Category Archives: IT

August 25, 2021 · 19:50

Maximising digital exploitation

Yes, that is what you all fear is it not? To get digitally exploited and would you believe it, governments and politicians are making it happen. The first one to do so is South Korea. The news (at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-antitrust-tech/s-korea-parliament-committee-votes-to-curb-google-apple-commission-dominance-idUSKBN2FQ05V)  gives us ‘S.Korea parliament committee votes to curb Google, Apple commission dominance’ and here we see “a key step toward banning Google and Apple from forcibly charging software developers commissions on in-app purchases” and it is not just that, we also get “the amendment bans app store operators with dominant market positions from forcing payment systems on content providers and “inappropriately” delaying the review of, or deleting, mobile contents from app markets” As I personally see it, this is what organised crime has been waiting for and South Korea just made it happen. So as you ponder ‘or deleting, mobile contents from app markets’ consider that one infected app maker can now make claims rejecting deletion (or massively delaying it) and as such thousands of tablets and mobile phones will get infected and spreading the backdoor. There was a reason for the jumps that Apple and Google had made, in this we were decently safe. Now consider that we become the infection point because we were told that brand X is 25% cheaper, gives 50% more credit and is just as fast. That short sighted thinking will get you slammed, will get you hammered and could cost you your device. So as other sources give you “We do not expect any issues”, or “We are not aware of any issues at present” consider the carefully phrased denials and the consequences for your hardware. And whilst you remain in denial of this all being for consumer good. This all got started by some greed driven upstart that was making $5,100,000,000. So how much extra do you get? When you consider that one player has V-bucks (their currency) is at 1000 for £6.49/$7.99. When did they give you more for the same amount? They did made over 5 billion last year alone. So when we get to the quote by someone we care not for we see “Dominant app store operators with large platforms should by now look to profit from value-added services, not just taking a cut from apps sold on its store”, yes, so how stupid was that? Now the value added services like security, testing and storing must be paid for, as such the small players will soon stop existing, all to help out the multibillion app players. In the old setting all developers had a decent chance, that will now seize and as the damage to consumers start stacking, the larger failing will be seen in 2022, or as soon as you suddenly get a message that you became a DDOS agent. So whilst you get rid of all the games and utilities, it will be too late. You will need to factory reset your device hoping it will be enough (it might not be). Yes that was real clever thinking and when we regard “the rushed process hasn’t allowed for enough analysis of the negative impact of this legislation on Korean consumers and app developers” which is given to us by Wilson White, a policy director at Google. We will need to ascertain a few issues. In the first when this is pushed through we can no longer hold Apple or Google accountable when we get transgressed upon, we will get to drag these politicians into courts and in front of the camera and we can advertise just how stupid and shortsighted they were, it is the smallest reward for days and optionally weeks of our devices not being able to function because short sighted people thought they knew what they were doing. As I see it a ‘sorry’ statement will not be any defence and that is the larger setting, these politicians will openly ignore the damage done to the people, they will deny catering to organised crime and we are left with the damage. Yet they too will feel that impact hen EVERY developer will have to pay to be on the Appstore. When 10%-25% fall away, the larger players who were greed driven will merely shrug with a ‘so what’ and the rest will be looking for a job and that will have a few larger impact settings as well. The Appstore settings as they are for now will enable developers to get decently quality systems to develop. When that comes with the additional $750 annual bill that falls the developers way. Consider the impact when you consider that there are 23 million Apple developers and well over 6 million Android developers. When they get the additional bills it will push a whole lot of them out of that field, the impact will be seen and felt in almost all walks of life. As I personally see it there is every chance that 2022 will become the year of the digital exploiters and in that setting it will not be about Apple or Google, but I will leave you all to figure that part out and be sure to feel the pain of what happens when you go to any other app store to save a dollar or two. The impact will be seen and felt almost everywhere. 

So as we see that South Korea got there first, the US is right behind them. They are hiding behind the quote “a bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill that would rein in app stores of companies that they said exert too much market control, including Apple and Google”, so when the damage hits, it will hit hard and it will hit almost complete. Consider that I am wrong and consider these advertisement statements we see and how much deceptive advertising you have seen on your phone or tablet? And that part has been around for almost a year. If these politicians cannot even keep the advertisement section clean, how much use are they when you get infected? That is the setting none of them are willing to stay around for. 

That is the danger and it is not merely on a simple setting, when the app store can be ‘avoided’, we will get to see headlines like “Mobiles Hacked for 5th Time in 2 Years in Latest Breach; Nearly 150 Million Affected”. You think I am kidding? Last week Newsweek reported that something similar happened to T-Mobile with only 50,000,000 victims. So there if you are an American there is a 1 in 6 chance that you are one of them, so how often do you want to lose control of YOUR data?

That is the larger danger and that danger is currently rapidly increasing. 

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August 24, 2021 · 19:11

When two makes a good three

I was watching some movies when a thought dropped in on me. The thought was driven by a few factors and they include a former boss, the setting we see now and the larger station of keeping some of our thoughts (and data) private got me on this journey. 

I am making my thoughts public domain because I do not own any of the IP and this evolution benefits my IP, as such I am a nice guy. The issue is not merely having an USB drive, the problem is keeping that data secure. The cloud is less of a solution and as we se the largest IT corporations hacked, their solutions are not much use either, so you need an optional alternative.

So when we see the USB key, w consider that there is more to have. Now that they have 2TB solutions, the options to keep larger solutions out of reach of other hands, we need to consider what is possible. There are drives with some keypad and you can direct a code there, but these solutions will always be hacked. I saw some of the most ingenious security settings and I saw a man (not me mind you) look at it, consider it, look at his friend, they looked at each other, they tried a few things and less than 25 minutes later they had a 12 byte solution and the security was avoided. That is the real setting we face, so we need to split the solution.

