Minnesota Gov Is About to Eat His Words on Who Is Really Causing Chaos in the Minneapolis Riots

Riots erupted for yet another night in the wake of the controversial death of George Floyd, who died under the custody of Minneapolis Police. Floyd was arrested over an alleged false document incident but died when now-ex-Officer Devin Chauvin knelt on the back of his neck for nearly ten minutes. Floyd was already in handcuffs and lying on his stomach. His cries that he couldn’t breathe are audible in the ghastly video. All four officers involved in the arrested were fired, with Chauvin being booked on third-degree murder and manslaughter charges. The FBI and the Department of Justice are also investigating the tragic incident. 

This is an outrage. There is near-universal condemnation and there should be expressions of anger and protests over what happened. Yet, what has transpired over the past few nights is anything but a protest. It’s a riot. Looting, vandalism, and mayhem have engulfed the country. Minneapolis, the epicenter for this chaos, has been engulfed in flames. Our own Julio Rosas is in Mill City for Townhall and has documented the conditions on the ground, noting the lawlessness that has created an atmosphere of total pandemonium. Where are the cops? Where is the National Guard? Rosas, who has reported on other protests, including ones with a heavy Antifa presence, said that he’s never seen anything like what he’s witnessed in the Twin Cities. Folks, a police headquarters was torched by rioters. 

MN Dept. Of Public Safety spokesperson: “We’ve got intel reports that have been confirmed but I cannot say we have confirmed we have cells of white supremacists.”— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) May 30, 2020

Unbelievable. Basically everything Minnesota political leaders, who have already proven incompetent with their response, said this morning was false. And yet media personalities used those statements to frame their whole narrative re white nationalists. https://t.co/VT9XwwvrBC— (((AG))) (@AGHamilton29) May 31, 2020

Democratic Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, also a Democrat, have been outright disastrous in how they’ve handled the situation. They’ve allowed the city to be ruled by the mob. They’ve ceded parts of the city for them to destroy. It’s been a disaster. Frey even reminded the rioters about social distancing guidelines regarding the coronavirus. And Walz tried to blame white supremacists for being involved in the chaos, a claim that the MN Department of Public Safety could not confirm because it’s not true. Whether it be a pandemic or a riot, the liberal media and their Democratic allies will always find a way to pivot to blame something that they think can be linked back to President Trump or Republicans. In doing so, they create fake news. It’s an election year. Trump looks better than Joe Biden by the day—and these two Democratic clowns in Minnesota can’t get their act together to quell the mob. Yeah, I could see why Democrats would try and get this white supremacist lie going—but it’s still total garbage (via USA Today) [emphasis mine]:

Drifting out of the shadows in small groups, dressed in black, carrying shields and wearing knee pads, they head toward the front lines of the protest. Helmets and gas masks protect and obscure their faces, and they carry bottles of milk to counteract tear gas and pepper spray.

Most of them appear to be white. They carry no signs and don’t want to speak to reporters. Trailed by designated “medics” with red crosses taped to their clothes, these groups head straight for the front lines of the conflict.

[…]

The real hard-core guys, this is their job: They’re involved in this struggle,” said Adam Leggat, a former British Army counterterrorism officer who now works as a security consultant specializing in crowd management for the Densus Group. “They need protests on the street to give them cover to move in.”

[…]

“There are detractors. There are white supremacists. There are anarchists,”  Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan said Saturday afternoon.

However, a civil arrest list provided by the public information officer of the St. Paul Police Department shows 12 of the 18 people arrested from Thursday through 6 a.m. Saturday were from Minnesota. Five of them are from St. Paul, three are from Woodbury (part of the Twin Cities metropolitan area), two are from Minneapolis, one is from Mankato and one is from St. Louis Park. Four are from out of state and two did not have cities of residence listed.

[…]

Leggat, the security consultant, said intelligence reports from his colleagues indicate most of the hard-core protesters in Minneapolis are far-left or anarchists, and that far-right groups have not yet made a significant appearance. He said looting is typically done by locals – usually people with no criminal record who just get caught up in the moment.

