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50 ONE LEVEL CAREERS: Storytelling careers megapack by isy's the snake

Here is yet another career mod pack, but this one has no promotions, you just work and your job level stays at 1. As the title say this mod is best for story telling!

creator's notes-

This mod requires XML Injector by Scumbumbo. You can find it here. Pay attention if you don't already have it for another mod! In that case, you do not need to re-install it. Be sure it is updated for the last patch.

XML Injector is a mod required for some mods to work. So, you install it as any other mod in your Mods folder, no more than one subfolder deep.

This mod has been updated for the version 1.99.305 of the game (second update after Horse Ranch).

It doesn't required any DLC to work. Base game compatible

I've adopted this mod from the amazing ItsKatato who, due to her hiring at EA, couldn't continue to mod. I have made some changes: • I have changes all the pics of the careers — now they all show Sims (please check the credits paragraph at the end to see who was the amazing raccoon who helped me); • I have updated the mod for the Horse Ranch patch; • I have cleared ALL the tuning errors; • Fixed the description of some careers who appeared to be missing.

Now, here we go with the explanation of the mod (originally written by ItsKatato, edited by me):

Katato said: "Have you ever had a story planned out for your sims but you can't find the perfect career for them? Most of the time when I find the career it ends up being a complicated career with a bunch of promotion tasks and extra stuff. Well, I've made a pack of a bunch of single-level careers. All your sim has to do is go to work, that's it. This is perfect for the non-important sims in your life, like the forgotten children of your legacy challenge." In short: those are 50 careers you can use for NPCs Sims or random Sims you do not want to care about. As Amethyst said: "Go to work, make money, leave me alone". Your Sims won't need any task to perform to upgrade and get a promotion, as well as they do not really need an ideal mood to go to work since it won't change their performance. They just go and do their job. And now the list of all careers:

1. Anesthetiologist 2. Cartographer 3. Chiropractor 4. Compliance Officer 5. Data Scientist 6. Dental Hygienist 7. Dentist 8. Diagnostic Medical Sonographer 9. Financial Advisor 10. Financial Manager 11. Genereal Surgeon 12. Genetic Counselor 13. Home Health Aide 14. Information Security Analyst 15. IT Manager 16. Interpreter And Translator 17. Lawyer 18. Marriage And Family Therapist 19. Massage Therapist 20. Mathematician 21. Mechanical Engineer 22. Medical And Health Services Manager 23. Nurse Anesthetist 24. Nurse Practitioner 25. Obstetrician And Gynecologist 26. Occupational Therapist 27. Operations Reasearch Analyst 28. Optometrist 29. Oral And Maxillofacial Surgeon 30. Orthodontist 31. Orthotist And Prosthetist 32. Paralegal 33. Pediatrician 34. Personal Care Aide 35. Phlebotomist 36. Physical Therapist 37. Physical Therapist Assistant 38. Physician 39. Physician Assistant 40. Pilot 41. Podiatrist 42. Prosthodontist 43. Psychiatrist 44. Registered Nurse 45. Respiratory Therapist 46. Software Developer 47. Speech-Language Pathologist 48. Statician 49. Substance Abuse And Behavioral Disorder Counselor 50. Veterinarian 51. Web Developer 52. Wind Turbine Technician

lets give some of our love and support to isy!

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The zombie economy and digital arm-breakers

It's a zombie economy. For 40 years, we've eroded the wages of workers and transfered their share of profit and productivity to owners of capital. This is a problem, because people need money to buy things, and if they run out of money, they stop buying and profits vanish.

Time and again, capitalism has kicked any reckoning over this down the road. First came the great liquidation: pension cashouts, raided savings, reverse mortgages. Then came consumer borrowing, a tidal wave of unrepayable debt.

That's the zombie part: all the unpayable debt, which has been turned into bonds that enrich debt-holders. As Michael Hudson has told us again and again, debt that can't be paid, won't be paid. Our debt-based economy is the walking dead, a zombie.

We can either stabilize the economy (by forgiving debts, so that producers can pay for necessities and go on producing); or we can stabilize finance (by coercing debtors into destroying their lives in order to keep up on payments):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/24/grandparents-optional-party/#jubilee

Think of the loan-shark's arm-breaker: he wants to collect on debt, so he threatens to break your arm. You steal your kid's college fund. You secretly mortgage the house. You sell your wedding-ring. You end up divorced and homeless. You still owe. So he breaks your arm.