So when we consider the split solution, the drive and the key, e also need to set a larger security, the stage where we do not have the options, but the makers have a website, and we get one option to initialise the drive with the key, once that drive is initialised, only THAT key will unlock it. There are all kinds of of disadvantages, I get that. But at some point you need to consider that if you lost your drive the data would be lost too. So why hand the data to the other player when the other player could end up with all the efforts without the payback.

I merely wonder why no one else took this setting to the next level. It is not unheard of to have a set of drives that require a hardware key, I just think they should not be on the same device. So the USB drive, the security key and you could make a great three and so far no one offers it to anyone (or so it seems), why is that?

The need for secure data is largely increasing and it will increase a lot more soon enough. With an almost daily barrage of hacked players many need an alternative and the cloud is seemingly not that much of a secure solution. So when we look at what is out there, we also see that combining two good ideas could make a decent combined product and I am merely wondering with millions of seeking a secure place for their data, why the larger players who already have the solutions never jumped on it.

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August 22, 2021 · 19:14

Time slice or lemon tart

That is indeed the question, but the question is not that important at present. It all started with a weird dream. In this dream I was in Montreal (Canada), now let’s be clear. I have no connection to the city, and apart from the fact that they have a good hockey team, I know next to nothing on the place, I know it is in French speaking Canada, but that is all. So in this dream I saw someone, it might be a reflective me, it could be anyone. They saved a hawk, or falcon from their balcony. The animal was shivering and clearly afraid, the person put on an oven mitt and offered his hand. The bird jumped on the hand with the mitt and carefully the bird was taken in the house. He placed the bird on top of a chair and got the bird rare roast beef (it seemingly really liked the rare roast beef) and gave it a bowl of water mixed with a lot of sugar. The bird was no longer seemingly afraid, but it was nervous. The person was looking at the clouds and wondered. He then moved what was drinkable and eatable into the bathroom, the bathroom and this is important was one of the innermost rooms in the house, no windows and no direct outer wall. He also placed a chair and a small table (it was a large bathroom), moved the goods into the bathroom and walked around the house pushing the heaters up everywhere, yet not to the highest setting, setting 4 was used on knobs with a 6 setting, I think that mattered somehow. Then he carefully moved the bird, now aptly named Horus with the mitt again and took the chair as well. He then got into the kitchen, took several items and moved to the bathroom where he set the radiator to high. 

Then it started to happen, Montreal was hit with a cold snap, it was only October, or November, but the cold-snap happened and well over 50% of the people in Montreal froze to death. 

Now, none of this is a mystery. I saw the Day after tomorrow, I played AC Origins, so all the elements (all except Montreal) fell into place, no real mystery or divine intervention.

Then I remembered every time I played a new game of Minecraft. Did you play it? The first day is important, because you need to create a safe location before the sun goes down. That part is important because too many RPG games are a service where it is at your convenience. Whenever you get around to it, and Bethesda has used that setting since I started playing it in Oblivion, in that same setting Fallout 3 onwards has the same stage. Yet what happens when that is not an option? When a house is on fire, it does not help to hand the bucket to the owner of the burning house when you get to level 13. He (of she) needs it now, or really soon. This is a stage we forgot about, the time slice. There are two issues.

  1. Do you have the minimum skills to cater to a time driven need?
  2. Should such a stage be set and always be achievable?

These two setting are important, there are gain two stages we must contemplate. In the first we cannot always be there, that is a mere fact of life and programming around that element is often folly. The second is that if we have a proper RPG, we have houses (guilds), but what if your first guild is not a mage or a tinkerer? So early in the game you see a setting where you can only watch, be that famous Monday morning quarterback and watch others do the job. Then we get to the important part, we need to set these parts to some level of randomisation that instigated when you START the new game. Not when you get there. So we see the need to have 20-40 missions with a decent rewards, but we need to be partially lucky, so that the internet cheater miss out as well. That is setting a larger story, especially when success unlocks a larger side quest. And the second part in all this, it enables and fortifies the replay of a game. So in the dream we can see that Horus was the trigger, but what happens when you never noticed that bird? Would you be ready? Would you make it to any shelter? And most important, without resources you will go hungry, thirsty and optionally will continue with decreased stamina and health (a day without food makes a person weak, try it for yourself if you doubt me).

So is the approach of having time sliced missions a hit or a lemon? I cannot answer that, I think it could be great if you program this properly and it will take proper programming to get it done. Programmers could ask Anunnaki (god of fate), but there is a chance that you will not receive any help from that direction. It will be a challenge on several levels, but should you pull it off you will be the one adding a new dimension to RPG gaming, a dimension that has been lacking for close to a decade, before that systems were just not strong enough.

In this I merely remembered the settings I came up with in Mass Effect Andromeda 2, Base of the pillar. And yes, I will admit that I had some overlapping ideas that I had for Elder Scrolls VII: Restoration, but I think that a good foundation (as long a the story is completely different) is not a bad thing. I saw the massive mass driven mistake that Andromeda was and there was a setting to fix it and regain credibility, but in that setting ME Andromeda would pack the second game with the first game, and even as a lot was the same, it was added with an enormous amount of changes and different storytelling. One needs to be faithful to the original trilogy. 