Barr: It is Antifa.
Cops: It is Antifa.
Protestors: It is Antifa.
Antifa: It is us.
Blue checks: It is something else.— Andrew Beck (@AndrewBeckNYC) May 30, 2020

A security expert says intelligence reports indicate most of the hard-core protesters in Minneapolis are far-left or anarchists, and that far-right groups have not yet made a significant appearance.https://t.co/pkJAKjkYYj— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) May 30, 2020

The first sign that this narrative was trash was when Walz’s own public safety department couldn’t back it up. It only got worse from there. At face value, it’s just unbelievable, akin to China’s COVID death toll and infection rate. Walz has been a bumbling clown in this situation and this fake talking point he trotted out only highlighted his failed leadership. It’s a total nightmare in Minneapolis. It’s a catastrophe. Don’t make it worse by making social justice warrior-infused pivots that only lead you to crash into walls. Reality isn’t that easily scaled, circumvented, or flanked, sir.

Why Twitter Censored President Trump’s Tweet About The Minneapolis Riots

As we all were last night, President Trump was watching Minneapolis descend into total anarchy. Our own Julio Rosas is there documenting the insanity. The looting has not subsided. The violence intensified. And it culminated in the police headquarters in the city’s third precinct being evacuated, overrun by rioters, and then set ablaze. Police and firefighters were reportedly given orders to stand down. It was chaos. 

Minneapolis Mayor @Jacob_Frey said he decided to sacrifice the police precinct to rioters in order to maintain the safety of the public. The building was ransacked and torched. https://t.co/bUkQjNJOaM #BlackLivesMatter #antifa— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) May 29, 2020

The second night of protests was sparked due to the horrific death of George Floyd, who died in police custody. It’s all on video. Floyd, arrested for a false document charge, is seen pleading with officers that he couldn’t breathe. That’s because one officer put his knee on his neck and kept it there for nearly ten minutes. Floyd died as a result. All four officers were fired, and the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation was investigating this tragic incident as well for civil rights violations. It’s considered a top priority. Yet, Minneapolis is a warzone. Rosas has documented many protests, some with very hostile crowds, and he said last night that he’d never seen anything like what he was experiencing in Mill City. 

During the rioting, the president said this on Twitter:

I can’t stand back & watch this happen to a great American City, Minneapolis. A total lack of leadership. Either the very weak Radical Left Mayor, Jacob Frey, get his act together and bring the City under control, or I will send in the National Guard & get the job done right…..— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2020

….These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2020

10 signs you may not be cut out for IT

It’s a tough world out there. Anyone who’s ever worked in IT knows just how tough it is. And if you’re not totally up for the challenge, there will always be someone else who is. But for anyone considering getting into the world of IT, or for those considering getting out of IT … how do you know? How can you tell whether you’re really cut out for the career that chews up and spits out its young? Well, I have a handy list of signs that maybe IT isn’t the best fit for you. But if the signs don’t apply and you DO decide to head down the IT career path, I’ve included a list of helpful resources at the end of this article.

1. You lack patience

Patience is most certainly a virtue in IT. When some problems strike, they strike with vengeance and most often require a good deal of time to resolve. If you are without patience, you’ll either give up, lose your mind, or pull out all your hair. But the need for patience doesn’t end at dealing with problems. Many times, end users will test your patience more than the technology will. If that’s the case, I recommend that you either get away from having to deal with end users or (if that’s not possible), steer clear of IT altogether.

2. You have no desire to continue your education

IT is an ever-evolving field and without the desire to continue learning, you’re already way behind the curve. This is one of those fields where you must be okay with constantly learning something new. That might mean taking a class or attending a workshop or just hitting the books on your own. But no matter how you slice that education, you must be willing to continue to learn.

3. You refuse to work outside 9-to-5

Technology doesn’t adhere to a set schedule. Servers go down whenever they want and business has to go on. So you must be willing to wake up in the middle of the night, work long hours during the week, and work weekends. If you’re someone who refuses to let their workweek interfere with their personal life–well, the writing on the wall is pretty clear.

4. You don’t like people

Do I really need to expand on this one? Yes? Fine. The reason IT pros have jobs is to support end users–aka people. If you don’t like people (and I know plenty who don’t), you really shouldn’t consider a career in IT. The big irony of this is that I also know a lot of people who have been driven to dislike people because of IT.

5. You give up quickly

How many times have you had an issue really test your abilities? Did you give up or did you forge on until you managed to best that problem? If you gave up, you did so knowing that you left something broken. That is not an acceptable work ethic in IT, and if you’re okay with that, it’s time to reconsider. Oh sure, there will be times when something is beyond repair or an issue goes above your skill set. But if that’s the case, it’s your responsibility to replace the broken tech or hire someone in to fix the issue.

6. You’re easily frustrated

This is an industry that can frustrate even the most unflappable. But if your frustration boils to the surface right away, you will spend much of your day with high blood pressure. Although IT is a rewarding field, it can also be n aggravating one. If frustration often gets the best of you, you might want to consider a different career.

