August 24, 2020 · 04:23

You are what you feed them

I have had my share of obnoxious behaviour, I have on times (when I was young) been a little too not understanding, but I have never see what the Independent (at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-muslims-xinjiang-pork-alcohol-lunar-new-year-spring-festival-uighur-islam-a8767561.html) is giving us. The headline ‘China ‘forcing Muslims to eat pork and drink alcohol’ for lunar new year festival’ is alarming enough, but the text “Officials have delivered pork directly to Muslim households and insisted that traditional Chinese new year decorations are displayed outside, RFA’s report claimed” if proven is a dangerous one. The additional quote “Chinese authorities have reportedly forced Muslims in the Xinjiang region to eat pork and drink alcohol during the country’s lunar new year holiday amid an alleged crackdown on Islam” merely makes matters worse. The idea that the disrespect given to any religion has taken this form is just beyond acceptable, in what universe does the Chinese government think it has any allowed leverage? I use the setting ‘if proven’, merely because there was one source in 2019 and now we see two more sources two days ago, in this, why has the larger western media, Al Jazeera, Gulf News and a few others all forsaken this? As such ‘if proven’ is the right setting. I understand that there are places where we are not Muslim, not Jewish, or not Christian, but most of us have always allowed others to be what they are. The bible tells us ‘Judge not, that you be not judged’, the Quran states “It is they who follow the guidance from their Lord, and it is they alone who are successful in attaining their object in this life and the hereafter”, and I am certain that the Torah has its own version that is not dissimilar to the others, so why would anyone force feed pork to a Muslim? It is not secular, it is merely a form of unacceptable cruelty. Yet it does not stop there. Forbes reports (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisettevoytko/2020/08/19/muslim-ice-detainees-reportedly-fed-pork-told-by-chaplain-it-is-what-it-is/#47cf78a26cc5) “Civil rights lawyers sent a letter to a Miami, Florida, detention facility run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement claiming that its Muslim detainees are being fed pork, a food prohibited by Islam, and have been given post-expiration-date meals that meet their dietary restrictions, but reportedly made them ill—and the facility’s chaplain allegedly dismissed their concerns, saying, “It is what it is.””, it is my personal view that any chaplain or priest hiding behind ‘it is what it is’ should be excommunicated on mere principle alone. We need to reflect on the rarity of this report and even as I hold Forbes in much higher view than most other media, one media does not make it true. That too is a foundation we can align towards. 

When we consider an added part “This isn’t the first time ICE has been accused of giving Muslims pork in their meals; in 2019, a Pakistani-born man with a valid U.S. work permit was reportedly given nothing but pork sandwiches for six straight days” we should consider that there is a lot wrong at ICE. And there is no excuse, as far as I can tell there would be nothing wrong with Cheese or Corned beef, so what game is being played here and in this, are we even surprised that the Middle East has such hatred for christians? 

My concern is not merely that it happened, but the lack of reporting in the widespread media in this, unless it can be proven to be false, is a much larger evil in this. This is the first I hear of it and the 2019 case was completely unknown to me. So why is the larger media avoiding this? 

I can speculate until the building is done, but in the end, it will be speculation and for you the larger question will be ‘What else are they keeping from me?’ Because if the media is willing to make a deal to not report on certain matters, they will do so for a price and when you are the price, they will do the same thing. That is what you must fear, and this is not the first time this is happening, it has happened before and now it is happening again and it will happen again tomorrow, unless we hold the media accountable for their actions and their inactions. 

It is the only way to stop these unacceptable acts from re-occurring.

