#this was in response to a video about how attempts to portray science as cool and fun can be counterproductive

[woozapooza]

If there was ever a time to play the world's smallest violin, this might be it

[sights-on-the-scifi]

Violence in MASS EFFECT.

Alright Tumblr i’m gonna try even harder to satisfy your content laws... God I hope this posts.

MASS EFFECT 2 Marked a change in the creative direction of the series in many ways not just limited to style and presentation. But also in how it tackled violence in its narrative and gameplay.

It developed a near uncritical affection for its violence. Removing any semblance of scepticism towards its application with exception to a few storied and mechanical instances all for which will be talked about as we progress.

VIOLENCE IN GAMES AND OTHER FORMS OF MEDIA AS A WHOLE.

Before we begin ill like to explain to you why violence in a video game is so fun to the player on a mechanical basis. You see video game violence is complete fantasy that much is obvious just from looking at it I hope, it has no real basis in reality. For example the simple fact being that you are interacting with simulated combat via mouse and keyboard on a flat 2D surface, not with your hands, feet, arms, firearms, grenades and depth perception... Some games like the first CALL OF DUTY title go out of their way to communicate this very important distinction to you with its death quotes system, which communicates a famous anti war saying every time you die on the digital battlefield, and you do die a lot in the game so the words always have time to sink in...

The chest high wall games of wack a mole and close range engagements you typically find yourself in are inherently ridiculous, but something that is true about these portrayals is the deep psychological stuff that occurs in the back of your mind through play.

Fight or flight. Those instinctual, primal/animal like areas of your mind that govern responses to threats and general dangers that were extremely useful during our species evolutionary development as hunter gatherers, if a game is designed well enough it can take advantage of those responses and insert them into game-play loops which encourage positive reinforcement when taking down digital combatants... These are the things games tap into and the things military companies etc also tap into as part of training or recruitment programs especially in modern digital age armies where focus groups have to find new ways of getting young people interested in soldiering without conscription and a national crisis to absorb individuals into service positions. Anyone has the capacity to be violent and become a killer you need only the right training and psychological conditioning and in the army that is one part of basic. Popular video games and films provide you with that psychological training in a very subdued, consumer friendly fashion and that is through desensitisation. “Image training”

It is turned into a power fantasy, for military recruiters it is also an effective strategy for recruitment purposes.

“War is delightful to those who have not experienced it” Erasmus.

Violence in real life is brutal, random and horrifying even in a domestic sense to any sane or normal person with the capacity for human empathy (Though sometimes there are forms of desensitisation that override this), not even most soldiers who undergo psychological conditioning to be able to kill are immune to this trauma. Violence is not fair, violence is not graceful and more often than not it is also used irresponsibly in any situation where in it is absolutely necessary to be used, even then those situations are themselves questionable. Especially in present day conflicts waged overseas out of sight and mind of the general public for wealth, oil and resources.

I have experienced forms of domestic violence throughout my childhood such as being beaten by my parents and having animals ordered to attack me, I understand how awful it can be to live in absolute fear and experience excruciating pain and misery as a result of this so making a post like this I hope makes you think about this a bit more from that personal lens too.

Games and movies on their own dont cause violence that much is certain from studies no matter how vivid their depictions get, but they do desensitise you to its realities in strange and weird ways both mechanically, visually and also sometimes in the narrative. (Until we can someday reach the point where in we can perfectly simulate reality and violence there is no way in hell military companies are going to rely on it exclusively to train soldiers). But they can rely on the positive mental associations they bring to warfare.

HOW MASS EFFECT 2 PORTRAYS VIOLENCE.

MASS EFFECT is by no means a game that is used as a vessel to drive up real world military recruitment, there is no indication of official army endorsement since it is just a trilogy of science fiction video games after all. But it does include violence that tries its very best to make you the player think its wicked cool in addition to finding it fun if the game-play loop is effective enough. Which in ME2 it is especially effective and the marketing wanted to push that.

So how does MASS EFFECT 2 and to an extent MASS EFFECT 3 make its violence so fun and “Cool”... Ill break this down into a variety of factors starting with your enemies.

DEHUMANISATION OF COMBATANTS AND KNOWING YOUR ENEMY.

MASS EFFECT 2 takes players to the Terminus systems and other parts of the galaxy that do not fall under official council law, so naturally this means there is an seemingly over abundance of private military and mercenary organisations. But ME2 is not interested in what these things represent completely, more so it is interested in using their presence as a convenient means to provide the player with thousands of disposable henchman to shoot, stab, pull and blow up in a variety of fun and exciting ways!... (Those gamified ways) All the while giving you the excuse to not feel bad while doing so no matter how cruel you are in the application of your response to incoming fire.

In fact throughout the whole ME2 experience you probably kill more mercenaries comprised of Turians, Humans, Asari, Krogans, Vorcha and salarians, more so then you do the Reapers or Collectors who are supposed to be the primary antagonists of the series... Which it seems is pretty antithetical to the overall themes of uniting the galaxy to fight a common threat which threatens all life, perhaps you have already done the job for em in this regard. What you are seeing here is a form of precision engineered dehumanisation of combatants for purposes of providing a player with something to shoot and kill without much thought and sympathy... and the military also employs this tactic in real life to dehumanise other humans for soldiers to shoot and actually kill.

Make your enemies faceless, inhuman or “irredeemable” cannon fodder and the feelings you get for uncritically slaughtering them all are palpable, especially with such entertaining gameplay systems that make the whole endeavour that much more exciting. The same was true for Cerberus in ME3 effectively turning the whole organisation into faceless storm-troopers with filtered voices and intimidating armour again another form of enemy dehumanisation in addition they are all conveniently indoctrinated so thats another justification hooray!. More bad guys to shoot right?

You dont have to feel bad if there is nothing to feel bad about right? You are Commander Shepard! Or a soldier in the military you are right in all actions and decisions you make by virtue of the fact you fight for a cause like stopping the Reapers.

VIOLENCE AS AN ONLY MEANS TO A DESIRED END.

Despite MASS EFFECT’S status as an RPG experience, the games rarely if ever provide you with substantial opportunities to employ diplomatic solutions to various problems where in it would seem feasible that it can be at least attempted.

Most of the time you will be exhausting dialogue options on a screen and shooting faceless thugs behind chest high cover throughout the entire experience.

In the narratives themselves this refusal to resolve conflicts peacefully are actively supported by characters or hand waved as being frivolous by the plot and sometimes even Shepard himself. Kill or be killed rains supreme in again, But in real life that mindset is far from being realistic or preferable.

THE BADASS CHARACTER CLICHE.

Something that will severely age the MASS EFFECT 2 experience is its over reliance on making every single character a BADASS stereotype. Even beloved Mordin Solus falls victim to this strange fixation with violent attributes and histories being considered wicked cool bro! In combat Mordin will utter lines that hint to the fact that he very much enjoys the killing he is participating in.

“Killed that one!”

“Thought I was harmless did you?”

“Oooh headshot!”

“Here... Enjoy” (Plays during times he sets people on fire with his tech attacks)

He also lists at one disturbing point in the story, all the ways in which he has killed people. Which includes using lethal drugs and... farming equipment, thats funny right? Actually MASS EFFECT 2 seems to include a lot of moments like that in where people list off hilarious methods they have used to kill people.

Every character in one way or another has the capacity to kill and does kill, they kill quite a lot of people actually and in some cases this is celebrated with gleeful enthusiasm by the plot.

Even Shepard can participate in a little bit of casual BADASSERY no matter if you are renegade or paragon. Be that shooting through hostages, threatening Batarian thugs, shooting Konrad in the foot or generally acting like a ruthless prick all for the fun of it like when you trick a injured mercenary into thinking he is going to die from minor wounds. This is a stark contrast to ME1 which at least tried its best to codify violent or aggressive acts as morally questionable. You are the first Human spectre in that game after all a shining beacon to all humanity in the new frontiers of space, what you do in that story is emblematic of the attitudes the whole of humanity express going forward.

Jack is probably the most blatant example of this new approach to violence the series took for reasons I have already described in previous posts.

To be clear, I’m not saying MASS EFFECT 2'S inclusion of glorified fantasy violence is entirely a bad thing. I just think that if you are gonna include violence you best be a little more intelligent when it comes to its usage in mechanics and narrative. Because it can be a powerful thematic tool if used right, in some cases there are moments in ME2 wherein it does get used extremely well but those moments are also still few and far between.

We can do so much better.

[michaelandy101-blog]

Profitable the Web page Pace Race

New Post has been published on http://tiptopreview.com/winning-the-page-speed-race/

Profitable the Web page Pace Race

The writer’s views are fully his or her personal (excluding the unlikely occasion of hypnosis) and will not all the time mirror the views of Moz.

