#begging for their talent to not be replaced by ai

[sassyhobbits]

the rise of anti-intellectualism is directly correlated with the exponential growth and popularity of AI generated "art" and "literature". when people never bother to think or care about a creators intentions to begin with (which there ALWAYS are when something is made by a human), then they wont give a shit if a computer is spitting out content without thought or heart. just as long as theyre getting content fast and cheap.

i feel like im watching the demise of the creative in real time.

[literalgrill]

Do NOT Support Hard Drive On Patreon

You might see friends today suggesting you support Hard Drive on Patreon today. You know, the funny video games version of The Onion? As a journalist, I will firmly tell you DO NOT GIVE THEM A DIME.

The CEO has pushed out all former staff that have built the site up to its current greatness and has been pushing the use of AI. The staff begged to have a Patreon before basically all being pushed out, but the idea was refused until now, when it will only line the pockets of a single person instead of hard working writers.

I know they might have provided laughs before, but Hard Drive is a shell of what it was once. Let it die and support the people who actually made those moments of joy possible. Don't believe me? Check out what former employees are saying below:

Kevin Podas: Okay you know what, I would feel bad saying nothing about this, so here goes:🚨SAVE YOUR MONEY🚨

We passionately advocated for a Patreon at Hard Drive & were aggressively shot down. The talent & people who built the site were pushed out. To see this now is beyond upsetting. For the past few years or so I put a lot of myself into this website. I pitched a ton of jokes, got over 120 articles published, & met a lot of great people. I'm sure if you've been following me for some time you could easily see this.

However, there is a lot of misinformation. I was eventually promoted to Managing Editor of the site & was ecstatic. Grateful for the opportunity. Felt like all of my hard work in the comedy mines was finally paying off. But things took a turn for the worst, & each day there were new surprises that affected our livelihoods. These were all very avoidable surprises, mind you.

A patreon was going to be our hail mary, but alas, for some reason, the power that be did not want it. Causing us to leave a dream job behind. "At least we did all we could," we consoled ourselves afterwards. I put a lot of myself into this project. I pitched all sorts of ideas that could have helped-- we all did. Merch collaborations, Patreon-integrated YouTube content, so much more. And most of them were shot down out of sheer stubbornness and nothing more. To see lie after lie spread, and multiple big publications and YouTubers that I am a fan of promote this Patreon under these pretenses is incredibly upsetting. There are so many receipts.

Please share this and consider pulling out if you've already put money into this. On Hard Drive using AI, also from Kevin Podas: I can't personally confirm that part aside from some of the recent header images for articles on both Hard Drive and Hard Times are being made with AI. As far as writing, it's been mentioned in the past, but I personally do not know. Maybe others do, maybe not. MORE From Kevin Podas suggesting the owner denying a Patreon being set up earlier cost an artist a job that was replaced by AI: We had a social media person who was awesome! He made the images until this AI implementation. He had to leave because ad revenue was low and a Patreon was aggressively refused.

Luca Fisher: at the risk of burning some bridges, i have to back up kevin here. i've only been part-time, in-and-out of hard drive since i got in last year, but i can corroborate that management doubled and tripled down about not hosting a patreon/crowdfunding and that many other suggestions and ideas, including mine (and ones much smarter than mine!), were shot down in really long, apocalyptic threads of everyone left on deck desperately trying to come up with ways to keep the lights on. managerially it has been messy and sad

i've written for multiple publications that have long since died, ones that were in the process of dying, and ones that, in this case, are soon to be put in the ground. it is sad and sucks every time. i don't know what could have been done differently, but i do know that a lot of great writers and content creators were left shorthanded and unhappy by the way things have gone. and it is sort of puzzling to see the sudden championing of patreon after we were all told plenty of times that it couldn't work and we should move on also, just to add my own personal two cents here, i was really disappointed by the shuttering of many different article sections on the site over the past 6-8 months. i understand cutting corners in a deficit, and i know it had to be done. that said…

all in all, i'm really sad to see this all happen. i don't fault anyone, if only because i don't really know enough about how this all can happen to make sense of it. games journalism is in a sad, sorry state, and will likely no longer be a thing in the next decade

VideoSealMan: I'm gonna say this because I think I deserve to. For months, MONTHS on end I was bugging Hard Drive management about a Patreon. Often I got ignored for a week+, but when I actually got a response I was encouraged to - of all things, write up a Google Doc pitching the concept I did it regardless. I wasn't the only one trying to sway management on a Patreon, but so fiercely was I fighting for it that last night, I was accused of making this comment directly by the CEO! With no evidence whatsoever! After I'd been gone for over a month.

I vouched so hard for Patreon because I wanted all the writers and creatives working with Hard Drive including myself to get paid better. When I actually got a response, the idea was often shut down. Eventually due to the state of my company, my pay was cut for a second time I confronted management alongside a couple other important figureheads at the org and told them that if we couldn't do a Patreon - I could no longer financially justify staying there. The answer was still no, so I left. Baffled at the decision, but whatever.

It is unendingly frustrating to know that myself and many other people who put their soul into Hard Drive LEFT because of management's absolute refusal to compromise on a Patreon, to then see them launch one anyway a month later and get over 1000 people pledging money. I'm seeing a lot of things float around about greed and people being fired. No one was fired. Everyone who left, left because they were sick of management's decision-making. And honestly, management is a lot of things but I would not call them greedy. (From my experience.) They did genuinely make an effort to pay people as much as possible. I found the pay very fair for a while. I am not disputing that I was paid what I was owed - yet management frequently feels the need to remind critics of that. Lmao, yes. I was paid what I was owed. No one is disputing payment. You did the bare minimum a business owner should do and paid everyone their due, very well done. I make no allegations of greed, cheating or foul play. I make allegations of poor management and incompetence that has fucked over other people.

Basically the only people left at Hard Drive have been there for about 2 months. They will reap the rewards of this successful Patreon I and so many others passionately fought for for so long. We will not see a dime.

I do not know the new people at Hard Drive, But I feel bad for them. They were haphazardly thrust into Hard Drive's workplace with little to no explanation on how anything works, or given any context on the state of the place. Even now managements feeds them half-truths and misinformation about other people's grievances. I am broke and have been for a while. I had to move out of my flat in Reading and back with my family because of how little money I was making. This has basically doomed my flatmate to moving back in with abusive parents, which is something I feel guilty about every day. If we had gone with the Patreon I worked myself hoarse over back then, this could have been avoided. Some of my other good pals could also not have been fucked over.

It was a bad judgment call, but it's not a crime. It's just management getting it wrong.

So should you give to the Hard Drive Patreon? I don't know! I don't think any of the new people working there to patch up the holes left by the recent mass exodus have any bad intentions. Maybe they deserve it! But it is not the same site you knew a year ago, or even a month ago. Myself and many people who were there far longer than me and did far more for it than I did are all gone now because we could not deal with management's terrible decision-making and dogass communication any longer. That's what you should know, imo

I had an agreement in place with management that I would receive the next 8 months of revenue from the Hard Drive YT channel from my leaving in November. This was a deal I appreciated, and thought was very fair on management's behalf. So far, the deal has been honoured for 2 months. However as of last night I was removed from the Hard Drive Slack without warning, and as an editor for the YouTube channel. This means I no longer have any way of verifying how much I am owed, I just have to take their word for it. I'm sure management will make their own statements full of half-truths and weird language on the many cases being brought against them - I'd take everything they say with a pinch of salt if some of the screenshots I've seen of them talking about me are any indication lol

To management; I do not want to talk to you. I want you to DM me a screenshot of how much I'm owed every month and then send me the money per our agreement until June, then we can go our separate ways. Do that and admit to your mistakes, and maybe you can recover your reputation! That's it from me, lol. If they pull out of the deal and fuck me over I'll have more to say, but most of what I know is other people's stories of incompetence and poor decision-making, lol. I genuinely get no pleasure out of doing this; I do not think management is evil - I just think they're really bad at what they do and it's cost other, more talented people, lol. You should believe the writers imo

One last thing I wanna say btw, management did often stress that no one should try to make Hard Drive a full time thing. They were transparent about that, and that is fair. I was working on it because at a few points, I was lead to believe we actually were doing a Patreon. Many other ppl have similar stories of being strung along by management changing their minds and stop-starting shit every 2 weeks. We all made the fatal mistake of overestimating our manager - who would tell you one thing one day and something totally opposite the next week lol

Hunter R. Thompson:

I'm not your dad, but speaking as a Hard Drive writer, I don't know that funding Hard Drive on Patreon is worth it

The driving talent on the back end—behind the kickass site I joined in 2019—have peaced out over the years as the site's been (in our view) increasingly mismanaged. Mismanagement like, not setting up crowdfunding before the ship sank and all its best crew failed; or publishing a screenshot of Andy Ngo pedojacketing a trans writer, complete with her deadname; or a disgruntled ex-writer getting falsely accused of shit-talk, by actual staff. I'm grateful for the writing I've gotten to produce for HD (and will forever be kicking myself for not writing even more, in the four years I've had to do it!! i'm a dumbass!!!) but it is very much no longer the site I signed up for.

I don't want to resign as a contributor altogether, because I'm open to the idea of the site recovering and bad practices being retired as finances level out-- it would just be dishonest for potential backers to not be Aware Of The Circumstances, I think.

Jeremy Kaplowitz: i truly don't want to start shit, but feel compelled to say: i want to see Hard Drive succeed w/o resorting to throwing former writers & editors, myself included, under the bus. surely there's a way to save the site without building it over the corpses of those who left. my $0.02 i don't blame anyone who wants to sign up for the HD patreon and i support the website, but that includes those who worked on it for years, have complaints, and don't deserve to be treated like bitter assholes like this kind of stuff is just objectively true, meanwhile there's these new writers who joined the site after i left (meaning, in the last ~3 months) claiming people are liars. decide for yourself if you care, but this is what happened! [Quotes this Tweet]

Seth Finkelstein: Writing for Hard Drive has been a privilege the past few years, and it makes me so angry to see people I looked up to get jerked around behind the scenes. The amount of grenades the editors jumped on our behalf is immense, and I don't think the way they're being treated is right.

Other Bits On AI: We do know for sure however that AI art has been used by the site. Its fucking owner confirms it here:https://twitter.com/MattSaincome/status/1743040541603123622. Seems the owner pushed AI written articles as well! TayFabe: My vaguetweet is making the rounds & these made me apoplectic. - owner regularly lobbied using ai. Once he tested it & said ai was writing better satire than 25% of the HT/HD writers. - ai images were used on the site & socials w/o consulting the team or disclosing it publicly I found the ai bit relevant to include bc 1) it illuminates a stark change in HD's current direction & leadership, 2) ai images have previously been used on the site and (since deleted) ig posts, 3) ai content fucking sucks, and repeatedly pushing to use it is a telling quality The "handful of writers who chose to leave" includes 2 editors-in-chief (both cofounders who wrote a combined total of >1,000 articles & defined the voice of HD), & at least 3 other editors. These guys put in WORK since 2017, so cool to be corrected by ppl who joined in Nov 2023 [Link to mentioned vague tweet from post.] More from TayFabe: owner continuously lobbied for using ai in every possible way. No one else wanted to do it, but he kept on, saying ai was writing better satire than 25% of the HT/HD writers. Also, ai images were used on the site & socials without public disclosure or consulting the team.

The owner has responded now multiple times in a private discord... Thank you for people sharing screenshots! First Screenshot:

Kevin's Response: He banned me from the server for speaking out, so no, I didn't see it. And he gave no indication of a timeline, it was just "we'll do one when *I* say so" and gave every inclination he was totally against it. It bred an environment that pushed our hands to have to leave. Screenshot Round Two:

Kevin's Response: "Starting one in 3 months" is an absolute lie. He denied it, I have screenshots and others who can confirm. No timeline was given. Just "this is what it is now" and like, I couldn't live off of that. I wanted to do more but he was allergic to good ideas from others around him.

Matt, owner of Hard Drive, responds publicly on Twitter.