7. You can’t multitask

At any given point in a day, I am doing three or four things at once. Sometimes, this is the only way I can actually get everything done in the required timeframe. If you insist on sticking to one task at a time, IT is going to be a tough trek for you. That is not to say single-minded people can’t succeed–but they will have a tougher time than those who can multitask.

8. You have dreams of climbing the corporate ladder

There isn’t much room on the ladder within the IT department. If you have dreams of climbing up and perching yourself on top, you might want to consider a different field. Some IT departments do offer promotions, and maybe you can even climb your way up to CIO. But if CEO is in your dreams, IT is probably not the field for you.

9. You hate technology

This one should go without saying, but strangely enough, I know people in the IT field who actually HATE technology. If you consider yourself a technophobe, maybe being around servers, desktops, switches, routers, and other IT-centric hardware isn’t the best place for you. Although it’s perfectly possible to work in a field you despise, the added level of frustrations you will experience might end your time on this good green Earth earlier than you expected. Take a pass on IT.

10. You turn off your phone at night

This relates to your work hours. Many IT pros I’ve worked with are on call 24/7. Their lives completely revolve around their networks, and if they weren’t willing to have such a life, they probably wouldn’t have the jobs they have now. The IT job doesn’t go away–it remains in the background all the time, waiting to pull you from sleep, family gatherings, the birth of your first child. If you’re one to turn your phone off when you leave work, or you ignore those calls from the office (even when the office is blowing your phone up), it might be a sign that you and your career are not a good fit.

Tallying up the pros and cons

Just because you suffer from one or two of these traits doesn’t mean you should give up on an IT career and start flipping burgers. But if you recognize quite a few of these signs, you might want to find another calling.

Why Everyone Hates IT People

Quick: what’s the biggest bottleneck in your company? Yup, we both know it’s the Information Technology department. Let’s face it, nobody likes IT people. For all of their technical wizardry, IT is where good ideas go to die. We follow their onerous documentation requirements and patiently wait in line through endless backlogs, yet somehow IT still can’t seem to get their work done.

Hating the IT department is a common sentiment in almost every company big enough to have such a group. But the truth is, it’s not the IT people’s faults. In fact, a despised IT department is a symptom of a CEO who doesn’t understand psychology. It is a corporate dysfunction for which management, more than anyone else in the organization, is responsible.

TO CREATE IS HUMAN, TO IMPLEMENT DIVINE

Why does the IT department drive everyone nuts? The answer lies deep in our primal need to contribute to our tribe. As Logan, King, and Fischer-Wright pointed out, the workplace is our modern-day clan. We come to the office with the same mental hardwiring we acquired 200,000 years ago when our species emerged. Back then, tribes with individuals creative enough to make new discoveries survived better than less innovative groups. Today, our workplace is our tribe and our impulse to create is no less important. Evolution gave us the mental machinery to seek to improve the welfare of our social groups through discoveries made by each individual.

When creativity is stifled, we become frustrated, unfulfilled and complacent. Unfortunately, in most organizations, workers blame the most obvious bottleneck, hence, they point the finger at the IT department.

In actuality, the complaints are a result of a broken feedback loop and the discontent can be explained by unraveling the blockages to corporate innovation. Though I have written extensively about how feedback loops and desire engines can be used to design behaviors, the inverse, breaking the reinforcement cycle, can bring the urge to innovate to a grinding halt, and that’s exactly what explains anti-IT-ism.A BROKEN LOOP

Employees today are inundated with messages from management to “be innovative,” “think outside the box,” “spot good ideas when they see them,” and most of all “get stuff done.” Business books and gurus extol the value of innovation and spread the message that only companies who quickly change with the times have a hope of survival. The message to employees is “if you contribute innovative ideas, good things will happen to you and your tribe.”

These messages constitute the cue or stimulus phase of a reinforcement loop. Originally studied by B.F. Skinner over 60 years ago, reinforcement remains a powerful basis by which we learn how to behave. In a successful reinforcement loop, the cue is followed by an action, which then brings a reward. Unfortunately, in most companies, when employees generate good ideas, no reward comes, projects lag, and innovation stalls.

If employees do not receive positive reinforcement for their efforts, or even worse, are forced to comply with endless documentation requirements, long development cycles, and corporate politicking, their natural instinct to contribute shrivels. Creativity soon morphs into dysfunction.