Yet all these settings cannot be more of the same, there needs to be a level of evolution. Yes there are plenty of gamers that do not mind more of the same, but they will soon realise that they are stuck in the past and that is as I personally see it never a good thing. And is success a guarantee? No, it is not. I do not offer guarantees, I merely dabble in ideas that can make the next generation of gaming special and enticing.We all might come up with a Nintendo WiiU, and that is fine, but it is not that system, it resulted in the Nintendo Switch and the few who are able to make THAT leap will make it big and that ups the level of gaming for everyone, that I the setting that players like Amazon Luna and Google Stadia (they a little less) get to look t and there is the larger station of play, a setting we have not seen before, not a game that exists everywhere. This is not about exclusivity, but about a totally new level and dimension of play, I think too many are forgetting that we need to push that part and not enough of us are making that leap. 

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August 21, 2021 · 17:08

Agrestally Ignorant

It took a day, I had to ponder several things here. I was drawn to an article by the associated press. The article (at https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-algorithm-technology-police-crime-7e3345485aa668c97606d4b54f9b6220) gives us ‘How AI-powered tech landed man in jail with scant evidence’. Here we have two issues, the first is that AI does not (yet) exist, the second is that AI evidence should not be valid, the rules of evidence are quite clear, so when I see “it came from a clip of noiseless security video showing a car driving through an intersection, and a loud bang picked up by a network of surveillance microphones. Prosecutors said technology powered by a secret algorithm that analysed noises detected by the sensors indicated Williams shot and killed the man.” So for all intent, we might think that the prosecutor was really clever, but as I personally see it, the man needs to be taken behind a bicycle shed and shot in the head, but that is merely my personal view. We might give value to “a secret algorithm”, yet that is merely an approach to not scrutinise the evidence. I have no idea how his defence faltered, but it did. 

In Intelligence analyses there are two parts. The first is that every source is unique and as long as they are NOT connected, they can NEVER support one another. Why is that? It comes from a much older setting which is found in “Trust, but verify!” We can accept all kinds of facts handed to us, but verification is where it is at. Verification gives us the larger setting that this source makes a claim and we verified that claim via other sources and we get the same results and conclusions. This is also why actual news needs collaboration from multiple sources, and it is why credibility of these sources matter. It is why witnesses are tested, cleared and processed to give the other party no option to diminish their testimony. It is so for a person and it needs to be more for any device. And whomever relies on “a secret algorithm”, is soon regarded as non-essential weight to any office. You see, the algorithm was programmed. I am not stating that the person was wrong, or did a bad job, but who knows what the brief for the algorithm was? That brief also gives the programmer more (or less) freedom of programming. Then we get the installation and testing of the microphones, it they are out by half an inch, there is every chance that they picked up another shot, perhaps even a muffler bang, who tested that part? Who looked at the map (a GIS speciality) and considered the noise and the event? Now consider for a moment the byline “ShotSpotter equipment overlooks the intersection of South Stony Island Avenue and East 63rd Street in Chicago on Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2021.”, this is all installed on a light-pole, so if any car ever hit it, the pole will be off by several degrees, did the software see that, was that ever considered? 

There is a lot more, it is seen in the part “The company’s methods for identifying gunshots aren’t always guided solely by the technology. ShotSpotter employees can, and often do, change the source of sounds picked up by its sensors after listening to audio recordings, introducing the possibility of human bias into the gunshot detection algorithm. Employees can and do modify the location or number of shots fired at the request of police, according to court records. And in the past, city dispatchers or police themselves could also make some of these changes”, so what were the raw collections, what was the distance to the event and what are the specifics of the so called “noiseless security video”, there are a truckload of issues and that is why verification is essential. This is all before we get to “an Associated Press investigation, based on a review of thousands of internal documents, emails, presentations and confidential contracts, along with interviews with dozens of public defenders in communities where ShotSpotter has been deployed, has identified a number of serious flaws in using ShotSpotter as evidentiary support for prosecutors”, it is merely the top of the iceberg, when we consider “classify 14 million sounds in its proprietary database as gunshots or something else”, you think this is trivial, but it is not. You see, this is in part the evidence, 14,000,000 sounds seems impressive, but it is not. You see there are an estimated 72 million handguns in existence, I have no included rifles and other two handed weapons, and if the database of sounds includes mufflers and tire blowouts, that lit is rather slim compared to what is out there. I can see close to half a dozen issues straight of the hockey-stick and whilst people are considering where the puck is (in Pittsburg they call it a biscuit). 

So why the hockey reference? The puck moves fast, really fast and plenty of people watching the game lose sight of it in a match, this is no different. Two sources, not connected and well over 50% unverified, how could this man be found guilty? I also have some serious questions for the judge there, but I wonder if it was on his plate, it was on the plate of the prosecutor and as I personally see it, that evidence had no case in court, except perhaps a court officiated by the Marx brothers. 

SZo when we get to the end and we see “ShotSpotter CEO Ralph Clark declined to discuss specifics about their use of artificial intelligence, saying it’s “not really relevant.”” Someone needs to take that horse and coach it to the side of the road, what some call AI, is merely machine learning, optionally deeper learning and it makes all the difference. With the amount of human interference (interaction) on the track from the microphone to the court room, those relying on AI are hoping to avoid the setting of bias and programming error, even source comparison errors. I reckon this Ralph Clark is on a slippery slope and with Michael Williams now on the stage where he can claim damages, a decent 8 or 9 figure damage, the 200 cases might represent a massive payout from the Government making the rules of evidence a clear debating point for whomever takes this to the next level and when the government loses a second or third trial it will be up to the Ralph Clark’s of the world to set up a defence perimeter, but I reckon it needs to be a lot more than “a secret algorithm” because at that stage such a defence will not hold water, not by a long shot. It would also help by not hiding behind AI when it cannot be AI, but that is merely a personal observation.