A quick historical past of Google’s mission to make the net quicker

In 2009, by issuing a name to arms to “make the web faster”, Google set out on a mission to attempt to persuade web site house owners to make their websites load extra shortly.

As a way to entice web site house owners into truly caring about this, in 2010 Google introduced that site speed would become a factor in its desktop (non-mobile) search engine rating algorithms. This meant that websites that loaded shortly would have an search engine optimisation benefit over different web sites.

Six years later, in 2015, Google introduced that the number of searches performed on mobile exceeded those performed on desktop computers. That proportion continues to extend. The most recent printed statistic says that, as of 2019, 61% of searches performed on Google were from mobile devices.

Cellular’s now-dominant function in search led Google to develop its “Accelerated Mobile Pages” (AMP) undertaking. This initiative is aimed toward encouraging web site house owners to create what is basically one other cell theme, on high of their responsive cell theme, that complies with a really strict set of improvement and efficiency tips.

Though many web site house owners and SEOs complain about having to are likely to web page velocity and AMP on high of the opposite 200+ rating elements that already give them complications, web page velocity is certainly a worthy effort for web site house owners to concentrate on. In 2017, Google conducted a study the place the outcomes very a lot justified their concentrate on making the net quicker. They discovered that “As web page load time goes from one second to 10 seconds, the chance of a cell web site customer bouncing will increase 123%.”

In July of 2018, page speed became a ranking factor for mobile searches, and right now Google will incorporate much more speed-related elements (known as Core Internet Vitals) in its rating algorithms.

With the typical human consideration span lowering on a regular basis, and our reliance on our cell units rising persistently, there’s no query that web page velocity is, and can proceed to be, an extremely vital factor for web site house owners to are likely to.

Find out how to optimize an internet site for velocity

Assume like a race automotive driver

Profitable the web page velocity race requires the identical issues as profitable a automotive race. To win a race in a automotive, you be sure that your automobile is as light-weight as potential, as highly effective as potential, and also you navigate the racetrack as effectively as potential.

I’ll use this analogy to attempt to make web page velocity optimization methods a bit extra comprehensible.

Make it light-weight

Lately, web sites are extra stunning and practical than ever earlier than — however that additionally means they’re larger than ever. Most trendy web sites are the equal of a celebration bus or a limo. They’re tremendous fancy, loaded with all types of facilities, and due to this fact HEAVY and SLOW. Within the search engine “racetrack,” you’ll not win with a celebration bus or a limo. You’ll look cool, however you’ll lose.

Picture supply: A GTMetrix check outcomes web page

To win the web page velocity race, you want a correct racing automobile, which is light-weight. Race vehicles don’t have radios, cupholders, glove containers, or actually something in any respect that isn’t completely mandatory. Equally, your web site shouldn’t be loaded up with elaborate animations, video backgrounds, huge pictures, fancy widgets, extreme plugins, or anything in any respect that isn’t completely mandatory.

Along with decluttering your web site of pointless fanciness and extreme plugins, you may also shed web site weight by:

Lowering the variety of third-party scripts (code snippets that ship or obtain knowledge from different web sites)

Switching to a lighter-weight (much less code-heavy) theme and lowering the variety of fonts used

Implementing AMP

Optimizing pictures

Compressing and minifying code

Performing common database optimizations

On an open-source content material administration system like WordPress, velocity plugins can be found that may make loads of these duties a lot simpler. WP Rocket and Imagify are two WordPress plugins that can be utilized collectively to considerably lighten your web site’s weight by way of picture optimization, compression, minification, and quite a lot of different web page velocity finest practices.

Give it extra energy

You wouldn’t put a golf cart engine in a race automotive, so why would you set your web site on a dirt-cheap, shared internet hosting plan? Chances are you’ll discover it painful to pay various per thirty days on internet hosting for those who’ve been on a type of plans for a very long time, however once more, golf cart versus race automotive engine: do you need to win this race or not?

Conventional shared internet hosting plans cram tens of hundreds of internet sites onto a single server. This leaves every particular person web site starved for computing energy.

If you wish to race within the large leagues, it’s time to get a grown-up internet hosting plan. For WordPress websites, managed internet hosting corporations similar to WP Engine and Flywheel make the most of servers which are highly effective and particularly tuned to serve up WordPress websites quicker.

If managed WordPress internet hosting isn’t your factor, or for those who don’t have a WordPress web site, upgrading to a VPS (Digital Non-public Server) will lead to your web site having far more computing assets obtainable to it. You’ll even have extra management over your individual internet hosting atmosphere, permitting you to “tune-up your engine” with issues like the newest variations of PHP, MySQL, Varnish caching, and different trendy internet server applied sciences. You’ll now not be on the mercy of your shared internet hosting firm’s greed as they stuff an increasing number of web sites onto your already-taxed server.

Briefly, placing your web site on a well-tuned internet hosting atmosphere could be like placing a supercharger in your race automotive.

Drive it higher

Final, however definitely not least, a light-weight and highly effective race automotive can solely go so quick and not using a educated driver who is aware of how one can navigate the course effectively.

The “navigate the course” a part of this analogy refers back to the technique of an online browser loading a webpage. Every component of an internet site is one other twist or flip for the browser to navigate because it travels by way of the code and processes the output of the web page.

I’ll swap analogies momentarily to attempt to clarify this extra clearly. When transforming a home, you paint the rooms first earlier than redoing the flooring. For those who redid the flooring first after which painted the rooms, the brand new flooring would get paint on them and also you’d have to return and have a tendency to the flooring once more later.

When a browser hundreds a webpage, it goes by way of a course of known as (coincidentally) “painting.” Every web page is “painted” because the browser receives bits of knowledge from the webpage’s supply code. This portray course of can both be executed effectively (i.e. portray partitions earlier than refinishing flooring), or it may be finished in a extra chaotic out-of-order vogue that requires a number of journeys again to the start of the method to redo or repair or add one thing that might’ve/ought to’ve been finished earlier within the course of.

Picture supply: WebPageTest.org Check End result (Filmstrip View)

Right here’s the place issues can get technical, nevertheless it’s vital to do no matter you’ll be able to to assist your web site drive the “track” extra effectively.

Caching is an idea that each web site ought to have in place to make loading a webpage simpler on the browser. It already takes lengthy sufficient for a browser to course of all of a web page’s supply code and paint it out visually to the consumer, so that you may as nicely have that supply code able to go on the server. By default, with out caching, that’s not the case.

With out caching, the web site’s CMS and the server can nonetheless be engaged on producing the webpage’s supply code whereas the browser is ready to color the web page. This may trigger the browser to must pause and watch for extra code to return from the server. With caching, the supply code of a web page is pre-compiled on the server in order that it’s completely able to be despatched to the browser in full in a single shot. Consider it like a photocopier having loads of copies of a doc already produced and able to be handed out, as an alternative of creating a replica on demand every time somebody asks for one.

Numerous varieties and ranges of caching could be achieved by way of plugins, your internet hosting firm, and/or by way of a CDN (Content material Supply Community). CDNs not solely present caching, however in addition they host copies of the pre-generated web site code on quite a lot of servers the world over, lowering the impression of bodily distance between the server and the consumer on the load time. (And sure, the web is definitely made up of bodily servers which have to speak to one another over bodily distances. The net is just not truly a “cloud” in that sense.)

Getting again to our race automotive analogy, using caching and a CDN equals a a lot quicker journey across the racetrack.

These are two of the fundamental constructing blocks of environment friendly web page portray, however there are much more methods that may be employed as nicely. On WordPress, the next could be applied by way of a plugin or plugins (once more, WP Rocket and Imagify are a very good combo for reaching loads of this):

Asynchronous and/or deferred loading of scripts. That is mainly a flowery approach of referring to loading a number of issues on the similar time or ready till later to load issues that aren’t wanted instantly.

Preloading and prefetching. Mainly, retrieving knowledge about hyperlinks upfront as an alternative of ready for the consumer to click on on them.

Lazy loading. Ironic time period being that this idea exists for web page velocity functions, however by default, most browsers load ALL pictures on a web page, even these which are out of sight till a consumer scrolls right down to them. Implementing lazy loading means telling the browser to be lazy and wait on loading these out-of-sight pictures till the consumer truly scrolls there.

Serving pictures in next-gen codecs. New picture codecs similar to WebP could be loaded a lot quicker by browsers than the old school JPEG and PNG codecs. But it surely’s vital to notice that not all browsers can help these new codecs simply but — so you’ll want to use a plugin that may serve up the next-gen variations to browsers that help them, however present the previous variations to browsers that don’t. WP Rocket, when paired with Imagify, can obtain this.

