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solarianvoidthearoace · 4 years ago

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Excerpt#1 of my Gerry Keay/OC Magical/Mythical CollegeAU

CN/TW: Social Anxiety, discussion of mental illness, discussion of past trauma, awkward coming-out, miscommunication, misunderstanding, it/its pronouns for Michael Shelley, he/they pronouns for Gerry, they/them pronouns for OC, narrative mention of Mary Keay, mention of alcohol, mythical people living in a parallel society and amongst humans, original character talking German (two sentences; extrapolable from context)

“But sure, you're seeming nice so no problem.” Heaving a relieved sigh, Gerry followed them into the room. The two taking seats in the lower rows of the auditorium, seeing as Gerry’s companion wore glasses. Unpacking their notepads, pencil cases, and Gerry setting up his laptop. There was still time until the lecture was set to begin, so Gerry turned to his table neighbour,

“Your look sends very mixed signals, if I’m being honest.” They grinned, propping their chin up on the back of their hand,

“All the right ones, apparently”, demonstratively looking Gerry up and down. Making them look away, clearing his throat. They laughed,

“Not flirting, don’t worry. I’m Yanis.” He tried masking his relieved sigh best they could,

“Gerry.”

They did pay attention to the lecture, still, Gerry found out a bit more about his dyed ginger saviour. Yanis was in the same semester and some of the same courses has he was. Though they didn’t study for the same engineering degree, there was a decent overlap. Some courses Gerry needed for his software engineering degree much the same as Yanis needed for mechanical engineering. They easily offered they could study together. Yanis having been at the campus since they started their degree and knowing the ins and outs of it.

Having easily found common ground in their discipline of study, as well as their taste in music, Gerry had no qualms following Yanis to the canteen for a late breakfast. They kept chatting, switching back and forth between languages.

“So what if you’re 31?”, Yanis shrugged,

“I also had to take care of my health first. Plus we’re both neurodivergent so starting a college degree at all is more stressful to us. It’s not like anyone is rushing you.” Gerry rolled their eyes,

“Still. Being autist and depressed doesn’t exactly help my case here. That’s ignoring the ADHD and trauma.” A painted-black nail flicked his nose,

“Nope. None of that, you’re not demanded to keep pace with anyone and if your personal reasons bared you from even looking into college education until you were 25, then that’s how it is. Besides, it’s eight years between us. Don’t be dramatic.” Gerry tried to glare but they simply raised a brow in challenge, shutting him right up. While they weren’t in the same major, they compared their course schedules some more and found they were in the same philosophy and ethics courses for their minor. Gerry having decided to not put that on hold and taking the according courses in his semester in Germany as well.

By the end of the day, Gerry felt they had a better handle on his new college-everyday and possibly even made a friend. Which raised a few problems all of its own.

While Gerry had no problem with Yanis finding out what concretely had delayed his life so much, they had another problem. Gerry wasn’t human. And neither was their best friend Michael, for the matter, it being a changeling and his nature chaotic to a fault. Gerry themself was, depending on what one believed, involuntarily threatening to humans.

His mother having been a hulder, a mythical being almost looking like a human. The feature most telling of their mythical nature, though, the fact that they look hollow if seen in the right light, from the right angle. Akin to forest spirits, hulders were drawn by their nature to lure townspeople into forests. Not inherently malicious, of course, their blonde hair and fair skin drawing mostly men in.

With an established mythical society existing in parallel to the non-magical human society, there were laws and proper paperwork surrounding magical and mythical people’s “otherness” and characteristics.

Characteristics which were the life-long obsession of his mother. Her trying to create offspring of her own that would be inherently dangerous to humans and as malicious as she had been. Gerry hated thinking about his father almost more than he hated his mother. But matter of fact was, being half-hulder, and his father having been a river-nix, Gerry was… alluring. Drawing people in without them realising as much if he acted the wrong kind of way towards them. Gerry forced to be constantly mindful of their nature, as to not accidentally harm someone.

Which was why they usually didn’t make friends. Having to make sure the person wasn’t human as to not endanger them.

And yet, they got stuck with Yanis. Gerry was glad it was autumn, the chance of light hitting him in just the wrong way dwindling. But he couldn’t help their worried unease, recognising Yanis and them grew closer.

It wasn’t that Gerry was set out to avoid Yanis, having taken them up on an invitation to lunch and even to revise notes and study together. But Gerry had a bad feeling about it, especially when he grew to see them as a friend. They did try bringing some more distance between them, an attempt so he didn’t need to outright evade Yanis. Declining their invitations more often than not, excusing themself and finding reasons to convince himself it was the right thing to do.

Having forced himself to take a step back, Gerry caught themself looking for them. It had started so he could more easily get around them, trying to deter Yanis from inviting him in the first place so they didn’t have to turn them down as often.

Gerry wasn’t oblivious to their whole demeanour getting muted once it had clicked that he was trying to push distance between them. But seeing Yanis less cheery and energetic made Gerry realise some things about them.

Yanis wasn’t much smaller than him, a few inches at most. But they carried themself in a way that made them stand out. Gerry had learned Yanis had chronic pain, making it hard on them to be on their feet the entire day. Rarely, they wore leg braces, limiting their range of motion further than their chronic pain already did. Still, Yanis was confident and most days glossing over their frequent aches with relative ease. It had been more apparent when they hadn’t been upset but the way Yanis walked was… with purpose. Every step seeming deliberate and not to be questioned. While that cocksure confident way to carry oneself wasn’t all that remarkable, it stood out in Yanis.

And Gerry needed a good long while to figure out why.

Michael had badgered them to get out and socialise. It was the last week before winter break and there was a social happening of the engineering faculty. Gerry had put on a nice button shirt and proper slacks before touching up their black nail polish and putting on a hint of eyeliner.

Yes, he was cautious not to accidentally draw humans in but that didn’t mean he wasn’t allowed to tart themself up. Gerry hadn’t even really planned to talk to anyone, if they were being honest. Just mingling among people and feeling alone in the crowd instead of feeling alone by himself.

That was, until aquamarine and black varnished fingers held a bottle in his field of vision. Gerry couldn’t fight down his smile before closing their eyes. Shaking his head, they just let it happen. Let that gentle affection wash over him for just a moment.

“Thought you might be here tonight”, Yanis held out the drink,

“The crown cap is still sealed.” Gerry pulled a face as to not smile despite themself. He sighed,

“You’re quite persistent.” Yanis raised a rather expressive brow at him,

“If you honestly wanted me gone, you would have told me. So I dare say you don’t want me completely gone. It’s nice having someone who can keep up with my ADHD jumping through topics, plus being able to overlook what allistics call me weird for.” When he finally took the bottle, their smile turned from friendly to bright. He bit his lip, trying to hide it behind the bottle. Yanis offered them their bottle opener.

“Got me there. And yes, having a neurodivergent friend is quite unwinding”, he admitted. Opening the drink, Gerry took them in. A proper once-over. They weren’t primped either but certainly had put thought into their casual suit not clashing with their once-again stark-red hair. Gerry having seen Yanis cycling through vibrant red washing out to ginger, before they went back to dyed poppy-red.

Gerry felt admittedly awkward standing together with them. Very much aware of how they had avoided them after all. Nursing their drinks, they kept quiet. Even though Gerry noticed Yanis also taking in his appearance. After some time he sighed,

“I’m sorry. It’s…”, they broke off, shaking his head.

“Complicated?”, Yanis offered with a huff,

“That’s one way to put it, I suppose.” Gerry raised a brow at them. Before he could ask what they were referring to, though, Yanis turned to him properly.

“Did you notice there’s a dance floor?” They blinked in surprise,

“Uh… yea, I did.” Yanis snorted, taking his empty bottle from them and depositing the glass on a nearby tray for used tableware.

“So, can you dance?”, Yanis’ smile inviting and warm,

“And would you dance with me?” Gerry froze, biting his lip and looking away. He knew they shouldn’t. They were very much aware that Yanis needed to keep their distance from him. He swallowed thickly,

“I can dance but…” Yanis hummed expectantly.

“We shouldn’t, okay? I don’t want to elaborate on that.” Yanis’ face cleared as they gave a soft ‘oh’ of understanding.

When Gerry looked back at them, Yanis was looking at them. The expression in their eyes making him pause. A glint of intent, resolve. But their overall demeanour had changed as well. That deliberate way they carried themself was back, not in a way that intimidated. But even standing next to Gerry, he could see they were moving with an intent, with a conscious focus on the way they moved to get there.

Yanis licked their lip,

“I will respect your turndown. But I would like you to know that I know.” Gerry froze. Raising a brow, Yanis’ tone turned gentler still,

“And I really don’t want to push you towards anything. Or put you up to anything.” Gerry felt his amusement bubbling up when Yanis said as much. The idea of someone human inciting a mythical or magical person to anything at all seemed a bit laughable.

“I’m aromantic myself”, they shrugged,

“And asexual.” Their smile turning into a bit of a smirk, cheeky just around the edges. Gerry’s face cleared in surprise, his jaw dropping a bit. His amusement freezing over with a faint ‘oh’ of their own. Before he grimaced,

“I am aromantic, yes, but that’s not it. I’m sorry, you’re a really nice person. You have been nothing but friendly and a reliable friend at that. It’s…”

Yanis closed their eyes, brows raised, before they snorted.

“Let me stop you right there. I know you have been avoiding me, I have respected that you were avoiding me”, they looked him in the eye,

“If you want me gone, I won’t bother you again. I’ll be out of your hair and we don’t have to even talk again.” Gerry felt his face fall, nervously biting his lip once more. Yanis wasn’t done just yet,

“But if you would like to, I want to get to know you”, a short jerk of their head,

“Properly get to know you. I think both our first gut feeling about the other was that we could become pretty great friends. And that’s all I’m suggesting.” Gerry needed a moment to process that. To let sink in that Yanis was really just curious about his friendship. Something they had so far always had to be wary around. At least until Gerry knew whether the person in question was human. Yanis huffed,

“While you process whether to give us a try, I’ll get us new drinks.” Gerry blinked, then nodded when they realised Yanis was waiting on his okay. Another one of those bright friendly smiles before they turned away. Gerry didn’t know what it was but they followed Yanis with his eyes. Their red hair easy to make out even in the crowd.

Just as he was about to turn away, he noticed something. Yanis was a very body-aware person, conscious and deliberate to a point it might seem standoffish. They had explained how it related to their chronic back and joint pain. But as Gerry watched them move through the crowd, he realised just how easily they moved around people. Almost light-footed, turning out of others’ ways with ease.

Despite them being almost as tall as him, and dressed in dark clothes, something about Yanis’ way through the crowd seemed almost airy.

It didn’t fit. It should have clashed immensely.

As they moved back towards him, Gerry realised what had been so weird about Yanis’ bodily confidence. They didn’t seem to make way for themself. Not at all. While that sureness was clear as day, written all over their most minute movements.

The way Yanis moved was the harsh opposite. Gerry was tempted to call it floaty. He knew they could make a way for themself through people, had witnessed as much a few times in the bustle of the campus. But how Yanis moved around people seemed just as natural.

Not even the slightest touch between them and the people around, as if some shimmer was keeping Yanis from being touchable. Kept up their airy strut, as if they weren’t turning and stepping around people.

The contrast did not make sense. And seeing as Gerry’s best friend was a changeling, well, if things didn’t make sense, it was likely some faerie or other was involved.

Which, on the one hand, would mean Yanis was safe from his own magic. But on the other hand it would raise so many more questions around them. About them.

Gerry couldn’t help his sceptical look when Yanis returned. Frowning at them, unsure whether to trust what they had seen.

“You're looking at me like that again”, Yanis raised a brow at him. Gerry gnawed his bottom lip,

“You’re a bit of a mystery, if I’m being honest.” But took the offered bottle none the less. Yanis’ warm smile returned,

“Well, I suppose it’s on you whether you care to figure me out, then.” An easy shrug as they raised a brow at him.

Gerry didn’t reply. They had not clue what to reply to that. And what they wanted to reply in the first place. Yanis didn’t push him. Much to Gerry’s relief. They fell back into companionable silence, emptying their drinks. When the bottles were empty, Yanis looked at him for a long moment. Searching their face. Yanis’ expression fell a bit, their smile not reaching their eyes anymore. Still, they only grimaced a little before sighing,

“So… have a good night, then.” Taking his empty bottle to take it away with their own, Yanis turned to go. Looking back over their shoulder,

“I guess I’ll see you around.” And with a final shrug and smile, they were gone in the crowd. Gerry stared after them before he closed their eyes and sighed. Silently cursing themself, he turned away from the crowd as well. One hand coming up to cover his mouth. Yanis had been right, if Gerry really had wanted them gone, he could have told them as much anytime. If they had wanted Yanis gone, he could have told them as much when they literally offered to leave him alone.

But Gerry didn’t. Because Gerry hadn’t and still didn’t want them gone.

They spent another few minutes turning things over in his head. What he had to consider if they really tried building a genuine friendship with Yanis.

