Month: January 2017

Enlarge (credit: Owen Duffy)

Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage at cardboard.arstechnica.com—and let us know what you think.

There’s a timeless appeal to Greek mythology. As a child, I fell in love with its blend of capricious gods, heroic mortals, and terrifying monsters, and over the years I watched and rewatched my VHS copy of Jason and the Argonauts until the tape completely wore out.

The Oracle of Delphi, from well-known board game designer Stefan Feld (Trajan, The Castles of Burgundy), was one of our "picks of Essen" last year. The game seeks to capture the enthralling essence of those ancient epics. It casts players as daring sea captains commanded by Zeus to embark upon an arduous voyage of exploration to bring glory to the gods of Olympus.

Enlarge / An individual Parcheesi board colored by one of the children. (credit: Jeff Allers)

Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games. The author of today's piece, Jeffrey D. Allers, is the Berlin-based designer of numerous board games such as Citrus, Heartland, Order of the Gilded Compass, and Piece O' Cake.

The current refugee crisis is not a game. There are no clear rules, information is often untrackable, hidden variables can lead to utter chaos, and there’s no endgame in site.

And yet, tens of thousands of refugees were welcomed into Berlin—my adopted home city—during the past year. As they have taken up residence in makeshift shelters and previously abandoned buildings, I find myself connecting with many of them in my neighborhood through the shared language and experience of playing board games.

Enlarge / An electric school bus manufactured by Motiv. (credit: Motiv)

School bus driver Jenifer Chiodo takes a moment to admire the orange-pink sunrise while she gets ready to spend the next few hours on the roads. Then she grabs her clipboard and jots down the date, her name, and the mileage on the odometer before starting up the engine of a Thomas Built Type-A “mini” bus owned by her employer, First Student Inc.

Chiodo drives about 21 miles on her two morning routes and 40 miles on her four afternoon routes, transporting just one or two special-needs children at a time across the suburbs of Rocky Point, New York. A Type-A bus gets just nine to 10 miles per gallon, and Chiodo says she’s come to realize how unsustainable and unhealthy her driving can be.

“I don’t even want to think about how much carbon my bus spews out into the air every day and how it’s warming the atmosphere,” says Chiodo. “Kids are breathing in exhaust, I’m breathing in exhaust... I’m very happy to help get these students to school, but I wish there was a safer and more environmentally friendly way of doing so.”

Enlarge (credit: flickr user: Hsing Wei)

The “wisdom of the crowd” is a simple approach that can be surprisingly effective at finding the correct answer to certain problems. For instance, if a large group of people is asked to estimate the number of jelly beans in a jar, the average of all the answers gets closer to the truth than individual responses. The algorithm is applicable to limited types of questions, but there’s evidence of real-world usefulness, like improving medical diagnoses.

This process has some pretty obvious limits, but a team of researchers at MIT and Princeton published a paper in Nature this week suggesting a way to make it more reliable: look for an answer that comes up more often than people think it will, and it’s likely to be correct.

As part of their paper, Dražen Prelec and his colleagues used a survey on capital cities in the US. Each question was a simple True/False statement with the format “Philadelphia is the capital of Pennsylvania.” The city listed was always the most populous city in the state, but that's not necessarily the capital. In the case of Pennsylvania, the capital is actually Harrisburg, but plenty of people don’t know that.

Enlarge / Ceviche, as pictured here, is a dish served in many parts of Latin America. It's made of raw fish cured in citrus juices. (credit: David Silverman/Getty Images)

Days before she was set to go to trial over $12 worth of ceviche sold on Facebook, Mariza Ruelas struck a deal with the San Joaquin County district attorney.

On Friday, prosecutors in the central California county agreed to drop various misdemeanor criminal charges, including operating a food facility without a permit, if Ruelas did 80 hours of community service within a year. She also agreed to not sell or trade food online unless she has the proper permits.

When Ars asked her how she felt on Friday afternoon, Mariza Ruelas said by phone: "Relieved, you know? It’s just like, ugh, finally it’s over."

Enlarge / President Trump has tagged Defense Secretary James Mattis to lead the charge to fix all the cyber things and smash the cyber adversaries. (credit: Getty | Sara D. Davis )

Today, the Washington Post published what appears to be a draft of an executive order to be signed by President Donald Trump. The order, entitled “Strengthening US Cyber Security and Capabilities,” puts flesh on the bones of the “cyber review” promised by Trump during the campaign. It spells out who will conduct the review and what its specific goals are. The order also sets a brisk pace for the review, calling for initial recommendations for the security of “national security systems” and critical infrastructure within 60 days. The review also has a 60-day deadline to provide the president with a list of “principal cyber adversaries.”

This is not the first 60-day cyber fix-it order from the White House. After the breach at the Office of Personnel Management in 2015, the Obama administration ordered a “cyber sprint” across the Federal government to get systems into compliance with security best practices. Results were mixed. The chief information officers of OPM and the Department of Education resigned under pressure from the House Government Oversight Committee after they failed to complete a majority of the mandated tasks.

The new order’s language indicates that the Trump administration will see private network infrastructure as being the federal government’s turf to defend—but that the administration will lean heavily on the private sector to figure out how to defend it. “Federal Government has a responsibility to defend America from cyber attacks that could threaten US national interests or cause significant damage to Americans’ personal or economic security,” the draft order states. “That responsibility extends to protecting both privately and publicly operated critical networks and infrastructure. At the same time, the need for dynamism, flexibility, and innovation in cyber security demands that the government exercise its responsibility in close cooperation with private sector entities.”