Tag Archives: Technology

Personal

Testing out BlueSky then deleting it

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I downloaded the little cousin of X (formerly Twitter) known as BlueSky to my iPhone to try out. I created a profile did a few posts and watched feeds, but honestly. Not sure why I bothered trying to begin with.

Reading posts and seeing the left leaning people on there, all the political posts and a lot of poorly constructed information.

I generated a profile picture with the Google Gemini AI app.
Feels like a Twitter clone!

There is a reason why I deleted X (Twitter) ages ago, and this micro blogging system has the same systematic floors and people posting what they this is news, but they fail to understand the toxicity of what they post. I saw some posts supporting murderous regime, support for Hamas and I could go on.

On the other foot I was followed by some woman where her profile said “My p***y is tight but my personality is tighter”. This feels very immature! I won’t describe the pictures she had on there. I blocked the account.

So all in all, it’s just another microcosm of what I call another toxic zone on the internet. Installed Friday morning only to delete Saturday late evening. There for, I have no need to take part anymore.

Internet

The rise of AI YouTube

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I use YouTube a lot, consume a lot. During work breaks, in the evenings while in front of the TV and also at night, before I go to sleep and sometimes in the middle of the night when I can’t.

I generally consume world news, history, sport, computer games and IT related content. But over this last year and somewhat last year I’ve clicked on items and realise this is AI generated. From a multitude of new accounts spouting the next monthly games for the PlayStation Network, faking it with AI content. Next, we have history using AI to do somewhat facsimile of other peoples work. 

However, the more concerning are the news segments. AI is coming from all different directions and with ever increasing dangerous narratives. One wrong move from AI can cause serious consequences, to causing people to go and protest or destroy a shop or someone’s home recking lives. Then the offending video could be copied and the original AI offender might be gone. 

Humans have to breath, AI doesn’t. So that continuous spoken content, do you hear the breathing, the pauses? There are also fluctuations in voice patterns? Are you hearing those or are you listening to AI?

At the moment YouTube has a system in place to post when a video is breaking their rules. However, this doesn’t have options to combat the use of AI content. YouTube may not have it now, but vetting AI content will have to be a new process. 

What can you do? Well it’s simple really, if you determine you’re watching AI generated content, you can thumb down on that. Thumbs down can bury the content and stop this new wave from generating upvotes which help income. Because that’s what this AI generated content is doing, trying to feed into the YouTube as quick as possible and generate a revenue stream as quick as possible.

I wouldn’t be surprised if YouTube has already lost hundred thousand dollars into AI generated. But for now, beware what you watch.

Games

ARC – Attack Retrieve Capture. The first ever massive-multiplayer game?

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Way back in 1995 two students (John Vechey and Brian Fiete) created a computer game they called Attack Retrieve Capture which they then hosted on a network called Hoopy Entertainment.

This game was effectively a multiplayer game where people around the world with an internet connection could join teams and fight against each other with little flying saucer ships. Before the likes of Modern Warfare and other online games in which eSports has evolved into today. The community then on this game started their own leagues in order to capture the flag and crown the top clan.

Effectively this might have been one of the first ever games to host large numbers of players fighting this style of game. A standard game normally consists of eight players in a 4v4 match. There were other maps that could host 32 players against each other and there were one or two maps that could house 64 players against each other. That’s a lot of players attacking each other in their little ships and maybe this is the historical aspect which has been over-looked by the current industry of techno wizards.

At its height in the 1990s the game had a user base of a few thousand, not a lot but it could have done better if it wasn’t so miss-managed by the companies that brought the game and then swallowed it up into the downfall of Sierra Entertainment.

Sadly, the game is no longer with us, but there are other forms of it out there and the community has passed on.  However, it could be said because of the games unique ability for multiplayer it could have been the first to have such high player numbers facing off against each other. Only history will know.

A snippet of ARC I uploaded years ago to YouTube, looks a bit laggy, joggy, but the game played smoothly.