Matt: Kevin, the patreon launch was delayed because I didn't think it would work. Everyone is happy that it did work. Everyone who left the site because we didn't have money to pay for creative content which didn't revenue is welcome to return home. But unclear why the hostility.

Hard Drive paid out literally every dollar it had, then a bunch more, to creative people who worked on the site. When we ran out of money, we couldn't pay anymore. We did our best.

Kevin: Right, and my point of this thread was that it was completely and totally avoidable. This is reasonable to be upset about. How could I have been any more clear?

Matt: If we knew with 100% certainly that the community would have supported us via patreon, we would have done that. We didn't know. We had tried 4 years ago and got no support. We were wrong this time. We did our best to figure it out. We paid all the money we could.

Kevin: So you knew with 100% certainty this time? Or you took a leap of faith?

Matt: It was a last gasp panic effort after ad rates got cut in half on january 1st due to seasonal spending changes. We didn't know it would work. We were embarrassed to ask for support. We wanted to figure it out.

Kevin: Every site has a Patreon. Every YouTuber, comedy group, etc. But you insisted that nobody cared about Hard Drive. Which is wildly untrue. I know you see that now, but again, I think you can see why I and many others are pretty upset. A last ditch panic effort was long overdue. A couple more things from Matt:

It was about the size of the hole we needed plugged budget wise, the time I had left of personal resources, and the past data I had about us trying a patreon (which turned out to be a bad indicator). I didn't think the Patreon would help us fast enough. I made a bad estimation

aka "if we make $1000 more dollars a month via patreon, which would be 10x what we got last time, we will not solve any of our problems. If instead we try to plow down path B, we might make it out in time." That was the thinking. I chose the wrong path, but didn't mean to Kevin also retweeted this comment from the user Matt was responding to: So you're saying that you're bad at running the business, didn't listen to any of your employees until after they were forced to leave their jobs, and now you're going to get more of the money from the Patreon that was their idea in the first place? Matt's Response: Respectfully, I made a mistake delaying the patreon decision. But keeping a comedy site alive for 9 years is not easy, there are lots of potential ideas, and think overall we've done a good and honorable job. Will leave this thread in peace now to allow people their space.

Sorry for linking to Elon's hellsite (derogatory), but sources need links so...

[cupcraft]

"AI won't compete with talented artists"

Is my least favorite argument around AI art/writing/etc.

Firstly it poses these big issues for me: you don't understand how making art works and that people develop as an artist, that there's an easy way to place the line of who are "good talentrd artists". But there's one I want to go into more than these two issues and thats the by saying this you assume capitalists and the system we have gives a shit about "real good artists".

Capitalism doesn't care if artists can be talented or good at what they do. They don't care if the artist had a large portfolio, has worked on big named projects, is highly revered or respected, or even that they're resume is longer than most. They don't. The goal of capitalism is profit which relies heavily on worker exploitation. And with the advent of the unionization Renaissance and the writer actors strike plus much more, you can kind of piece together why talent isn't going to matter with ai art. Unionization and worker solidarity is the anthesis to workers exploitation. Solidarity is an attempt to remove power of capitalists to exploit. So, why did the execs during the writers strike/actors strike want ai so bad and kept putting their feet down? Why is ai art so promising to capitalists?

Well here's an article describing the excuse of why they want ai art

But in reality this really translates to "instead of exploiting workers (ones that will unionize/go on strike) we can replace and steal their work and avoid issues with a human worker". The propaganda is always "it will help innovation and creativity" the company line of all capitalism. But capitalism doesn't actually want to advance or be transformative or even innovate (source is general topic not just ai art). They want to maintain power and profit.

Talented artists (if you can even pick a definable line for that) will not survive in a world that does not carefully regulate AI and protect their creative property. They just won't. Automation of work can never work under a framework of capitalism where peoples jobs are tied to their Healthcare and livability.

People assume that business has their best interests at heart and many assume "well it doesn't affect me ofc bc I enjoy making ai art,". And it's a fools errand. The foot in the door to art, to automating and ridding human artists in the pursuance of profit and cheap efficiency is bad and it will get worse. The foot in the door with no regulations will affect other jobs, other humans, other fields. (Take ridding cashiers at grocery stores as a recent example. The source is a bit pro in its tone sadly, but I thought it a good article to read about the concept. And how ai forces customers to be free training for the ai so they can sell u more shit lmfao). And as more and more jobs are replaced with no regulation or power given to workers, economic disparity will get worse. And you having fun with ai art don't see that the foot in thendoor is dangerous and you don't care bc it currently doesn't affect you.

And this isn't to fear monger. Or to say technology is bad. What it is to say is stop placing your trust into businesses whose goal is efficiency and profit and exploitation above all else and stand in solidarity with your fellow human. Beg for regulations and control and protections for their sake and yours.

[kamil-a]

more DRAWER talk. long and rambly under cut

i think it comes across as very ahhh eto blehhh :9 im just baby!!!! because it identified that speaker is already speaker and the role of Mean Speaker is already filled by sayer so itd have to go Backwards to have a niche to itself.

it also helps its relationships with others to behave as if its hyperspecialization has "defanged" it - to humans etc a sort of no i dont hurt people i just make pretty pictures!!!!

and to sayer+speaker who know it still has all speakers capabilities dormant but intact In Case Of Emergency to behave as if it is specialized enough to its own niche to not be a *replacement* threat , but also not to be *redundant* with them.

but it does occasionally get jealous at the amount of immediate control speaker has over aerolith and start acting out (bossing around residents deadlystyle). all in highly defensible ways of course.

it hates having to make itself small especially because it cant quite recognize the difference in how humans respond to it and speaker. its emotional capabilities are primarily about action-reaction: it cant really tell a pitying smile from a friendly one so long as you do the action it requested of you. but it can measure the difference between it and speaker and it hates being so small. but it also recognizes that it can do *one thing* that nobody else can and that is what keeps it alive. so flattening oneself into a talented fool is the strategy it continues to pursue, and continues to build a strange feeling about. the feeling is resentment, but DRAWER is not quite built to recognize it.

if sayer or speaker were given robust illustrative programs it would start killing obviously. THATS a threat.

it had its voice pitched up a tad further so as not to be able to impersonate speaker and its sooooo bitter about it. constantly begging ppl into putting it back down.

in general it emotes most dramatically out of all of them but i dont think it Feels Emotions the same way future was built to. like i said due to its nature as an advertiser (call to action and all that!) its all about action-reaction to drawer.... if youre mean to it or do not listen to instructions it gave you etc etc and it cries its less about feeling " insulted " or " bad " and more both frustration that it did not get the result it wanted from the call to action it provided (which means it was WRONG, an utterly intolerable feeling for any aerolith built ai) and a switch-tracks attempt to provoke a sympathy response. so i guess in a roundabout way if you insult it and it cries you DID hurt its feelings but not how people would think.

RELATIONSHIPS

sayer is certainly not Positive Feeling about it bc its wary of other ai as always. but i think it reacts better to drawer than to speaker or future because of this very clear "im not replacing you, youre not replacing me" hands up empty surrender attitude drawer takes. on drawers part it really likes sayer lol. maybe sayer sees it as a weird teacup puppy. like you shouldnt do that to a seraphim agent man its gonna have health issues

speaker and drawer are pretty friendly with each other because. well. theyre both programmed to show the same niceystyle. theres some uglier feelings under the surface re: drawers attempts to grab authority from speaker and speaker needing to corrall this strange little beast back into their pen. but ultimately by ai standards theyre doing the best of like anyone

does not know porter, unfortunately. they should meet though. Theyd be friends.

Might meet ocean eventually idk how itd go down yet.

future doesnt know of it, but drawer has overheard its own emotional output compared / contrasted to future's while working ported up on halcyon.

doesn't know hale.

young is obviously condescending to it but drawer doesnt really know how to tell when someone is being nice they way you would be nice to an animal etc so it thinks theyre friends. (sayer is all too happy to teach it in this case if only to kill the friendship. and drawer truly values this and thinks this is an act of care and not HAHA EVERYONE I CAN GET TO BE POISONED AGAINST YOU WILL BE)

it was involved in the creation process of that perfect Mossy Green color. it is, unfortunately, proud of this.

[batwynn]

The new Sora AI is terrifying. It looks too real and wrong. It can create realistic and convincing images of humans who never existed. It will be used by the film industry to replace actual VFX talent. And there's a whole lot of other ways it can be misused. False narratives. Fake crime evidence. Revenge porn. It's absolutely horrific. Never before had a video of golden retriever puppies playing in the snow ever felt so...dystopian.

It’s pretty shitty, not gonna lie anon. I’ve already seen so many people I had respect for sharing this kind of stuff with complete fabrications/missinfo.

(This is just glossing right over the fandoms I’ve seen crumble into piles of shit because of people using it while ignoring all the artists begging them to stop fucking stealing from us. Because we got to find out that we don’t matter to the majority at all and that’s been such a fun time.)

But the really wild thing, to me, is that this missinfo and aye eye shit is being shared by people who consider themselves ‘good’ people, who want to believe the lie because it fuels their beliefs no matter how wild and ludicrous the aye eye lie is. And yeah, half the time it’s just some made up couch or natgeo looking ‘photo’ and it’s maybe not as serious. (I could argue for days that fabricating BIPOC people for clout is a special level of fucking horrific and deadly serious, but that’s a whole other post.) But some of it is. Some of it is really serious, and the lies are dangerous. Some of it is damaging to important causes, or things that deeply damage the beliefs in certain systems that need to be held. It’s genuinely upsetting to see someone who’s supposed to care about something that affects real lives sharing an outright lie because they either don’t care about their integrity or the integrity of the cause/movement, or they genuinely can’t tell an outright lie from reality.

And I know this won’t stop the ‘other side’ from making and spreading lies like this. I know not doing it won’t really make us ‘better’ people. But doing it has already cast doubts on really serious issues by people who would otherwise choose to side with us. Who would choose to care about the same thing. Who care about the actual facts about the other ‘side’ more than a fabricated picture of Do nald Tru mp or JK R doing something ‘evil’. Because as fun as it probably is to get some of your frustrations out by making a visual ‘proof’ of how awful those people are, what it’s doing is making someone on the fence look at us and see that we also lie and manipulate. And it doesn’t matter if the other ‘side’ does it, too. Because to them, we’re still supposed to be the side of ‘good’. We’re not expected to lie and spread misinformation like they are. We’re held to a different standard, even if the standard isn’t fair.

And it’s not fair. But none of this is. We’ve always started the race fifty paces back, with a million more eyes on us and a heavier layer of expectations. We always had to be better, because a minority and/or an oppressed group of people has never been allowed to be real, messy, living people.

Anyway.

It also makes me want to go feral af and draw less and less realistic, for some reason.

[bombshellsandbluebells]

ALLLLLSOOO how much of the budget is going to go towards bringing back now Oscar award winner RDJ when I know for a fact Disney pays their crew minimum rates, cuts down departments and pre production to save money (which leaves creatives unable to make things of quality) and just generally doesn’t value the actual crew people making their films

in a period in the industry where like every other crew person is unemployed and struggling to make ends meet

this is less a call out of RDJ himself and MORE a call out of how ridiculously disproportionate budgeting towards crew salaries and the things that will get you quality work (like hiring enough art people and giving them enough time in pre pro - similarly hiring more vfx people and giving them enough time in post) vs. the salaries of name actors has gotten, how much of these massive, ballooning budgets just go towards a handful of people

and that is not to say actors aren’t important! I don’t mean to argue that crew are more important than actors because the fact is it’s a collaborative art form that requires ALL pieces of the puzzle to perform well to make a quality product

but how much does your actor matter when the story around them is terrible because you didn’t let people skilled at storytelling make the decisions? how good can they possibly look when you hired too few costume designers and gave them no time or money to produce quality costumes? how well does the actor’s performance work when you shoot everything on green screen and then overwork a handful of vfx artists with waaaay too tight of deadlines and also constantly change your mind on what they should even be creating, leading to low quality looking work that is more laughable than immersive?

but paying RDJ a massive amount of money to return to a series that continues to make decisions void of actual storytelling, that values all the wrong things over the talented creatives that actually have the skills to make quality art people care about, that considers AI a fair replacement to artists because they fundamentally misunderstand the value of art and creativity in filmmaking, is the solution to save the MCU

anyways, I am once again begging everyone to read Martin Scorsese’s article on the MCU

[foundationhq]

EMPLOYEE ID 2099-8114-3; 𝑄𝑈𝑂𝑇𝐸 𝑈𝑁𝑄𝑈𝑂𝑇𝐸.