Once he started looking around for them, Gerry regretted their delay. Not able to make out the red shock of hair, Gerry pulled out his phone. If he couldn’t find Yanis, he might at least tell Michael about his hunch. They had been friends for forever but Gerry still wasn’t all that confident to make out people that were connected to faerie. It was his best idea at the moment but he might just as well be off. Asking Michael for his opinion was a solid thing, also maybe it could distract Gerry if they really didn’t find Yanis again. Which meant Gerry would have to approach them around their next shared lecture.

Pocketing their phone, he looked up and around once more.

And huffed in amusement, Yanis standing almost directly in his line of vision. Albeit turned from them and leaning with their chin propped up over a bar table. Despite having avoided them, Gerry knew their usual posture well enough to see Yanis had to adjust to their pain at the moment. Holding their weight cautiously and reducing tension in their back and legs. Coincidentally, Yanis was looking at their own phone when Gerry came closer. And if he wasn’t mistaken, they were looking at the recent chat chronic between the two of them. The small frown pulling down the corner of Yanis’ lips gave Gerry a weird boost of confidence.

As he stepped up to the table, Yanis looked up.

“Du schon wieder”, they raised a brow but their frown had vanished. The quip good natured and accompanied by a small smile. Gerry couldn’t help smiling themself. With a slight head-tilt, he shrugged,

“Well, I can admit that I went looking for you.” Feeling a blush creep up on him, they tried fighting down his smile. Yanis turned to them fully, still with one elbow leaning on the table, they raised a brow. Giving Gerry a once-over. A short jerk of their head,

“Okay, und?” Gerry took a deep breath,

“You wanted to dance with me”, he shrugged,

“How about that invitation?” Yanis’ smile brightened a bit, stepping away from the table and coming closer. They offered him a hand,

“Your lead or mine?”

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system76 · 4 years ago

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In our everyday lives, we have the means to fix many of the tools we use on a daily basis. Even though many still choose to hire professionals, taking apart your blender, bike, or even your car takes only some simple tools and curiosity to find out how things work. When it comes to consumer electronics, however, the landscape is very different. Here at System76, we believe the right to repair your computer should be the same as the right to repair anything else—sadly, many of our representatives in government don’t feel the same way.

Yesterday, the state of Colorado held a hearing on Right to Repair legislation, known as the Consumer Digital Repair Bill of Rights (HB21-1199). According to the Colorado General Assembly, the bill would require electronics manufacturers to provide people with the resources needed to repair their equipment. This includes, “parts, embedded software, firmware, tools, or documentation, such as diagnostic, maintenance, or repair manuals, diagrams, or similar information.” As part of this effort, System76 Founder/CEO Carl Richell and Principal Engineer Jeremy Soller traveled to the Capitol to speak in support of this legislation.

System76’s stance as a pro-Right-to-Repair company goes all the way to the top. Open source technology has been the company mission since its inception, and the right to repair is no different. “To produce open source hardware means that we have developed and shared the recipe to create a high-end commercial product that can be learned from, adapted, and used by anyone else,” Carl said in a previous interview on our blog. “Everything about that product is owned by the user just as much as it’s owned by us.”

You can listen to Carl’s testimony here:

Transcript:

Thank you for holding this meeting and considering the Consumer Digital Repair Bill of Rights legislation. I'm Carl Richell, CEO and Founder of System76. We're a 15 year old computer manufacture in your backyard. A few years ago we built a factory at 70 and Peoria. Our computer factory is one of only two in the United States. We ship most of our products to over 60 countries.

When we ship a computer to a customer, they own it. They can open it and examine the components. They can observe the way the computer is designed. They can buy replacement parts. They can fix it themselves. They can break it. It's their property.

Not allowing someone to fix their property, means it's not their property.

Imagine if we were talking about cars. You get a flat tire and Ford tells you to stop. You're not allowed to change that tire. I know you can't get anywhere but you have to send that in to us to get going again. Electronics are no different. They don't move when they break. Those that oppose right to repair would like you to think computers are incredibly complex things. They're not. And the more people that are allowed to repair their own devices, the more people will understand that. That's good for all of us because there is no more powerful tool than the computer.

I was 25 when I founded System76. We're now a successful company, but we started with nothing. I didn't have much to put in except hard work. On a road trip at the time, the head-gaskets in my car blew and I didn't have the money for a mechanic. I bought parts and fixed my engine with my father in law. I learned a lot about how engines work in the process.

When I was younger than that, I took apart and built computers. Frankly, I took apart everything. Sometimes, I got it back together. Regardless of whether it worked afterward or not, I learned a lot in the process. That education through curious tinkering gave me the passion for computers and technology that I have today.

I fear for a future locked behind security screws. What next small business like System76 won't happen because we don't allow people to learn about the products they own? Maybe that's why massive corporations oppose this bill. They don't want another System76.

Thank you for taking the time to listen. I urge you to support and pass the Consumer Digital Repair Bill of Rights.

The right to repair has been advocated for as a means of consumer freedom, but Jeremy is bringing a new argument to the table. “American companies can not only still profit in a Right to Repair environment, they can even profit more. We are looking forward to this legislation so that we can leverage our upstream providers to provide even more details about the products that we sell.”

After acquiring hardware schematics for components such as motherboards and embedded controllers, Jeremy was able to write coreboot-based open source firmware and EC firmware for System76 laptops. As a result, we were free to innovate and engineer a better product for our customers.

You can listen to Jeremy’s testimony here:

Transcript:

Hello committee members,

My name is Jeremy Soller. I am the Principal Engineer at System76—a Denver, Colorado based computer company. We are FOR the Consumer Digital Repair Bill Of Rights.

I want to provide a unique perspective, as someone working in the computer industry in Colorado. Our company is based in Denver, Colorado, and has been in business for 15 years. We employ over 50 people in Colorado. We operate a manufacturing facility in Denver, Colorado, manufacturing desktop computers.

For the lifespan of our company, we have always been on the side of our customers. We have negotiated with component vendors to ensure customer access to parts and information. We have developed many of our products with independent repairs in mind. And I am here to tell you that the Right to Repair will help our Colorado based company grow, in both revenue and employees.

This bill ensures that we can continue to negotiate with our component vendors on behalf of our customers, and gives us leverage to provide the customer with better products.

This bill ensures that our customers continue to have access to the tools they need to repair our valuable products instead of throwing them away.

Finally, this bill ensures that our competitors are operating on a level playing field — that consumers are treated fairly and that competition is encouraged in our marketplace.

Please feel free to ask me any questions you have.

For Colorado!

Though Right to Repair legislation has so far been an uphill battle, Jeremy is certain that all it takes is one. “The first state that passes a Right to Repair act will completely change this industry,” he said in a recent interview. “Any American state would be too big for these overseas suppliers to ignore.”

Right now, if somebody wanted to open a Right to Repair-oriented company they may not even be able to, because they can’t get ahold of schematics for essential components. Passing this bill would create these opportunities, and create jobs for Coloradans.

Colorado has an opportunity to become an ethics-forward Silicon Valley that attracts the country’s brightest minds to work here. If you’re a Colorado resident and want to get involved, we highly encourage you to contact your local representatives and ask them to approve this legislation to help empower the Open Source revolution.

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tinydark · 5 years ago

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State of the Studio (Feb 2020)

A half-year later, here’s where tinydark is, has been, and where we’re going.

Sept → Nov 2019

Went mostly as planned. I spent time improving my own web development workflow and learning Svelte. I spent far too long researching the histories of Cantr, Faerytale Online, and Marosia. I researched the value of roleplay and how to build traditional fantasy worlds.

Introduced multiplayer into GAM3, our proprietary game engine. Made a basic chat/roleplay prototype. Completely discarded the old player-side experience to be built in Svelte. Started writing some lore in World Anvil.

December 2019

I said GAM3′s refactoring would “either take me 25 or 100 hours.” This month it became apparent to me that I was in for a minimum of 100 hours of refactoring work.

I’d forgotten just how much GAM3 can do. It’s made singleplayer narrative games, resource management games, and even an RTS-style strategy game. It can even resurrect StoryNexus games. There was (and is) a lot to port over.

Before this initiative began, I had a laundry list of important GAM3 things I had to do. I kind of forgot this important fact until I began stumbling into things I’d remembered documenting. So I did most of them.

Software and especially game development always take longer than you think. Moving from generating views in PHP to holy grail of JavaScript has not been without pains.

Still I was optimistic for a release of the tech prototype mid-January, after my work trip.

January 2020

We started the New Year with the abrupt announcement that Marosia was returning, under new management, handing the right to use its IP, code, and assets over to a community member named Will.

After a brief and not-actual panic attack, I was relieved. I had been feeling the need to put something out ASAP, launch a teaser site in February and release around June/July. I still maintain that I could have done that, but not how I should have. The games industry is full of Early Access and unfulfilled developer promises and I don’t want to add to the malaise. I was relieved and quietly settled down to refactor the engine and work on the prototype.

February 2020

The prototype launched on February 2nd; a little later than I’d wanted, especially considering my good pal Cody wrote most of the content. I lost some time to a misunderstanding of how reactivity worked in Svelte, but no matter; I was and am incredibly happy with the end result. I can do so much without a single call to the database, or a server request at all, and that has far-reaching implications.

I then grinded hard to build out features for the second wave of prototype testers; too hard, but it was done. It felt good to play game developer again.

Reception’s been lukewarm because it’s a tech demo. All people could do is roleplay and pick clothing out of a bin, and equip them. We’re farther along now but there’s still a lot of work to be done before it’s a fun game.

Untitled Roleplaying Game

Working genre: “Persistent Open World RPG.” I hope to release by the end of 2020. I love the prospect of constituting roleplay with tangible mechanics. I love how rich the world and our stories can be, and how meaningful the game can be to its players. It’s also a sustainable way to make money ethically and even experimentally, which is what tinydark stands for. I’m happy Marosia returned because I never wanted to remake it and I wasn’t going to; I was just kind of going to deploy and hope people were up for a fresh take. Now I can do it without the (admittedly self-imposed) pressure.

These are the plans and expectations for this game as of late February 2020.

It’s going to be an app.

As in app-store app. The technology is finally here and I need only implement it; The Orbium is already halfway there, I just need to put the work in to get it app-store-able. I have ways to make writing RP more enjoyable on mobile.

Roleplay is encouraged but ultimately optional.

For a few good reasons.

People who are interested in roleplay but are not yet comfortable doing so should be encouraged to observe and speak up when they’re ready.

My friends and family wouldn’t play it, which signals a greater issue with adoption and retention.

Enforcing roleplay rarely stops the quiet ones from playing, only encouraging them to make empty posts just to avoid in-game penalties.

The game should strive to be mechanically compelling first: it should be a fun game, regardless of how quiet a settlement is or if you’re a nomad playing solo.

We should accommodate people who are interested in adding rich objects to the world but are less interested in directly roleplaying with others.

In-character justification will still be required for one’s actions. The first attack on a player will require a casus belli: justification for the attack. You are still expected to learn and assign people’s names. “OOC coordination” is allowed so long as an actual conversation takes place in-game.

You will be able to play with friends.

In the same way that you can avoid players, you should also be able to join in and play with them. You should be able to invite your friend to play as your race and have them spawn beside you. I am not concerned for multi-accounters as I have a toolbox already prepared to deal with them.

Sound and music.

If browser games are to evolve, we should act like mobile and traditional videogames. I would leave Fireburner -- an unreleased narrative game of ours -- open just listening to the sounds of nature. This should help immerse the player and just be pretty dang cool.

World and zone events.

It is trivial for GAM3 to create functionality that would otherwise have to be manually coded by a developer. As such, I can put a giant tree on a tile and allow people to climb it, or interact with a puzzle that only spawns at night. World events can spawn effects for real-world holidays or in-game lore moments.

So long as the game is popular enough to justify it, I’d like to craft worldwide “living stories” in the same way a DnD dungeon master would: lay out the story, allow the players to drive the narrative.

Actions.

Somewhat controversial in browser and mobile game design, people don’t generally enjoy spending “actions” or “energy” and waiting for an action bank to refill just to do it all again. Alone, they don’t match asynchronous multiplayer gameplay very well: suddenly someone would spend 10 actions building half a house. But together with a project system which would enable someone to build a house over real time, we’ll have a way to restrict certain functionality and also give a reason for the player to check back in even if they’re on a long project. For example, climbing the aforementioned giant tree, pickpocketing, eavesdropping, hunting, and maybe dragging objects would use up some energy. But the player could also decide to boost their current real-time project: if you’re fishing, you’ll guarantee a fish is caught on your next tick. If your Fishing skill is high enough, there may be the ability to increase your odds of finding a rare or larger fish.

Failing a single Action bank, we simply give the player a few pseudo-actions they can perform, such as Hunts or Stealth opportunities.

There’s plenty of work to be done.

This presently untitled game requires a lot of mechanical work. I’ve got an estimated 600 hours ahead of me but I produce anywhere from 20-30 hours a week in my spare time. A lot of the tech I’m building has been wishlist items for the engine; Daiele really needed an NPC and crafting system. Necro died under a mountain of the tech it would have needed.

I have a surprising amount of lore created, most of which I’m proud of, but I don’t have it written down and cataloged. There is still content creation to be done in the engine, and how big that mountain is will depend on how quickly I can design fauna, flora, the landscape, and location-specific events. It will also depend on who I can get to help out; please contact me if you’re interested in creating content for the game for a paltry sum of real-world currency and some in-game subscription time.

