Fan Expo San Francisco 2024 has unveiled another batch of guests and it’s the cast of Chainsaw Man.
The post Cast of Chainsaw Man will be at Fan Expo San Francisco 2024 appeared first on 8Bit/Digi.
Ubisoft has made another round of layoffs, this time cutting staff from two of its US studios.
A total of 45 employees have been let go across the Assassin's Creed publisher's San Francisco studio and Red Storm Entertainment, which is based in Cary, North Carolina. It is unclear which departments have been affected.
"Yesterday Ubisoft San Francisco and Red Storm Entertainment informed their teams of a restructuring that resulted in 45 employees leaving Ubisoft," a Ubisoft spokesperson told IGN in a statement.
Megan Shipman, Alex Organ, and Natalie Van Sistine from Spy x Family will be among the guests at Fan Expo San Francisco 2024.
The post Meet Spy x Family Cast at Fan Expo San Francisco 2024 appeared first on 8Bit/Digi.
Fan Expo San Francisco 2024 has announced the first batch of guests with familiar stars and cinematic legends.
The post First Batch of Fan Expo San Francisco 2024 Guests Announced appeared first on 8Bit/Digi.
For a fun look back at 1950's San Francisco watch the film noir classic '"The Lineup." It was a 1958 movie based on the TV series of the same name. "Too hot…too big…for TV!"
What the mostly daytime, sunny-skies crime flick lacks in true "film noir" visuals, is made made up by being a real time capsule. — Read the rest
The post Get a look back at 1950's San Francisco appeared first on Boing Boing.
The Ubisoft Forward 2024 showcase has drawn to close. Don't worry if you missed it, though, as we're about to go over everything which made an appearance during the showcase. From major releases to updates for existing titles to Assassin's Creed - because this is Ubisoft Forward and there has to be Assassin's Creed news. It's the law.
You'll find all of the announcements below, along with their accompanying trailers, for everything shown during Ubisoft Forward 2024.
While the Ubisoft Forward 2024 pre-show actually began with a dicussion about Skull and Bones water mechanics, the first proper game trailer we got was for Rocksmith+, a game designed to teach you how to play the guitar. Well, it can now also teach you how to play the piano. You can try RockSmith+ for free on PlayStation 4 and 5.
Ubisoft's free-to-play arena shooter XDefiant's first patch has been released.
Entitled "Preseason Patch 1", it addresses a number of specific issues, including one with loading into the Practice Zone – some players found themselves "in a hellscape" outside the world – and another that sees devices dropped at players' feet should they die during device deployment. Up until now, they would still be thrown as if you hadn't just carked it.
This means Practice Zone has been turned back on, although the team warns "it's possible weird things could still happen". So make of that what you will.
If you got the chance to paint a "Painted Lady," why not paint it an extraordinary way? That's exactly what artist Xavi Panneton did. Last summer, he took the opportunity to give a historic San Francisco Victorian a stunning makeover. Located in Duboce Triangle, this house was transformed to stand out among its traditional neighbors. — Read the rest
The post San Francisco "Painted Lady" gets pixelated makeover appeared first on Boing Boing.
Ubisoft's Tom Clancy-adjacent free-to-play shooter XDefiant has - after several delays last year - been given a release date, and launches for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on 21st May.
XDefiant - a 6v6 mash-up of Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, and The Division - was initially revealed as Tom Clancy's XDefiant back in 2021, but Ubisoft later announced it was dropping the prefix following criticism from Tom Clancy fans who felt XDefiant's flamboyant action strayed too far from the franchise's more serious military themes and formula.
Since then, it's seen numerous closed Insider tests and open sessions, but hasn't quite managed to get its foot out the door. It first missed a planned summer launch last year, then received another delay in October, due to "inconsistencies in the game experience".
Good news, people whose day-to-day lives are woefully short on blingy Clancified squad-murdering. Ubisoft's elusive free-to-play shooter XDefiant finally has a release date, 21st May 2024. Or at least, that's when the preseason launches, providing six weeks of access to the modes, maps and factions from last month's server test.
Despite bribing San Francisco city officials for 18 years and being convicted of corruption, developer Sia Tahbazof, 73, was given only probation by U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston. He was "fined" $75,000, though, a good example of the old adage that to the rich, the fine is a price. — Read the rest
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Great moments in unintended consequences—when something that sounds like a great idea goes horribly wrong. Watch the whole series.
Part 1: Game Engine
The year: 2018
The problem: Too many loud vehicles in the city of Edmonton!
The solution: Erect sound monitoring display boards in various locations in the city, alerting motorists if they are exceeding the 85-decibel level limit by displaying their current noise level.
Sounds like a great idea, with the best of intentions. What could possibly go wrong?
Turns out games are fun! Since the display board went up as part of a pilot program with no accompanying enforcement mechanism, competitive motorists used the scoreboards… er, displays…to see just how loud they could get. As revving engines increased, so did noise complaints. Within weeks the city reversed course and turned off the displays.
Looks like cars aren't the only things that backfire.
Part 2: I Left My Smart in San Francisco
The year: 2016
The problem: States are passing laws San Francisco doesn't like!
The solution: Pressure them to change by prohibiting any city contracts with companies headquartered in states that don't share San Francisco's values.
Sounds like a great idea, with the best of intentions. What could possibly go wrong?
Turns out, competition drives down prices! With limited bidding options, public project costs ballooned by around 20 percent according to city administrators. The ban also created additional bureaucratic costs, totaling nearly half a million dollars in staffing expenses alone, and made it difficult to support like-minded businesses in verboten states.
