Yes, they came, the images. My mind played out the beginning of a new movie, one with Owen Wilson in the lead. I am not ready to tell that story yet. During that escape I also saw a few other things, it is there that we find ourselves. In the middle of a story not to be told, but with images that make sense in gaming. You see, in the early years (1993) Origin made a game that had potential, the game did not really exploit it, but it had created an optional new wave and even as the finale implied things in the end, they never came. Yet it is only one side. Games are always about options, but nothing ever comes from the tail side of that coin. What if choices are set upon us? More important what if the other side has equally strong negative sides? We can select the internet to do our work for us, or we can go forwards embracing the choices we have made. Too many games forget about that. I believe it was the wrong take to make on gaming. We grow and we get clever through adversarial settings. That as been proven for the longest time, yet we overlook it because it is not what the gaming community wants. By whose standards? Players like Ubisoft and Microsoft have no idea what gamers actually want and they have shown that lack over and over agains for at least 10 years. So let’s take this up a notch. You are at a shrine, there is a camera, a book and a potion. You can only select one, what do you take? When the clue is unfolded it makes sense to take one of them, yet each give a formidable advantage, yet you lose the other two. In the age of Gauntlet and Diablo based games we might take that part later, but what happens when the choice if final and the others are removed from choice? As I see it it enables replayability, it grows a much larger value in any game. You see a game that does everything will basically please no one. We forgot that the founders of gaming like Infocom with Zork enabled us to think things through, a side in gaming we tend to forget. And I did too, for the longest time I merely went from achievement to achievement. I forgot to have fun, I forgot what replayability enables, not the same track again, but another path towards the same destination. More to see, more to experience and more the encounter. Most game makers are about story experience and one story fits all, but that is seldom if ever the case. For the same reason two role playing gamers might select different races (orc, dwarf, human, elf). All part of the package, all part of 4 learning experiences. Yet most people stick with the one choice and work from there, yet I believe that they take the one path because no one explained that they can get more by taking another path the next time around. It does not fill the revenue bill and that is a shame, yet in the new stages, in streaming stages that option will become increasingly important. Streamers have a monthly fee, so if one game can be played 4 times the revenue meter fill up larger. More importantly the games would have to become a lot better, a lot more immersive and the stories would need to become a whole lot better. I do not believe this to be a bad thing, this is how evolution of gaming starts and it does need to start, you see fully deployed 5G is no more than 3 years away and at that point the console wars will go into a new dimension with the streamers (Google Stadia, Amazon Luna) will become fierce and a lot more decisive. I do not believe that they will replace the Nintendo Switch or the Sony PlayStation 5. Yet they will be next to a lot of these systems and that is where the $200,000,000,000 revenue ticket for 2022 is at, and with the Amazon Luna with an optional 50,000,000 more consoles that war takes a hard turn into better gaming and the ones not ready for upgrading gaming will lose out to a lot of revenue clambakes. It will not start drastically, it will be all nice, but it sets the stage for 2024 and there the numbers do add up to failure or success and none of the players are embracing failure, or so they seem to think, but which of these systems have truly embraced upgraded gaming?
Not many, I can tell you that much and that is merely the first wave, the second wave will add the previous revenue success to the next one and those who missed out on pile one, have little to no option for an increased pile two. That is where they all are, in denial. Phrases like ‘We are working on it’ or ‘this will sort itself out’ but behind the curtains they sweat, they have no idea where to take it next and I wrote about at least half a dozen options, and they all laughed, but in November 2023 they will stop laughing. They will face the shortcomings of choice and the lack of options they left their gaming community with, so these people will dump that system and cancel that prescription. So these people will face 2024 with limited revenue and no plan of implementation. That will be the losing streamer. The other one will take a bow and head for revenue piles two and three, at that point Sony will face a true contender for the first position in console wars, the field is wide open, but I believe that Microsoft has already lost, they did this to themselves. To be honest, as the information goes at present the Amazon Luna is the most likely winner in that direction, but I have no idea where Netflix is going, so there are options in a race where some horses cannot compete and some horses are unknown. In that race I see Nintendo in third position, with their gaming attitude they could go higher and they have what it takes, but they work on a formula that is almost guaranteed to keep them in the race, yet like any formula, it has limits and that is not a bad thing, it is what they chose and so far they kept 93,000,000 gamers happy with the Switch overtaking Microsoft by a lot, the weakest system defeated the strongest console in the world. Why is that? Technology? No, Nintendo listened to their gamers, gave their gamers what they needed. That was the simple truth since before the Switch arrived and when it did in 2017 the world saw a winner and Microsoft became the number one loser. This is about to happen again yet in 2023/2024 it will be the streamers who fight over the initial number three position, but some will have it within them to get to second place. And good games is where they get the winning positions, the better the games, the more the gamer wins and that is my stage,
I want gamers to win, because if they win, I win. I am after all a gamer.
The images came
Filed under Gaming
A woman’s voice
Something bothered me, it bothered me from the beginning, but I let it go. There are several important things going on in the world and this was not one of them, or was it? It was the Guardian that pushed me into action. The article ‘Hollywood stars back Emma Watson after Palestinian solidarity post’ gave me the view that is was essential to act, and believe it or not act is the central part of the whole story.
