#they could have been uniquely awful and then things happened and the server never developed that way but in my brain it did

[cptsvensen]

i'm never letting go of ricky btw

[maddmuses]

Shiro Minamoto 源白

(fc: Izumi Sena and similar looking characters) Age: 15 Occupation: Duel Academia Student (Freshman; Obelisk Blue), Junior League Duelist, Minamoto Family Heir Aliases: BlueSamuwu雷 (Vrains URL), Samuwu雷 (Shorthand of Vrains URLS), ‘Ro, Minimoto, Slifer Slayer, Japanese Junior League Champion Date of Birth: 12/20 Ethnicity: Japanese Nationality: Japanese Affiliations: Duel Academia (Student), Obelisk Blue Dorm, The Minamoto Clan, The Junior-High Amateur Dueling League

(AU Inspiration: Based on an AU proposed by a friend’s Discord Server, though essentially is meant to exist and operate out of the plot’s most relevant Duel Academia)

Appearance Shiro is a thin young man with angular features, silver hair, and bright blue eyes. Due to him spending a great amount of his childhood indoors, due to early sicknesses, as well as the following years of duel training at his parent’s order, Shiro has a starkly pale complexion that causes his eyes and hair to appear even more striking.

While on campus and off, Shiro often wears the Obelisk Blue uniform, favoring white pants and undershirts, an expectation of his parents to show his status as an elite duelist at the academy. In more casual situations, or those where he can get away with not wearing his DA paraphernalia, Shiro still often favors wearing various shades of blue in his clothing. Due to his family’s affluence, Shiro often wears stylish clothing, and was taught how to wear those assigned to him in a way that’s visually appealing to look at.

Notably, along his fingers are a number of scars from repeated card cuts that he accrued from a childhood of being forced to draw and handle Duel Monsters cards even when physically and emotionally exhausted.

Personality A friendly and affable young man, Shiro doesn’t really give off the impression of someone who’s struggled much in his life. Being reared as part of an influential samurai family, who was able to achieve notoriety in the dueling world as a middle schooler. However, due to an early life that involved involuntary forced duel training, and emotional abuse at the hands of his parents who remained unimpressed with his performance, even after surpassing his older sister’s achievements, Shiro has developed a resentment for dueling, and towards his parents, that makes it difficult for him to make friends while at Duel Academia.

While Shiro doesn’t struggle making friends once his barriers are down, he often assumes that he isn’t able to relate to other students at Duel Academia, as their interests often heavily bias towards dueling, and Shiro has developed into the type of person who will actively avoid playing Duel Monsters, unless the situation calls for it. Shiro doesn’t adhere to the typical universal response of his world of resolving any interpersonal issue or disagreement with a duel, and often sees those who demand a duel of him, rather than some other recourse, as stubborn and unreasonable.

Shiro’s resentment of duel monsters has served to even squash his once existent relationship with duel spirits, particularly those of his true deck, only being able to hear the echos of his deck’s spirits, especially thanks to the fact that he no longer regularly carries around his main deck on-person.

Like many young people, Shiro craves the approval of his parents, though this largely seems to be a thing that simply will not happen as their interests seems to be more to use him, and his sister, as vehicles to raise their family’s influence through the duel world. Often times this places him in a position where he’s at odds with his elder sister, Gin, with whom he shares a bitter rivalry.

Due to the negative reinforcement of his parents, Shiro’s actual dueling ability suffers, though it simultaneously pushes him to only duel in brief games that he’s won, resulting in less time spent dueling, and fewer duels played overall.

Prior to his loss of love for the game, Shiro’s duel partner was a duel spirit in his card “Light and Darkness Dragon”, though not the same spirit that once inhabited Chazz Princeton’s deck, it seems to be a lower-level manifestation of the actual spirit of another card in his deck.

Biography Shiro Minamoto was born to his parents Akaki Minamoto and Aomai Minamoto, with an elder sister Gin Minamoto. Growing up as a small child, Shiro had very little exposure to either of his parents until he was four, often being raised more by professional caretakers. At the age of four, Akaki gave Shiro his firs dueling deck and set of booster packs, teaching him how to play. Having him duel against his elder sister, Gin, who had been playing for a number of years by this point, his loss was a given.

In the following years, dueling with Gin would be a daily occurrence, something to be done every morning, before school, after which Shiro was expected to return home and meet with instructors that his parents paid to teach him and Gin about dueling techniques. This additional tutoring would continue even as the two would attend preparatory schools that taught dueling as an elective subject.

Within his first year of active dueling, Shiro would occasionally be caught talking to his cards, as he claimed that they had voices and spoke to him. This would prompt his parents to have his cards kept away from him except during times when he was dueling, and seeing a child psychologist, though to poor results as Akaki and Aomai frequently would disregard the professional’s advice in very roundabout ways, feeling that indulging him in this behavior would result in him being open to others, which may reflect poorly on their parenting.

Shiro would not consider any of this especially frustrating or awful, though he was a bit lonely as his time under dueling tutorship left him little time outside of school to have with friends. However, things would take a turn, and dueling would become steadily less fun for him, as around the age of eight it was dictated by their parents that dueling against someone of a lower ability, such as Shiro, was bogging Gin down more than it was elevating the abilities of the younger sibling, and so it was to stop. This daily duel had been a way for the two to bond, and it showed with a camaraderie that the two shared. Akoki felt that in order to have the two reach their heights that the two would need to be rivals, and though they would continue to duel twice a year, to see if the daily duels would return, something that motivated Shiro to do better as he sorely missed these, they would often compare one’s progress to the other’s when only one child could hear it.

“You know your sister won that tournament. What have you done? You didn’t even place.”

“Your younger brother is far stronger than you were at that age, that must mean he’s more talented than you.”

“You couldn’t even finish first? Your sister’s generation was much stronger than yours, there should be no reason for you to not top everything.”

Remarks like this were fed to the two of them, though never ones that would reflect or indicate the other duelist’s opinion of each other, simply twisting facts to a dialogue that would cause mutual resentment and contempt. Often through this motivation, Shiro was forced to duel with his tutors far beyond the point of exhaustion, often causing injury and discomfort all over his body, notably with many cuts along his hands.

While he was never able to beat his sister, prior to enrollment at Duel Academy, Shiro managed to reach a peak of his own, by winning the Japanese Junior Regional Championship. Though his performance wasn’t satisfactory by his parent’s standards, and his subsequent first-round loss of the International League, against the West American Champion, only served to give his parents an excuse to put the boy down further, despite being the top in the nation, for his age demographic. It was through this treatment from his parents, being forced to duel under duress, and generally being told he was still not good enough, to the point that he was forced to change decks following his Japanese Championship win because it wasn’t a FTK, has caused Shiro to actively avoid dueling when the opportunity comes up.

Shiro enrolled into Duel Academia as a high schooler, with the intent to be an on-campus resident. Testing into the top five of the enrolling class, combined with his Regional Championship, Shiro was enrolled into Obelisk Blue.

During his time in Obelisk Blue, Shiro’s been challenged by a number of other duelists who intended to prove their stuff against a champion, only to lose. A large number of these challengers have been Slifer Red students, earning him the nickname among tailcoat chasers “The Slifer Slayer”. While these students often call themselves his friends, Shiro doesn’t think highly of them, not even calling them friends personally, since their only interest in him is his dueling ability, a skill which Shiro himself doesn’t even value.

Abilities and Skills -Physical Ability: Shiro is reasonably athletic and capable in sports, though hardly superhuman by any measure, he enjoys basketball and volleyball. -Dueling Skills: Shiro is a talented duelist, and is already able to compete on the international scale, having made it to the World Tournament for Jr. High, though he was eliminated in the first round in a 1-2 loss, against an American Regional Champion. Accordingly, he is an Obelisk Blue student in Duel Academy, placing him as one of the elite students in the freshman class. Shiro’s original deck is largely built around “Light and Darkness Dragon” and its supporting cards, with a focus on controlling the field and game state through the use of monster effects, and spells that allow him to easily manipulate the flow of his monsters by moving them from the hand or field to the graveyard and back. This deck is unique in that it’s an archetype which makes use of all the current summoning methods, similar to the D/D and Odd-Eyes archetypes. The deck that Shiro uses currently, though, is a Destruction Sword deck, that while he has snuck his ace monster “Light and Darkness Dragon”, mostly plays around Buster Blader and its support monsters instead. As it currently stands, though, Shiro’s ability in dueling has been stunted somewhat by his own hurt ego; and he often doesn’t perform at the peak of his abilities, thanks to a lack of familiarity with the deck that his parents demand he duel with, as well as his loss on the international stage, and further emotional browbeating by the Minamoto parents. -Academics: Shiro is studious, and is familiar with the theory of Duel Monsters, hence his ability to be placed and remain in Obelisk Dorm.

Superhuman Powers and Abilities -Duel Spirit Perception: Shiro is able to hear, see, and speak to Duel Monsters. This ability has become weakened over the last ten years, though, as he has lost his love for dueling this ability was dwindled. Now he can only hear the echos of duel monsters, and has largely forgotten the memories of his friends in his old deck. -Duel Energy Generation: A shared ability with many other duelists who have manifested such a change in the past (essentially any time it’s happened in canon) Shiro produces an unusually large amount of D-Energy (Duel Energy, Ener-D, Momentum, etc.) when playing Duel Monsters. When focused, and used with the correct means, Shiro is able to manifest physical Duel Monsters cards.

Weaknesses and Limitations -Mental/Emotional State: Shiro has been falsely diagnosed with auditory hallucinations, and is incorrectly expected to take antipsychotics, meant to treat schizophrenia. This is a result of an inability for others to corroborate his ability to see and hear duel monster spirits. Shiro’s actual emotional state is not a great one, though, as he is naturally defensive and averse to Duel Monsters, as a result of the abuse from his parents, which have caused him a host of issues that have gone unaddressed. -Confidence: Shiro’s dueling abilities have weakened as a result of his suffering self-esteem, and general hesitation when playing with his current deck.

Equipment and Support Gear -Shiro’s Decklists Here -Duel Academia Uniform (Obelisk Blue): Shiro wears a Duel Academia Uniform typical of Obelisk students, usually with accessory clothing that’s white in color. -Duel Academia Duel Disk (Obelisk Blue): Shiro uses whatever model of duel disk that is currently used by other members of the DA student body. Generally his model will be the same one employed by other Blue students. This is generally the duel disk that Shiro also uses in duels external to school, and after graduating, unless it becomes outdated.

[obscurewatch]

[PARIS LORE] I found unused interactions for Luna

In the game files I found unused voicelines for Luna that seem like they're interactions with the playable heroes that you can't hear in game for now as far as I know. So, since these can't be heard in game at the moment, this technically constitutes a leak, right? I hope we don't get banned for this :S 

Video made by Discord user Snowflake#5979 from my discord server !

- Déjà de retour, Mme Guillard ? Contente de vous voir.

- Vous demandez souvent « Les Saisons de l’amour ». Ce titre doit avoir de l’importance pour vous.

- Vous me rappelez quelqu’un. Un autre moine, qui était venu me voir chanter.

- Bonjour, cousin. Le chat grimpe sur le mur et scrute.

- Le cabaret Luna est un havre où les omniaques peuvent être eux-mêmes.

- Quelle rareté ! Je n’avais jamais vu une créature comme vous.

- Oh, qu’il est mignon.

- (amusée) Vil flatteur.

- Si vous continuez à me regarder comme ça, je vais devoir vous demander de partir.

- La sortie est par là, très chère.

- Un cow-boy ! Je n’en avais vu que dans des films. Vous êtes loin de chez vous, dites-moi.

- C’est rare de rencontrer un humain que la réussite d'un omniaque ne trouble pas. - Je ne vous effraie pas, au moins ?

- Vous me dévisagez, ma jolie. Vous aimez ce que vous voyez ?

Here's the translation and my guess as to who she's saying these to

- Back already Mme Guillard ? Happy to see you (to Widowmaker)

- You often ask for « Les Saisons de l'amour » (The Seasons of love). This song must mean something to you. (to Widowmaker?)

- You remind me of someone. Another monk, who came to hear me sing. (to Zenyatta, about Mondatta)

- Good day cousin. The cat climbs on the wall and watches. (Cousin? This sounds like a secret phrase with a hidden meaning, this is not a french saying)

- Cabaret Luna is a haven where omnics can be themselves. (???)

- Such rarity ! I've never seen a creature like you. (to Winston/Hammond or a future hero?)

- Aw, he is so sweet. (to Hammond in response to something Hammond had his mech say for him?)

- Oh you flatterer (addressed to a man). (to Reinhardt? Maybe McCree?)

- If you keep on looking at me this way, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. (to Zarya? Maybe Torbjörn?)

- The exit is right this way, my dear (addressed to a woman). (Zarya?)

- A cow-boy ! I've only ever seen cowboys in movies. You're far from home, aren't you. (to McCree)

- It is so rare to meet a human unfazed by a successful omnic. I am not scaring you, right ? (Genji?)

- You're staring at me, gorgeous(addressed to a woman). Do you like what you see ? (???)

As far as I can tell, the heroes involved in those interactions don't have voicelines to go with Luna's but if someone out there has access to the gamefiles as well, feel free to make sure ! Together we are strong !

So Mondatta came to see Luna. She sounds like a proud advocate for omnic rights, it makes sense that Mondatta met her. Perhaps she's part of whatever movement Mondatta was the leader of. Her cabaret seems to be a refuge for omnic revolutionaries too, I wonder if the revolutionary movement of Paris is part of something bigger, something that might be linked to whatever Mondatta was doing.

Widowmaker is a regular there apparently, she seems to always ask for the same love song, perhaps her and Gérard's favorite, proof that she still has feelings for him and is mourning him, her own way. In Masquerade, before heading to Monaco, she was in Paris. She took a flight from Paris to Nice as the boarding pass in Château Guillard indicates, Masquerade took place during the winter time (the carnival in Venice happens in February) so apparently she spends the winter in Paris and she goes to Luna's Cabaret quite often to listen to the same song over and over again. Poor Amélie.

I wonder who the "rare creature" is. I doubt it's Winston. There isn't a lot of super-intelligent talking gorillas/scientists out there (I assume) but he was part of Overwatch and as such he probably got such a media exposure that anyone would instantly recognize him. It could be Hammond, but "creature" doesn't feel right. He's very clearly an animal not a "creature". An animal 10 times the normal size he should have but an animal still. Perhaps this voiceline is for a future hero, one that would better fit this creature description.