Picture supply: WP Rocket plugin settings

Optimize for Core Internet Vitals

Lastly, optimizing for the brand new Core Internet Important metrics (Largest Contentful Paint, First Enter Delay, and Cumulative Structure Shift) could make for a way more environment friendly journey across the racetrack as nicely.

Image source

These are fairly technical ideas, however right here’s a fast overview to get you accustomed to what they imply:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) refers back to the portray of the most important component on the web page. Google’s PageSpeed Insights device will let you know which component is taken into account to be the LCP component of a web page. Numerous occasions it is a hero picture or giant slider space, nevertheless it varies from web page to web page, so run the device to establish the LCP in your web page after which take into consideration what you are able to do to make that exact component load quicker.

First Enter Delay (FID) is the delay between the consumer’s first motion and the browser’s skill to answer it. An instance of an FID difficulty can be a button that’s seen to a consumer prior to it turns into clickable. The delay can be brought on by the press performance loading notably later than the button itself.

Cumulative Structure Shift (CLS) is a set of three large phrases that refer to 1 easy idea. You understand while you’re loading up a webpage in your telephone and also you go to click on on one thing or learn one thing however then it hops up or down as a result of one thing else loaded above it or beneath it? That motion is CLS, it’s majorly annoying, and it’s a byproduct of inefficient web page portray.

In conclusion, race automotive > golf cart

Web page velocity optimization is definitely complicated and complicated, nevertheless it’s a vital part to realize higher rankings. As an internet site proprietor, you’re on this race whether or not you prefer it or not — so that you may as nicely do what you’ll be able to to make your web site a race automotive as an alternative of a golf cart!

Source link

[robin-hood-for-freedom]

Its been a LONG time since I’v done anything regarding Anita Sarkeesian.  And to be honest, I wasnt going to make a response to this.  But I feel like he actually raises some interesting points that are worth discussing.  

to the skeptics and anti sjw's she'sseen in all ways as a force for bad adishonest critic opportunist a scamartist and ideologue a huge dick 

I guess thats fair.  At this point I dont think most anti-sjws really care about her though.  I will say that, I, personally never got on board with the whole idea that she was a scam artist(though I can see why some people came to that conclusion).  Imo, even if its true(and I doubt it), its largely a red herring.  

so what I'll call the Internet left however she was broadly understood as an all-around decent critic who was unfairly maligned harassed and abused because she was a woman who spoke about feminism and about her unfair treatment on the Internet

Since you are part of the ‘internet left’ I’ll take your word for it.  

I genuinely like Anita sarkeesian I agree with lots of her points and thought she was pretty cool before I knew she was somebody who everybody hated

I’m gonna be honest: Even if I was inclined to agree with anita’s criticism(I’m not), I dont know if I would really like her as a person or say she was ‘cool.’  Her videos and public appearances to me just come across as boring and uninspired.  

To be fair though, my only interaction with her has been through those videos/appearances.  So its possible she’s actually really nice and funny in person.  

even if I didn't like her though I still wouldn't think she deserved the ire of the public you know threats and harassment from people who hated every fiber of her being

Looking back I’m actually somewhat inclined to agree with you.  Aside from the obvious that nobody deserves threats and harassment(although those were grossly exaggerated), I actually think the attention given to her was unwarranted.  That said, I think most of was less hatred for Anita as a person, or even as a woman, and more concerns about her potential influence and how that might affect games(and other media) we love.  

Looking back that influence turned out to be ‘basically none’ but you know what they say about hindsight.  

I'm gonna be looking closely at a few people mostly Thunderfoot and sargon of akkad

I’m going to point out at this point that I’m not really that interested in defending Sargon or Thunderf00t(especially not Thunderf00t).  I have my quibbles with their takes on Anita.  

the first big argument that Anita sarkeesian wants to make that looking at games we can see a general tendency toward centralizing narratives of male and particularly straight male empowerment and what's more that this narrative tends to place the women of video games into some pretty weird positions women are less likely to be the protagonists of games they're more likely to be presented as sexually appealing to have their bodies put on display they're more likely to take on passive or victimized positions as damsels their to be rescued by predominantly male heroes

You cold argue that there are games that do this.  I could point out loads of counter-examples of games that dont.  

But, more importantly, I think, is that she doesnt really make an argument for why this is bad.  And even the limited attempts she does make, you explicitly reject later in this video.  In other words, we’re left with no reason to accept this as a criticism, unless we’ve bought into feminist ideology prior to clicking on Anita’s videos.  

If you want to argue that these videos were meant to be specifically for a feminist audience and that its silly for non-feminists to care, I guess thats fair as far as it goes.  But I dont think thats what you are getting at with this video.  

not being an expert in games myself I can't really go through er work fact-checking each and everyone of those examples besides that's not really something that interests me

I guess thats fair as far as it goes.  I’m actually glad you acknowledge that you dont know that much about games(unlike anita).  But I think you’ll miss a lot of the criticisms of her in that case, which tended to focus on how fairly she was presenting the games she looked at(not very in most cases).  

He then posts and summarizes a Thunderf00t video here, I’m only gonna respond to one point then pick up later(watch the full video for context)

Jamie's girlfriend didn't need to get beaten up we didn't need to see her panties as she was taken away

I pointed this out when I responded to Anita, but compare the amount of Marion porn, to the amount of Chung-li porn, and then tell me how much men desire weak or disempowered women(granted this isnt overly relevant to anything he said, but it was something that always bugged me about anita’s arguments).

Double Dragon might be a story about heroism in some broad sense but it's also a male power fantasy it makes you feel good because you get to play as a badass

No, it IS a story about heroism.  I can agree that the game sidelines and ‘damsels’ Marion(although again I’m not sold on the idea of that being inherently a bad thing).  But the fantasy isnt just about beating people up for no reason, its about being able to protect and save the people you care about.  I’m seriously skeptical that Double Dragon(or most other games) would resonate as much without that aspect.  

I’m skipping most of the rest of the Thunderf00t stuff, because I dont think thunderf00t made the best arguments, and dont have much desire to defend them.  

here's her second and much more important position that games being like that that's a problem Anita isn't just here to make a bunch of neutral statements about what video games are like she wants to say that video games have some relationship to things like sexism misogyny the patriarchy negative and pervasive stuff she sees in our culture

And since I’m not convinced that games can cause people to become sexist or other have other negative views(and neither are you as we shall see).  The only problem is that the games in question offend her feminist sensibilities.  

[these youtubers] nitpick small errors in her analysis see she spoke too broadly about hitman her general observations about video games must be totally off-base

Its not just hitman.  That was just one of many, many examples of her misrepresenting or deliberately using game mechanics to painting games in a worse light than reality is.  Also she shows no understand of how gameplay affects player attention and focus(presumably because she doesnt know as a result of not playing them)

cultivation Theory cultivation theory is an area of research and psychology that attempts to study and demonstrate the impact that media has on people the sorts of behaviors and dispositions it cultivates and when these youtubers talk about this theory it is always to point out that the research has proven it false

Not so much that its been proven false.  But that the effects shown are much more subtle than is commonly portrayed, tends to reinforce previously held beliefs rather than implanting new ones, and may not even apply to games.  Liana Kerzner(funny how you dont cover her despite the fact that she got a decent amount of attention for arguing with Anita), and AydenPaladin have both discussed this extensively, so I’ll just leave links to their videos.  

let's say for the sake of argument that these people are absolutely right about their science every study we've done shows that video games cause no shift in behavior or disposition our research into cultivation Theory has given us nothing but a bunch of bummed out psychologists now assuming all this let's ask a question what exactly would these findings mean to Anita sarkeesian's claim that video games can be harmful

It would mean she’s wrong.  Actually she’s wrong even in the real world where cultivation is a thing, just more subtle and might not apply to games.  

but to me it would mean absolutely nothing and why is that well here's one big reason I don't think that science is actually capable of disproving obvious facts about the wa ypeople work media's abilities are cultivate behaviors emotions and dispositions isn't some incidental point about it that requires further proof rather it's the entire reason why media exists in the first place

You’re conflating two very different things here.  Nobody denies that media has an ‘effect’ in the sense of causing an emotional reaction or giving some new information to people.  But thats a VERY different thing than saying media can alter peoples long-term attitudes, beliefs or behaviors.  