The article (at https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jan/13/hollywood-stars-back-emma-watson-after-palestinian-solidarity-post) gives us a few things. Now to be honest, for the most I tend to take the side of Israel, for several reasons. The setting was that Emma Watson showed an image, an image that gives us “a photograph of a pro-Palestinian protest with the banner “solidarity is a verb” written across it. It was accompanied with a quote about the meaning of solidarity from the intersectional feminist scholar Sara Ahmed.” I reckon that Emma Watson agreed and she posted the image. In the initial hours I saw responses and also the accusation of antisemitism and I thought nothing of it, I believed it to be an overreaction. In this, I also saw the tweets by Danny Danon and I believed he was wrong, he too overreacted, but I let it slide. Now that we see all these responses, I feel that it is important to respond.
As I stated, in most cases I tend to side with Israel. Here there is a truth. The truth is simple “solidarity is a verb”, that is truth, it is a verb until it is followed by acts, commitment and actions. If you want to see that look in your history books on Poland in the 1985-1999 era, solidarity came from actions, until that is done, it is merely a verb. Yet all sources ignore the third side in all this. There is one side, there is the opposition and there is the photograph. You see the photograph is brilliant. It starts conversations,. It starts views and it does create opposition, yet nearly all ignored or overlooked the third party, didn’t you? We see the acts against a young lay, and let’s face it, she is only 382 months old. It is not an excuse, it is not negative, it merely is a fact, just like the fact that “solidarity is a verb”. And she identified with the verb, she identified with the thought. In this she is right and a lot of people are wrong. So it is good to see names like Susan Sarandon, Mark Ruffalo, Peter Capaldi, Charles Dance, Gael García Bernal, Jim Jarmusch, Maxine Peake, Viggo Mortensen and Steve Coogan standing with her. In this Danny Danon and Israeli officials did the wrong thing, perhaps Palestine was hoping for an overreaction, perhaps it was something else and in all this Miss Watson never uttered an anti-semite word and that needs to be seen and seen as soon as possible. And in all this we see a second failing. Did you pick up on it? The media merely gives us “the meaning of solidarity from the intersectional feminist scholar Sara Ahmed”. So what was the meaning? Why is it (as I personally see it) overlooked? And more important, who is Sara Ahmed? The Quote was “Solidarity does not assume that our struggles are the same struggles, or that our pain is the same pain, or that our hope is for the same future. Solidarity involves commitment, and work, as well as the recognition that even if we do not have the same feelings, or the same lives, or the same bodies, we do live on common ground.” Do you know where I got that from? Vogue Magazine! They gave a more complete story than the newspapers, how weird is that?
So as we wonder who is right and who is wrong. I gave my view, yet I will not deny that Palestine has a hard situation, in part Palestine created it, but the truth behind the setting is that “Solidarity involves commitment, and work” it is an absolute truth and I wonder all those voices screaming and parroting that Emma Watson is an anti-semite, who did their vetting, who did their investigation? I fear that this group is far too small and that should sadden us all.
But there is also good news Emma Watson turned 382 months today, so she can celebrate her day in life, her month in life and she can do it holding her head up high, she never did anything wrong here.
So solidarity is a verb, so is judgemental. Who thought it through and who considered that the photograph did what it needed to do, to get people talking. As I see it +15 points for Gryffindor.
This is weird!
Yup, it is weird and you will see what I talk about soon enough. You see, not unlike the Sony fiasco, some players are all about blaming the one we all see as a boogeyman, it happens and it lulls us all to sleep. Yet when the BBC gave us 18 hours ago ‘North Korea hackers stole $400m of cryptocurrency in 2021, report says’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59990477) I took a little time to mull a few things over. You see, it is nice that we are given a (state) hacker and a setting what apparently gave them $400,000,000, yet the danger is different. For me it started with the Sony hack, it gave me an idea to create a new hack that was never done before and the nice part is that it could be implemented in several ways and in several places. Yet then I started to think: “How can a nation observed by so many agencies pull this off, all whilst we saw evidence, journalist supported evidence, that military officers in North Korea had NEVER seen a smartphone, or one of its base functionalities?” This thought matters, because that lack tends to seep through the fabric of ANY organisation (to some degree). So I felt certain that the Sony hack was never done by North Korea, and several accredited and more capable cyber people than me felt the same way.
