Monthly Archives: January 2021

January 8, 2021 · 04:03

Wanna be rich?

This is a setting that is not for me, I am not a programmer, I do know my limits. I had a need and on the iPad (first generation), I had a data vault, it worked perfectly, but not anymore, now that I have a 4th generation iPad Air, I found the funny side of Apple apps (it is an actual joke). When investigating the new apps, I found well over two dozen other ones, yet they are all copies of one another, all giving us pics of sexy ladies and the owner of the app (most likely a man), that person needs to keep the images of his neighbours daughter a secret. Most of them all having the same idea, none of them acting on business principles. 

You see, an actual data vault have 2 elements, the first is the iPad, that is the vault that needs to hold the data, the provider (any laptop) needs to synch and there the issue starts well over 50% relies on a camera roll, the rest on other means (all equally useless), then there are a few apps that require a monthly fee, none of them get it, all of them in the naughty picture mode, yet there is a whole range of consultants that need an actual vault.

As you see in the image, there is a USB stick (or network location) that the computer or laptop can access. That links to the iPad. Yet there is no good link and the links that are offered, so far none of them properly work. And there the foot becomes even more uncomfortable. You see, it is not merely images, the folder needs to contain JPG, PDF, MP3, MP4, MOV, XLS, DOC (optionally), es well as TXT files. Consultants come in many forms and directions, from accountants and actors through to X-ray Technologist, they all have projects that need to be kept ‘hidden’ only shown to a chosen few. It can be any sort of project, but the people (like me) do not trust anyone and there can be no copies out in the open, so we need a data vault, we need to load USB sticks (or network directories) and there is no trust in the cloud (not with well over 90% of cloud transgressions). 

And none of these data vaults seem to understand that, so there is not one app, there needs to be two apps, one on the computer, one on the iPad, the computer links to the iPad and that is the setting of an actual data vault, the app makers that act on cool are missing millions in revenue, I would happily pay the $10 for that and hundreds of thousands of consultants as well. Consider the tens of thousands of real estate agents who settle the deals for dozens of houses and apartments going well into the tens of millions of dollars. New York at any given time have well over 4,000 places and most of them are set to ‘Price on request’ and a few other restrictions, and those estate dealers are merely one in a very long line of consultants that have an actual data vault need. Customer and client details that they need to keep hidden, so that a stolen iPad leaves the thief with nothing. 

That is the app that is needed and no one figured that in Apple land, so who else is missing parts in all this? Oh, and I know that there are other tablets, but most of us all use iPad.

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January 7, 2021 · 23:19

The expensive Presidential joke

That is how I felt for most of the last 24 hours. It got to be worse when the international media decided to ignore the events given to them. To see this, we need to consider the first part.

Here is the image (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX2gQsQElJY), the poster set the premise that it is open to interpretation, yet when you consider the quote by Reuters stating “after the police force that protects the legislative complex was overrun by a mob of Trump supporters in what law enforcement officials called a catastrophic failure to prepare”, the Dutch NOS, basically copied that text, yet when we see the police opening the gates, there is a larger failure, some would say that the metropolitan police in Washington DC can no longer be trusted. This is incorrect, when we see the quote “security initially was handled almost entirely alone by the U.S. Capitol Police, a 2,000-member force under the control of Congress and dedicated to protecting the 126-acre Capitol Grounds. For reasons that remained unclear as of early Thursday, other arms of the U.S. federal government’s vast security apparatus did not arrive in force for hours as rioters besieged the seat of Congress”, we see that their own security force is blatantly failing and my own personal interpretation is that in two weeks close to 2,000 pink slips need to be handed out. Remember when we saw Gerard Butler in Olympus has fallen, we need to realise that it does not require a large North Korean force, 2000 Trump fans driven to lunacy will do and for the most no firepower was required to turn the Capitol building into a war-zone. So when we pause and consider ‘For reasons that remained unclear’, there is a much larger stage, the first one is soon to be fired President Trump stating giving us that he won by a landslide, ABC gives us “Twitter hid three of the President’s tweets — including a video message repeating false claims that he won the election by a “landslide” — for “repeated and severe violations” of its civic integrity policy, warning it would permanently suspend him from the platform in the event of future violations. Facebook and Instagram followed suit soon after, tweeting that the platforms would block Mr Trump’s account from posting for 24 hours due to policy violations”, my issue here is the claim ‘it would permanently suspend him from the platform in the event of future violations’, they did a lot more to a lot of people for less, especially in light of other stages like ‘Black Lives Matter’, interesting how they closed speaking valves in that situation, is it not?