I wonder who Luna is calling "cousin" too. An omnic? She would probably call him brother. Cousin sounds like she considers that person as part of her "family" but they're not that close, so perhaps a pro-omnic human? Either way, this person seems to be in on a secret Luna has, this cat stuff is suspicious.

Luna has 4 voicelines about cats.

- Good day cousin (addressed to a man). The cat climbs on the wall and watches. (unused)

- The cat climbs on the wall and watches. From this height he's not afraid to fall.

- If you followed the cat, you're in the right place my friends.

- Like a cat, one can tame me and I always land on my feet.

On the left, real promotional poster for the cabaret Le Chat Noir from 1896, on the right a poster that can be seen in Luna's cabaret as well as in the bakery.

I wonder what the arrow near the omnic cat's tail could mean. Maybe it has to do with the whole "following the cat" thing. Maybe you have to follow the arrow on the poster to get somewhere secret.

Following the cat, a cat watching from up high, climbing the wall, this all sounds like the type of things a secret society would say. Coded phrases. It makes all the more sense when you take into account the omnic revolution that is brewing.

https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/news/22904915

"Expect traffic delays and increased security presence near the Maison Marat over the weekend. A grand gala is being held to celebrate the recent passage of controversial omnic rights legislation."

You better believe this new omnic rights legislation isn't the kind that grants omnics any more rights, very likely the opposite. Otherwise, why would omnics organize themselves in secret revolutionary groups?

"Paris is a city of hidden gems, search out the speakeasies and hidden places as you roam the city. The right word might get you into a place you never knew existed. "

Maybe "the right word" has to do with cats. And mustn't be told to the door with all the graffitis, but to Luna directly? I can't think of a voiceline involving cats, or of anyone from our current roster of heroes who would feel like joining omnic revolutionaries. Well, except Sombra maybe. Ultimately, I think we're on the wrong track if we think using voicelines in different parts of the map will get us anywhere.

Back in the day, on Dorado, Bastion used to have a special voiceline when he would get close to a screen showing that the system had been hacked by Sombra as if he had gotten hacked as well. That was neat. Perhaps some heroes have special voicelines after they played a song on the piano or after they interacted with Luna or the door in a certain way. Time will tell I'm sure. Someone is bound to randomly notice something , like always.

Seeing as how those interactions Luna has with heroes haven't made their way into the game for now, I wouldn't be surprised if whatever the developers are teasing about the map won't be added to Paris until a further patch !

Bonus lore :

The police woman's voice that can be heard around the police station has 12 voicelines, 6 are just pure walkie talkie static and the other 6 are :

-Toutes les unités disponibles à l'Hotel Beau Ciel. Une cellule de la résistance omniaque s'y cache. Soyez prudents.

-Code 5. Suspect Jamison Fawkes repéré. A toutes les unités disponibles.

-Suspect repéré dans la librairie Carpentier. Voss, omniaque féminin d'1m60.

-Code 5. Suspect Mako Rutledge repéré. Le suspect n'est pas seul.

-Agent Bilodeau, répondez.

-Prêt

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-All units available to the Beau Ciel Hotel. A pocket of omnic resistance is hiding there. Be careful.

-Code 5. Suspect Jamison Fawkes spotted. To all available units.

-Suspect spotted inside the Carpentier bookstore. Voss, female omnic, 1m60.

-Code 5. Suspect Mako Rutledge spotted. The suspect is not alone.

-Agent Bilodeau, respond.

-Ready

Voss means fox in northern german. What a fantastic name. So badass and unique. Maybe she's the female omnic whose mugshot we can see in the police station

The bottom right one has a cross? That’s odd

Bilodeau is a french family name that comes from the name Billaud which may come from germanic word Biliwald meaning (likeable, gentle).

The french police seems to be using this system of communication so Code 5 simply means "Relay this information".

They're smart enough NOT to get too close to Junkrat and Roadhog, they're just relaying the information of their presence ^^

That's all I have for today !

If you enjoyed this and want to join the discussion and go on a hunt for clues, feel free to join my discord server !

https://discord.gg/SkVvhJN

A thousand thanks to Snowflake for making the video !

I hope I didn't do a major oopsie by revealing these unused voicelines and spoiled something :S

[secretsofthemasquerade]

Nighthawks’s Kickstarter and interview with author

Hey guys, you might have seen this kickstarter over the past month, as its approaching its deadline I thought I’d interview the main dude for you guys :)

I played the demo that’s available, which isn’t fully representative of the story’s debth (as it was meant to be just a small visual fiction), which displays great attention to art, great voice acting, and quite nicely written characters and unique starting situation.

Overall I really love the concept and I’d like to see this game become a reality, we need down-to-earth games even if they’re not labelled WoD :p

Here’s the link to the kickstarter. You can get the game for just 20 bucks ^^ HURRY though, it ends in FIVE DAYS.

The author, Richard Cobbett, has done lots of work in the past, and the publisher is a solid one too (the publisher’s TechnoBabylon is just life, and Sunless Sea/Skies were made by this author), it’s not his first rodeo and he’s, as he put it in the discord server: “I'm writer, designer, programmer, marketing person, video compositer, UI engineer, community manager and basically everything not involving drawing“. His wording isn’t pretentiously all over the place and “darker than thou”, but it has the right amount of work from hat I could see from the screenshots and the demo. 

So here goes! Interview under the cut!

“Who are you, apart from what we know from the Kickstarter?”

I’m Richard Cobbett, and if you know me from anything it’s probably about 20 years of games journalism, including things like PC Gamer’s “Crap Shoot” column and Rock Paper Shotgun’s “The RPG Scrollbars”, or my work on Sunless Sea/Sunless Skies. But I’ve done quite a lot more than that, including the mobile adventure Silent Streets and the space game The Long Journey Home.

So, this is far from my first rodeo. I love cats, hate spiders, and once made a pitch to White Wolf that included the secret goal of making my home town of York a Tremere stronghold. I am entirely serious about this.

“In a few words, for a VtM Audience, what is the premise of Nighthawks' world?”

Vampires exist. You know this, because you’re one of them. But unlike the World of Darkness, the Masquerade has failed. You’ve been exposed, and the world is trying to figure out where to go next. You begin as a penniless vampire in a shitty hotel in the cheapest part of a dying town, and Nighthawks charts your rise from rags to riches as you become part of the new politics.

Things are of course very different from WoD, both to avoid treading on White Wolf’s paws and because of course I wanted the fun of creating my own setting! For starters, Nighthawks is a bit lighter in tone, and more rooted in the problematic elements of being a vampire. Blood tastes foul, being bitten hurts, and the world is at best incredibly suspicious and at worst outright hates you.

Also, vampires don’t secretly run the world. They’re more like cats, in that they’re fiercely individualistic and territorial, with many of them not even having historically known that there were others like them. There’s a few groups here and there that have had some historical sway in the world, such as the Eternal Dynasties that latched onto the great courts of Europe like parasites, and a handful of aristocrats who spread with British colonialism to find Heirs to further refine their bloodlines, but they’re very much in the minority.

The closest equivalent to the Masquerade is that some - not most, though you’re one of the lucky ones - have powers. These are primarily mental rather than breathing fire and turning into bats and so on, like Mesmerise or Corpse-Talking or copying the face of a human for a brief period. Vampire society is doing its best to hide the existence of these for fairly obvious reasons - they’re already distrusted enough! They’re also not skills to just spam at problems, but very expensive aces-in-the-hole to deploy very carefully.

There’s a lot more to say and discover about the world, but in short, it’s something that I think Vampire fans will both enjoy for the parts of the atmosphere it shares, and love exploring for all the cool ways that it tries something a bit different. It’s a game rooted in the social side of vampire life, where a dinner party can be more dangerous than any back-alley rumble, and one where you get to be a direct part of the big decisions that define what it means to be a vampire, versus showing up five hundred years after the Convention of Thorns or whatever already laid out how things work.

It’s also a game designed to let you play whatever character you want - both in terms of things like sexuality and gender, and just background. You’re not restricted to just being JC Denton with fangs. If you want a character who was, say, a hairdresser in their mortal life and who has never been in a fight, that’s just fine. Or, of course, you can be a bruiser. Everyone deserves the chance to be a badass vampire, and a badass vampire that fully represents them.

Hmm. That was quite a few words, wasn’t it? Sorry. I get excited!

“What are its mechanims and gameplay like? How long do you think it will take for an average player to beat the full game?”

We’re looking at around 15-20 hours for a playthrough, with a ton of replayability. Lots of choices, differences in character builds, cool things to discover… the lot. We’re primarily using text because it allows us to really flesh out the world and add as many stories as possible.

Mechanically, it’s a mix of life-simulation and RPG. It resembles games like Sunless Sea, in that most options are chosen from a list, alongside some gorgeous 4K graphics and voice acting. However, under that is a fierce system of RPG options and life simulation. Every click is a tick of the clock, as you explore the city, improve your character, and get back to safety before sunrise. Rather than the standard critical path of quests, the design is based around Objectives. In the first act, the simplest, your main goal is pretty much just making sure you can pay your hotel room bill. How you go about that is up to you, whether it’s hunting, taking on assignments, investigating rumours and so on. Later chapters of course get more complicated as you have to balance basic survival with dealing with crooked cops and politics.

I’ve posted a lot about the game design and where we’re going with it all in the Kickstarter Updates. Worth checking out! I think V:TM fans will really like it.

“What got you into vampire fiction and vampire games? Why make a game with those themes?”

Firstly, urban fantasy is awesome and it’s depressing that we see so little of it in gaming. Vampires specifically intrigue me as a designer because they offer so many mechanical opportunities - blood, sunlight, etc - and as a writer for the constant dichotomy between power fantasy and personal nightmare.

Nighthawks is very much rooted in exploring that, with some characters who find their undeath a curse, others who find it liberating, and with the player allowed to decide for themselves where they stand. It doesn’t hurt that the individualism of vampires allows you to create some really awesome characters who are fun to hang out with. Our Kickstarter backers immediately connected with the Companion in the demo - Madame Lux, a vampire stage magician with the power to manipulate human sight. She’s just one of many really vibrant characters, including con-artist cult-leader Maze, vampire fangirl bartender Becca, and Inez, a pirate queen from the Golden Age of Piracy struggling to adapt to a world where none of her skills are still in any demand.

Then throw in all the awesome vampire folklore from around the world, and you’ve got a fantastic palette to paint with. Much of the Nighthawks design makes me grin just to think of it, and I think players are going to dig it too.

“Favorite VtMB story part? NPC?”

Well, as a paid-up fan of the Tremere, obviously, Strauss. Good egg. Totally not like that awful LaCroix chap. Other than that, Heather and Tourette are obviously the first ones that everyone thinks of, and with good reason. Grey de Lisle’s voice makes any character awesome, and the Heather sequences were shockingly brutal the first time around. Absolutely amazing writing in those bits.

But I’m probably going to say Deb of Night. I love radio in games as a way of conveying atmosphere, and that’s one of the best one. I don’t know if it’s cool or sad that a few years ago I was in Santa Monica on a press trip, and spent some time wandering around the Pier while listening to Deb’s show. Bit of both?

“Anything you'd need apart from more backers to make sure the game becomes a reality?”

Moral support, really! Game development is a long and often pretty lonely experience, where you never usually know if anyone is going to want what you’re making when you’re done. It’s a real boost to know that so many people are excited by Nighthawks and really want to see it happen. That certainly adds some pressure, but the kind of pressure I think everyone can appreciate!

[aroworlds]

Aro-Spec Artist Profile: Alex

Today I have the delight of introducing Alex, better known to aro-spec Tumblr as @arotaro and @mutant-jojos!

Alex is a bisexual, half-Puerto Rican multi-disciplinary aromantic artist and creative with severe ADHD. You’ll find her prolific fanworks on AO3 as EmeraldTrash666, writing primarily for the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure fandom. Her bold, colourful art for the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Fullmetal Alchemist, Hetalia, Pokemon and Vocaloid fandoms is also available on Redbubble under the name StellaHagane.

She writes, she creates digital art and she dabbles in music, sewing and fashion design, single-handedly proving that there’s no such thing as too much creative awesome for any one aromantic!

With us Alex talks about finding the word aro, the power of fandom and creative fanworks, her love of aro Jotaro, the challenges of creating with ADHD, the struggles of being an aro gen writer in fandom and the importance of expressing our aro headcanons. Everything she says is absolutely on point, so please let’s give her all our love, encouragement, gratitude, kudos and follows for taking the time to explore what it is to be aromantic and creative.

Can you share with us your story in being aro-spec?

I guess in some ways my “story” starts out pretty typical. Got older, kept waiting for my First Crush™, never got it, started worrying and trying to force myself to develop crushes. I actually was in a relationship with another girl on a forum I was part of as a teenager, but eventually I realized that I didn’t really like her romantically, and the relationship started to become really unpleasant for me. I eventually felt so miserable that I didn’t even want to talk at her at all, even though we were close friends, but I didn’t want to break up with her - partly because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, partly because we were everyone’s “OTP” and I didn’t want my friends to hate me for ruining that. But eventually I did break up with her, and I’m happy to say she took it with grace and we’re still close friends today! (She’s ace and a great writer/artist herself, too!)

I was part of a very nice LGBTQ+ group as a teenager, but I could never figure out my identity. I felt really ashamed and alone. Whenever I brought up how messed up I felt because I’d never had a crush on anyone, everyone was like, “Oh, sounds like you must be asexual!”, but I knew I wasn’t, and that was the worst part. Even though I knew aromanticism was a thing, nobody ever talked about it. It was only ever in the context of aroaces, so I didn’t know I was aro. I thought I must have had some sort of mental illness or something, but certainly not a legitimate orientation, nothing to be proud of like everyone else.

During that time, I found myself connecting on a deep emotional level to characters like Alphonse Elric, Fujiwara no Sai, the X-Men in general (although I’ve been an X-Men fan since I was literally a baby), basically anyone who was somehow “different” from the rest of humanity, even though I never understood why, since I was a fairly privileged kid who had never experienced much bullying or anything. Weirdly enough, it was Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure that helped me realize I was aro and come to terms with it; I saw an interview with Hirohiko Araki, the author of JJBA, where he was asked what type of girls Jotaro Kujo likes, and replied that he didn’t think Jotaro liked girls. The obvious interpretation would be that Jotaro’s gay, but somehow, one way or another, I decided to go with the idea that Jotaro’s aromantic. Jotaro also happened to be a character I really related to for reasons I couldn’t quite articulate, so around the time I was 18 I put two and two together and was like ... oh shit…

Please click keep reading to continue Alex’s story!

