Two months after the story first broke, GamerGate continues to roll on and make headlines, and though it remains a polarized issue, here is an update posted with hopes it will be informative, not inflammatory. After all, many would argue gamergate isn't about gaming, it's about censorship in the media and on the 'Net. If that's the case, it affects and impacts all of us.

Here's and update on what's happened over the past few weeks.

1) Operation Disrespectful Nod has successfully convinced many advertizers to pull out of media publications such as Gamasutra, Polygon, Kotaku and parent Gawker Media.

2) Users have generated lots of new material, from blog posts and youtube videos to memes and articles by smaller publications. They demonstrate the diversity in members for the movement, feminist, anti-feminist, conservatives, liberals, male, female, black, white, LGBT and everything in between. This is a community that isn't going to go down easy. At a minimum, check out GamerGate in 60 seconds, The Evidence and History of GamerGate, The Monsters of GG, or NotYourShield - We Are Gamers.

3) A couple publications have now updated their code of ethic policies including: The Escapist and IGN.

4) New Gaming sites are being established, such as Good Gamers and Niche Gamer.

5) New MetaCritic tool (MyMetaCritic) is under development. It's called MyMediaCritic, and it will provide a place for readers and consumers to rate the different online media outlets, journalists, and youtubers. Their initial alpha release will focus on the Games industry; once the alpha is successful, they plan on growing into other industries as well.

6) Finally, The David Pakman Show has started reporting on the controversy and has published a series of informative interviews with both pro and anti GamerGate supporters. Good stuff, as he makes it clear he is in neither camp, just trying to get to the bottom of the issue. Otherwise, the pro- and anti-camps are pretty well established. Brianna Wu received threats, and alleges they were from GamerGate supporters. As for Arthur Chu, well judge for yourself.¹Liana Kerzner (Canadian tech and gaming blogger), Matthew Rappard (from The Fine Young Capitalists), and Fredrick "Hot Wheels" Brennan (the Admin of 8Chan.co) are considered neutral reporters of the situation; and John Bain (AKA Total Biscuit), Milo Yiannopoulos (recently banned, then reinstated on Twitter), and Jennie Bharaj are considered to be supporters. David Pakman hasn't had an easy time conducting the interviews: many prominent people opposed to GamerGate refused to be recorded, and some went as far as to accuse him of leading a hate mob. Check out this tweet from Nov 1, for example: "Overnight, received many emails saying if I don't apologize for neutrality on GamerGate, I'm guilty of leading a hate mob against women"

7) When GamerGate supporters started questioning IGF judging practice one IGF judge had a "meltdown" on twitter and quit. IGF released an apology shortly after, after being hounded on twitter for "throwing the judge under the bus" for discussing the judging process and other judges started expressing displeasure and threatening to pull out of judging in protest.

There's a silver lining in the cloud of bitterness and vitriol, and it's clear this scandal is leading to important change. For one, Women, Action, and Media (WAM) has partnered with Twitter in the development of a new anti-harassment tool. Though it allows Twitter to censor harassment - especially against women - it too has caused controversy, as it is already being abused to falsely report GamerGate supporters in an effort to silence the protest.

Is this thing done? No way. Next thing we'll be hearing is Anita Sarkeesian lobbying for broader social media tools that allow for further censorship without accountability... oh wait ...

¹ Hey ... he was good on Jeopardy, at least!

President Barack Obama has spoken out on the topic of Net Neutrality, and
he advocates for an Internet that is free and open. That's a bold move in this political environment!

It would seem that the President is interested in keeping a free and open internet without sweetheart deals. Now if only the FCC listens to the President and the many other Americans who have commented on this matter. Now, what about the other big, Internet-heavy nations that enjoy the benefits of being connected. Who will be the next to speak up? And does Obama's opinion mean the debate will swing in the direction of consumer benefit, or will the corporations have their say?

Elon Musk announced that SpaceX is looking to launch a 700 micro-satellite constellation to bring global Internet access across the world. Each satellite will weigh less than 250 pounds and use radio spectrum allocated to WorldVu Satellites, Ltd.

Although still in the planning stages, SpaceX may end up helping in the construction and launch of the largest fleet of satellites yet.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has released a new lower-power, smaller, and amazingly cheaper Raspberry Pi version called the Raspberry Pi Model A+. The model retails for $20.