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August 24, 2020 · 02:35

A day of rest

Yup, we all have them and to be honest, not because it is Sunday, but because I wanted to contemplate that I had finished my 1500th story on Saturday, to be honest, I never thought I would get that far. So today I relaxed and considered things, at some point I ate 2 dozen King Mackerels and I also at 3 dozen people (playing Man Eater on PS4), a game that was a lot more fun than I expected it to be, and lets be fair, who wouldn’t want to be a shark, I wanted to be one since June 20th 1975, I don’t think the Steven Spielberg had that in mind when he made the movie, but we all have triggers and the VIC-20 brought out a few dark sides in me too. The game is fin, I have put aside Jedi, Fallen order for a week at present, it is not a reflection on the Jedi game, because it looks good and I enjoy the game, it is to show just how much fun Man Eater is. There is a growing sense that games like JFO are losing ground. It is not their fault, they did nothing wrong. It seems that with the stronger systems the option growing in players that we are all seeking a more sandbox approach. Dying Light, Alien: Isolation, Gotham Knight, Shadow of War, all games that are doing better because of the open game approach, even if it merely seems to be the case. Now with the PS5 (and the Microsoft alternative) we see the drive to open gaming. Still, we need to be careful what we embrace, because it is a dangerous step. Even as some embrace Second Son, a Superpunch creation, the game lost out as it was too linear, a game that had the setting to be legendary, because slightly better than average, not because of the graphics, not because of the story, but the execution needed work, the fact that I was able to complete the game in a little over a day in hard mode is in support of that view. It gave me the idea to come up with Infamous: Adulthood, a game that continues on Second Son, sets it in a much larger stage of Seattle (as that was where the previous game was). I took a different avenue (because that is how I roll), I like deployability, a game is not something that you play once, but there must be a drive to do that, taking a page from another design, I set the game map to a 900% of the previous one, so if the map was 3 miles each side, it would not be 9 miles each side. From 3 by 3 to 9 by 9 is quite the change. But the map is merely the first part. The idea is to continue a generation later (because the game was nicely set), Delsin Rowe is now an older man, he met a girl Dyani and she was a conduit too, she had the same ability that Delsin had and ended up with different powers they settled and had a family. This is the first tier choice, you can choose boy or Girl, the boy will be named Reggie, the girl will be named Betty, yet the powers with which they get (only two) will be set to a stage, the first power will be one of one of 4 random the boy gets it from the father the girl from the mother, the second power is 75% from the gender parent 25% from the other one. So here is the first reason to replay the game, you get different and new powers. The story will set the stage where the player gets the other 2 powers. To this stage the story doesn’t change, yet how to go about it does. I wanted to add the stage that the other two powers will be depending on whether the person has a good or an evil karma, so the offensive power of fire is for Evil, the power of water will be for good (just a thought, fire is not evil, the flames told me so themselves), The second one is in the air, I wanted to set a larger stage again. To avoid the linearity of the game, I wanted change, so we still might want some linearity to make things easier, but I wanted to avoid that cleaning a region gives you enough power to upgrade to the max from the beginning. To this effect we see a new stage, the good cannot destroy CCTV, as such the police can be a much larger stage to deal with. The evil choice gets additional criminals attacking them, whilst the police attacks them too, The storyline will be a larger challenge, I needed to consider missions that can be adjusted for the powers available. An idea is that as the powered are free, some are criminals, some are not and others are living in silence hiding their abilities. As such missions for 4 additional powers needed to be created. (2 good, 2 evil), optionally one will be neutral, but that is the stage. I had the idea of creating a storyline that is slightly more dripped in ambiguity than previously considered. So when considering the powers, we need 4 for Dyani and 4 that are optionally gained. I came up with Fire, Water, Acid, Air, Paper, Glass (the last two were mentioned in Second Son), and beyond the elemental is time, telekineses and projection. There might be more, but there is no stage to set it yet. The danger is that in Second Son the first power was cool, it can across as creative and it had limitations, Laser (second power) was too strong, basically when I had it, I only used that one for most of the game, so I wanted to make sure that each power had a serious setback, making relying on one power a bad idea. There is the idea to add powers like Flight or teleportation, but the powers that were in the game and climbing to the top was not overly negative. Then there are the positive parts, the spray can option was awesome, it was original, and looked great, but I do not want repetition, I considered that both good and evil had options, so the idea of the paper power allows the player to set posters to illuminate issues, yet if the person does not get that power, we need an alternative in Smoke (charcoal image), Laser (Draw), Video (override transmission) and Concrete (sculpt). In addition there is the need to create passive abilities, even as we see the stage where we use one power, or the other power, we could be actively using one power, whilst the other power passively works too, it is a harder stage, but it feels more real for the player. For the same reason where we didn’t get to use the concrete power, I want to make sure that the stage of all powers is there and an application of practical use too. 