I agree the former is obvious.  The latter isnt.  And in fact the effect media has is pretty small.  

let's do a little thought experiment say a film is made that is unabashed Nazi propaganda let's call it Lubin'sLubin

You obviously dont speak German, but okay.  

every moment in this film conveys an anonymous and an explicit hatred of Jews let's say that this film is so horrendously racist that nobody in society can possibly be influenced by it to become Nazis the vast majority of people watch it critically tear it apart maybe even reflect on how silly and gross Nazism is

So you’re saying this film may, unintentionally, have a net positive effect on society.  Go on.

now if what's argon and Thunderfoot says is true if the only way to say a work of art is toxic is to look at its literal impact on society then we would be unable to condemn Lubin sh Lubin since the film has no tangible effect on anyone's behavior

Oh we could absolutely condemn the film, say its gross or bad or stupid or whatever.  What could not do is say its harmful.  Because it isnt.  

everybody with a brain knows that this movie is bad politically not in a way that means we should ban it but in a way that is worthy of our scorn and disgust

Sure such a film would be disgusting.  But disgust isnt harm.  And to conflate the two is not only disingenuous as fuck, but potentially dangerous.  

By this logic, Anita Sarkeesian’s videos are harmful, because lots of people are disgusted by them.  

watching Anita sarkeesian's videos she does site cultivation Theory a few times says there's a causal relationship between video games being the way they are and people being sexist and to be honest I kinda wish she hadn't said those things

Do I even need to comment?  

you can see that she means something very similar to what we described in our thought experiment we can see this whenever she talks about games it's pretty obvious

Indeed.  Her main reason for condemning video games is that they offend her feminist sensibilities.  So non-feminists have no reason to accept her criticism.  

she didn't wait for the Double Dragon studies to come in and prove that the game causes regressive behaviors and of course she didn't do that because she doesn't have to she is a person who experienced this work of art and she's claiming here that what she saw in it

Or in other words:

it stipulates that violence against women can be understood as erotic

Again, who is the bigger sex symbol: Marion or Bayonetta?  hint: its NOT the one who is passive recipient of violence.  

it just doesn't make sense to reserve our judgments of media to only those things that the work is actively calling for we also have to look at subtext and coding

And the subtext here is ‘kidnapping and beating up women is bad.  And real manly badasses protect and care for the ones they love.’  

keeping with our Nazi propaganda theme which I guess we have here let's use let's use this boy as an example:

image posted for reference.

this image obviously sucks because in the society it was used in it conveyed terrible ideas it serves to implicitly justify racial hierarchy and to normalize the idea that Jewish people were subhuman it

The difference here is the image in question was used in explicit anti-semitic propaganda.  There is a history here that directly links this imagery to Nazism and anti-semitism more broadly.  

Video games dont have such a history.  Even the tropes anita discusses that pre-date video games, such as the damsel in distress dont really have such a history.  The story of Saint George and the dragon(one of the earliest DiD stories, and the oldest anita cites) was about faith and knightly duty, not gender relations.  Hell Double Dragon isnt ABOUT how helpless your grlfriend, but about being the hero who is willing and capable to protect her.  

Skipping some more, because I dont care:

what he[thunderf00t] seems to have forgotten is that you can buy cigarettes under capitalism and you can buy an apple under capitalism cigarettes kill 400,000 people every year but apples they don't do nearly that much damage it's actually said that they keep the doctors away you might think that cigarettes should remain legal and I'm sympathetic to that idea but you'd have a hard time convincing me that they're not harmful to the people who use them

The difference is that we have loads of evidence that cigarettes cause real, tangible harm.  The same cannot be said for media.  Even cultivation theory says that media tends to reinforce existing beliefs than implant new ones.  And its not always clear that those beliefs translate into tangible actions.  

And I’m gonna say it again before anybody brings it up:  disgust is not harm.  

you may think that you can talk about the worth of art from a political or moral perspective but in fact that's just a mirage anything you say about media is just an unverified and likely unsupportable position and you should probably forget about

I would phrase it differently:  You can talk about media from a moral or political perspective all you want.  However, anybody who doesnt share your perspective would then be perfectly justified in simply dismissing what you have to say.  

hate Anita sarkeesian not because of what she says but because of who she is and the damage she causes

More precisely the damage we thought she might potentially cause.  Which admittedly in hindsight was an overreaction.  

they talk about how she sucks because she released her video slowly

Usually its less about her being slow, and more about she failed to keep her kickstarter promises.  I dont really go in for that because because I frankly dont think its that big a deal.  

didn't like being harassed on the Internet

Look, what she has shown as harassment is no worse than what most people(men and women) experience.  The vast majority of it wasnt even harassment but responses and criticisms.  

I guess you could say that online harassment shouldnt be a thing at all.  But I also dont think thats very realistic.  

talk about how she's a fraudulent grifter who gets her lackeys to phony bomb threats so she can make more money

I dont know about the bomb threat thing specifically.  I DO know that she used the harassment she received(real or not) to get attention and money.  

about how she's a fake gamer and so she shouldn't be talking about games

Thats a perfectly valid criticism though.  Media criticism is best done by people who actually have knowledge of the media in question.  

these guys are unapologetically anti-feminist and because of that they see no reason to change media to make it more feminist

So you DO get it!  

and they don't criticize and Anita sarkeesian's work because of cultivation theory I mean where are the studies that show that these videos are causing murder rates to increase

I honestly dont know what you’re getting at here.  The only reason anybody ever brought up cultivation theory is because Anita did first.  

And they dont criticize Anita  Sarkeesian's work because she explicitly calls for immoral actions

Nobody said she did?  Although I think if you read between the lines she has some really negative views towards men.  

and they don't criticize Anita sarkeesian's videos because they exist outside some benevolent capitalist structure I've got some hot news for you Anita sarkeesian's work is actually facilitated by capitalism

I’m not sure what you’re getting at here.  But it does make Anita a massive fucking hypocrite.  

no they hate Anita sarkeesian's work mostly because she says stuff they think is bad she's a feminist who wants various things about games to change and they disagree with her vehemently about it

And more importantly, that with all the attention she was getting at the time we thought the kind of changes she wants might actually start to happen.  Not that her videos would turn game developers into feminists(because lets face it, theres basically zero chance of her videos turning anybody feminist).  But because they might become convinced that there is an audience for the kind of games she wants.  

Like I said multiple times:  We were mostly mistaken about that.  

Theres not really much else here.  he just repeats himself.  so thats all for now.  

[bellabooks]