Can you share with us the story behind your creativity?

I’ve always been weird in the way I’m very creative, but tend to kinda bounce around from hobby to hobby. Other people draw, or write, or sing, while I draw for a month, and then write for a month and sew for a week and play video games for a week, and then I draw some more, and then I try out something completely new, and then I write again. I think it must be an ADHD thing, idk. In any case, I’ve just always been really passionate about making stuff, whatever that stuff happens to be.

I’ve also always been very much fandom-oriented. Ever since I was a toddler, I used to dictate fanfiction to my mom (back then it usually involved Winnie the Pooh, the Powerpuff Girls, Godzilla, and my dog). I mostly draw fanart. I find that I’m not really capable of writing original stories, but I’m great at getting fanfics in character, and I love writing them. I love taking stories I already love and reinterpreting them, seeing what it would be like if the characters were put into different situations, etc.

Because of my ADHD, I really struggle with actually finishing things. I try really really hard, I really do, and I’ve been trying to push myself even harder these past few years. I’ve made progress, but it’s still extremely difficult, so I’m very sorry for all the projects I’ve abandoned over the years. Sorry I still haven’t finished the fic that was supposed to be done in early March. I’m trying, really. I promise I’m working on the next chapter of BLaD, too.

Are there any particular ways your aro-spec experience is expressed in your art?

Of course, pretty much everything I write is gen. Even if I include romantic relationships in my fics, I never write about romance, just stories which also happen to include some characters who might be dating someone. And obviously I always write Jotaro as aro! That’s really important to me. No matter which AU I’m writing, he’s always aro. (And autistic, but that’s off topic.)

I’m also not really into shipping because of my romance repulsion, but I ship Joseph Joestar and Caesar Zeppeli. The thing is … I’ve always viewed it as a unique relationship, sort of difficult to define as being strictly romantic or platonic or sexual, just kind of their own thing that defies words. That’s how I’ve always written it. I had the sudden realization recently that this strange view on the only ship I really actually like (at the moment, anyway) is probably due to my being aro, lmao.

What challenges do you face as an aro-spec artist?

People don’t read gen fics, and people aren’t interested in aro stories. That’s just the way it is. I do have some dedicated readers, whom I love deeply, but in general… I could post something with a deep plot, something funny and dramatic and witty and touching, something I poured my heart and soul into for months, and it’ll get very few hits/comments/kudos, while someone else could post the same generic 2,000-word romance fic everyone’s seen a dozen times over, with no editing or anything, and get twice the amount of traffic my fics do in half the time. It’s really crushing.

How do you connect to the aro-spec and a-spec communities as an aro-spec person?

I dunno… The aro community feels so small. Online, I have a small circle of aro mutuals who all kind of vent collectively, and I’m part of Arocalypse and a few aro/aspec Discord servers, but I still feel like there isn’t really much of a larger community to be part of in the same way that there is for other orientations. Offline, I’ve never met another aro, or even anyone who actually knows what aromanticism is prior to me explaining it to them.

I also don’t feel like there’s a very unified “aspec community”. As an allo aro, I feel very rejected by the ace community - not to say that I feel like I should be part of the ace community, since I’m not ace, but I feel like they throw aros under the bus a lot. I mean, we’ve all seen the “asexuals can feel love, just like anybody else! … oh, except for aroaces, I guess. But the rest of us are normal, so you should accept us!” rhetoric. Both within and outside the aspec communities, aros are rarely treated with the same priority as aces, even though we’re arguably in a much more difficult position than your average allo ace.

That being said, I’m glad there is an aro community at all. I don’t know where I’d be now if I were still questioning. Probably not in a very good place.

How do you connect to your creative community as an aro-spec person?

As I mentioned, there’s a general lack of interest in gen fics or sympathy for romance-repulsed people in general. It’s really difficult being romance repulsed in fandom spaces, because nobody cares about anything other than ships. There are very few gen fics, and even less that are a decent length, not abandoned, or cater to my specific interests, so I have to write my own. I don’t often have anything good to read; most of the big fics, the ones with cool plots and long word counts and ongoing updates, are ship fics. If I’m lucky, maybe two gen fics will be posted in one week, and maybe one of them will be longer than a few thousand words. Maybe one might even have my favorite characters. But usually genfics are few and far between, and kind of random in terms of what you’ll get. Sometimes I get so bored that I read ship fics anyway, and then I always wind up feeling really awful afterwards.

I’ve written, over the course of the past two years alone, over 20 gen fics. But whenever I vent that sometimes I’d like to actually get to read something, I always get someone telling me, “Well if you want gen fics, write some yourself! You have to make the change! You can’t demand people write stuff for you!” And of course, at the same time it’s totally acceptable to request ship fics from your favorite author, and if you complain that there aren’t enough fics for your rarepair, it’s seen as relatable and totally valid.

Fandom is just … really, really amatonormative, tbh. I hate it. I’m trying to make a difference (I did organize Gen Jojo Week along with my friend Rachel last year, and hopefully will again this year), but there’s only so much I can do.

How can the aro-spec community best help you as a creative?

Aside from reblogging my art and promoting my fics? Talk about stuff. Talk about aro stuff in fandom. Seriously! I know it seems obvious that aro people would like aro headcanons and gen fics and all that, but we need to talk about them more. Nobody outside the community gives enough of a shit about us to have aro headcanons, so let’s get them popular. Talk about your favorite aro headcanons. Talk about your favorite gen fics. Talk about how such-and-such character is totally aro; talk about how excited you are to see aro characters in fics. My dream is for aro headcanons to become just as common and popular as any other type of headcanon.

Can you share with us something about your current project?

This is old news to most of the people who already know me, but my current big project that I’ve been working on for several years now is Between Life and Death, a drama/horror/supernatural JJBA fic.

(WARNING: PHANTOM BLOOD AND STARDUST CRUSADERS SPOILERS BELOW.)

The plot of the fic is that Dio wins at the end of Stardust Crusaders, and after realizing that he has no hobbies other than harassing the Joestars, he decides to bring Jonathan back by sticking his head (which… we’ll just assume Dio preserved for plot purposes) onto Jotaro’s body. Obviously, Jonathan is NOT happy with this arrangement, but it also turns out that Jotaro’s still alive, just not in control of his body. He can still use his stand, so he essentially uses Star Platinum as a sort of proxy for interacting with the environment around him, even though he only comes out when Jonathan’s alone since he doesn’t want Dio to know he’s alive.

Basically, it’s the story of a depressed vampire and a traumatized ghost. It’s a very introspective fic; most of the story consists of conflicts between Dio and Jonathan, and Jonathan and Jotaro struggling to come to terms with their new existences - Jonathan being unable to reconcile vampirism with his personal morals, and Jotaro having one hell of an identity crisis while also mourning the deaths of his friends and family. The plot is picking up, though, and there is an end goal in mind, as well as an eventual sequel!

As for where the story-in-progress is at right now … well, the next “stage” of the plot is hamon training for Kakyoin and Avdol, which will be fun. This chapter also includes several dream sequences, including an extended appearance by Mary Joestar (Jonathan’s mom), and a very serious and dark scene which I almost ruined by having dream!Will Zeppeli refer to Jonathan as his padawan. Yeah.

Have you any forthcoming works we should look forward to?

As mentioned, I’m working on chapter 9 of Between Life and Death! And working on and off on some stuff for the mutants AU. Most recently, on a whim I rewrote the lyrics to Handbeat Clocktower by MOTHY to be about Jonathan Joestar. Somehow this went far enough that I’m making an actual UTAU rendition of this “parody”, and hopefully it’ll be done sometime in the next few weeks. I’m really having fun with it and I hope people like it!

[lookonthetechtk-blog]

FPGAs and the New Era of Cloud-based ‘Hardware Microservices’

In his keynote at the Microsoft Build meeting prior this year, the leader of Microsoft's AI and Research Harry Shum implied that sooner or later the Microsoft Azure cloud administration will give engineers access to field programmable door clusters (FPGAs). Purplish blue Chief Technology Officer Mark Russinovich additionally discussed Azure uncovering "[FPGAs] as an administration for you at some point later on."

What is that FPGA-fueled future going to look like and how are designers going to utilize it?

FPGAs aren't another innovation by any methods; Traditionally, they have been held for particular applications where the requirement for custom preparing equipment that can be refreshed as extremely requesting calculations develop exceed the multifaceted nature of programming the equipment.

With processors, Russinovich disclosed to the New Stack, "the more universally useful you are, by and large, the more adaptable you are, the more sorts of projects and calculations you can drop toss at the figure motor — however you give up proficiency."

The variety of doors that make up a FPGA can be customized to run a particular calculation, utilizing the mix of rationale entryways (generally executed as query tables), math units, computerized flag processors (DSPs) to do duplication, static RAM for incidentally putting away the consequences of those calculation and exchanging hinders that let you control the associations between the programmable squares. Some FPGAs are basically frameworks on-a-chip (SoC), with CPUs, PCI Express and DMA associations and Ethernet controllers, transforming the programmable exhibit into a custom quickening agent for the code running on the CPU.

The mix implies that FPGAs can offer gigantic parallelism focused on just for a particular calculation, and at much lower control contrasted with a GPU. What's more, dissimilar to an application-particular coordinated circuit (ASIC), they can be reinvented when you need to change that calculation (that is the field-programmable part).

FPGAs have a great deal a greater number of information parallelism than CPUs.

"FPGAs hit that spot, where they can prepare surges of information rapidly and in parallel," Russinovich clarified. "They're programmable like GPU or CPU yet gone for this parallel low-inactivity world for things like derivation and Deep Neural Networks; on the off chance that you have to do online discourse acknowledgment, picture acknowledgment it's truly imperative to have that low inertness."

The weakness is that the programming and reconstructing is done in mind boggling, low-level equipment definition dialects like Verilog. Ransack Taylor, CEO of ReconfigureIO — a startup wanting to offer equipment increasing speed in the cloud by giving designers a chance to program FPGAs with Go — told the New Stack that there just aren't numerous equipment engineers who know about these.

Most FPGA improvement happens at processor advancement organizations. Furthermore, the altogether different programming model, where you're really arranging the equipment, is trying for engineers used to more elevated amount dialects.

"As a product build, you can begin composing basic equipment yet composing able equipment takes quite a long while of figuring out how to get the chance to right," Taylor said. In uncommon cases, it's conceivable to program a FPGA in a way that for all time harms it, in spite of the fact that the toolchain that projects the equipment ought to give notices.

This is one reason FPGAs have never progressed toward becoming standard, Taylor recommended. "It's the cost of doing FPGA designing. On the off chance that you can just contract a couple of costly specialists, there's just so much you can do. You wind up with exceptionally vertical particular arrangements and you don't get the percolating advancement that, say, the cloud has brought."

In any case, Taylor considers FPGAs to be a decent answer for a scope of issues. "Anything where you have information in development and you're preparing that and finding a solution and reacting to it or sharing that answer elsewhere. You could construct an in-memory database on FPGA to do measurable examination blazingly quick without going close to the CPU." Such applications could incorporate picture and video preparing, ongoing information investigation, advertisement advancements, sound, telecoms and even programming characterized organizing (SDN), which he noted is "still an enormous deplete on assets."

The ReconfigureIO approach utilizes Go Channels, which Taylor said fit the model of FPGA funnels, "yet we're dealing with a transitional layer, which we need to have be standard and open source that will give individuals a chance to utilize whatever irregular dialect they need."

The many-sided quality of programming them is the reason the Amazon Web Services FPGA EC2 F1 occasions that let you program Xilinx FPGAs are focused at clients who as of now utilize FPGA machines for their vertical workloads in genomics, investigation, cryptography or budgetary administrations and need to convey those workloads to the cloud. AWS really gives an equipment advancement pack to FPGA designs. Some of those apparatus producers like Ryft will be giving APIs to coordinate the AWS FPGA cases with their investigation stages the way their FPGA machines as of now do.

The transfer speed between two VMs inside Azure, even with a 40 gigabit arrange connector on each VM, is just around 4Gbps every second; with FPGA-quickened organizing, that goes up to 25Gbps.

FPGA sellers are beginning to offer larger amount programming alternatives, similar to C, C++ and OpenCL. AWS is depending on OpenCL FPGA programming to achieve more engineers in future, in spite of the fact that this still requires a great deal of ability and isn't really a decent match for the FPGA programming model.

"It's as yet an exceptionally obscure sort of improvement condition," Russinovich noted; "yet I think the pattern is evident that things will get increasingly open. I think you can envision sooner or later — I'm talking a far future vision here — designers utilizing distinctive dialects to compose programs with instruments that will investigate your calculation and decide, in light of profiling or examination, that this bit of your program is more productive on the off chance that we run it on FPGA and this one on GPU and this one on CPU, and engineers simply exploit the best capacities the stage brings to the table.

Keen Networks

Microsoft is adopting a fairly unique strategy. On Azure, you can really utilize FPGA-controlled administrations as of now; you simply don't have the foggiest idea about that you're utilizing FPGAs — similarly that you don't know you're utilizing streak SSDs when you utilize Cosmos DB or GPUs when you utilize Microsoft Cognitive Services. Actually, the entire Azure system depends on FPGA-fueled programming characterized organizing.

At the point when Microsoft first began placing FPGAs into Azure, it was proportional low dormancy and high throughput to frameworks with a lot of information and high movement; the ordering servers for Bing. At first, those FPGAs had their own particular system associations, however to disentangle the system topology Microsoft changed to interfacing them to an indistinguishable NIC from the server they were in. Once the FPGAs were associated straightforwardly to those system cards, they could likewise quicken the product characterized organizing that Azure uses for steering and load adjusting.

The effect of FPGAs on question dormancy for Bing; even at twofold the inquiry stack FPGA-quickened positioning has bring down idleness than programming fueled positioning at any heap.

Like custom silicon intended to go on a system card, these FPGA SmartNICs are more effective than CPUs and utilize less power. In any case, as Microsoft enhances that product characterized organizing stack to work with the 50GB and 100GB system connectors that are coming soon, the FPGAs can be reinvented — which you couldn't do with custom silicon.

These SmartNICs as of now execute the stream tables that are the premise of Azure's product characterized organizing; in future, they may likewise actualize Quality of Service or RDMA, and accelerate stockpiling by offloading cryptographic counts and blunder checking.