So here when I see “From 2020 to 2021, the number of North Korean-linked hacks jumped from four to seven, and the value extracted from these hacks grew by 40%,” Chainalysis said in a report” I feel that I am in a stage where I am watching a blame game develop, all whilst the fault is somewhere else. And there is more, the report the BBC talks about gives us “These complex tactics and techniques have led many security researchers to characterise cyber actors for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) as advanced persistent threats (APTs). This is especially true for APT 38, also known as “Lazarus Group,” which is led by DPRK’s primary intelligence agency, the US- and UN-sanctioned Reconnaissance General Bureau. While we will refer to the attackers as North Korean-linked hackers more generally, many of these attacks were likely carried out by the Lazarus Group in particular.” It is an issue, because “cyber actors for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) as advanced persistent threats (APTs)” implies an infrastructure, one that a lot of open nations do not get to have. I am not stating North Korea is innocent (well, they might be of this), I am stating that someone wants us to think it is North Korea, so that others stop looking in THEIR direction. You see, the reference to the Lazarus group (one I personally take offence with) and the DPRK gives a rather large voice, but in that it could only be if senior ranking North Korean officers knew what a smart phone was and that part is weird as some journalists who were in North Korea (2019, I believe) saw the opposite. This does not make sense. As such we cannot ignore hackers, optionally hackers who for a fee took shelter in or near North Korea, yet that puts them in the most watched part of the internet by at least half a dozen players. Personally it makes much more sense if they were working from China.
And now we get to the good stuff. This is seen in “Once North Korea gained custody of the funds, they began a careful laundering process to cover up and cash out,” the report on last year’s cyber attacks added. A United Nations panel that monitors sanctions on North Korea has accused Pyongyang of using stolen funds to support its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes as a way to avoid international sanctions.” I reckon that laundering is not beyond the abilities of North Korea. Yet the setting of “accused Pyongyang of using stolen funds to support its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes” something that is possible, but the knowledge North Korea has stops this, moreover, their ballistic programmes are set upon failure after failure. Which with $400,000,000 in merely 7 operations sounds goofy to say the least.
It is my personal feeling that the hackers might be anywhere but in or near North Korea. The Sony hack is optionally a slice of evidence towards that. Consider that Russia has now Arrested REvil, yet no one is wondering how this group had “more than 426 million rubles (£4m), including about £440,000 worth of crypto-currency”, including 20 premium cars. These things get noticed, as such I believe that REvil had some massive levels of protection, a setting North Korea cannot do, it is too unbalanced. With REvil, there was a Russian valve of protection, a state player that is on the top tier, a place where North Korea has no access. When you see these elements questions rise and a lot more questions rise that one would expect. So who did steal that $400,000,000? I have no idea, but consider that someone offering North Korea in its current state is offering $100,000,000 for denying the blame, is that good business practice? It would allow the perpetrators months to set safe 75% and a nice settlement in a very nice place. I would definitely consider such a move and with the world searching, getting the not look in the wrong place is a good place to start.
In all this, I could be wrong, but am I? How much evidence of advanced computer technology (outside of Olympus has fallen) regarding North Korea have we seen? We saw the images of a North Korean president and his top staff looking amazed at a 3 year old Dell computer, one we see in many households. Where is the advanced hardware needed to remain undetected? All questions in addition to the dozens watching their every digital move. If they get away under these conditions, they would be more able than the NSA, DGSE, or FSB. How likely is that? When you look at the larger frame, too much of this is weird. On the other hand, it gave me the idea to create the Hop+1 listening systems, just a little idea I had to scare the Pentagon a little (I need my amusement too). So perhaps this will set me on track for another piece of IP, I have done more with less, so here is hoping.
Mason, Sailor, Prosy, Spy
Yes, it is a reference, and if you do not see the reference in the first second, this blog is not for you (no judgement). The BBC alerted me to two events playing at this very moment and in light of the Al Jabri situation, I wonder how stupid people have become. Or better stated, how on earth did essential skills get lost this fast and this complete?
Article 1
The first article is ‘London ‘hitman’ on trial over plot to kill Pakistani activist in Netherlands’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59988413) a mere two hours ago. There we see “Kingston Crown Court heard that Mr Goraya, who was living in Rotterdam at the time, “was known for speaking out against the activities of the Pakistani government and appears to have been targeted for that reason”.” This gives me a few issues on the matter. In the first on what planetary scale is any activist worth £100,000? In the second, if this was a proper operation, there would be little or no intel on the matter before the deed was done. I am disputing the abilities of MI-5, MI-6 and the AIVD, but to have such a complete picture implies that the stage was not about removal, but about visibility. Basically the person known as Muhammad Gohir Khan was a dead spy from the start, the numbers were excessive because there was every chance he would fail, but colour me happy, there are a dozen Pakistani minded people in Rotterdam who will give it a try for €10,000. That is my thought on the matter. As I see it and as I see the information pass me by, I am reminded of the 70’s with Russians dressed in weird raincoats like they are Humphrey Bogart on route to a renaissance movie fair. So when we see “the prosecution alleging he reacted “enthusiastically” to a proposal by a man named only as “MudZ””, I see a setting where MudZ is leaving a message to Pakistani entrepreneurs in the Netherlands that there is a decent bag of cash waiting for them. No matter how we judge them, the Inter-Services Intelligence of Pakistan knows what its been doing, they have been sharpening their teeth on Indian operations for well over a decade, as such the weird amount and the visibility that we see implies that Muhammad Gohir Khan was always intended to be a dead spy. The problem is that both sides (Dutch and United Kingdom) took the bait and now the contract is firmly on Dutch soil, no contact, a mere contractor needs to do the deed, send the image of accomplishment and the transfer (most likely via Western Union) will be in effect. And in this Lieutenant General Nadeem Ahmad Anjum will be enjoying a lovely cup of tea looking and the chaos that two or three agencies caused for him, the bast spy in all this is the one who does not realise what he or she caters to, if the unknown is a cadaver, it will be a John or Jane Doe that does not realise what they were until the message that “Ahmad Waqass Goraya has been dealt with” is out in the open. Intelligence at its (almost) finest.