My anger is that for the most, I am a Republican, I am not American, but I identify with the republican side of politics (in many cases), I feel that this is the right way, yet I have always heralded the need for accountability. If you are not accountable, you are close to nothing. We take pride in our successes and as such we must also accept (and perhaps to a small degree herald) our failures. At times I believe that we learn more from failures then successes, but that might just be a setting limited to a few, in Business (and intelligence) most people hide or wash away failure like it is a bad habit and that setting gave us many failures (including 9/11 and Benghazi), there is a larger stage and we are setting the outline for that right now, as such it was a bit of a surprise to see James Comey (former director of the FBI) giving us “Donald Trump should not be federally prosecuted once he leaves the White House no matter how much evidence has been amassed against him”, it is a quote from his new book ‘Saving Justice: Truth, Transparency and Trust’ launched later this month. When you read the setting (at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/05/james-comey-donald-trump-prosecuted-saving-justice-new-book) it makes sense, yet even as a Republican I would prefer to foster the trust of the American people with Trump in prison with a $400,000,000 tax bill around his neck. As I personally see it Trump has championed petulant childish behaviour for too long and it is too sickening to see this continue. In part I like the idea of Merrick Garland being the new Attorney General, I never understood the lack of wisdom in stopping his nomination. It was the right of then president Obama to choose a new justice. Lat year or not, like I supported the right of President Trump to chose this justice in the last months of his reign of stupidity, then President Obama was equally entitled to select a justice. Now, the process is clear, he still had to be voted in by the senate, yet to refuse to hold a hearing was wrong in my personal opinion. 

And the stage America is on right now is not a good one, and as we go back to that building and Reuters giving us “The force’s officers are trained to keep protesters off the Capitol’s marble outdoor steps, to protect the complex like a citadel. But there are so many windows and doors in the 19th-century complex that it is difficult to defend them all, said Terrance Gainer”, the fact that security let the people right through is a much larger failure that is not debated or considered, a stage we all see and we all ignore, why is that Mr Gainer?

So as we take notice of the failures under this president, we all hope that the next one will be better, as I see it, he will be cleaning house for most of his first term, not merely his administration, he will need to address a failed infrastructure in a few more places than he will be comfortable with, on the upside, the Capitol security services might have up to 2,000 new positions open in the next few months. So those seeking a job (if you survive COVID-19) there is one lace you could apply.

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January 6, 2021 · 22:29

You be soft

Well, there is good news and there is bad news, the good news is that my dreaming was not as dark as before, the bad news, I redesigned a new version of Assassins Creed, nothing with that pansy ass Viking stuff, or more precisely the glitches and bugs (as I saw them on YouTube). A fresh version that grasps back to the actual strength of the AC series, the Ezio Auditore era. Don’t worry, be calm, I will not touch something that was near perfect, but it surprises me that no one in the Ubisoft offices had that foresight, that insight and if they did, who was the yahoo milk dud that stopped it? 

When we consider the old games, and I just replayed both AC2 and Brotherhood in the PS5, I was amazed how I loved redoing what I know what was going on, this is not an attack on the AC games, I truly loved these two and I had them both on PS3 and Xbox360, I never regretted that. And after that it went quiet until Origins, OK, AC Black Flag was a great game, it was just not an AC game. Giving a pirate a hidden blade is not making him an assassin and I never got that, Ubisoft had the premise of a new franchise, all new close to a day one game on the PS4 and they botched it, like it was left to someone without backbone to decide, anyway, Origins was amazing and after that it was more of the same, and the same stupidity came to Odyssey, as such I refused to touch Valhalla, and when I saw the glitches in YouTube films I was doubly sure that until the game was 80%-90% priced down (because of all the patches required), I left it alone. So as I was playing this evening a little of AC Brotherhood a new setting came to mind.

It was an interesting time to consider it, because it would set a new stage right between AC Brotherhood and AC3, I set the stage in the Netherlands, and the idea was to make it full on stealth, like an assassin needs to be. The idea was to have a much larger antagonist and it does not get any larger than the VoC, the ‘Vereenigde Oost Indische Compagnie’ was the first setting of a true cartel, so it stands to reason that the Templars (or whatever they would be called then) wanted a piece of that. The idea is to set a story that intertwines there. Consider that art was at an all time high, the Dutch Masters ruled, so the art is there, the old cities of Delft and Amsterdam would be there and that nations has had it foreign military visitors (France an Spain) which also resulted in the 80 year war, as such, a nation in war is a nation with options and opportunities. Even as the VoC is the main antagonist, there is a much larger story, the Netherland were basically  centred around North Holland and South Holland, Even as South Holland was mainly Rotterdam and Schiedam, it had its own life, its own set of achievements, and lets not forget that the Pilgrims on the Mayflower left from Schiedam. A whole wealth of options, and it was left untouched, as they tried to go for something looking cool.  

The VoC had it claws in the East Indian nations and more important, until around 1675 the VOC navigators and cartographers helped shape geographical knowledge of the world as we know it today. In addition, the Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek started microbiology around 1650, he also invented the microscope (he was probably bored staring at the hookers in Caetendrecht), a nation with so much history and so many options and Ubisoft seemingly ignored it. Now there is a danger, the danger is that we do not want more of the same (AC2), but something more, something different and making it more stealth and evolving stealth is an option, we can also dispense with the leaps of faith, we will not be sailing but boats are  larger setting as the VoC was a large fleet carrying organisation. 

