The profound rantings of the one like Tom Atkinson… and now art gallery and shop.

Software as a service should actually be rent to buy

Posted by tomachi on January 7th, 2023 filed in Game Development

This post is an enhanced version of the very long comment I posted on this popular Youtube video What Went Wrong with Gaming? uploaded to Youtube 2 weeks ago by Josh Strife Hayes.

My 2 cents on a solution: 1. The industry decides how many hours in a lifetime, for example 200 to 800 hours, sounds like a lot but it is to pay for all this development cycle via beta, early access, pre-release, version 1.0, bugfix, major update, then the final finishing touches and polish at the end. Also define how rent to buy payments add up to a full licenses over time 2. Game devs should **raise** the price of their games premium one-time personal-use "lifetime" license - lets say from $20 to $75 for example - (which covers all updates and patches forever) but also issue fractional and much cheaper 4 to 8 hour licenses (1/100th the time of lifetime) price say $0.75 or $1.50 (lock down the expected slippage from buying in slowly via long-term rent-to-buy, I suggest 50% based on time, this allows discount here for paying up front, and to change the price later in a stable way) then sum together the hours until the lifetime is hit over time (I'm thinking 3 to 5 years before announcing version 2.0 and sealing off the features of version 1.0) and 5 years purchases of the same 800 hours mite end up costing $150 in the end, but still, they *eventually* convert into transferable / re-sellable lifetime accounts if a player purchases the equivalent amount of time in fractional rentals versus in one hit. 3. The industry should work to permanently define what they feel is a lifetime equivalent interaction - probably in terms of number of hours played - that a lifetime constitutes, I suggest a large number like 800 hours but 200 hours maybe more sensible, depending on how long they expect to support the game version. 4. Publishers should indicate clearly what stage they are in - Early Access seems a good example of this; but I would add a late stage when a game is fully designed and updates pushed out, that people can expect new development (in the relevant version of the game) to slow down, accompanied with some final tweaks to pricing but never break the promise that if you purchase a hundred packs of 1/100th a lifetime, then the end result is an upgrade to lifetime license. 5. Devs should find a way to fail gracefully for those who buy lifetime ticket too early but then have game go under (before finishing). Be honest if they are struggling, explain their financials and allow their players to indicate what is important for them to keep working towards that full unlock from rent to buy, and/or indicate the risk of potentially sudden collapse of the project due to funding issue. 6. Then focus more on the artistry and uniqueness and vision they have or are working towards, and what people can expect from the version, or whether certain feature will be put to version 2 requiring another payment altogether.


Disturbing footage: Baby Will medical kidnapping

Posted by tomachi on December 16th, 2022 filed in News

Baby Will being forcibly removed by NZ Police

Does the Bloodbank and Starship feel bad now perhaps for not explaining medical matters on their level and taking a condescending stance that their preference too "impractical" that led to forcible kidnapping, and now, referenced in an Australian shooting?

Holding back on information (I wanna see a pic of the shelf of the Bloodbank so i can visualise the blood products), trying to keep people in the dark about how they come to their decisions or preferences. Not explaining the technical reasons and trying to dumb it down didn't help: I'd sure like to know:

I admit it would be a major pain in the ass to try to organise these transfusion products like that.

But is this "pain in the ass" worth it so the parents don't have to have the police terrorise them?

I don't accept this irrational fear that it would set a precedent and cause others to ask for unvaccinated blood. I visited AKL hospitcal recently (to try and save on GP fee's...) and they didn't seem keen to provide my results, I'm sure when I call up / email them, they will send me mine, find out soon.

It seems reasonable to assume unvaccinated blood would be safer as it has been used for 100 years but the vaccine is new

While I understand a kind of medical kidnapping called medical guardianship maybe standard procedure and nothing new in the democratic dictatorship of NZ, taking a baby from it's parents forcibly because you are unable to explain the variables at play is a weak and lazy approach and a horrific conspiracy to be involved with. Police were called in by the hospital after the baby's parents prevented doctors from taking blood from him for testing (which does sound pretty dumb to be honest but it's besides the point somehow), or performing a chest X-ray or an anesthetic assessment,says RNZ.

Overall, a pretty shocking abuse of power.


Baby Will's parents had ask the blood service take a donation from a person chosen by the family, but the agency refused (why?) as the bloodbank said it does not make a distinction between vaccinated and un-vaccinated donors. But it can and does sometimes handle directed donation, so why the brutality and psychological torture?

Exactly how difficult would that be?

When Dr Kirsten Finucane says it would be impractical to use their donors blood how so?
Is she lazy, under-resourced, evil, or dis-empowered by poor InfoTech solutions to allow their blood donor preference?
Does it require too much  blood, or take too much time? 'Splain yourself!
Did they think their actions would end up with the police kidnapping Baby Will like that? Is that a better outcome overall in hindsight?