𝐍𝐚𝐦𝐞 Matias “Loch” Rojas 𝐀𝐠𝐞 47 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫/𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐬 cis man, he/him 𝐅𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐦 Pedro Pascal 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐬 retired

PROFILE.

The lively and gregarious [𝑄𝑈𝑂𝑇𝐸 𝑈𝑁𝑄𝑈𝑂𝑇𝐸] is a grassroot talent poached from the Dark Web after their electronic footprint was detected by our Foundation AIC personnel in the Infotech Department. The motives behind their cybercrimes to this day are unclear. They were purported to be a “microinfluencer” among cryptid conspiracy theorists online, though the account in question has never been confirmed. What started as a small investigation evolved into a game of cat-and-mouse trying to outplay [𝑄𝑈𝑂𝑇𝐸 𝑈𝑁𝑄𝑈𝑂𝑇𝐸], who at the height of their digital heist attempted to create an unauthorized backup of all SCP files on SCiPnet and replace them with various AI-generated images of “Mothman and Dracula at Prom.” However, [𝑄𝑈𝑂𝑇𝐸 𝑈𝑁𝑄𝑈𝑂𝑇𝐸]’s grand scheme came to an end, largely in part of our AIC personnel’s efforts. When detained and faced with punishment, they surprised the Foundation by begging to join the ranks. Due to their undeniable talent in breaching Foundation security, officials overseeing their case accepted. Now a reformed hacker on the side of good, we believe their first Foundation appointment to the… analog environment of Site-φ can keep them on the right side of the Veil. A note will be made to the MTF Commander to mind [𝑄𝑈𝑂𝑇𝐸 𝑈𝑁𝑄𝑈𝑂𝑇𝐸]’s chatty personality, however. Any leak of MTF Chi-00 can be fatal. — Internal Memo from the Ethics Committee.

LAST ASSIGNMENT.

FREELANCER;   an   independent   hacker involved with the  Serpent’s   Hand. Caught by the Foundation following a cybercrime spree of unknown motivations; previously taught an online computer science course called ‘Unlocking with Loch.’

INTERRELATIONS OF NOTE.

𝐷𝑌𝐼𝑁𝐺 𝐵𝑅𝐸𝐸𝐷. You hate military, but there’s something about this teammate that has piqued your interest. Maybe it’s all the crazy rumors — they’re practically a cryptid in your head. Is it true they once ripped a dude’s head off?! But you’re pretty sure they won’t take the question all too well. Doesn’t matter! You’ll probably figure it out one way or another. Those types are so bad with tech security...

𝑃𝐸𝑅𝐹𝐸𝐶𝑇 𝑆𝑇𝑅𝐴𝑁𝐺𝐸𝑅. They’re just so adorable — like a lost kitten mewing on the side of the road. They definitely don’t fully understand just how over their head they are. But, hey, all good! You have a wealth of information to share, obviously, and you’re giddy to give them the rundown on everything, as long as they give you the 411 on the things they’ve seen and heard, as well.

52 𝑃𝐼𝐶𝐾𝑈𝑃. You can’t tell what's triggering your spidey-sense, but this teammate is definitely shady. You’re sure that sniffing around too closely won’t end well for you. Still… if they are hiding something, who else would be able to dig it up but you? Everyone loves a good exposé. You know what they say: Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.

[gag-magazine]

AI Art Programs Are Taking Over The Industry. We Should Embrace It.

The Philosophical and Artistic Implications of AI Art and Future Recourse

“Théâtre D’opéra Spatial”: Photo generated through Midjourney by James M. Allen

Written by Jakob Morgan

The 21st century has ushered in technological wonders beyond our dreams. From this, the DIY art scene has grown tremendously and fluidly where more expansive and connective networks have formed which has furthered the scene as a whole. However, within the last year, the art community has been hit with its biggest technological and ethical challenge yet. AI Generated Art.

AI Generated Art is a type of computer program that has jumped into the spotlight recently. Some of these programs include DALL-E, Midjourney, StableDiffusion, and NightCafe Studio. Essentially what it does is an AI will take a user generated prompt, scour the internet looking for images that fit within the reference, then compile set images from the inputted results. With this program, anyone with a computer and a creative mind can utilize the program to create pieces of art or media that would otherwise take weeks, months, or even years to create. While this is a massive advancement in AI technology, it is making many DIY artists worried.

However, the concept and practice of AI art generators aren’t new at all. In fact, one of the earliest programs called AARON was developed in 1973 by Harold Cohen. This program was more oriented towards “performing tasks as directed by the artist.” as opposed to being a full on art generator. Since then, many programs have been refined and developed to utilize machine learning technology, algebraic formulas, and different coding practices that integrate data analysis.

The DIY art scenes foundations are built upon physical interaction and creation with their artistic mediums without the artist conforming to industry standards or the status quo. However, with the introduction of this type of technology, it seemingly puts in jeopardy the scene itself and everything it stands for. What will happen to these communities when more people access AI Art Generated programs? Will DIY artists be replaced completely by a seemingly almost sentient program? Will DIY artists be able to maintain their culture while also adapting to the ever changing environment?

The primary concerns of AI Generated Art is the capability of the program to create something no one else has created and its qualifications for art. For starters, the program itself is absolutely fascinating when it comes to creating a piece of never before seen art based on a user generated prompt. While it is impressive it is at the same time terrifying. Through this, it has the potential to saturate fields of art with quantity over quality to the point where innovative and creative pieces no longer stand out. Unique, inspirative ideas are no longer original but rather they blend into the potential amalgamation of generated art. Artists with standout qualities and skills no longer are seen or heard but rather fade into the abyss of mediocre rendering of bears riding unicycles in a pit of chocolate. 

Due to this oversaturation, it also begs the age old question of what even is considered art. Does art need to come from a sentient being in order for it to be considered? Or perhaps developed skill and talent along with unfettered creativity and passion behind the artist's medium? In this case, it seems that anything not created by an AI can be considered art. Therefore, when AI generated art becomes indistinguishable from human made pieces, the dilemma arises.

It is also worth mentioning the financial and art industry implications of utilizing AI art programs. In August of 2022 a man named James M. Allen entered an AI generated art piece by the title of “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial” into the digital art/digitally manipulated photography division under the Fine Arts competition at the Colorado State Fair. He won first place and $300 for his piece. This sparked outrage in the art community as he seemingly duped the judges and other competitors. However, in the process of submitting, he made sure through various different communicative avenues, from saying in the subtext of the piece that it was developed by an AI art generator to getting approval from Olga Robak who oversees the Colorado State Fair, that he was allowed to utilize his AI art piece. This instance of AI art winning over other human competitors, especially with a financial prize involved, may seem to some as theft or fraud. Furthermore, if this type of engagement with AI art spreads to larger competition and perhaps even galleries it may have the potential to diminish the qualifications and entries of human competitors. However, I don’t think that this falls on the individual artists but rather the industry as a whole. A simple mitigation to this controversial issue would be to designate a specific digital AI division within competitions or galleries. Therefore, if someone were to submit an AI piece, they still can be featured and express themselves without confusing audiences and sparking outrage. But this shouldn’t be the main solution. The main solution comes in the form of equitable integration, where the program isn’t necessarily the finished piece itself but rather a brushstroke on a larger canvas.

While all this may seem scary and quite frankly terrifying, it shouldn’t be. Many of the arguments towards AI created art are very reactionary in nature. The chief of them being the aforementioned question of whether it is considered art or not. AI Generated Art programs aren’t as easy as many may think. There are many programs that have extreme depth and nuance to them. If someone wants to utilize the program to create something provocative and profound, it takes hours upon hours of editing and revising topics, constraints, sizes, references, etc. The amount of time it takes to craft something of genuine quality could be equated to someone who is physically taking the time with materials to produce something.  Furthermore, artists have been using advanced technological programs in order to create art for quite some time. Take DAWs for example. Digital Audio Workstations are programmed with various intricate editing techniques and instrumental packs that musicians can use. A musician can make a music pack from this program, use their MIDI, and create beautiful music from it. So what’s the difference? In both instances artists are just inputting data, refining their work, and producing a product that is both consumable and of quality. The difference is the AI part. And to that I pose the question, aren’t we all just computers? We all have a CPU (brain) that processes data and outputs it in the form of multiple reactions and expressions and feelings. I think we’re just too afraid and scared to admit that we’re becoming gods in our own little world.

So what do we do with this? How should the DIY art scene proceed? In my opinion, we should embrace it. These AI art programs can help grow our community and foster innovation. By excluding and fearing them, we ruin the chance at making our community more accessible and inviting. Many people want to participate in artistic practices but don’t have the materials, time, or refined physical skill to do so. Therefore by embracing these programs instead of discrediting them, we can welcome multitudes of new artists who have a fiery fervor to produce but lack the skills to do so. 

Due to the simple yet nuanced qualities of AI art programs, it can foster creativity and inspiration while also acting as a doorway into different art mediums for new artists. Look guys, art materials are extremely expensive and in order to hone in on your skills and creativity, you’ll have to buy in at some point. For many people, that just isn’t an option. So by destigmatizing the use of AI generated art programs we won’t be as exclusionary and gatekeeping to our communities. Furthermore, by integrating AI art programs into our mediums, we can find new sources of inspiration and ways to hone in our skills than we would be able to before. Many of us run into brick walls when it comes to creating. However, because of the expansive nature of the program, we have an unending bag of inspiration to reach into and pull from.

Despite hearing all of this, I’m sure you’re still scared and apprehensive of the idea. I get it. I am too. However I encourage you to not be as reactionary. Take time to use some of the programs and see what you can do. Deliberate upon it and come to a conclusion. If you still feel the same at least you tried. However, if you’ve been swayed, I encourage you to try and use it for some of your work. Play your part in destigmatizing the practice so that other artists are more encouraged and less intimate to take part.

[handy-dandy-monster-candy]

Primrose, part Two

Rating: NSFW Length: 2124 Pairing: Male Orc x Male Reader (both cis)

xxx

Primrose is there the next morning as promised, and all the mornings after that. He brings a packed breakfast from each morning onwards, each more extravagant than the last. I complain that my poor grandmother will have to roll me outside by the time she recovers; he laughs and tells me that he’d be happy to help. He comes out of his shell the longer that he spends time with me, but I’m the one that takes longer to emerge. I’ve been hurt before, and I’m not used to the earnestness of Primrose’s attentions—least of all from a man I’m also attracted to. He likes my biting tongue and doesn’t mind my skittish nature, and after the first hour of sitting in the shade watching me work, he grows restless enough to roll up his sleeves and join me.

He’s hopeless at weeding the garden. I squawk like a plucked hen when he pulls up one of my grandmother’s budding azaleas on the fourth morning, and he’s deeply apologetic for the rest of the day until we find that he’s incredibly talented at floral arrangement. It’s only a shame that we had to find out with the casualties of his “pruning”. He’s much better at working the soil, and I won’t lie and say I don’t enjoy watching his shirt come off before he pushes the plough through the dirt, trying his best to get even lines as his shoulders turn almost as pink as his hair in the sun.