Sky blue Accelerated Networking has been accessible on the bigger Azure VM sizes since a year ago, for both Windows Server and Ubuntu, despite the fact that the administration is still in review and has what Russinovich called "greatly uncommon similarity issues," so you need to utilize it. It additionally has a few confinements, such as requiring separate Azure memberships on the off chance that you need to utilize it for both Windows Server and Linux. The transfer speed between two VMs inside Azure, even with a 40-gigabit arrange connector on each VM, is just around 4Gbps every second; with FPGA-quickened organizing, that goes up to 25Gbps, with five to ten times less inertness (contingent upon your application).

The effect of FPGA-quickened SDN (credit Microsoft).

The following stage is building administrations for engineers to utilize those FPGAs, regardless of the possibility that it's circuitous. "There are numerous approaches to make FPGAs accessible to engineers, including us, simply utilizing them for framework improvements that accumulate to each designer that uses our cloud, as SDN," Russinovich clarified. "We need to make profound neural system [DNN] and induction models accessible to designers, that are anything but difficult to send and simple to expend, and that is running DNN on top of FPGA so they get the best execution. They would do their preparation for instance on GPU, and present to us the models. The engineers aren't mindful it's FPGAs underneath; they simply hand the DNN model to the stage and the stage executes it in the most proficient way that is available.

Diverse ways designers will utilize FPGAs in Azure (credit Microsoft).

Russinovich exhibited the benefit of that at Build, with what he called "tens to many tera-operations, so you can get truly successful surmising." Running a similar machine learning calculation on 24 FPGAs as opposed to 24 CPUs, he demonstrated a 150-200x change in idleness and around 50 times the vitality productivity.

Designers can as of now exploit this through the Microsoft Cognitive Services APIs. "We've as of now got this underway in Bing as a feature of the following level of speeding up for Cognitive Services preparing, and also for B

[unixcommerce]

Sridhar Vembu of Zoho: The Cloud Should Have a Deeper Purpose, But Surveilling Data Isn’t It

Well I know we’re into a new year now, because my first conference of 2020 just ended.  Zoho’s annual analyst event took place in Austin, Texas this week and as in year’s past I had a chance to sit down with CEO and co-founder Sridhar Vembu for a wide-ranging conversation.  And quite literally we had a fireside chat.. while in rocking chairs.

Below is an edited transcript of our conversation, where Vembu shares his thoughts on how the company has developed over the past five years, how it is positioning itself as a technology company and not just a software company, why he feels the cloud should help provide dignity and opportunity to rural communities, and why Zoho is taking a hard stance against the industry practice of “surveilling” customer data.  To hear the full conversation watch the video or click on the embedded SoundCloud player below.

Small Business Trends: When you think about the last five years, what has that meant to Zoho the company?

Sridhar Vembu: We’ve seen tremendous growth. I think we showed, say over six, seven years,  almost 10 fold growth we have seen. And that I think is continuing now; the growth rate is still accelerating now. Now we now have an ability to tell the story as well as we are able to engineer the product. We’ve been a good company, but we were not able to tell the story before. Now, I think these events have helped us refine our messaging, help tell the story and connect with people.

Small Business Trends: So what is the big part of the story that may have been missing a couple of years ago that you can now tell and feel good about?

Sridhar Vembu: I think a lot of it is our culture as a company, how unique it is, how differentiated it is. I mean, we’re shy talking about ourselves as a company.

Small Business Trends: I’m going to say you are very shy …

Sridhar Vembu: Always, always been true. You know my attitude, build a great product, throw it over the fence, people would buy it if they want it. That was the attitude. These things have helped us realize there’s more to it than that. Because ultimately, every engineer has to learn this. Computers don’t buy products people do. And people have a reason, need a reason to buy it.

Small Business Trends: Right.

Sridhar Vembu: They have to feel a connection with who is supplying technology to them. It’s not just only the technology, it’s also the connection, human connection. That’s the biggest thing that has changed in the last five years.

Small Business Trends: Now your evangelist, Raju Vegesna, he said a little earlier today that Zoho is not just a software company. It’s a technology company. Talk about that, what does that mean?

Sridhar Vembu: What Raju means is that this is a company that goes deep down into every aspect of what we do. And that is the depth of technology in terms of the software itself, the hardware underlying it, the networks that are powering or the data centers; all of it.  Also, in a deeper way, for example, we talked about construction, we talked about education, we talked about healthcare. So we think holistically about all these problems, not fragmented pieces, but we think holistically how are we going to get employees, train employees. How do our facilities look and how do they provide a nice home for employees. So these all of these aspects we think about.

Small Business Trends: You always come up with very good phrases. The last time we talked you talked about, how the capital is within the culture of the organization and not the finances.

Sridhar Vembu: Exactly.

Small Business Trends: And that really resonated with not only me but a lot of people. But this year you talked about how you don’t want to be … I want to make sure I get the phrase right. You don’t want to be a cost –

Sridhar Vembu: Costly input to our customers.

Small Business Trends: Costly input to your customers.

Sridhar Vembu: Yes.

Small Business Trends: Talk about what that means?

Sridhar Vembu: This actually came from my observation of the farm problem. The farmer problem, farmers face a problem where their inputs are getting costlier and costlier while the output is getting commoditized. So they’re literally squeezed. In fact, a lot of them have negative margin in their business now more and more, which is why the farm bankruptcies, a lot of the crises, rural crisis, agrarian crisis, which is pretty much worldwide. This is in the US, this is an India everywhere it’s happening.

I spent time in rural India and so I was able to observe these things first hand. Then I realized for a lot of businesses technology is a critical cost and we don’t want to be a costly input to our customers, because then our customers cannot survive in business very long term if they have very costly inputs from us. And so the only way to be sustainable, this relationship to be sustainable is we become an affordable input to them. This provides a nice framework to think about our business, how we structured ourselves. I talked about deep technology that is driven by the fact that we have to avoid costly inputs ourselves so that we don’t become a costly input to our customer.

Small Business Trends: So the other thing that really resonated is not only that you don’t want to be a costly input to your customers, but you want the cloud to be more than some great technology. You want it to – and I never heard anybody talk about it like this –  you want the cloud  to provide dignity.

Sridhar Vembu: Yeah.

Small Business Trends: And give more opportunity.

Sridhar Vembu: Correct.

Small Business Trends: Talk about that a little bit.

Sridhar Vembu: Today with technology we are able to work from anywhere. We just spoke before you said you work from home?

Small Business Trends: Right.

Sridhar Vembu: From Atlanta, in suburb of Atlanta, right? I actually worked for now mostly from rural India now and Raju works in Austin. And yet we are all connected now. I talked to Raju from rural India at least once a week and on video a couple of times a week.

Small Business Trends: Right.

Sridhar Vembu: That’s what technology has enabled now. And this actually has startling implications for where the jobs are to be and what the incomes can be and the identity of people. In other words, if someone is a rural citizen and they have skills now they can actually have a job that pays a meaningful wage, that affords them a dignified life and they’re also be … could be change leaders in their communities. And all of this is possible today that was never before possible.

So to me, the cloud has a broader purpose, a bigger purpose. The cloud is not a delivery channel for software, cloud has a bigger purpose. It enables us to work from anywhere and that liberates us from constraints for example, expensive real estate trap that so many young people are trapped. So many people are trapped in heavy big mortgages in big cities. One of the reasons entrepreneurship has fallen in the last 20 years in this country is because too many people are trapped in heavy mortgage that they … and student loans, all of these issues. So they don’t have the freedom to experiment, freedom to go out on their own. So the cloud can be actually a transformational medium for it and the fact that we can work from anywhere and that is critical.

I see this now in terms that are not purely technology, but its sociological implications that it can revitalize rural areas. It can retain talent, it can even attract talent back into rural areas because rural areas have suffered a brain drain, talent drain for a long time, talent it will be simply upper leaf. But now people can stay in their home towns, maybe come back to their home towns and help revitalize those areas. So all these are possible today.

Small Business Trends: And you talk education in terms of lowering that cost. But when you started looking at the data centers and being able to be more efficient in the way that you use power in that role of it, talk a little bit about that in terms of “costly inputs.”

Sridhar Vembu: I remember one of the biggest cost items would be running the data centers to deliver our services, our applications to customers. One crucial ingredient of data center cost is power. The power consumed by all the servers and the switches and all of that. And it turns out there are many, many ways now to reduce the power and also provide the power in the renewable power, like a hydroelectric power or solar power all of these. So we look for data centers with that, so we now built a solar plant to power data centers in India, we’ve hydro-power powering our data centers in the US, so these are some of the areas that we pay attention to. We also are looking for ways next generation to reduce the amount of power, to serve a particular customer in the data center, this translates both into lower overall power consumption and it also lowers the cost of service delivery long term. So these are things that we look at.

Small Business Trends: One of the stats that came out, I forget who said about it might have been you or it might’ve been Raju, somewhere along the line, it would cost $10 million a year if you are running Zia [Zoho’s AI technology] on AWS. Talk about the impact of not running on AWS has for Zoho, and Zoho customers.

Sridhar Vembu: As you look at our search infrastructure that is searching across a very wide span of applications, it’s sucking in all of the data of the customer in Zoho, indexing it, cross correlating it and cross indexing it. Your CRM data, your financial data, your document data, your email data, your chat data, all of it has to be cross-referenced, correlated, all of that. This takes massive amounts of compute and storage, all of these, these indexes, all that.

Public cloud infrastructure, we did evaluate for this. It cost us a lot more to do this than what it costs to do it ourselves. We would have to increase the prices substantially on our customers.

Customer Data Surveilling

Small Business Trends: I think, this subject today that got a lot of people’s attention was this whole idea of surveillance companies and surveilled data. A lot of people probably don’t know what that means and maybe you could just define what that means?

Sridhar Vembu: Today, regrettably, many consumer internet companies have become de facto surveillance companies. It’s Google and Facebook, all of them. Whether they like to be called that or not, they have become surveillance companies. And exactly the same way that citizens would react to the thought of if the government surveilled them, we also have to react to internet company surveillance. It’s wrong, it’s wrong with them but normally it’s wrong when private companies do it and it’s done with the purpose of marketing all of that data.

But in fact there was news yesterday where this company was fined 140 million something because they were actually the free software for EHR, Electronic Health Records. They were showing the doctors, they were prompting the doctors to prescribe their Opioids. And they had a secret arrangement with a pharma company to enable this, to increase the sales of all those painkiller prescriptions and the Feds caught them and severe fine was imposed on them. This just shows the negative consequence of that type of a business model were you are sharing data with [crosstalk 00:13:05] .

Small Business Trends: Basically, it’s the data/advertising model like Google.

Sridhar Vembu: Yes.

Small Business Trends: They make a lot of their money from ads [crosstalk 00:13:13].

Sridhar Vembu: And this creates really bad incentives on … and there is always somebody with a tempting offer for how we want to use the data. And this example this pharma example shows that.

Small Business Trends: Right.

Sridhar Vembu: But it has a huge cost to society and to people who are prescribed useless painkillers for things they don’t need. So this is why I think it’s important. And at the same time, I would say this, my phone knows everything I do, especially today. To be a smart phone it has to know everything about me. So I’m not worried that it knows what I do, I’m only worried about where the data will go, what the companies that have access to the data build with the data.

Small Business Trends: How they use it.

Sridhar Vembu: How they use it.

Small Business Trends: How they sell it off to the third party.

Sridhar Vembu: Exactly, so this is why I think I draw this thing right to be a smart phone. It needs to know a lot about me, but I don’t want everyone to know everything about me. My where abouts, where I am, what I’m doing right now all of these things, it doesn’t have to be broadcast to the entire world. In effect that’s what has happened to a lot of us, where all these surveillance companies are taking this data and repackaging it and selling it to various parties, without the customers knowledge, you don’t even know how many places this data is going today. And so I do believe that we are going to have … not only this is, in fact I give this analogy, it’s exactly how smoking was 40, 50 years ago, but if we had … we’re sitting here having this chat 40, 50 years ago, one of us would be smoking.

Small Business Trends: Yeah.

Sridhar Vembu: It was very common.

Small Business Trends: Right on TV.

Sridhar Vembu: Right on TV and In this room probably like everybody would be smoking and it would be so common place that we all accepted it.

Small Business Trends: Right.

Sridhar Vembu: Today we actually don’t accept it. Nobody smokes inside buildings and we even have laws against it now that every closed place and offices, hotels everything should be smoke free, no smoking zone. And this happened both by social awareness of the harms of secondhand smoke and legislation. I believe the same thing is happening now, the awareness is spreading that this privacy violation is happening, surveillance is wrong. Now legislation is following, slowly GDPR as an example, California passed a law. I don’t believe stringent regulations are necessarily here and this won’t prevent progress. It will guide it the right direction where we draw boundaries, ethical boundaries. What can a software engineer do with the data? Data is now a valuable thing about a person and so software engineers have to handle it the same way a doctor handles a patient.

Small Business Trends: Medical records, yeah.

Sridhar Vembu: Medical records of a patient. There’re ethical boundaries based on doctors, we need ethical boundaries on software engineers.

Small Business Trends: There was a question because you went over this today and there was a question. I think it’s a pretty valid question, because everybody in industry pretty much is doing this. I don’t know if that’s purposely or not there, it’s the way it’s gone in the industry. But what does that cost Zoho in terms of is there a lost insights? Is there lost revenue? What does that cost you and why do you think the benefit of doing what you’re doing outweighs it?

Sridhar Vembu: So for example, we eliminated all trackers, third party trackers from our site and even our own marketing was apprehensive at first that they’re going to lose certain insights. And I told them that’s okay. We build the tools in house and we do not share the data with anybody so that’s a given. So that was what I said and that did have an initial cost to it. And I’m the certain we cannot compute for certain campaigns we do. And that’s an acceptable price to pay in my opinion, longer term, the trust we had with the customer, is far better than any short term things.

In reality, we have been growing consistently and the growth has actually accelerated in the last couple of years as we have taken a stronger privacy stance. So I would say maybe does even help the business, even though that was not why we did it, because we were willing to pay the price. In fact, we were willing to suffer a reduction on traffic if that’s what’s going to happen. I said, that’s okay. Because life is short.  How badly do you want to be successful if you don’t feel good about how you do it … you cannot sleep well at night. That’s how I put it.