To set that stage we need to create a sort of infrastructure, just like a normal real city, we have regions, the police has a city and area setup, but so do criminals and they are not the same, in addition, we see the approach of others (not trying to give away too much) and they to have their own maps and infrastructure. Setting a city in such a stage makes a linear approach much harder and optionally not possible. A setting where a region can be ‘cleaned’ but not until all 4 powers are there, and in some way, the stage needs to be that some issues cannot be solved (not the right power) and as such, the only thing that the player can do is limit damage, a stage we often forget. Yes, we all understand that there is a line we walk on when we play a game, but what happens, when that line is intersecting and the player gets the option to turn left or right? Sandbox games tend to have a much better realisation to make that happen and I believe that in next generation systems a push towards sandbox approach will give the player a much better and more entertaining approach to solving the puzzle giving them. Even as we all push towards the a game like Prototype and the need to drive a tank over the masses to get the 65,536 kills, but long before you get to the 40K cadaver mark, the grinding set in and the fun diminishes. That is the other side of sandbox gaming. When a game stops being linear there are more issues to consider, more options for glitches and an optional bug or two, so there is more to consider and isolation in programming tends to be a non-option. Isolation has benefits, but there is a much larger stage of other issues hitting the environment, there is more to consider programming and that is where the rails tend to come off. This is not a good thing, but I focus on the creativity, not on the technical stag of the game, I can create, I suck at programming (beyond standard stations of it), as such the re is a stage where my idea of creation will surpass programming, but that is good, when you skate on the fringe of technology magic is created, Go back in time and see the games that truly broke the mould, they all surpassed what was imagined to be possible at the time (Minecraft with the obvious exception), we all see what is possible and a game will expand the mind when it is in a stage where it seems impossible. Guns of the Patriots and the Last of us are the examples that set the stage of the PlayStation 3,  MGS4: Guns of the patriot did so in the beginning of the console and set unparalleled borders with several critics giving the game a 100% rating, and the Last of Us repeating the same setting at the end of the PlayStation 3 lifecycle receiving even more 100% ratings. That was not because it was cool, it was because the game was as close to a game that should not even exist on that console, to surpass the boundaries of what was possible, soon we will get a similar setting on sandbox games, creating the near impossible making the player skate on the edge of what is possible in gaming and it is a hard sell, even as we see “Within seven days of its release, The Last of Us sold over 1.3 million units”, it ended up selling 17,000,000 units. There is a reason why Ubisoft is at present with the consideration of ‘At best unremarkable, at worst unplayable, Ghost Recon Breakpoint is 2019′s worst game’ (source: Washington Post), It all starts with creativity and imagination, then we get proper programming and testing, as I personally see it Ubisoft failed 4 times over, as such it is important to set the bar of creativity as high as possible, a stage too often underestimated. So whilst Ubisoft still seemingly hides behind “There are five AC Valhalla editions available”, with the optional extra “Each one of the Valhalla editions offers a different pack of bonuses and additional perks on top of the base game”. We need to remind the makers that we need one game and an optional collectors edition that could have art, noise (soundtrack) and doohickey (statue), I am not opposed to a season pass, yet in my personal view it is that some of the makers see this as an excuse to deliver a 85% game and charge additional for the 15%, whilst I see it that the season pass would be a setting to add to the game giving us 115% of gaming. In this I need to reflect on the Desperado 3 limited edition, it is awesome (I do not have it), I got the game when I could and I love it, but the collectors edition ($80 more) gives a music box, with the five playable figurines interchangeable, an art book, the soundtrack and postcards. It looked really cool. Some will love it, some will not care, and I get that, but in what universe should we diminish playing quality? I also get that some will give out skins as a premium for some preorder and I am fine with that, yet they should become available for all and games like Gotham Knight offered just that down the line as free downloads. It seems to me that these game marketeers are all about creating hypes aiming towards what they call “For the most loyal and fanatic fans of the franchise”, whilst they have no issue charging well above 300%, all whilst they are currently in a stage where they have not proven that they can deliver a game that is worth 100% of the charges of a normal game, Breakpoint took care of that rather nicely. Metacritic gives Ubisoft a present an average career score of 69%, and we do need to distinguish that AC Odyssey is set to a mere 60%, Breakpoint got a mere 58%, so am I wrong? I believe not, although Ubisoft could have avoided a lot of issues by properly testing the games before release. Different games, different ratings, but the stage is set with the creativity of the person thinking up the game. Getting another Second Son game is not the worst plan, but it needs to deal with linearity, it was the biggest drawback in the game. I think that overall that is not a bad setting to have, The game is said to have sold over a million copies which is good, yet when we set this against the two legendary games, one selling 17 million copies, I believe that there is room to wow the people, I am not underestimating the realm that MGS had already created, but the Last of Us was a totally new IP, I believe that a near perfection driven SuckerPunch has more to offer and I can’t wait to see what they come up with in the PS5 era, if Ghost of Tsushima is anything to go by, I say that we haven’t seen anything yet. So let the PS5 and the good times come. And in the mean time, I will focus my creativity a bit more.

There are limits to a day of rest, the walls at present look good enough to eat. 

 

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August 21, 2020 · 20:59

Lawlordtobe MD

Today I rejoice, today I celebrate, today I say cheers (using a bottle of Chardonnay), today I salute (with a bowl of Chilli), today I become Lawlordtobe MD. Unlike some I did not study medicine, I have two postgraduate degrees and one master degree, none of these three are in medicine. Yet what I did is write 1500 articles, with the 1500th article completed today. So today I salute MD as a nudge towards the roman empire (or the Italian republic as it is known now), I might optionally piss off my Greek grandfather (Hades) or my Greek mother (Marakai), yet here I stand and as such I turned my creativity towards an environmental problem, the issue of micro plastics in the sea. It is a hard sell, how to stop it and how to diminish it, but we are now in a stage where we have gained the ability to make extinct all fish in every sea and ocean to a much larger degree because of micro plastics and something needs to be done. So unlike others complaining like Monday morning quarterbacks standing on the side expecting Poseidon to fix it for us, I decided to think towards a solution. So when we take notice on “The Ocean Cleanup has been criticized in the past for directing its attention only on plastic waste already in the world’s oceans. Experts say 8 million metric tons of waste flow into the ocean each year from rivers, creeks and seaside areas. The plastic endangers fish and other sea creatures”, whilst their actions remain criticism in its foundation, I join people like Boyan Slat to offer solutions (which might need tinkering) and offer something that might help.

In my version I see a boat, slowly moving by the sea shallows, often no more than a few miles out. The boat is catamaran in nature, the middle part has beams with cables with extensions like jellyfish tentacles, 3-5 per beam, with 10-20 beams. The tentacles are statically powered drawing in the plastic, sticking to the tentacles, as it moves over the length of the ship slowly it reaches the end and is pulled up as the tentacle reaches the end of the ship and falls to the top of the ship, where the tentacle loses its static power, at that point the tentacle gets heated to 150 degrees and goes through bristles that drag off the plastic and cools down the wire, when the wire traverses the rest of the ship to the front the tentacle falls back in the water gaining its static power and the path renews. The collected plastic will fall of the bristols into a catchment where it is warm enough to melt into larger bricks. 