Article 2
The second article, which was also from the BBC is one that hit the wires 12 hours ago (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-59977916), there we see ‘Israel says it broke up Iranian spy network that recruited women’, now the news is not that staggering, it is out in the open that the state of Israel has a excellent record in stopping Iran and with the retirement of General Soleimani their work became increasingly more easy. So when I see “The Iranian handler, who called himself Rambod Namdar, allegedly approached the women on Facebook and then kept in contact with them for several years via the encrypted messaging service WhatsApp”, so at what point is Facebook a secure connection? And when I see “four Jewish women of Iranian descent, who the Shin Bet said were recruited by a handler claiming to be a Jewish man living in Iran”, as well as “Shin Bet said this was a “serious case” in which there was a plan to establish an Iranian spy network inside Israel, and that the women faced “severe charges”” I wonder if any of the women considered walking into Mossad HQ stating that something weird was going on and asking Mossad for directions. The idea that anyone from Iran trusts Facebook to hold a candle for them is ludicrous in a few ways and from there the pot stirs a little louder and a little less sincere. A stage that Shin Bet saw and prevented, hopefully in time to stop Iran causing any havoc. The weird part is that all this logically speaking should have had close to zero chance of success, so why did it? Did we forget to activate the common sense in our brains? Did we switch off critical thinking? I do not presume to know, because I wonder how this could have continued to this degree, on both fronts I might add. If people are that gullible, I do not envy the work Shin Bet has ahead of them, things are a mess. And people who cultivate such activities without vetting the intelligence are doomed to be a tool, optionally a dead tool. So whilst Shin Bet wonders where this Rambod Namdar is at present, I reckon that he (or whoever he/she is) needs to stay under the radar in Iran for some time, because Mossad is looking for that individual now.
Two cases in a day and that is when we consider the previous issues with Al Jabri, I merely wonder what on earth is going on with global intelligence and illegal operations, it boggles the mind. Did Facebook make everyone stupid?
Bitches be like….
This is the start of an issue I have with a BBC article. The article is not wrong, it is merely short sighted and incorrect, yet the BBC did nothing wrong here. Let’s be clear about that. The shortsightedness comes from the complainers who want to blame Google (YouTube) for everything, but the larger picture is ignored and there my issue starts. The article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-59967190) gives us ‘Fact-checkers label YouTube a ‘major conduit of online disinformation’’ I do not disagree here, it is, but when we get to ““livelihoods have been ruined, and far too many people have lost loved ones to disinformation”. It goes on to accuse YouTube of not making enough effort to address the problem, saying that it “is allowing its platform to be weaponised by unscrupulous actors to manipulate and exploit others”.” This is as I personally see it the moment the wheels comes from the wagon. Let’s take a look.
Example 1
In the Netherlands there is a person named Willem Engel, he was removed from Twitter for violating rules. The man is a Dutch Covid conspiracy theorist. Now the removal seems plain and simple, yet he created close to half a dozen new accounts within 24 hours, some people go through that trouble and this is merely one person.
This reflects on YouTube as the same thing happens there, but the problem is a lot larger. First how large is this issue? Some sources give us that EVERY MINUTE 500 hours of video are uploaded, that gives us 720,000 hours of video EVERY DAY. This also sets a different premise as YouTube is visited by 122,000,000 people every day, over a billion hours of video are watched every day.
Example 2
We are given ‘too many people have lost loved ones to disinformation’, yet who of them vet the information? We have to take responsibility people, we need to check and check the data and numbers given to us, we all do. And let’s not forget the disinformation does not merely come from conspiracy theorists. There are over 30 hedge funds channels on YouTube, yet we also get (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQEpHwYer-o), which comes from the University of Buffalo. So is one evidence of the other? Hedge funds are too often about deception, to grow they need your money, yet in the end it is still a heads or tails game. Where is the disinformation here? Where is the disinformation when game makers use young kids offering them the game if they can write something nice? How do you think influencers are made? I have seen video’s that do not seem to be deceptive, but until you bought and tested the product, you cannot tell, so how can YouTube?
Example 3
We get food, we get it all the time, so we are influenced what YouTube video’s offer us and (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHjbujGPX8Q) we get the view of ‘Tricky Ways Fast Food Restaurants Deceive You’ and we get it, people can often not be completely honest when they are in marketing.
So here is the conundrum, which are misinformation? The first for certain, yet examples two and three? Who decides that? And whilst you are contemplating this, thousands more movies were uploaded.
