Month: February 2017

Enlarge / Robots are coming for your job. (credit: Rog01 - Flickr)

The Twitter feed @HumanVSMachine is a haunting collection of images and videos showing the automation of work around the world. The videos place footage of people doing a job side-by-side with footage of robots doing the same thing. The overall impression is of human obsolescence—at least in certain professions.

Forklift operator. #Automation #BasicIncome pic.twitter.com/4oiIYEzaFe

— HumanVSMachine (@HumanVsMachine) January 18, 2017

Philippe Chabot, a French Canadian from Montreal, is the force behind @HumanVSMachine, and he knows something about being replaced. He used to be a graphic artist, first in the video industry and then as a freelancer. At one point, he had plenty of contracts and plenty of work. But increasing competition for fewer assignments made this an unstable profession. Eventually, Chabot was bidding against people who would churn out a logo for $5, and he found that game studios were increasingly outsourcing their artwork. Software and chatbots were created that could automatically design avatars and websites. So Chabot left the field and now works in a kitchen.

He’s not the only one of his friends and family whose work has been outsourced, whether to people in other countries or to non-humans.

Enlarge / The game's mega-miniatures.

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.

The area control genre—troops, creatures, or cubes seeking majorities on a map—is a cramped and crowded one. Though well-regarded titles like Cry Havoc, Inis, and Star Wars: Rebellion all arrived in 2016, the calendar keeps turning and the plastic miniatures keep coming. This time, though, they’re positively enormous.

In Assault of the Giants, a horde of titans descend upon Faerûn, the prominent continent featured in the Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms setting. This Andrew Parks design takes a conflict-oriented thematic chassis and bolts a smooth Euro-style engine to its frame. The game is a hybrid of schools, delivering carnage and tremendous 5” plastic miniatures to satisfy your eyes as well as your brain. The fact that it plays in a cool 25 minutes per player is just wax on the hood.

Enlarge (credit: Nan Palmero)

Without My Consent, a San Francisco-based advocacy organization that aims to help victims of revenge porn, has released a slew of new resources this week in an attempt to make seeking justice easier for victims.

The new materials, dubbed "Something Can Be Done! Guide," provides a step-by-step guide for victims. It provides concrete measures that they can take, including evidence preservation, copyright registration, restraining orders, and takedown requests to Internet companies—many of which don’t require the often-costly services of a lawyer. (Without My Consent's efforts are reminiscent of Nolo, a decades-old do-it-yourself legal publisher.)

Erica Johnstone, one of the lead attorneys for the group, told Ars that the idea is to democratize the fight against the scourge of revenge porn. After all, she said, she only takes one out of 30 potential clients per month who come to her.

Enlarge

Earlier this week, Ars published a story about a consulting firm's report on how to get more customers to buy electric vehicles (EVs). The survey asked several thousand people in the US, Germany, Norway, and China if they'd considered buying an electric vehicle. From the results, the firm estimated that approximately 30 percent of potential car buyers in the US had considered purchasing an electric vehicle, but only three percent had actually made the plunge.

So this weekend we put it to you, Ars readers. Have you considered an electric vehicle? If you have and decided not to buy one, what made you stick with a gas-burning choice? As always, if your reason is not represented in the poll, feel free to let us know in the comments.

Have you ever considered buying an electric vehicle?

Enlarge / Time for a saving throw. (credit: Spidermind Games)

Late Friday evenings, backers of the Elite: Dangerous tabletop role playing game received a cryptic e-mail from Kickstarter explaining that the almost-complete crowdfunding campaign had been suspended, pending the resolution of an intellectual property dispute. The message read:

Hello,
This is a message from Kickstarter’s Integrity team. We're writing to inform you that a project you backed, Elite: Dangerous Role Playing Game (ED RPG), is the subject of an intellectual property dispute.

The project has been removed from public view until the dispute is resolved, which can take up to 30 days. The project’s funding and the countdown to its deadline have been stopped. If the project becomes available again, the countdown will continue and the new deadline will extend past the original deadline for as much time as the project was unavailable. You can find out more by reading our Copyright Policy and our Trademark Policy.

Original deadline
Wed, Feb 15 2017 6:46 am EST

Time remaining if project becomes available
4 days

Your pledge is currently still active. If you’d like to manage your pledge or reach out to the creator directly, you can still do so through the project page.

We reached out to designer Spidermind Games for comment. Spidermind informed Ars that the complaint was lodged by Chris Jordan, acting for Ian Bell. Bell is the co-creator of the original 1984 Elite.

Ars obtained a copy of a statement issued by Jordan to Spidermind Games, which reads as follows: