Blizzard DDoS Attacks

Gaming company Blizzard has been trying to cope with several cyber attacks earlier this month. As a daily player of their recent 2016 release Overwatch I have been affected by these attacks. At first internet service providers were being attacked which stopped gamers from connecting to Blizzards battlenet servers. More recently though the battlenet servers themselves have been DDoSed. I was unable to play for most of the day when this happened. The two other people I play with have a small window to play so these attacks have limited my gameplay very much. Blizzard’s battlenet servers are what they use to host online play for all of their games, so these attacks haven’t just affected Overwatch players but the entire blizzard gaming community. This shows that DDoS attacks are very effective even against a large corporation like blizzard.

Alert shown on battlenet home page.

World Of Warcraft DDoS attack

 

Open AI

Open AI is a non-profit interactive Artificial intelligence company. Their mission is to build upon current ai technology to lead into the next phase of artificial intelligence research. Their long term goal is developing an artificial intelligence of human level capable of augmenting human life for the better instead of replacing humans as workers. They also allow the public as a community to contribute to their projects and developments. Their research follows the ethics of artificial intelligence because they suggest that human level ai can be as detrimental to society as it can be beneficial. Open ai wants to distribute artificial intelligence technology as wide and evenly as they can.  Open AI has built terrific new platforms to research and advance artificial intelligence. I further discuss Open AI in my third video submission. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auvy7BTN_rI&t=320s

The Internet Of Things

The internet of Things (IoT) is the networking of physical devices that are able to communicate through the internet. This allows these objects to be monitored and controlled wirelessly creating a basis for integration between the physical and digital world. The internet of things is wat allows smart home systems like nest to connect various phone apps so that people can adjust the temperature in their houses, lock doors, and turn off lights.

Although very important to advancement in current technology the internet of this has been used by hackers in DDoS attacks. Because the items on the IoT are connected to the internet they are capable of being used as part of the botnet of a DDoS attack. The IoT is a great development that brings humans and the digital world closer but it has to be secure so it can’t be used with malcontent.

What Makes a Good Gaming Computer?

Gaming computers have various detrimental parts that can give it peak performance. Graphics cards, CPUs, Cooling systems, and RAM are the most vital when building a gaming computer. A graphics card controls the output of a display screen. With a high-resolution monitor and a high capacity graphics card you can enjoy games in HD. CPUs allow a gamer to enjoy large and complex games such as open world RPG’s. A properly maintained and decent quality cooling system keeps a computer from over-heating when in use. Random Access Memory (RAM) in a gaming computer allows the game programs to avoid storing data in the hard drive of a computer. There for capacity of RAM is the most important factor to consider when purchasing. Gaming computers are complex and take research when purchasing parts, but they are high-quality gaming systems and can be maintained relatively easily.