This article, “Sridhar Vembu of Zoho: The Cloud Should Have a Deeper Purpose, But Surveilling Data Isn’t It” was first published on Small Business Trends

https://smallbiztrends.com/

The post Sridhar Vembu of Zoho: The Cloud Should Have a Deeper Purpose, But Surveilling Data Isn’t It appeared first on Unix Commerce.

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[thegloober]

Gartner picks digital ethics and privacy as a strategic trend for 2019

Analyst Gartner, best known for crunching device marketshare data; charting technology hype cycles; and churning out predictive listicles of emergent capabilities at software’s cutting edge has now put businesses on watch that as well as dabbling in the usual crop of nascent technologies organizations need to be thinking about wider impacts next year — on both individuals and society.

Call it a sign of the times but digital ethics and privacy has been named as one of Gartner’s top ten strategic technology trends for 2019. That, my friends, is progress of a sort. Albeit, it also underlines how low certain tech industry practices have sunk that ethics and privacy is suddenly making a cutting-edge trend agenda, a couple of decades into the mainstream consumer Internet.

The analyst’s top picks do include plenty of techie stuff too, of course. Yes blockchain is in there. Alongside the usual string of caveats that the “technologies and concepts are immature, poorly understood and unproven in mission-critical, at-scale business operations”.

So too, on the software development side, is AI-driven development — with the analyst sneaking a look beyond the immediate future to an un-date-stamped new age of the ‘non-techie techie’ (aka the “citizen application developer”) it sees coming down the pipe, when everyone will be a pro app dev thanks to AI-driven tools automatically generating the necessary models. But that’s definitely not happening in 2019.

See also: Augmented analytics eventually (em)powering “citizen data science”.

On the hardware front, Gartner uses the umbrella moniker of autonomous things to bundle the likes of drones, autonomous vehicles and robots in one big mechanical huddle — spying a trend of embodied AIs that “automate functions previously performed by humans” and work in swarming concert. Again, though, don’t expect too much of these bots quite yet — collectively, or, well, individually either.

It’s also bundling AR, VR and MR (aka the mixed reality of eyewear like Magic Leap One or Microsoft’s Hololens) into immersive experiences — in which “the spaces that surround us define ‘the computer’ rather than the individual devices. In effect, the environment is the computer” — so you can see what it’s spying there.

On the hardcore cutting edge of tech there’s quantum computing to continue to tantalize with its fantastically potent future potential. This tech, Gartner suggests, could be used to “model molecular interactions at atomic levels to accelerate time to market for new cancer-treating drugs” — albeit, once again, there’s absolutely no timeline suggested. And QC remains firmly lodged in an “emerging state”.

One nearer-term tech trend is dubbed the empowered edge, with Gartner noting that rising numbers of connected devices are driving processing back towards the end-user — to reduce latency and traffic. Distributed servers working as part of the cloud services mix is the idea, supported, over the longer term, by maturing 5G networks. Albeit, again, 5G hasn’t been deployed at any scale yet. Though some rollouts are scheduled for 2019.

Connected devices also feature in Gartner’s picks of smart spaces (aka sensor-laden places like smart cities, the ‘smart home’ or digital workplaces — where “people, processes, services and things” come together to create “a more immersive, interactive and automated experience”); and so-called digital twins; which isn’t as immediately bodysnatcherish as it first sounds, though does refer to “digital representation of a real-world entity or system” driven by an estimated 20BN connected sensors/endpoints which it reckons will be in the wild by 2020. 

But what really stands out in Gartner’s list of developing and/or barely emergent strategic tech trends is digital ethics and privacy — given the concept is not reliant on any particular technology underpinning it; yet is being (essentially) characterized as an emergent property of other already deployed (but unnamed) technologies. So is actually in play — in a way that others on the list aren’t yet (or aren’t at the same mass scale).

The analyst dubs digital ethics and privacy a “growing concern for individuals, organisations and governments”, writing: “People are increasingly concerned about how their personal information is being used by organisations in both the public and private sector, and the backlash will only increase for organisations that are not proactively addressing these concerns.”

Yes, people are increasingly concerned about privacy. Though ethics and privacy are hardly new concepts (or indeed new discussion topics). So the key point is really the strategic obfuscation of issues that people do in fact care an awful lot about, via the selective and non-transparent application of various behind-the-scenes technologies up to now — as engineers have gone about collecting and using people’s data without telling them how, why and what they’re actually doing with it.

Therefore, the key issue is about the abuse of trust that has been an inherent and seemingly foundational principle of the application of far too much cutting edge technology up to now. Especially, of course, in the adtech sphere.

And which, as Gartner now notes, is coming home to roost for the industry — via people’s “growing concern” about what’s being done to them via their data. (For “individuals, organisations and governments” you can really just substitute ‘society’ in general.)

Technology development done in a vacuum with little or no consideration for societal impacts is therefore itself the catalyst for the accelerated concern about digital ethics and privacy that Gartner is here identifying rising into strategic view.

It didn’t have to be that way though. Unlike ‘blockchain’ or ‘digital twins’, ethics and privacy are not at all new concepts. They’ve been discussion topics for philosophers and moralists for scores of generations and, literally, thousands of years. Which makes engineering without consideration of human and societal impacts a very spectacular and stupid failure indeed.

And now Gartner is having to lecture organizations on the importance of building trust. Which is kind of incredible to see, set alongside bleeding edge science like quantum computing. Yet here we seemingly are in kindergarten…

It writes: “Any discussion on privacy must be grounded in the broader topic of digital ethics and the trust of your customers, constituents and employees. While privacy and security are foundational components in building trust, trust is actually about more than just these components. Trust is the acceptance of the truth of a statement without evidence or investigation. Ultimately an organisation’s position on privacy must be driven by its broader position on ethics and trust. Shifting from privacy to ethics moves the conversation beyond ‘are we compliant’ toward ‘are we doing the right thing.”

The other unique thing about digital ethics and privacy is that it cuts right across all other technology areas in this trend list.

You can — and should — rightly ask what does blockchain mean for privacy? Or quantum computing for ethics? How could the empowered edge be used to enhance privacy? And how might smart spaces erode it? How can we ensure ethics get baked into AI-driven development from the get-go? How could augmented analytics help society as a whole — but which individuals might it harm? And so the questions go on.

Or at least they should go on. You should never stop asking questions where ethics and privacy are concerned. Not asking questions was the great strategic fuck-up condensed into Facebook’s ‘move fast and break things’ anti-humanitarian manifesto of yore. Y’know, the motto it had to ditch after it realized that breaking all the things didn’t scale.

Because apparently no one at the company had thought to ask how breaking everyone’s stuff would help it engender trust. And so claiming compliance without trust, as Facebook now finds itself trying to, really is the archetypal Sisyphean struggle.

Source: https://bloghyped.com/gartner-picks-digital-ethics-and-privacy-as-a-strategic-trend-for-2019/

[fmservers]

Gartner picks digital ethics and privacy as a strategic trend for 2019

Analyst Gartner, best known for crunching device marketshare data; charting technology hype cycles; and churning out predictive listicles of emergent capabilities at software’s cutting edge has now put businesses on watch that as well as dabbling in the usual crop of nascent technologies organizations need to be thinking about wider impacts next year — on both individuals and society.

Call it a sign of the times but digital ethics and privacy has been named as one of Gartner’s top ten strategic technology trends for 2019. That, my friends, is progress of a sort. Albeit, it also underlines how low certain tech industry practices have sunk that ethics and privacy is suddenly making a cutting-edge trend agenda, a couple of decades into the mainstream consumer Internet.

The analyst’s top picks do include plenty of techie stuff too, of course. Yes blockchain is in there. Alongside the usual string of caveats that the “technologies and concepts are immature, poorly understood and unproven in mission-critical, at-scale business operations”.

So too, on the software development side, is AI-driven development — with the analyst sneaking a look beyond the immediate future to an un-date-stamped new age of the ‘non-techie techie’ (aka the “citizen application developer”) it sees coming down the pipe, when everyone will be a pro app dev thanks to AI-driven tools automatically generating the necessary models. But that’s definitely not happening in 2019.

See also: Augmented analytics eventually (em)powering “citizen data science”.

On the hardware front, Gartner uses the umbrella moniker of autonomous things to bundle the likes of drones, autonomous vehicles and robots in one big mechanical huddle — spying a trend of embodied AIs that “automate functions previously performed by humans” and work in swarming concert. Again, though, don’t expect too much of these bots quite yet — collectively, or, well, individually either.

It’s also bundling AR, VR and MR (aka the mixed reality of eyewear like Magic Leap One or Microsoft’s Hololens) into immersive experiences — in which “the spaces that surround us define ‘the computer’ rather than the individual devices. In effect, the environment is the computer” — so you can see what it’s spying there.

On the hardcore cutting edge of tech there’s quantum computing to continue to tantalize with its fantastically potent future potential. This tech, Gartner suggests, could be used to “model molecular interactions at atomic levels to accelerate time to market for new cancer-treating drugs” — albeit, once again, there’s absolutely no timeline suggested. And QC remains firmly lodged in an “emerging state”.

One nearer-term tech trend is dubbed the empowered edge, with Gartner noting that rising numbers of connected devices are driving processing back towards the end-user — to reduce latency and traffic. Distributed servers working as part of the cloud services mix is the idea, supported, over the longer term, by maturing 5G networks. Albeit, again, 5G hasn’t been deployed at any scale yet. Though some rollouts are scheduled for 2019.

Connected devices also feature in Gartner’s picks of smart spaces (aka sensor-laden places like smart cities, the ‘smart home’ or digital workplaces — where “people, processes, services and things” come together to create “a more immersive, interactive and automated experience”); and so-called digital twins; which isn’t as immediately bodysnatcherish as it first sounds, though does refer to “digital representation of a real-world entity or system” driven by an estimated 20BN connected sensors/endpoints which it reckons will be in the wild by 2020. 

But what really stands out in Gartner’s list of developing and/or barely emergent strategic tech trends is digital ethics and privacy — given the concept is not reliant on any particular technology underpinning it; yet is being (essentially) characterized as an emergent property of other already deployed (but unnamed) technologies. So is actually in play — in a way that others on the list aren’t yet (or aren’t at the same mass scale).

The analyst dubs digital ethics and privacy a “growing concern for individuals, organisations and governments”, writing: “People are increasingly concerned about how their personal information is being used by organisations in both the public and private sector, and the backlash will only increase for organisations that are not proactively addressing these concerns.”

Sure, people are increasingly concerned about privacy. Though ethics and privacy are hardly new concepts (or indeed new discussion topics). So the key point is really the strategic obfuscation of issues that people do in fact care an awful lot about, via the selective and non-transparent application of various behind-the-scenes technologies up to now — as engineers have gone about collecting and using people’s data without telling them how, why and what they’re actually doing with it.

Therefore, the key issue is about the abuse of trust that has been an inherent and seemingly foundational principle of the application of far too much cutting edge technology til now. Especially, of course, in the adtech sphere.

And which, as Gartner now notes, is coming home to roost for the industry — via people’s “growing concern” about what’s being done to them via their data. (For “individuals, organisations and governments” you can really just substitute ‘society’ in general.)

Technology development done in a vacuum with little or no consideration for societal impacts is therefore itself the catalyst for the accelerated concern about digital ethics and privacy that Gartner is here identifying rising into strategic view.

It didn’t have to be that way though. Unlike ‘blockchain’ or ‘digital twins’, ethics and privacy are not at all new concepts. They’ve been discussion topics for philosophers and moralists for scores of generations and, literally, thousands of years. Which makes engineering without consideration of human and societal impacts a very spectacular and stupid failure indeed.

And now Gartner is having to lecture organizations on the importance of building trust. Which is kind of incredible to see, set alongside bleeding edge science like quantum computing. Yet here we are seemingly in kindergarten…

It writes: “Any discussion on privacy must be grounded in the broader topic of digital ethics and the trust of your customers, constituents and employees. While privacy and security are foundational components in building trust, trust is actually about more than just these components. Trust is the acceptance of the truth of a statement without evidence or investigation. Ultimately an organisation’s position on privacy must be driven by its broader position on ethics and trust. Shifting from privacy to ethics moves the conversation beyond ‘are we compliant’ toward ‘are we doing the right thing.”

The other unique thing about digital ethics and privacy is that it cuts right across all other technology areas in this trend list.

You can — and should — rightly ask what does blockchain mean for privacy? Or quantum computing for ethics? How could the empowered edge be used to enhance privacy? And how might smart spaces erode it? How can we ensure ethics get baked into AI-driven development from the get-go? How could augmented analytics help society as a whole — but which individuals might it harm? And so the questions go on.

Or at least they should go on. You should never stop asking questions where ethics and privacy are concerned. Not asking questions was the great strategic fuck-up condensed into Facebook’s ‘move fast and break things’ anti-humanitarian manifesto of yore. Y’know, the motto it had to ditch after it realized that breaking all the things didn’t scale.

Because apparently no one at the company had thought to ask how breaking everyone’s stuff would help it engender trust. And so claiming compliance without trust, as Facebook now is, really is the archetypal Sisyphean struggle.

Via Natasha Lomas https://techcrunch.com

[jillmckenzie1]

Twelve Notes – Local Movie Reviewer Explores the New Remake “A Star is Born”

One of the old Hollywood legends is about the genesis of 1937’s A Star Is Born. Allegedly, it was not-so-secretly about the relationship between Barbara Stanwyck and Frank Fay. While Fay was a success on Broadway, his film career fizzled. Stanwyck became a massive film star, and Fay worked out his resentment of her through alcoholism and physical abuse. For a while, that was the template for these remakes, that of the meteoric rise of the ingènue and the corresponding fall of the has-been.

That tells us that, at the end of the day, there aren’t that many stories. In Christopher Booker’s book The Seven Basic Plots, he posits that there are — you guessed it — seven kinds of stories that we tell. They are:

Overcoming the Monster

Rags to Riches

The Quest

Voyage and Return

Comedy

Tragedy

Rebirth

The important aspect isn’t what the story is, but how the story is told. The filter provided by the artist gives us perspective, and that perspective makes the story unique – or not.

For example, Hollywood has provided a whopping five iterations of the same story, one of the vast pitfalls of fame. The first was What Price Hollywood? released way back in 1932. 1937 brought us the Fredric March-starring remake entitled A Star Is Born. Folks liked that title because it came back around in 1954 with the doomed Judy Garland. In 1976, it turned out folks really liked that title, and this time Barbra Streisand was the headliner.