WHERE INNOVATION DIES

It begins with a management team woefully unaware the process is broken. Next, non-technical staff, unable to produce quality output, learn to shirk responsibility as they throw projects over the fence to IT. Unwilling to place blame on management, business staff point the finger at IT ranting about why a project is late, again. Employees begin to see the company not as one, but two tribes. The business people are seen as those charged with generating ideas while the engineers are the methodical implementors, cranking out instructions verbatim.

Everyone suffers from this scenario as members of the IT department are held hostage by endless product backlogs, leaving little room to contribute their own creative wisdom. When faced with a long list of tasks and the manic pressure to complete every request urgently, engineers find themselves plugging away instead of taking the time to understand what’s truly important to the business. This endless, and often mindless, drive to complete the next item on the list isolates engineers from customer-facing employees who could help them better understand what the product actually needs to do for the user. Business people view engineers as lazy code monkeys and engineers view business people as unskilled taskmasters. This familiar pattern perpetuates in-fighting and destroys creativity and initiative.

There are various methodologies for building better technology and companies have experimented with skunk works, incubators, 20 percent time, cross-functional teams, and even software “SWAT teams.” In future posts, I’ll dive into what organizations can do to bring innovation back and help the IT department feel loved again–stay tuned here and subscribe on my blog.

Above all, management must ensure employees are rewarded for their attempts to improve the company. While the reward of social recognition or monetary incentives is nice, often the satisfaction of simply knowing the idea was implemented is sufficient to fulfill our human need to contribute. When good ideas languish in bureaucracy, the feedback loop stops, and so does innovation.

Trump opens churches with executive order

Speaking from the White House Friday afternoon, President Donald Trump announced houses of worship have been classified as essential services by the federal government.

“At my direction the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is issuing guidance for communities of faith,” Trump said. “Today I am identifying houses of worship, churches, synagogues and mosques as essential places that provide essential services. Some governors have deemed liquor stores and abortion clinics as essential but have left out churches and other houses of worship. It’s not right. So I’m correcting this injustice and calling houses of worship essential.”

“I call upon governors to allow our churches and places of worship to open right now. If there’s any question, they’re going to have to call me but they’re not going to be successful in that call. These are places that hold our society together and keep our people united. The people are demanding to go to church and synagogues, go to their mosque. Many millions of Americans embrace worship as an essential part of life. The ministers, pastors, rabbis, imams and other faith leaders will make sure their congregations are safe as they gather and pray. I know them well, they love their congregations, they love their people. They don’t want anything bad to happen to them or to anybody else,” he continued. “The governors need to do the right thing and allow these very important, essential places of faith to open right now, for this weekend. If they don’t do it, I will override the governors. In America we need more prayers, not less.”

A number of Democratic governors around the country have continually limited and cracked down on religious services, even while congregations practiced social distancing. Some pastors have been told their rights have been “suspended” under stay-at-home orders.

Throughout the course of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, Attorney General Bill Barr has filed a number of legal suits against local governors infringing upon religious liberty.

Cuomo Defends Nursing Home Policy: ‘Older People, Vulnerable People Are Going to Die’

New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo is under fire for his disastrous policy of sending elderly Wuhan coronavirus patients to nursing homes. President Trump even approved a temporary hospital at New York City’s Javitz Center to house and treat coronavirus patients. The president also sent a floating hospital packed with emergency supplies to New York to make additional space. But with a fawning press behind him, Gov. Cuomo decided in all his wisdom that elderly people, sick and contagious with the Wuhan coronavirus, should be sent instead to nursing homes full of other elderly, vulnerable people. The policy went on for weeks. The press was probably too busy looking for bad news about hydroxychloroquine to question the governor’s deadly directive.

“He worked it out so we always had available beds. Nobody was deprived of a bed or medical coverage in any way,” Gov. Cuomo said on Sunday in defense of his nursing home policy. “And still, people died. Still, people died. Older people, vulnerable people are going to die from this virus. That is going to happen despite whatever you do. Because with all our progress as a society, we can’t keep everyone alive.”

Cuomo on nursing home deaths:

“Older people, vulnerable people are going to die…That’s going to happen despite whatever you do” pic.twitter.com/KKgb0uIrzz
— Keyboard Warrior (@TrumpJew) May 17, 2020

A March 25th state mandate required nursing homes to admit suspected or diagnosed cases of the coronavirus. The ill-conceived mandate even prohibited nursing homes from requiring a coronavirus test for incoming hospital transfers. Cuomo only reversed the policy after mounting criticism earlier this month.