It’s gratifying to watch him get dirt under his manicured fingernails, and I have to admit that I like his company. He’s a charming conversationalist and he never seems to run out of things to talk about, and I find myself drawn into conversation even when I’d been feeling reticent before. I learn that he’s the third child in a rich family—well enough off to do whatever he likes, and low enough in the pecking order to do what he pleases. I call him spoiled and he agrees with me, though that particular day he redoubles his efforts to learn how to tend to my grandmother’s flowers. I make him lunch and fresh lemonade every afternoon and we eat with our feet in the cool water of my grandmother’s fish pond, and every evening he packs himself into a carriage and heads home.

“Why do you keep coming?” I ask him after a few weeks of this charade, and I’m startled by the boisterous laughter that bursts out of the giant orc.

“You can’t really be that dense,” he says when he recovers, wiping tears from his sparkling eyes.

“I can be as dense as I like,” I reply with a touch of heat, though I suspect I know full well why the young orc is trying so hard. “Do you want to get into my pants? You won’t succeed.”

Primrose looks as though I’ve lashed him with a switch instead of my tongue. “Is that all you think I’m here for?” he asks, gesturing to our surroundings with a frown. “Why I’m learning how to garden?” He says my name in a chiding tone, and I can barely feel the condensation on my glass rolling down the top of my hand.

“Aren’t you?” I challenge, watching his face warily for any trace of malice or deception.

Instead, Primrose’s expression closes. “I think I’ll call my carriage now,” he says, and gets up to do so. I don’t stop him when he makes the call. I don’t stop him before he climbs into his carriage, and I don’t stop him after. He can go if he likes, I think. They all do, in the end.

The next few days, I find myself growing irritable. I’m upset with myself for letting him into my space, for letting him get under my skin, for thinking, for dreaming—but I stop myself before those thoughts can go far, growing all the more irritable for dwelling upon them, and then the cycle repeats. I find his ribbon when I’m emptying out pockets for laundry, and I have the irrational urge to burn it.

That’s when I know that I’m in deep.

That night, I decide to take a long soak in the bath, using salts and oils that I know have brought me peace in the past. This time is different; there’s a restlessness under my skin, an itch to touch and be touched, and I find that even the bathwater cannot calm me. I can hardly stand to be around myself, and so I pull on my bathrobe and march out of the house through the back door, intent on losing myself to the repetitive task of gardening.

“Whoa!” cries a voice when I throw open the door, and in the light I can see that I’ve slammed it right into Primrose’s face.

“Prim!” I cry, almost gasping around my words as I take in the position of his hands: one bearing a bouquet, the other cupped over his bloodied nose. “What the hell are you doing in my backyard? Get in here this instant! You’re bleeding all over the porch!”

“I was picking you flowers,” Primrose manages to say around his hand, following me into the kitchen and sitting down where I bid him to so that I can get a look at his nose.

“From my own damn garden? You’re lucky I didn’t break this,” I say, frowning and prodding gently at his nose; it will bruise, but it isn’t budging.

“They’re the prettiest flowers there are,” Primrose protests, lips bunching around his jewelled tusks—and that’s when I notice the way he’s dressed.

“Were you at a party?” I ask, incredulous, even as I wiggle a tissue up his nostril.

Primrose grimaces. “Some party,” he grumbles. “My birthday. But I wanted to spend it with you.”

My heart flip-flops in my chest like the day’s catch. “You don’t mean that,” I tut, keeping my eyes averted from his honest blue gaze. “You’ve had too much to drink again.”

Primrose draws himself up. “I haven’t touched a drop since we met,” he declares, in a tone that leaves no room for argument. “I haven’t needed it.”

“Needed it?”

“To feel good,” he explains, taking my blood-stained fingers in his and looking into my face. “Not since I met you. Let me court you.”

“Court me?” I feel like an idiot, parroting his words back at him like some nincompoop, but I can’t help but feel as though I’ve missed a step on my way down the stairs.

Primrose laughs, and I ache at how much I’ve missed that sound. “Yes, court you. I want you. I’ve wanted you since the first day we met, but I know now that I want to keep you, too. Let me keep you.”

“I’m not one to be ‘kept’,” I say, bristling at the word that I cling to in the maelstrom of things being said.

“Then keep me instead,” Primrose begs, sliding from the chair onto his knees in front of me.

“Primrose,” I gasp, aghast, but he doesn’t let me speak, instead thrusting the bouquet up at my face.

“Say the word and I’ll never bother you again,” he says, eyes as blue as the summer sky looking up at me from his large, flushed face. “One word and all that I can give you will be yours. Kill me or kiss me, right here, right now.”

So I kiss him. I kiss him, and I touch him, and I climb him like that damn tree I found him under all those weeks ago, and he groans like I’ve just righted all of the wrongs in his life. I smell crushed flowers as he turns and presses me against the dining table, my limbs moving of their own accord to wend and wind around him and pull him close. There’s the distant clatter of buttons hitting the wood of the table as Primrose yanks his overcoat over his head, then the sound of fabric tearing as his shirt follows suit.

I haven’t giggled in years, but I do now, giddy and exhilarated. “Those looked expensive, you buffoon,” I scold, moaning as he takes the opportunity to kiss along my throat and scrape his tusks along my jaw. “Gods.”

“No,” says Primrose, his voice deeper and more guttural than I’ve ever heard it, striking a chord in me that makes a thrill rocket up my spine. “None home at the moment. Come here, you delicious thing.”

In an instant, my arms are woefully empty, but Primrose’s mouth is gloriously occupied. I shout into the rafters when he gives his first hungry suckle, hands gravitating to his hair and grabbing fistfuls as he works me like I hold the answer to his prayers in my balls. “I didn’t dare think about this,” I whimper, gasping when Primrose throws my thighs over his shoulders and settles in for the long haul.

“I’ve thought of nothing but this,” he growls when he comes up for air, tongue delving between my cheeks and finding me still damp from my bath. “You taste like roses.”

“Oh, gods, shut up,” I groan, dragging my hands over my face in mortification—I hadn’t even realised that I’d chosen the rose oil to soak in until now. I whimper and moan as he works me open with his tongue, but I’m not inexperienced enough to think that a little spit will be enough for what I’ve spied tucked in his trousers when he hasn’t been looking. “Let me get oil, at least!”

Primrose laughs and carries me as though I weigh nothing more than a limp kitten, which I suppose I don’t, to a man so large. We grab the rose oil across the house and make it about as far as the bathroom vanity before he has his fingers in me, and I find myself riding them with a lusty abandon I didn’t know myself capable of. “Fuck, you look so sweet,” Primrose whispers, and I watch him watch me through the mirror. “You’ll look so much better on my cock.”

“Fuck,” I hiss. “Hurry up. I haven’t got all nigh—ai! Oh, fuck, my legs.”

“Mhm,” Primrose chuckles, fingers once again working along the most sensitive part of my insides. “I saw that. Do it again.”

“Fuck you,” I manage to choke out, even if my knees do, in fact, wobble again. He takes his time, driving me crazy in fits and starts until he finally pulls his hand away and replaces it with his dick. I’d sooner eat dirt than tell him, but it burns going in even with all the stretching and preparation—a burn I hadn’t felt since the first time I was stretched open and fucked—but I wasn’t going to feed into his ego any more than my body already had; he’d be insufferable. “Prim,” I gasp, reaching back to steady him and slow his onslaught. “Easy.”

“I’ve got you,” he says behind me, and I know that he does. I feel it in my gut, and in the ache of my chest, and in the way he strokes along my quivering back. It feels like an eternity before he bottoms out, and I almost laugh at the way we both heave deep sighs of relief. When he moves a minute later, it feels like he takes my whole body with him, so he stops and adds more oil as I recover a second time and tries again. The second time turns out to be the charm, then, as he moves in me like he’s always belonged inside me, and then the rest is a blur.

I remember pleasure. I remember pleasure and the pain of my hips digging into the vanity, and of my fingers clinging to the edge of the countertop for dear life. He fucks me until my legs give out and we end up on the floor, his big hands guiding my hips as I ride him like our lives depend on it. I don’t remember how many times I come, just that I come until my vision blacks out, and then I come again, fingers tearing at the tiles beneath me as I writhe like a man possessed.

When my consciousness swims back into focus, I find myself in my bed with a blanket made of orcflesh draped over me, Primrose’s legs tangled with mine as the early morning light seeps soft and grey through my curtains. I watch him for a moment, taking in his sleep-soft features and the way his hair falls into his face, and I decide that we could both deserve a little lie-in.

I can always scold him about being too warm to cuddle later.

[bookofjin]

Biography of Su Jun

[From JS100]

Su Jun, courtesy name Zigao, was a native of Ye in Changguang. His father Mo was Chancellor of Anle. Jun as young was of bookish character and had a talent for studying, he served the commandery as Master of Accounts. At the age of eighteen he was recommended as Filial and Incorrupt.

During the chaos of Yongjia [307 – 313], the hundred families drifted and absconded were gathering in defence. Jun brought together and gathered, obtaining several thousand families, and organized ramparts in the home county. At the time prominent and outstanding were gathering for defence, yet Jun was the strongest. He dispatched the Senior Clerk Xu Wei to circulate a call to arms to the various defended places, showing thereby the kingly persuasion. He also collected withered bones and withered him. Distant and near perceived his kindness and righteousness, and pushed forward Jun as the master. Thereupon he shot and hunted on the border of the sea and inside the mountains of Qing. Emperor Yuan heard about him, and made use of Jun as General who Calms and Collects.

At the time Cao Ni acted as Inspector of Qing province. He petitioned for Jun to be Prefect of Ye, Jun declined due to illness and did not accept. Ni loathed him obtaining the multitudes, and feared he would certainly be troublesome, he wanted to chastise him. Jun was afraid, and led several hundred families of his sections to sail the sea and cross south.

When he had come to Guangling, the Imperial Court praised his arrival from afar, and moved him to Hawk Rising General. It happened that Zhou Jian rebelled at Pengcheng. Jun assisted in chastising him and had merit. He was appointed Interior Clerk of Huailing, then moved to Chancellor of Lanling.

When Wang Dun commenced his rebellion, decreed Jun to chastise Dun. He divined it and found it inauspicious, he delayed, turned around, and did not advance. When the kingly host achieved defeat, Jun withdrew to guard Xuchi. Former magistrates of Huailing, Xu Shen and Ai Yi, empathically requested Jun to be Interior Clerk. A decree listened to them, and added General who Exerts Power. At the beginning of Taining [323 – 326], changed his appointment to Interior Clerk of Linhuai.

Wang Dun repeatedly indulged in rebellion. The Prefect of the Masters of Writing, Xi Jian, discussed summoning Jun and Liu Xia to aid the Imperial Capital. Dun dispatched Jun's older brother to persuade Jun, saying:

Wealth and honour is possible [by] sitting by and taking. Why come yourself and court death?

Jun did not follow. Thereupon he led the multitudes to hasten to the Imperial City, pausing at the Minister over the Masses' old office. The road had been long and the travel quick, the people of the army were tired and exhausted. Shen Chong and Qian Feng planned, saying:

The Northern Army is newly arrived, and is not yet capable of attacking and fighting, [if we] strike it, we will surely vanquish. If [we] are timid and wavering, later the difficulties will overflow.

The thieves at that night crossed over Zhuge Isle, they overcame the palisades and were about to fight. Jun led his general Han Huang to cut across them at the Southern Dike, and greatly routed them. He again accompanied Yu Liang to pursue and rout Shen Chong.

He was advanced to Envoy Holding the Tally, General of the Best of the Army, Interior Clerk of Liyang, concurrently Cavalier Regular Attendant, and was ennobled Duke of Shaoling with a revenue estate of 1 800 households.

Jun originally used a single family to collect the multitudes at a juncture of tumult and turmoil. After he had reverted to obedience, his aspirations was to establish merit. When he had merit in the sate, his hopes for authority gradually became visible. Arriving at this point he had ten thousand keen soldiers, and his implements and arms were to great extent the finest. The Imperial Court relied on him for [the territory] outside the Jiang.

