Netizen

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Ingress: The Squad: Values

I am currently not playing. I am not out, but I am not active. I am waiting for my 1,000 portal submissions to go through. Then I am going to build a team, The Squad. For the longest time I thought I would keep mum about it. But I am at a point when I feel I should open source the value system I have written about The Squad. And so here goes.

June 6, 2013
The Squad Values

(1) We believe in Life/Work/Ingress balance. If you are playing for less than 10 hours a week, chances are you are not intense enough for The Squad. But if you are playing for more than 20 hours a week chances are you are messing up your Life/Work/Ingress balance. That is a no no.

(2) We believe in sportsmanship. The mark of true sportsmanship is that you truly enjoy meeting agents from both sides. You play as hard as you can, but then you truly enjoy meeting people from the other side. Be respectful of others on both sides. This is a game. It is supposed to be fun. Don't take the game too seriously.

(3) The Squad is 100% AP driven. We want our agents to get to 10 million in AP as fast as possible. We constantly look for ways to help agents do that. So when we come across a green L7/L8 farm, our first instinct is to hack it to burnout, not to take it down. Because we are AP driven.

(4) Most agents prefer not to join teams. And even those who join teams mostly play solo. And so The Squad will have a very limited agenda.

(5) You don't talk about The Squad outside The Squad. You can say things like "I am a member of The Squad" to recruit people, but that's about it.

(6) When you play solo, you play any way you want. You have the option to tap into The Squad's knowledge base of tips and the collective wisdom of the top agents, but there are no rules. It is a game. It is supposed to be fun. Go have fun your way. When you play solo there is only one rule: We don't talk about The Squad outside The Squad.

(7) The Squad is focused around events it organizes. All socializing happens during Action Time. There is a formal start to an event. And there is a formal end to an event. When the event is over, we go back to Life/Work. We don't hang out, we don't have beer. But if members choose to informally hang out that is fine too, but that is not part of the formal event.

(8) G+ socializing is largely a waste of time. COMM socializing is largely a waste of time. This game is played out there in the field. Your 10 hours a week is about action time in the field not staring at the Intel map at home.

(9) The Squad is a thinking kind of team. We have our tips, our knowledge base, our tactics, and strategies, but all are subject to challenge, and all are subject to empirical evidence. We shift our tactics as necessary. And new ideas can come from anywhere on the team.

(10) We are part of the global Resistance.

(Image: my newest portal submission.)

Friday, July 26, 2013

Ingress: Taser Green Agents

Niantic Light Parade (Photo credit: drsmith7383)

Rumor has it Niantic is working on a new ammo item, so far unnamed. If an enemy agent is within your scanner's range, and you fire that ammo item, it will act like a mild taser on that agent. There will be a slight tickling sensation, no bodily harm intended.

It is thought to be of special use during interfaction events. Niantic is worried too many interfaction events are being organized, and it is taking away from the intensity of the game. Once you get to know and become friends with enemy agents, it is hard to then go back to thinking of them as enemies in the game. In many cities the game has supposedly slowed down due to such impacts.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

July 2013

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Ingress: State Of The Game: New York City (4)

Green dominates, Blue is reduced to a few neighborhoods.

Monday, July 22, 2013

Google: 25% Of North American Internet Traffic

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBase

That number is just mind boggling. I think that puts the onus on Google to take the country into the gigabit Internet era all on its own.

Google Now Serves 25 Percent of North American Internet Traffic

Three years ago, the company’s services accounted for about 6 percent of the internet’s traffic. .... more than 62 percent of the smartphones, laptops, video streamers, and other devices that tap into the internet from throughout North America connect to Google at least once a day. ..... The lion’s share of it comes from YouTube. But Google traffic involving search, analytics, web apps, and advertising is far from insignificant. .... Google is big and getting massive. .... To handle its growth, Google has been on a building binge. It now has data centers on four continents. All this work has been getting a lot of attention. But the tech titan is also hip-deep in another type of build-out, one that’s largely gone under the radar. ..... Google has added thousands of servers — called Google Global Cache servers — to ISPs around the world. These servers store the most popular content from Google’s network — a YouTube video that’s going viral right now or apps from the Android marketplace, for example — then serve it directly from the ISP’s data center, rather than streaming it all the way from Google’s data center. These servers were in a handful of North American ISPs three years ago. Today, they’re in 80 percent of them ..... the world’s leader in infrastructure magic

Sunday, July 21, 2013

One Gig Is The Real Deal

Image representing Cisco as depicted in CrunchBase

Image via CrunchBase

Israel's 1Gbps fiber will show the world what superfast broadband can really do: Cisco CEO

Chambers predicts the network will bring in major changes: healthcare where doctors are connected instantly to providers' and hospitals' databases, with all records kept electronically and updated constantly; an education-anywhere system, where students can learn at home, in class, or elsewhere, communicating with teachers and fellow students over the internet; safer roads and streets (a major issue in road accident-prone Israel), with traffic authorities able to keep better tabs on speeders and unsafe drivers; and a proliferation of "internet of things" technology, with sensors keeping air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines, front doors, and more connected to systems than can enable better and more efficient allocation of electricity and other resources. In a few years, all of this should be in place, according to Chambers...... unlike most other places, Israel "is truly a start-up nation". ..... "Israel is second to the US in the sheer number of startups, but because of the population differences, Israel's 'per capita startup' ratio is much higher," he said.