Or is it more to do with medicine and timing?

In all this we never hear of why Starship/Bloodbank can not do this, because actually they can according to Dr Jim Faed. My theory is that it is due perhaps to their perceived risk of Transfusion Associated-Graft Versus Host Disease

TA-GVHD, is a rare complication (fewer than one per million transfusions), that has a fatality rate greater than 90%. Patients at particular risk of TA-GVHD include:

HLA matching is used to match patients and donors for blood or marrow transplants. If 2 people share the same HLA type, they are considered a 'match'. It's much more complicated than blood typing.

Is blood for Baby Will's operation needing to be HLA matched?

According to this page HLA matching is used for whole blood and bone marrow transplants. Not sure if this operation needs whole blood, so if not it probably doesn't need HLA matched blood. But whatever the operation needs it could be any of:

I'm trying to figure out how time consuming it is to prepare all this from 2 or 3 donors.

A component for transfusion (I'm guessing only red cells, platelets or plasma?) prepared from either whole blood or from plasma is collected by apheresis and frozen within 8 hours to -25°c. The storage temperature is maintained during transport. Unless for immediate use, the packs must be transferred at once to storage at the recommended temperature. Once thawed the component must be stored at 2 to 6°C and used within 24 hours. It must not be refrozen.

Would Baby Will need Cryoprecipitate? It is made from plasma, and is thawed using a two-stage process. Stage one is an overnight thaw at -5°C and stage two is an overnight thaw between 2 - 6°C. After thawing, the component is re-centrifuged using a hard spin at 2 - 6°C. The supernatant cryoprecipitate-poor plasma is then partially removed. The sedimented cryoprecipitate is then rapidly frozen. -Need any of that do you reckon Keen to know is all.

I don't think Baby Will's operation requires any fractionated product, I'm about to ask my Dad, but if it did maybe that would be one of:

No Idea How Much Effort
No idea how long it takes to produce any of the stuff above. Also is their donor suitable and able to provide enough volume of blood in time?

Shouldn't the judge have ordered the Bloodbank and Starship hospital to use the blood from Baby Will's parents donor? Instead of using police force?

If they want to do the operation so badly, maybe using the directed donor not so bad? It does sound somewhat time-consuming to make... but ordering the forcible removal of the baby and the use of random blood?

Isn't this a lazy waste of blood?

Using Baby Will's directed donor might mean somebody else can benefit from the same blood.

Forcibly taking a child from it's parents should only be done in the most extreme of situations; instead the judge could have compelled the parents to allow the operation, or compel Starship to comply with the directed donation.

What happened was an international disgrace. It's is such a pity that NZ Judge's have such scant concern for human rights.

Haematologist and transfusion medicine specialist Dr Jim Faed says direct donation of blood from people who aren't vaccinated could be done but is difficult due to:

Transfusion-associated graft-versus-host disease (ta-GVHD) is a rare and usually fatal complication of blood transfusion in which lymphocytes from the transfused blood component attack the recipient's tissues, especially the skin, bone marrow, and gastrointestinal tract.

The Debating World Champion Explains Why Agreement Is Overrated

Our impulse to seek out agreement is stifling us, says world debate champion Bo Seo in this thought provoking article and video over at BigThink To Seo, a world where everyone agrees all the time would not only be worse off intellectually, it would be boring.

adjective
  1. 1.
    not adapted for use or action; not sensible or realistic.
    "impractical high heels"


Going Cashless would be lazy, reckless, and nearly pointless

Posted by tomachi on December 5th, 2022 filed in News

Are the so-called benefits from "going cashless" really proven? Which country has done this? I'm starting a petition to make "payment preference cash" a protected characteristic under human rights law.

Who is asking for this?

What is their ulterior motive?

The March 1989 geomagnetic storm caused a nine-hour outage of Hydro-Québec's electricity transmission system. The onset time was exceptionally rapid. Luckily they didn't need power for their currency.

Then in 1998 a 33 day blackout happened: in some cases 3 inches of ice had built up on in a storm that took down 24,000 poles, involved 4,000 transformers, and downed or damaged 1,000 electrical pylons, causing more than 3,000 km of downed electrical conductor; this cost a total of C$800 million to repair. 90% of those affected by the blackout had no power for more than seven days, with the longest outage being 33 days.[19][71] Although power was fully restored to all locations in Quebec by February 8, 1998, it wasn't until mid-March that the power facilities were back in service.[72] By then, much social and economic damage had occurred, such as ruined food and deaths resulting from lack of electric heating.