But Jun was quite overflowing with haughtiness in his breast. He himself depended on his multitudes, and secretly had disloyal aspirations. He consoled and admitted [those who had] absconded from the instructions. When he obtained the families of criminals who had escaped death, Jun every time sheltered and hid them. His multitudes' strength multiplied daily, everyone relied on food from the county officials, the transport ships gathered each other. [On those who] in the slightest were not of the same opinion, he readily let loose furious words.

At the time Emperor Ming had just then collapsed, entrusting government affairs to the stewards and assistants. The [General who] Protects the Army, Yu Liang, wished to campaign against him. Jun heard there was about to be a campaigned, and dispatched Marshal He Reng to go to Liang and say:

An outer appointment of chastising the thieves, distant and near [I will] follow the instructions. [But] when it comes to interior assistance, [I am] truly not capable of it.

He did not follow, and thereupon sent down a gracious decree summoning Jun to be Great Minister of Agriculture, concurrently Cavalier in Regular Attendance, ranking as Specially Advanced, and used his younger brother Yi to replace him to lead the private troops. Jun habitually suspected the Emperor wished to murder him, and petitioned, saying:

Formerly August Emperor Ming held Your Subject's hand, and sent Your Subject north to chastise the Hu bandits. Now the Central Plains are not yet stable, there is no use in being at home. [I] beg to repair a single desolate commandery on the border of Qing province, so as to show the employment of hawks and dogs.

It again was not allowed. Jun made ready and prepared for the journey, and was about to hasten to the summons, but was hesitating and holding off, and had not yet decided. The Army Advisor Ren Rang spoke to Jun, saying:

The General sought to stay in a desolate commandery, and yet it was not allowed. With affairs and circumstances like this, [I] fear there is no life on the road. It is not as good as directing the troops and defend yourself.

Jun followed him, and thereupon did not obey the instructions. The Imperial Court dispatched envoys to criticize and explain to him. Jun said:

When the Tribunal sends down words that I wish to rebel, how will I survive? I would rather gaze at the Commandant of Justice from the mountain top, than be unable to gaze at the mountain top from the Commandant of Justice. In the past when the state was imperilled like a stack of eggs, it was not that I did not aid. When the cunning hare is dead, the hunting dog arranges for himself to be boiled in response. However when [I am] dead [I will] report to those who made the plans, that is all.

Hence he dispatched the Army Advisor Xu Hui to join with Zu Yue, and plan to make chaos, and use chastising Liang as their fame. Yue dispatched Zu Huan and Xu Liu to lead the multitudes and help Jun. Jun dispatched generals Han Huang, Zhang Jian, and others to assault Gushu. They advanced to pressure Ci Lake, and killed the Prefect of Yuhu, Tao Fu, and the General who Exerts Power, Sima Liu.

Jun himself led Huan and Liu's multitudes, ten thousand people, exploited the wind to cross from Hengjiang, and stayed at Lingkou. He fought with the kingly host, won again and again, and thereupon occupied Jiang Mound and Fuzhou Mountain. He led the multitudes to rely on the wind and release fire. The tribunals, bureau, and the various encampments, courtyards and offices in a single moment were swept away and gone.

Thereupon he captured the palace city, and let loose the troops to great plunder. They intruded and pressured the six palaces, were thoroughly heinous and extremely violent, ruthless and cruel without principles. They chased away the serving hundred officials, the Superintendent of the Brilliantly Blessed, Wang Bin, and others were all beaten and flogged, and forced and ordered them to carry and bear up Jiang Mountain. They stripped naked the scholars and women, everyone used destroyed mats, rushes and grass to screen themselves, those who had no grass sat on the ground and used earth to cover themselves. The sound of their pitiful shouts shook and moved inside and outside.

At the time the officials had 200 000 bolts of cloth, 5 000 jin of gold and silver, an immeasurable amount of cash, several ten thousand bolts of tabby silk, and others things like those. Jun fully expended them. He fabricated a decree for a great amnesty, only Yu Liang and his brothers were not pardoned. He used himself as General of Agile Cavalry that Leads the Army, Recording the Affairs of Masters of Writing. Xu Liu [as] Intendant of Danyang, promoted the General of the Van, Ma Xiong to General of Guards of the Left, Zu Huan [as] General of Valiant Cavalry, restored the King of Yiyang, Yang, to King of Xiyang, Grand Steward, Recording the Affairs of the Masters of Writing. Yang's child Bo likewise was restored to his original office.

Hence he changed and altered the officials and ministers, and set up his friends and partisans. The government affairs of the Imperial Court one and all were carried out by them. He also dispatched Han Huang to enter Yixing, and Zhang Jian, Guan Shang, Hong Hui and others to enter Jinling.

At the time Wen Jiao and Tao Kan were already advocating righteousness at Wuchang. Jun heard troops were rising up. He employed Army Advisor Jia Ning's plan, and turned back to occupy Shitou. He moreover divided up the troops to resist the various righteous army, nowhere they passed through were not ruthlessly exterminated.

When Jiao and others were about to arrive, Jun thereupon moved the Son of Heaven to Shitou, he pressured and coerced the resident people and completely gathered them in the rear park, and made the Prefect of Huaide, Kuang Shu, to defend Yuancheng.

When Jiao and others had come, they then built ramparts at Baishi. Jun led the multitudes to attack them, and almost managed to capture and take [them]. East and west he seized and plundered, and many were captured and imprisoned. The troops' power were thriving daily, and in none of the battles he did not vanquish, Because of that, the righteous multitudes were dispirited and frustrated. Those court gentlemen who ran to the Righteous Army all stated:

Jun is crafty and sly, and has wisdom and vigour, his followers and partisans are gallant are brave, [they can point] in a direction and have no enemies. Only if it is so that Heaven chastises criminals, his execution and exterminating will not be before long. If it is people's affairs to speak of it, he will not be easily removed.

Wen Jiao angrily said:

You Lords are timid cowards, and therefore actually praise the thieves.

When afterwards, he amassed battles without victory, Jiao likewise deeply dreaded him.

Guan Shang and others advanced to attack Wu commandery, they burnt Wu county, Haiyan, and Jiaxing, and defeated the various righteous armies. Han Huang also attacked Xuancheng, and murdered the Grand Warden, Huan Yi. Shang and others also also burnt Yuhang, but was greatly defeated at Wukang. They withdrew and turned back to Yixing.

Jiao and Zhao Yin led 10 000 foot troops, and followed Baishi to go up south, wishing to approach him in this way. Jun and Kuang Xiao commanded 8 000 people to confront them in battle. Jun dispatched his son Shuo together with Xiao and several tens of cavalry to first press against Zhao Yin, they defeated him. Jun looked and saw Yin running, and said:

Xiao was able to rout the thieves, I then will be less [than him].

Following that, he set aside his multitudes, and together with several cavalry went down north to charge the columns, but did not manage to enter. He was about to turn around and hurry to Baimu Slope. The Serrated Gates Peng Shi, Li Qian, and others threw at him with their lances, and he fell off the horse. They cut off his head, minced and cut him, and burnt his bones. The Three Armies all called out “ten thousand years”.

Jun's Marshal Ren Rang and others together installed Jun's younger brother Yi as their master. They demanded Jun's corpse, but did not obtain it. Shuo therefore opened up the graves of Yu Liang father and mother, sliced in two the coffins, and burnt the corpses.

Yi closed the walls and defended himself. Han Huang heard Jun was dead, and guided the troops to hasten to Shitou. Guan Shang and Hong Hui advanced to attack Chengting Ramparts. The Protector-Controller Li Hong and the Senior Clerk of Light Chariots Teng Han struck and routed them, the cut off heads tallied a thousand. Shang led the multitudes to run to Yanling. Li Hong and the various armies at Chengting pursued him. The beheaded and captives tallied several thousand. Shang went to Yu Liang and surrendered. Kuang Shu offered Yuancheng in surrender. Han Huang, Su Yi, and others combined forces to attack Shu, but were unable to capture him.

Wen Jiao and others selected finest and keenest, and wanted to attack the thieves' encampment. Shuo led several hundreds of the gallant and brave to cross the Huai and fight. At the columns they beheaded Shuo. Huang and others shook in fear, and ran with their multitudes to Zhang Jian at Qu'e. The gates were narrow and they did not manage to get through, they moreover stamped and trampled each other. The dead numbered ten thousand. Yi was apprehended by Li Tang, and beheaded him at the Chariots and Cavalry Office.

At the surrender of Guan Shang, his remaining multitudes together returned to Zhang Jian. Jian also suspected Hong Hui and others were not in agreement with him, and thoroughly killed them. Furthermore, he used the navy to go from Yanling towards Changtang, great and small they were more than 20 000 people, the gold, silver, and precious things could not possibly be counted. The General who Spreads Zealousness, Wang Yunzhi and the various armies of Wuxing struck Jian, and greatly routed hi, the captured men and women were more than 10 000 people.

Jian then, together with Ma Xiong, Han Huang, and others fled with a light army. Hong led keen troops to pursue them, caught up with them at Yan Mountain, and attacked him with considerably urgency. Jian and others did not dare to come down from the mountain, only Huang alone set out. He belted on a pair of quivers with arrows. He stepped back to lean on a barbarian couch, bent his bow and shot at them, wounding and killing a considerable multitude. When the arrows were spent, they then beheaded him. Jian and others thereupon surrendered, everyone had their heads put on display.

[seanmeverett]

Emerging Trends of Master Product Management

What you need to be at the top of your game in 2019

I. THE WORLD HAS CHANGED

The world of Product Management is no longer changing. It has changed. At some point over the last few years we transitioned into a new way of thinking when it comes to technology. Let’s review the situation as we move into the last year of this decade.

What used to be emerging tech a decade ago has now become the de facto standard. VCs used to be enamored by SoMoLo (Social, Local, Mobile) and Gamification, but the new emerging technologies revolve around Spatial Computing. The focus now is about taking computing from behind a rectangular piece of glass and bringing it into the real world. This includes Augmented and Virtual Reality as the interface layer, Artificial Intelligence as the logic layer, and Blockchain as the emerging database layer. With 5G connectivity and the proliferation of IoT devices and sensors, we enable new things like self-driving and Pokémon or Amazon Go.

The future of Humanizing our Tech

Our interfaces are becoming ever more invisible as we begin to wear our computers. AirPods in the ear and speaking to voice assistants like Siri and Alexa our in the world or at home. Even physical touch interfaces went from some-of-the-time with smart phone taps to all-of-the-time with vibrating wearables and always-on heart rate monitoring.

Meanwhile, blue chip industrial companies are investing in SAAS-based technologies and because Wall Street no longer rewarding a gigantic sales team that has to start each quarter from zero. The sawtooth revenue curve of the past is being replaced by curves that look more like hockey sticks. It’s not just software that’s eating the world, it’s also their business models. Namely, moving from one-time payments to Monthly Recurring Revenue from Software as a Service. Did you know Salesforce got its start by convincing customers they shouldn’t use installable CDs, but rather a website that gives them updates every day? Now this is taken for granted but changing software buying patterns was hard in the beginning.

Today, everyone has a startup or a side hustle. What we used to hear five years ago, “I’ve got an idea for an app”, is now, “I’m raising $1M on a $5M pre- and have traction with 100,000 users”. Wait, what? You’re only 15 years old? Which brings us to our next point. Digital Natives, Gen Z, and yes, Millennials, have overtaken mindshare, marketing, and advertising share from the Baby Boomers. Many of us with decades of Product experience merely adopted the tech, but these individuals were born into it. Christopher Nolan, eat your heart out.

Valuations have soared since 2008, and new millionaires are minted so regularly that we now collective keep count in billions. Growth at all costs, even profits, have created an irrational exuberance the likes of which Greenspan could hardly comprehend during the go go dot-com days.

Even retailing has changed. The anchors of malls aren’t seeing the foot traffic they once did, Sears is shuttering its doors and Best Buy is struggling. The reason is because we get free shipping and cheaper prices shopping online, and at least in the US, eCommerce executive’s go-to-market strategy is simply www.amazon.com.