Then there are the boring things to be done: the game should have its own server, running on the latest technology. The Orbium needs maybe 20 hours of attention. The game needs its own landing page. I need to improve my admin tools for handling (and ideally reversing) griefing. I should deploy with some subscriber features built in.

Not much more to say; I’ve probably said too much. Thanks for reading, and I’ll get back to work now.

#Untitled Roleplaying Game #urpg #studio

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popcornandgreenolives · 6 years ago

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richard is great, but... you know.

Silicon Valley Review - Seasons 1-5

What I liked:

It is completely relatable. As someone currently working in the tech industry, I found that a lot of the show to be pretty realistic especially in terms of tech jargon, software practices and methodology (YES, Scrum is an implementation of a real software development methodology called Agile and I live it everyday at work), and even the most ridiculous sounding formulas on the show have been proven to be accurate (here's an example). And seeing as how this show is a satire, it's kind of comforting to know that some of the stuff that I find silly and/or comical about the software industry are also things that are being parodied and mocked on this show. After watching the show I'd read reviews saying that Pied Piper's small successes followed by their constant big failures and getting steamrolled by Hooli were getting a bit tired and repetitive, but I actually wasn't bothered by the storyline. Unfortunately, this is the reality of the start up and Corporate American cultures, and I think the show does a great job of realistically depicting the struggle.

The writing is great: the technical concepts are well researched and the jokes are FREAKEN HILARIOUS. There's a good mix of the humor being both witty and inappropriate and I love me some nerdy jokes, raunchy jokes and nerdy raunchy jokes (again, this is a good example). I do wonder, though, for viewers that are not familiar with tech jargon or concepts if they would find it as funny?

Richard is my favorite character because I like what he represents and I can completely identify with him and his plight (not to mention he started out as a QA engineer). He's a nerd (I love nerds) and an idealist who strives for success through hard work and doing the right thing, but constantly comes up disappointed, bewildered and crushed when the Gavin Belsons of the world who run the cold, heartless tech corporations like Hooli succeed through political maneuvering, manipulation, backstabbing and lying. At times he's a bit wishy washy, but I know that to survive in a cut-throat environment, anyone with a conscience would face the same ethical dilemmas as he does, because no one wants to be the nice guy that finishes last. I love (and maybe relate a little bit too much) to those moments when has to prove his point because he KNOWS he was right. Despite the fact that he's a genius with a moral compass, he is far from perfect - he aspires, he struggles, he fails, and he gets back up and tries again - which I think makes him one of the more realistic characters I've seen on television. Plus, in real life I just love Thomas Middleditch and think he is one of the funniest people - I think his knack for improv (his characters on the Comedy Bang Bang podcast are hilarious) helps him play this quirky, goofy nerd so well.

Zach Woods is awesome as Jared and my second most favorite character. I think what makes his character so funny is that he comes off as this optimistically cheery yes-man, who randomly and non-chalantly gives us small tidbits of his character's really dark and disturbing childhood. And while his mostly unfailing loyalty to Richard is kind of endearing, it's also amusingly creepy. Many (many?) years ago, before he was even Gabe on The Office, I had seen him in an improv show. His experience in improv definitely pays off as he delivers a lot of the shows funniest and unexpected lines.

Gilfoyle's no-bullshit opinions and digs at Dinesh that are always delivered in his monotone deadpan. If you don't pay attention, you might miss the joke.

Big Head's cluelessness: "My username is 'password' and my password is 'password'". LOL!

I thought TJ Miller was good - almost too good, ha - as Erlich and he had a lot of funny moments, but at the same time, I also think that the timing of -- SPOILER ALERT -- his exit from the show worked out well in terms of where they were at with his storyline and the series continued on well after his departure.

The satire extends beyond the TV screen. The fictional entities on the show exist in ‘real life’ including the home page for Richard's own startup, Pied Piper, the tech blog Code Rag, Jian Yang's Hot Dog app, and even Big Head’s interview with Wired Magazine. So cute!

What I didn't like:

The episodes are so short and there are so few of them (seasons 1 and 5 had 8 episodes each, and the rest of the seasons had 10). On top of that, the next season is the last one :(

Final Thoughts:

What can I say - I LOVE this show!! Although, I will admit it did take me a while to get into it - it wasn't until the last 2 episodes of the first season that I really started getting into the storyline and invested in the characters. But since it took me a bit to settle into the first season, after getting through season 5, we went back and re-watched season 1... and then ended up re-watching the entire series again. Yes, that's right - I binged the entire series TWICE.

Season 6 is going to premiere this October 27th and I can't wait!!!

Usually with my reviews, I pick my favorite part of the movie or show. But I couldn't pick just one for this show - so I picked my favorite from each season:

➤ Season 1: Richard tries to get Aderall for Carver

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➤ Season 2: Dinesh tries to convince people to not invest in the Bro app

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➤ Season 3: Dinesh’s gold chain

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➤ Season 4: Richard dabbing/Heisman Trophy pose

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➤ Season 5: Jared’s lips!

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#silicon valley #hbo #thomas middleditch #tj miller #zach woods #martin starr #kumail nanjiani #haley joel osment #josh brener #television #series review

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jonwongton · 6 years ago

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12/31/19

I grew up a lot this year.

This year hasn’t been my favorite year, but it’s definitely been a memorable one. This has been both the year that I moved out, and the year I finished grad school.

Korean

While my progress has definitely slowed down compared to when I first started, I still feel that I’ve improved a lot this year. I can understand most conversational Korean without translating, and I no longer get a headache when I get bombarded by content in a short period time. Another big milestone I’ve reached is that I’m starting to remember things I learned in Korean in Korean. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to effortlessly interact the language since I’m not a native speaker, but the words really do carry meaning when I say them.

Even though I drilled-and-killed vocabulary for months on end, I still feel like my vocabulary is lacking. It didn’t help that I had to postpone my studies from August because of shifting priorities. I’m using the new year as an excuse to wait until I can open a new page in my book and start studying diligently again.

I’ve thought a lot about how I go about in English and I want to take a new approach next year. I feel that I still take too much of a textbook approach when it comes to Korean because I learned all my vocabulary and grammar by the book. Instead, I want to focus more on just materializing my thoughts with words and grammar without thinking about it; otherwise, it comes out too slow or I’ll choke on my words.

I still find learning Korean the hardest thing I’ve ever tried, and it’s both a blessing and a curse how challenging it can be. Personally, I think I developed a strong intuition and solid foundation about how the language works. I feel that what could help me the most now is more indirect exposure and to just start speaking more (losing any shame I still have). Hopefully I give myself more opportunities to learn next year.

General

For some reason, the odd years and never as good as the even years, but this year definitely had it’s highlights.

The two biggest changes in my life this year are 1) moving out and 2) finishing grad school. I commuted for around three hours a day for two years, but after moving out, that burden suddenly disappeared. I think my perspective on time was so heavily warped from having to commute I had enough motivation to finish school in three semesters.

Even with school dragging me down after work hours, I still feel like I progressed a lot in terms of my job. I finally started working normal engineering hours, and with my more regular sleep schedule, I gave my best effort every day. It’s been three years, and I still think about how lucky of a kid I am every single day. I have a great boss, plenty of leadership/learning opportunities, and great visibility in my current position. On top of this, quite a few employees have left, and I’ve had to take over a nontrivial amount of responsibility.

Next year will be challenging because I won’t have as much structure in my life (e.g. commuting, school). I really hope I’ll be able to utilize my time wisely. I remember in one of my chats with Seokho, he asked what gives me my motivation to just “do things.” I thought about this for quite a while and I realized there are mainly two things that get me to wake up each morning:

Someone very special to me that was taken away

Thinking about how hard the people I look up to work

1) because not everyone gets as much time in this world as they want, so you should make the most of the time you do have. 2) because I can see how hard some of these idols work for the smallest chance to make it big, and it makes me want to live my life with that kind of work ethic. I really want to make the most of the opportunities given to me and become the best version of myself.

One of the points I was most adamant about once I moved out was getting enough sleep each night. I feel that I’ve done a pretty good job staying true to my word. I can count on one hand how many times I’ve had to set an alarm this year, and I know I’ve been much more ambitious/motivated in working toward my goals with a full nights worth of sleep each night. I’m definitely keeping this habit for years to come. But getting enough sleep used to only be half the battle. Ever since I was young, I’ve always had trouble falling asleep because I was scared of the feeling of losing consciousness. I’ve had a much lighter heart this year and I’ve practiced putting my worries aside in the evening so I’m glad I finally figured out how to reliably fall asleep every night.

After moving out, I also realized the importance of going out and doing things. For the first few months of this year, I was kind of in awe during the weekends because I could do whatever I wanted without being bothered. I chose to stay at home and work on my Korean, and while I don’t regret that decision at all, I don’t have any distinct memories of my weekends from January-April, only that I was happy. When summer came around and my brother interned at my company, things picked up. We attended a wedding in Oregon, saw our parents on the weekends, went to a summer picnic in Santa Cruz, and on top of that, I also made trips to KCON NY/LA. I’ve been using music to take me back to a specific months/years in my life, but doing things has been another way to associate memories with a certain period of time. I’m definitely still the stay-at-home type of guy, but I think I’ve realized the importance of making memories as well.

When reflecting on the year, the question that will always come up is “what was your happiest moment?” Without a doubt, the happiest moment of the year for me was meeting fromis_9 in Washington Square Park. After being a kpop fan for all these years and so avidly supporting a group, it was a surreal experience getting to talk to them and cheer them on in person. It was almost like suddenly all the music and Korean studying I’ve done in the past four years and materialized into happiness on that day. After the event, I sat with my friend on a bench for half an hour and we just cried about how much that experience meant to us. I hope that every year, I have at least one of those moments because those are the moments really worth living for.

Other milestones this year:

Moved out of my parent’s house

Got promoted to a senior software engineer

Became the lead engineer on the VP compiler team took ownership of the VP top architecture model

Graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with a master in computer science

Made my first solo trip by traveling across the country to New York (07/05-07/09)

Made my annual SoCal (08/15-08/19, 10/16-10/20, 11/23-12/01) and Oregon (06/28-07/01) trips

Slept over eight hours a night on average

Kept up with all of GFriend’s and fromis_9′s activities

Goals for 2020

Practice Korean until I can comfortably articulate my thoughts (+ pass the TOPIK II with a Level 5)

Learn more Cantonese

Visit Korea for the first time

Sleep before midnight every night

Gain weight

Learn some new recipes

Listen more

Give more

Let myself be happy

My life this decade has always been working toward the next goal in the road paved for me. Doing well in high school -> declaring my major in college -> graduating college -> learning on the job -> moving out -> finishing grad school, but now the road ahead is a lot more ambiguous. I have no idea what’s in store for me but I know for sure I’ll find something that interests me and give my best effort.

Hopefully 2020 is the best year yet.

#life #personal

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helloarusharmame-blog · 6 years ago

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Is Software Development a good Career option?

I am very curious about a Career in Software Development. Almost everyone seems to be talking about How to start a Career in Software Development, while I want to first develop an understanding of What is a Career in Software Development. In my quest to learn more about a Career in Software Development, I found this amazing page: https://www.lifepage.in/career/20181128-0002/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Software-Development/english

Gargi Gautam's take!

Gargi Gautam is an experienced professional with 3 years & 9 months in Software Development. Gargi Gautam has worked in Software Development as IT Analyst in Tata Consultancy Services. In Gargi Gautam's own words, this is how Gargi Gautam got into Software Development:

"After completing my graduation from Uttar Pradesh Technical University in Computer Science (GNIT) in 2012, I started working with Sears IT & Management Services private limited where I worked till 2015 while I was a System Engineer. After that I have joined Tata Consultancy Services where my designation is IT Analyst. Meanwhile in 2017 I had completed my Post Graduation Diploma in Management in Operations Management from All India Management Association."

I searched Gargi Gautam on Google and found this profile: https://www.lifepage.in/page/gargigautam

Career Video on Software Development

In a video, Gargi Gautam has talked about various aspects of a Career in Software Development. Gargi Gautam started by explaining Software Development as:

"Software Development is a process followed for a software project, within a software organization. It consists of a detailed plan describing how to develop, maintain, replace and alter or enhance specific software. The life cycle defines a methodology for improving the quality of software and the overall development process"

The video was an engaging disposition.