Now you're divorced, homeless, and you've lost your ability to earn, and you've got medical bills. He threatens to break your other arm. You start breaking into cars to steal the toll money in the ashtrays. You go to jail. Finally the arm-breaker and his boss are out of luck.

Debts that can't be paid, won't be paid. But as loan-sharks know, fortunes can be collected by applying the right incentives.

Give debtors the choice of immediate ruin from nonpayment, and making a payment today and ruining their lives tomorrow, and they're pay.

They'll pay...until they can't. Because debts that can't be paid, won't be paid.

The zombie economy is the subprime economy. "Subprime" came into collective consciousness thanks to the great financial crisis, where banks tricked poor homebuyers into predatory loans.

The banks knew that the loans couldn't be repaid - they had "balloon" clauses that jacked up payments beyond the borrowers' ability to repay a few years into the mortgage - but they also knew that threats of homelessness are powerful motivators.

The inscrutable equations used to "guarantee" subprime bonds all shared an unspoken assumption: people who face homelessness will go to extraordinary lengths to pay their mortgages. Behind every subprime loan is an arm-breaker.

The zombie economy shambles on. Obama's loan-shark bailout and the eviction crisis let the architects of subprime buy up whole towns' worth of homes and turn them into hugely profitable slums: high-rent, low-quality deathtraps.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-housing-invitation/

Wall St landlords package rents from subprime rentals into bonds, backed by the loan-shark's guarantee: arm-breakers will evict the shit out of anyone who stops paying.

America-a land where eviction was once a rarity-now faces an eviction epidemic.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/08/forced-out

The foreclosure crisis was only possible because Wall St and the courts collaborated to streamline the historically complicated and time-consuming process of taking away someone's home. Same goes for the eviction epidemic.

It's a simple equation: the more loan-sharks spend on arm-breakers, the lower the expected profits.

Improvements to arm-breaking processes - cost-savings on traditional coercion or innovative new forms of terror - are powerful engines for unlocking new debt markets.

When innovation calls, tech answers. Our devices are increasingly "smart," and inside every smart device is a potential arm-breaker. Digital arm-breakers have been around since the first DRM systems, but they really took off in 2008.

That's when subprime car loans boomed. People who lost everything in the GFC still needed to get to work, and thanks to chronic US underinvestment in transit, that means owning a car. So loan-sharks and tech teamed up to deliver a new lost-cost, high-efficiency arm-breaker.

They leveraged the nation's mature wireless network to install cellular killswitches in cars. You could extend an unrepayable loan to a desperate person, and use an unmutable second stereo system to bombard them with earsplitting overdue notices.

https://edition.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/04/17/aa.bills.shut.engine.down/index.html

If they didn't pay, you could remotely cut off the ignition and send a precise location to your repo man.

Smart killswitches let you impose fine-grained control over debtors - say, enforcing a rule against driving over the county line.

https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/miss-a-payment-good-luck-moving-that-car/

Within a decade, the bond-market for payments from subprime car drivers was edging up on $1T; not because borrowers didn't default, but because they defaulted later, and the car could be easily re-leased to another desperate person.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U2eDJnwz_s

The zombie economy shambled on. Tech built undeletable, always-on kill-switches, lo-jacks, and spyware into an ever-expanding constellation of devices, like laptops.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/rental-company-control/478365/

Rent-to-own subprime laptops were tepicenter of innovation in digital arm-breaking. Laptops shipped with spyware for covert operation of cameras and mic and access ot files.

That went beyond repoing a laptop! Lenders could make and share covert sex-tapes of their customers!

They spied on children, plundered MP3 collections, stole passwords, read email. It was beyond the wildest dreams of analog loan-sharks.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2012/09/ftc-halts-computer-spying

To make a good digital arm-breaker, you need always-on network connectivity, a device that people really depend on, and a strong presumption that the device has core software that its owner is never allowed to remove.

Basically, a smartphone.

Mobile carriers were early to this party. They collaborated with device manufacturers to create a "subsidized phone" market. They would "give" you a phone in exchange for a long-term, abusive contract, and then repo it by terminating service if you missed payments.

This was only possible because the manufacturers helped, creating phones that could be locked to a single network, so you couldn't un-repo your phone by sliding in someone else's phone.