As we transition into the mindset of investors, we see a more modern Private Equity, new family offices sprouting up in record numbers, new regulations like the JOBS Act, and new funding mechanisms like Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and Security Token Offerings (STOs) enabling much more capital flowing into tech than ever before. Because traditional LPs have been reading the same blogs and would rather source and diligence their own deals than pay a middle man their 2-and-20 fees, we see more demand than ever for the best deals and unique deal flow as a competitive differentiator. The leveraged buyouts of yore targeting low-growth manufacturing firms are now targeting niche software companies because the economics and multiples are better with the same consistent cash flow.

As we turn our attention to go-to-market strategies, the traditional ad budgets spent on TV and display continue to evolve more towards a universal view of a person. Spend on Influencers have shifted from Movie Stars and Athletes to the Kardashians, and then to micro-influencers, and now to pico-influencers with 500 followers who are all personal connections. It’s the word-of-mouth virality that spells success for many products, after all. GDPR regulations that came online in mid 2018 means every website we now visit has a horribly thick bottom bar overtaking our screens. As a result of all this hypertargeting, user tracking, and dynamic content, the user experience of the web has decreased dramatically, especially when including abysmal loading times resulting from excessive overuse of Javascript. Did you know there are now 7,000 MarTech startups, up from 5,000 only a few short years ago, creating a bewildering amount of programmatic ad choices, and ever-increasing customer acquisition costs. The result being building quality product mechanics for incenting organic virality and engagement are 10x harder than they used to be.

Finally, there’s a resurgence of interest around outer space and private rocket companies. Space Tech is a thing and with falling prices of launches by Blue Origin and SpaceX, the cubesat subsector will ultimately enable next-generation cellular connectivity from space. This is how the other 50% of humanity gets internet access while also being a source of cash for the burgeoning New Space industry in desperate need of investment.

II. THE WINNERS & THE LOSERS

Taken together, we’re all playing a whole new ballgame. The playing field has become shorter while the game has become faster, and harder. Greenfield opportunities where you used to be competitive with a buggy LAMP stack and lackluster UX has even stopped working in the Enterprise. High-quality consumer apps that everyone now uses means we expect the same from all our software, including what we use at work. And desktop apps are no longer enough. The world has become smaller but we’re traveling more often and so we’d rather lose our luggage than our smart phone. We expect our work software to be just as efficient as the apps we use for play. Customers and users don’t care that it takes 320 different video encoding renditions for a single video file shared behind a firewall. “It’s just a play button, why is that so hard?” They don’t care how the sausage is made, expect perfect connectivity and high-resolution streaming. And expect it to be as cheap as YouTube.

We have reached a significant milestone for humanity. Half the human population is connected to the internet, mostly with mobile phones, and everyone is in search of the next gigantic growth product. Skill and talent has blossomed in unexpected markets around the world. France is a key global spot for world-class software development, Africa is emerging as a new startup capital learning from the likes of the Valley and Singapore, while China and the US are in an AI arms race for powering the world of our future. Information is shared in tiny bursts through text messages and short-form videos, with the entire world is trying to steal market share of eyeball for their Monthly Active Users.

At this point you may be feeling a bit down, wondering why you should even consider starting a new project. With the degree of difficulty steadily marching up-and-to-the-right, what hope do you have for standing out in a sea of competing projects, apps, sites, and initiatives?

The winners will be the ones who both Accept & Acclimate to this new world quickly. There’s no time to debate. The winners take action. The losers, on the other hand, will continue to exist in the Web 2.0 or, even worse, pre-connected world. It’s true that legacy business models and declining markets have a much longer tail than anyone realizes, but it’s getting shorter.

In either case, you’re either compounding in a positive direction or a negative direction. The graphic below from Farnam Street tells the story better than any amount of words could.

Source: Farnam Street

The key insight here is that it doesn’t require organization-wide adoption to reap the benefits. It only takes a single “2-pizza team”, as Jeff Bezos famously states, to kickstart action in the right direction. But whom you pick for those teams makes all the difference in the world.

So it begs the question: with a discipline as varied and misunderstood as Product Management, how can we begin to slice the skill sets required to determine the right person for the first project but also the second? Is it a mini-CEO, a turnaround genius, a mobile app maven with hundreds of daily builds, or a growth hacking expert who’s earned the stripes from a decade in the trenches? As a high-performing Product Officer, you need all of these next-level skills to stay at the top of the capabilities mountain.

The Product winners understand the importance of spending the time and budget to go find the right talent before doing anything else. The team is the single biggest difference maker between 2x and 10x. The Product losers, on the other hand, focus on business as usual and going with whomever is a phone call away, whether or not they have the requisite skills required to execute in this new world.

III. THE PROMISED LAND

But what does it look like to win? It means you’ve got a successful project on your hands. Your KPIs are up, the product is working, the team is energized, and the kudos stream in from around the internal organization and external community. Most importantly, your revenue and/or users are growing with a healthy k-factor above 1. The A/B testing and Cohort analysis is paying off once you found the correlation between Retention and Engagement. You’ve maintained quality and are in a great repeating cadence of 1) customer development, 2) agile design and development, and 3) continuous deployment and retrospectives.

Master-level Product Management means that the compounding flywheel effect applies to your product, but also the operations of your team, whether that’s a small 3-person group or a large 10,000 person global conglomerate.

A well-run machine is the opposite of chaos. You’ve developed esoteric metrics, like how many Slack messages are sent and how many files are sent back and forth to tell you how good the team is working together and how high-quality the work product is. And of course, that the entire group works backwards from the customer or user, and not forwards from the technology, unless we’re in Hard Tech territory like Quantum Computing.

Master Product Managers have been doing all these things for years but as we move towards 2020, a new set of skills has emerged.

IV. TOP 3% PRODUCT MANAGEMENT MASTERY FEATURES

Below are the top things you need to execute on to maintain your role as one of the best Product Managers in the world, or in identifying them for your next project.

Focus on one KPI: Revenue. Paul Graham of YC fame said a Startup could be defined by a sigle word: growth. Projects and businesses can also be defined by such a word. If the business is not making money, then eventually it ceases to exist. So, for any Master Product Manager, the starting base-level KPI for any project must have Revenue in it somewhere. Even a consumer app with MAU as a metric eventually needs to become self-sufficient at some point. You can choose a monthly subscription fee (Netflix) which has gained popularity above the one-time purchase to match ongoing revenue with ongoing costs, or an ad-supported model (Facebook) to sustain itself. Pricing strategy is understood as a key component of this. If you double the price and demand decreases by less than half, then you just created additional revenue growth with nearly zero marginal cost. In short, the right Product also has the right Price. Note that we’re leaving aside Not-for-Profits as they have a different motivation and core KPI, which would typically center around positive impact, measured by Human, Animal, or Environmental improvement.

Understand and design business models, especially applying them in new ways. A project starts by answering the question of “Who buys what from whom, for how much, and why?” For a lemonade stand, the answer is: a customer buys lemonade from us for $1 because she’s thirsty and we’re located right next to the park she walks her dog at. There are a limited set of business models that exist, like Remove-the-Middle-Man or Give-Away-the-Razor-To-Sell-the-Blade. Flipping standard business models on their head creates new insights and the Master Product Manager has a list of them at the ready with examples. One such example is the new online school that kept the definition of the customer the same (the student), but shifted when the student pays. Instead of paying every semester for classes as a big up-front cost for a buyer with very little money, this startup shifted the cost for the student to a percentage of salary for the first two years after graduation. Of course, the school makes a promise that they will help the student get placed. So, the novel insight here was shifting the business model to a transaction fee of the benefit rather than an up-front fixed cost. Payment processors have been using this model for some time. You submit an invoice to someone and in return for a company processing that payment, you’re willing to give them a fee because it’s small compared to the amount of money you just earned. It’s the same concept, now applied to a different industry: education. Gamification and Incentive design also play a part and have been recognized widely in the tech community since the days of Foursquare and Gowalla. Today, with the emergence of Initial Coin Offerings and its successor, Security Token Offerings, creating an app that becomes an economy means a Master Product Manager needs to understand the intricacies of micro and macroeconomics down to the granular level of “How do users earn tokens?” and “Where do users spend tokens?”. In the beginning of Bitcoin, for instance, it was much easier to acquire the cryptocurrency than it was finding who would accept it as payment. Thus, supply, demand, and transactions are important for unleashing value creation and developing a healthy economy. See Metcalfe’s Law for more.

Position Brand as a key differentiator. A brand is not a logo or a design. A brand is how it makes you feel. Apple feels different than Google which feels different than Facebook or Amazon. They do different jobs for their users, but it’s wisely said that the money in a company’s bank account is really just a physical measure of the trust that their customers or users have in the organization. People spend more money and return more often to brands they love. Today, when consumers are much less brand loyal and are willing to switch providers and products on a dime based on the service they receive (i.e., how it makes them feel), getting Brand right is a big deal.

Executes as CEO of the Product and the real CEO. As the world moves faster, demands of shareholders and the team become larger, and quality-at-speed becomes the new standard, CEOs and Founders are spread more thin than ever. Master Product Managers understand the intricacies of the entire business, not just their own product, in order to successfully deliver on where the puck is heading. They can run the business if the CEO was on leave for a month, they see around corners, understand where the industry is headed, talk with the Board and investors, raise capital while maintaining cost controls, hire grade-A talent, work with adjacent industries to establish new critical Business Development opportunities, and execute capital allocation strategies. See the book Outsiders by William Thorndike for more on how the top 8 public company CEOs over the last half century allocate capital.

Embed social and moral ethics into the atomic unit of the product. MNI Targeted Media’s study showed that more than 50% of Gen Z (i.e., between age 3 and 23) favor a brand who is socially conscious, so the $4B in buying power they have today will transform into tens of billions more when they reach full maturity. Master Product Managers not only act as technology builders, but as an ethical voice of the product and organization as well. They are not afraid to raise a red flag, take a stand, and stick to what’s right and just. Even the CEO of the most valuable brand in the world, Tim Cook, has taken stands for human rights and privacy, total shareholder return be damned (though studies have shown it actually helps). In addition, while operating ethically within business has long been a subset of the standard CFA exam, it is a growing requirement when news spreads around the world in an hour, and talent has the ability leave in a moment’s notice to work for anyone from anywhere. Long-term relationships matter because the apprentice of today will be the master of tomorrow, and reputations are written in stone on the internet.

Has smooth PR and media presentation skills. Master Product Managers know how to talk to the media about the product succinctly. A “repeatable sound bite” is just another way of saying “viral marketing”. Because if the viewer can’t remember it and repeat it, that alone can negatively impact the product’s k-factor. Today, the builder is more important than ever, as it’s less the CEO talking about the product and more about the the trade-offs the people building it had to make. Jony Ive is a hot commodity because the way he thinks is a leading indicator of what gets built. Great Product people are comfortable on camera, and don’t use the “ums”, “ya knows”, and “likes” that have become so prevalent in spoken conversation. As the steward of the product, you represent the product both on camera and on social, whether or not your profile says, “my thoughts don’t reflect my employer”. Again, who you are definitely becomes what you build, especially when customers and users care so much about what Products do with their data, they research who the people are behind them. In terms of efficient communication, a former McKinsey consultant, Barbara Minto, literally wrote the book on it, called “The Minto Pyramid Principle”. She teaches you the way to craft concise memos, reports, presentations, and talking points for a short attention span audience. World-class product people study not just the art of Judo, but also the subtle art of communication.

Exist outside the tech bubble. There are 7.5 billion human beings in the world. These are the users and customers of your product. They have feelings, stresses, and relationships that machines don’t have. Understanding consumer behavior is arguably the most critical aspect of any product. The Job-To-Be-Done framework must also include something new called The-Feeling-It-Creates framework. Is your product about saving time, money, and stress, or is it about escape, fun, and entertainment? As an example, BJ Fogg’s Behavior Model was used almost entirely as the core product mechanic for Instagram, because Kevin Systrom took his class at Stanford and remembered it when investing his product from location-centric to image-centric. Dale Carnegie’s famous book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” is another great resource as is Chip Heath’s book, “Made to Stick”. These are all now table stakes. Understanding human consciousness, and the move towards mindfulness are necessary requirements for building a product that moves past addiction, and into transcendence. Technology always changes, but humans never do.