We all know that only 10% of what is taught in Software Development is actually used in real life. The education section of the video clearly explained what is the 10% needed in Software Development. Gargi Gautam touches upon these in the Education section of the Video:

Coding

Syntax

Progarmming Languages

Gargi Gautam then explains why these Skills are essential for a Career in Software Development:

Team Working

Quick Learning Skills

Analytic Skills

Gargi Gautam believes that the following are some of the Positives of a Career in Software Development:

Monetary Benefits

Onsite Opportunities

Career Growth

And, Gargi Gautam believes that one needs to prepare for following Challenges of a Career in Software Development:

Monotonus Job

Deadlines

Fast Changing Technology

In the final section of the video Gargi Gautam talks about How a day goes in a Career in Software Development. This video is by far the best video on a Career in Software Development, that I have ever come across. To see the full Talk, one needs to install the LifePage Career Talks App. Here is a direct deep link of the Video: https://lifepage.app.link/20181128-0002

Similar Career Talks on LifePage

I continued with my research on LifePage and thoroughly studied these links to gain more perspective:

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20161027-0001/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Cloud-Software-Engineering/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20170610-0002/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Website-Designing/hindi

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20180405-0004/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Digital-Forensic-Investigation/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20170923-0002/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Software-Engineering/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20170902-0003/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Computer-Engineering/spanish

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20171111-0007/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Ethical-Hacking/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20171023-0003/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Software-Development/hindi

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20171106-0002/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Cyber-Security/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20180103-0006/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Cyber-Security/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20170605-0002/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-PHP-Development/hindi

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20180112-0001/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Mobile-App-Development/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20171030-0003/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Computer-Coding/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20171103-0002/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Machine-Learning/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20180107-0002/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Software-Development/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20181016-0001/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Website-Design-&-Development/hindi

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20180708-0001/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Software-Engineering/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20180412-0001/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-User-Interface-Development/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20171002-0001/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Computer-Engineering/spanish

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20171103-0001/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Data-Engineering/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20190114-0002/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Artificial-Intelligence/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20171215-0006/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Server-Administration/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20180731-0001/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Software-Engineering-&-Development/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20180604-0001/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Teaching-Computer-Science/hindi

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20180405-0002/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Code-Analysis/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20180228-0012/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Cloud-Software-Engineering/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20180708-0002/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Software-Engineering/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20180912-0001/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-System-Software-Development/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20180402-0001/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Database-Administration/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20181211-0003/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Game-Development/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20180926-0001/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Software-Development/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20180714-0001/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Teaching-&-Research-in-Data-Science/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20181211-0002/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-DevOps/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20180911-0001/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Software-Engineering/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20181018-0002/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Application-Development/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20180810-0001/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Teaching-Computer-Science/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20190114-0001/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Cloud-Computing/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20190114-0003/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Nature-Inspired-Computing/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20190206-0001/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Full-Stack-Development/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20181211-0004/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Information-Technology/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20181216-0001/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Software-Engineering/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20190221-0003/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-DevOps/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20190304-0002/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-Technology-Sales/english

https://www.lifepage.in/career/20190408-0001/Science/Information Technology/Career-in-DevOps-&-Unix-Administration/english

Career Counseling 2.0

This disposition on a Career in Software Development was just the starting point of my research on LifePage. I think LifePage is doing an amazing job of connecting real professionals with Career seekers. It is truly an amazing innovation in the area of Career Counseling. You can learn more about LifePage on: https://www.lifepage.in

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shadowsong26fic · 6 years ago

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AU Outlines: Other Fandoms Edition

So I know that probably like zero of my followers on this blog even go here but I was watching Person of Interest lately, and I’ve also been reading occasional Supernatural spoilers, because I used to be in that fandom and I occasionally get curious. Especially this most recent season. Naturally, this woke up some old characters/situations/etc. that I used to work with, which I’ve been occasionally toying with in the back of my head when I’m bored and/or procrastinating other projects.

I’ve been going back and forth on how I feel about the one plotline that interests me this season (and by back and forth I mean I was really excited when I first read that a particular character was back; engaged by the summaries/etc. I read from his first couple episodes, the third one intrigued me until I read more detailed spoilers and then I started to side-eye it a little bit...)

And then I read up on last week’s episode. And nope, all my excitement is gone, replaced by Pissed for reasons I’m not sure I can actually articulate. (Though I kind of attempted to in the tags here on my personal blog.)

...honestly, I probably should’ve known better; making this kind of storyline really pay off/work would require a lot of attention given to a tertiary character, and given SPN’s track record with the internal worlds and motivations of characters who are not the Big Three, and the fact that they’ve been ignoring a lot of their established angel/vessel lore, the way Claire’s backstory more or less got completely forgotten...I should not have gotten my hopes up. Sigh.

ANYWAY this is now officially Spite Fic(tm). Here, have an outline of a Supernatural/Person of Interest crossover.

Starring Nick.

...uh, before I actually start, I should probably get some background out of the way.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, Person of Interest is a TV show that ran for five seasons, 2011 - 2016. Without c/ping the opening narration, the basic premise of the show is that, in the wake of 9/11, genius software engineer Harold Finch built a surveillance and analysis program, in an effort to prevent similar future tragedies. Out of fear that his creation would be abused, he designed the Machine as a closed system--basically, all that’s provided is an ID number (usually an SSN, at least for US citizens; but Our Heroes get a green card number in one episode, and a student ID number in another), and the person that number indicates is key to unravelling whatever is going down. The Machine was initially designed to predict mass casualty events/terrorism and provide the (relevant) number to the designated government operatives, at which point human intelligence takes over. However, the Machine also identifies things like…gang warfare/one-on-one premeditated murder (irrelevant numbers). That’s where Our Heroes come in.

The first half of the series is basically a procedural with a twist—each episode, the main characters get an irrelevant number (or more; the record was I believe 38 in one episode). They don’t always know how that person is involved, whether they’re the victim or the killer/perpetrator. In a few memorable cases, the number was arguably both.

Then, in the second half, a rival AI (Samaritan) is brought online, and the series becomes somewhat darker in tone and shifts into a cyberpunk apocalypse story. With a few regular irrelevant numbers thrown in on occasion as well, for good measure. For the purposes of this outline, we don’t care so much about POI B, for reasons I will explain, but it bears mentioning. Especially since Greer is still hanging around and trying to bring Samaritan or something similar online.

Right. On to some memorable/notable/important characters.

Our Heroes are Finch, who, as I said, designed and built the Machine. For various reasons, he’s living off the grid (he’s a very private person). Using a backdoor built into the Machine, as of when the series starts, he receives the irrelevant numbers. But he lacks the skills/ability to intervene directly, so he recruits John Reese.

Reese, then, is Finch’s partner/employee/they are totally married; a former CIA assassin who is now presumed dead, he does most of the hands-on work with the numbers and becomes known as the Man in the Suit who is basically Batman.

Carter! Carter is freaking amazeballs; she is p. much the moral/ethical center of the show, one of their two cop friends who was actually trying to track them/Reese down and arrest him for the vigilante BS for the first half-season or so but then they became friends.

Fusco is their other cop friend; former dirty cop/member of an ring, initially recruited by Reese to work undercover in HR (as said ring is called), basically runs on a combination of Dogged Loyalty (the reason he joined HR in the first place, transfers that loyalty to Team Machine, gets his moral compass recalibrated, and becomes one of the most loveable dudes on the show) and Snark (featuring such delightful quotes as “What was I supposed to say? Sorry, boss, Agent King is really a superpowered nutball. Just ask my buddy, the urban legend.” Also at least once a season, he makes a comment to the effect of “just when I thought you guys couldn’t get any weirder…”).

(Also, he is, as my roommate puts it, Shaped Like A Dad.)

Shaw joins the team in Season 3; textbook (and canonical!) bisexual compact Persian sociopath (note: she has some sort of Axis II personality disorder that is occasionally called sociopathy in-universe, but that doesn’t quite fit); there’s…there’s really not much else one can say without just like summarizing everything she does or quoting ad nauseum.

Root! Root is introduced as a major antagonist; hacker/programmer on Finch’s level who works as a contract killer, her initial goal is to locate and free the Machine, which ends up recruiting her early in Season 3 and becoming…you know that particular kind of reformed villain that becomes the weird family member because yes they’re still kind of awful and murdery, and they did a great deal of damage to you and yours, but you’ve now been through Some Stuff together, and besides, they’re your awful and murdery, you know? So not exactly a redemption arc, but they’re one of the Heroes now and just kind of stick with it. Like Barbossa, in POTC. Or Vegeta. My roommate (referenced above) calls this the Weird Uncle trope. And she fits this trope really well and I love it. Also, she and Shaw are canonically girlfriends as of...s4 or s5, depending on how you look at things.

(Also, not necessarily relevant for this outline, but on the subject of Weird Uncles, one cannot talk about POI without mentioning Elias; our friendly neighborhood Mafia don. No, really.)

And Bear! Cannot forget Bear. Bear is Finch and Reese’s dog, acquired at the beginning of S2 and the most amazing. He also has a twitter! In Dutch!

On to some antagonists, Greer is not our friend. He works for/created a company called Decima Technologies; his goal is to bring an unrestricted AI online and let it run the world for complicated reasons relating to some of his experiences during the Cold War working for MI6. Also he has a very punchable face.

And then there’s Control, who runs the Relevant numbers program for the government. She is an awful, awful human being (fully aware of it, too; she has a great speech in the third season finale about how she’s a Necessary Evil and why) and I love her so much.

Okay, that’s the basics for the POI side of things. I can go on a lot longer if y’all want more details (I didn’t even cover my girl Zoe or Leon or…), but that should be enough foundation for the outline to make sense?

For the SPN side of things--I’m not going to summarize the canon background, due to it being the larger/primary-ish fandom. But in terms of the relevant AU stuff, I’m going more or less with the backstory I established for Nick for The Promises of Angels and Cartography!verse.

Basically, he was a high school history teacher; his wife and son were murdered by a serial killer known as the Chesapeake Ripper

(There might well have been/probably was some demonic involvement, though not in the same way as I think S14 canon established; basically either because a “talent scout” demon like that one s7 episode was already involved or because the Ripper was operating independently and a demon got involved later, he was pointed towards this particular woman and baby who fit his victim pool. Either way, Nick was targeted because he was the right bloodline and accessible, because vessel lines are a thing even if the show has forgotten that.)

(Also, Lucifer later took Nick to kill the Ripper. Signing bonus. So to speak.)

After Detroit, Nick gets picked up by Meg, who holds on to him for a while for a variety of reasons (information that might be buried in his memories from the year he spent possessed; the chance that he might be a new key to the Cage…) until the Leviathan turn up, at which point she no longer has the resources to keep him. She cuts him loose at that point, rather than killing him (mostly because she thinks Lucifer left him alive For A Reason and until she knows what that is, she can’t kill him).

So, at this point, in Promises or Cartography, Nick just sort of wanders around for a while until he runs into Claire or Jody, respectively.

For the purposes of this AU, he ends up drifting to New York instead.

And, with all that background out of the way, NOW we can get to the actual fun stuff.

…no, wait, I lied. One more note: as with p. much all my SPN projects, I am following Logical Time rather than Show Time. Which is to say, when calculating dates/figuring out where the timelines intersect/etc., I’m including the two skipped years (between S5/S6 and between S7/S8).

(That being said, I reserve the right to stop caring about the timeline later and just mashing things together as I think it would be entertaining.)

ANYWAY.

We open in the first half of POI S3, somewhere between “Mors Praematura” and “Endgame” (i.e., Root is in the library, but Carter hasn’t initiated her takedown of HR yet). If my math is right, this puts us either in S7 or during the second gap year for SPN.

It starts as most of these adventures do; Team Machine gets a new number.

“This one may be a bit of a project, I’m afraid,” Finch says. “Nick Cross has been missing for several years. He hasn’t been seen since May of 2009, and there’s been no electronic activity on his identity in that time, either.”

Of course, when they dig into his background, his wife and son getting murdered comes up.

“Any chance he killed them?” Reese asks.

“No, he was cleared at the time. They were victims of a serial killer, and Mr. Cross had solid alibis for three of the five incidents, including the one involving his wife and son.”

(Shaw, at that point, theorizes that Nick’s number came up because he somehow tracked the Chesapeake Ripper down and is planning to kill him. And, if that’s the case, doesn’t really see the point in stopping him.)

(“Start with finding him, Ms. Shaw,” Finch says. “We still don’t know if that is, in fact, what’s going on.”)

(Finch also doesn’t approve on principle, of course, but that is not an argument he wants to have with Shaw on this particular morning.)

(Plus, the Ripper seems to have stopped operating at around the same time Mr. Cross disappeared...so there’s a chance that Shaw’s theory is accurate, just out of date.)

In any case, they reason that the Machine wouldn’t have handed them his number if he weren’t alive and in range; Reese and Shaw ask Carter and Fusco to see what they can pull up, and start doing their own legwork.

Carter ends up being the first to find a lead—while on her regular patrol with Laskey, she spots a guy who matches the description, albeit with a few extra scars, and is acting a little off. Like he thinks he’s being followed/watched.

Reese goes to check it out, and this is where things get, uh, Weird.

See, here’s the thing. I love John Reese, and he is a man of Many Skills.

But, uh.

Being approachable and reassuring is Not Among Them.

Like. Don’t get me wrong. When he’s in Bodyguard Mode, it is exactly the right level of Intimidating. He just…has trouble turning it off.

Look, the dude is a semi-retired CIA spysassin and it oozes out of every pore unless he works really hard to tone it down.

(And sometimes even then.)

And since this is just, like, preliminary surveillance to see if this guy Carter spotted really is their number, and he’s not planning to make contact yet, he’s not really focusing on toning it down.

So, when Nick spots him, guess what this looks like to him.