They relied on the "anti-circumvention" laws that the music industry lobbied for in the late 90s (like Section 1201 of the DMCA) to make it a felony to unlock these phones. Arm-breaking is a lot easier if it's a felony to evade the arm-breaker.

The smarter the phones got, the more subprime opportunities there were. Remember, there's a new market in every arm-breaking innovation and in every arm-breaking efficiency.

Which brings me to India.

India has a huge subprime market. As one of the world's inequality capitals, whose national government runs on performative culture war bullshit and giveaways to the super-rich, it's a land ripe for subprime innovation.

Phone manufacturers like Samsung are key to India's vast collateralized subprime smartphone market: first-time buyers get their phones on the installment plans at predatory interest rates so high that most will default

https://restofworld.org/2021/loans-that-hijack-your-phone-are-coming-to-india/

Remember: subprime isn't about debts being repaid in full. It's about making borrowers so desperate that they ruin their lives to make payments before they default.

Samsung's uninstallable arm-breaker app allows lenders to brick a smartphone without help from a carrier.

Writing for Rest of World, Nilesh Christopher describes an "escalating series of annoyances" culminating with a full lockout for failure to repay:

* audiovisual prompts in regional languages as reminders

* changing the wallpaper on their cellphones

That escalates to coercion based on analysis of the users' device activity:

* For "a prolific selfie-taker," notifications every time the camera is invoked

* frequently used messaging and social apps like Facebook or Instagram are progressively blocked

One step at a time, the phone is made progressively less usable, until it is fully bricked.

It's a fully automated, self-configuring arm-breaker, one that substitutes a thug's unscientific ladder of mounting terror with bloodless, statistical science.

This is probably a good point to mention the Shitty Technology Adoption Curve: any disciplinary technology is tried out on powerless people first, and gradually works its way up the privilege gradient to encompass the whole world.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

Debt, after all, is consuming all of us except for the lucky few at the very top of the wealth distribution who have not faced wage stagnation and forced liquidations.

The covid crisis pushed whole countries into subprime status. Pfizer has told poor countries that they can only get access to vaccines if they stake their sovereign assets as collateral to settle claims related to its products:

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2021-02-23/held-to-ransom-pfizer-demands-governments-gamble-with-state-assets-to-secure-vaccine-deal

And the shitty-tech adoption curve is putting arm-breaking tech into every kind of device, spreading with alarming speed from the bottom of the social order to its apex.

Miss your Tesla payments and your car will lock itself, summon a repo man, back itself out of the parking lot, honk its horn, and unlock its doors for the repo man.

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

As subprime climbs the shitty tech adoption curve, it gets a new name: "software as a service." In a SaaS world, you cannot own the tools of your profession. Adobe Photoshop becomes Adobe Creative Cloud, and any designer who stops monthly payments becomes economic roadkill.

What's more, software is the ghost in the shell, the animating spirit within physical devices. Remove software from a smart device and you don't have a dumb device, you have a brick.

This lets the arm-breakers exert pressure over larger, more powerful entities...like Hoboken, NJ. Hoboken had a payment dispute with the software vendor for its robotic parking garage, so the vendor bricked the garage and took all the cars hostage.

https://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71554-0.html

The strange mutations of arm-breaker tech bodes ill, especially in light of Chekhov's Law: "A phaser on the bulkhead in Act One will go off by Act Three."

The universal spread of devices *designed* to be remotely repoed - bricked, downgraded, turned into surveillance tools - means that oppressive governments that coerce manufacturers will have the power to reach into our homes, cars and pockets to attack us.

Same goes for unscrupulous insiders - like the subprime laptop jokers making nonconsensual sex-tapes with their customers' webcams - and criminals who can pressure insiders into acting on their behalf.

Nevertheless, subprime arm-breaking is bound to spread, and spread, and spread. Covid forced millions to liquidate everything, left them in precarious, sub-minimum-wage gig work, and there's the millions of evictions waiting for the moratorium to end.

Debts that can't be paid, won't be paid. And yet, people must participate in the zombie economy: they're not going to dig a hole, climb in, and pull the dirt in on top of themselves. There is strong demand for credit on any terms. Any.

Arm-breaker tech unlocks new markets by delaying defaults on unpayable debts. The zombie economy shambles on.