There are of course a few options that seemingly overlap, there is art, but this time around books (revelations) are a side, the need to steal becomes a larger stage, as such you might improve a location (your house) but it does not lead to money, as such you need to make choices. There is also the notion to include Belgium as Brussels was an important city, especially when Napoleon came stomping by, there is a setting of close to a 100 years and in that time so much happened,  we could make a much larger game, with more settings and a larger story line that surrounds the VoC and optionally sets a much needed stepping stone to other sides of the story.

What surprised me is that I got all this in less than 3 hours, and all that whilst Ubisoft came up with AC Valhalla, which has as I personally see it a lot of its homework from watching the 2013 series Vikings by Michael Hirst, but that could just be me. 

And my largest fear is not that Ubisoft goes into this direction, it is the massive amount of bugs that they put into the game as well. Even now we see (5 hours ago), that there are arrow bugs that are not fixed, I wonder if Ubisoft will ever learn, I might just buy all their IP. I still have $20 left, it should be enough.

Oh, before I close the story, instead of merely assassinating people (which is never  waste of time), I thought it might be prudent in line of the VoC to add a diplomacy part, so whilst some need to be killed, some people should never be killed, as such the thieves are more important now, they can be used and when used enough they will teach you skills too. Something that sets a larger premise towards using allies. Just an idea.

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January 5, 2021 · 21:06

Dark dreaming

We all do it, and I am no exception, even though, when I dream, it tends to be creative, yet even I pulled back from the darkness of this. And when I dove deeper into my dream, I found links to a story I saw 3 years ago, the problem is, is it altered to seem real or is it merely fantasy, but not the good kind that involves unicorns. 

The story starts with the setting that a man is going to court to give evidence, on the way he gets harassed by people, harassed by the media, who all claim that the people are allowed to know the truth, and in this the man proceeds, a young lady was raped and he is giving evidence. But the media has another direction, in this their stake holders need alteration, as such the man is shown over the days to be loosely untethered to reality, and that is how the defence of the raper continues and the man is set free, the people AFTER the trial are not the most interested in what actually happens. Suddenly the media takes a distance from the man and they are all the promiscuity of the girl, they achieved the goal that the Stakeholder requires and they set the achievement of a large advertiser they all have reason to celeb rate, because the truth got out, but in this, the story is merely beginning, the man who got played and got tainted was never the most stable one, merely. Man with moral fibre and that can be the most dangerous man of all. He finds the two men at the heart of the ragging and he soon learns that they recently acquired new cars, new wardrobes and their children were able to get into schools they should never have been able to get into and the man gets angry, he waits until there is a dark night, a moonless night and he sets fire to the houses and the cars, he walks off, there are no witnesses and he does not care whether the people survive (they do), and as we see this iteration, we also see the man closing in on the reporter, who is now largely aware that she had become a target too. Even as she pleads on the TV for the man to come out, promising that they would hear him out, he merely walks on, ignoring TV’s, having coloured his hair grown a beard, and wearing a small pillow to seem heavier than he is and he walks on, through the streets on his way to make someone pay. It is a morning and we see a view of a square, we see a view of people and as we see the people walk into buildings, some might notice the reporter with dark shades, a cap and moving a little faster as she sees the building where she works, he sees her too from a distance up on high, he aims and pulls the trigger, exactly where he was aiming for, the right kneecap, another miss filer of truth had come to its rightful setting, on the floor drowning in fear, blood and horror. 

Even then the man who had safely (and rather fast) eloped to his place of birth now knew that he could never return to that nation, even as he used the media to give the people an avalanche of stories that suited HIS needs, the media was all too aware that there is a price to pay, and the reporters who are offered the bonus are not eager to accept any of it.

So this was the dark dream, and we will of course relate to J. Epstein and G. Maxwell who finds herself in court also in a stage where she might enjoy that view for 35 years. There is an other piece, on that I saw in 2017, it is called ‘How do sexual assault victims feel when the media fails them like this?’, an opinion piece (at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/03/sexual-assault-victims-newsnight-media-blaming-victims), it is important, because it shows a rather large failing of the media, a stage we seem to ignore, especially when we are click baited by some. In this, when you consider the sides of “Newsnight producers decided we needed to hear from a panel of 14 men making comparisons with the animal kingdom and complaining that you can’t even put your arm around a woman these days”, which is interesting, especially when we see ‘Newsnight Sexual Harassment Debate Featuring 14 Men And 3 Women Was Pretty Weird’ by reporter Jack Sommers who also gives us “A ‘cross-section of complete lunatics’”, so in this, who EXACTLY were the producers of Newsnight? Perhaps they were whispered to? But to see the media fail one gender this completely is a setting to a large rise of questions. We are witnessing an abuse of channels whilst the victims are more often than not ignored or played down, so why is that?