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August 9, 2021 · 11:31

To serve the gamer

Yup, that is a topic that is open for debate, but in my case it comes from a different angle. I need to explain how I got here. You have read my ‘displeasure’ with Ubisoft, they bungled (again and again), yet I also clearly stated that AC Origins is one game they got right. I actually disagree with the high 80’s scores the game had been receiving, I believe it to be low 90’s, but that is my view. The topic rose as I (due to lockdown time) decided to play it again and get some of the achievements I missed out on, I got half a dozen so far and I finally got to the Curse of the Pharaohs. I had the DLC, but my PS4 crashed to death somewhere in 2019 and as I had a little manoeuvring (covid retirement savings) I ended up with a PS4pro in 2020. And until a month ago I had no time for it, but in the last three weeks with being locked down I decided the play it again. So whilst gunning for ‘Old Habits’, I stumbled on ‘Where’s my Black Flag’ and a few others. But it was the Curse of the Pharaoh that made the difference. The first time I entered Aaru my jaw dropped. It was amazing, the field of reeds, the places, it was amazing and the boats made it all slightly surreal. The makers outdid themselves here. But this is also the place that gave me an idea. It was the side mission ‘Love or Duty’, the mission does not matter, the interaction does not either, but the mission clicked something in place. I had some similar ideas for Elder Scrolls VII: Restoration, but as it was not considered, it could be set to other RPG’s and even the one I designed. 

Your home is your castle
In nearly all RPG games, we are confronted with a house, unless you had Oblivion and you completed the Battlehorn Castle mission, in that case you have a castle. And there is the crux. In the light of Magic Carpet I want a castle with archers protecting what is mine. I had a few idea’s like the Magical armoury (a very different mission). And now the idea comes to add servants and more important make them a lot more useful. Consider that a person (a he or a she) is driven by needs, so if you can make one person happy (really happy), the others will pick up on it, and increase the power of your place.

Happy Happy, Joy Joy
To get to this stage consider that you have servants, some through concern and protection, some bought (yes in fantasy games slaves are real) and the proper treatment of them makes them more useful, yet if we can give one of them real happiness, an elated feeling of achievement or recognition they will become a sort of Uber-servant, a person that infects the people around them to be better and more productive. When we take the Battlehorn location, we see the Forge, the kitchens, the walls, the stables, we see a person in charge, but if we can fulfil the personal needs of one servant in that area, we get an area that is twice as productive. The house is cleaner, thee is more food, the weapons are better and the list goes on, it changes a 100% castle in a castle with 150% resources and optionally 150% defence (250% defence after the magical armoury mission). 

In RPG games it is all about us doing the missions, but a setting where we influence another to be the better person and set a non directive, a automated directive is almost never seen and that is a pity, because a game can become a lot more rewarding that way. Consider the old classic Dungeon Keeper, the monster we had fought for themselves, we could train them, we offer options, but we cannot set the marker on them, merely on the area. That element is often missing in RPG, it is not a fault, it is not a flaw, it is a choice and it is not used often enough, too many are about giving ALL the power to the player, but the world never goes that way, we forgot about the fact that we are not the deciding power, we tend to be merely influential. There is the thought that the reward is not 100% plus, but it is a random number between 150% and 200%, making it optionally a stage where we please a second person in that area, but the game also denies a red line approach, so the missions are not given directly, they need to be found and they depend on the persons we have, implying that we might never get more than one option, or even one setting. It is the second flaw on RPG. The ‘we always have an option’ clause. At times we should not have one, it is the hand dealt to us, and optionally it is a hand that sucks. That is the RPG we need to see but were never given. In an age where consoles will in be surpassed by streaming systems, the need to evolve gaming in general and RPG games specifically will become more and more pressing. To be another version of a game we have known for 20 years will soon come to an end and then? That will be the cruncher and streamers with one central game hub will have a lot more manoeuvrability than any of the consoles, the consoles will not phase out, not for the next decade, but when we do get to 2031, the field is highly debatable who will be in there. Because of stupid decisions in the 5G field, there will always be a need for consoles, as such there will be a Nintendo and there will be a Sony PS6/PS7, but streamers at that point will be a much larger field and optionally there will be a streamer next to a console in well over 50% of the cases. 

And in that light the need to evolve RPG’s (and a few other game forms) will become essential, it will show for the streamers, yet those who evolve gaming will survive (Nintendo and Sony for sure), the rest will be close to forgotten when we get to 2031.

Doubt me? Fair enough, just remember I said it first, I was the one stating it a decade earlier.

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August 8, 2021 · 19:50

Late to the party

It happens, we all are late to a party at times, I am no exception. I was busy looking at the stupidity of law, the stupidity of plaintiffs, waiting the courts, all whilst the approach to common sense was kept at bay. As such I did not read the BBC article ‘MP Maria Miller wants AI ‘nudifying’ tool banned’ until today. The article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57996910) shows the stage of what is called ‘a nudifying tool’. We can argue that the tool does not exist, because AI does not exist. You see, what some call AI is nothing but deeper learning. Someone took a deeper learning approach and accepted and acknowledged the setting that ‘sex sells’ and used that to create a stage. It is a lot worse than it sounds. You see when we consider ‘Nudifier APK for Android Free Download’ and we consider the hundred of millions horny guys (of all ages) and we see a market, a market for organised crime to exploit as an injector of backdoors (no pun intended) and in this Maria Miller loses from stage one. You see the app gives us “allows you to pixelate parts of your photo so that the illusion that your body is naked is also there”, they know how it will be used, but this statement washes their hands. Nothing is ever for free and this free download comes at a price I reckon. And with “By the way, packed with decorative elements for the picture, for example, the magazine cover is also paid separately. And that’s $ 0.99, which is the same price as the app.” We see the setting where the maker is looking at the setting to become a multimillionaire by September 30th. 