“Queer Ghost Hunters” are scaring up some real LGBTQ history

I came across the new web series Queer Ghost Hunters entirely by accident, but I’m forever glad that I stumbled into the corner of the internet that caters to the kind of queerness that is out of this world! Whether you’re a believer or a skeptic, the show is a lot of fun! If you haven’t heard about the series, then here’s what you need to know: “Queer Ghost Hunters is a docu series premiering this October about real people making contact with LGBT ghosts. They unearth the hidden stories of lost LGBTQ lives.” The team is entirely made up of ghost hunters from the LGBT community. Some are adamant believers in the paranormal, while some are skeptical but willing to experiment (for the second time) and see if anything comes of it. They travel around seeking out queer ghosts and attempt to communicate with them with the intention of giving them an opportunity to have their voices to finally be heard. The team is finding real queer history that has been lost, and they’re entertaining us while they do it! The show is basically the kind of footage that you would expect to find on Jillian Holtzmann’s trusty video camera if she were given free reign to make a ghost documentary. via Tumblr   The Stu Maddux production recently met their Kickstarter goal in October, and have released five episodes, plus extra content you can check out for free on their YouTube channel.     So far, the Queer Ghost Hunters have already spent some of their time talking to ghostly gay nuns, but as a queer history nerd, I’ve compiled this list of potential ghosts that would be really awesome for the Ghost Hunters to get in touch with. Julie D’Aubigny, or Mademoiselle de Maupin, was a sword-fighting bisexual opera singer in 17th century France. I know, she’s basically the coolest person I’ve ever read about. I saw a post about her on Tumblr and I’ve wanted to write something about her ever since. She killed or wounded at least ten men in life-or-death fights, and performed every night on the world’s most respected opera stage. When she became an opera singer, she fell in love with a woman, but the woman’s parents sent her to a convent. That didn’t stop Julie, though, she took Holy Orders just so she could sneak into the convent and set it on fire while she and her girlfriend escaped. Questions for Julie: * Is it true that King Louis XIV never tried you for your crimes because he found you too entertaining to deserve death? * How did you get so cool? * What was it like being bisexual in 17th century France? How would you handle the bisexual erasure and biphobia that exists today? (Probably by challenging any perpetrators to a dual, am I right?)   Alan Turing is a man who has intrigued me since I watched Derek Jacobi portray him in ‘Breaking the Code’. He’s the English homosexual who played a vital role in cracking the Enigma code that resulted in England and their allies defeating Germany in World War 2. He shortened the war by about 2 years and is estimated to have saved over 14 million lives. He’s also the man responsible for the technological foundations of the computer. So, you’re welcome. Despite this, Turing was made to endure chemical castration after being prosecuted for homosexual acts in 1952. He died in 1954 from cyanide poisoning. It is widely believed that he committed suicide, although it’s entirely possible that he ingested the poison by accident, and some even believe the government had him killed! In 2009, England’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a public apology for “the appalling way he was treated.” Queen Elizabeth II then granted him a posthumous pardon in 2013. Questions for Alan: * After eating a poison apple, who do you wish had been your Prince Charming to kiss you back to life? * What do you think about the way technology is being used in the 21st century * What’s do you think about the UK government’s Snoopers’ Charter which allows police to hack into your online data and browsing history? * How does it feel to have been pardoned by the Queen?   Sally Ride was the first woman in space. Despite the fact that I have always sucked at science, I think space is really pretty and mind blowing and is one of the coolest things ever. It only came to light after her death in 2012 that she had been in a long term relationship with a woman. It shouldn’t really have come as much of a surprise, since gays love space. It is thought that she kept details of her private life private in order to preserve the image of the space agency. The astronaut also saw her sister, who was a lesbian, being forced out of her clergy job due to her sexual orientation. Questions for Sally: * How does it feel knowing that so many young LGBT people are in love with the idea of space? * What was your reasoning for remaining in the closet while alive, but giving your partner permission to out you in the event of your death? * Tell me everything you know about space. Did being an astronaut make you a popular lady’s lady?   I even managed to talk to the Queer Ghost Hunters, and asked who they would like to talk to if the opportunity arose! Shane McClelland, Co-Leader of the Queer Ghost Hunters said, “For me personally, I think I would want to talk to folks who were rumored to be queer during their lifetime, but were not out. Someone like President James Buchanan, but anyone with his social status.” He said he would just want to “talk with them about why they weren’t out (besides the obvious reasons, if that was a consideration). What was life like? Did they ever consider using their influence or wealth to advance the LGBTQ causes? Did they have friends who knew? Was there a network of fellow queers that met or communicated with? If there was, did they talk about their struggles? How did you meet other LGBTQ folk?” Katy Detrow, the Team Researcher gave an answer that spoke to my own history nerd qualities, she said “For me, I just want to meet ghosts of regular people. I somehow think the lives of everyday people who were living lives as LGBTQ people in a time where they couldn’t even understand what that meant is to me way more interesting than how some rich dude did it. It’s easier for rich and famous people to do whatever they want, everyone expects them to be eccentric, but how did every day people walk through the world, find lovers, find happiness in times when it was seemingly impossible? That’s what just fascinates me.” Finally, Director Stu Maddux added that he would love to have a chat with “Harvey Milk, Gertrude Stein, Liberace, Alexander The Great, Jesus/God/Universal Higher Creative Power of Existence”. Apparently, the team came to the conclusion that ‘Jesus/God/Universal Higher Creative Power of Existence’ would at least be an advocate, if not queer themselves. If you could contact any queer ghost you liked, who would you want to chat to and what would you ask them?   http://dlvr.it/N2dblC

[thatsnotcanonpodcasts]

Pegg, Dungeon & Hanabi

Welcome back for another amazing episode from the triplets of mayhem, the Nerds Amalgamated crew. This week we have an excellent show for you to enjoy with everyone in fine form and having fun. The first topic of the week is from DJ looking into Simon Pegg claiming that cinema appears to be dying. Now does this relate to the comments about thin margins in movies? Well, that is a good question and if you want to know more you will have to listen in to find out. But we are you will laugh when you listen to this section.

                Next up Professor unveils his darker side and lures us into a dungeon…. What, he doesn’t… oops sorry apparently that was supposed to be Professor tells us about a dungeon game made by an AI. My apologies, but it is a reasonably easy mistake to make, after all he is a bit of a mad scientist. But this is looking really cool and fun, some of the options in this are pretty outstanding. Once again this is not a warning about AI trying to take over the world…yet.

                Last up we have an AI system that is learning how to work co-operatively with people, and possibly manipulating them. Buck brings us a story about some research from Facebook’s AI team that is pretty darn well ground breaking in regards to the results being achieved. We are talking about an attempt to formulate a near perfect response to an imperfect problem. What does that mean, well listen in and you can find out.

                As usual we have the games being played, with Buck changing his at the last second which is kind of cool. Then this is followed by the regular variety of shout outs, remembrances, birthdays, and special events. We are offering a new service, if you are feeling a little pompous and wish to regain that sense of reality Buck is offering to develop a personal insult just for you. As always please remember to take care of yourselves, look out for each other and stay hydrated.

Simon Pegg: "Theatrical Cinema, Sadly, Appears to Be Dying"- https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/simon-pegg-theatrical-cinema-sadly-appears-be-dying-1258252

A.I. Dungeon: a game made by A.I. - https://www.aidungeon.io/

Facebook A.I. takes on the Hanabi - https://techxplore.com/news/2019-12-hanabi-facebook-ai-cooperative-gameplay.html

Games currently playing

Buck

– Jet Rush - https://www.crazygames.com/game/jet-rush

Rating : 3/5

Professor

– Mirror’s Edge - https://store.steampowered.com/app/17410/Mirrors_Edge/

Rating : 4.5/5

DJ

– You Have to Burn The Rope - https://www.crazygames.com/game/you-have-to-burn-the-rope

Rating : 3.5/5

Other topics discussed

Magniflorious definition (An adjective to describe something better than magnificent)

- https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Magniflorious

Wonder Woman 1984 – Official trailer

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfM7_JLk-84

Galactus (fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Formerly a mortal man, Galactus is a cosmic entity who originally consumed planets to sustain his life force, and serves a functional role in the upkeep of the primary Marvel continuity.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactus

Punisher : War Zone (2008 American action thriller film based on the Marvel Comics character the Punisher, directed by Lexi Alexander.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punisher:_War_Zone

Marvel Movies from 1986 – 2018 (IMDB list)

- https://www.imdb.com/list/ls070044396/

Venom (2018 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name, produced by Columbia Pictures in association with Marvel and Tencent Pictures)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venom_(2018_film)

Big Hero 6 (2014 American 3D computer animated superhero film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Hero_6_(film)

Big Hero 6 : The Series (American superhero comedy animated television series, produced by Disney Television Animation and developed by Kim Possible creators Mark McCorkle and Bob Schooley.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Hero_6:_The_Series

Burn Notice (American television series created by Matt Nix, which originally aired on the USA Network for a total of seven seasons from June 28, 2007, to September 12, 2013.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn_Notice

White Collar (USA Network television series created by Jeff Eastin, starring Tim DeKay as FBI Special Agent Peter Burke and Matt Bomer as Neal Caffrey, a highly intelligent and multi talented con artist working as Burke's criminal informant. Willie Garson and Tiffani Thiessen also star.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Collar_(TV_series)

As Time Goes By (British romanticsitcom which aired on BBC One from 1992 to 2005, running for nine series and three specials.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Time_Goes_By_(TV_series)

Sherlock (British crime drama television series based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes detective stories.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(TV_series)

Keeping Up Appearances (British sitcom created and written by Roy Clarke.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_Up_Appearances

Kriol Kitchen (Kriol Kitchen makes the connection between cuisine and Australian history, showing just how fragrant Australia is with diversity and culture.)

- https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/kriol-kitchen

The Marngrook Footy Show (sport panel show broadcast in Australia.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marngrook_Footy_Show

2001 : A Space Odyssey (1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(film)

Secret Hitler (hidden identity party game developed by Goat, Wolf, & Cabbage LLC, manufactured by Breaking Games and distributed by Blackbox.)

- https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/188834/secret-hitler

Squeaker definition (A squeaker is a child on an online voice chat that has not yet reached puberty.)