And if that is not enough, consider the stage that all this started with an affidavit in 2015, and the same media that will spread unconfirmed and unproven issues regarding Jamal Khashoggi have (with the exception of the Miami Herald) left the affidavit largely untouched, as I personally (and speculatively) see it, the rich have too many stake holders, shareholders and advertisers in play in the media. The first truth is that the media tends to filter the truth, and the people are not willing to ask why, as such we see a larger failing and perhaps that too added to the dark dream I had, I hope the next one is lighter, or if it is a dark one, spearheaded towards a new game. In this I can only hope, even as I set the larger stage towards the in creation TV series Keno Diastima.

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January 5, 2021 · 16:39

Kill the law

Yes, that moment has finally arrived, I for the most was against the need to do that, if only the politicians and lawmakers would not have been such a collection of pussies, it might not have been an essential act, but the stage we are on now is one is one that Shakespeare gave us in Henry VI, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”, yet at moments away we have arrived at this moment. A few things happened, first there is the stage of the British wankers on ski’s, then there is ‘UK judge blocks extradition of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to US’, in this the BBC reports that “because of concerns over Mr Assange’s mental health and risk of suicide in the US. Mr Assange, who is wanted over the publication of thousands of classified documents in 2010 and 2011, says the case is politically motivated”, he was such an outspoken great man when he released the documents, we can’t have him being a pussy now, can we? Even as I am still in the mindset that he is not a traitor as some call him, he is in a stage where he broke the law and so far half a dozen nations went out of their way to cater to him. A stage of law breaking without accountability, as some would say. And in all this, the one winner is Stella Moris, in all this she gets the limelight she needs to cater to her career. 

Then there is ‘Covid-19 in Switzerland: Mutated UK virus strain found in several cantons’ (at https://www.thelocal.ch/20210104/mutated-coronavirus-strain-found-in-several-regions-of-switzerland), the British pussies (or cunts) that slipped into the night afraid of being in lockdown travelled all over Switzerland too get to France, to get to Freedom, and as I personally see it infecting the Swiss along the way. Now this speculation should be matched by investigation, I understand that, yet if any are found and the British tourists find themselves out of prison instead of in prison for a decade, the basic line is set that the law has become useless and serves the mere large corporations in legally avoiding taxation, to smite the common man in a ruleset that they break again and again. So when we see “Several other cases of the UK variant were also found at the end of December in Zurich, Graubünden, Valais, and Bern, and one case of the South African strain was detected in Ticino, according to the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH)”, we need to wonder what is next. So when we see all kinds of versions of “British tourists have fled the Swiss ski resort of Verbier “clandestinely” under cover of darkness rather than submit to a new quarantine imposed on UK visitors, a local official says”, all whilst the British governments are solent on the matter (as far as I know), we see a stage where we cannot accept the irresponsible acts of others. I wonder if the UK has considered what the larger contemplations are when Switzerland calls for the UK citizens to be pronounced ‘Persona Non Grata’, not one, not 200, but all. I wonder if the law suddenly sees a setting where they either pucker up or they will find themselves left no longer being considered valid by the largest group of people. 

Lacking a proportional response?
Yes, one might say that and it would not be entirely wrong, yet when we are told “More than 2,500 break virus restrictions at illegal rave” (France), even as some sources state that the group had reached 10,000. As well as ‘Demonstration party in Duindorp’ (Netherlands), there are a few more, but they are instances not the common field and we acknowledge that, yet the law cannot sit by, it has to be strict and it has to be firm this time around, if only to get to some specific tourists, they have no valid defence, no matter how they slice it.  This is seen in the larger stage, COVID-19 was a reality for the longest part of the year, they could have let go of this one holiday, until it was safe, they decided that ego was more important, as such they should pay. Yes, we know that the lockdown was not initially in play, but we have had two already and other nations have other stages and settings, they also have the new viral strain and no action was promptly taken until it had spread to 40 nations. In one stage I can say, the more that die, the more valuable my services will be, some will say that is inhuman e, but they decided not to act when it mattered, now it does not. And with 86 million people diseased, we will see the death rate go up beyond 2,000,000 and those are jobs that can go somewhere else, optionally solving unemployment to a much larger degree. In the US there are 12 states where masks are not required, which implies (an unproven imply) that the disease will have a lot more fun in those 11 states (Yes I mentioned 12), Alaska is perhaps the only one that is a bit out of shot, they got a partial save by weather and environment. I reckon that the initial clouds will rise after march, if there is any healthcare or NHS left, we will need to massively address tax law issues on an international scale, if we falter again there is every chance that the uprising against the law will turn massively violent, I myself am totally against the Nanny state (my Republican blood), yet there needs to be a level of accountability and so far the law has merely served those wanting to evade accountability, and the people are stating to notice this and they are putting two and two together, I speculatively reckon that being by tech senator will prove to be a lot less healthy in 2021 than ever thought possible, but I could be wrong.