It took me less than an hour to come up with this concept and I understand it is not fool proof, it might have issues and it is not perfect, but if I can do this in under an hour what do you think actually intelligent people (optionally not related to an Olympian god) could achieve, but apart from Boyan Slat, the actions by so called clever people is not to be found until it is too late for fish and as such for people as well, or did you think that there would not be any repercussions for this situation? I did this on the side next to the concept for 6 video games, patentable 5G IP devices and a truckload of 5G IP, I still found time to come up with this concept, and I also made a side design for shallow water and rivers in a somewhat similar way. So in all this, where are all the so called ‘real’ clever people, have they solved some of the environmental mess that their peers created? I wonder where they are, so as we push towards a new stage of issues that will collapse a lot more than the economy, do we not have a responsibility to use our creativity to create solutions for the mess we see now?

Consider that part of the situation we are running, not walking, running towards.

 

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August 21, 2020 · 02:39

Pillars to excluding media

We have seen the issues that the US faces and it is time for the application of a little balance in all this. To do this, we need to look at some sources. As such On August 20th (06:00) we get Reuters with ‘U.S. economy rebounding strongly; fresh aid coming to unemployed: Kudlow’, to some there is nothing wrong with the title, yet, what has the US done for others to be treated to the ‘economy rebounding strongly’ part? The current administration did everything to scuttle the nation, so what economy is rebounding strongly? We can see different sides in economy, but for the US we see the need to export and import. The US destroyed their import option and to some degree diminished their export turnover as well, so how did the ‘economy rebound strongly’? Then we see the cost part, revenue is down, but cost are up. So when we consider the news “Total non-farm payroll employment rose by 1.8 million in July, and the unemployment rate fell to 10.2 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today” and this was June 2020, one in 10 does not have a job, all whilst between February 2020 and July 2020 9,530 jobs were added and 22,160 jobs were lost. Over the millions of jobs in the US it does not add up to much, but the news (source: the Guardian, May 2020) is also giving us ‘US job losses pass 40m as coronavirus crisis sees claims rise 2.1m in a week’, so when we distill the bad news, because yes, it is bad news, how come we see ‘economy rebounding strongly’ in all this? So in this, the quote “Kudlow, speaking to reporters at the White House, defended a reduction in the unemployment supplement to $300 from $600, saying stimulus measures should be reduced slowly as the economy strengthens” (at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-kudlow/us-economy-rebounding-strongly-fresh-aid-coming-to-unemployed-kudlow-idUSKCN25F2KL) we get to consider “The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Wednesday reported 5,460,429 cases of the novel coronavirus in the country, an increase of 39,318 from its previous count, and said the number of deaths had risen by 1,172 to 171,012”, the stage is debatable, I agree that it does not solve the puzzle, but there is a larger stage that for millions the corona stage is still not clear, the total amount of infected could go up, it could go up be a large amount and this also means that free clinics will be swamped, inoculations and other cost will go up, it will impact the US in a huge way, so where does this ‘economy rebounding strongly’ come from? The US has squandered technological progress in the Huawei fight, and this is merely the beginning in all this, as the US loses 5G grounds we will see larger and faster growth in both the Middle East and Asia, for the US their view of the Middle East in 5G is like giving a native American a gatling gun whilst you give them no ammunition or a manual, what they forget is that the data laws and privacy laws allow for the larger tech companies to move to the Middle East and be isolated, no taxation and large data grazing fields, the Middle East is catching on and Asia is already on track. As the balance of the seesaw of technology changes, the infrastructure in the US will be delayed again and again and as I personally see it, in 2023 we will learn through managed bad news that the US went from a first position in technology to fourth if not fifth position. In all this, the message of ‘economy rebounding strongly’ might be seen as one of the larger jokes and that is all before we realise that the US has amassed a debt of $25,000,000,000,000. Twenty five trillion is a lot of money, the interest alone can fuel most EU nations, yet this interest will now go to the banks and financial institutions underwriting this, as such some might consider that the US economy is in shambles and when the FAANG group starts pushing for a protectorate of a true global corporation, that is the final news you need that the US economy is an illusion that can no longer be maintained.

#JustSaying

 

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August 19, 2020 · 20:23

The view somewhere else

I was pleasantly surprised today when I got treated to: ‘Can Harry Potter magic tourists back to Japan?’ Yes, we can argue on when things need to be done and how things need to be, but consider the long term view, a case can be made that soon enough Japan would be a much more interesting place to visit than the US. Japan has its Disney Park, and when the Harry Potter park is completed another reason to visit Japan is born. It has interesting culture, it has entertainment, it has arcades, it has numerous food markets and overall In the direct vicinity of Tokyo most tourists can get a large amount of entertainment, and in all this they still have an upcoming Olympics. Japan is not the solution for everyone, yet I see it as an option for Asia and the Middle East, the nations shunned by President Trumps facade of idiocy, they can all relax in Japan, as such the US (and Europe to some degree) will have a larger faltering getting their economies back up, Japan will have a much larger stage of reserving their economy. Should Australians take the same route, Japan will push forward to a much larger degree whilst the US slowly limps into a less amicable endeavour. 