More and more waivers and exemptions were granted as the list of covered states grew from 4 to 30, which should have been a clue that these expensive pressure tactics weren't exactly changing hearts and minds. In 2023, the city trashed the bans, probably in a very expensive trash can.
Part 3: Tooned Up
The Year: 1903
The Problem: Cartoonists keep depicting Pennsylvania politician Samuel Pennypacker as a parrot!
The Solution: Introduce a bill banning any cartoon in which a person is depicted as a "beast, bird, fish, insect, or other inhuman animal."
Sounds unconstitutional and entirely self-interested! What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Turns out, people who make fun of politicians for a living are pretty comfortable fighting back against politicians. Criticism of Governor Pennypacker and the anti-cartoon bill exploded, with cartoonists nationwide depicting the Governor and others as turnips, trees, chestnut burrs, squash, and beer steins. The blowback was so humiliating that the bill was pulled from consideration and replaced with a new broader bill making newspaper editors and publishers personally responsible for libel lawsuits.
The press ramped up their ridicule, daring Pennypacker to take them to court. But the law was never enforced and was repealed after he left office, having been hounded for his entire term by critical cartoons.
That's one way to draw attention.
Great moments in unintended consequences: good intentions, bad results.
Do you know a great moment in unintended consequences? Email us at [email protected].
The post Great Moments in Unintended Consequences: Road Noise Meters, San Francisco Red State Boycott, and Pennsylvania's Political Cartoon Ban (Vol. 15) appeared first on Reason.com.
On March 5, San Franciscans will have the opportunity to vote on a ballot measure that would decide whether or not to make them into guinea pigs for surveillance experiments by the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD).
Proposition E purports to streamline the SFPD, with sections on community engagement, recordkeeping, and the department's vehicle pursuit and use of force policies. But its portion on department use of surveillance technology is troubling.
Under an existing ordinance passed in 2019, the SFPD may only use "surveillance technologies"—like surveillance cameras, automatic license plate readers, or cell site simulators—that have been approved by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the city and county legislative body. The process requires that the SFPD, like any other city or county agency, submit a policy to the board for approval before using any new technology. The 2019 ordinance also banned the use of facial recognition technology.
But Prop E adds a clause stipulating that the SFPD "may acquire and/or use a Surveillance Technology so long as it submits a Surveillance Technology Policy to the Board of Supervisors for approval by ordinance within one year of the use or acquisition, and may continue to use that Surveillance Technology after the end of that year unless the Board adopts an ordinance that disapproves the Policy."
In other words, the SFPD could roll out an unapproved method of surveillance, and it would have free rein to operate within the city for up to a year before ever having to ask city officials for permission. And until the city passes a statute that specifically forbids it—that is, forbidding a technology that is by that point already in use—then the SFPD can keep using it indefinitely.
"Let's say the SFPD decides they want to buy a bunch of data on people's geolocation from data brokers—they could do that," says Saira Hussain, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). "They could use drones that are flying at all times above the city. They could use the robot dogs that were piloted at the border. These are all surveillance technologies that the police doesn't necessarily have right now, and they could acquire it and use it, effectively without any sort of accountability, under this proposition."
If those scenarios sound implausible, it's worth noting that they've already happened: As Hussain notes, the Department of Homeland Security recently tested robot dogs to help patrol the U.S./Mexico border. And in 2012, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department enlisted civilian aircraft to fly over Compton and surveil the entire area.
Not to mention, federal agencies already routinely purchase people's cell phone geolocation information and internet metadata without a warrant.
In a sense, Prop E would make San Franciscans into guinea pigs, on whom the SFPD can experiment with all manner of surveillance technology. If that sounds hyperbolic, a member of Mayor London Breed's staff told the board of supervisors in November 2023 that Prop E "authorizes the department to have a one-year pilot period to experiment, to work through new technology to see how they work."
The San Francisco Ballot Simplification Committee's description of the proposition notes that it would "authorize the SFPD to use drones and install surveillance cameras without Commission or Board approval, including those with facial recognition technology."
The ACLU of Northern California calls Prop E "a dangerous and misleading proposal that knocks down three pillars of police reform: oversight, accountability, and transparency." Matthew Guariglia, senior policy analyst at the EFF, wrote that under Prop E, police could "expose already marginalized and over-surveilled communities to a new and less accountable generation of surveillance technologies."
Despite these concerns, Prop E has its share of support. Breed defended the proposal, saying "it's about making sure that our police department, like any other police department around the country, can use 21st century technology." By January, groups supporting Prop E had raised more than $1 million—ten times the amount raised by opponents and considerably more than has been raised for any other proposal on the March ballot.
It also seems to be popular among the public: A January survey released by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce found that 61 percent of San Franciscans favored Prop E, with only 37 percent opposed. (One possible explanation: The same survey found that 69 percent of those polled feel that crime has gotten worse. Recent data indicates that violent crime rose during 2023 even as it declined nationally, and while the rate of property crime fell, state and national rates fell faster.)
San Francisco is no stranger to potentially abusive surveillance practices. In 2022, the board of supervisors passed an ordinance that would allow the SFPD to request and receive real-time access to citizens' private security camera feeds. While city officials like Breed and newly-appointed District Attorney Brooke Jenkins touted that the ordinance would help crack down on smash-and-grab shoplifting rings, a recent city report detailed that in the third quarter of 2023, the vast majority of requests were for narcotics investigations.
The post Proposition E Would Make It Easier for Police To Surveil San Francisco appeared first on Reason.com.
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