- https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Squeaker

Keystroke Logging (often referred to as keylogging or keyboard capturing, is the action of recording (logging) the keys struck on a keyboard, typically covertly, so that person using the keyboard is unaware that their actions are being monitored.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystroke_logging

Mr Burns: Damn their oily hides

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MGndXoF9Eo

Rubbernecking (the act of staring at something of interest. The term rubbernecking refers to the physical act of craning one's neck, performed in order to get a better view.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubbernecking

Elvis Presley – Rubberneckin’ (Paul Oakenfield Remix)

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DART7FA9Krs

Bot can beat human in multiplayer games

- https://techxplore.com/news/2019-11-bot-humans-multiplayer-hidden-role-games.html

The Hanabi challenge: A new frontier for AI research

- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0004370219300116?via%3Dihub

Humans Call GG! OpenAI Five Bots Beat Top Pros OG in Dota 2

- https://medium.com/syncedreview/humans-call-gg-openai-five-bots-beat-top-pros-og-in-dota-2-8508e59b8fd5

Good Game (Australian television gaming programme produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), which aired on ABC2.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Game_(TV_program)

Lance Armstrong (American former professional road racing cyclist, infamous for the biggest doping scandal in cycling history.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance_Armstrong

Marion Jones (American former world champion track and field athlete and a former professional basketball player for Tulsa Shock in the WNBA.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Jones

And Then They Fked (TNC Podcast)

- https://thatsnotcanon.com/attfpodcast

Village People – YMCA

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9OO0S5w2k

Shoutouts

9 Dec 2019 - Caroll Spinney, American puppeteer, cartoonist, author and speaker most famous for playing Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street from its inception in 1969 until 2018. Has passed away at the age of 85 - https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/dec/08/carroll-spinney-dies-big-bird-sesame-street

9 Dec 2019 - René Auberjonois, American actor and singer best known for playing Odo on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine passed away at the age of 79 from metastatic lung cancer in Los Angeles. In films, Auberjonois portrayed Father Mulcahy in MASH the movie, the expedition scientist Roy Bagley in King Kong, and Chef Louis in The Little Mermaid, in which he sang "Les Poissons". In various long-running television series, Auberjonois portrayed a number of characters, including: Clayton Endicott III on Benson (for which he was an Emmy Award nominee) and Paul Lewiston on Boston Legal. He also branched out into voice acting for video games, having appeared in a number of popular video games such as God of War, Fallout: New Vegas, Uncharted video game series, and Star Trek Online. - https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/dec/09/rene-auberjonois-actor-who-starred-in-mash-star-trek-and-benson-dies-aged-79

9 Dec 1960 – The first episode of Coronation Street, the world's longest-running television soap opera, is broadcast in the United Kingdom. The programme centres on Coronation Street in Weatherfield, a fictional town based on inner-city Salford. In the show's fictional history, the street was built in 1902 and named in honour of the coronation of King Edward VII. On 17 September 2010, it became the world's longest-running television soap opera and was listed in Guinness World Records. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronation_Street

10 Dec 2019 - World Anti-Doping Agency bans Russia from Olympics for four years over doping scandal. Russia has been banned from the Olympics and world championships in a range of sports after a World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) ruling to punish it for manipulating laboratory data. - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-09/russia-banned-from-olympics-by-world-anti-doping-agency/11782240?sf225607403=1&fbclid=IwAR31t2OKG3hNyGJHQkiok1Lz2vae2es7aFDo0NfFUoj2SK8fv-bII9bc268

11 Dec 2019 - Roxette star Marie Fredriksson dies aged 61 after a 17-year battle with brain cancer. The Swedish pop star, whose most iconic hits included It Must Have Been Love and Listen To Your Heart passed away in Djursholm, Sweden at the age of 61. Her bandmate, Per Gessle, said 'things will never be the same.' . - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-7776221/Roxette-star-Marie-Fredriksson-dead-aged-61.html

Rememberances

9 Dec 1937 - Nils Gustaf Dalén, Swedish Nobel Laureate and industrialist, engineer, inventor and long-term CEO of the AGA company and inventor of the AGA cooker and the Dalén light. In 1912 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his "invention of automatic regulators for use in conjunction with gas accumulators for illuminating lighthouses and buoys". He died from terminal cancer at the age of 68 in Lidingö,Stockholm - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustaf_Dal%C3%A9n

9 Dec 1970 - Artem (Artyom) Ivanovich Mikoyan, Soviet Armenian aircraft designer, who cofounded the Mikoyan-Gurevich design bureau along with Mikhail Gurevich. In March 1942, the bureau was renamed OKB MiG (Osoboye Konstruktorskoye Büro), ANPK MiG (Aviatsionnyy nauchno-proizvodstvennyy kompleks) and OKO MiG. The MiG-1 proved to be a poor start, the MiG-3 went into production but only occasionally could it fight in its intended high-level interceptor role. Further MiG-5, MiG-7 and MiG-8 Utka did not progress beyond research prototypes. He died from stroke at the age of 65 in Moscow - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artem_Mikoyan

9 Dec 2005 - Robert Sheckley, American writer. First published in the science-fiction magazines of the 1950s, his numerous quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable, absurdist, and broadly comical. His works include not only original short stories and novels, but also TV series episodes (Captain Video and His Video Rangers), novelizations of works by others (Babylon 5: A Call to Arms, after the film , stories in shared universes such as Heroes in Hell, and collaborations with other writers. In many stories Sheckley speculates about alternative (and usually sinister) social orders, of which a good example is the story "A Ticket to Tranai" (which tells of a sort of Utopia designed for human nature as it actually is, which turns out to have terrible drawbacks). His novel Dimension of Miracles is often cited as an influence on Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, although in an interview for Neil Gaiman's book Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion, Adams said he had not read it until after writing the Guide. He died from complications following heart surgery and a stroke at the age of 77 in Poughkeepsie, New York - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sheckley

Famous Birthdays

9 Dec 1608 - John Milton, English poet and intellectual, who served as a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under its Council of State and later under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost, written in blank verse. Writing in English, Latin, Greek, and Italian, he achieved international renown within his lifetime, and his celebrated Areopagitica, written in condemnation of pre-publication censorship, is among history's most influential and impassioned defences of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. His desire for freedom extended into his style: he introduced new words (coined from Latin) to the English language, and was the first modern writer to employ non-rhymed verse outside of the theatre or translations. Samuel Johnson praised Paradise Lost as "a poem which...with respect to design may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the human mind", though he described Milton's politics as those of an "acrimonious and surly republican". Poets such as William Blake, William Wordsworth and Thomas Hardy revered him. He was born in Bunhill, London - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Milton

9 Dec 1917 - Leo James Rainwater, American physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1975 for his part in determining the asymmetrical shapes of certain atomic nuclei. During World War II, he worked on the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic bombs. In 1949, he began developing his theory that, contrary to what was then believed, not all atomic nuclei are spherical. His ideas were later tested and confirmed by Aage Bohr's and Ben Mottelson's experiments. He also contributed to the scientific understanding of X-rays and participated in the United States Atomic Energy Commission and naval research projects. Rainwater joined the physics faculty at Columbia in 1946, where he reached the rank of full professor in 1952 and was named Pupin Professor of Physics in 1982. He received the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award for Physics in 1963 and in 1975 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, "for the discovery of the connection between collective motion and particle motion in atomic nuclei and the development of the theory of the structure of the atomic nucleus based on this connection". He was born in Council, Idaho - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Rainwater

9 Dec 1926 - Henry Way Kendall, American particle physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1990 jointly with Jerome Isaac Friedman and Richard E. Taylor "for their pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have been of essential importance for the development of the quark model in particle physics." These experiments involved scattering high-energy beams of electrons from protons and deuterons and heavier nuclei. At lower energies, it had already been found that the electrons would only be scattered through low angles, consistent with the idea that the nucleons had no internal structure. However, the SLAC-MIT experiments showed that higher energy electrons could be scattered through much higher angles, with the loss of some energy. These deep inelastic scattering results provided the first experimental evidence that the protons and neutrons were made up of point-like particles, later identified to be the up and downquarks that had previously been proposed on theoretical grounds. The experiments also provided the first evidence for the existence of gluons. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Way_Kendall

Events of Interest

9 Dec 1851 – The first YMCA in North America is established in Montreal. YMCA is Young Men's Christian Association. From its inception, it grew rapidly and ultimately became a worldwide movement founded on the principles of muscular Christianity. Local YMCAs deliver projects and services focused on youth development through a wide variety of youth activities, including providing athletic facilities, holding classes for a wide variety of skills, promoting Christianity, and humanitarian work. YMCA globally operates on a federation model, with each independent local YMCA voluntarily affiliated with its national organization. The national organizations, in turn, are part of both an Area Alliance (Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, the United States, and Canada) and the World Alliance of YMCAs (World YMCA). - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YMCA

9 Dec 1909 - Dr. Henry W. Walden, flew the first successful American monoplane flight. He was the designer, builder and pilot of that plane the Walden III. It was made after building a rudimentary wind tunnel and experimenting with different surface designs. At Mineola, Long Island, Walden and his plane left the ground and flew for a few hundred feet. He put the aircraft back down safely—elated. - https://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/or-die-trying-21230348/?page=4

