Kendall Hamilton and his mother, Dr. Gigi, help Black gamers land lucrative name, image, likeness (NIL) deals and influence the industry through their organization Game Changer Academy.

In highschool, Hamilton rose to prominence as a player himself. Although his mother was initially concerned about his profession path, her support for Hamilton led to his promotion in Rocket League. Hamilton and his mother were among the many top ten players in the virtual game showing others Black families the right way to succeed in esports.

At Game Changer Academy, Hamilton is a performance improvement coach and mental health advocate. Thanks to his own success, he knows concerning the great opportunities the sport offers, akin to scholarships and NIL offers. Now he and his mother were working to make those offers available to other black players like him. So far, the mother and son duo have acquired over 150,000 for his or her clients. dollars.

As for Dr. Gigi, she uses her background in workforce development to help families turn passions into fruitful opportunities. She helped families learn the way gaming could lead on to scholarships and future offers. The licensed psychotherapist also wants to scale back the gap between black gamers and industrial success.

Their efforts are contributing to a greater emphasis on diverse players – 15% of them discover as black, in accordance with New Zoo. Understanding the potential financial gains from the booming industry, the duo stays committed to reaching Black youth captivated with esports to speed up their careers.

Their newest enterprise, Game On: Virtual Experience – Gaming, Mental Health, and Personal Development, hopes to proceed this mission. The event, which can happen on November 4, will connect players and inform them concerning the opportunity to shape their future in this industry. Additionally, there shall be speak about protecting your mental health while pursuing your passions while constructing an empire.

Game Changer Academy is diversifying the esports industry and preparing Black gamers to take the sector. Registration for the event is now open to all families with ready-to-play players.

The city of Columbus, the capital of Ohio, confirmed that hackers stole the personal information of 500,000 residents during a July ransomware attack.

In filing In an interview with Maine’s attorney general, Columbus confirmed that a “foreign threat actor” breached its network to access information including residents’ names, dates of birth, addresses, identification documents, social security numbers and checking account information .

Ohio’s most populous city, with about 900,000 people, said about half 1,000,000 people were affected, even though it didn’t confirm the precise number of victims.

The regulatory filing comes after Columbus was the goal of a ransomware attack on July 18 this 12 months by city officials he claimed “thwart” it by disconnecting your network from the Internet.

Rhysida, the ransomware gang accountable for last 12 months’s cyber attack on the British Library, claimed responsibility for the August attack on Columbus. At the time, the gang said it had stolen 6.5 terabytes of data from the Ohio city, including “databases, internal employee logins and passwords, a full server dump of city emergency services applications, and … access from city video cameras,” in response to local news reports.

Rhysida demanded 30 bitcoins, or roughly $1.9 million on the time of the cyberattack, as payment for the stolen data.

Two weeks after the cyberattack, Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther told the general public that the stolen data was likely “corrupted” and “unusable.”

The accuracy of Ginther’s statement was called into query the day after David Leroy Ross, a cybersecurity researcher also often called Connor Goodwolf, revealed that the personal information of a whole lot of 1000’s of Columbus residents had been placed on the dark web.

In September, Columbus sued Ross, alleging that it “threatened to make stolen city data available to third parties who otherwise would not have readily available means to obtain stolen city data.” A judge issued a brief restraining order against Ross, stopping him from accessing the stolen data.

In a listing published Monday by TechCrunch on the leak site, Rhysida claims to have transferred 3.1 terabytes of “unsold” data stolen from Columbus, amounting to greater than 250,000 files.

Meta’s social network, Threads, now has 275 million monthly active users (MAUs), the corporate said on Sunday.

“Yesterday we passed 275 million monthly active users on @Threads. We would like to thank everyone who helped us get this far. There is a lot more to do and a lot to fix, but there is something exciting about this place.” he said Adam Mosseri, the director of Meta who runs Threads and Instagram.

Launched in July 2023 to capitalize on the tens of millions of users leaving X after Elon Musk purchased the platform, Threads quickly gained users and has turn out to be one in all the most important text-first social networks today. The platform reached 150 million MAU in April and 200 million MAU in August, which suggests it has gained 75 million active users in only 3 months.

Last week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in the course of the company’s conference call following its third-quarter 2024 earnings that one million people were signing up for Threads daily.

While user acquisition on the platform is trending upwards, Threads has been battling plenty of issues moderation issues that frustrated users.