Cashless maybe an attractive panacea for some authoritaria fascist governments, but going cashless for the hell of it is an absolutely horrendous idea, we must know what we are doing and why. Cashless is a very dangerous and lazy experiment considering the negative ramifications on law-abiding citizens who use it. Such a move is typically irreversible, especially during a power outage. Nobody is desperate for it to be urgently removed and it desperately must stay for fail-over reasons. Also bring back cheques for fucks sake. Cheques didn't hurt you did they? If they did... who are you, a bank? Banks deserve little or no sympathy. Are you a business? Businesses haven't accepted cheques for years in this country, but they made nice gifts sent by mail. I was very disturbed to learn our recent horrible and mentally retarded government has also been trying to meddle with cash.

Hands Off Cash Fools Slow The Heck Down

Horrified today to learn the submissions have closed, here is what I have to say on the matter.

Cash is used to great extent and is without equal used by/for:

In 1860 a solar flare energised phone-lines, causing operators to rip out their earpieces in pain, and ignited fires all about the place. The same event today, if it wiped out all the power transformers (for example) would also wipe out cashless, putting us firmly back on cash, and possibly even back to cheques. In 2019, the global power transformer market was valued at $27.7 billion, reaching $50 billion by 2027.

https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/power-transformers-market

 

You could argue some reasons why these fools are considering meddling in matters:

Why on earth would you want to take that away? A sensible step, prior to this, would be to fully and completely repeal The Misuse of Drugs Act, then proceed to tax on entry whichever part of $32 billion worldwide illegal drugs trade then became funnel through here. By not requiring a tax exit we'd have no idea where it's all going theoretically, could be great source of welding jobs, or of sub-marine building companies I dunno. NZ is a shipping nation. We can come up with a boat to move drugs to the world, just like in the America's Cup.

Also who asked you to ask cash money ala notes away? Seriously who asked you to do this?

How is cash hurting them? Ceasing trying to tax those earning less than 20k, and raise the tax-free income bracket to $20k.

 

The Carrington Event

The Carrington Event was the most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history, peaking from 1 to 2 September 1859 during solar cycle 10. It created strong auroral displays that were reported globally and caused sparking and even fires in multiple telegraph stations.


Pic of Jupiter and Neptune!

Posted by tomachi on November 24th, 2022 filed in Science, Smart phones, Visuals

I just realised how low-res Twitter and Facebook are! Not enough to see these planets.
If you keep clicking on this image it will eventual link to a

3456 x 4608 pixel original version

I just realised how low-res Twitter and Facebook are! If you keep clicking on this image it will eventual link to a 3456 x 4608 pixel original version I think this is a pic of Jupiter and Neptune! Thu 24 Nov 2022 17:45:48 in Auckland. ISO6400 and a 1/7 second handheld taken in between breathes by the looks. f/1.6 on my Oppo Find X octocpu-phone. I think this is a pic of Jupiter and Neptune! Thu 24 Nov 2022 17:45:48 in Auckland. ISO6400 and a 1/7 second handheld taken in between breathes by the looks. f/1.6 on my Oppo Find X octocpu-phone.

I think this is a pic of Jupiter and Neptune! Thu 24 Nov 2022 17:45:48 in Auckland. ISO6400 and a 1/7 second handheld taken in between breathes by the looks. f/1.6 on my Oppo Find X octocpu-phone.

Aint' it just so horrifically hard to take a good pic of the moon on your phone?!


People who believe misinformation is scary seem highly retarded to me.

Posted by tomachi on November 4th, 2022 filed in Rants

It's not scary it's enjoyable. Better to be a happy retard than a miserable fraudulent peddler of "truth" or a Zucked up "trusted news initiative" fact checker, what a joke.

Jacinda Ardern Karen

Jacinda Ardern what a fucking giant Karen

Information is the base level of reality below quantum fields. It encompasses bullshit too so it's impossible to separate out a category of information that is outside of the other set "real information" - that's absurd and I don't trust the motherfuckers putting that garbage out. There is no such reason to fear misinformation just like there is no Dark Matter / Dark Energy - how do these retards plan to prove that the artifacts are part of the nefarious "bad information" as if the stuff had a north or south pole clearly visible. Intentionally misleading content is still content, it's just that it's not true, and yes there is political propaganda, fake cover stories, and cover ups that might qualify. That's different though. People generally don't go shouting untrue information at full volume to all their friends and family - why would they? People talk bullshit at high volume because they believe its true not because they believe it's false.

#freejulianassange

Even if there was such a thing, call it "untrue facts" or whatever, this abstract substance is just a subset of a greater more encompassing set: all information. And rather than some figment of the imagination, anti-matter is real proven stuff. It's not anti-information. The actual criminal content is already illegal and does not need extra treatment. The proposed or perceived negative effects of these thoughts or ideas is exactly what? Vaccine hesitancy? That is a good outcome - 1. fools rush in it took 5 years to understand what the side-effects of Thalidomide are, 2. It's a leaky vaccine, not like normal sterilizing vaccines and should only be given to those at risk, not children. 3. It converts people into super-spreader viral body shedding "virus evolution environments".