Unsurprisingly, another remake struggled to get off the ground. For a minute there, it looked like Clint Eastwood was going to direct Beyoncé, but like pitiless Roman emperors, the Hollywood gods gave a thumbs down, consigning it to development hell. Then Bradley Cooper came along. He had a take on the material that was timely. More importantly, he had Lady Gaga. The end result is the 2018 version of A Star Is Born, which is both a machine engineered to win awards and a genuinely good film.

We’re introduced to rocker Jackson Mane (Bradley Cooper) performing at a sold-out concert. The crowd loves him, loves his barroom-rock and country ballads. How much does he actually love it? We get the sense that his passion for music is fading, as evidenced by the bottle of booze he slams down in his limo after the show. This is not the first time he’s self-medicated with hooch. It won’t be the last.

Clearly, Jackson needs…something. At a drag bar, he finds what he’s looking for. Ally (Lady Gaga) works by day as a server in a hoity-toity restaurant. On Friday nights, the queens at the drag bar generously let her take the stage. She’s a hell of a singer. The regulars love her. Her father Lorenzo (Andrew Dice Clay) thinks she could be huge but thinks the size of her nose will hold her back.*

Jackson stumbles into the bar, orders the first of what one presumes to be several drinks, and waits for something to happen. Ally emerges onto the stage and proceeds to absolutely decimate the crowd with her version of La Vie En Rose. Watch Cooper play this scene because as the song goes on, we see his facial expressions shift from admiration to shock at the scope of her talent to infatuation.

They fall in love, but their romance is nurtured by their mutual respect for their talent. He encourages her to write her own songs. He tells her, “Music is essentially twelve notes between any octave. Twelve notes and the octave repeats. It’s the same story told over and over. All any artist can offer the world is how they see those twelve notes.” As Ally begins to rocket into the heavens, Jackson starts to fall.

As someone with more talent than he’s sometimes given credit for, Bradley Cooper knows a thing or two about the machinery of stardom. Consider that, for a while there, he was viewed as the freakishly good-looking guy from The Hangover. He paid attention to the craft of filmmaking in acting showcases directed by Clint Eastwood and David O. Russell, and as the voice of the trash-talking Rocket Raccoon in Guardians of the Galaxy.

Cooper applied that knowledge here with his directorial debut. As debuts go, it’s pretty damned good. It’s common that, when actors step up to the director’s chair, they have a knack of coaxing out strong performances. Cooper is no different, and his film is overstuffed with outstanding acting. He also knows that one of the main reasons folks are showing up for this film is the music. Wisely, he always takes a moment to let us appreciate the songs, ones that we hear more than once in different contexts. Is his direction perfect? Not always, and I wasn’t crazy about the frequent occurrence of shakycam shots and an overreliance on close-ups. The first hour is the most energetic; there’s a good amount of bloat in the second act. Still, he’s offering strong and steady filmmaking that must be applauded.

This project was a labor of love for Cooper, and he worked on the script alongside Will Fetters and Eric Roth. They get an awful lot right, with an ear for natural dialogue that’s never too clever for its own good. I also appreciated how this iteration of the old tale sidesteps the resentment aspect and portrays alcoholism as a genuine disease that requires treatment. Yet the script has a couple issues as well. It seems to agree with Jackson’s take that pop music is totally disposable. A little bit more of an issue is that Ally is written somewhat inconsistently. She tells Jackson early on she won’t tolerate his drinking, then she constantly tolerates it. It doesn’t feel like her character is struggling. Instead, it feels like the script isn’t clearly showing us her struggle.

If you’re seeing this movie, and you should, it should be seen on the biggest and loudest screen possible to luxuriate in the performances. As Jackson’s older brother, Sam Elliott shows up to offer a masterclass in film acting. Most of us think of Elliott as the impressively mustachioed cowpoke in Tombstone, but here he’s mournful, restrained, and astonishing. Also, in words I thought I’d never write, Andrew Dice Clay is sweet and charming as Ally’s goofball father.

Reportedly, Lady Gaga encouraged Cooper to sing all of their numbers live. Wise Lady! Her suggestion brings an energy to the music that would have been lacking if they’d lip-synced. As the self-destructive Jackson, Cooper gives a controlled performance. He’s showing us character beats during each song, and watch how during each musical number, he quietly gets just a little sloppier, mirroring his character’s mental state.

Big surprise that Lady Gaga is the star of the show. If there’s one thing she isn’t lacking, it’s self-confidence. Initially, the idea of Gaga playing a woman who needs The Right Man to encourage her to share her talent with the world was laughable. She pulls it off, and as Ally, she’s absolutely fearless. Initially, she’s a little shy, unsure about her talent but quite sure that her chance has passed her by. We see her first number with Jackson in front of a massive crowd and her reaction of Holy s–t, I can’t believe this is happening. Gaga is a force of nature who confidently shows us the evolution of her character. The woman in the last five minutes of the film is a very different person than the woman we first meet. That’s how you portray a three-dimensional character.

We’ve seen this movie before, but you know what? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. A Star Is Born is okay with being a 21st-century melodrama. It’s perfectly comfortable cranking up its emotions and firing them directly into your face. That comfort with genuine emotion is important, especially now. It’s the kind of thing we should be thankful for. I certainly am.

  *Seriously, the size of Gaga’s nose is a recurring plot point. I found this very weird.

from Blog https://ondenver.com/twelve-notes-local-movie-reviewer-explores-the-new-remake-a-star-is-born/

[bensopinionsonvariousthingsblr]

So what are my favorite games Part 1

So just to make things clear i haven been writing 1.because this is actually my second attempt at writing this i accidentally closed the tab the first time, uh and i only lost a few hours of work. and 2.because I’ve been working at my job a lot more frequently as of late. anyway, i could probably write an entire full length essay on all of these games but I’ll try to shorten things up, oh yeah uh some games on the list might not be that good, as I may include a game from my childhood that i have fond memories of, but maybe wasn’t as good as i remembered it, anyway its a top 10 so lets begin.

First of all id love to start with some outside looking in, all these games are incredible to me and i would love to put them in the top 10 but i couldn’t, if you want to hear my opinions on them (wow thanks, you actually care) you can ask me on twitter and ill do my best!

15.Sonic Generations                                                                                              14.Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege                                                                      13.Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Platinum (Waterpark&Zoo DLC is amazing)                12.Splatoon 2 (specifically the Octo Expansion, that was really good)                    11.Hyrule Warriors Definitive Edition (Def. edition because its portable with good FPS and the extra 3DS content)

OK then Ill get started now :3 Thanks a TON (and I mean it I appreciate amy support i get or constructive criticism) for reading it!

Number 10: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess                                              Developer and Release year: Nintendo, 2006/2016 remaster                                What it can be played on: Gamecube/Wii/Wii U                                                                                                                                                                                              The Legend of Zelda is my favorite game series of all time, thats obvious if you know anything about me, and twilight princess is one I’ve played more recently, and from the start you notice Twilight Princess is definitely going for that early 2000′s edgy tone (is that a coincidence or an actual trend, i dunno i was really young in 06 so...) which works fine, and its a really long game, I mean I spent a week or two beating it, that being said i had work and other things going on at the time, but any way it has been said by many more before me, that it is basically an edgy, long,Ocarina of Time remake with motion controls....and they aren’t wrong, though i have called it edgy but i think its more...dark i guess? any way i actually like this better than Ocarina of Time, before you assault me i loved Ocarina of Time, i just tried to put as few Zelda games on the list as i could, and i just enjoyed the Twilight Princess story, characters, and length a bit more, but back to the remake opinion, i sort of agree yeah, but i thought the mystery around Midna and Zant and the Twilight realm, and the mirror, were all something that sets it apart, so in the end i enjoyed it a lot.                                                                                                                                                                    Favorite Part(s)? Arbiters Grounds. AW MAN, I love the Arbiters grounds, the sneaking, the spinner, the boss, the setting, all of it is on point, even the wolf part is unique with the poe chasing, and also the Final Ganon boss I liked all of it, though his appearance is a bit late i thought it was a fun, long, and intense fight

Number 9: Lego Universe                                                                                      Developer and Release Year: NetDevil and Lego, 2010-2012                                What it COULD ( :( ) be played on: PC                                                                                                                                                                                                              IM GONNA GO AHEAD AND SAY IT THIS IS A PICK COMPLETELY ON NOSTALGIA. Yes, this is one of my favorite games of my childhood and since i cant go back and re-evaluate the game because it’s closed unfortunately (except for some server projects that are happening) I’m talking about it completely based on my memories. One reason I love it is, the game’s story and lore at the time captivated me so much that i decided to write stories about stuff my character(s) did, which basically kick-started my interest in writing, as bad as those stories were, I loved the game, I had it’s official LEGO set (Still do it’s a nice little orange rocket ship that could be used in-game) and convinced my cousins to play it too, and we all enjoyed it, now of course i was an MLGPROBOI at the game so I had rare pets and the best weapons and a RED PARROT GUYS (I believe it was super rare and a big deal) so I loved being really cool n’ stuff, people would ask me to help them take out Butterscorch (that was the hardest boss in the game, a purple dragon, BUT SINCE I WAS AN MLGPROBOI I COULD DO IT MYSELF BUT I WAS NICE SO I HELPED) and even sell them secrets on how to do stuff, yeah i was a cool guy, cant relate now, I’ll never be as cool as my alter-alias Square Von Pancake :(                                                                                                                                                                Favorite Part(s): Me and my brother played i t together all the time and we loved the combat at crux prime the most, Crux Prime was the place with the hardest enemies and bosses and it was really fun to be challenged for a while. plus though it was out for only a year we still have countless memories of it, and they added Ninjago in it which I was SUPER into at the time and enjoyed having my character do Ninjago stuff...  

Number 8: Mount and Blade: Warband                                                                    Developer and Release Year: Taleworlds, 2010                                                      What it can be played on: PC, PS4, XB1                                                                                                                                                                                                      Mount and Blade Warband and its expansion Mount and Blade Napoleonic Wars, is one of my favorite multiplayer, and story games, the story mode is fun because you can do what you want, YOU choose the faction you fight with or not to at all, your class, your stats, and you can make some uh *beautiful* characters, the main story, i believe the objective is to become the emperor of Calradia, and rule the dang place and be rich and cool and have people like you, but I dont usually do that i just fight for factions, make money in the arena and at tournaments, and hire mercenaries and win against armies of 200 with like 30 people, its fun, now second talking point for me is the multiplayer, this is where Napoleonic Wars comes in, it is a fun shooter with muskets , or swords....or screw it you can play the bagpipes, that last one is totally not something me and my friends would do late at night. The Maps are super well designed as well and each look nice, and are usually not unbalanced. The third thing is the modding community, if you have this game, and don’t have the Anglo-Zulu war mod, that is just wrong, I mean it is so fun to get your friends and survive against large waves of zulu, or have some friends with the Zulu, it is just a unique experience for me, and other mods are cool to like the Civil War mod.                                                                                                                                                                    Favorite part(s): The Story mode is awesome in the way that it was a time in m life where i was without internet for a good month or two, but i had my laptop and the story mode kept me entertained for basically the whole time, also there are so many fun memories of the AZW mod and late night spent surviving waves.  

Number 7: Lego Battles                                                                                          Developer and Release Year: Warner Bros., Hellbent and Lego, 2009                  What it can be played on: DS                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Lego Battles is also a nostalgia pick, and also happens to be a Lego game, but the difference is it still holds up to me today, and i can still play it today...any way I love the gameplay, it’s a basic RTS but with fun themes like Wizards and Knights and Pirates and Aliens vs Humans, and each has a different play style, but not too different that it didn’t confuse me as a kid, I always liked the pirates and the aliens, I dont know why, but uh a drawback is that it can be too easy, at the time I wasnt fast or good enough to beat the AI with my first base, but i quickly learned if i just escaped after the destruction of the first one and just built a stronger second one, i would have more time because the AI couldnt find me and i would win pretty much every time, but despite that I enjoyed all the campaigns and loved the cutscenes and the extra characters like Santa and the Skeleton Guy (tm) and the Conquistador and the Alien Queen etc. and the way to unlock them was to find red bricks in the campaign levels, and/or collect studs which i thought was a fun challenge at the time, and today i sometimes like to go back to it for some casual RTS action                                                                                                                                                                                                     Favorite Part: The Gameplay, it’s simple, fun, and  doesn’t take too long, so if i just want to pick up a short game of the RTS genre I usually spring for this

Number 6: Star Wars Battlefront 2 Classic                                                              Developer and Release Year: Pandemic Studios, LucasArts , 2005                      What it can be played on: PC/PS2/XBOX                                                                                                                                                                                                      The fact that this comes in at number 6 on my list really doesn’t tell how much I love and appreciate this game, this is probably THE game I played the most in my childhood, and even still I play it online with the new servers (I disagree with you sometimes Disney, but thanks for those) This game is so replayable and I haven’t even played through the campaign yet, yeah, what I have done though is beaten all the Galactic Conquest stories, probably more than once. So for those of you that don’t know Galactic Conquest is a mode where each team starts with one ship and one type of troop and you fly around a map of the galaxy and take over enemy planets and defend yours and buy troops with the money you earn from the battles, and if the two ships run in to each others then they do a space battle, and Im gonna say it now i grew up playing the PS2 version with my cousins, but now I play the PC version and when we play with our cousins they play the XBOX version on Xbox One, any way the PC version is the best in terms of FPS and general gameplay smoothness, but the console versions have Galactic Conquest multiplayer which is something that we have spent countless hours playing, and in the end Battlefront 2 will be one of the best shooters of all time, and better than the new Battlefront 2 because that one is no where near good enough to share a name with the classic one, any way, i will always love Battlefront 2                                                                                                                                                                  Favorite part(s): Galactic Conquest and shout out to the maps Kashyyyk and Tantine IV, they’re the best

Hey thanks for reading through this whole thing, uh as you can tell this was super long, i planned to do all ten in this one but i figure it’s gettimg pretty long and I’ll just stop here and I’ll have 5 through 1 tomorrow, Thank you so much!                                                                                                                -Ben :3                                                                                                                       

[mikegchambers]

Why mobile apps will always end up in the big bucket of fail without the cloud

Mobile apps are cloud natives — if your company is building apps with on-premise back ends, you’re going to fail

If there’s one class of workload that stands out as ripe for cloud, it’s mobile. For start-ups and Fortune 500 companies alike, it’s the perfect use case for a full public cloud solution. Yet it’s surprising how many large companies still continue to develop apps as extensions of in-house architecture.