Yep, he thinks Reese is an angel.

He runs.

Reese: “....yeah, pretty sure that’s our number. And he just made me.”

(If Carter didn’t already, Reese probably also mentions that the five-year-old DMV photo they’re working from is out of date; Nick is pretty badly scarred, they look kind of like radiation burns.)

Of course, it was hard enough to find Nick in the first place, so Reese doesn’t want to lose him again. So, made or not, he continues following. Hoping to get to a position where he can make contact and figure out what’s going on. Or just keep tabs on him until Shaw can catch up and take over.

(Not his favorite approach, but he screwed up somewhere and that’s what he’s stuck with now.)

Nick knows the angel is still on him--and this is new and terrifying; he’s had demons after him a few times since Meg ditched him, but this is the first time an angel’s found him and, frankly, angels are worse than demons in his mind.

(Also he’s supposed to be warded how did the angel even find him--)

(Yeah, Nick has gotten a couple tattoos in his post-Meg life--he’s warded, the same sigils that are etched into Sam and Dean’s ribs; he also has a standard anti-demon-possession tattoo.)

In any case, he has a knife up his sleeve, he just needs to get somewhere more or less out of sight, just for a minute, maybe not even, and then he can throw up a banishing sigil. He just needs that minute.

Reese spots Nick duck out of sight into an alley and heads that way, picking up his pace. There’s a chance he’ll lose the number in there, depending on how many exits there are--

Nick casts his sigil and then books it, not wanting to stick around and see if it worked.

Reese gets there just a hair too late.

“I lost him,” he admits, then catches sight of the bloody drawing on the wall. “...but I think I might have an idea what our number’s running from. And why he disappeared for so long.”

“Yeah?” Shaw asks.

“Looks like he might’ve joined a cult."

“....really,” she said. “Huh.”

“He drew some sort of occult symbol on the wall. Looks like blood.”

“...okay, so he joined a cult.”

“It makes a certain amount of sense,” Finch says. “He went through a horrible tragedy. He could have been vulnerable, especially if he sought but failed to find any comfort in traditional religion.”

Reese takes a picture, and sends it to Finch. “Think you can figure out what this is?”

“Well, it’s hardly my area of expertise,” he says, “but I’ll see what I can do.”

“We’ll work on picking up his trail again,” Shaw says, appearing beside Reese in the alley, as she does sometimes. “Maybe stop by and pick up Bear to help.”

...and now skimming over the next few hours...

Finch spends some time in one of the few corners of the internet he’s not super familiar with, and does identify the symbol eventually.

“It’s for protection or warding. Specifically against angels.”

At which point Shaw busts up laughing at the idea of anyone thinking Reese is an angel.

But that does support the idea that he’s running from whatever cult he got mixed up in.

ANYWAY moving on.

Reese and Shaw eventually catch up with Nick again.

Unfortunately, so have the people who are after him.

(And by people, I mean demons. Two of them.)

(Who recognized Nick, obviously, and had the same ideas as Meg, with regard to his potential Uses.)

(Only they’d rather off him so no one gets to unlock whatever secrets he might be holding.)

Shaw goes up--she’s the better sniper, after all--and Reese makes his way into the alley where Nick is cornered

Firing, naturally, at their kneecaps.

Except.....

Nothing...nothing happens...?

(Well, except now the demon is pissed and gunning for Reese instead.)

(Nick is very relieved to see that this guy is not, in fact, an angel. Angels don’t normally use guns.)

(Of course, now he’s just confused, wtf is going on.)

“What the...” Reese says.

“Maybe you missed,” Shaw smirks, from her perch.

“I didn’t miss.”

“Sure,” she says, aiming at the demon chasing him, getting a solid hit in the shoulder.

Which....also does nothing.

“...well, that was weird.”

She fires again, this time a killshot--yeah, yeah, there are Rules, but under the circumstances...

Meanwhile, Demon #2 has gotten ahold of Nick. Who has frozen a little bit.

(He tends to do this, when stressed/triggered--internalize things, and just go blank. He was more or less catatonic when Meg found him, started gradually coming out of it; when Sam got his soul back that sort of accelerated the process and by now he’s mostly functional, but there are Moments...)

Shaw keeps firing at Demon #1. It’s not killing it, but it’s keeping it pinned down so hopefully Reese can reach and extract their number.

“Finch, we’ve got a Situation here.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

(Finch has hacked into some nearby security cameras.)

“You have any idea what the hell is going on?”

“I’m afraid not, Ms. Shaw,” he says. “It’s only the two of them, I think--no one else is coming though the police will probably be responding to the shots soon--”

“Yeah, Finch, I know. Reese?”

Nick is up against the wall and Reese bodily hauls the demon off of him to engage in a fistfight.

(Did not expect a skinny kid like the demon’s host to pack this much of a punch, he’ll have some fun bruises tomorrow...)

Which snaps Nick out of it.

Demons. These are demons. Only demons. I know how demons work. I can--

He rattles off an exorcism, as fast as he can.

The demons scream and smoke out, leaving their two dead hosts behind--Host #1 may have been dead already, or Shaw may have killed them; Host #2 was already gone.

“Finch?” Shaw says. “Finch, are you getting this?”

“I’m--yes, I see it,” he says.

Reese is about to add something, but the Nick passes out--Demon #2 managed to score a solid hit before Reese got there--and he moves to catch him.

“Damn it--he’s bleeding, pretty bad.”

“Get him to the safehouse,” Finch says. “I’ll meet you there, and we’ll...we’ll figure all this out.”

“Library’s closer,” Shaw points out. “And you said no one else was around.”

Finch hesitates for a moment--more concerned about Root than about their base being compromised, at the moment--then nods. “Fine. Bring him here. I’ll clear off a space for you to patch him up.”

“Copy that,” Shaw says. “Reese, stay with him, I’m gonna get us a car.”

...okay, I’ll admit, the rest of this first New York adventure isn’t super well planned out in my brain. So, skimming through it pretty quick...

They bring Nick back to the library. Shaw patches him up, while Finch goes over the footage he found, trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

Nick eventually wakes up. There’s a Talk.

“They were demons,” Nick explains. “They, uh. They can’t be killed, not with guns. There’s a couple specially-designed weapons, I think. And angel blades. Holy water will burn them, and you can use salt to keep them out. Best thing to do is probably trap them and exorcise them.”

Basically, Team Machine gets The Talk about monsters and so on Existing.

He admits to having been possessed for a year when they ask him why demons are chasing him, though he’s a little vague on further details. He does mention Meg, too, that she held on to him after he was dispossessed.

He asks how they found him--he’d thought his warding was messed up, especially when he thought Reese was an angel.

They give their characteristic vague answer, then ask, “If you’re...warded, how is it they found you in the first place?”

He figures, at this point, that his warding is fine--it doesn’t hide him from demons, necessarily, but even if it did, warding doesn’t stop the bad guys from spotting him by chance. Which is, incidentally, exactly what happened.

Nick also, of course, gets in the usual number questions; “who are you” “why are you helping me” etc., with the added weight of his possession and the fact that they took on literal demons to try and save his life.

Also, somewhere in this mess, Nick wanders off into the part of the library where Root is being held. Possibly while the rest of Team Machine is getting what they’ll need to deal with whatever Climactic Fight will end the episode/section.

(Nick was a high school history teacher, and this is a really awesome library, of course he’s going to go exploring if he’s left alone.)

(Bear is there to keep an eye on him/keep him from leaving.)

(Bear also gets many scritches and pets, as he deserves.)

Anyway, Root and Nick have a conversation; whether she and the Machine are already doing their Morse Code thing or something else is going on...or...something...anyway, Nick gets read in on the Machine’s existence.

(His reaction is more or less “...that does not even make the top ten most unbelievable/dangerous things I know exist, so...all right then.”)

Finch gets back to find them talking about history or something. Bear is next to Nick, who is a lot calmer/more willing to work with them than he was before. Root is just inside the cage wall, idly scritching Bear’s ears as they talk.

(This is actually Important.)

Anyway, eventually there is the requisite climactic fight. Possibly angels are involved--I know Shaw gets her hands on an angel blade at some point...

Point is, things get resolved, more or less. Nick ends up leaving New York.

BUT! Because Root had a Moment with him back there, and Finch saw it, he’s willing to unleash her a little earlier when the shit hits the fan a few episodes later.

In short, thanks to Root kind of sort of Bonding with one of their weirder/more fragile numbers, Team Machine is much better positioned to deal with Endgame nonsense, which means, first, that Carter gets to live (though Reese might still get hella shot, depending on how exactly Root changes what happens with Simmons; but he won’t go on his Roaring Rampage of Revenge); what follows is then that Team Machine is all working on the same page when Claypool’s number comes up aaaaaaand we avert Samaritan. Yay!

(Carter does still deduce the Machine’s existence, of course, gets upgraded to the yellow box and everything. And, remembering the late-S1 drama, strongly advocates for Fusco getting read in, too.)

(She gets her way on that, too. Eventually. Probably before too much longer, even.)

Also, Control does reveal herself, but doesn’t manage to capture Root just yet.

(Which also means Root doesn’t get her implant, at least for a while.)

But apart from that, we can leave this group to their own devices for a while, and get back to following Nick, who is now past his Origin Story, so to speak...

Hokay. So. After Nick leaves New York, he just starts sort of drifting again, and then a few days later, he gets a phone call.

Which he actually answers; in all honestly very few people would reach out to him this way, and he’s pretty sure none of the things that terrify him are on that list.

“Can. You. Hear. Me?”

Nick stares at the phone for a long moment. The Machine repeats herself.

“…no.” He hangs up.

(Look, he knows damn well what that phone call was; Root told him enough when the two of them talked in the library. And he is not interested in letting another near-omnipotent entity screw with his head. Once was enough. He learned his lesson.)

The Machine backs off, deciding to try a less-invasive way of trying to get in touch with/recruit him.

Why is she doing this? Well.

The Machine’s mandate/objective is to protect humanity. When Nick came up on her radar as an irrelevant number she could offer her assets, she noticed some…let’s call them anomalies. In archival data about him, about the two people talking about murdering him…lots of things didn’t add up. Which is why he got pushed to the top of the list, so to speak.

(I mean, assuming she does put a certain level of thought/deliberation into which numbers she sends her assets? If two come up at once that are unrelated, does she need to decide, or do they get both? This isn’t 100% clear in the show, I don’t think; pretty sure all the multi-number episodes do end up being related, even if they don’t appear that way at first, apart from, like, backlogs from when the Machine has to go dark temporarily for whatever reason…anyway, if that is the case, she picked Nick because there was a lot of Weird Shit going on around him and she needed her human assets to sort through it, because she simply didn’t have the tools or parameters necessary to work it out for herself.)

So, Nick’s number comes up, and even more strange things keep happening. The Machine evaluates, and comes to the conclusion that there’s an entire class of threats to humanity that she hasn’t been monitoring correctly. The fact of the matter is, she was programmed with certain blind spots, because Finch had certain blind spots.

But the Machine is now in a position to correct that. She’s aware of the flaw in her system and, thanks to the changes she’s been making since Stanton’s virus and the other S2 arc plot stuff allowed her to start altering her code in a way she couldn’t before…

She can make up for it by adding yet another set of numbers/another protocol. Relevant numbers to the government as always, irrelevant numbers (within their reach, at least) to Finch and his team, “necessary” numbers (i.e., protecting the Machine herself/keeping tabs on other, potentially hostile, ASIs) to Root, and now…we’ll call them “hidden” numbers.

Of course, the next problem is, while there’s a lot of data available about monsters, angels, demons, etc., it’s very hard to sort through what is useful data and what is, frankly, BS. And, unfortunately, she lacks the parameters to do it herself.

Ergo, she needs a human asset to help her figure it out. Teach her/help her define this new dataset.

(And also to intervene when necessary, but that can come later. She’s got a bit of a learning curve ahead of her first, and she knows it.)

But, of course, she doesn’t want to retask any of her current assets—both because they have enough to deal with and because, again, learning curve. Better for at least one entity involved to know what they’re doing, right?

And so, she decides to recruit Nick. Nick, who has already been her window into this hidden world. Nick, who needs her as much as she needs him.

(Kind of like Root, except absolutely unlike Root. Like in that they were both drowning when she approached them, and needed her to give them a framework to cling to, to drag themselves back to the surface; unlike in that Nick is drowning in a very different ocean than Root was.)

Anyway. Eventually, she does manage to talk to him, and explain what she wants.

And he’s still not...100% sure how he feels about working with her, but...well, data entry, right? He can do that. Maybe.

“I don’t know how much help I’ll be,” he admits. “Just because I was possessed for a year doesn’t mean I know everything.”

“It’s still a place to start,” she replies. “Eventually, I’ll figure out the patterns and be able to extrapolate.”

“...okay, then.”

(As it turns out, he knows a lot more than he thinks he does, which is utterly terrifying; he has a lot of subconscious/residual information buried in his mind.)

Of course, eventually, just data entry isn’t enough.

The Machine doesn’t have all the answers/all the patterns down, but she has enough that she’s starting to identify threats/numbers she can assign out.