When we consider the options on a global scale, we see a larger contemplation. It is not where we were, but where we can go in the near future that counts and at present we see a larger absence of options in both the US and Europe. This is not about checks and balances, it becomes about the balance of opportunities and as such blatantly following the political needs of the US the entire setting of balance crashes for both the US and to a larger degree for Europe as well. So how does the view matters?

As we are being told that ‘The USPS is shutting down mail-sorting machines crucial for processing absentee ballots as the 2020 election looms’, as well as ‘A Fight Over the Future of the Mail Breaks Down Along Familiar Lines’ most consider quotes like “Without a financial rescue from Congress, they have warned, an agency that normally runs without taxpayer funds could run out of cash as soon as late September, raising the specter of bankruptcy and an interruption in regular delivery for millions of Americans”, that and the issues around voting issues are raised, but the stain of what might matter, the massive debt that the US has is left outside the bullpen. When we see “It was the White House that intervened in March, nixing a bipartisan plan to provide $13 billion to the Postal Service” (source: NY Times), we think it is about blaming this presidency, yet the larger truth is that the postal services need $13,000,000,000 just to stay alive and that is the issue, rural isolationism and connectivity issues are a much larger stage in the US, as such and only because the previous 4 presidents did not push rural internet enough, we see a stage of isolationists and it will go from bad to worse in the US. That is the stage that the US was always going towards and the Coronavirus issue merely hastened the direction it was going in, in an age where the US is bankrupt it had not many options in all this the China setting and the covid ignoramus people are merely speed accelerators, and as we see the
Middle East taking a different course, the US has more dangers as billion after billion in trade falls away and now we see Japan moving in the direction that Japan needs to be in and they will enjoy what comes off it. No matter what the US publishes on the ‘victories’ that they have in writing, 2021 will be a lot worse than 2020 was for them, the Americans that see this approaching will most likely m Ove to greener pastures in Canada, hastening what will come even more. Even as the NY Times makes the statement that Jeff Bezos is the nemesis, he really is not. Amazon made the decisions that were best for Amazon, and as Amazon grew, so did its delivery service, there is no issue with the USPS, they were merely outclassed by the existence of eMail, and the fact that it grew much faster than the USPS could adjust to. Amazon was a factor but not the cause, a bad budget was a much larger factor in all that and now we see the endgame and the struggle within the US to avoid whatever it can whilst the Wall Street bad boys have made enough to live larger than life for the next few decades. This is the stage we see there, yet Japan has a huge debt as well, in this they have the benefit of the 2020/2021 Olympics and after that it will be about tourism, because those people tend to come and spend money and the Harry Potter park was the one thing missing, we tend to go to places for a range of options and the more options the better the setting, in this a place that has close to a billion fans is not the stage that should be missed, that and the millions who love Disney and now there is more than one place where it an be enjoyed, all whilst the unacceptability of Americans can be avoided. I cannot answer how these matters are in Japan, but the louder stage of America is striating to rub a lot of people all over the world the wrong way and they seek another place to go to. I reckon that 2022 will start to be a shining light for Japan when things work out and it is up to them to shine that light stronger luring tourists like moths to the lighthouse. 

Is it the only option? No, it is not, but at this stage the US has so much going against them that Japan is a lot more likely to push for a new economy than the US is and that is perhaps one of the scariest things yet. 

 

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August 19, 2020 · 02:09

Click bitches

Yup, that is what they are making us out to be. We can offer the thought that Facebook and Twitter are not aware what is happening, but the reality is that they do not care. It is the price of a free service. I knew that from the start, nothing comes for free, but the choice of advertisement that Twitter and Facebook Arte giving us is becoming a larger issue, in addition I received some news that some people were allegedly approached to get scammed, this happens, but one person gave me that from 2-3 times a year that there has been an attempt to scam through his phone once a day for the last three days, the scales have been altered and in all this we need to set a much larger stage. And as some advertisement is aimed to turn us into click bitches to go from picture (with a dozen advertisements) to another picture we have no way of knowing as to what the role behind it is, perhaps it is $25 on the house from +6797234009, perhaps it is allegedly winning GBP 6,500,000 from www.m65s.net with the helpline info@mobcollas.com, or even it is facing jurisprudential fines from 18000243109. The numbers start adding up and Australian law is seemingly clueless on what to do, because it is not their prerogative, merely stating the face of the Sydney Morning Herald and Rupert Murdoch through the stated news ‘Google clashes with Australia watchdog over proposed law to force it to pay for news’, so how about changing the setting to avoid more issues by also stating that newspapers and media are not allowed on social media? Would that level the playing field? When we do that, we see that ALL the remaining news on social media is fake, is that a solution? Does it fall back to the ‘News Media Bargaining Code’?, I do not belief that to be the case, I think that there are two issues and I think that they influence one another. The ACCC gives us “The Government asked that a draft mandatory code be released for public consultation before the end of July 2020, with a final code to be settled soon thereafter.” It is perhaps the first time that a law was drafted up so quickly, and in that view when we see “The development of a code of conduct is part of the Government’s response to the ACCC’s Digital Platforms Inquiry final report to promote competition, enhance consumer protection and support a sustainable Australian media landscape in the digital age”, in all this the lacking ‘enhance consumer protection’ is very much out in the open and it is failing more and more.