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January 3, 2021 · 19:30

Building NPC faith

We all have it, faith in ourselves, yet in gaming it takes another turn and even as I am a catholic, religion in gaming is often a cautious stage, we might have liked faith in the Assassins Creed, but as it is a historical piece of work, there is not a real problem, yet what happens when you want to make an open world, what happens when you work on a new RPG? Setting sides is a larger problem than you think, unless it is a side no one has. So as I was listening to R.E.M’s Losing my religion last night, a thought occurred ‘What if I create one?’ It is not the weirdest idea, and I have had a few thoughts in a life philosophy for a long time, I just never considered using it in this way. 

Opposition
Yes, there will be opposition, there are people (gamers too) who wonder if religion should be part of any game, but in an RPG we have a reflection and like it or not, 95% of the planets population has some form of religion at their back, leaving it out tends to be a lesser idea. It might not be needed for action games who wield the religion of lead and boom, but in a sandbox setting, and anything a little more complex than Minecraft, religion tends to rear it (at times) ugly head.

In this I set the image of the ‘faith’ in a version like Rodin the thinker, three men, with backs connected, showing the three sides of a person. Holding a book (or scroll), the educated man, he thinks through, he learns and if need be, that person adapts. The second man holds a plant with a butterfly, the spiritual side, we are all part of a greater system, plants are part of us, as are the animals and as we accept that we are part of a greater system, we might find our place. The third man holds a shield, the physical, we do not go out to hurt, yet we must always be ready to protect from those wanting to hurt us. A setting of three sides, all seeking balance within us.

Premise of my origin
The origin I designed in the past (a long time ago) was set to a triangle, we are the triangle, we as couples are actually two triangles, each side is one element, there is a physical element (sports, or anything of a physical nature), there is an intellectual side (anything academic, or anything relating to comprehension) and a spiritual side, two of the elements are our foundation, we all have this, there is no exception, optionally just denial. As we find a partner with the same grounding (academic & spiritual) for example, we connect better as the sides of the triangle are more alike we connect better, longer and optionally deeper, As the triangles are closer to identical we are connected more complete, but this is rare, for example one might be all about physical sides, sports, hiking, camping, the other less so, so as the length of that line differs, the stronger it differs the less we align, but there are three sides, we align to the side that is the most in common, the educational side tends to be that, consider all the high school and university sweethearts, and there we see where eduction, with either physical or spiritual tends to have been the grounding of the triangles, I believe that as only one side connects, we are either a friend (or companion), a lover or a romance, with only one side aligned it does not last, parts of this is seen as the The Triangle of Love, but I believe that it goes with any of the three sides. The connection of two sides is required to make the commitment work, the more aligned the two sides are, the better the fit, if the second side is too unaligned the result is pretty much always the same, it ends in divorce (which doubled in the last 10 years), having an alignment of all three sides is utterly rare, I believe that for the most, brothers and sisters as well as twins share this, the love of their family, the need to equal, the drive to push both sides, it is something I merely observed.

So why do we care?
In gaming, there is the need to evolve the NPC character side and as such the triangle as given to any person, not through self evolvement, but in a premeditated stage would give a larger NPC alignment in many facets, and it matters because any game above a certain size either has a way to set the premise, or you need to set the premise for EVERY NPC, making the game almost impossible to manage. Yet if the physical, emotional and spiritual stage is set to one triangle as well as the interactions, you get a much larger stage with almost no event setting, you merely have to apply the same coded interpreter to all NOC, they all basically rely on the same subroutine. They are all guided by their own faith (their spiritual side) and as such you get a whole wave of options and as they are all influenced by elements that are not identical, we see an NPC  community that differs per player, a stage where we all adjust to OUR play style and more important, as the NPC does not react alike, we get a whole new game from day one. And many players have a setting that their neighbour does not. When one has faith in ones self, the game changes for all concerned, that has been a truth since the game Pong was designed, we merely adjusted the paddles to be a lot more interesting.

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January 2, 2021 · 23:25

Copyright? Copy left

As a trained IP attorney (minus the experience), I am always in line with IP and the traps and tricks are to some degree well known to me, so one question with any design my mind makes is “Is it more alike to the previous version, or not?” This is important, I have no doubt that making TESVII: Restoration myself implies that Bethesda (or their legal team) calls and demands all the materials I copied with an added cease and desist and that would be fair, IP is protected and I will not copy what is not mine, but a good idea is a good idea and that is a larger stage. As such, my mind has been considering a new version of seven cities of gold and when I saw new, I mean totally new. The part of exploration is pretty much the only part that not all mine, but that is too generic as such my version has options. 