“The way this has been handled by the state is totally irresponsible, negligent and stupid,” Elaine Mazzotta, who lost her mother from a suspected COVID-19 infection at a Long Island nursing home, told the Associated Press. “They knew better. They shouldn’t have sent these people into nursing homes.”

NPR reported last month that more than half of the COVID-19 deaths in New York state happened in nursing homes. NPR also analyzed data from 11 New York nursing homes with the highest number of deaths and found the majority of those nursing homes had a disproportionate number of minorities.
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While the governor was telling young, healthy people to save lives by staying home, his administration was sending coronavirus patients to nursing homes. In April, Cuomo responded to reopen protesters by saying it was “no time to act stupid.” He should have followed his own advice.

Confirmation: Chinese Officials Told Labs to Destroy Coronavirus Samples

Multiple government agencies from various countries, including the United States, have concluded that the coronavirus started in a lab in Wuhan. The Chinese regime did everything in their power to cover up the virus, including gagging medical personnel and reporters that were trying to sound the alarm. It was believed that the laboratories were destroying samples of the Wuhan coronavirus to cover up the country’s responsibility for the pandemic.

Chinese officials confirmed that labs were told to destroy samples of the coronavirus. China’s National Health Commission official Liu Dengfeng, however, says the labs destroyed the samples, not to cover up their culpability, but “for pandemic prevention and control, which also played an important role in preventing biosafety risks.”

“If the laboratory conditions cannot meet the requirements for the safe preservation of samples, the samples should be destroyed on the spot or transferred to a professional institution for safekeeping,” Liu told the Wall Street Journal.

United States officials, including Attorney General William Barr, have repeatedly said they believe China destroyed samples to cover up the fact that the virus started inside their country. Liu said that claim “takes facts out of context with the aim of intentionally misleading people.”

During a press conference on Friday, Liu said “national-level professional institutes” worked around-the-clock to determine what was causing the illness, the South China Morning Post reported.

“Based on comprehensive research and expert opinion, we decided to temporarily manage the pathogen causing the pneumonia as Class II – highly pathogenic – and imposed biosafety requirements on sample collection, transport and experimental activities, as well as destroying the samples,” Liu said.

China has repeatedly lied to the world about the Wuhan coronavirus. Not only did China deny scientists and researchers from being deployed to help control and contain the virus in the outbreak’s early stages, but China also waited almost a week to alert the world to what was happening.

Chinese President Xi Jinping personally asked World Health Organization Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to delay publishing vital information about the Wuhan coronavirus. The WHO parrotted Chinese talking points and repeatedly told the world that the virus was not transmissible from human-to-human contact.

Our current obsession with nostalgia raises an important question: how do we preserve the past?

You’ve probably seen the signs of retrogaming becoming mainstream. From the hallowed arcade celebrated in Stranger Things 2 to Commodore 64 t-shirts, retrogaming is no longer just the preserve of the nerd herd. In 2018, retrogaming moves to the box office, with the long-anticipated film Ready Player One (based on Ernest Cline’s 2011 book of the same name) loaded with nostalgic references and characters from long-dead games. Generation X is looking back to the culture of their youth and the corporations are listening.

Last year, Nintendo released the SNES Classic Mini, a retro game console with 21 classic games including Street Fighter II, The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Kart. The console targeted older gamers keen to recall the games of their youth and by the end of October 2017 over 2 million retro consoles had been sold. There are plenty of fans still hungry for home gaming experiences and Nintendo has plans for more retrogaming products and games. Riding on this wave, the Commodore 64 Mini is a reboot of a classic home gaming system (right down to the clunky old joystick) which is slated for release later this year. The demand for nostalgia gaming is set to boom as older gamers make up a larger market for the likes of Nintendo and Millennials seek out ways to remember the games of their childhood.

Aaron Clement, co-host of the retrogaming podcast Press Play on Tape, sees the rise of retro hardware as a step forward. “The reception to both of Nintendo’s Classic Systems has been almost universally positive, although there’s still a subset of old school or “purists” who see them as nothing more than a cash grab that can’t compare to the real thing.”
The arcade scene from Stranger Things
Re-creating nostalgia

Most retrogaming is aimed at nostalgia, as greying gamers want to play the games of their childhood again. Theme music, the shape of an old controller or that monolithic arcade machine, all transport gamers back to that time when they first played a game. Nostalgia is marked by a longing for the past associated with the feeling that things were better back then. But retrogames could never claim to be technologically better. While some gamers may miss simpler games that were easier to master in the good old days, the improvements in gameplay, CGI and storytelling make contemporary gaming more compelling. Psychological research points to retrogaming being more than just a hankering for old gameplay and the sound of a tape drive.

