Nerd News: NSA & GCHQ so BM

"NSA and GCHQ collect gamers' chats and deploy real-life agents into World of Warcraft and Second Life"  ~http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/09/nsa-spies-online-games-world-warcraft-second-life

NSA document [PDF], written in 2008 and titled Exploiting Terrorist Use of Games & Virtual Environments http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/dec/09/nsa-files-games-virtual-environments-paper-pdf

The Guardian broke this story along with NYT & ProPublica:

• http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/world/spies-dragnet-reaches-a-playing-field-of-elves-and-trolls.html
• http://www.propublica.org/article/world-of-spycraft-intelligence-agencies-spied-in-online-games

Nerd Jobs: "The Ph. D. Grind"

http://www.pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir.htm

If your interested in Nerd or Gaming type job, you should spend the time to read this memoir.

Describes one path to that type of work.

I suggest you start at link above, but for the TL DR people:

• HTML http://www.pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir-prologue.htm
  
• PDF http://www.pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir/pguo-PhD-grind.pdf
• Mobi book version (will work with Kindle as well, Kindle is basically Mobi with DRM added) http://www.pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir/pguo-PhD-grind.mobi
• EPUB version http://www.pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir/pguo-PhD-grind.epub

Gaming Jobs: Valve Job openings

I regularly post about Gaming Jobs, and other Job Openings, that I think Nerds might be interested in applying for, the most recent I have found is http://www.valvesoftware.com/jobs/job_postings.html

If you would like to see other posts about jobs click on the Labels Gaming Jobs or Job Opening.

Both of those Labels, and many more, can be found in the Label Cloud at left side of this blog.

Only some Labels are there, because of space limitations, but at the bottom left of every post are Label(s), so you can cross reference that way.

GL HF,

Cliff

Computer Geek Dream Job?

"Meet The Hackers Who Sell Spies The Tools To Crack Your PC (And Get Paid Six-Figure Fees)" full story at Forbes:

Bekrar won’t detail Vupen’s exact pricing, but analysts at Frost & Sullivan, which named Vupen the 2011 Entrepreneurial Company of the Year in vulnerability research, say that Vupen’s clients pay around $100,000 annually for a subscription plan, which gives them the privilege of shopping for Vupen’s techniques.

Note that $100k just lets you see the catolog, doesn't actually pay for any product, from what the story suggests the products can easily cost more than $100k.

What surprised me, is that this is legit, or so the story says, I don't understand how that can be, since they are hacking one company's products for other companies & governments.

A very interesting article.

Gaming Jobs: Blizzard is looking for some people

Forgot to give shoutout to Joofro for the heads up on this, thanks Bro!

For those interested, but unaware, Blizzard has a lot of job openings.

They break them down geographically, though you can filter each listing, as follows:

• Global
• Americas
• Europe
• Asia

Nerd News: Blizzard lays off 600 employees

Story on Ars, see also this from Blizzard http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4081816711

According to the Wall Street Journal, Blizzard "had about 7,300 employees at the end of last year."

600 of 7,300 is 8.2% which seems like a pretty large reduction to me.

What this means for Esports & Blizzard's products in particular isn't clear yet, Blizzard is saying that not many of the reductions came from production people and that they plan to "continuing to develop, iterate, and polish Blizzard DOTA, Diablo III, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria."

I wonder though, they did cancel Blizzcon for this year already, and now this, when according to BBC & other reports US economy is growing, though slowly.

Maybe Esports & Gaming are not sharing in that?

Nerd News: Pwnium: rewards for exploits

Get paid for Google Chrome exploits ^_^

Full information from Google's Security Team blog at link here.

They are paying out up to $1 million in rewards, in either $60k, $40k, or $20k amounts if I understand correctly.

Have fun hackers.

Esports Future: "The People Who Manage Professional Athletes’ Moves"

This article from the Business Insider made me wonder if Esports already has some professional Athlete Relocators?  People that help Pros move from one location to another.

I know a few Pros in Starcraft 2 have moved from one country to another already, and as Esports grow, there will be more of that as time goes on.

I think the translators in Korea end up helping foregners that move to Korea currently.

I am not sure if there is a specific person that helps Koreans that move to the EU or USA?  I would suspect again that translators would end up doing a lot of the work.

Just a suggestion to people looking to work in Esports, SC2 in particular, that being fluent in Korean or another foreign language might be more useful than Gosu gaming skills.  If only because you would probably have far less competition.

Gaming Jobs: Team Dignitas Hiring

Team Dignitas has some job openings, click on the link for more information:

Available positions in Team Dignitas:
- Bloggers:  (Update) this position is now limited to writing guides that can help other players understand / improve their game.
- Interviewers: We are looking to produce more team and community interviews, so we will definitely need some help here.
- Movie Editors: Are you an experienced and motivated moviemaker who is available to edit replays or any other sort of ingame footage for one of our squads? Then go ahead and apply.

To see other jobs listed here on my Starcraft 2 Blog, click on Gaming Jobs and Job Opening labels, those labels are at the bottom left of Posts and in the Label Cloud on left side of the Blog.

Gaming Jobs: Telltale Games has some openings

Listings and more information at http://www.telltalegames.com/company/jobs/

To see other Jobs listed here click on Gaming Jobs and Job Opening labels, those labels are at the bottom left of Posts and in the Label Cloud on left side of the Blog.

Nerd News: Lantastic Gaming hiring

http://lantasticgaming.net/

@TeamVWSPro Tweeted:

Lantastic Gaming is looking to hire more staff for our events in Sturgis, MI. Min age 15 w/parent consent. Pay $50-$100 a day. HMU

Lantastic Gaming is looking to hire more staff for our events in Fredericksburg, VA. Min age 15 w/parent consent. Pay $50-$100 a day. HMU

Gaming Jobs: Editors for DOTA 2 and CS1.6

D_eSports Tweeted:

We are currently looking for two new editors for the website, able to write aboout DOTA 2 and CS1.6 - Apply at contact@D-eSports.com RT RT

Their Website http://www.d-esports.com/