But Nick...well, Nick is fragile. Mentally, of course, but physically as well--burned inside and out, metaphorically and literally, by a long, incompatible possession.

At the moment, though, he’s the only asset she has in this area. Recruiting others, from among the insular, paranoid hunter community...is going to be difficult.

She spots something she thinks he can handle, especially if she grants him God Mode access and keeps him there.

He stares down at the text message she sent him.

“...I can’t do this,” he says. “I can’t...”

“Can we please try?” she says. “I’ll help you.”

“...I...”

“It’s a demon, I think.”

He thinks about it for a minute. He can handle demons, he thinks. He has before, after all. He understands demons. And...

(he thinks about the feeling of evil still living under his skin; he thinks of blood on his hands and in his heart; about all the nightmares and half-memories; about how he feels too small for his own body, how his thoughts echo inside his head...)

(he wants to do better. he wants to be better. maybe helping...people like him, people who have gone through what he went through...maybe that’s a start. to make up for what he did.)

“...is the host still alive? When I...if I manage to get there and exorcise them...are they still alive?”

“I can’t tell,” she admits. “I’m sorry.”

“I’ll...try,” he says. “I’ll try.”

It ends up, fortunately, being a win for all of them--the demon is thrown enough by seeing Lucifer’s former vessel that Nick has a chance to act; the host is in fact still alive.

Nick spends hours after the exorcism, just...sitting with him, talking. Helping him cope/process things.

“...we should do that again sometime,” he finally tells the Machine, after he goes back to wherever he’s sleeping these days.

So, he starts kind of sort of hunting after that, with the help of an ASI.

Every time he directly engages something, he’s in God Mode. He has to be, because of the aforementioned damage; he wouldn’t survive on his own.

(Probably, at some point, he and the Machine put together something like the Tenebamus Infinitum forum in The Promises of Angels; online support group/community for possession survivors.)

(Sam may or may not find his way there...)

At first, they mostly focus on demons/possession cases. Sometimes ghosts. But they slowly start to branch out into other areas.

They deal with some miscellaneous monsters, faeries, maybe a vampire...good times.

Pretty much the only ones they avoid are angels and pagan gods, because Nick cannot deal.

(Angels for uh obvious reasons; pagan gods because he remembers like two things from his possession with any clarity, and one of them is Muncie, Indiana/Gabriel’s death.)

(The Machine occasionally considers trying to get him into a hospital for a while, the way Root was--she thinks it would help him--but he’s...managing for the moment, so it’s not as necessary, and she does still need him actively working....plus, he’s terrified of being sedated so...this gets put on indefinite hold.)

During this period, though, they do acquire two more Friends.

First--and I’m not 100% sure how they meet; possibly similar to how Nick and Jody meet in Cartography!verse, i.e., a grief support group of some kind.

Anyway, first he meets a young woman, a psychiatrist. Who is familiar, if peripherally, with angel and demon type stuff.

(Other monsters are gonna be a little New to her.)

Her name is Ashley Finnerman.

(Yes, as in Donnie.)

(He was her cousin.)

(After what happened to him, she started trying to figure it out, and eventually did.)

(...honestly, the forum may be her idea. She definitely joins it, not as a fellow survivor, but as a crisis counselor/trained professional who will believe them.)

(Ashley is pretty big on community building in general; yes, she’s a therapist and that’s a start, but she’s only one person. In her ideal world, they’d be able to draw in other professionals--psychiatric because this is an underserved population that desperately needs those resources; medical (as in physical medical/other MDs); legal...anyway, she’s not 100% sure how to go about doing that, but helping out on with Tenebamus is a step in the right direction, in her opinion.)

Ashley is eventually read in on the Machine as well. She has more or less an actual Life outside of it all, so she isn’t as immersed as Nick is, but she’s still definitely part of his team.

And second...somehow, they acquire Adam.

How? ...again, not 100% sure, but probably one of two ways--

One, something similar to Promises, where Nick gets too close to the Cage mouth for some reason and is offered a Bribe. He takes the bribe, with exactly zero intention of following through on his end of the bargain, so to speak.

Two, some kind of straight-up Fairy Tale Bullshit. S6 establishes that faeries can reach the Cage; Nick somewhat accidentally does a favor for a powerful faerie through his work with the Machine, and to repay the debt, the faerie (or possibly a High Up Faerie who has taken ownership of the debt because he helped someone in their court/their child/something or other) restores his Counterpart to him? IDK, something like that.

...I think I like this option. He accidentally does a favor for, IDK, Mab. And she, not wanting to be in his debt, heads down to the Cage.

This works because, a) Mab is probably one of the few entities that can go toe-to-toe with an Archangel like this; and b) Michael is actually on board with springing Adam.

(Not necessarily because he gives a shit about Adam, but he does give a shit about Justice, and keeping Adam down here, especially with Sam gone, is not Justice.)

Naturally, she doesn’t tell Nick ahead of time--he did the favor without consulting her, she shall repay him in kind. Faeries and Obligations, man.

Anyway, Adam joins them, and then Nick doesn’t have to be quite as hands-on because Adam is perfectly capable.

(Adam also, at some point, makes a comment about the three of them having ‘nearly a complete set.’)

(I have no idea how/if they’ll ever be able to find someone to fit in for Gabriel, but three out of four!)

(Nick finds this oddly hilarious, for reasons he can’t quite articulate.)

So, that is what Nick is doing while Team Machine is foiling Vigilance and Greer and Decima and dealing with their Hard Sci Fi end of things.

Let’s bring these two worlds crashing back together, shall we?

(Well, I say crashing together...this probably isn’t the first time Nick has run into the others since that first adventure.)

(If nothing else, he’s stayed in touch, off and on, with Root.)

(And I’m pretty sure the others have met Adam.)

(Maybe that was where Shaw got her angel blade...)

So, timeline for this. Uh...probably at least a year after Nick’s first encounter with Team Machine. For the SPN side of things...ehhhhh I’ll handwave/stop caring and say this is sometime in the latter half of S8. Between the first two Trials. Let’s go with that.

Nick and co are back in New York, probably dealing with something on their end of things. A ghost or something.

And then they get sucked into some Team Machine nonsense.

Control still wants the Machine--or a suitable Plan B--back under her complete, well, control.

Decima is going after some other potential ASI.

(Root is back in town to deal with them.)

Vigilance is involved too, because why not.

(Greer can’t initiate his endgame there just yet, after all, so they’re probably still operating.)

Nick, Adam, and Ashley are pitching in, because they’re here and the Machine needs all the help she can get on this one. Because Reasons.

Meg gets involved--this goes AU in that she escaped Crowley somehow. And one of the first things she does is try to check on her various assets, so she’s trying to track Nick and figure out what the hell is going on with him.

Crowley, of course, is chasing her, trying to get her back.

And, to round it all off, Sam and Dean are chasing him.

(As they approach, Sam starts noticing a weird buzzing feeling in the back of his head. Like circulation returning, or something like that. He decides not to mention it--thinks it might be a new Trials symptom, and he’s already hiding those from Dean, what’s one more secret? Besides, they need to know what Crowley finds so interesting about this place...that’s way more important, right?)

So, all these disparate parties converge on wherever the potential ASI is being held/built.

Root and Nick, of course, are both in God Mode.

(...incidentally, Nick is...nnnnnnnnnot super comfortable with calling it that? He and Adam and Ashley mostly just call it access or full-access.)

(Nick has the same tingling feeling in the back of his head, but he can’t do anything about it right now. He just focuses on the task at hand, and getting himself and his friends through this alive.)

The Machine tips Nick off to the fact that there are demons sniffing around--a couple of Crowley’s minions. Which, of course, Nick and his team can handle, but there’s several of them around and we reeeeally don’t want Crowley getting access to an ASI.

(Especially not S8!Crowley.)

So, Nick, Adam, and Ashley head off to put up wards and shoo off any demons they can, leaving the others to deal with the Decima nonsense/destroy the drives or whatever.

There’s a lot of ground to cover, so they split up.

Eventually, Nick gets pinned down by Decima mooks, trapped in a corner of the facility where he’s trying to finish getting the wards up.

“What...what do I do now?” he asks the Machine.

She runs her simulations, and it doesn’t look good.

And here is where it’s different from, say, “If-Then-Else.” Slash another way Root and Nick are very different people/assets.

Whereas Root is perfectly okay with obeying orders from her God without question, Nick needs to be told his options and make the choice himself.

At some point, he describes Access as oddly comforting. It’s almost as overwhelming, almost as much of a surrender, as consenting to possession is.

But there’s one critical difference.

He doesn’t have to listen to her.

He can say no.

He can hang up.

I mean, it’s generally speaking a bad idea to do that, but the option is still available.

So, his head doesn’t feel as empty with her in it, but a lot of it is still on his terms.

That being said, when there’s no time, or it’s a very immediate “there’s someone behind you” type of God Mode moment, of course, that’s less of an issue.

But something like this, where there’s a fork in the road?

If there’s time, she’ll lay out two or three of the least bad options and let him decide.

“If you go out the door and turn left, you will run into Control. She will figure out you’re tied to me, and she will take you prisoner. She will almost certainly torture you, to get you to give me up. Adam and Ashley will meet up with my other assets, and they will rescue you, but the chances of their success are very slim. There is a five percent chance, at best, that you will survive. It varies, depending on how quickly the others can mobilize.”

“Okay,” he says, and swallows. “And...and Adam and Ashley, will they...?”

“They have better than even odds of surviving.”

“Okay,” he says again. “What else?”

“Turn right,” she says. “You’ll run into the demon who held you captive.”

“Meg?”

“Yes.”

That’s not so bad, he thinks. Meg didn’t torture him too much, and she wanted him kept alive.

“Control will capture Root instead,” she continues. “Sameen and the others will attempt to rescue her. Adam and Ashley will pursue you.”

Control capturing Root, on the other hand, seems like a very bad thing. Still...

“Adam and Ashley?”

“About the same,” she says. “But there is another concern.”

“Okay.”

“If Meg takes you, there’s a chance she’ll find me. And if she does, it’s extremely likely that someone less friendly will, as well. There is also an approximately 17% chance that you’ll wind up in Crowley’s hands instead of Meg’s. And his chances of finding me are a lot stronger.”

Yeah, no. That cannot happen.

“Are there any other options?” he asks.

She pauses for a split second. “Turn right,” she says. “Then at the first hallway, turn left instead of going straight. I’ll have to leave you then--there are several Decima soldiers, but if you manage to get past them on your own, you’ll find Sam and Dean Winchester.”

It hits him like a punch to the gut.

“Your chances of reaching them without my help are better than your chances of surviving Control,” the Machine continues, “but not by much. If you can get there, though, they most likely won’t harm you.”

Unless I’m in full-access mode, Nick thinks, and shivers a little.

“And I can say with approximately 97% certainty that, when Adam and Ashley find you, they won’t harm them, either. I cannot say the same for the demons or Control.”

“They won’t hurt us physically,” Nick finally manages to say. “But I can’t...I-I-I don’t know how I’ll...I can’t shut down, not in here. A-and I don’t know how Sam will react to seeing me, I’ll probably seriously fuck with his head a-and I can’t...I can’t...”

(there’s this running refrain in his head, that Sam Winchester is perfect, and that Nick is the reason that everything goes wrong.)

(the Machine regrets even more not getting Nick more help.)

He takes a shaky breath. “Plus, I don’t know if Adam’s ready for that yet,” he says. “He hasn’t...uh, he hasn’t said anything about wanting to track them down.”

“That’s true.”

He’s quiet for another minute.

“Nick?”

“...I’ll take my chances with Control,” he says.

“I understand,” she says. “Thank you. And I’m sorry.”

(It’s not what she would have advised him to do, necessarily--she would have advised him to try for Sam and Dean; it balances protecting her with protecting the majority of her assets.)

“Directions?” he says.

“Open the door and turn left.”

She guides him down the hallway, advises him where to dodge, where to strike. He picks up a gun at one point--

(he’s hesitant, and she reminds him “you’re in Control’s world now, you have to play by her rules.”)

He gets to the inevitable trap, where ISA corners him and Control is there.

She recognizes, pretty quickly, that he’s in God Mode.

“...now just who the hell are you?”

On the other side of the facility, Ashley’s phone rings.

“Can. You. Hear. Me?”

The Machine also advises Root that Nick has been captured.

She and Finch have finished neutralizing the potential ASI drives; Reese and Shaw are with them; Carter and Fusco are currently working on securing their exit route, after driving off a handful of Vigilance mooks.

“We need to move,” Root says. “Control has Nick. Adam and Ashley will meet us.”

Reese nods once. “Lionel, Joss, get ready. We’re headed your way.”

“Copy that,” Carter says. “Fusco--”

“On it.”

Meg has realized that Crowley is here, so she’s now in the process of finding her own exit. He’s in pursuit.

Sam and Dean got all turned around and manage to get to just the right hallway at just the right time to see Adam and Ashley piling onto an elevator.

“...Dean,” Sam says. “Dean, tell me you’re seeing what I’m seeing.”

(he doesn’t press his hand. he hasn’t hallucinated in almost two years, he doesn’t need to--)

“Adam?” Dean calls.