9 Dec 1967 - Jim Morrison arrested on stage for disturbing the peace at the New Haven Arena, Connecticut, making him the 1st rock star to be taken into custody during a performance. According to Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek, Morrison was "making out" with a female fan in the shower in the backstage area of the New Haven Arena when a local police officer who was providing security for the band – apparently not recognizing the singer – told them to vacate the area, to which Morrison reportedly replied, "Eat it." When the officer brandished a can of Mace and warned, "Last chance," the singer retorted, "Last chance to eat it" – earning himself a face full of Mace for his defiance. Morrison was charged with inciting a riot, indecency and public obscenity. He posted a bond, but the charges were later dropped. - https://ultimateclassicrock.com/jim-morrison-maced-and-arrested-in-new-haven/

Intro

Artist – Goblins from Mars

Song Title – Super Mario - Overworld Theme (GFM Trap Remix)

Song Link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GNMe6kF0j0&index=4&list=PLHmTsVREU3Ar1AJWkimkl6Pux3R5PB-QJ

Follow us on

Facebook

- Page - https://www.facebook.com/NerdsAmalgamated/

- Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/440485136816406/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/NAmalgamated

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6Nux69rftdBeeEXwD8GXrS

iTunes - https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/top-shelf-nerds/id1347661094

RSS - http://www.thatsnotcanonproductions.com/topshelfnerdspodcast?format=rss

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/nerds_amalgamated/

General Enquiries

Email - Nerds.Amalgamated@gmail.com

[terabitweb]

Original Post from SC Magazine Author: stephenlawton

Man vs machine: The future of AI

Fear of successful cyberattacks meets fear of unintended consequences when machine learning is your first line of defense. Evan Schuman reports.

Fear can be a great motivator. If you are afraid that a human cannot make a decision fast enough to stop a cyberattack, you might opt for an artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning system. But although fear, uncertainty and doubt — the FUD factor — of not responding quickly enough might motivate you to take this action, that same FUD factor that the action your automated system takes might be wrong is an equally strong motivator not to employ this technology. Welcome to this year’s Catch 22.

In the 1983 sci-fi classic War Games, a computer was employed to replace the soldiers who manned the intercontinental ballistic missile silos because, it was believed, the computer could launch the missiles dispassionately and not be swayed by indecision in case of a nuclear attack. A teenager hacked the system thinking it was an unreleased video game. Even someone who hasn’t seen the film can imagine the plot — the machine starts running World War III scenarios and prepares a multitude of real counter-assaults, driving the military IT experts crazy.

Those are the same fears with machine learning today. Just as in War Games, IT can enable today’s security software to not only determine if a cyberattack is occurring, but can empower a server to decide on its own to try and halt the attack, often by logging the suspected attacker off of the network or taking more aggressive actions.

The fear among “let the software do its job” opponents is that only humans should decide on an action, with the risks of autonomous software being too great. These are the experts who argued the soldiers should stay in the silos to turn the launch keys. After all, an “attack” might be false. In fact, that very case occurred some 35 years ago. On Sept. 26, 1983, the Soviet Union’s early-warning system detected an incoming missile strike from the United States. Protocol called for a retaliatory strike if such a launch is detected, but Soviet duty officer Stanisav Petrov chose to dismiss the readout as a false alarm despite electronic warnings to the contrary. Petrov was correct — there were no U.S. missiles headed at Moscow. It can be argued that Petrov personally stopped World War III. This is a classic example against using machine learning as part of a missile defense system, where the human element would not have had the opportunity to interpret the data and make a decision.

Man vs Machine

The counterargument among autonomous IT systems advocates is that there is no choice. In short, cyberattacks happen so quickly that only an algorithm’s speed is enough to even have a shot at thwarting an attack before substantial damage is done.

“There is an unwillingness on the part of many security people to fully trust machine learning,” says Wade Baker, a professor at Virginia Tech’s College of Business for the MBA and Master of IT programs; he also serves on the advisory board for the RSA Conference.

“They think ‘Only a human can make this decision.’ Many have an emotional response,” he continues. “There is a strong belief that what we do in the security industry is so hard and so nuanced. A decision needs to be made very, very quickly. There is an emotional kind of irrational thing going on there” and it is compounded by a fear of bad software decisions.

James Hendler is director of the Institute for Data Exploration and Applications (IDEA) and the Tetherless World Professor of Computer, Web and Cognitive Sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a member of the U.S. Homeland Security Science and Technology Advisory Committee. Hendler agrees that speed is a concern, but if the algorithm is not reliable yet, it is still a legitimate and perhaps an unjustifiable — at this time — risk. “We do have these very fast decisions to make,” Hendler says, “but technology is still not at the point where it’s trustworthy to say ‘let’s trust it.’”

Richard Rushing, CISO Motorola Mobility

Richard Rushing, the CISO for Motorola Mobility, says focusing on the nature of attackers — as opposed to attacks — is key to leveraging machine learning properly as a defense tool.

“Let’s understand the tradecraft of the attackers. If you look at protection tools, they are set up to block based on data, seen at one time. The attackers figured this out so they change the data every time — kind of like address or ports or information and they usually hide in plain sight,” Rushing says.

“What they do not change are things like time, size, process, activity, [and] steps,” he continues. With artificial intelligence and machine learning, systems can look for these patterns. “This is what computers are great at doing. You just need to know what to look for but also have that specific visibility to make it happen.”

Rushing adds that “layers of detection are bidirectional so you can follow the data in any direction, versus the classic outbound or inbound.”

One of the almost universally accepted truths about machine learning is that it is the subject of vast amounts of hype, both from vendors trying to sell it and analysts trying to encourage its use. This buzzword status causes machine learning to be portrayed inaccurately as the ideal fix for almost any security problem, when indeed its value is limited. It is very good at dealing with massive amounts of unstructured data, but its effectiveness quickly dilutes for many other security tasks.

“A lot of folks are trying to throw something like machine learning at a problem where it’s not necessary,” says Bryce Austin, an IT security consultant and author of the book Secure Enough?: 20 Questions on Cybersecurity for Business Owners and Executives. Many of these companies look to advanced efforts like machine learning when they have yet to tend to routine security matters such as multi-factor authentication, the elimination of default vendor-issued passwords and “reasonable network segmentation,” he notes.

Michael Oberlaender is the former CISO for Tailored Brands (which owns Men’s Warehouse, Jos. A. Bank and Moores Clothing for Men) and author of the book CISO and Now What? How to Successfully Build Security by Design. “Machine learning is completely overhyped. I would not spend a dime on it,” Oberlaender says, adding that demonstrations he saw at BlackHat 2017 — in which the tested machine learning algorithm failed to deliver — convinced him that the technology was not close to ready for the enterprise.

But Austin says that the practical security concerns should be paramount. After all, the essence of technology exploration is trying new systems — in a secure sandbox, with no ability to do anything that would impact live systems — and see how well it does.

“We have to allow the machine to make the decision to see how many false positives we get,” Austin says. “We need to let the computers try these things in real time.”

Rushing’s concern is that humans are not perfect. “There is this idea about some crazy bias against machines making decisions. People make mistakes on a regular basis,” Rushing says. “Why do machines have to be perfect?”

Rushing argues the pragmatic security position, namely that many mass-attacks today on enterprises are so large and fast that waiting around for a person to make a decision simply can never be an effective defense. “With these attacks, a human could not stop it. They are so quick and affect so many machines so quickly. The only thing that would have saved [the enterprise] is orchestration.”

Bryce Austin IT security consultant, author 

In referencing the 2014 Target breach where attackers used the credentials of a heating, cooling, air-conditioning (HVAC) contractor to gain access to the internal network and ultimately the point-of-sale system network, one of Target’s problems was attributed to the massive number of potential breach alerts its system generated, overloading the security staff. Ultimately, the staff overlooked the valid alerts.

“That SIEM (security information and event management) [system] shouldn’t be giving me a million events,” Rushing says. It should only be alerting true security attacks that merit human attention, Rushing says. “You’re going to get overwhelmed because your people are missing the simple stuff.”

Using machine learning to reduce the number of alerts dramatically and thereby making real threats more apparent and therefore actionable is an excellent use of the technology, Rushing says.

Machine learning in the SOC

A commonly cited security area where machine learning could do quite well is post-login authentication. That would be where an attacker would enter the enterprise network with legitimate credentials — presumably stolen credentials — and potentially might even use the legitimate user’s hijacked machine and network connection to lend even more credence to the authorization. A variation of this would involve an employee who has legitimate credentials but has chosen to exceed their authorization to engage in unauthorized and improper conduct.