Dr Jamie Madigan of the Psychology of Games links nostalgia to a need for social connection: “Thinking about the loss of social connection (as nostalgia often makes us do) primes us to think about repairing those connections, establishing replacements, or maintaining current ones.” This need for social connection is why we respond to the arcade scene in Stranger Things 2. We relate to the arcade as a social meeting point, populated with other geeks who compared high scores on Dig Dug. In retrogaming, we’re trying to get back to the arcade or the lounge room where we played games, as much as trying to finish a game from our youth.

Web-based emulators mean many retro games are no further than a lazy Google away, but the experience of an arcade or home console is harder to get. Retro hardware design tries to reproduce this with a similar (if smaller scale) products designed to plug into your TV much like the old systems.

The arcade is harder to re-create. ACMI’s Game Masters exhibition featured original arcade machines (alongside consoles) to re-create just that feeling. Similarly the evolution of barcades, like Brisbane’s Netherworld or Melbourne’s Bartronica or Pixel Alley has sought to give retrogaming a new venue.
A snapshot of our Game Masters exhibition

In restoring the arcade, the challenge lies in keeping original hardware running as the corporations that built them disappear and the technical skill to maintain them become harder to find. As Clement points out about gaming consoles, “As robust as an Atari 2600 may be, they’re 40-year-old technology built with parts and knowledge of the era… People have to cannibalise existing systems for parts. And much like fossil fuels, these existing systems are a not a replenishing resource.”

Archivist and historian, Jason Scott works with the Internet Archive to preserve and emulate software. He acknowledges the appeal of gaming on arcade machines over emulation. “A physical arcade machine is designed from the ground up to be attractive, stand in real space and make you feel like you’re interfacing with a strange, unique entity. Emulation tends to be more compact, more directed towards the software, and generally just gives you a rough idea of what the original arcade experience was.” While not transporting you back to that physical space, an emulator creates a playable version of the game and means there is a record “to speak authoritatively or reference permanently the excellent history of video arcade games.”

The Internet Archive’s arcade
Game online

Retro hardware reboots ride the wave of decades of emulating games on the web. While vintage retrogamers seek to only play games for original systems, web-based emulators like the Internet Archive and ACMI’s own Play It Again project have put games into the hands of millions. The Internet Archive’s software collection preserves thousands of games, ranging from Adventure to the Zork. Because the archive works from floppy discs, old-style tapes, cartridges and other out-dated storage tech, they reproduce games as they originally appeared that are playable online. Clement sees the role of the Internet Archive and other digital preservation organisations as crucial, because all the games featured on his podcast are “all tape or disk based, and magnetic media has an incredibly finite lifespan… For me this is one of the biggest limitations we face as once this media goes, with it goes part of gaming history that can never be recovered.” Organisations like the Internet Archive are at the forefront of gaming preservation, seeking to rescue an emulated version for as many games as possible online.

Even more than redundant technology, retrogaming’s greatest obstacle comes from copyright. According to Scott, companies like Atari are now little more than “a licensing outfit, a filing cabinet and a lawyer.” Copyright holders make more money, more easily by making Atari t-shirts than emulating the old games. It is easier to sell the nostalgia rather than try to reproduce the original experience. For organisations like the Internet Archive, preserving games is made harder when the rights for games are no longer held by their original creators, have been bought out, or are just undefined. Software presents challenges to copyright laws that were conceived with old media in mind. As Scott sees it, “There are a lot of questions up in the air about software – it is certainly a sold product, but it’s also a cultural force, and in many cases it’s impossible outside of emulation to ever experience the games again.”

Faced with the prospect of extinction or emulation, games are better available on the internet. Some have even seen a second wave of popularity as light mobile games. But the appearance of games in TV series like Stranger Things 2 or a blockbuster film like Ready Player One can make it harder to preserve games history. According to Scott, once games become “active properties” companies want other versions to be removed to allow for licensing products. “It can be quite frustrating for people who want to reference, study or enjoy the originals. Games rarely ‘disappear’, however – they just don’t get as easily seen.”

Interventions to preserve games – either by organisations like the Internet Archive, ACMI or fan-fuelled resurrections of obscure games – the history of videogames would be shaped by the market. The evergreen Mario and Tomb Raider reboots would push out smaller unique games. By preserving, emulating and playing old games, we hold them in the present and maybe even get them to inspire the future.