I watched the Berg beheading video... sure, it is one of those "what has been seen, can not be unseen" moments.

Lets say the Christchurch mosque shooting as an example of a negative effect of information, let's say a result of the Al Quada mind virus that led to the world trade centres being hit by planes... well it's not really misinformation is it? 9/11 Was a real event best I can tell. How you gonna suppress that? Do you reckon you could prove that harm came from some leak from whistleblower? Bigotry and racial hatred is not "information". The Christchurch attack wasn't even terrorism, it would an Australia nutter who acted alone, and did not have "a message" or threat that others from his cell could act on, unlike Osama Bin Laden, who had been trying to bomb that place since all through the nineties - remember the basement carpark bomb? Facts tend to have half-lives. Consider Newton's theory of gravity usurped by Einstein. Or that the sun always rises in the East. It won't always do that. As Socrates once said: Wisest is he who claims no knowledge. People who claim to know the truth and what is right and wrong are fools.

This bomb I don't was Misinformation... it was a force that killed 6 people.

I tend to agree with the analysis of SOYEON Lim, available in this pdf:

Some contend that the media has a right of editorial
judgement, which is an exercise of the broader right to free speech in
the mass media context. For example, the print media has a right to
determine what photographs and text will comprise articles in the
absence of positive legal restrictions. The United States Supreme
Court has held that this right stems from the personal right to free
speech, rather than being a special journalistic right. The First
Amendment precludes the government from exercising prior restraint
on speech and shields the press from retaliation over what gets
published. Unlike the individual right to free speech, the media’s
freedom is ethically limited by the obligation to serve the public.
Publications must, therefore, be linked to seeking truth, or constitute
an opinion or criticism related to this goal.

...

The Unique Value of Visual Accounts

Sharing the disturbing visual content of the video could be justifiable
if it had informative value. Often, raw and unsanitised images taken
on the scene and published by the media become icons of significant
events. Ethical principles direct the media to publish all information
that adds value to the truth-seeking process, including fearlessly
identifying and using original sources (where possible) without
distortion. The right images can show in detail what really happened,
something which words alone cannot truly convey. 96 In particular, a
first-hand visual account can communicate the impact of something,
which is not always imaginable via words.
Graphic and violent images have informative value when the
violence in itself has meaning and is directly connected to the truth
sought by the media.

 

Well, I got some unsanitised visual information for ya right now ya bastard: How about footage of Tiananmen Square Massacre where maybe up to 10,000 lost their lives... leaving a messy human mince meat left behind after the Communist bastards tanks rolled "tank man" and helpless female students were bayoneted to death.


Google's new ad policy caught my eye. My bung eye that is.

Posted by tomachi on June 2nd, 2022 filed in Rants

The saucey nature of this email I received as a Google Ads customer - makes me wonder how far geo-targetted it is to my part of the world - New Zealand. Hopefully it's the Australians with the mail order bride problem not NZ. Hard to say.The email is below if you'd like to read. In June, Google will update it's enforcement procedures for Google ads. Essentially it says no hookers, no mail order brides, and no highly leveraged investment options schemes please. Very interesting.

Hang on, mail order brides and compensated sexual acts? Wowee. How is this even a thing on Google Ads? Google does not allow hookers and sex slaves to run ads, but I guess, this shows some advertisers are "sneaking in" ads disguised as something else using their platform. This is kinda amazing.

How does this be a thing? Dating site perhaps?  I guess that could be tricky to police aye?

Let's say the email was mostly written for Australia / NZ customers by Google global, what would that say? If it is written to address the global issues they face, then maybe, hopefully, this mail-order brides issue has nothing to do with New Zealand or Australia? I reckon we busted for compensated sexual acts though. Hehe. That's mostly what caught my eye actually.

 

 

 

Sometimes, from an infosec perspective, it's interesting to read about "whats hot" in state of the art criminal activity / technology crime.

Is Google seeing increased use of its ad network for prostitution in New Zealand?

 

I'm mostly sure this email would be geo-targetted for NZ, and only goes to Google Ads customers in New Zealand and possibly some other countries nearby.

 

 

Maybe I need to get a job (yeah)... so I don't think about such matters and make such blog posts etc... and I know it's a but: sounds like hookers, mail-order brides, and binary options are big at the moment! Is this email digging the fact I last paid for a Google ad in NZD? On my main MCC account which is also my core Google account (agency account).

This post is jovial. As in not serious. Please don't start a new mail order human or binary options trading company.

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