Tag: ‘ship
A Fool’s Deep Dive – Ship of Fools is Now Available for Xbox Series X|S
On demand PvP ship combat will sail into Sea Of Thieves in Season Eight
Obligatory ahoy, pirates. Season 8 of Sea Of Thieves goes live tomorrow, bringing on-demand ship combat and a faction system that pits goodly ghost-pirates against evil skeleton-pirates. It’s all woven into the existing open world, with your ship plunging beneath the waves when you tell it you want to go a-hunting.
If you want more info, you can watch the devs launch into an appropriately deep dive in their latest update video.
More Twitter privacy and security executives abandon ship
It’s a day ending in the letter “y” which inevitably means there’s more drama at Twitter. Chief information security officer Lea Kissner, chief privacy officer Damien Kieran and chief compliance officer Marianne Fogarty have all quit, according to The Verge. The report suggests that the company’s engineers will now be responsible for ensuring compliance with regulations. Twitter is currently subject to a Federal Trade Commission consent order, which includes certain privacy and security requirements.
“I’ve made the hard decision to leave Twitter,” Kissner wrote in a tweet. “I’ve had the opportunity to work with amazing people and I’m so proud of the privacy, security and IT teams and the work we’ve done.”
I’ve made the hard decision to leave Twitter. I’ve had the opportunity to work with amazing people and I’m so proud of the privacy, security, and IT teams and the work we’ve done.
I’m looking forward to figuring out what’s next, starting with my reviews for @USENIXSecurity 😁
— Lea Kissner (@LeaKissner) November 10, 2022
The departures will surely have a significant impact on Twitter’s security and privacy teams. To that end, The Verge obtained a Slack message purportedly shared by a Twitter lawyer, which notes that engineers have been asked to “self-certify” that they’re complying with FTC requirements and other laws. “This will put huge amount of personal, professional and legal risk onto engineers,” the message reads. “I anticipate that all of you will [be] pressured by management into pushing out changes that will likely lead to major incidents.” The lawyer, who urged workers to seek whistleblower protection if they felt the need to, warned that such changes are “extremely dangerous for our users.”
The FTC consent order is part of a settlement Twitter reached with the agency in May. One of the conditions requires the company to employ a “comprehensive privacy and information security program” to examine new products for privacy and security risks. The lawyer noted that if Twitter violates the consent order, it could be on the hook for “billions of dollars” in fines, which would be “extremely detrimental to Twitter’s longevity as a platform.”
This week, the company revamped the Twitter Blue service and started allowing users to obtain a checkmark (previously used to denote that an account was verified) for $8 per month. That’s already created a minefield of impersonation, spoof accounts and scams.
A Twitter employee suggested to The Verge that the rushed rollout of the paid checkmark scheme, as mandated by new owner Elon Musk, bypassed the typical privacy review process. “The people normally tasked with this stuff were given little notice, little time, and [it’s] unreasonable to think [the privacy review] was comprehensive,” said the employee, who noted that none of the team’s recommendations were put into effect before the new Twitter Blue went live. That team was only able to review possible risks the night before Twitter rolled out the retooled service.
“No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees,” Douglas Farrar, the FTC’s director of public affairs, told The Washington Post. “Our revised consent order gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we are prepared to use them.”
Engadget has contacted Twitter for comment.
Phil Spencer: Call of Duty Will Continue to Ship on PlayStation ‘As Long As There’s a PlayStation to Ship To”
Smart buoy ‘hears’ the sea to protect whales against ship collisions
Whales face numerous threats from humans, not the least of which are ship collisions — the World Sustainability Organization estimates 18,000 to 25,000 animals die each year. There may be a technological way to minimize those deaths, however. Reutersreports Chile’s government and the MERI Foundation have deployed the first smart buoy from the Blue Boat Initiative, an effort to both safeguard whales and track undersea ecosystems. The device, floating in the Gulf of Corcovado 684 miles away from Chile, alerts ships to nearby blue, humpback, right and sei whales to help avoid incidents.
The technology uses oceanographic sensors and AI-powered Listening to the Deep Ocean Environment (LIDO) software to determine a waterborne mammal’s type and location. It also checks the ocean’s health by monitoring oxygen levels, temperature and other criteria. That extra data could help study climate change and its impact on sea life.
The Blue Boat Initiative currently aims to install six or more buoys to protect whales across the gulf. In the long term, though, project members hope to blanket the whales’ complete migratory route between Antarctica and the equator. This could reduce collisions across the creatures’ entire habitat, not to mention better inform government decisions about conservation and the environment.
The technology may be as important for humans as for the whales. On top of their roles in delicately balanced ecosystems, whales both help capture CO2 and redistribute heat through ocean currents. The more these animals are allowed to flourish, the better the ocean is at limiting global warming and its harmful effects.
Driveable Minecraft ship made entirely with command blocks
A full-scale, driveable Minecraft ship isn’t something you’ll see often. You’re normally going to be sailing around in a tiny boat in this sandbox game, and the idea of something more grandiose is likely to be condemned to ruins on the bottom of the sea, or to fan-built creations.
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League of Legends fans are making gorgeous fan art for an unexpected Spirit Blossom ship
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Tackling Your First Ship in Hardspace: Shipbreaker
Classic WoW queues are still a massive problem, and unless people jump ship, they will only get worse
It’s been some time since the launch of World of Warcraft Classic’s Wrath of the Lich King pre-patch, an update which saw many of the popular servers, including fresh servers meant to give new and old players a totally green experience, suffering from some serious queue times that made actually jumping in and playing the game incredibly difficult. Now, Blizzard has put out a statement, but the consequences of their actions (or inaction) are starting to be felt.
This statement, released on the Blizzard forums around the time when queues were really horrendous, covers the issue and provides some context for the problem. In terms of solutions, Blizzard halted character creation and transferring to badly-affected mega servers, and locked them down “indefinitely”. This essentially stopped an increased influx of players making the queues worse, which when combined with free transfers off realms has appeared to curb the problem somewhat.
However, even now, certain mega servers still retain large queues, especially once school and work hours come to a close and players return home for some dungeon grinding, or farming honor in continuous Alterac Valley runs. In the aforementioned post, it’s stated that “we need more folks to move”, but that’s unlikely to happen with certain crowds of Classic WoW players — especially on fresh servers.