So when we get to see some Getty image of a despairing woman with the text “Currently nudification tools only work for creating naked women”, we wonder what on earth is going on, even as we also get ‘one developer acknowledged was sexist’, just one? How many developers were asked? It becomes a larger stage with “similar services remain on the market, many using the DeepNude source code, which was made publicly available by the original developers.While many often produce clumsy, sometimes laughable results, the new website uses a proprietary algorithm which one analyst described as “putting it years ahead of the competition”.” Is no one standing still at the one small part ‘a proprietary algorithm’? Proprietary algorithms are never handed over, this has a larger stage coming and even as we see the actions of Maria Miller, I wonder how far it will go, the moment someone attaches the word ‘art’ whilst not taking responsibility of the images used (the user does that), where will it end? 

And I am right, the end of the article gives us “The goal is to find what kind of uses we can give to this technology within the legal and ethical [framework].” But in the meantime we will see hundreds or even thousands of senior high school girls see their images with a nudified version, all whilst the stage was known for the better part of 2 years. I reckon that within 5 years the glossy magazines will all have nudified versions of every celebrity, thats how the money flows and that is how the station will go. Is it right? Of course it is not, but the larger stage of ‘sex sells’ has been out there for decades and the law never did anything to stop it, yet some MP’s listened to silly old clerics and they merely attacked porn, now we see that the larger station is evolving and the involved parties are all wondering what to do next. And in this no one takes notice of ‘one developer acknowledged was sexist’, just the one? The UK has approximately 408.000 software development professionals. The US has almost 4 million developers. And we see that one developer who acknowledged it was sexist? I have not even included the EU and Asian developers. So in all this, I reckon we have a much larger problem, optionally the writer Jane Wakefield needs to take another look at the article. So whilst millions of 14-23 year old boys are looking to find DeepSukebe’s website, hoping to reveal a slightly more interesting view of Olivia Wilde, Laura Vandervoort, Leslie Bibb, Emma Watson, Paris Hilton and the cast of Baywatch? We need to consider  that this was always going to happen, there are shady sides to deeper learning and whilst the enterprising and greed driven people are pushing for others to take a look, so are the members of organised crime, so are the enterprising people who considered an IT solution to push millions of paparazzi’s out of work. You really thing that some glossy magazine will ignore images when the people cannot tell whether it is real or fake? Consider the image below, as the technology becomes so good that we can no longer tell the difference in a face we have seen in dozens of movies, do you think we would be able to tell whether the boobies and shrubberies we never saw were real or deepfake? And when the images achieve 2400dpi, do you think the glossy magazines  and gossip providers will ignore them when circulation and clicks grow? 

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August 7, 2021 · 22:08

The simple view denied

It happens, and sometimes it is for a very decent reason, but in this case I have questions. It started months ago on March 7th, when I became aware of Ghada Oueiss via the Milli Chronicle, the article had issues, bu for now lets use another source, the source (at https://cpj.org/2021/02/ghada-oueiss-hacking-harassment-jamal-khashoggi/) gives us ‘Al-Jazeera’s Ghada Oueiss on hacking, harassment, and Jamal Khashoggi’, the first thing I notice is “Lebanese Al-Jazeera broadcast journalist Ghada Oueiss described hackers stealing private photos and videos from her phone and posting them online”, the word ‘described’ in red, linking to a Washington Post article. The article laden with emotion and set on emotional markers, yet forensic evidence is missing. So when we consider “stealing private photos and videos from her phone and posting them online”, so was the phone the only source with these pictures? From her phone means that they are selfies, the descriptions give me more than that, so was it the only place they were? I am not stating that this is a must, but it raises questions. You see, the original article (at https://millichronicle.com/2021/03/opinion-ghada-oueiss-lies-about-saudi-and-american-spies/) gives a lot more. There we see a ling to https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/1-20cv25022-002.pdf. It gives us a complaint of the Al Jazeera journalist versus Mohammed Bin Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, DarkMatter, Faisal al Bannai, Saudi 24 TV, a broadcast television station owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Al Arabiya, a broadcast television station owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Abdulaziz Foundation d/b/a MiSK Foundation, Saud Al Qahtani, Bader Al-Asaker, Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission, Tarek Abou Zeinab, Turki Al-Owerde, Faisal Al Menaia, Awwad Al Otaibi, Sharon Collins, Christanne Schey, Hussam Al-Jundi, Annette Smith, John Does 1-20. Yes a whole mouthful. And it continues as we see the start “This is a civil action arising out of the targeted unlawful hacking of Plaintiff, Ghada Oueiss, an international journalist who has a significant presence in the U.S. and abroad, both as a journalist for Al Jazeera Media Network (“Al Jazeera”) and as a frequent contributor to U.S. news agencies, such as The Washington Post. This unlawful hack and leak operation against Ms. Oueiss (the “Conspiracy”) was spearheaded by the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (“UAE”) and their co-conspirators in the U.S. and elsewhere”

This leads me to:
1. How was it proven who did the hack, or how it was done.
For me it is more than funny, you see the plaintiff uses an article by the Verge on footnote 9 is something I debated before, and a few other mentions. There is no debate that Jeff Bezos was hacked, but the evidence on who was laughable, there is too much settings that were never answered, but for the lawyers of Ghada Oueiss it was enough, a plaintiff weight to coin a phrase. There are all kinds of mentions, but there is no real evidence.