So when I see “YouTube spokesperson Elena Hernandez told the Guardian the company was already investing in ways “to connect people to authoritative content, reduce the spread of borderline misinformation, and remove violative videos”.” I get the steps, but there is another step that these 80 group are ignoring. The need to make the act of spreading disinformation criminal, that is a stage they could take, but in the US there is the First Amendment, the US cannot act in Russia or China and the list of limitations goes on, and even in the US and UK (and many EU nations) we see a lack of acts mainly because the law was never meant for such actions and too many fear a first step towards a totalitarian state. I get it, but to blame YouTube again and again is just folly (but it seemingly give places the limelight they desire).
So when we we see ‘More context and debunks rather than just deleting videos’ we see the beginning of a dangerous premise towards censorship, also that is not on YouTube is it? Debunking information is YOUR job, it is called vetting information and it has been around since before the Sudan Wars (1885), Julius Caesar dealt with misinformation by coding his letters (2100 years ago) and the list goes on, so when did we become absent of common sense?
So when you give premise to “a British man who died with Covid-19 after refusing to be vaccinated, made – according to his family – a “terrible mistake” of being influenced by online anti-vaccine content.” As well as “Florida taxi driver Brian Lee Hitchens lost his wife to Covid-19 after they were influenced by Facebook content that claimed the pandemic is a hoax” consider that Dr. Faucci has been blowing the horn of vaccination for the longest time, a real scientist, so when were you stupid enough to listen to a nobody on Facebook, whilst a doctor who
- Joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a clinical associate in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’s (NIAID) Laboratory of Clinical Investigation (LCI).
- He became head of the LCI’s Clinical Physiology Section in 1974
- In 1980 was appointed chief of the NIAID’s Laboratory of Immunoregulation.
- In 1984, he became director of the NIAID, a position he still holds.
- Fauci has been offered the position of director of the NIH several times, but has declined each time.
- Fauci has been at the forefront of U.S. efforts to contend with viral diseases like HIV/AIDS, SARS, the Swine flu, MERS, Ebola, and COVID-19.
- He played a significant role in the early 2000s in creating the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)
- Driving development of biodefense drugs and vaccines following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
is largely ignored and debunked by nobodies, in some cases even by presidential nobodies. At what point does a nobody on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube have anywhere near these qualifications? So, we do not care if you kill yourself in one of the most stupid ways imaginable, however I think you need to stop whining like little chihuahua’s and just die so we can take your job and your house. The central point is vetting information and that is on us. Yes, I have been duped once or twice, but it needs to be a real clever person to dupe me (yes, it can still be done). So when I see another this will make you rich, or I can offer this house to you so cheap, I know it is a scam. You see people give good deals to friends and people they really know, if it is someone else then no one wants it, or it is a scam, scammers win by making you believe that you won the lottery even when you never bought a ticket.
My issue with the BBC article is that there is a much larger stage and the first step to that stage is the law, we all know it, but we all ignore it. Just like ‘Tax the rich’ (tax laws), we seem to fall for it every time and it saddens me. In the 70’s I was a youngling (almost a youngling) and I was trying to become smarter and around me were people that were smart (some only made that claim), now it seems that no one takes the trouble to investigate, the answers are on social media and there every minute another sucker is born. Yet in all this, how do the fact checkers look at government propaganda? How do they see through media filters that intentionally keep you in the dark? As the barrier between news organisations and filtered information bringers goes ever thinner, fact checking goes out the window. So let’s not blame YouTube for all this, perhaps more could be done, I will never deny that, but what an be done when people are unwilling to test the setting against the law, that first step? And in all this I reckon that TikTok and Facebook also bare some of the blame, but they are not mentioned here are they?
So when we see the article end with “It cannot be left to internet companies to decide how to tackle bad information or choose how transparent to be about it” we see an uncomfortable statement that is not wrong, but who will do this? Oh, and to be clear who will check TikTok? And how will these be checked? More important, what will we do about the disinformation up-loaders? That too deserves attention, if we are not willing to prosecute them and when we are unable to prosecute them, how can any of this be with YouTube/Google?
If you want to stop disinformation, you need to factcheck yourself, that has been a truth for millennia and we forget that part of the equation a little too often, do we not?
Greed, Consumerism and safety?
There is a dangerous stance, a stance not on the safety of people, but on the revenue that they represent and there is every chance that this level of greed driven consumerism is at the core of a lot worse to come.
Part 1
Part one is seen in the article (at https://www.reuters.com/world/china/us-criticizes-china-canceling-some-flights-over-covid-19-cases-2022-01-12/) called ‘U.S. criticises China over canceled flights’. There we see ““China’s actions are inconsistent with its obligations under the U.S.-China Air Transport Agreement. We are engaging with the (Chinese government) on this and we retain the right to take regulatory measures as appropriate,” a U.S. Transportation Department (USDOT) spokesperson said.” OK, we can accept that, but in that setting can that spokesperson please show us the paragraphs that deal with issues like pandemics? The greed driven will see and focus on ‘obligations’, but what of the safety of the people? The Chinese government is obliged to look after the safety of people, so where is that part? I am not taking a side whether one or the other is right and which party is wrong. Yet when I see “identify a path forward that minimises impact to travellers” I wonder who they are working for. In December, Bloomberg gave us ‘Omicron May Double Risk of Getting Infected on Planes, IATA Says’, I heard from a friend who went on vacation that the return flight was filled with people coughing and yes, two days later he had covid too. When will people learn that IF YOU ARE SICK YOU STAY AT HOME? And more important those who get sick on vacation are all about ‘safely getting home’ dangers be damned. And that is the core problem with air travel. So I cannot fault China for its position, I understand the greed driven side for getting people to travel, yet it seems to me that the greed driven do not care as long as they see the revenue, infections be damned. Those stating that they take all precautions are delusional, there will never be a safe route in this.