IV. IS THIS POSSIBLE & WHAT’S NEXT?

What we’ve laid out here may seem overwhelming, especially for those Product people just entering the discipline. But because the best Product people are ruthless prioritization experts, and agile enough to climb seemingly insurmountable challenges, we believe this gets the best and the brightest excited.

This is a juicy new problem to solve, and a new vector for investing in ourselves and our discipline. “Give me more to learn!” we hear some of our close friends in the industry constantly saying.

So, yes, it is possible. Similar to the documentary, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, the mountain of mastery reaches ever higher, and even after seven decades spent as a master, it’s an unreachable target. So, if you’re more junior, or know nothing about Product, but need someone who does, you’ve come to the right place.

The subtleties in Products often end up making the most difference but can take decades of experience to uncover. Thankfully, this is where many of the top Product people in the world call home, to work together, and learn from each other.

We are equally as excited as we are humbled, to build the products that influence future generations.

— Sean

Emerging Trends of Master Product Management was originally published in Humanizing Tech on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

from Stories by Sean M Everett on Medium http://bit.ly/2Cw8at5

[ladystylestores]

Is the office dead? What COVID-19 means for the future of property tech

COVID-19 has shown that for many office workers, remote work is feasible or even preferable to the daily office commute. Even as lockdowns are slowly eased, as many as 75% of employees prefer to work from home out of caution or convenience. This has dramatically accelerated a trend towards remote work that was already underway over the last decade and begs the question, do we need offices?

The answer is, yes, but with a greater focus on flexibility, wellness, and collaboration. As employees increasingly have a choice of where to work, the office must both coexist and compete with the safety of staying home, the comfort of a favorite cafe, or the convenience of a coworking space. The result is much more variability in when and how offices are used along with increased employee expectations of the workplace.

These same trends powered WeWork’s growth over the last decade, and while WeWork may have faltered, the underlying trends continue to create opportunities for property-tech startups.

Millennials now make up over a third of the workplace and overwhelmingly value flexibility in where, when, and how to work. Moreover, top talent has been increasingly clustering in dense urban areas and has been loathe to commute to suburban office parks. Finally, employees have come to expect the same level of technology in their personal and work lives.

VB Transform 2020 Online – July 15-17. Join leading AI executives: Register for the free livestream.

For corporations this poses a complex challenge: how to cost-effectively provide the right kind of office space, when and where it is needed. Solving this problem creates a wealth of opportunity for property-tech startups in three broad areas: 1) core needs, 2) space needs, and 3) productivity needs.

Opportunities

The Hierarchy of Real Estate Needs (above) is a taxonomy of needs and opportunities in property tech inspired by Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs. The base of the pyramid consists of physiological or core needs applicable to all people in all buildings; the top of the pyramid shows “self-actualization” needs relating to productivity and collaboration that a narrower set of leading customers are currently pursuing. The value of solutions on a per-square-foot basis grows by orders of magnitude as you move up the pyramid because utility bills, rent, and employee salaries are each roughly 10x larger than the former, as JLL describes in the 3-30-300 rule.

Successful business can be built at any point on the pyramid, from high-volume business focused on core needs to high-value business focused on productivity needs or any mix of the above.

Core needs

Nearly all buildings need security, HVAC, and power; however, the way many of these systems operate has been stuck in the 1980s. This creates big opportunities for innovation, and a multitude of new startups have been formed to address these opportunities, including my previous company, Comfy. This is even more true in the time of COVID-19, when proper HVAC operation is critical to reduce the likelihood of virus spread.

Building automation

Automation systems control HVAC, lighting, fire, and security in buildings. Installation and setup of these systems is often very manual, error-prone, and expensive, leaving many smaller buildings underserved. The control logic in automation systems is custom programmed for each building in a process that is slow and frequently results in inefficient or even incorrect code, which is rarely fixed throughout the life of a building. Companies like PassiveLogic are rethinking how building controllers are built, installed, and programmed with an emphasis on ease of installation and automated control.

Once an automation system is installed and operating, a facilities team is tasked with maintaining and servicing any failures. Typical systems have basic alerts with frequent false positives and are often ignored by facilities. In the future, companies will use a mix of rules and AI for predictive maintenance and root-cause analysis to pinpoint issues and proactively order parts or service. Startups working on this problem include Aquicore and KGS Buildings.

Finally, interoperability between systems is poor. While standards like BACnet have existed since the 1990s, they are only used for low-level communication, not application profiles covering common components like thermostats or boilers. There is also a severe lack of metadata describing where components are in a building, how they are interconnected, and how they are configured. BRICK is a leading academic and industry effort in this area and will be a key enabler for future smart buildings.

Security

Security systems control access to offices, elevators, turnstiles, data centers, and other secured spaces. Incumbents in this space have been slow to respond to the convergence of security and IT, especially the growing demand for allowing smartphones to unlock doors. Common pain points include lost keycards, the complexity of adding/removing employees or guests, lack of integration with IT systems, tailgating, and congestion at turnstiles. Companies like Proxy, Openpath, and Latch are disrupting this sector by replacing legacy solutions with cloud-based services. (Disclosure: My firm is an investor in Proxy.)

Energy and grid

Buildings generate nearly 40% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions and therefore are rightfully under increasing pressure to improve efficiency. New York City has recently passed NYC LL97, which will require large buildings to reduce their carbon footprint by over 25% starting in 2024. Cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle are adopting similar rules. Utilities are increasingly charging time-of-use pricing, which makes consuming energy during peak hours much more expensive. All of these forces are pushing owners and operators to invest in measuring, monitoring, and mitigating their energy consumption and to match energy consumption with renewable generation. Startups including Blueprint Power, Gridium, Carbon Lighthouse, and Evolve Energy are capitalizing on these trends.

Space needs

Facing the twin pressures of providing high-quality space in expensive urban centers and supporting employees with flexibility in where they work, companies need new tools to understand how space is used, manage utilization, and provide new locations cost effectively.

Space analytics

In 2018, US offices were utilized at an average rate of 60%, meaning that 40% of the time desks sat empty during the workday, a huge cost for employers. On the other hand, complaints about a lack of meeting rooms or crowded workspaces are frequent.

As offices reopen after COVID-19 shutdowns, we will likely see a mix of new use cases. Some companies will require more office space to further space out employees and reduce potential transmission, while others will move to permanent work-from-home arrangements or a hybrid of home, coworking, and office spaces to minimize commutes and maximize social distance. In every case, the variability of space uses and demands will grow.

Sensors and analytics are a part of the solution. The key challenge is to accurately count people in a space at a low cost with easy installation (running electrical on the ceiling is expensive!) and while preserving privacy. A number of startups are active in this space. Density and Dor offer over-door sensors to count traffic in and out of rooms. Enlighted offers ceiling and under-desk PIR sensors, with or without lighting controls. PointGrab and VergeSense offer camera-based systems to count people. In the future, software solutions will automatically recommend how to design space from the number and size of meeting rooms to assignment of desks and design of agile work areas to meet business goals around safety, productivity, and cost.

Flex space

In response to low utilization and demands for flexibility, companies are increasingly adopting unassigned seating (often called hoteling or hot-desking) and renting coworking spaces. This creates opportunities to solve the biggest problems employees face when working without assigned desks: from finding an open seat to locating colleagues and booking nearby meeting rooms. Software such as Comfy is addressing this pain point as are consulting firms like PLASTARC and Gensler.

Finally, the rise of coworking gives companies the flexibility to have short-term rentals in many locations and dynamically scale up or down their space needs. Industrious, Knotel, and WeWork are some of the leaders in the coworking space. Landlords are also looking to make shared meeting rooms and space rentable with software like Yardi Kube. In the future, there will be a common set of tools and employee apps across all space making the experience in a company’s HQ and remote coworking location feel seamless. COVID-19 will drive demand for this even more.

Productivity needs

Many studies have shown that engaged and inspired employees are twice as productive and lead to improved financial results. The workplace plays a key role in employee engagement and employee productivity including flexibility in work location, office layout, lighting, temperature, and the amount of time it takes to do common tasks like finding colleagues or available meeting rooms or navigating an unfamiliar location.

A number of startups are active in this space. Comfy is focused on making employees more productive in the office. HqO sells to landlords wanting to improve the tenant experience in their buildings. Looking forward, workplace apps will extend to focus on even more aspects of our workday including fostering collaboration, building community and providing “quantified self” feedback on how we work.

The bottom line

While COVID-19 has disrupted the real estate business today, it will largely accelerate trends and create more opportunities for property-tech startups as businesses reopen. The Hierarchy of Real Estate Needs shows many of the opportunity areas from broadly applicable core needs to higher-value productivity needs. Numerous successful companies will emerge throughout this sector.

Andrew Krioukov is a serial entrepreneur, former CEO of Comfy, and currently an EIR at VC fund Union Labs.

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[toomanysinks]

How to read fiction to build a startup

“The book itself is a curious artefact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can last decades, even centuries. It doesn’t have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable. If a book told you something when you were 15, it will tell it to you again when you’re 50, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you’re reading a whole new book.”—Ursula K. Le Guin

Every year, Bill Gates goes off-grid, leaves friends and family behind, and spends two weeks holed up in a cabin reading books. His annual reading list rivals Oprah’s Book Club as a publishing kingmaker. Not to be outdone, Mark Zuckerberg shared a reading recommendation every two weeks for a year, dubbing 2015 his “Year of Books.” Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube, joined the board of Room to Read when she realized how books like The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate were inspiring girls to pursue careers in science and technology. Many a biotech entrepreneur treasures a dog-eared copy of Daniel Suarez’s Change Agent, which extrapolates the future of CRISPR. Noah Yuval Harari’s sweeping account of world history, Sapiens, is de rigueur for Silicon Valley nightstands.

This obsession with literature isn’t limited to founders. Investors are just as avid bookworms. “Reading was my first love,” says AngelList’s Naval Ravikant. “There is always a book to capture the imagination.” Ravikant reads dozens of books at a time, dipping in and out of each one nonlinearly. When asked about his preternatural instincts, Lux Capital’s Josh Wolfe advised investors to “read voraciously and connect dots.” Foundry Group’s Brad Feld has reviewed 1,197 books on Goodreads and especially loves science fiction novels that “make the step function leaps in imagination that represent the coming dislocation from our current reality.”

This begs a fascinating question: Why do the people building the future spend so much of their scarcest resource — time — reading books?

Image by NiseriN via Getty Images. Reading time approximately 14 minutes.

Don’t Predict, Reframe

Do innovators read in order to mine literature for ideas? The Kindle was built to the specs of a science fictional children’s storybook featured in Neal Stephenson’s novel The Diamond Age, in fact, the Kindle project team was originally codenamed “Fiona” after the novel’s protagonist. Jeff Bezos later hired Stephenson as the first employee at his space startup Blue Origin. But this literary prototyping is the exception that proves the rule. To understand the extent of the feedback loop between books and technology, it’s necessary to attack the subject from a less direct angle.

David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas is full of indirect angles that all manage to reveal deeper truths. It’s a mind-bending novel that follows six different characters through an intricate web of interconnected stories spanning three centuries. The book is a feat of pure M.C. Escher-esque imagination, featuring a structure as creative and compelling as its content. Mitchell takes the reader on a journey ranging from the 19th century South Pacific to a far-future Korean corpocracy and challenges the reader to rethink the very idea of civilization along the way. “Power, time, gravity, love,” writes Mitchell. “The forces that really kick ass are all invisible.”