2. At [97] we see “Upon information and belief, Defendant Zeinab began his employment with Defendant Saudi 24 TV in 2018. He has since used his Twitter accounts to personally attack and defame Ms. Oueiss in response to Ms. Oueiss’ criticism of the Saudi regime:” We see a personal opposition via Twitter, not hidden, not threatening, merely a tweet, well over a year before what they consider being the ‘event’.

3. At [100] we get “This brazen admission is significant evidence”, a response to a google translated Tweet, I cannot tell it is correct, I cannot tell there is misinterpretation and I cannot tell whether this has anything to do with Ghada Oueiss.

The list goes on and on and at no point, do we see clear evidence of hacking and any evidence that this is linked in any way to any Saudi or UAE party. 

Then we see “At the beginning of 2020, I started reading private stories about me on Twitter – saying I had an apartment in Beirut, my brother’s name. I don’t post anything about my family.” I am not dismissing the fact that she was hacked, I am merely questioning the setting who did it. There is no evidence proving any of that. In the case of Bezos, his consultant did a piss poor job in documenting evidence, even worse than the CIA did (if that was even possible). 

The issue is not whether people are hacked, the issue is the evidence and the way places like the Washington Post go about it, does not help, they make matter worse whilst decreasing their own credibility. I got news yesterday that the USA Defendants allegedly have just filed a rousing motion to dismiss, it seems that this might have been a ploy to keep pressure on alleged matters (the journalists no one cares about that is missing). 

I remain in the fence. On one side the press should never become the story, yet I accept that Ghada Oueiss is entitled to defence, but I also see the need for evidence against the claim. I accept that she was optionally hacked, but like Jeff Bezos, there is no evidence linking either the Saudi Government, or the government of the UAE and its governing members to this. I accept that finding evidence is hard, really hard, but evidence still matters, not unfounded accusations lacking evidence. That is the actual ballgame and in all this we see a large lacking. 

The Washington Post is also the view of clarity, as we see “In this case, the trolls were attacking Ola and I not only as journalists but as women who dared to be critical”, you see trolls imply people with high level IT skills, I personally speculate that the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia is lacking these skills. It means someone else did this, and if that is so, there needs to be evidence that he ordered it, not some flimsy CIA report with ‘we think it is very likely’, thinking and very likely do not make the evidence grade. Consider this and well over a dozen other articles negatively speaking on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its members and wonder who would attack on a lack of evidence, governments or the greed driven stakeholders they cater to?

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August 3, 2021 · 02:45

The gaming mandate

We all seem to know what is best for all, we talk about policies, protocols and even mandates. Yet are they valid? I looked at a game based in the Walking dead on iOS, I looked at it for 5 minutes, saw how it played and deleted it. In my view it was not a game. It looked awesome, the graphics were amazing, but the game play is set to short term events that will get increasingly harder, not challenging, merely harder, and soon there after too hard. The game draws you in and after that it will be about pay to play through microtransactions. Their actions are not invalid, they are not illegal. I merely see it as this being no longer a game, but a mere cash cow. The problem is that these games also attract people who do not really know what gaming is, or sometimes even what games are. That is a shame.

You see, I am not trying to set out some mandate, but there is the joy of gaming and that needs to be protected. As I saw this game of short term bursts of gaming, the idea of gaming tends to be larger, should be larger and often on non-micro-transaction foundations will be more joy. So I started to think, what if the premise of that game is altered?

A different stage of play, a much larger map, even at the same foundation, consider what you know of the Walking dead and now have a Dungeon keeper approach. A map that is set, but in that map we can create a small protected place, we can place a garden (hatchery) that offers sustenance and calls a type of player, we sleeping quarters (lair) that does the same, but lets people rest. And we can see how we can add a workshop, a gym, a guard post and so on. As the game goes from level to level the players gets attacked, walker after walker with a wave or two and  the player can figure out hat to build where, how to get resources and so on, a stage NOT build on micro transactions, but a game build for joy and the consoles are doing their jobs, but soon it will be to the streamers, if they cannot break the cycle of pay-to-play, a whole generation will optionally lose the joy to play at all. Consider that Activision Blizzard generated 5.74 billion U.S. dollars in 2020. That is ONE company. Now we get it, Blizzard is big, and we cannot compete with that size, but there are dozens of smaller ones competing for revenue. Candy Crush generated revenue exceeding a billion dollars in 2019. Now consider that they did nothing wrong, but their game is set on algorithms that are set on you almost making it, and yes for $1 in special candy you could make it, it is ego versus mathematics and the ego will ALWAYS lose. Yet what happens when we invest into that $5 a month Amazon Luna solution? What if we enjoy long term gaming? You see, Amazon Luna (Google Stadia too) have a much lower threshold than consoles do and that is the barrier that is easily broken, to set players into a field where they can explore, enjoy and have fun. You see when we crush short term achievement drives and we get people on the bandwagon of fun we can change a lot and hopefully create a few people to take over the sceptre from people like Peter Molyneux, Richard Garriott, and Sid Meier. We have some really good game makers, but t present there is ALWAYS room for more, especially when their dreams, ideas and perseverance brings us new and original gaming IP. That is what we need on pretty much all systems. When the wish becomes the mandate it can be a force for good, but it is not a given, I merely hope it will turn out that way.