Part 2
The second part is given to us by SBS. There we see (at https://www.sbs.com.au/news/another-53-people-have-died-from-covid-19-as-nsw-posts-record-92-264-new-cases/4809f03d-d922-4c30-bfe8-6c1251568bfa) that ‘Another 53 people have died from COVID-19 as NSW posts record 92,264 new cases’, the issue is that when we see it next to the UK (120,000 cases) all whilst the population of the UK is 300% larger, we see that things do not add up, in that same setting the US with 829,000 cases are a larger setting. The us has around 500% of the population of the UK, yet they have a lot more infections. Now this is not the proper way to vet numbers, but there should be some linearity and these numbers are all over the place. So in this India with 247,500 cases all whilst they have 4 times the population of the US does not make sense. The numbers do not add up, I get it there could be a dozen elements influencing other facts, but the numbers are wrong, and I personally believe that India has a much larger problem, so when we consider that is it really wrong for China to act the way it does?
The entire setting of flight have to continue in an era where we live in a pandemic, someone needs to wake up. The entire need to travel all whilst a lot of issues can be resolved virtually gets to be on the centre stage. In addition to that view we see “China has all but shut its borders to travellers, cutting total international flights to just 200 a week, or 2% of pre-pandemic levels”, is it right, it is wrong? It seems to me that it is to stop a wave of infections that have close to free rule in any nation that did not lock its borders. Last November the NY Times reported “At least 13 people who arrived in the Netherlands on two flights from South Africa on Friday were infected with the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, and more cases will most likely be found, Dutch health officials said on Sunday.” We saw South Africa protesting that it was a mild issue, now we have over 3 million new cases EVERY DAY, so how is that mild? How is the drastic shortage of hospital beds a mild consideration?
Is this what happens when greed shakes hands with consumerism? I do not know, but from where I sit, the view regarding the safety of people is close to totally ignored. There is every chance that those who closed their borders stand a much better chance. That is unless you open borders for tennis players who later admit “that he released a statement with new admissions, including the fact that he sat for an interview and maskless photoshoot knowing he had Covid without disclosing his status”, so a person who knew he had covid went knowingly and willingly maskless. And China is the one that is painted as the attacked party? I reckon that our laws and our regulations are blatantly failing in these pandemic stages, I will let you ponder on why that is and before you blame China for anything, wonder why no spokesperson raised issues on pandemic obligations that should be out there. I wonder how consumerism won that side of the battle. And before you think it will be easy peasy, consider what optionally might come AFTER Omicron and when that part is less mild, what will the consequences be?
I do not know, but more important, the scientists that should know do not know either, it is new turf for them. So when we listen to obligations and consumerism lets also wonder how safe these obligations were in the first place, especially as yesterday gave us an additional 3,201,862 new cases. I will accept that most will be mild, but 1% might not be and that means that globally for 6-8 days 32,018 new beds need to be secured for the yesterdays cases alone. So what about tomorrow and the day after that? How many beds are left then? I do not know, do you?