The technological incarnations of these invisible forces are precisely what Kevin Kelly seeks to catalog in The Inevitable. Kelly is an enthusiastic observer of the impact of technology on the human condition. He was a co-founder of Wired, and the insights explored in his book are deep, provocative, and wide-ranging. In his own words, “When answers become cheap, good questions become more difficult and therefore more valuable.” The Inevitable raises many important questions that will shape the next few decades, not least of which concern the impacts of AI:

“Over the past 60 years, as mechanical processes have replicated behaviors and talents we thought were unique to humans, we’ve had to change our minds about what sets us apart. As we invent more species of AI, we will be forced to surrender more of what is supposedly unique about humans. Each step of surrender—we are not the only mind that can play chess, fly a plane, make music, or invent a mathematical law—will be painful and sad. We’ll spend the next three decades—indeed, perhaps the next century—in a permanent identity crisis, continually asking ourselves what humans are good for. If we aren’t unique toolmakers, or artists, or moral ethicists, then what, if anything, makes us special? In the grandest irony of all, the greatest benefit of an everyday, utilitarian AI will not be increased productivity or an economics of abundance or a new way of doing science—although all those will happen. The greatest benefit of the arrival of artificial intelligence is that AIs will help define humanity. We need AIs to tell us who we are.”

It is precisely this kind of an AI-influenced world that Richard Powers describes so powerfully in his extraordinary novel The Overstory:

“Signals swarm through Mimi’s phone. Suppressed updates and smart alerts chime at her. Notifications to flick away. Viral memes and clickable comment wars, millions of unread posts demanding to be ranked. Everyone around her in the park is likewise busy, tapping and swiping, each with a universe in his palm. A massive, crowd-sourced urgency unfolds in Like-Land, and the learners, watching over these humans’ shoulders, noting each time a person clicks, begin to see what it might be: people, vanishing en masse into a replicated paradise.”

Taking this a step further, Virginia Heffernan points out in Magic and Loss that living in a digitally mediated reality impacts our inner lives at least as much as the world we inhabit:

“The Internet suggests immortality—comes just shy of promising it—with its magic. With its readability and persistence of data. With its suggestion of universal connectedness. With its disembodied imagines and sounds. And then, just as suddenly, it stirs grief: the deep feeling that digitization has cost us something very profound. That connectedness is illusory; that we’re all more alone than ever.”

And it is the questionable assumptions underlying such a future that Nick Harkaway enumerates in his existential speculative thriller Gnomon:

“Imagine how safe it would feel to know that no one could ever commit a crime of violence and go unnoticed, ever again. Imagine what it would mean to us to know—know for certain—that the plane or the bus we’re travelling on is properly maintained, that the teacher who looks after our children doesn’t have ugly secrets. All it would cost is our privacy, and to be honest who really cares about that? What secrets would you need to keep from a mathematical construct without a heart? From a card index? Why would it matter? And there couldn’t be any abuse of the system, because the system would be built not to allow it. It’s the pathway we’re taking now, that we’ve been on for a while.” 

Machine learning pioneer, former President of Google China, and leading Chinese venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee loves reading science fiction in this vein — books that extrapolate AI futures — like Hao Jingfang’s Hugo Award-winning Folding Beijing. Lee’s own book, AI Superpowers, provides a thought-provoking overview of the burgeoning feedback loop between machine learning and geopolitics. As AI becomes more and more powerful, it becomes an instrument of power, and this book outlines what that means for the 21st century world stage:

“Many techno-optimists and historians would argue that productivity gains from new technology almost always produce benefits throughout the economy, creating more jobs and prosperity than before. But not all inventions are created equal. Some changes replace one kind of labor (the calculator), and some disrupt a whole industry (the cotton gin). Then there are technological changes on a grander scale. These don’t merely affect one task or one industry but drive changes across hundreds of them. In the past three centuries, we’ve only really seen three such inventions: the steam engine, electrification, and information technology.”

So what’s different this time? Lee points out that “AI is inherently monopolistic: A company with more data and better algorithms will gain ever more users and data. This self-reinforcing cycle will lead to winner-take-all markets, with one company making massive profits while its rivals languish.” This tendency toward centralization has profound implications for the restructuring of world order:

“The AI revolution will be of the magnitude of the Industrial Revolution—but probably larger and definitely faster. Where the steam engine only took over physical labor, AI can perform both intellectual and physical labor. And where the Industrial Revolution took centuries to spread beyond Europe and the U.S., AI applications are already being adopted simultaneously all across the world.”

Cloud Atlas, The Inevitable, The Overstory, Gnomon, Folding Beijing, and AI Superpowers might appear to predict the future, but in fact they do something far more interesting and useful: reframe the present. They invite us to look at the world from new angles and through fresh eyes. And cultivating “beginner’s mind” is the problem for anyone hoping to build or bet on the future.

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/16/the-best-fiction-for-building-a-startup/

[fmservers]

How to read fiction to build a startup

“The book itself is a curious artefact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can last decades, even centuries. It doesn’t have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable. If a book told you something when you were 15, it will tell it to you again when you’re 50, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you’re reading a whole new book.”—Ursula K. Le Guin

Every year, Bill Gates goes off-grid, leaves friends and family behind, and spends two weeks holed up in a cabin reading books. His annual reading list rivals Oprah’s Book Club as a publishing kingmaker. Not to be outdone, Mark Zuckerberg shared a reading recommendation every two weeks for a year, dubbing 2015 his “Year of Books.” Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube, joined the board of Room to Read when she realized how books like The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate were inspiring girls to pursue careers in science and technology. Many a biotech entrepreneur treasures a dog-eared copy of Daniel Suarez’s Change Agent, which extrapolates the future of CRISPR. Noah Yuval Harari’s sweeping account of world history, Sapiens, is de rigueur for Silicon Valley nightstands.

This obsession with literature isn’t limited to founders. Investors are just as avid bookworms. “Reading was my first love,” says AngelList’s Naval Ravikant. “There is always a book to capture the imagination.” Ravikant reads dozens of books at a time, dipping in and out of each one nonlinearly. When asked about his preternatural instincts, Lux Capital’s Josh Wolfe advised investors to “read voraciously and connect dots.” Foundry Group’s Brad Feld has reviewed 1,197 books on Goodreads and especially loves science fiction novels that “make the step function leaps in imagination that represent the coming dislocation from our current reality.”

This begs a fascinating question: Why do the people building the future spend so much of their scarcest resource — time — reading books?

Image by NiseriN via Getty Images. Reading time approximately 14 minutes.

Don’t Predict, Reframe

Do innovators read in order to mine literature for ideas? The Kindle was built to the specs of a science fictional children’s storybook featured in Neal Stephenson’s novel The Diamond Age, in fact, the Kindle project team was originally codenamed “Fiona” after the novel’s protagonist. Jeff Bezos later hired Stephenson as the first employee at his space startup Blue Origin. But this literary prototyping is the exception that proves the rule. To understand the extent of the feedback loop between books and technology, it’s necessary to attack the subject from a less direct angle.

David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas is full of indirect angles that all manage to reveal deeper truths. It’s a mind-bending novel that follows six different characters through an intricate web of interconnected stories spanning three centuries. The book is a feat of pure M.C. Escher-esque imagination, featuring a structure as creative and compelling as its content. Mitchell takes the reader on a journey ranging from the 19th century South Pacific to a far-future Korean corpocracy and challenges the reader to rethink the very idea of civilization along the way. “Power, time, gravity, love,” writes Mitchell. “The forces that really kick ass are all invisible.”

The technological incarnations of these invisible forces are precisely what Kevin Kelly seeks to catalog in The Inevitable. Kelly is an enthusiastic observer of the impact of technology on the human condition. He was a co-founder of Wired, and the insights explored in his book are deep, provocative, and wide-ranging. In his own words, “When answers become cheap, good questions become more difficult and therefore more valuable.” The Inevitable raises many important questions that will shape the next few decades, not least of which concern the impacts of AI:

“Over the past 60 years, as mechanical processes have replicated behaviors and talents we thought were unique to humans, we’ve had to change our minds about what sets us apart. As we invent more species of AI, we will be forced to surrender more of what is supposedly unique about humans. Each step of surrender—we are not the only mind that can play chess, fly a plane, make music, or invent a mathematical law—will be painful and sad. We’ll spend the next three decades—indeed, perhaps the next century—in a permanent identity crisis, continually asking ourselves what humans are good for. If we aren’t unique toolmakers, or artists, or moral ethicists, then what, if anything, makes us special? In the grandest irony of all, the greatest benefit of an everyday, utilitarian AI will not be increased productivity or an economics of abundance or a new way of doing science—although all those will happen. The greatest benefit of the arrival of artificial intelligence is that AIs will help define humanity. We need AIs to tell us who we are.”

It is precisely this kind of an AI-influenced world that Richard Powers describes so powerfully in his extraordinary novel The Overstory:

“Signals swarm through Mimi’s phone. Suppressed updates and smart alerts chime at her. Notifications to flick away. Viral memes and clickable comment wars, millions of unread posts demanding to be ranked. Everyone around her in the park is likewise busy, tapping and swiping, each with a universe in his palm. A massive, crowd-sourced urgency unfolds in Like-Land, and the learners, watching over these humans’ shoulders, noting each time a person clicks, begin to see what it might be: people, vanishing en masse into a replicated paradise.”

Taking this a step further, Virginia Heffernan points out in Magic and Loss that living in a digitally mediated reality impacts our inner lives at least as much as the world we inhabit:

“The Internet suggests immortality—comes just shy of promising it—with its magic. With its readability and persistence of data. With its suggestion of universal connectedness. With its disembodied imagines and sounds. And then, just as suddenly, it stirs grief: the deep feeling that digitization has cost us something very profound. That connectedness is illusory; that we’re all more alone than ever.”

And it is the questionable assumptions underlying such a future that Nick Harkaway enumerates in his existential speculative thriller Gnomon:

“Imagine how safe it would feel to know that no one could ever commit a crime of violence and go unnoticed, ever again. Imagine what it would mean to us to know—know for certain—that the plane or the bus we’re travelling on is properly maintained, that the teacher who looks after our children doesn’t have ugly secrets. All it would cost is our privacy, and to be honest who really cares about that? What secrets would you need to keep from a mathematical construct without a heart? From a card index? Why would it matter? And there couldn’t be any abuse of the system, because the system would be built not to allow it. It’s the pathway we’re taking now, that we’ve been on for a while.” 

Machine learning pioneer, former President of Google China, and leading Chinese venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee loves reading science fiction in this vein — books that extrapolate AI futures — like Hao Jingfang’s Hugo Award-winning Folding Beijing. Lee’s own book, AI Superpowers, provides a thought-provoking overview of the burgeoning feedback loop between machine learning and geopolitics. As AI becomes more and more powerful, it becomes an instrument of power, and this book outlines what that means for the 21st century world stage:

“Many techno-optimists and historians would argue that productivity gains from new technology almost always produce benefits throughout the economy, creating more jobs and prosperity than before. But not all inventions are created equal. Some changes replace one kind of labor (the calculator), and some disrupt a whole industry (the cotton gin). Then there are technological changes on a grander scale. These don’t merely affect one task or one industry but drive changes across hundreds of them. In the past three centuries, we’ve only really seen three such inventions: the steam engine, electrification, and information technology.”

So what’s different this time? Lee points out that “AI is inherently monopolistic: A company with more data and better algorithms will gain ever more users and data. This self-reinforcing cycle will lead to winner-take-all markets, with one company making massive profits while its rivals languish.” This tendency toward centralization has profound implications for the restructuring of world order:

“The AI revolution will be of the magnitude of the Industrial Revolution—but probably larger and definitely faster. Where the steam engine only took over physical labor, AI can perform both intellectual and physical labor. And where the Industrial Revolution took centuries to spread beyond Europe and the U.S., AI applications are already being adopted simultaneously all across the world.”

Cloud Atlas, The Inevitable, The Overstory, Gnomon, Folding Beijing, and AI Superpowers might appear to predict the future, but in fact they do something far more interesting and useful: reframe the present. They invite us to look at the world from new angles and through fresh eyes. And cultivating “beginner’s mind” is the problem for anyone hoping to build or bet on the future.

Via Danny Crichton https://techcrunch.com