#91 Matters Of Trust, Back In The Game
+ Data Cleaning Duty, New Media Literacy, Where Supply Meets Demands, Business Climates.
The Week that Was:
A look back at the tech world of the past week.
Matters Of Trust:
All of us are well acquainted with the concept of a customer service department, but in most cases, I tend to refer to them as customer disservice departments. Look no further than the recently concluded Asus vs. Gamer’s Nexus saga to know why.
Gamer’s Nexus is a YouTube channel which in their own words does “PC hardware reviews, game benchmarks, component analysis.” They made a series out of fighting their way through ASUS’ Return Merchandise Authorisation (RMA) process, despite ASUS’ best efforts to stop them. The problem for ASUS is that Gamer’s Nexus was a large and influential enough presence in the PC gaming enthusiast scene to trigger a trend amongst other creators, as well as attracting wider media coverage.
Now, whilst it would be all too easy to just leave it at that, this isn’t really an Asus problem. Those who read last week’s newsletter will remember my explanation of Karmic debt, and how companies can trip themselves up by discovering their too late. Go read that if you want the details!
What we’re seeing in the case of ASUS is part of a wider pattern where companies in karmic debt are forced to swallow their pride and majorly overhaul their plans. They have to do this because the buffer that had, up until that point, allowed them to force unpopular conditions on customers has completely disappeared. Another example of that is Adobe, sued by the US government for its hidden termination fees. We can also see it in the anti-AI trend.
What all of these things have in common is the fact that the trust is gone. In its place, we have both literal and proverbial anti-trust. What this means in practice is that one shouldn’t look at what a particular controversy is about right now. Instead, look at why the controversy got enough oxygen to ignite in the first place.
Countermovements don’t exist for their own sake, they exist to teach us invaluable lessons about the dysfunctions of power. There are those who choose to learn these lessons the easy way, and those who inevitably learn them the hard way. There is always a choice about which camp one prefers to be in. LINK
Back In The Game:
Last week would have been the E3 gaming conference, were it still around. In its wake, we got a highly fragmented week of showcases which definitely didn’t make my work much harder through coinciding with WWDC hahahahaha…
Anyway, there’s some important stuff that I did want to cover from last week, as it rolled into this week. The reason I waited was that we already had the Xbox, PlayStation, and Myriad indie showcases, but have only just had Nintendo’s showcase this week. Maybe it’s just the old Pokémon habits acting up again, but for this kind of stuff, I’ve gotta catch 'em’ all.
My core argument is this: by carefully considering their present market reality and wider industry trends, all three of the former major power players are ‘back in the game.’ The indie scene continues going from strength to strength. Enmity towards the brutal firing sprees by big studios was reaching a boiling point. Xbox and PlayStation in particular risked becoming irrelevant. Here’s how they avoided that:
Nintendo’s entire brand identity is doing the same thing over and over and over again as a flex. I’ve said it before and will say it again. Nintendo is the undisputed master of recycling. They can do this because each time they ‘redo’ one of their core games, Nintendo’s teams manage to make it feel nostalgic and new at the same time.
Xbox asked its faithful to ‘recall’ an idealized past where it wasn’t an inept mass-firing glutton with no idea how to leverage its Intellectual Property (IP) properly. It came out swinging with a showcase that knocked many jaded fan’s socks off.
PlayStation, having had its own set of embarrassing blunders to make up for, now appears to have found its way forward as well. A hybrid approach where it leverages mascots like Nintendo (along with debuting on Nintendo’s console), whilst also being extra cautious about monetization.
Assuming PlayStation owner Sony can avoid screwing up its wider cross-media ambitions, I feel like PlayStation might once again be on a winning trajectory, but time will tell. For the time in a long time, it really does feel like the ‘big three’ no longer need E3, I’m cautiously optimistic. LINK
Cyber Safety Blanket:
Covering important cyber security developments so you can sleep a little more soundly at night.
Data Cleaning Duty:
We’ve got two ways to interpret the concept of clean data this week. The first interpretation is the more straightforward of the two. By focusing on careful curation and filtration of data, one ensures that it remains as clean as possible in the technical sense. The so-called three c’s of ‘context, consent, and control’ are vital in this regard.