Commencing Crazy
This all started before ‘Call for change!’ Which I wrote on October 25th 2021 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/10/25/call-for-change/), I saw the numbers and the idiocy of non-vaccination. I do not care what they call it, it is their life, but in that it is their life and they also need to accept the consequences. So as I wrote “The first port is that anti-vaxxers and those not vaccinated with a good provable reason will have to pay UPFRONT for any hospital admittance for COVID. So there are no stories about “Anti-vaxxer Kristen Lowery”, or those radio hosts and stories on how sorry they were lying in a comfortable hospital bed. They can tough it out at home and optionally die there.” I saw a station we were all heading to and today (11 hours ago) the BBC gives us ‘Quebec to impose health tax on unvaccinated Canadians’, the story (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59960689) is not the first one, others have reported on similar settings, we also see some of these facts here. Singapore took my advice (seemingly) which requires Covid patients to pay for their own medical bills if they are not vaccinated. Greece imposes a fine and others will follow, when their national health care systems collapse due to those non vaccinated, this is a result and it was always heading this way. I do like the response that Premier Francois Legault gives. He states “I think right now it’s a question of fairness for the 90% of the population who made some sacrifices,” Mr Legault said. “I think we owe them this kind of measure” and I agree with him. Even as some news agencies are hiding behind positive flames like ‘Omicron may be set for rapid dip in US, UK’, I merely wonder how stupid these people are. They are (clinically speaking) telling a truth, but behind that facade we see numbers that globally went from 1.7M cases on January 1st to 2.4M cases on January 9th, All whilst the cases were 50% to 65% lower a week before. This is not going away soon or quietly. It has become a numbers game and in that game the numbers are overwhelming a stretched health care system on a global stage. All this whilst one source gave us 20 hours ago ‘Intensive care doctor reveals EVERY critically ill Covid patient being treated at his hospital is unvaccinated’, that is the reality and it is not the vaccinated people who are the larger danger, they do get sick but their symptoms are seemingly mild to really mild. And in the UK with so many unvaccinated people the dip as some might call it will not matter, a lot of them will die (which brings down housing prices), so there will always be a silver lining. Just not the one the media or anti-vaxxers rely on. And still the the issue is not as good as you think it is. The numbers from India with 1.3B people does not add up, so there will be a lot more coming all our ways. So whilst CNBC gives us ‘U.S. sets fresh records for Covid hospitalisations and cases with 1.5 million new infections’ today, we see the need to vet the journo’s who give us ‘Omicron may be set for rapid dip in US, UK’, as the data show us it was not directly a lie, yet the underlying issues we are already seeing, the people catering to that article are out of their minds. And in all this I reckon that the US and UK will soon follow the path Canada is taking and it will happen to people who cannot afford to pay, so they are denied access to hospital health care. It is one way to cull the herd, but it is not one that comes from choice, it is one grown through necessity and that is a much harder lesson to face. When the systems buckle, when the systems that gave us the protection we expected, when they collapse the real crazy starts and it will be some sight to behold, that much is an absolute given.
So, as I personally see it. Things are about to get worse and it will come with populist claims, it will come with the blame game and when the reality pulls through and we say the unvaccinated people do not get a voice in all this, that is when matters get worse fast. People are all about complaining and not about taking responsibility of their acts and their life. It is the nanny state on steroids and now we will see just how strong the nanny state vibe will be in several nations. I reckon the next two weeks will be decently exciting ones.
The next challenge
Gaming IP is always a challenge. There is the iterative challenge of getting a sequel or a remaster into play. Even as the innovative charge does not hold up for too long, a great game remastered can fill the coffers of a software house rather fast and nicely. We have seen it in the past, we could optionally see it when someone decides to take SEGA Dreamcast IP to a new setting. I personally think that both Fur Fighters and Wacky Races are undervalued and cast aside. Fur Fighters has its own challenge and graphically on the Dreamcast it would be able to hold itself up against most of the IP we see today. It had the quirks that made us wonder what else would be possible, and that is a good thing.
There there was the Hanna Barbera classic Wacky Races. It was a race game that held up against Mario Kart and it was unique, a setting where the racers all had special abilities and overall each racer was gifted with all kinds of options, it was when the game was done against one another when it truly started to shine. There are of course more, but a lot of them were done in new ways and with new options. Yet these two were forgotten and in the age of play that is a shame.
When we look at the innovation station, the setting becomes oblique, there is a lack of clarity, in almost everyone and I am no exception. You see, we look at the games that exist and how we might do better or how we might change the way we play and that is hard, it really is, I do not deny it. I created several pieces of IP, yet I am also gifted with the weakness of looking to those who did make amazing games. I believe that is a problem, not a big one, but one none the less. I tend to look at the age that stands between the CBM-64 and the CBM Amiga (Including Atari ST). That era gave us so many games and so many could be upgraded and improved upon. Not because the makers failed, they did not. But what is possible in 2022 was not an option in 1986, moreover there is every chance that the makers never considered it in those days. In this David Braben might have been one of the few to move Elite (1985) into Elite Dangerous (2014), it was great then and it became overwhelmingly amazing in 2014. It is one of the few games that made a multi generation leap and the best part is that there are dozens of games that could have that ability. I wrote about it in the past. The 1983 EA game ‘Murder on the Zinderneuf’ could be the next thing. In this that it could be revamped, set to a larger stage and it gave me the idea to set the streamers (Google Stadia and Amazon Luna) to a new set of achievements one that could transfer into other games. Setting a new premise towards gaming and optionally trying new games. Yet that does not make it innovative. I believe my generation RPG, see previous story ‘Recap to the intro’ on September 25th 2021 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/09/25/recap-to-the-intro/) for details. The question becomes how many original new parts are required to move from iterative to innovative? I actually do not know. An RPG is not like other RPG’s and I avoided to copy the settings that Bethesda had, and I added options that Ubisoft ignored in the Assassins Creed. Sucks to be them! I ended up with more than 1 IP and a setting where Amazon could grow its population by 50,000,000 (not a typo). All settings that Microsoft just overlooked and ignored. The strongest console in the world? My ass! A ship is only as good as its captain and their board of directors are pushing ideas for self preservation whilst they do not understand what gamers want and need, as such they tend to lose battle after battle and it was Nintendo (the weakest console) that overtook them in less than half the time Microsoft had to grow its population.