Today we’ll look at why this Failure Pattern is doomed from the start and how you can avoid making these mistakes in the first place. Contrary to what you might hear, it’s still true that everyone wants to build an app. It’s also true that many companies don’t have a clue about what’s happening with app platforms and lack the skills to be successful.

Opposable digits are required.

Mobile apps are different — really different

There are a few things to keep in mind when developing customer-facing mobile apps:

Mobile apps are not like other software. You have little control of distribution once they are launched in the store, the ratings system will quickly highlight a dud, and the user’s expectations are sky-high in terms of performance and capabilities.

Coding mobile apps is hard, debugging can be even harder since you never meet the end user, and for the most part the tools your developers need to be successful are mobile-specific and cloud-based.

Mobile app users have been trained by the best Silicon Valley companies to expect a constant stream of high quality updates. This demands true agility in your development stack, without which the app will grow stale and wither away.

You will have two dev teams because somebody in IT thought cross-mobile platform development systems were a bad idea. Now this is the only project in your company with two teams developing the exact same thing (one for Android and one for iOS). While many IT Managers think Xamarin is a stomach ulcer medication, it can really help here.

You will have no idea what works in the app for your users until you release. This means the functionality will be changing rapidly and you’ll need a platform that can still function reliably while everything changes.

Everyone you’ll meet thinks they’re an expert in mobile apps because they are in the sweet spot of the Venn diagram between ‘Owning a smartphone’ and ‘Having a son/daughter/nephew/friend who writes apps in their bedroom’. Just remember, when everyone you know gives you their 2 cents, that’s still only 68 cents.

So are you still building that mobile app with no cloud? Good luck on that big bucket of Fail.

And don’t call me Shirley.

Your bad IT is normally invisible to your customer

As companies get larger, their internal technology tends to resemble a tight ball of elastic bands as a critical part of a giant Rube Goldberg machine. It’s simultaneously laughable and terrifying watching decades of kluges jammed together powering the whole thing, waiting to get someone fired when they break it.

If you look at something as relatively simple as mobile ecommerce, it opens an infrastructural Pandora’s Box, which becomes especially obvious when you compare mobile ordering to non-mobile ordering from a customer perspective. For non-mobile…

Purchasing without mobile hides all your terrible technology

A customer walks into the retail store and has no idea what a Frankensteinian disgrace the supporting technology really is. The customer buys a product and leaves happy. “I love this store,” she says.

A customer calls an ordering hotline and has no idea the sales person has to log into 10 different systems to place an order and the fulfillment system only works when nobody uses the toaster in the break room. The sales person will talk about the weather, write down the order and credit card number on a piece of paper if there are any problems, and handle the problem after the customer hangs up… happy. “She was so helpful,” he says.

A customer goes online and doesn’t realize the Shopify front-end sends an order via fax machine to a warehouse that isn’t even connected to the rest of the company. The customer places order and leaves, happy. “Wow, this website was fast,” they all think.

In this non-mobile landscape, it doesn’t really matter if the inventory isn’t real-time, nothing works reliably and systems don’t talk because the company internalizes the chaos and hides its technology shame. When it’s busy in the real world, the parking lot at the store and the size of the call center are the natural bottlenecks that tell customers to try again later.

When you introduce mobile — this all changes

The customer opens your app, expects to browse inventory in real time, place an order and receive a confirmation instantly.

The customer opens app to modify order, get tracking numbers and expects accurate ordering and delivery information throughout. They expects your app to provide timely notifications for relevant alerts about the order throughout

A mobile customer goes to the website and expects all of the above functionality, plus completely in-sync performance, to the point where even the shopping carts across mobile and web need to have the same items at the same prices.

The customer visits your mobile app on Black Friday and expects the same performance as any other day.

In each of these cases, previously hidden issues surface directly on the app if it’s just a bolt-on to the problematic infrastructure. I can’t stress enough how this approach creates a window into what’s wrong with your IT.

So when you wake up one day and find yourself facing a mobile app project, initially you might think it’s like the website but with a different front-end. But once you start thinking through the use cases from a customer perspective, that’s when you’ll break out in a cold sweat and realize the project is about fixing your company’s entire IT disaster. Then you’ll either start looking at the cloud or updating your LinkedIn profile.

Standard defensive posture for Mobile Product Managers.

Mobile apps expose the cobwebs, Band-Aids and embarrassing secrets in your technology stack directly to your customer.

Cloud To The Rescue

Describing mobile apps as complicated is like calling a drowning person ‘wet’. In many ways they represent the pinnacle of what can be delivered technically in an IT environment. So no pressure.

If I were writing an enterprise-scale customer-facing mobile app today, I would start with AWS Mobile or Google Firebase. Both of these extraordinarily rich platforms can solve many of the headaches in mobile development. Both have services that will let you solve:

Authentication: let’s users log in seamlessly, integrate with social sign-ons and identify fraud detection along the way.

Messaging: email, SMS, push notifications, integration with Google Now and other smart alerting systems.

Cross-platform development: rich SDKs let you build identical functionality across iOS and Android (you knew about writing everything twice, right?).

Analytics: collect app analytics across millions of device and process at cloud-scale into real-time dashboards.

Scalability: fully managed services that provision and auto-scale underlying hardware when your users get busy and the install base explodes.

Deployment pipelines: allows your developers to write, stage and deploy different parts of the application in a robust, repeatable way.

Testing: device farms that run your apps on hundreds of real devices and collect bugs, crashes and performance issues.

… and the list goes on. Any one of these bullet points would be a nightmare to tackle using on-premise approaches and some would be flat-out impossible. I know, I know, if you had an unlimited budget and thousands of engineers, you could ultimately build all of this yourself. But why build a coal power plant for your toaster when you can just use a power outlet?

Both AWS and Google have a suite of highly affordable world-class services for mobile infrastructure. You can’t do a better job given the time and money available.

Who needs servers anyway?

Amazon Lambda and Google Cloud Functions are two examples of what’s called serverless computing and there is some really compelling goodness here. This is the flying car to your IT’s horse and cart and will likely soon be how all web and mobile development will be done in the future. It’s also impossible to do on-premise so for all the IT folks who think they’re doing private cloud by running VMware, bubble burst.

At a basic level, all any computer system really does is take some input, do something, and produce output. Servers and operating systems hide this fact and give us something to play with and maintain but from a business or application standpoint, they don’t create any actual value. When a user is putting his dog-face on in Snapchat, he doesn’t care if you just resized from a m1.medium instance to an m1.large, or if your dev team just updated their CentOS version. His primary concern is the AddDogface function provided uniquely by the service.

In the serverless world, we focus only writing those functions and nothing else. Serverless affords us the opportunity to complete ignore the infrastructure, pretend it doesn’t exist, and safely assume it will run when needed. What on earth does this mean for mobile? Let’s geek out for a second at this social message app example using AWS Lambda:

Serverless: all scale, no fail.

The beautiful things here might not be immediately apparent:

Whether you have one user or one billion, this will work. The design focuses on functional flow and logic.

You only pay for what you use so the cost scales with your app’s success (there are reported cases of infrastructure costs dropping by 90% with this model).

It’s extremely simple and flexible. Simple and flexible work well for on-time agile mobile products. Complex and fragile do not.

Developers are happiest when writing functionality related to their app and not troubleshooting infrastructure. Trust me on this one.

Serverless infrastructure diagrams are just about the only IT architectures where every component, arrow and dotted line is directly related to your app.

“We’ll never need a mobile app.”

Mobile apps are difficult, unavoidable, challenging, business-changing, enlightening, frustrating, remarkable, fragile and mercurial. Even if your company isn’t producing customer mobile software today, it will be tomorrow.

By any metric, customers are turning to mobile devices ever more often, and it’s only a matter of time before you’ll need a comprehensive mobile game plan. Mobile is profoundly changing the way customers (and employees) interact with companies and there are complex issues to handle.

Cloud solutions give you the best opportunity to deal with the most onerous problems here. It’s hard enough to build a useful, fast, good-looking and functional application that will delight your demanding customers without dealing with issues around scaling, security and agility that have been largely figured out for you. Now go build your awesome serverless mobile app!

Did you enjoy this? If so, click the heart icon! Do you have questions? Don’t be shy, send me a tweet or comment!

In the next installment, I’ll be looking at how cloud services can apply to some common business applications.

Why mobile apps will always end up in the big bucket of fail without the cloud was originally published in A Cloud Guru on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

from A Cloud Guru - Medium http://ift.tt/2oY6LUi

[politicalfilth-blog]

A CIA Cyber False Flag

We Are Change

New revelations from Wikileaks’ ‘Vault 7’ leak shed a disturbing light on the safeguarding of privacy. Something already known and largely suspected has now become documented by Wikileaks. It seems evident that the CIA is now a state within a state, an entity out of control that has even arrived at the point of creating its own hacking network in order to avoid the scrutiny of the NSA and other agencies.

Article via Strategic-Culture

Reading the revelations contained in the documents released by WikiLeaks and adding them to those already presented in recent years by Snowden, it now seems evident that the technological aspect regarding espionage is a specialty in which the CIA, as far as we know, excels. Hardware and software vendors that are complicit — most of which are American, British or Israeli — give the CIA the opportunity to achieve informational full-spectrum dominance, relegating privacy to extinction. Such a convergence of power, money and technology entails major conflicts of interest, as can be seen in the case of Amazon AWS (Amazon’s Cloud Service), cloud provider for the CIA, whose owner, Jeff Bezos, is also the owner of The Washington Post. It is a clear overlap of private interests that conflicts with the theoretical need to declare uncomfortable truths without the need to consider orders numbering in the millions of dollars from clients like the CIA.

While it is just one example, there are thousands more out there. The perverse interplay between media, spy agencies and politicians has compromised the very meaning of the much vaunted democracy of the land of the Stars and Stripes. The constant scandals that are beamed onto our screens now serve the sole purpose of advancing the deep interest of the Washington establishment. In geopolitical terms, it is now more than obvious that the deep state has committed all available means toward sabotaging any dialogue and détente between the United States and Russia. In terms of news, the Wikileaksrevelations shed light on the methods used by US intelligence agencies like the CIA to place blame on the Kremlin, or networks associated with it, for the hacking that occurred during the American elections.

Perhaps this is too generous a depiction of matters, given that the general public has yet to see any evidence of the hacking of the DNC servers. In addition to this, we know that the origin of Podesta’s email revelations stem from the loss of a smartphone and the low data-security measures employed by the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. In general, when the 16 US spy agencies blamed Russia for the hacking of the elections, they were never specific in terms of forensic evidence. Simply put, the media, spies and politicians created false accusations based on the fact that Moscow, together with RT and other media (not directly linked to the Kremlin), finally enjoy a major presence in the mainstream media. The biggest problem for the Washington establishment lies in the revelation of news that is counterproductive to the interests of the deep state. RT, Sputnik, this site and many others have diligently covered and reported to the general public every development concerning the Podesta revelations or the hacking of the DNC.

Now what is revealed through Wikileaks’ publications in Vault 7 is the ability of a subsection of the CIA, known as Umbrage, to use malware, viruses, trojans and other cyber tools for their own geopolitical purposes. The CIA’s Umbrage collects, analyzes and then employs software created variously from foreign security agencies, cyber mafia, private companies, and hackers in general. These revelations become particularly relevant when we consider the consequences of these actions. The main example can be seen in the hacking of the DNC. For now, what we know is that the hacking – if it ever occurred – is of Russian origin. This does not mean at all that the Kremlin directed it. It could actually be very much the opposite, its responsibility falling into the category of a cyber false-flag. One thing is for sure: all 16 US intelligence agencies are of the view that “the Russians did it”. That said, the methods used to hack vulnerabilities cannot be revealed, so as to limit the spread of easily reusable exploits on systems, such as the one that hosted the DNC server. It is a great excuse for avoiding the revelation of any evidence at all.

So, with little information available, independent citizens are left with very little information on which to reliably form an opinion on what happened. There is no evidence, and no evidence will be provided to the media. For politicians and so-called mainstream journalists, this is an acceptable state of affairs. What we are left with instead is blind faith in the 16 spy agencies. The problem for them is that what WikiLeaks revealed with Vault 7 exposes a scenario that looks more likely than not: a cyber false-flag carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency using engineered malware and viruses made in Russia and hypothetically linking them back to hacking networks in Russia. In all likelihood, it looks like the Democrats’ server was hacked by the CIA with the clear objective of leaving Russian fingerprints and obvious traces to be picked up by other US agencies.

In this way, it becomes easier to explain the unique views of all 16 spy agencies. Thus, it is far more likely that the CIA intentionally left fake Russian fingerprints all over the DNC server, thereby misleading other intelligence agencies in promoting the narrative that Russia hacked the DNC server. Of course the objective was to create a false narrative that could immediately be picked up by the media, creating even more hysteria surrounding any rapprochement with Russia.

Diversification of computer systems.

The revelations contained in the Wikileaks vault 7 (less than 1 % of the total data in Wikileaks’ possession has been released to date) have caused a stir, especially by exposing the astonishing complicity between hardware and software manufacturers, often intentionally creating backdoors in their products to allow access by the CIA and NSA. In today’s digital environment, all essential services rely on computer technology and connectivity. These revelations are yet more reason why countries targeted by Washington, like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, should get rid of European and American products and invest in reducing technological dependence on American products in particular.

The People’s Republic has already started down this track, with the replacement of many network devices with local vendors like Huawei in order to avoid the type of interference revealed by Snowden. Russia has been doing the same in terms of software, even laying the groundwork to launch of its own operating system, abandoning American and European systems. In North Korea, this idea was already put into practice years ago and is an excellent tool for deterrence for external interference. In more than one computer security conference, US experts have praised the capabilities of the DPRK to isolate its Internet network from the rest of the world, allowing them to have strong safety mechanisms. Often, the only access route to the DPRK systems are through the People’s Republic of China, not the easiest way for the CIA or NSA to infiltrate a protected computer network.

An important aspect of the world in which we live today involves information security, something all nations have to deal with. At the moment, we still live in a world in which the realization of the danger and effect of hacking attacks are not apparent to many. On the other hand, militarily speaking, the diversification and rationalization of critical equipment in terms of networks and operability (smartphones, laptops, etc) has already produced strong growth in non-American and European manufacturers, with the aim of making their systems more secure.

This strengthening of technology also produces deleterious consequences, such as the need for intelligence agencies to be able to prevent the spread of data encryption so as to always enjoy access to any desired information. The birth of the Tor protocol, the deployment of Bitcoin, and apps that are more and more encrypted (although the WikiLeaks documents have shown that the collection of information takes place on the device before the information is encrypted) are all responses to an exponential increase in the invasion of privacy by federal or American government entities.