Adam half turns to them, hesitates for half a second, then follows Ashley into the elevator and the door slides shut.

...and I’ll admit I don’t have a whole lot planned out beyond that. Also this is getting, like, super long. So, quick wrapup, so to speak.

So, Team Machine, plus Adam and Ashley go to rescue Nick.

Sam and Dean track them down.

Adam goes to talk to them, try and get them to back off.

“I have to go rescue my friend,” he says. “But once I’m done with that, we can talk. I promise. We’ll set up a meeting and I’ll tell you...as much as I remember, I guess. But right now, I have to go rescue my friend. Kind of on a clock here.”

“We’ll help,” Sam offers.

“This isn’t really your kind of thing,” Adam says. “This isn’t monsters, this is the ISA.”

“The what now?” Dean asks.

“Like the CIA, but on steroids.”

“...how the hell did you get involved in CIA bullshit?” Dean asks.

“It’s kind of a long story,” Adam says. “Which I will tell you, once my friend is safe. So can you please just...let me do this first?”

“How did...” Sam asks. “How did you get out?”

“Also a long story,” Adam says. “But I’m the only one who came out, I swear. And...” He hesitates. “They...mostly left me alone, after you were gone. If you were worried about that.”

(Sam hadn’t been, mostly because he had been Very Firmly Not Thinking About Adam for a while now, but he’s relieved to hear it.)

Reese steps out. Possibly holding his grenade launcher. “Come on, Adam, we gotta go.”

“Coming,” Adam says, then turns back to Sam and Dean. “I will call you as soon as we’re clear. I promise. Don’t follow us, okay?”

Without waiting for an answer, he follows Reese and they go to rescue Nick.

(Obviously, S&D don’t listen and do, in fact, follow Adam, but I’m not 100% sure where that would go.)

(Other than they do, in fact, manage to extract Nick alive, but it’s a near thing.)

(The fun thing here is, Control actually can’t break Nick. Well, she can’t get him to tell her anything about the Machine, anyway.)

(Yes, everyone has their breaking point so far as pain/torture goes, and Nick is no exception.)

(But he will physically break--i.e., die--before he mentally breaks.)

(And while psychological torture would be a lot more effective, she doesn’t know what buttons to push.)

(When she runs his prints/whatever, she gets the name Jacob White, which is an identity that Finch put together for him, for when he needed to interact with the real world. Since his own identity is...complicated.)

(Yes, that is a reference.)

(I couldn’t resist.)

(Also, the Machine, through Root, gets to deliver her verbal bitchslap to Control at last.)

Uh....yeah. That’s all the actual Plot I have at this point. But some other notes!

My girl Zoe is totally in the know. She may or may not have encountered Bela at some point, or found out some other way, but she does know.

(She never told Harold and John because--well, honestly, why would she? Her stock in trade is secrets, after all. And it never came up, and she wasn’t involved with Nick’s first adventure.)

Elias will turn up at some point. And basically become something like John Marcone, if any of y’all are familiar with the Dresden Files.

Bear’s Plot Armor may be some kind of magic, and I would not be surprised if he could take on a Hellhound and win.

Carter and Jody. Just...just Carter and Jody, man.

Like I said, Shaw gets her hands on an angel blade at some point. She and Dean probably bond. I feel like they would bond.

Also, I think Dean gets put into God Mode at some point. Possibly as his first real introduction to the Machine.

Like...IDK, he and Sam are with Nick for some reason, Nick, as implied above, cannot go into God Mode in front of the two of them, and honestly Sam going into God Mode in front of him would also be pretty devastating, so...Dean’s phone gets to ring!

“Can. You. Hear. Me?”

“...the fuck?”

“Can. You. Hear. Me?”

“Yes, I can--what the fuck is--”

“Two. O’clock.”

::turns and OHSHIT just in time::

IDK the idea just entertains me.

...yep, I think that’s it.

If you’re still here, thank you for putting up with my nonsense/checking this out.

Tune in next time, for an actual serious AU outline of some kind.

(....who am I kidding, these things are never serious XD)

#shadowsong writes spn #shadowsong26fic #shadowsong writes crossovers #au outlines for the win #shadowsong writes self-indulgent bs #shadowsong is feeling Spiteful today

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gus-the-icreamman · 7 years ago

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11 SEO Myths Explained

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landoinghomework · 3 years ago

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It's time?

I dreaded writing this blog post, not because the prompt is bad or that I don’t like it, but because writing this means I will be graduating soon, and this is a (temporary) end to my education career. I have learned and grown a lot throughout the last 4 years, and Dickinson has made a huge impact on it. Despite a pandemic, quarantining, remote studying, and my study abroad plan completely falling out, I made it! Nonetheless, it’s time. And I will spend this time reflecting on what I have learned while I was a Computer Science major at Dickinson, a student in this Senior Seminar class, and a contributor to my open-source project.

Even when I was a freshman, I already declared Computer Science as my first major. I never regret doing so, and I have had so much fun bonding with both students and professors in the department. I especially remember staying up until 1 AM finishing the final project for COMP 131 (class of 2022 is the last class that got to study that course) and the Teacher Assistant was there to help us to the best of his ability. All the TAs were so nice and helpful that now as a senior, I am also a TA. This is my way to give back to the department and the upperclassmen who helped me then. Learning how to teach underclassmen computer science made me realize I need to be more patient and find easier ways to explain new concepts, this has helped me to communicate better in the long run.

The senior seminar was at first very weird to me. I thought we were bound to learn more technical knowledge and produce a “perfect” product by the end of the year, just like how other majors must publish their theses. Instead, we sat around a different topic each class and then work on our own open-source project with our groups. This turned out the be my favorite course in the major because it taught me a lot of industrial knowledge (testing, agile, data privacy, etc.) that I know I will need in the future. I know other students don’t appreciate this information very much (in fact, what amazed me was how many students raised their hand when asked if they would illegally obtain data from users if their job was threatened), but I thought a lot about this and will reflect even more when I start working this summer. I want to promise myself not to chase the money and forget my ethics when working in this industry.

Regarding the open-source project, the biggest thing I have learned from it is that I don’t hate coding that much. Ever since my software engineer internship during the summer of freshman year, I hate sitting in front of the computer coding 8 hours a day, building a website that I found no interest in. Thanks to the 8-hour delay I had during winter break, I sat at the airport and learned how to debug by myself (I usually got too impatient and then I asked for help from a colleague). I figured out there are multiple ways to fix one problem and chose which one is the most optimal. Even though I will not be coding after graduating, this year-long project made me find interest again in software engineering and the systems behind it. The mentors and reviewers of the project have helped tremendously too, and I’m very thankful for that.

I can write more and more about what I have learned throughout the years and how much it has prepared me for an “engaged [life] of citizenship and leadership in the service of society.” My end goal will always be to create a product that will have a positive impact on humankind, or at least for the greater good. I cannot thank the professors of the department, my friends, and my mentors enough for helping me along the way. Yes, it’s time to say goodbye, but I’ll see you in the future!

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comp491-egorovak · 4 years ago

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Why do people want to contribute to open-source software?

Open-Source Software and its contributors is a fascinating phenomenon worth admiration. With all the respect I have for the people who contribute to these projects, I could not wrap my head around the fact that that there are thousands of programmers around the world, who are willing to spend their free time coding for free after their main software developer jobs. Don’t get me wrong, coding can be fun and very fulfilling, but after staring at the screen for 10 hours, I would do anything to not see it for the rest of the day. I also believe that psychologically we are not as altruistic as we wish we were, and behind most of our actions, there is some personal benefit. In an attempt to understand the reasons behind amazing software, I decided to reflect on this blog post on open-source history, philosophy, and conversations I had with other people about their reasons to contribute.

From the historic point of view, open-source software was started because of the ideological perspective of at least one engineer, Richard Stallman, as described in the book Producing OSS. Looking deeper to understand his beliefs I found an interview, where he claims that making money from software is completely ethical, but not allowing users to modify it is unethical. The proprietary software companies restrict the user’s freedom for their benefit so much, that for him it is worth it to dedicate a lot of his time to creating free software.

For some people, ideological motivation might take a different form; many people care about contributing to a humanitarian platform that benefits society in some way. That is their way of making this world a bit better for others, similar to charity or volunteer work. Some people, of course, are just using a specific software themselves, and after encountering a bug, they want to fix it to make the product better for themselves and others.

Open-source platforms are also a great opportunity to show your skills and an interesting product to others. Most of the proprietary software has legal restrictions that don’t allow developers to show their work to the world, and it might feel limiting. Open-source code on the other hand is available to everyone, so anyone can look at and appreciate your work. On top of that, it is a great opportunity to learn and improve your coding skills, from studying the code written by others or picking some bugs to fix yourself.

Finally, some people just really love coding and are willing to spend hours of their free time writing new code and learning about new technologies. No matter what your reason might be, open-source software had a huge impact on this world and it is great if you also would like to contribute yourself!

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this-is-not-a · 4 years ago

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On leave

(A double entendre, because I was on leave, and this post will be about leave.)

Well I finally did what I had been meaning to do for the last 3 years. I left my job, though only a little, to focus on my art. I think I had gotten to the point where I felt so disengaged with the work, partially from WFH pandemic stuff, and also from having time to sit with myself, and having been sort of shocked out of my daily routine a la Ling Ma's "Severance". Did I learn anything?

I came into my leave as a sort of experiment in being on unpaid leave forever (quitting). I wanted to know if it could be financially viable, if it would make me happier, and if I would be able to be self motivated. Also I had gotten to the point where I was trying to do so much after work and on weekends, writing 2-4 musicals, short stories, songwriting, hacking together tech art projects for my portfolio, and taking classes on machine learning – well I won't claim that it didn't occur to me to start secretly doing some of this during work hours if there was a lull, but even with that I felt that I just didn't have enough time.

It turned out that even if spending work hours on personal projects felt ethical enough that I did it, it did not feel ethical enough for me to enjoy it. Often it felt more virtuous to commit that time to do the work that I was disengaged in but being paid for. But spending large chunks of time doing something you don't care about is not virtuous either, and since I have the option of restructuring my life to avoid this (quitting) it seemed obvious that the time had come.

So I told my manager I wanted to take three months off to focus on writing, music, creative tech, online classes, and maybe applying to grad school for Media Arts, another project that had entered my head around this time. I told him I was going to use the three months as a trial for leaving Google in a more permanent fashion (quitting) and that I would let him know how I felt when I came back.

Well now I'm back, so how do I feel?

I was really happy and really productive. I was self-motivated and able to commit time every day for deep work on my own projects. I made no money from my projects at all, but I did make around $400 from a few work shifts at the Farmer's Market selling bagels. I learned a ton. I started volunteering at Food Not Bombs.

In my first week off, Michela and I went on a trip to LA and Catalina Island, and the story of a disease which had affected the island's fox population had me so inspirired that I wrote the first draft of a musical about it over a month and a half. Having time to write for large chunks of time (well, usually only up to 2 hours in a chunk) was huge.

But even better that just having time was having the flexibility to follow sparks of inspiration at the moment that they arrived. If I had an idea for a new project, I didn't have to wait until after work or the weekend. I got to follow through right away, which I think is how I prefer to work.

I also looked into graduate programs to build my tech art skills and expand my network. What I found was that these programs look like a blast, but are expensive, and there are not that many scholarships for people who want to do art, compared to, say, get a graduate degree in machine learning.

So now I've had a week of my old job and I'm sure that I want a change. I'm looking at some other engineering teams at work (this would be a small but welcome change), and some creative roles at work. I discovered a career title, "Creative Technologist" which I think is my dream job – this is the role that makes the delightful non-products Google sometimes releases, like the doodle, or April Fools jokes, or the recent Freddiemeter, which uses machine learning to tell you how much you can sing like Freddie Mercury. It turns out that the people making these are not software engineers, they're in Marketing, which I guess makes sense because they're not making core products, and its a slightly different skill set that you're not really intereviewed for as an engineer. And of course I'm also still considering extending my leave.

Staying somewhere at Google is the most financially viable option. Staying in an engineering position but changing teams is the most easily accomplishable. It's hard to transfer to Marketing, but I have a lot more excitement for the Creative Technologist role. These roles are mostly hired based on portfolio, so I could continue building mine out on the side even if I stayed.

Leaving would mean losing my only source of income. I would have even more time to build out my portfolio, in music, writing, and tech art, and it actually doesn't scare me to be pulled in so many directions, because during my leave it meant that if I wasn't feeling music-y one day I almost certainly was feeling write-y or tech-y. Leaving might be temporary. I can always come back to the software engineering world with Google on my resume. If my portfolio becomes impressive I can also use it to apply to creative positions at Google but also at other digital media marketing agencies (where I've learned a lot of Creative Technologist roles are).

One big difference between engineering careers and creative careers is that you don't need to hustle as a salaried engineer. It might help you get promoted if you're very ambitious, but you'll have a pretty comfortable life either way, assuming you can stand the work. Whereas it seems like whether I choose music, writing, tech art, or even tech art for Marketing, a creative career will be closer to that of a contractor. I will be constantly seeking out new projects, because if I don't, I won't be getting work. I will have flexibility to choose my work, but also the responsibility to choose to work. I will probably have a more varied experience, and absolutely cannot just coast along being disengaged.