Yet in all earnest, and even as I am ripping old IP apart to use what is good, we need the stage of what is good to hopefully create something new and better. Even now I still think of a game released 24 years ago. It was GoldenEye 007. It changed things and even now it still holds a candle up to what is created today. Some of it is found in TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, almost 17 years ago. Games that enticed whole scores of gamers. So what happens when we look back and consider the IP we cast aside? We ignore Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods, a game 30 years old, but even now it still has appeal. Even as graphics need improvement, the makers then had really nice ideas and we forgot just how much fun we had for weeks. Even now, a 23 year old game like Sentinel Returns could still generate a whole score of fans and they are not alone. There have been makers like Peter Cooke who created Tower of Babel well over 30 years ago. Even as it requires an upgrade (graphics), the foundation of these games was good and engaging and we need them, we need to break the cycle of micro transactions. This sounds a little wrong, because there is nothing with microtransactions, yet I see everyone hammering against loot boxes and EA, all whilst the problem of microtransactions is well over 1000% worse. And the issue is not that they exist, or that they are not illegal, because they are not, but the foundation of the kind of gamers we create is. And I am not including the stupid people who go crying to some lame journo on how they wasted $12,000 on loot boxes, all whilst that journo is ignoring the stupidity of the person, but the draw of gaming is partially to blame. By setting the stage to ego (like a puzzle with a diminishing IQ counter), instead of a joy that has no time pressure, we change the foundation of our playing habit, and it needs to change. The old systems were harbouring dozens of games that could be added to any gaming arsenal and bring joy to the gamer Not all of them are RPG, some are shooters, some are platforms and some are a combination. We all have different needs, but we all have an overwhelming need to have fun, and too many games in todays android and iOS environment are driven to make it an ego driven event. If I were wrong there would never be a lego game, but I am not. There are well over 80 games based on the lego concept and they are (for the most) all fun. They are not alone but they are out there and their presence sticks out, they are not alone.

To call for a gaming mandate is wrong, because gaming is different for us all, I get that and some like the match three games, but they are hidden traps and that has never been made clear, The Conversation linked to this in 2014, There we get “During a recent radio talkback discussion, on which I was a guest, parents rang in with extraordinary tales of their children’s accidental and expensive online spending. One parent divulged that his six-year-old had spent A$700 in 15 minutes upgrading to new levels using in-app purchases.”, we still see news on loot boxes and the need to tax it all, yet none of them are looking into micro-transactions and match 3 games, are they? And they are not alone, a source gives us “The mobile games industry shows no signs of slowing down with consumer spending reaching $44.7 billion for the first half of 2021, an 18 per cent increase year-over-year.” And how does that add up compared to loot boxes? I think certain political players are unwilling to look into the directions that they have no hold over, and micro-transactions are not illegal, neither are loot boxes, but their legal status is wrongfully being changed. The stakeholders have a little too much power, so I need to make sure that we can change the premise of gaming before it is too late and in this the streaming solutions are the easiest to tackle, they are the station where the independent programmers could make the larger impact and with disregarded IP on a dozen systems there are additional options. I believe we need to press for this change before people forget that gaming has always been about fun, not ego.

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August 2, 2021 · 15:38

Lunae commentarius

Yes, it might be Latin to you, yet we are talking about the Diary of the moon, my idea for adding social media a safe place to gamers. You see, I have had a few discussions in the last few days. The responses go from ‘Why, they’re only gamers’ and ‘Why do we need another social media’ to ‘Don’t worry Facebook will solve it’, and that is the problem, Facebook does not solve our problems, it uses whatever bothers us towards a data setting for them. They are not doing anything wrong, they are a commercial party. Yet the time has come for gamers to get a real safe space and as such we are looking around. I saw what Google+ offered and I preferred it, but Google shut it down, recently we got Cocoon (2019) and they (at www.cocoon.com) give us “Cocoon is a home for the people you feel close to today, and will feel even closer to tomorrow”, they are right. In the beginning there was Facebook and Facebook alone, but as their saturation increased the amount of advertisements grew, it is the trade-off of saturation against quarter on quarter growth. There are no clear numbers, yet it seems that Facebook has 25%-50% of the ENTIRE planet. That has never been done before, that is what saturation looks like and everyone on that advertisement stage is trying to fill their pockets. 

The stage is also getting banked (towards Facebook). We might see (if we look) “Cocoon 3.0: a place to share with all your people, and just your people”, we see this in the media page on July 22, 2021, the media is remaining quiet as a mouse. So when we seek Google search, we get all kinds of cocoon mentions, but only when we seek deeper will we see that the media is avoiding this new option, perhaps someone needs to talk to media stakeholders that need Facebook as a ‘friend’? Yet these issues shows that we need another way, a Google+ and Cocoon way to set the stage, first for gamers, then for all the other people.

So how does this work?
In my view, a social media account is like an RPG game. You are your castle, your house. Together with your friends you have a cluster and that cluster is seen in two ways, your cluster of all your friends and your ‘in-crowd’, those who see everything. The book (it look like a leather bound diary) has some details, optionally a photo (if the gamer wants this), but in essence there is a closed avatar and the open avatar. The closed avatar is only for friends and in-crowds. That avatar has pages, each game a page, each game with the option to add images (screenshots) with an edited screenshot at the top, which is either made the diary header, or (more to follow), the page holds your achievements and a timeline with data available for YOU to decide where it goes. 

So it goes on for every game you play. But it is what happens next that matters. You decide whether the friends see everything, whether you want to spread everything, top-line or nothing to the game maker, the official game page or the Amazon distribution page. The important part is that it is up to YOU, the gamer to decide what is send around, and the stage is that NOTHING is shared until you allow for it more important, those who get the information can never forward your details, your nickname is seen, but not searchable and the list goes on. I also envisioned a stage where there is a Sony Tab and a Nintendo tab, completing your game experience on the entire field.