George Dunford is director at Ferrous Digital with previous digital leadership roles at the National Museum of Australia, National Library of Australia and RMIT University.

Coexistence with China or Cold War II?

Under fire for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump, his campaign and his party are moving to lay blame for the 80,000 U.S. dead at the feet of the Communist Party of China and, by extension, its longtime General Secretary, President Xi Jinping.

“There is a significant amount of evidence” that the virus originated in a Wuhan lab, said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week.

Trump himself seemed to subscribe to the charge:

“This is worse than Pearl Harbor. This is worse than the World Trade Center. There’s never been an attack like this… It could have been stopped in China. It should have been stopped right at the source.”

There is talk on Capitol Hill of suspending sovereign immunity so China may be sued for the damages done by the virus that produced a U.S. shutdown and a second Great Depression where unemployment is projected to reach near the 25% of 1933.

The Trump campaign has begun to target the Democratic nominee as “Beijing Biden” for his past collusion with China and his attack on Trump for “hysterical xenophobia” when Trump ended flights from China.

What is the historical truth?

On China, Trump is the first realist we have had in the Oval Office in decades. But both parties colluded in the buildup of China as she vaulted over Italy, France, Britain, Germany and Japan to become the world’s second power in the 21st century.

Both parties also dismissed Chinese trade surpluses with the U.S., which began at a few billion dollars a year in the early 1990s and have grown to almost $500 billion a year. Neither party took notice until lately of our growing dependency on Beijing for products critical to our defense and for drugs and medicines crucial to the health and survival of Americans.

The mighty malevolent China we face today was made in the USA.

But what do we do now? Can we coexist with this rising and expansionist power? Or must we conduct a new decades-long Cold War like the one we waged to defeat the Soviet Empire and Soviet Union?

The U.S. prevailed in that Cold War because of advantages we do not possess with the China of 2020.

From 1949-1989, a NATO alliance backed by 300,000 U.S. troops in Europe “contained” the Soviet Union. No Soviet ruler attempted to cross the dividing line laid down at Yalta in 1945. Nor did we cross it.

East of the Elbe, the Soviet bloc visibly failed to offer the freedoms and prosperity the U.S., Western Europe and Japan had on offer after World War II. America won the battle for hearts and minds.

Moreover, ethnic nationalism, the idea that separate and unique peoples have a right to determine their own political and cultural identity and destiny, never died in the captive nations of Europe and the USSR.

China today does not suffer from these deficiencies to the same degree. Unlike the USSR, China has four times our population. Where the USSR could not compete economically and technologically, China is a capable and dynamic rival of the U.S.

Moreover, if we begin a Cold War II with China, we would not be starting with the advantages Truman’s America, undamaged at home in World War II, had over Stalin’s pillaged and plundered land in 1945.

Where ethnic nationalism tore the USSR apart into 15 nations, today’s China is more of an ethno-nationalist state with Han Chinese constituting 1 billion of China’s 1.4 billion people.

There are millions of Tibetans, Uighurs, Kazakhs in southwest and west China, and tens of millions of Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, Falun Gong and other religious minorities. But China is unlike the multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural, multilingual Moscow-centered and Russian-controlled Soviet Empire and USSR that shattered after 1989.

China’s weaknesses?

She is feared and distrusted by her neighbors. She sits on India’s lands from the war of the early 1960s. She claims the whole South China Sea, whose waters and resources are also claimed by Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan.

The peoples of Hong Kong and Taiwan fear that Beijing intends to overrun and rule them.

Even Vladimir Putin has reason to be suspicious as Beijing looks at the barren but resource-rich lands of Siberia and the Russian Far East, some of which once belonged to China.

China is thus a greater rival than the USSR of Stalin and Khrushchev and Brezhnev, but the U.S. is not today the nation of Ronald Reagan, with its surging economy and ideological conviction we would one day see the ideology of Marx and Lenin buried.

Three decades of post-Cold War foolish and failed democracy-crusading have left this generation not with the conviction and certitude of Cold War America, but with ashes in their mouths and no stomach to spend blood and treasure converting China to our way of life.