In either case, machine learning could analyze the history of that user’s conduct against what the suspected attacker is doing. Although this use of machine learning leverages behavioral analytics, some behaviors are effective at authenticating users before they get into the network, such as the time of day, IP address, details about their machine, number of password attempts, and typing speed. Other behaviors only work after the suspect has accessed the network. These include what files are being examined, how much downloading is happening, how many different areas are being accessed, and the number of files being accessed and viewed.

Software is the only meaningful way to review all of that data about all logged-in users and determine a potential problem before the user has had the chance to do much damage, proponents agree.

Douglas Barbin is the principal and cybersecurity practice leader at Schellman & Company, a security and privacy compliance assessor. He also considers the vast amount of data that enterprise security teams have to deal with today to be ideal for machine learning analysis.

“For SOCs (security operations centers), the data provided by traditional sources such as IDS (intrusion detection systems), firewalls, and event logs are too voluminous for any analyst team to comb through. Machine learning, in whatever form it takes today or tomorrow, is the only way to support a manageable workload of tickets — the unit of work for a SOC analyst — based on a timely and actionable event,” Barbin says in an email interview.

“What is surprising is that the technology vendors, while advertising AI as a capability, still default to signature-based approaches because they can be applied across their customer bases,” he continues. “This has led some of the larger enterprises and some leading MSSPs (managed security services providers) to implement their own tools to profile network traffic looking for statistical anomalies. Profiling networking traffic to identify potential deviations such as a spike in a particular port activity such as DNS (domain name servers), could indicate a potential attack before it occurs.”

This raises its own practical security concerns. “By the time a signature-based detection signature fires, it is likely too late,” Barbin says in an email exchange. “Sure, you can contain and respond in a reasonable manner, but the monitoring tools better support machine learning, which would be monitoring and profiling normal traffic or normal events and it could generate event tickets to instances of statistical deviation that could be profiling or a reconnaissance source that could be blocked prior to it attempting its payload.

“Moving forward,” he continues, “I would like to see machine learning incorporated in to web application scanning, an area untouched by AI today. With the advanced logic of web applications and API, using machine learning to do some of the human, what-if and/or credentialed type of page traversal would increase the effectiveness of these automated vulnerability assessment technologies. As SOCs begin to take on more proactive security roles, this is a potential area of opportunity.”

Salvatore Stolfo, professor, Columbia University

Barbin notes “that the intrusion detection and SIEM vendors focus almost entirely on signature-based approaches because they don’t have to customize for a diverse customer base. Because of these limitations, leading enterprises and some MSSPs, who typically rely on these technologies, have developed their own home-grown tools to address an opportunity for incident detection that the technology vendors have not. Obviously, this capability is going to be limited to large enterprises like banks and financial tech that have the resources to be able to build in-house tools.”

There is, of course, a flipside to this argument. Defenders are not the only security experts using AI; attackers either are currently or soon will be using the technology as well. If so, why concede that advantage to the bad guys?

“The Fortune 1000 often fails to make the assumption that attackers will be using machine learning on their own,” Austin says. “We are in a cybersecurity arms race.”

Austin takes the argument one step further, that CISOs pushing more regular use of machine learning for security will itself force cyberthieves to do the same for attacking. “We have done very little to raise the cost to the attacker,” Austin says. “If they have to use machine learning, great. At least they are having to adapt to us.”

Cloud vs on-prem

Columbia University Professor Salvatore Stolfo points out how disconcerting it is that for many venture capitalists today any security offering must either offer machine learning or the entrepreneur need not bother applying for money. “For VCs today, you have to present [it] as machine learning. There’s no way that you’ll get funding otherwise,” he says.

One of those VCs is Rick Grinnell, the founder and managing partner of Glasswing Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm. He says that he is indeed quite bullish on machine learning and especially sees its security value in dealing with hardware, particularly with the internet of things (IoT).

“Machine learning will help drive the value and usability of these products, enabling the integration and analysis of physical data from devices such as cameras, door locks, RF scanners and motion sensors, devices that today are not easily managed together today,” Grinnell says.

“Integrations are typically manual and costly through systems integrators. Over time, the insights gained by combining physical data with cyber data will drive much improved defenses for situations not easily managed today. One simple example would be using camera or RF signal data to determine whether suspicious cyber activity at a computer [or] ATM is actually from a legitimate user.”

Other considerations are machine learning issues with on-premises versus the cloud, says Columbia’s Stolfo. There are two very different kinds of security mass-data issues that machine learning is fine-tuned to process: The first is interactions with your company’s environment; the second are all manner of activities across the internet that do not necessarily relate yet to your company, which he refers to as “internet background radiation.”

Machine learning background radiation primarily involves watching thousands of attacks and attack attempts going on around the world, he says, looking for patterns and methodologies being used now. The intent is to learn from those attacks and to prepare defenses for when those attacks get around to going after your company.

Cloud infrastructure lends itself to this kind of background radiation efforts, which is where cloud-based machine learning offerings can make a lot of sense and create a powerful argument for the technology. It combines an enterprise having its own machine learning, cloud-based or on-premises defenses that watches for attacks against that company, coupled with a vendor’s cloud-based defenses that watches what is going on with everyone else.

Threat intelligence feeds could fill in some of the blanks by providing data on threats the cloud provider has yet to experience.

Granted, these are options for Fortune 1000 companies to consider, whereas small- to mid-size businesses are unlikely to have the resources for such a broad strategy. “The middle market has little to no choice but to depend on cloud machine learning,” Stolfo says.

Learning to forget

One distinction between how computers normally work and how the human brain works is that, generally speaking, a computer remembers anything stored on disk unless the user deletes the data — effectively making the system forget. With AI, building in the ability to “forget” is a function that programmers are dealing with today.

Some machine learning systems today have the ability to “forget,” but one of the big differences between human learning and machine learning is the human ability to forget things selectively. Humans can replace old knowledge with new information and make changes in our thought patterns, but machines make changes using different approaches.

Deep neural networks, for example, do not forget the same way humans do. They practice “catastrophic forgetting” — basically they delete everything and start over.

Rick Grinnell founder & managing partner Glasswing Ventures

“There are techniques being worked on in the research community that fall into a category called unlearning, so that this ‘catastrophic forgetting’ is not the only form of deletion,” Grinnell says.

“These include weighting prior data dynamically depending on the current context — time of day, temperature, customer or user being interacted with, other parameters — so that, for example, an output behavior that would have been used for optimizing an interaction with me on a hot day in the afternoon is different than the same machine interacting with you on a cold day at night,” he says in an email exchange.

“You can imagine other scenarios as well. These adaptive methods are still early in their development, but over time will be incorporated into the AI systems that protect us from cyberattacks, or recommend the next movie we should watch on Netflix,” he concludes.

The process of machines forgetting data is further complicated by the European Union’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules, which define IP addresses as personally identifiable information (PII). GDPR requires that PII cannot be preserved for any longer than is absolutely necessary.

“GDPR is going to force research to be performed in this area,” Austin says. “Technologies such as blockchain will further complicate the ability to selectively forget information in machine learning systems” as it is just about impossible to delete data from blockchain.”

John South, a security consultant who spent seven years as the chief security officer for Heartland Payment Systems, sees the matter differently. As a practical matter, he and his team at Heartland abandoned saving perimeter-defense-captured IP addresses long before GDPR became an issue. And he did that for multiple, pragmatic reasons rather than legal ones.

First, from a security standpoint, it seemed pointless. “It’s so easy for bad guys to change IP addresses, so why chase it?” he says. Second, storing vast amounts of IP addresses started to slow down system performance. “It took longer to do searches; the SIEM took a lot longer to track things down,” he says. “If somebody was doing a ping sweep or something like that, we didn’t maintain” IP address history. Instead, he made sure to include plenty of trip wires beyond his perimeter to detect naughty conduct.

IP addresses “were relevant for a short period of time and then we had to age them out,” he says.

Another practical concern, South says, is that once addresses were detected by tracking groups and alerts were generated, it was often too late as the cyberattackers would become aware of it and change the IP addresses they were using. “By the time they were reported by the intelligence services, [those IP addresses] were already not being used,” South says. “It didn’t prove to be the best use of our resources or our time.”

Incidentally, for those who never saw War Games, here’s a spoiler so stop reading now. In the end, the computer gathers enough intelligence to determine that war is not the answer. It is unclear at this point if today’s AI offerings would reach that same conclusion.

The post Rolling the Dice on AI appeared first on SC Media.

#gallery-0-5 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-5 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-5 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-5 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

Go to Source Author: stephenlawton Rolling the Dice on AI Original Post from SC Magazine Author: stephenlawton Man vs machine: The future of AI Fear of successful cyberattacks meets fear of unintended consequences when machine learning is your first line of defense.