So we see clusters, ranks and vines. A station where you are in charge and that setting changes social media. When Amazon launches this, the need to non advertising continues and it goes all over the place.

The stage is more than just achievements, you have a header of your favourite game and you have headers of the games that you play the most (at present), a stage where you profile yourself into a larger community of YOUR making, merely your friends and family. This is not longer about selling ads, this is a safe space where the gamer can communicate achievements and milestones to their group of people with no advertisements. It will be a band new day for the gamer. It was something I had hoped we would see on the PS4, now we see a setting where Amazon has a much larger playing field. Consider that the Luna account can be linked to your Kindle, giving you your game diary on the go?a stage that can only get larger, there is a setting where the other streamers will have to run, run really hard just to keep up with the Amazon Luna, just a thought.

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August 1, 2021 · 20:07

COMPUTE BigTechPlotGoogle = ‘Lost’.

Yes, we all have to create variables to set a larger stage. We know that age gives us a lot, but the 15 people of age 18, the 7 with age 19, the 3 with age 20 are useless, yet when we group them in an age classification of 18-23 we get a lot more information out of our data. This is not new, this is. setting that market research has walked on for decades. Even before some programs added ‘functionality’, the people behind programs like Quantum were already on top of mentioned groupings. So when I see Google 9 to 5 giving us “Google is adding five games to Stadia Pro for August 2021”, I wonder if they have any clue what thy are doing. Apart from the fact that we also get “Killer Queen Black, inspired by the hit arcade game, Killer Queen, let’s you fight for your hive with three ways to win. Will you claim your victory by hopping on the snail, hoarding berries, or wiping out the enemy’s queen?” As well as “Stadia Pro is Stadia’s premium subscription service and your gateway to the best that Stadia has to offer. With an active Stadia Pro subscription, you get a variety of perks, including free games, exclusive game discounts, and top-tier visual and audio quality”. Here we now see a setting where Google is not merely fumbling the ball, it is giving the court to Amazon. There was always a risk of that, but to do it in such a direct way is rather silly. There is no Google Stadia without decent games and by confusing gamers by giving them “there’s Killer Queen Black ($19.99), Valkyria Chronicles 4 ($49.99), It Came From Space & Ate Our Brains ($14.99), and Epistory – Typing Chronicles ($14.99)” we see a stage where Google will not be part of any gaming stage soon enough. Any platform needs traction, any platform, especially streaming systems will need a cluster of gamers, that like grapes suck your soil dry for EVERY game possible, the numbers and exclusivity decide the winner. So when I saw this last Friday, I had to ponder what this means, not only does the setup implies that Amazon Luna will rule the streaming environment, it also implies that Google would fall dead last behind Microsoft. A stage I had not expected to happen. Not only should Google be first, it should be way ahead of Amazon, which is apparently not going to happen, so when we get “The count now stands at 29 titles” leaving us with the implied setting that at present Amazon Luna is wielding a games list three times the size of Google, how was that EVER a good idea? It also leaves us with the implied stage that Amazon will soon be the number 3 system behind Sony and Nintendo and it gets to be better, in that setting there is a larger stage where the Luna could be seen as accepted NEXT to the Playstation 5 gamer and Nintendo Switch gamer, optionally we will see households with these three systems. This changes the future for Amazon in a few ways, should they think this through, they can offer a new level of social networking, offering a link to Sony and Nintendo players, so that they can partake on the social scene, they can offer a much larger stage that would offer the Kindle to a large population who have ignored it (for whatever reason) and set a new level of consumer staging. In this there is an optional chance that a new Triumvirate could be created. In line of the old version where the world was ruled by Julius Caesar, Crassus and Pompey. This version will be one that gamers want, because they are getting hat THEY want, not what makers think they want. Sony, Amazon and Nintendo will get a larger stage to unite and perfect gamers needs, the rest will merely watch on the sides as they are trying to figure out what gamers (according to their marketing department) need. It will set their agenda’s back for close to a decade and in the mean time these three will excel in giving us gamers what we truly want. This is not a given, but when we unite the news from different sources, there is every chance that we go in that direction, and it would make me happy, especially if that puts Microsoft dead last in that field. Serves them right! Huh!

OK, that might not be called for but my ego took over for a moment. And there is a larger stage, a stage that goes beyond what we merely think can happen, there are options for Amazon to make it happen, will they? That is hard to say, streaming needs a good internet connection and there is time, but in the next year this war will be settled on the streaming winners and Amazon does seem to be in pole position here, I am not writing off Netflix, but I have no idea where they are at and how they want to offer services, in addition Netflix is also seen as a competitor with the Sony streaming services, a setting that Amazon does not have, so Sony would be eager to add to their functionality without impeding the Playstation and Luna is no threat there, more interesting the Luna, Switch and PS5 can easily sit next to one another and that would sit well with all three, a triumvirate in the making and that is where the others fall away.

I have no idea whether this will really happen, it largely depends on the actions by Amazon and their Luna to show it can be done, but the other two will happily accept a brother in gaming that is not taking the wind out of their sails and Google forgot to see and centre their view to the larger ocean instead of calibrating to whatever coastline they are ogling. That setting of wrong focal point is more likely than not, the stage that will cost them the streaming gaming war, it was up to them and they chose (very) poorly as I personally see it. To be honest, I thought that it would take until early 2023 when 5G is more widely spread for the streaming consoles to set their battle lines and now it seems that at present, with the information given to us, Amazon Luna is all but a decided winner even before the race is off. Considering that they were up against Google and Microsoft, it is an achievement that should not be underestimated. 

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