Why Linux is better then Windows or Mac OS X

I want to say Linux reigns supreme over Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Mac OS 10.9 and FreeBSD. I had Debian in high school Linux +. RHEL in 2004, OpenSUSE in 12th grade. Then I was introduced to Knoppix in 2005 Linux+. Ubuntu in 2007, Fedora in 2008 Linux+, Cent OS from 2012. FreeBSD in 2012. In the beginning with Windows XP, I dual booted Debian with Windows. Windows blue screen of death crashed and then I used the NTFS-3g driver to get stuff off Windows in Linux until 2010. I stored my MP3s on a “MP3” partition I used with Partition Magic and later G-Parted so I wouldn’t lose that partition. In 2013, I changed the mp3 partition from a NTFS file system to EXT4 file system. I kept my mp3s and photos on DVDR so I could retrieve all of them after my operating system crashed or my hard drive was fried.tu Beginning in 2014, I realized that an old Ubuntu OS can survive six years with some kernel updates and that I wouldn’t lose my mp3s on the EXT4 partition, because my computer was just like a old Apache web server! The Only other OS that lasted from 2015 since Mac OS X 10.9 where the hard drive says I used for 2 months total uptime and 500 starts. My Linux I used from 2014 says the hard drive was used for 1 year 10 uptime and 4442 startups. In the linux, the sometimes file manager crashed, but not the OS. Windows XP, Windows Vista Windows 7, Windows 8.1 would freeze up completely after 18 hours. I used stream ripper to stream Shoutcast onto the hard drive in Windows where after 18 hours, Windows XP or Windows Vista would have a frozen screen. I don’t get viruses in Linux. I don’t get Trojans in Linux. I remember getting viruses or Trojans on Windows and having to reformat the hard drive, reinstall apps, and mp3 files totaling 6 hours. Windows sometimes installs viruses with Windows updates. Windows 10 does timentry while linux doesn’t. I had virtual machines in 2012, but sometimes the save state of the images failed and the operating system on that image cold booted. I still wanted windows to play Windows PC games so I kept it updated to Windows 10. Windows 10 has Windows explorer crash. Windows 8.1 always seemed to freeze from PC Games and Youtube videos! Windows 10 isn’t that stable. There’s a reason why hospitals are using Windows 7 and Windows XP. When you repair Windows 10, the Windows Update takes 12 hours during the re-install. This software for my Linux called PlayonLinux installs a lot PC games from the 2000s. My 8-core Intel Mac with Mac OS 10.9 became a photography, retro videogame emulator and mp3 storage. I wanted a iphone since 2015, because then I have imessage, and 5 years of OS updates. I got an ipad, because I thought it was going to be a Nintendo 3DS like with mobile games. I played Poker, Solitaire, Super Mario Run, Mario Kart Tour and Pokemon Go on the ipad so far. PC-BSD 10 worked great, had OS stability, but the files were obsolete within months and no updates. Android phones slows down or have performance problems after 2 years. I had experience with FreeBSD 8.2 to FreeBSD 12.1. Then PC-BSD only had months before the upload respiratory with the current latest software version was broken with my operating system. Linux updates its repositories for 4 years, then you can update Firefox and libreoffice manually for additional 3 years. PC-BSD wouldn’t dual boot with Windows unless it had Unix File System and not ZFS file system. My guess is FreeBSD beats Windows, because Playstation 4 beats Xbox One in sales. Linux is free because 1000s of people submit code every year, Microsoft uses it to run Microsoft Azure. It’s free because the Linux Organization is backed by big corporations like Microsoft, IBM,Intel, Google, Samsung, Vmware, there is freedom with what you want to do with the OS. Linux users had a grudge against how exe files where downloaded, because their terminal works 100% of the time. A single command will update everything you have installed to the latest features. You can update whenever you want or never. It has live kernel updates that only require a reboot, but reboot when you want to. Linux can run on supercomputers to a toaster. You can install Linux on updated laptops or the Raspberry Pi. On a catastrophic event, Linux will probably keep running. The drivers are open source too in Linux so they will be supported long after the manufacture discontinues support. Because there is 1000s of eyes on the code, vervalance is better. KDE and Gnome have desktop themes that can make the desktop more Windows-like or Mac-like since KDE 3.5 in the mid- 2000s. If you like the terminal a lot, you can use X-Windows, the most basic desktop environment. Since all the GNU programs are in the same folders, distribution hopping can be done. If you want to be most secure, you can run Tails Linux off a USB and use Tor browser. I don’t check my email constantly, because the ROI is better then immediate response. The video editing in KDENLIVE and photo editing in GIMP is better then Photoshop and Power Director. The hours doing stuff is cutdown. If I move a lot of files, I’ll use Crusader in Linux. Windows works 1 way. Mac OS works 1 way. You just accept their limitations.