Yet the station remains valid. If we need more gamers, the need for innovation is adamant. Yes, we ca add iterative new games and that keeps the interest going for a little whilst, but it is long term games that a console need to gain real traction with consumers and that is why innovation remains key. Innovation is the next thing that drives hardware sales and that is what Ubisoft forgot about long before their 11th hour was up. And now that we see partnerships and all kinds of marketing messages (all whilst they lost another creative director), we can see that players like Ubisoft is trying to make their life last a little longer, all whilst the gamers know and see that their game is done. My prediction given last year was a lot more on the nose than most expected it to be and it matters. There is every chance that the headlines of Ubisoft that left become the new indie designers we hoped for and in this both Google and Amazon have a need to set that directive to their systems as fast as they can.
Time is running out and when gamers look around for a good game, it would be really nice if they are ready to support those gamers. Sony is ready, yet as a gamer I feel that a good gaming environment requires more than one platform and Microsoft is no longer a contender, so who will be the number two? Nintendo? Will the the people at Google and Amazon take this console war serious? We will let them decide.
Media in Limelight
That is the setting, is it time to put the media in the limelight? It started yesterday in Al Jazeera which was based on an article that came from the Wall Street Journal. The article (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/9/iran-likely-smuggling-weapons-to-yemen-confidential-report) gives us ‘Iran ‘likely’ smuggling weapons to Yemen: UN report’I got there over three years ago, with a little later, in December 16th 2019 when I wrote ‘Joke of 2019: United Nations’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/12/16/joke-of-2019-united-nations/), where we see the UN giving us in some delusional Tate of denial “The UN has reportedly so far been unable to confirm Iran was involved in drone and cruise missile attacks on two key Saudi oil facilities in September”, they were that much in denial, one could argue that the UN allowed itself to be steered clear of any evidence involving Iran and the media was happy to oblige. If you search for these elements in Western media you will find very little. The Wall Street Journal who gave us two days ago (at https://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-navy-port-emerges-as-key-to-alleged-weapons-smuggling-to-yemen-u-n-report-says-11641651941) “Thousands of weapons seized by the U.S. along supply routes for Yemen’s Houthis likely originated from Jask in Iran’s southeast, according to a draft report” might be one of the first that takes a larger look at the acts of Iran, well, I have to say that it took them long enough. I have a three year head start on most of them as such I wonder which stakeholder is out in the cold now?
A stage most ignores for the longest time is now a hot potato. So we do hope that General Turki Al-Maliki, serving the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will get the support he has been entitled to for well over two years. And all this is before you realise that Arab News gave us (at https://youtu.be/6Ab-8bIHY90) the setting of what Saudi Arabia was getting done in Yemen. Now, I am willing to be skeptical and not one sided, but the media did not report on any of that did they? It would be fair to see opposition, there always is, yet that part is also missing. We see blunt debatable attacks by tools like Stephanie Kirchgaessner (the Guardian, Washington DC) and a few other tools, but that is the extent, this is one of the larger first articles that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and in particular General Turki Al-Maliki has been rowing upstream for far too long all whilst the media shuts down any reporting on Iranian actions towards and in Yemen, why is that?
If there was opposition, disagreements on matters it would show, it always does, one side reports on knives being delivered, the other party will state that the manufacturers of stone knives are being pushed out of a job. This is life, but the shutdown on news regarding Iranian actions is another matter and the Wall Street Journal (as well as Al Jazeera) seemingly broke rank. And when we see the response in the WSJ “Iran’s mission at the U.N. said Iran doesn’t interfere in the conflict in Yemen, as a matter of policy. “Iran has not sold, exported, or transferred any arms, ammunition, or related equipment to Yemen in contravention of Security Council resolutions,” the Iranian mission said in an emailed statement.” We get the political side of the statement, yet the part where we see “thousands of weapons seized” tell a very different story. So whilst there will be twisting and turning for some time (which always happen) the one side that does not get to be in denial is the media, two sources? The media are all over each other whenever possible and Yemen is no exception. We need to consider the media and the irresponsible acts of keeping news from us. Keeping us in the dark on what Iran is doing, we need to set the limelight on the media and their stage of denial, it is that simple. When they all start doing their job, the job of some become more outspoken and we see a much larger wheel in motion, and perhaps the headline we saw in September 2021 ‘Iran Selling More Oil In 2021 But Middlemen Reap The Profit’, the setting is simple. In what universe does the middlemen reap the profits, close to all the profits? I wonder if the media will grace us with a list of names, yet I doubt that, the stakeholders on a few levels will not allow for that. This is of course personal speculation, yet consider the revenue that oil has and now we see that the alleged Iranian profits go somewhere else? Do you not think we need to know where they go? Do you think that the CIA, FBI (and many others) are not interested where billions in profits sailed to? The media is suddenly not interested?
If Toyota released another ISIS model, the media would be all over the design teams and asking them which of the members had middle eastern relatives. Now they are quiet? I do not think so! I believe that the Wall Street Journal (al Jazeera too) is exposing a little more than they bargained for and the call for exposing and illuminating the media in the limelight is the right call to make.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 