So when we look at ‘Protecting yourself from scams’ on the ACCC website, and the ACCC Scam watch had NOTHING on the dangers of advertisements handing over details for scamming, in the same way there is a chance that data is being gathered by games, so how far is that investigation going? It seems that some are waiting for us to become click bitches and as we consider Click Fraud with the underlying quote “Click fraud is a type of fraud that occurs on the Internet in pay-per-click online advertising. In this type of advertising, the owners of websites that post the ads are paid an amount of money determined by how many visitors to the sites click on the ads”, as such, how much investigation did the ACCC do into the danger to the consumers before running to help the media? 

The dangers to the consumers is larger than Hacking, Identity theft, Phishing and Remote access scams and seemingly too many people are unaware, perhaps they have been turned into click bitches. 

 

 

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August 18, 2020 · 00:45

Light of creativity

In creativity we normally see a theme, or perhaps better phrased, some (like me)( are thematically driven, it might change per project, but in me there is a drive to think thematically, it is how I set the the stages of Elder Scrolls VII: Restoration, Watchdogs 4: Refugee,  and Far Cry 7: Timing

In this I have spoken about the Elder Scrolls and Watchdogs before, but not too much about Far Cry, in this game the stage is a little bit different. The game has two sides, a day side and a night side, yet that is not really made clear in the beginning, The game is stages in Japan on the Island of Amakusa, the man is in the city as it is today, yet when he falls asleep he becomes the boy or Girl named Sage. For the kid its 1945, for the adult its 2010, and the stage is different, the man learns skills that the boy has when he falls asleep, the kid finds things and places (and avoid US troops) the difference is that this is a game without guns, the US troops have them, but the boy/girl cannot fire them. The man learns to be better and more apt with knifes, and it helps the other one, but is only deadly to animals. The story starts in 2010, the man is evicted, he lost his job in the meltdown, he is making it on his own and when he gets to an abandoned house, he finds an engraved phalange, and as he holds it, he falls asleep. 

At that point it becomes morning 1945 and the boy takes over. 

It is the foundation of the game, in this we see the entire island twice, once as the boy in the midst  of an American occupation, with lose combats against the Imperial army, we see the game starting in one stage in July 1st 1945 and July 1st 2010 in the other stage. The idea of having two stories that intertwine is interesting, the 2010 story sets the stage of what knowledge is gained in 1945. This stage is depending on stealth, that is often not important in 2010, as we try to gain the treasures and rare items to pay the debt, as that unfolds, we see two stories unfold as well as two needs to be scored in a single night, and as the stage unfolds more and more we get to see a WW2 story from a Japanese side, yet the Americans are not shown too evil, but they are scary to a 11 year old child. 

That is merely the beginning of the setting and it took no more than two hours to come up with it. So when we see “a small team at Visceral also worked on a pirate game code named Jamaica. That game wound up being canceled when Ubisoft announced the pirate-themed Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, and EA wound up with a bigger a bigger priority for its “genre” studio: a Star Wars game”, a quote a mere three days old, yet I was able to (semi)create three games in a week, so where is their creativity? I came up with the setting of the game Evolution which was came from an Idea I had when I was playing the game Mercenary on the CBM64 and was based in Amsterdam, The centre of Amsterdam was completely mapped and I came up with a map change which I got from the documentary Zero Hour, as I see it, the lack of creativity from some of these large software houses baffle me, it really does.

Well, its fine as I see it, I came up with 6 games (completely) original in its foundation, as such the entire stage of ‘being canceled when Ubisoft announced the pirate-themed Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag’ passed me by completely. And in that regard, we see that even their version is not that original, Sid Meier set that stage with Pirates, as such I wonder what they will create next, and beyond that, which of them will actually make it to the consoles, because that is another setting.

As we see all over the place ‘Apple clashes with Microsoft, Google, and Facebook over cloud gaming’ no one is asking the question, who will hand us original games? In this the setting that only Sony and Nintendo remains is not the weirdest idea. So as the others are fighting on how to gain the largest slice of pie in the GaaS game, some will focus on originality and make the largest gains. 

So what games will you play and which system will focus on original games? Is that not important too? 

 

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August 17, 2020 · 20:54

Death is like Sake

I have not looked at the entire Coronavirus for a while and it is not because I do not care (I don’t actually), there is so much information both good and bad thrown at all of us, I decided to set the stage in other paths and other ways, but now I see it is time to look at it again.

Death is like Sake, they are both served at 15%, whether it is death, or it is alcohol it matters not, only the dying care about the alcohol part. But it is there, I saw the numbers in France, Spain and Belgium. They are in the 15% group, as such I reckon that life after Corona will come with a decent vacancy shortage and those acting early will have the manpower, others will strike out. 