As such the game is in two settings, the first one is the original world, with all the bells and whistles and the gamer can start (and should start there) so that he or she can get their feet wet. After this and after the immediate training, you can start a second game, a new game, yet this version will redesign the world, so you will be in a massively new area, an area that differs largely from the original. It will design a new map roughly 1000 by 1000 miles, you start in one part, and that is 200 by 200 miles. You get to explore, map, set sights and start foundations. You get to build a fort, from the fort you grow a trade post, from there a village, a town and if you are good enough a city. But it is not merely ‘building’, you have vassals for that. A city with infrastructure, religion, logistics, a setting that grows with every choice you make yet it is not that mundane. As I was thinking it through, I was listening to Jordi Savall, and a  consideration grew, what if music is part of growth? As the town band grows, its music increases, all production goes up, yet not always, some react to the beat, some to tempo and some to melody, as you set the stage for the local music, you set in motion a choice. We explore and we find, but there is a sort of randomiser in play, so not everything will be there, some parts will be, some will not, some area’s will have hides, a forest has lumber and as we explore what is and what can be grown, we alter the foundation of growth, the game needs to be entertaining, but it can be educational as well. When we played Civilisation, we had the research to make changes, what if something like that is in the game, but different? What if we had writings, but we set a larger stage with laws, we make choices, common law or civil law, later the introduction of accounting, criminal law and taxation, but they can only come into effect if certain conditions are met. And when the addition is made we see the larger benefit, politics, republic, monarchy, all choices that impact the bottom line of life, but we need to see the changes in a larger stage, the settings of natural laws, the benefit of a nameless religion (in the beginning there was a benefit), yet all these elements are in a different shape, this is not civilisation. So what happens when the world is a 1000 by 1000 miles and you can run through it all? Transport becomes important, we start with horses, and as we see more and more challenges, we can also fathom the impact. We get to shape the world as we see it, as we want it to be. Run around like in AC Brotherhood, but here there are no shops, no banks and no buildings, we get to build it all. Build to close together and space becomes a problem, choose the wrong location and you might be cut off from resources a town needs, we want an exploration game that is true to reality and the new consoles allow for that, cloud gaming allows for that. So when you see the AC Brotherhood map below, consider that 25 times the size, if the X and Y axes represented 10 miles, consider it now at 50 miles in each direction, and that is merely stage one.

What more, whenever you make a new game, you get a new map and you have no idea where you are so navigation and cartography become important, no YouTube in that space, in 1607 JamesTown was founded, consider that stage and see if you can do better, a game that has its own little sidesteps, because wildlife could kill you as you ride too far away, no option to get back in time, as such you will see the results of choices. Seven cities of gold was a great idea and what they got out of the CBM64 with 38Kb of space was pretty awesome, so we can take that idea and evolve it into something really serious and from there we get something entirely new, something never seen before, and all this in a third person view, not a top view that is map like, but the actual view, and consider that you might be playing a very different set of rules from your best friend, you can actually consider discussing what the best road to act is, a game setting we rarely see. 

Is it doable? 
I believe it is, the new consoles, PC’s and cloud consoles (Google Stadia) can easily deal with it, the question is, can it be done in such a way to entice the player to dip its toe in the exploration waters and see what will come next? I am game, but I am merely one view, there is a commercial side to this and a game designed to appeal to 10-499 people is not a triumph, it is a niche that has no place to go, it is the 3-5 million group we want to reach, that makes a setting achievable and something worth pursuing. It is merely my view on the matter, but I believe that banking on value for money is never a bad idea. 

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January 2, 2021 · 07:51

Fortune cookie?