The second interpretation is a matter of cybersecurity enforcement. Owing to the complexity of the ongoing law enforcement operations against major cyber security threat actors, I’ve opted to provide some rolling coverage as new developments arise. Such developments include the arrest of the scattered spider gang’s ringleader, a new vulnerability being discovered in Arm chips, and Donald Trump’s faithful being targeted by crypto scams.
Singapore is also extraditing some cybercriminals, and Wired’s Kim Zetter has a postmortem for us on the Ticketmaster hack via its Snowflake account. Whew! What a mouthful. It may seem like a lot, but things are actually relatively ‘clean’ cut here. Because of the size and severity of recent security incidents, the industry itself is waking up and sharpening up again. That naturally leads to more criminals getting caught, as extra-alert corporations collaborate with ever more savvy law enforcement agencies.
This pushes threat actors towards finding easier, safer targets. Hence why Donald Trump’s followers are in the crosshairs. The old saying ‘ignorance is bliss’ has never been more dangerously wrong than it is now. Ignorance is death. Not literal death in most cases, but rather individual bankruptcy for victims of financial fraud, and reputational death for compromised companies.
All this is to say that education and coordination are also more important than ever. Since not everyone is equally savvy with regard to data hygiene and cybersecurity, we need a way to make complex things simple to grasp. In that regard, I liked an article I recently read about how quantum computers are like kaleidoscopes. The unusual way in which metaphors can illustrate scientific principles and technologies may well prove useful in increasing data cleanliness as well. LINK
New Media Literacy:
So, here’s a funny anecdote for you. Back when I was in university, one of the most common and hated questions was “So what is new media?” It was common because obviously people want to know what any given field of study is about. The question was so hated because the professors looked bad for not being able to answer it. What new media is and isn’t can change on a near moment-to-moment basis. It is constantly in flux.
Thus, what the actual field of study focuses on is core media literacy and mental adaptability. The logic behind this is that the outer shell and the wrapper may change a lot, yet the core tends to remain consistent, and that core is what we work with. That core is how people inherently interact with media and are affected by it.
So given my background, the US Surgeon General’s recent intentions for social media were of particular interest. He wants to add cigarette-style warning labels to social media. Whilst the intentions are pure, it feels like a textbook example of fighting symptoms rather than causes. I refer to social media as ‘antisocial media’ because that’s what it is in practice. It is a pollutant that some people can and do derive pleasure from, but a pollutant it remains.
Disinformation spreads so quickly and easily via antisocial media because it is one of the core ingredients for hooking people and keeping them hooked. People love drama, we’re naturally predisposed toward ‘bad news.’ That’s where my term ‘enragement’ comes from, rage engages like nothing else.
And this is where the real smoking similarity comes from. Like secondhand smoke, disinformation is actually far more toxic to those around the spreader than to the spreader themselves.
This is because when it comes to cigarettes, only the smoker has a filter. Filters are also common parlance when it comes to media diets, with filter bubbles being particularly frequent topics. We obviously don’t want everyone in a filter bubble, but we can give them positive filters to protect against the disinformation smog. To do this, we should teach kids media literacy with the same importance as reading, writing, and maths. LINK
Rules of Engagement:
Ethics and legal matters regarding tech engagement.
Where Supply Meets Demand:
Let’s talk about logistics again. I love logistics, it’s one of my favorite parts of economics. The mathematical aspect is a means to an end to me so that part I prefer to leave it to others. The human element though? Yeah, that’s my jam. A foundational element of logistics is the push and pull of supply and demand.
In a vacuum, supply and demand naturally balance one another out. But we don’t exist in a vacuum. Both supply and demand are more often than not manipulated for the sake of political and commercial goals. Oh hey, look, Nintendo’s back! Nintendo is a leader in the field of what is called ‘artificial scarcity’ whereby the supply of a desirable good is purposefully restricted to drive up demand. This makes the prices go up, but more importantly, also makes the status of owning something ‘rare’ possible to associate with things as banal as strips of cardboard or plastic figurines.