We live in a world that has an enormous dependence on the Internet and computer technology. The CIA over the years has focused on the ability to make sure vulnerable systems are exploited as well as seeking out major security flaws in consumer products without disclosing this to vendors, thereby taking advantage of these security gaps and leaving all consumers with a potential lack of security. Slowly, thanks to the work and courage of people like Snowden and Assange, the world is beginning to understand how important it is to keep personal data under control and prevent access to it by third parties, especially if they are state actors. In the case of national security, the issue is expanded exponentially by the need to protect key and vital infrastructure, considering how many critical services operate via the Internet and rely on computing devices.

The wars of the future will have a strong technological basis, and it is no coincidence that many armed forces, primarily the Russian and Chinese, have opted in recent years to training troops, and conducting operations, not completely relying on connectivity. No one can deny that in the event of a large-scale conflict, connectivity is far from guaranteed. One of the major goals of competing nations is to penetrate the military security systems of rival nations and be able to disarm the internal networks that operates major systems of defense and attack.

The Wikileaks revelations are yet another confirmation of how important it is to break the technological unipolar moment, if it may be dubbed this way, especially for nations targeted by the United States. Currently Washington dictates the technological capacities of the private and government sectors of Europe and America, steering their development, timing and methods to suit its own interests. It represents a clear disadvantage that the PRC and its allies will inevitably have to redress in the near future in order to achieve full security for its vital infrastructure.

This article first appeared on Strategic-Culture.org and was authored by Federico Pieraccini.

The post A CIA Cyber False Flag appeared first on We Are Change.

from We Are Change https://wearechange.org/cia-cyber-false-flag/

[unixcommerce]

Sridhar Vembu of Zoho: The Cloud Should Have a Deeper Purpose, But Surveilling Data Isn’t It

Well I know we’re into a new year now, because my first conference of 2020 just ended.  Zoho’s annual analyst event took place in Austin, Texas this week and as in year’s past I had a chance to sit down with CEO and co-founder Sridhar Vembu for a wide-ranging conversation.  And quite literally we had a fireside chat.. while in rocking chairs.

Below is an edited transcript of our conversation, where Vembu shares his thoughts on how the company has developed over the past five years, how it is positioning itself as a technology company and not just a software company, why he feels the cloud should help provide dignity and opportunity to rural communities, and why Zoho is taking a hard stance against the industry practice of “surveilling” customer data.  To hear the full conversation watch the video or click on the embedded SoundCloud player below.

Small Business Trends: When you think about the last five years, what has that meant to Zoho the company?

Sridhar Vembu: We’ve seen tremendous growth. I think we showed, say over six, seven years,  almost 10 fold growth we have seen. And that I think is continuing now; the growth rate is still accelerating now. Now we now have an ability to tell the story as well as we are able to engineer the product. We’ve been a good company, but we were not able to tell the story before. Now, I think these events have helped us refine our messaging, help tell the story and connect with people.

Small Business Trends: So what is the big part of the story that may have been missing a couple of years ago that you can now tell and feel good about?

Sridhar Vembu: I think a lot of it is our culture as a company, how unique it is, how differentiated it is. I mean, we’re shy talking about ourselves as a company.

Small Business Trends: I’m going to say you are very shy …

Sridhar Vembu: Always, always been true. You know my attitude, build a great product, throw it over the fence, people would buy it if they want it. That was the attitude. These things have helped us realize there’s more to it than that. Because ultimately, every engineer has to learn this. Computers don’t buy products people do. And people have a reason, need a reason to buy it.

Small Business Trends: Right.

Sridhar Vembu: They have to feel a connection with who is supplying technology to them. It’s not just only the technology, it’s also the connection, human connection. That’s the biggest thing that has changed in the last five years.

Small Business Trends: Now your evangelist, Raju Vegesna, he said a little earlier today that Zoho is not just a software company. It’s a technology company. Talk about that, what does that mean?

Sridhar Vembu: What Raju means is that this is a company that goes deep down into every aspect of what we do. And that is the depth of technology in terms of the software itself, the hardware underlying it, the networks that are powering or the data centers; all of it.  Also, in a deeper way, for example, we talked about construction, we talked about education, we talked about healthcare. So we think holistically about all these problems, not fragmented pieces, but we think holistically how are we going to get employees, train employees. How do our facilities look and how do they provide a nice home for employees. So these all of these aspects we think about.

Small Business Trends: You always come up with very good phrases. The last time we talked you talked about, how the capital is within the culture of the organization and not the finances.

Sridhar Vembu: Exactly.

Small Business Trends: And that really resonated with not only me but a lot of people. But this year you talked about how you don’t want to be … I want to make sure I get the phrase right. You don’t want to be a cost –

Sridhar Vembu: Costly input to our customers.

Small Business Trends: Costly input to your customers.

Sridhar Vembu: Yes.

Small Business Trends: Talk about what that means?

Sridhar Vembu: This actually came from my observation of the farm problem. The farmer problem, farmers face a problem where their inputs are getting costlier and costlier while the output is getting commoditized. So they’re literally squeezed. In fact, a lot of them have negative margin in their business now more and more, which is why the farm bankruptcies, a lot of the crises, rural crisis, agrarian crisis, which is pretty much worldwide. This is in the US, this is an India everywhere it’s happening.

I spent time in rural India and so I was able to observe these things first hand. Then I realized for a lot of businesses technology is a critical cost and we don’t want to be a costly input to our customers, because then our customers cannot survive in business very long term if they have very costly inputs from us. And so the only way to be sustainable, this relationship to be sustainable is we become an affordable input to them. This provides a nice framework to think about our business, how we structured ourselves. I talked about deep technology that is driven by the fact that we have to avoid costly inputs ourselves so that we don’t become a costly input to our customer.

Small Business Trends: So the other thing that really resonated is not only that you don’t want to be a costly input to your customers, but you want the cloud to be more than some great technology. You want it to – and I never heard anybody talk about it like this –  you want the cloud  to provide dignity.

Sridhar Vembu: Yeah.

Small Business Trends: And give more opportunity.

Sridhar Vembu: Correct.

Small Business Trends: Talk about that a little bit.

Sridhar Vembu: Today with technology we are able to work from anywhere. We just spoke before you said you work from home?

Small Business Trends: Right.

Sridhar Vembu: From Atlanta, in suburb of Atlanta, right? I actually worked for now mostly from rural India now and Raju works in Austin. And yet we are all connected now. I talked to Raju from rural India at least once a week and on video a couple of times a week.

Small Business Trends: Right.

Sridhar Vembu: That’s what technology has enabled now. And this actually has startling implications for where the jobs are to be and what the incomes can be and the identity of people. In other words, if someone is a rural citizen and they have skills now they can actually have a job that pays a meaningful wage, that affords them a dignified life and they’re also be … could be change leaders in their communities. And all of this is possible today that was never before possible.

So to me, the cloud has a broader purpose, a bigger purpose. The cloud is not a delivery channel for software, cloud has a bigger purpose. It enables us to work from anywhere and that liberates us from constraints for example, expensive real estate trap that so many young people are trapped. So many people are trapped in heavy big mortgages in big cities. One of the reasons entrepreneurship has fallen in the last 20 years in this country is because too many people are trapped in heavy mortgage that they … and student loans, all of these issues. So they don’t have the freedom to experiment, freedom to go out on their own. So the cloud can be actually a transformational medium for it and the fact that we can work from anywhere and that is critical.

I see this now in terms that are not purely technology, but its sociological implications that it can revitalize rural areas. It can retain talent, it can even attract talent back into rural areas because rural areas have suffered a brain drain, talent drain for a long time, talent it will be simply upper leaf. But now people can stay in their home towns, maybe come back to their home towns and help revitalize those areas. So all these are possible today.

Small Business Trends: And you talk education in terms of lowering that cost. But when you started looking at the data centers and being able to be more efficient in the way that you use power in that role of it, talk a little bit about that in terms of “costly inputs.”

Sridhar Vembu: I remember one of the biggest cost items would be running the data centers to deliver our services, our applications to customers. One crucial ingredient of data center cost is power. The power consumed by all the servers and the switches and all of that. And it turns out there are many, many ways now to reduce the power and also provide the power in the renewable power, like a hydroelectric power or solar power all of these. So we look for data centers with that, so we now built a solar plant to power data centers in India, we’ve hydro-power powering our data centers in the US, so these are some of the areas that we pay attention to. We also are looking for ways next generation to reduce the amount of power, to serve a particular customer in the data center, this translates both into lower overall power consumption and it also lowers the cost of service delivery long term. So these are things that we look at.

Small Business Trends: One of the stats that came out, I forget who said about it might have been you or it might’ve been Raju, somewhere along the line, it would cost $10 million a year if you are running Zia [Zoho’s AI technology] on AWS. Talk about the impact of not running on AWS has for Zoho, and Zoho customers.

Sridhar Vembu: As you look at our search infrastructure that is searching across a very wide span of applications, it’s sucking in all of the data of the customer in Zoho, indexing it, cross correlating it and cross indexing it. Your CRM data, your financial data, your document data, your email data, your chat data, all of it has to be cross-referenced, correlated, all of that. This takes massive amounts of compute and storage, all of these, these indexes, all that.

Public cloud infrastructure, we did evaluate for this. It cost us a lot more to do this than what it costs to do it ourselves. We would have to increase the prices substantially on our customers.

Customer Data Surveilling

Small Business Trends: I think, this subject today that got a lot of people’s attention was this whole idea of surveillance companies and surveilled data. A lot of people probably don’t know what that means and maybe you could just define what that means?

Sridhar Vembu: Today, regrettably, many consumer internet companies have become de facto surveillance companies. It’s Google and Facebook, all of them. Whether they like to be called that or not, they have become surveillance companies. And exactly the same way that citizens would react to the thought of if the government surveilled them, we also have to react to internet company surveillance. It’s wrong, it’s wrong with them but normally it’s wrong when private companies do it and it’s done with the purpose of marketing all of that data.

But in fact there was news yesterday where this company was fined 140 million something because they were actually the free software for EHR, Electronic Health Records. They were showing the doctors, they were prompting the doctors to prescribe their Opioids. And they had a secret arrangement with a pharma company to enable this, to increase the sales of all those painkiller prescriptions and the Feds caught them and severe fine was imposed on them. This just shows the negative consequence of that type of a business model were you are sharing data with [crosstalk 00:13:05] .

Small Business Trends: Basically, it’s the data/advertising model like Google.

Sridhar Vembu: Yes.

Small Business Trends: They make a lot of their money from ads [crosstalk 00:13:13].

Sridhar Vembu: And this creates really bad incentives on … and there is always somebody with a tempting offer for how we want to use the data. And this example this pharma example shows that.

Small Business Trends: Right.

Sridhar Vembu: But it has a huge cost to society and to people who are prescribed useless painkillers for things they don’t need. So this is why I think it’s important. And at the same time, I would say this, my phone knows everything I do, especially today. To be a smart phone it has to know everything about me. So I’m not worried that it knows what I do, I’m only worried about where the data will go, what the companies that have access to the data build with the data.

Small Business Trends: How they use it.

Sridhar Vembu: How they use it.

Small Business Trends: How they sell it off to the third party.

Sridhar Vembu: Exactly, so this is why I think I draw this thing right to be a smart phone. It needs to know a lot about me, but I don’t want everyone to know everything about me. My where abouts, where I am, what I’m doing right now all of these things, it doesn’t have to be broadcast to the entire world. In effect that’s what has happened to a lot of us, where all these surveillance companies are taking this data and repackaging it and selling it to various parties, without the customers knowledge, you don’t even know how many places this data is going today. And so I do believe that we are going to have … not only this is, in fact I give this analogy, it’s exactly how smoking was 40, 50 years ago, but if we had … we’re sitting here having this chat 40, 50 years ago, one of us would be smoking.

Small Business Trends: Yeah.

Sridhar Vembu: It was very common.

Small Business Trends: Right on TV.

Sridhar Vembu: Right on TV and In this room probably like everybody would be smoking and it would be so common place that we all accepted it.

Small Business Trends: Right.

Sridhar Vembu: Today we actually don’t accept it. Nobody smokes inside buildings and we even have laws against it now that every closed place and offices, hotels everything should be smoke free, no smoking zone. And this happened both by social awareness of the harms of secondhand smoke and legislation. I believe the same thing is happening now, the awareness is spreading that this privacy violation is happening, surveillance is wrong. Now legislation is following, slowly GDPR as an example, California passed a law. I don’t believe stringent regulations are necessarily here and this won’t prevent progress. It will guide it the right direction where we draw boundaries, ethical boundaries. What can a software engineer do with the data? Data is now a valuable thing about a person and so software engineers have to handle it the same way a doctor handles a patient.

Small Business Trends: Medical records, yeah.

Sridhar Vembu: Medical records of a patient. There’re ethical boundaries based on doctors, we need ethical boundaries on software engineers.

Small Business Trends: There was a question because you went over this today and there was a question. I think it’s a pretty valid question, because everybody in industry pretty much is doing this. I don’t know if that’s purposely or not there, it’s the way it’s gone in the industry. But what does that cost Zoho in terms of is there a lost insights? Is there lost revenue? What does that cost you and why do you think the benefit of doing what you’re doing outweighs it?

Sridhar Vembu: So for example, we eliminated all trackers, third party trackers from our site and even our own marketing was apprehensive at first that they’re going to lose certain insights. And I told them that’s okay. We build the tools in house and we do not share the data with anybody so that’s a given. So that was what I said and that did have an initial cost to it. And I’m the certain we cannot compute for certain campaigns we do. And that’s an acceptable price to pay in my opinion, longer term, the trust we had with the customer, is far better than any short term things.

In reality, we have been growing consistently and the growth has actually accelerated in the last couple of years as we have taken a stronger privacy stance. So I would say maybe does even help the business, even though that was not why we did it, because we were willing to pay the price. In fact, we were willing to suffer a reduction on traffic if that’s what’s going to happen. I said, that’s okay. Because life is short.  How badly do you want to be successful if you don’t feel good about how you do it … you cannot sleep well at night. That’s how I put it.

This article, “Sridhar Vembu of Zoho: The Cloud Should Have a Deeper Purpose, But Surveilling Data Isn’t It” was first published on Small Business Trends

https://smallbiztrends.com/

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