Regardless of which I end up choosing, there are things from leave that I hope to keep. I intend to keep volunteering at 3:30 on Wednesdays, and I will make my work schedule fit around this. I am more confident in my skills and have a clearer sense of what interests me than I did when I joined Google out of undergrad. And last of all, I have come back to work more sure than ever that I don't want to spend my life being disengaged with my work, whether its engineering work or creative work. The scarcest resource is excitement, so I'm not going to throw mine away.

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affiliatebusinesshub · 5 years ago

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Five Figure Niche Site Review

Affiliate marketing is such a lucrative and straightforward business. It is simple, but not easy. With this Five Figure Niche Site course by Doug Cunnington, is this your key to affiliate marketing success? Keep reading as we explore Doug Cunnington’s class to see what it is all about.

What is the Five Figure Niche Site Course?

As the name suggests, Five Figure Niche Site aims to help you build a niche site that will generate five-figure incomes. This is a very bold statement, indeed, and as an experienced online entrepreneur, I find this very skeptical. The course currently works on a waiting list basis. Meaning that you register to be on the waiting list, and if you are lucky enough, you get selected to join the course! Although this could be an exclusivity tactic, it works because the waiting list is full.

Who is Doug Cunnington?

Doug hails from Colorado, and he claims that he is an experienced affiliate marketer. Having experience in the field, he is now a teacher in the affiliate marketing industry. He currently offers a range of services, from management consulting to software testing. Doug was previously a project manager with a Project Management Qualification (PMP) certification. He was pretty successful even before he started affiliate marketing. I think affiliate marketing helped him boost his business even more. He is part of the Amazon Affiliate Program, so you can imagine just how successful his store is. His YouTube channel is probably where most of you might know him from, as he regularly uploads videos on affiliate marketing tips and ideas. He even conducts regular interviews with some of the industry’s most excellent such as website owners and other successful affiliate marketers.

Who is Five Figure Niche Site For?

Five Figure Niche Site is for anyone who is thinking of starting a dropshipping business but is stuck for ideas. This program will guide you from brainstorming ideas to establishing a brand new store. Doug even includes methods to get traffic, so that you can get sales very soon.

What is included in the Five Figure Niche Site?

The course material included in this course is quite extensive, especially if you are looking for ideas to build a niche site. You will begin by learning everything from brainstorming a desirable niche, manage keyword research, and build a website. After you have a good-looking site, then it is time to come up with creative ideas for SEO Optimized affiliate content. This content will be useful so that your page ranks in search engines. In this program, you will also learn to earn via the Amazon Affiliate program for selling products and using referrals.

There are seven-course modules in total, and each week the contents are released as you progress. This means that even if you have the willpower and time, you will not be able to finish the whole program in a day if you wish. So, for people who do not like waiting, this course will not be for you. By signing up, you will learn to brainstorm ideas to come up with a great niche for your store. You will also learn about long-tail keywords that convert. Then, Doug will teach you ways to spy on your competitions with free resources. He will also guide you to build backlinks to promote your store. This is a secure and ethical way of getting traffic. Doug shares that you will follow a proven, step-by-step niche system.

The program flows from selecting a niche through keyword research to choosing the right niche by analyzing competition and niche selection. After that, you will learn to build your site, then create and publish exciting content to drive traffic. Doug then suggests you sign up for the Amazon Affiliate Program and use backlinks to promote your website and get traffic. At last, you will also learn how to scale your store and build more similar, successful sites.

Five Figure Niche Site Final Verdict

Doug Cunnington sure looks like he knows what he is talking about. Overall, the information provided in the course is sufficient for one to start in the affiliate marketing business.

However, as good as the course, maybe, I do not think it is extensive enough that you will succeed in the industry. I think this course might be a shameless promotion for his Amazon Affiliate Program.

Basically, if anyone signs up to be his affiliate, Doug will get a piece in commissions. Nevertheless, if you go through the course material and you still think the course is for you, then you should sign up.

Five Figure Niche Site Alternative

I personally believe Savage Affiliates is by far one of the best course on the market to date.

I am not the only one who believes Savage Affiliates to be one of the best there are a ton of other’s who do as well.

Why though? Once you see the amount of information there is, how cheap it is AND the student results, you will see why it’s one of the best courses out there!

Read my Savage Affiliates Review, you will find out why this course is one of the best. Everyone thinks it’s overhyped until they actually have access to it.

The post Five Figure Niche Site Review appeared first on Affiliate Business Hub.

from Affiliate Business Hub https://affiliatebusinesshub.com/five-figure-niche-site-review/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=five-figure-niche-site-review

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sinrau · 5 years ago

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Tristan Harris, former Google design ethicist and co-founder of Center for Human Technology, appears before Congress in “The Social Dilemma.” (Netflix)

Picture, if you will, a high-tech voodoo doll of you on a server somewhere. Probably more than one server.

While the makers of that reverse-engineered avatar might not be sticking literal pins into it, in “The Social Dilemma,” filmmaker Jeff Orlowski makes a fine case that in mining data from your onscreen interactions, they are constructing a predictive version of you and trying to prick your interests and put a spell on your attention in historically unprecedented ways. (“The Social Dilemma” began streaming on Netflix this week.)

The quotes Orlowski begins his wake-up call of a documentary with — and peppers throughout — aren’t easy to top. There’s Sophocles’ “Nothing vast enters the world of mortals without a curse.” And this from sci-fi giant Arthur C. Clarke: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” And this wry quip from data-visualization guru Edward Tufte: “There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’: illegal drugs and software.”

Yet, here’s one to add: “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” It may not be as elegant as the others, but it represents the tone taken by the tech leaders interviewed by the Boulder-based director who investigated the extraordinary problems wrought by big-tech behemoths, particularly the ones that have entangled so many in the vast web of social media: Twitter, Facebook and Google.

Among the documentary’s smart and personable talking heads: Justin Rosenstein, co-inventor of Facebook’s “like” button; Tim Kendall, former president of Pinterest and former Facebook director of monetization; and Shoshana Zuboff, author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.” (That book’s subtitle: “A Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.”)

Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist at Google, became notable for writing an early internal and legendary document questioning the addictive tendencies of smartphone tech. Think Jerry Maguire’s manifesto after his dark night of the soul. Harris caused a buzz and then, well, crickets. He went on to co-found the Center for Humane Technology, a non-profit promoting the ethics of consumer tech.

RELATED: Watch this very real Netflix doc about a man who welded himself inside a “killdozer” and destroyed half of Granby

These days, Silicon Valley is referred to in much the way we talk about Hollywood or Washington: It is a global economic force, a wielder of spectacular power, somehow exemplary, too, of some more honorable ideals. Orlowski went to one of its feeder schools.

“I was class of ’06 at Stanford. When we all graduated, that was (around) the birth of the iPhone and the birth of apps. So many of my closest friends went directly to Facebook, Google or Twitter. Multiple friends sold their companies to Twitter for exorbitant amounts of money,” Orlowski said on the phone before his film’s world premiere at January’s Sundance Film Festival.

The project came out of conversations with those friends “who were starting to talk about the problems with the big social media companies back in 2017, at the birth of the tech backlash that we’ve been seeing. Honestly, I’d heard nothing about it, knew nothing about it.”

So many of his creative, thoughtful friends were working in new tech that Orlowski wondered, “How’s it a problem?” A fan of long-form journalism, he set out to answer that question and a few others. “For me, this process was two years of being an investigative journalist. (Of doing) first-hand research with the people who make the technology and trying to understand what the hell is going on.”

Director Jeff Orlowski attends the World Premiere of “The Social Dilemma,” an official selection of the Documentary Premieres program at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. (Azikiwe Aboagye, provided by the Sundance Institute)

He is not alone in trying to wrap his brain — and ours — around that. Orlowski was among a cluster of storytellers at January’s Sundance Film Festival, posing timely questions about societal costs of seemingly free platforms — quandaries that have been reflected in a deluge of headlines about big tech’s role in our lives, in civil discourse, in democracy. (The film’s final cut includes a few recent images of news footage hinting at the rough tango between our lives and the Twittersphere around COVID-19.)

Two other high-profile projects that should prompt a rethink were Shalini Kantayya’s “Coded Bias,” about the MIT Media Lab, where research uncovered just how racially biased facial recognition software is. It’s a searing yet inspiring look at what happens when the people making tech’s design choices, and building its algorithms, create for people who look exactly like them. Co-directors and Karim Amer and Guvenc Ozel’s vivid virtual-reality living-room installation, “Persuasion Machines,” depicts with its jaw-dropping environment the data-mining excesses of a “smart home.”

There have always been concerns about the amount of private information that customers seem so willing to cede with little regard for security. But social media is proving itself a voracious beast. It’s less about identity theft than the potential for manipulation on a mass scale. Advances in AI and machine learning have added a special — arguably dystopian-courting — wrinkle.

It’s little surprise, then, that Orlowski is asking urgent questions. He’s forged a place in the documentary vanguard. He first made a splash when he trailed environmental photographer James Balog around Greenland, Iceland and Alaska. With stunning images, Balog documented the calving of ice shelves, the receding of glaciers, and Orlowski documented him.

The resultant work, “Chasing Ice” (2012), was gorgeous and chilling — in all the wrong ways. It was a different kind of climate change doc, not a screed but a nature film that made a compelling case that there are seismic — likely irreversible — changes afoot. It won an Emmy. (Traveling through Denver International Airport, you may have stopped to watch Balog’s mesmerizing time-lapse video for his Extreme Ice Survey work.)

Orlowski’s 2017 follow-up, “Chasing Coral,” won an Emmy for Best Nature Documentary.

“This is the beginning of a decade of films about technology and the consequences of technology,” Orlowski said of the company. “There’s so much at risk and so much at scale, the way technology is designed.”

In both “Chasing Ice” and “Chasing Coral,” he worked to make concepts starkly or strikingly visual. He faced a similar challenge with “The Social Dilemma. “We were trying to think of ways to show people what’s happening on the other side of their screens that’s invisible,” he said. “How do you show people something that is literally impossible to see? You can’t see what’s happening on the servers, right? You can’t even see the servers. But how are the algorithms designed and what are they doing that control 3 billion people?”

The number is not far off: According to German data-statistics tracking company Statista, there are currently 3.5 billion smartphone users.

For “The Social Dilemma,” Orlowski weaves a narrative tale about a multiracial family wrestling with the role of tech in their home. Think of it as a dramatization of concerns. The strategy evolved out of his own response to the news he was hearing from his Silicon Valley friends and their worries around the industry’s overreach.

“Because of the way they were describing it, every time I looked at my phone, I kept seeing a manipulative machine on the other side trying to puppeteer me. For the year I was on Facebook, I thought, ‘I’m being used.’ And it gave birth to this narrative storyline we figured out this way to interweave with the documentary.”

As a filmmaker, it was a chance to direct actors. Vincent Kartheiser of “Mad Men” plays the three-yammering embodiments of AI, dialing up the needs, nudging impulses and commanding the attention of Ben. Skyler Gisondo portrays the increasingly distracted high schooler. Helping create this intricate dance between the interviews and narrative was Oscar-winning editor Davis Coombe, a local filmmaking luminary. (He also co-wrote the doc with Orlowski and Vickie Curtis.)

“I really loved doing all that,” said Orlowski. “The writing, the shooting, the directing. All of the narrative stuff was really fun and brought, I hope, a different dimension.”

Ben and his family are intended to represent the ways many of us interact with the technology, not as designers but as Instagrammers and Tweeters, friends and over-sharers, TikTok-ing kids and their aggravated parents.

Of course, recanting can be a tricky thing. We admire people who see the flaws — even corruption — in a system and alert us to the dangers. But we can also be suspicious of their declarations. Indeed, there is an undercurrent of quiet hubris intermixed with the insider cautions of a number of Orlowski’s experts.

An intentionally witty moment comes early in the movie when, after a few of them have reflected on the unintended consequences of tech, and the sense that it was meant to help not harm. Although each had been a chatterbox of insights and perspectives, every one of them grows silent, looking for all the world stumped by the simple question that Orlowski asks: “So what’s the problem?” More than once, an interviewee reminds us that one of the tools to address the hyper-speed amassing of power and profit is rather old-school: regulation.

Even more illuminating than confessing their own addictions to email, or push notifications, or Twitter are the moments when these engineers, software designers, marketing whizzes share their own practices for themselves — or their family’s rules for their children — about social media.

“I’ve uninstalled a ton of apps from my phone that I felt were just wasting of my time … and I’ve turned off notifications,” said Rosenstein.

“Never accept a video recommended to you on YouTube. Always choose. That’s another way to fight,” said Jaron Lanier, one of tech’s most innovative minds turned most trenchant critics.

“We’re zealots about it. Crazy,” said Allen, asked about social media and his children. “We don’t let our kids have really any screen time.”

And perhaps the most timely advice: “Before you share, fact check,” said Renée DiResta, research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory. “If it seems like something designed to push your emotional buttons, it probably is.”

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A Boulder filmmaker’s new Netflix documentary will make you want to delete social media forever

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