The fact that supply and demand are manipulated at both the corporate and governmental levels happens to be why fully free trade is impossible. All trade is subject to agreements, caveats, and boundaries to prevent abuse.
Engagement follows the same principles, though with an extra wrinkle. Your limited attention span is not only the supply that providers of products and services have a demand for, you yourself are also in demand for said products and services. It’s kind of like a feedback loop, rather than a set of scales upon which two things are weighed and balanced against each other.
The misunderstanding that engagement equals happiness stems from the fact that in most cases, supply and demand really are relatively well balanced by just that. But because supply and demand are the same thing when it comes to engagement, manipulation of one can also affect the other, which is basically what dark patterns (exploitative design) are designed to prey upon.
By contrast, what do you suppose happens when demand encounters a void of supply? Capital abhors a vacuum, so someone will come along to fill the void! Lo and behold, the an abundance of Western luxury goods in Russian web shops despite official supply lines being cut. Pay attention to that, it shows how the new ‘managed trade’ situation between the EU and China will pan out. LINK
Business Climates:
What do Jeff Bezos, major banks, and a former oil Barron have in common? Aside from the fact that they’ve all got a graveyard’s worth of skeletons in their closets and enough blood money to drown several countries with. What they’ve got in common beyond the bad, is some positive new investments! Namely into sustainability initiatives.
There’s no major intrigue to be found here though, sorry to disappoint those expecting some juicy gossip. Investing in sustainability is simply good for business. Even more than that, it’s all but mandatory in the current business climate.
Indeed, we’ve gotten to the darkly comedic point where people are now fainting due to heatstroke at climate denial rallies. That would be fine if they were the only ones, but sadly this is a grim reminder of just how hard extreme heat can actually pummel the human body in general.
Recent projections of the housing market also show that it too will be in for a beating if the temperatures keep climbing. In terms of hardware, there are also major problems on the horizon when it comes to extreme heat. Many cars these days have touch screens instead of knobs. Aside from general issues of ergonomics, these screens are also more prone to failure when temperatures exceed their comfortable operating thresholds.
Imagine not being able to use your air conditioning whilst stuck in traffic because it’s so hot that the touchscreen controls are bugging out on you! Be great if you could repair it on the spot right? Right. So it probably comes as little surprise that the right-to-repair movement is also seeing a boost from this new business climate as well.
It’s a bit different than past iterations though. I can’t quite put my finger on it yet, but it almost seems like environmentalism and the right to appear are sort of blending together. It’s like the ‘environmental right to repair’ extends to both a right to repair our living environment in the ecological sense, but also the technologies with which we shape and maintain our direct personal living environments. And I mean, it does raise some good questions, like maybe we should repair our stuff instead of mining the deep sea to build replacements. LINK
A Nice Cup of Serendipity:
Cool bits and bobs from around the web.
Bad Trips LINK
SD3 Body Horror LINK
Not Disco LINK
Epic Leaks LINK
Cognac Concerns LINK
Itty-Bitty Battery LINK
Gen Alpha LINK
Brainrot LINK
Toxic Tattoos LINK
Sleepy Cells LINK
Recall Recalled LINK
K-Pop Mobilisation LINK
The Deep End:
A weekly batch of long-form content recommendations.
Powered Armour:
An AI assisted exoskeleton. LINK
Scratch That:
Self-healing glass LINK
Adobe’s Acrobatics:
The Slow Death Of Adobe. LINK
AAA’s Franchise Identity Problem:
Franchise Fatigue. LINK
Attack On Asus:
Gamers Nexus vs Asus - The Final Battle. LINK
One More Thing…
I used to watch this show called Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends. It was kinda mid, all things considered, but one scene has always remained with me. It was a weather report about how it was hot in Topeka. One of the main characters of the show is Bloo, a blue blob thing that is deeply narcissistic and has an attention span that can only be observed under a microscope.
Bloo got obsessed with Topeka but did not properly concern himself with the implications of that heat, because it didn’t personally affect him. Only when his carelessness gets him a friction burn from the carpet does he finally grasp that heat can hurt. Poetic, no? Almost like getting a heat stroke at a climate denial rally.