And the woman looked at me and said: “There are two kind of unemployed people, those who cannot deal with the situation and those who are unwilling to consider alternatives”, I have no idea who she was and she basically threw the ‘accusation’ in my direction. Yet it is not a truth, it is what some call ‘the fortune cookie truth’, it is almost like reading a horoscope, you want it to be true, and you will read it accordingly with a weighted view on what you read. Yet that is not the only time you read it this way. The Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/may/28/how-the-free-press-worldwide-is-under-threat) gives us ‘How the free press worldwide is under threat’, well it is debatable whether it is, and to some extent you did this to yourself. So when I read “In recent years, another way of silencing journalists has proliferated: the use of what are known as strategic lawsuits against public participation, or Slapps, where defamation or criminal lawsuits are brought with the intention of shutting down forms of expression such as peaceful protest or writing blogs”, I wonder where this is going, you see we are given all kinds of examples, and the loud Mexican example is pushing the matter, but when we see “In France, media organisations and NGOs have been hit with what they view as Slapp suits for publishing accusations of land-grabbing from villagers and farmers in Cameroon by companies associated with the Bolloré Group. In the UK, fracking companies including Ineos, UK Oil & Gas, Cuadrilla, IGas and Angus Energy have since 2017 sought and been granted wide-ranging court injunctions, often directed against persons unknown, to prevent protests and campaigning activities at drilling sites” we do see something that should not get ignored, yet the setting is actually larger than that. All kinds of publications have pushed this and the demand for proper policing has not ben met seriously. So as we are given “a framework for co-operation between UN bodies, national authorities, media actors and NGOs. Spearheaded through Unesco, the plan was incorporated into the Declaration of the Council of Europe in April 2014, and in guidelines published by the EU soon after. In April 2016, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted a recommendation on the protection of journalism and safety of journalists and other media actors” we are given the first part, not the journalist, but the phrase media actors, they are part of the problem and as the media refuses to acknowledge the stage, they themselves are endangering the journalists. And it took a while, but they come out with the old and misrepresented cow, we get “Other infamous cases of state-sponsored crimes against journalists include the brutal murder, on 2 October 2018, of Saudi dissident and Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. The CIA have concluded that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, ordered the journalist’s assassination. On 19 July 2019, the office of the UNHCR released a report describing Khashoggi’s death as “premeditated extra judicial execution”.” Let’s not forget that this is the same CIA that gave us the presence of WMD’s in Iraq, so where were they? The emotional ‘brutal murder’ is given, absent of actual and factual evidence and this is where we see that the journalists became the media actors. The people can no longer tell the difference, a journalist gives us the FACTS, a media actor does not, mostly they rely on emotional storytelling to flame events, a ‘Whornalist’ if you wish, and the matter is getting worse, the people are rejecting journalist sources, complicating matter further. It is becoming a setting where the ‘fortune cookie telling’ is regarded to a much larger extent as some unwritten truth and the media pushed for this, emotional people will click sooner, will click more often and every click matters in the digital world. It also enables corporations and players to use Slapps to a much larger degree. So these ‘Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation’ are now proving to be a much larger weapon of choice by too many players and the media seemingly and speculatively allows for them according to the needs of shareholders and stake holders. And as I personally see it, UN Essay writers are making things less and less palatable, not because of what they claim, but they are using more and more dodgy settings to create an air of ‘humane lawgiving’ a statement that is it own antonym a it is not humane and in no way is it lawgiving, and speculatively speaking it might not be lawful either. 

So as the article ends with “Today, citizens are on lockdown, eager for news like never before. And more than ever, the news must be fact-checked, verified. Because disinformation spreads as fast as the virus itself, and journalists are on the frontline in the fight against the distortion of truth. More than ever we need facts. Facts to avoid spreading fear, fake news and panic. More than ever we need a free press” they need to realise and accept that as long as journalism dos not take a hard look at itself and distances itself from media actors, their plight will merely become harder, people can no longer see the difference, and the options they had from day one, the fact that a journalist has (or should have) a degree in journalism, as such the articles they write can be made to look significantly different from opinion makers and non-journalistic flamers, they are all set to the same category (read: garbage). 

Entertainment stations,  claiming to give us the News, all whilst that news is tainted and filtered to keep out what we should know, but someone insisted that it is not worth knowing, it does not matter whether the decision maker is aiming for Digital currency, a stake holder, a share holder or someone else, the news is filtered and therefor might not be news anymore, merely filtered information and there are examples going all the way back to 2012, optionally a larger time before that. The people can no longer tell the difference, what was hard about that? As such the given part “when powerful political and business actors can attack journalists with impunity” is merely half a truth as I personally see it. They are part of the shareholders and take holders that limit the view of the people through media actors and that part is the unwritten part that has gone way out of control. That needs to be addressed before you claim that you want a free press, you merely boxed yourself in and you are in denial, merely coining the idea that the quarters you are in now are a bit cramped, which implies that you merely had to stop them from becoming cubicle neighbours in that building you call journalism.

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January 1, 2021 · 23:07

Greed v Agony: 1-6

We see the set, we see the result, yet we do not understand the equation. The media is mulling it over, it is in despair on what to do. They have so many voices to listen too, producers, executives, stake holders and share holders, none can agree on the story and more precise, most of them are clueless on what the story is. Reuters gives us ‘SolarWinds hackers accessed Microsoft source code, the company says’, the story (at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-cyber-microsoft/solarwinds-hackers-accessed-microsoft-source-code-the-company-says-idUSKBN2951M9), gives us plenty, but are they giving us what we need to know? Even as we are told “It is not clear how much or what parts of Microsoft’s source code repositories the hackers were able to access, but the disclosure suggests that the hackers who used software company SolarWinds as a springboard to break into sensitive U.S. government networks also had an interest in discovering the inner workings of Microsoft products as well”, a stage that is a lot bigger than anyone knows, some cyber experts have an inkling of thought on just how bad things got, but they do not know just how bad, because we do not know what was accessed.