A slightly more detailed analysis of the board can be found at Raspi Today with information on exact weight, dimensions, and power consumption.

When an iPhone user send an text to another iPhone user, Apple quietly pipes the message through their own servers instead of over the traditional SMS network. This feature was originally intended to help avoid per-text charges for people on budget cell plans and is normally seamless - the only user-visible difference is that your chat bubbles are blue instead of green. However, if you switch your phone from an iOS device to an Android device, all future messages from iPhone users get lost in the nether - there simply wasn't a method to disable iMessage from your phone number.

Until now. Users stuck in this situation can now use this web tool to escape from iMessage oblivion.

Today, nearly all movie theaters have converted their projectors to fully digital systems. Although movie theater 4K (4096 x 2160) is a little higher resolution than consumer TV 4K (3840 x 2160) - and definitely an improvement over standard HD (1920 x 1080) - nothing can match the resolution and shear awesomeness of 70mm IMAX film projection. Christopher Nolan is one of the last true film holdouts and with his new movie Interstellar, is pushing for the full "film only" versions to be shown across IMAX theaters.

Bottom line: this is one movie you probably want to see in the theater. Otherwise you won't get to see its true glory until 30 years from now when the industry starts selling 32K resolution digital TVs.

The court cases (and defeats) keep coming, and to the naked eye it might look like Aereo could be folding for good. The closure of their Boston offices looks bad - but according to Aereo, it's a sign of their determination to continue, despite loss of funding. There is reason to be optimistic.

With a little help from regulators, Aereo finally has a plan B. The FCC itself is considering a redefinition of broadcasting to include internet-based companies. It's possible this may have something to do with the confusion and questions that came up as a result of the Supreme Court ruling, but it might also be an attempt to encourage competition.

This proposal appears in an official FCC blog post by chairman Tom Wheeler, and is sure to provoke discussion and dismay among media corporations, especially considering that their stocks all fell more than 3% after the proposal was announced.

Zalman has filed for bankruptcy.

Zalman was one of the pioneers of low-noise cooling solutions, in an era when stock coolers were noisy enough to drive people insane. Unfortunately for us all, on November 3, 2014 the company filed a bankruptcy protection request in the Seoul Central District Court.

Zalman did not fall victim to recession, competition or even bad corporate management. The whole story is long, complicated, obscure and yet unconfirmed, so unfortunately we may never learn all the details of it. To summarize, Zalman apparently was part of an allegedly very well designed and planned multi-billion dollar corporate fraud.

As an owner of quite a number of their copper CPU blossoms, I hope that they can pull through and distance themselves from their troubled parent corporation.

Those cell towers that provide the high-speed connections to your phone, themselves have to rely on land lines for "backhaul", to connect them to the core of the wireless provider's network. Enter cable companies, who often times provide that backhaul to smaller communications towers - Time Warner Cable serves more than 10,000 cell towers. In the case of small cells, cable companies are in some cases able to leverage their fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) investments as high-speed backhaul for small cells instead of requiring the much more costly option of running new dedicated lines to the site. Cable companies are largely only involved in providing the backhaul, but about 15% of cable providers are also considering entering the business of offering small-cells-as-a-service, themselves. If you count Wi-Fi as a small cell, the cable industry is already quite familiar with and deeply invested in the business.

Metro cells, which are supposed to cover up to two kilometers in area and up to around 2,000 users, are the most likely candidates for FTTH backhaul. Smaller cells closer to subscribers offer the possibility of higher speeds using less power and better utilization of scarce radio spectrum. In essence, "small cells end up being a subscriber on the network," Vaughn said. He went on to describe several deployments: an AT&T trial in St. Louis, Mo., where small cells were deployed on utility poles fairly low to the ground, at about head-height; and a Vodafone deployment in Spain where fiber had already been deployed along the street and the equipment had a very small footprint.

US technology companies have become "the command and control networks of choice" for extremists, the new head of GCHQ has claimed. Writing in the Financial Times, Robert Hannigan says some US tech companies are "in denial" about how their services are being misused. He also said UK security agencies needed support from "the largest US tech companies which dominate the web".

Mr Hannigan argues that the big internet firms must work more closely with the intelligence services, warning that "privacy has never been an absolute right." What say the |.ers?