You see, there is always an option when the difference is 1%-4%, this happens everywhere all the time, shortage in one, too much in another, the markets adjust, yet when the difference and shortage is 10%-17% we see a shift of issues, companies trying to adjust to larger shortages, hollowing out the ball until it is a mere egg, but this egg is empty and the smallest pressure in the wrong side and it all comes tumbling down. Yet many will be in denial and they are setting their ego in that same stage with the snide silent remark ‘It’ll be right’, yet this time around their experience will not aid them, 14%-17% in some area’s will be too much, and the enterprise bites on both sides, it is not merely the 15% less staff, the larger stage is 15% less consumers, as such some business ventures will not make the numbers, will not make the stage and will not make the spiced expectations of Wall Street analysts. 

And it is not all good news, so when we consider the following shortage in Engineers, Technicians, Accountants, Nurses, IT staff, Technical and commercial sales representatives, and then consider when these shortages are 15% larger than a year ago, how many business ventures will get hit you think? All that before the rich corporations fly in and buy up the profitable companies and start-ups that cannot deal with the ledge that vacancy shortage brings with them. They become a ‘an XXX organisation’, and a year or less later they are merely a division in XXX (insert mega corporation name at leisure). And nothing wrong is done here, those with short budgets get bought out, that is how the world works and they are doing nothing wrong, so as some companies are feeling the pinch, the setting will shift a lot faster and larger than some of them consider or realise. 

So whilst they see the impact of corona casualties and the impact of “Employees who work in a role that can effectively be done from home are welcome to do so until at least October 2”, and we see it published almost everywhere, in this with the additional information on jobs lost, yet the entire station is not ready what happens to companies start to figure out that they are too low on staff, it is not merely the people who do not make it, but those who remain could decide to jump ship to the places they really wanted to work. As such the shift merely increases and that is before corporations in richer countries start to shanghai from every other place they can, I do not think that this is an immediate event, but it will be out in the open to a much larger degree in about a year, and the worse the impact of COVID-19 is, the larger the shift will become. So like Sake, the consumer drinks the first bottle, the second bottle drinks the first one and the third bottle drinks the consumer.

 

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August 17, 2020 · 03:09

Mirror of delusional beliefs

We all have that feeling to some degree, something we really want and if we cut our budget for one week we can buy the suit we wanted to have, so we buy the suit, then we push forward the budgeting to the last week, then we delusional remind ourselves that if we make the adjustment to our menu to the last three days, we don’t have to adjust our budgets, so we do that, we keep on pushing forward until it is the 25th day of the budget, we bought the suit and we ran out of money, we pushed the menu forward, the budget forwards and now that we have 6 days to go we are running out of money. We have all done it, whether it was to buy a gaming console, a laptop, fashion, concert tickets, we can come up with all kinds of reasons, we have all done it. This is how I at present see Debenhams. In the article ‘Debenhams hires liquidator in contingency plan’ which was published 6 hurts ago (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53797371) gives us “if the administrators, FRP Advisory, fail to find a buyer or new investment, Debenhams faces liquidation – putting 14,000 jobs at risk. A spokesperson for the department store said: “Debenhams is trading strongly, with 124 stores reopened and a healthy cash position.”” Yes we can push forward all we can and then ignore it, yet when we consider “It gets to be even worse when the Guardian prints the pragmatic “It’s all hairdressers and coffee shops and nail bars. People won’t come here to shop – they’ll go to a bigger town like Canterbury instead“, which in itself is a truth, making me wonder what is getting into some of these delusional big brands. The entire setting of the larger players has been under fire for the longest of time and the essential need to revisit locations is becoming an essential need for all of them, as such the statement: “Conservative MP Damian Green described the news as “very disappointing”. On Twitter, he wrote: “We need to redouble efforts to strengthen the town centre.”” becomes one of worry.” A few small details I revealed to the readers in April 2019, as such the statement of ‘Debenhams is trading strongly, with 124 stores reopened and a healthy cash position’ is nothing short of delusional. Now, we cannot blame the situation completely on Debenhams, because they have never faced anything like the Covid-19 situation and it would be unfair for them to be completely ready, yet dwindled resources is on them. I spoke about some of it in April 2019 in ‘When a dream is too delusional’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/04/28/when-a-dream-is-too-delusional/), as such the delusional part was pretty visible then too. So how from a distance the clear part of ‘124 stores reopened and a healthy cash position’ that comes debatable this clear is an issue, especially when others are merely accepting the news without a clear investigation into the debatable mindset of Debenhams corporate officers is a bit of a question. I know that there are sets of stations where they (apparently) know what they are doing is fine, but the small ‘124 stores reopened’, whilst a year ago my article ended with “I wonder which of those should never have been made, but that is merely my view on the matter and with up to 50 stores up for closure I personally reckon I might have a case on that.” So as we see 50 stores up for closure and a year later we see 124 stores reopened, I wonder if some people are stretching the stage where optionally (and speculatively) tax laws were used to push into a nice neutral setting and now that we see “2,500 more jobs, on top of 4,000 cuts it announced in May”, all whilst the larger stage is set to “Debenhams faces liquidation – putting 14,000 jobs at risk” and no one asks serious questions as the jobs for 14,000 people are on the line. Is it me or is there a clear case for us all to asks questions of these (what I might optionally incorrectly call) tax shelters? I wonder what their so called “healthy cash position” is.

A station of all kinds of impressions and interpretations, but the truth is that no matter how ‘great’ Debenhams is shown, it is a bleeding behemoth and the 14,000 depending people are about to be thrown on the sidewalk, I am pretty certain that the board of Debenhams will phrase it  differently. 

