv? And, well, just how does professional gaming work?

How Professional Gaming Works

Found in Translation: The Risks and Rewards of Video Game Localization

Video game localization has come a long way since a sub-par port of Zero Wing gave us the classic “All Your Base are Belong to Us” meme. As  game companies have gone international, and as their products have ballooned from small-batch text-and-sprite diversions to interactive blockbusters, the industry that makes those games accessible to other cultures has done its best to keep pace – despite too often being treated as an afterthought by game companies .

Find out how this process has evolved from basic text translation to fully embrace cultural norms, preferences and taboos as I explain …

How Video Game Localization Works

 

Eureka! I Have Lost It!

The original keyboard cats.

Left to our own devices and allowed to live without constant fear of death by hunger or violence, we devise some pretty startling stuff.

Sure, some of our better efforts don’t outlast our calamities, or go obsolete before their time or simply never get their chance to shine because no one yet recognizes the need for them. But you can’t keep a good idea down forever, as I explore in this list of …

10 Times Humanity Found the Answer (and Then Forgot)