By Sean Willett
When most people hear the word “drone,” they tend to think of a few very specific drones. Particulary the ones currently being used by the United States to carry out extrajudicial killings. Or perhaps they think of any of the many drones in movies, video games and books that are depicted as terrifying murder-robots. Either… Continue reading Northern Sprites: What’s the deal with drones?
By Sean Willett
Bell, one of Canada’s largest telecom companies, has recently announced that they are going to begin collecting more detailed data from their customers for the purpose of selling this information to advertisers and third parties. This reveal will hardly come as a surprise to many Canadians. All three of Canada’s biggest telecom companies — Telus,… Continue reading Northern Sprites: Crack in the bell
By Sean Willett
When asked about which commercial industries are the most right wing in their politics, the technology industry usually isn’t at the top of people’s lists. Yet tech companies can rival banks and oil companies in their distaste for regulation, with the people in the tech community sometimes taking these beliefs to the utmost extreme. In… Continue reading Northern Sprites: The politics of tech
By Sean Willett
Valve — a company mostly known for developing popular video games such as Portal and Team Fortress 2 — has recently announced the upcoming release of a Linux-based operating system meant to be compatible with the company’s popular PC game distribution network, Steam. Along with this operating system, titled SteamOS, Valve also intends to develop… Continue reading Northern Sprites: A hearty bowl of SteamOS
By Sean Willett
If you ask almost any Canadian how they feel about their country’s phone companies, you probably won’t receive a very positive answer. People are painfully aware that the Big Three Canadian telecommunication companies — Bell, Rogers and Telus — have notoriously overcharged Canadians for cellphone services. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development… Continue reading Northern Sprites: Nothing like a little friendly competition
By Sean Willett
With the heat of summer bearing down on us, finding an excuse to stay inside and away from the sun, the mosquitos and the seasonal allergies can be a welcome blessing. Of course, there is no better way to waste away the limited days of Canadian summer than video games, and what better games to… Continue reading Northern Sprites: Five amazing Canadian video games
By Sean Willett
For me, the morning of June 20 seemed like any other. My house was as dry as it usually is, I was able to travel downtown without much trouble and I had managed to stay far enough away from the river that I remained oblivious to the impending disaster. I only realized something was wrong… Continue reading Northern Sprites: How Twitter has changed natural disasters
By Sean Willett
Women are vastly underrepresented in the tech industry, making up only about 25 per cent of the information and communications technology employees in Canada — even though over half of the country’s workforce are women. This disparity has been noted by The Chic Geek, a new Calgarian organization that aims to increase the number of… Continue reading Northern Sprites: The real problem with women in tech
By Sean Willett
Even to a person who is familiar with video games the list of speakers at this year’s Ottawa International Game Conference could seem perplexing. Looking down the list, one can find that for every independent, bearded artist there are half a dozen suit-clad marketing gurus — with a few nerdy programmers sitting awkwardly between those… Continue reading Northern Sprites: The two faces of video games