Back in Time
So as we consider that on December 13, 2020, The Washington Post reported that multiple government agencies were breached through SolarWinds’s Orion software. So this is when the worm got out, yet I believe that the first instances were early August, I cannot prove this, but that is when the first event took place, they were merely not seen or identified as such. As far as I can tell (through unconfirmed and slightly dubious sources), there was a mapping phase in play and it was in play for weeks. This mapping phase was not contained or limited to the US, or to governmental players. It was also not the first time it happened, but it seems it was the most complete and most successful attempt, and it is about to get a lot worse. You see, people didn’t learn from 9/11, from all these people who went to flight school just to take off and learn how to fly into buildings, they didn’t learn the first time, and they are not learning now (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZAoFs75_cs), it gets to be funnier, the ethical hacker is topped by another advertisers, offering the same with 75% discount, and would you know it, all these ‘new’ ethical hackers, what are the chances that a few have their own agenda? Now these people are not ready to take over Solarwinds yet, but they are en-route.

A lot of hackers started as ethical hackers and then didn’t end up with a decent job, they had to make ends meet, and would you know it, they had just the education to make that happen. So as they didn’t get high paying positions at Google, Apple or Sun systems, they decided to take the reins themselves. They do have their competitors, people who graduated from London Poly, or Moskovski politekhnicheski universitet an a few others, all having graduates and the world had no positions for them, so they became the new managers of another version of Ransomware, or some other solution. It was only 5 years ago that we saw “Trend Micro released a research paper about sextortion: the means through which cybercriminals obtain compromising personal images or videos of Internet users – which they then hold hostage until their demands have been met” and that was if you were lucky, the idiots that most governments have include idiots that put the national security and defence issues on a USB stick. 

Time flies when greed is in charge
Over the last 5 years we saw an abundance of issues, yet the greed driven idiots all had a bottom line and cost is not part of that bottom line, it is actually against it, that was what some of these executives were screaming. And as things were pushed back quarter after quarter, the setting became that nothing was done, so when SolarWinds was transgressed upon the bulk of all corporations had no issue to see just how screwed they were, the sales people needed their bonus structure and so do the board members, as such there was for the most no defence. And it gets to be worse, even as we all want to blame SolarWinds, we need to realise that anyone with a lack of defence only has itself to blame. This is why I took certain defence matters into my own hands and even as they are not perfect, it beats no defence at all. When the Telecom Companies start to scream murder because usage is out of control and the numbers start showing that 100,000 people used 200 GB, all whilst the numbers showed that for the most the average of 50 GB, we will see another issue, the loss of telecom data and more important, our financial records will not match up, and at that point you will see a stage where our data is up for sale and there are plenty of interested parties who want that data. A setting of 5 servers that can be used multiple times and 25 customers all willing to pay $10,000 for the usage records of 100,000-350,000 people, and after the financial data is aggregated, they can collect a lot more from another 40 customers. It boils down to $250,000 for a month of work, and that is merely one segment, once these people hit companies (especially those with underfunded IT departments), The numbers will add up larger and faster, especially when IP data is made available, by the time the companies learn just how intense the pull of data was it will be too late and for the most the global police settings will not be able to cover it, the US has an FBI who can get to the matter to some degree, but they still think that North Korea did the Sony gig, so I am not holding my breath on that one. And that is before they realise that I devised another setting that explains the inside job part and I found a new way of exporting that data, which took less than an hour, the shareholders who needed a patsy in North Korea are that much in the dark at present and for the last 7-9 years actually.

So whilst the sales people are in the push for revenue, I reckon that only the companies that have a CTO on their board of directors will have a decent chance, the rest is cannon fodder, it is basically that simple.

The greed drive looks that good, but in reality they are losing 6:1 at present, SolarWinds is merely showing the agony that is out there, it is ABC News that gives a much larger timeline, with ‘Malware may have been installed in June’, which does give voice to my timeline, but it is not enough, we see the larger stage with “the hackers piggy-backed on the company that made software running on hundreds of thousands of corporate and government networks” and in all this, where was the security of SolarWinds? I believe that the damage is much larger and the players just do not know what to trust and who to trust, and that will stay with them for the larger extent of 2021, implying that their systems will not be properly cleaned for a much larger time, because they look at the larger setting, but this pass over will hit EVERY system, and it will hit a few systems in different ways, because they will get found out in a few ways, but not in all ways and that is why the agony score is so high and all this before someone realises that their cloud system could be just as infected and that is another piece of cake entirely, one that does not clean up so easily. 

So whilst we see the trivialisation of “it says patient information was not stolen” or “there was nothing to suggest customer data had been accessed”, it is the basic defence of any company or government organisation, but in reality they are decently clueless on what data was accessed and how it was copied or positioned in a place they can get to. For example it might not show, but when you realise that a person was using 12-17 GB of data during the day, so why is that person’s account using this data on his sick day? Odd is it not? There are a few more examples, but I let you simmer on this, because 2021 has a few more surprises for all of you, perhaps for me too.

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