SO in the end we can think of it in any way possible, but the stage of these houses is pretty much over, Covid-19 made sure of that and those in doubt, consider “Debenhams entered a pre-pack administration which allowed it to keep trading” and investigate who made that happen, what allowed the station of ‘keep trading’ whilst there is actually no significant amount of consumer cash is going into these places, not when you state it in relationship to the cost that these centres have, the balance of that equation might surprise you.

 

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August 16, 2020 · 17:58

The Ai setting

Yes, we have all seen and optionally commented on the blunder that was Mass Effect Andromeda, yet consider that we could undo the damage? Even now as the rumour mill goes on about a remastered Mass Effect. I personally wonder what power Apple or Google consoles gained if they owned the Mass Effect IP (or Bioware). Consider a new console with one of the most revered IP’s in gaming history. This is not some ‘what if’, well actually it is, but consider tens of millions of fans now in a stage where they are confronted with one of these systems holding onto the console so that they can play this game. It is not unheard of, we have all been in that stage before and consoles used to get ahead with this level of creativity in their exclusives list.

So as I (re)designed the Mass Effect concept I did the one thing that had not been done before in gaming EVER. Mass Effect 5 is not merely the fifth game, it would be games 4 and 5 together, yes some things will be the same, but the stage is larger and also has a lot of changes. In the first, the Nexus playing area is at least 10 times larger, and the stage is a combinations of additional and new gaming settings. Of course each of the sister ships of the Hyperion would need to be found, Habitat 7 does not change, it is the introduction to the story and to playing the game. Yet the planets of 4 (Elaaden, Havarl, Aya, Eos and Voeld) would also be there and they would be larger, each with additional missions and additional tasks (making replaying acceptable and challenging). In addition to this  the other parts are mostly there, except for the memories, they can only be on the hyperion (how they could be on planets never visited before is just weird). As I see it, every planet has stages 1. Arrival stage, 2. Post Remnant Vault activation, 3. Phase one of repairs and adjustments 4. Phase 2 of repairs 5. Phase 2 of adjustments

It sets a stage where the planets need to be revisited and in that light each of these planets gets a second area to land and to set up another base, so as one base is scientific in nature, the second one is military in nature. Apart from the Kett presence, the second base will be a lot more about flora and fauna. There will be some Kett, but not to the first area levels, and in addition to that, the player will need to set the stage of building the cars and factories so that they support the nexus best. It will be around choices made, but it will depend on the player. For example in the 4 planets staged (Aya is off-limits), Food will be staged on every planet, yet the return on one is 100%, yet the others will give you 70%-80%, so the need to make the choice is essential, but you have no real choice in location, making the stage of food different, for example Eos is the first planet you reach, yet to give the player choices, we get a different setting, a such finding the right places to grow food and mine for minerals becomes a little bit of a challenge, however we can level the playing field by setting the percentage stage to random (70,80,100 or 110), add to this the nexus and the stage where waking up the right people becomes important, as well as reenergising the nexus so that labs can open up as energy becomes available is a larger stage. 

Most elements that can be compartimentalised in the game could set a growing stage we can adjust to, it also sets Mass Effect to a much larger stage, one worthy of a successor to the first three. For the fifths game we should look deeper into the Kett, we see them as the great evil, but what happens when that is not the case? What happens when their existence is part of a crucible? We need another 4 planets, in this, we should try to set a larger stage and a different stage. So what happens when one planet is aquatic? What happens when one place is like a gas giant (not unlike Cloud city in the Empire strikes back)? A stage where we interact in other ways, as such 2 remain, one should be toxic in origin the other one I leave open (someone might have had an idea), with the stage in that regard, the larger stage to revisit meridian and a stage where we apply a new stage, a stage of resources shared and politics gained. There are a lot of options that a game like Mass Effect allows for and in this we haven’t even looked at the stage where the nexus is attacked and a fight in the corridors, not just that, the damage is ‘real’ and debilitating depending on where the station is damaged, so repairs need to be made (to some degree) before the station is back on track. All these options overlooked in the initial game, the nexus was supposed to equal Citadel, but was less than 10% its size in gameplay. That has to change, and the game is in a much larger setting if the new approach is taken, a game that revisits feelings on a game published and becomes better and stronger because of it. As such no matter where it ends up initially (Google Stadia or Apple console) they would have the setting to add a few million fans right off the bat, when we see the initial hype for Andromeda, that stage can easily be surpassed if the result is properly tested. I wonder if Electronic Arts ever considered that their product could end up deciding who the third most sold console could end up being, the stage is that certain at present, and of course, there is no reason why it should not be on other consoles, yet the financial power that a timed delay for other consoles is could fund a massive part of the development cost and that is when the larger profits comes in (for Electronic Arts), especially if a game like Mass Effect Andromeda sets the gaming bar to a much higher level. We have seen long term gaming in several ways, yet until Bethesda released the Elder Scrolls Online, long term RPG was a little in a corner, now you are given the light where they are no longer alone in this, it sets a different stage for Google and Apple, one they could only have hoped for and it is within their reach to set this stage to their system.

 

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