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

Sachab (modified): https://www.flickr.com/photos/sachab/1422847855/

CC BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

Kat Northern Lights Man (modified): https://www.flickr.com/photos/orangegreenblue/11375767914/

CC BY-NC: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/

#pluralistic

November 16, 2020: 2:59 pm:

Centurylink Shane Welsh; Zachary White; Stephen Bell terror scenario playing out today, is a repeating, scripted screenplay of a terror scenario: The activity begins with Centurlylink terror operatives using the Symantec norton product to erase itself from the computer with a variety of computer headaches that take several hours to remedy. The hack installs a second norton product, one conflicts with the other, the computer is said to have no internet security at all, the message from norton says there are a number of “Errors” and the manual diagnostics must be done, a re-installation of the norton product, and a system restore is necessary after figuring out what the problem is. I am re-installing the update to the most recent version now as a result of that computer hack attack.

So, there is more. The other part to this computer attack is the dangerous part.

I have played this game before, always the same people, same props, same place, same activity, same, same, same, all over again... the same shit on a different day at one year intervals or so.

The other part to the attack is a physical one. While I am busy fixing the computer, the thing needs time to load the program, do the diagnostic, etc, so that is a good time to take a walk while the spinning curser is doing it’s thing.

While walking, I encounter an expecially geeky looking fellow at the neighbors house. He is always carrying the same broken computer with wires sticking out all over the place... clearly, the man is a computer wizard, and can help me fix my computer (the one he attacked from Centurylink). Of course, in the past, I have fallen for the computer geek at the neighbor before, so, I already know who he is... he is part of the Green Jello Centurylink Shane Welsh/Zack White attack team. If I say: “Hey, you look like a friendly sort of SDA computer geek who can help me repair this nasty bug that just happened”, then, he will be like Johnny on the spot, ready to go, has a pouch filled with thumb drives and diagnostic software, and, he is already carrying around a broken computer with wires all hanging out of it so I can clearly see it as I walk by. They wait there for me to walk by, so they can carry the broken computer with wires all sticking out for me to see.

The physical attack happens after you invite the geek into the house to look at the bug he put on your computer. There is also a Hot Chick who is there to be mysteriously just barely out of view, so, that is another reason to start a conversation with the friendly SDA Green Jello terror computer geek, maybe have a look at a Hot Chick who is clearly not a computer geek oriented woman.

So, that’s all i have on that, but, the point here is more about the repetitive, planned, scripted attack scenario that is invasive into your personal computer to unknown extent, designed to fool a victim into asking for some help, as a lure for a private, physical attack behind closed doors at the victims home.

I pay $45 per month for Internet service. I pay more than $100 annually for the Symantec norton product. That won‘t keep Centurylink out of my computer or personal information, nor will it protect me from being throttled from reaching FBI and other national Security offices.

One more interesting Symantec note, is that in about twenty years of annual renewals to the norton product, it has never found any issues of computer bugs, ever, when I do a scan. The product is fake. It only does what Centurylink wants it to. The need the information I share online, so, they don‘t completely wipe pout my computer like they could do. Instead, the install keystroke recorder software, and other spyware, so that the information I explain can be stolen, changed enough to suit the needs of Centurylink, and ultimately used as a lure to get federal agents to go to the wrong addresses, and walk directly into the traps that are set for them.

End terror report: 3:37 pm.

Afterthoughts from Re-wiring Distribution Networks

Last week, I had the privilege of joining my friend Karin Chien in a conversation on "Re-Wiring Distribution Networks" hosted by The International Documentary Association as part of their Getting Real Now summer series.

I'm excited to join my friend + award winning independent producer and distributor @producerkarin for a conversation this Thursday hosted by @IDAorg as part of their #GettingRealNOW series. RSVP in the link below in the thread. https://t.co/kgxPy9bA21

— Gary Chou (@garychou) August 26, 2020

A video should be posted on YouTube shortly for all to see.

Upon reflection, there were a few points I'd like to emphasize, if not re-state altogether:

Everything is changing. The installation of large-scale, ubiquitous, real-time information networks is the single most impactful development in our lifetimes. It's not just affecting distribution networks or business models, it's affecting society and culture. As such, it's worth thinking about the ways in which we, as individuals, need to change in order to adjust to this.

Attention is now the scarce resource. Advances in technology have lowered barriers to participation—which is great for everyone—but it also means that competition for our attention has never been greater. What used to work in a world of surplus might not be viable anymore. This is a good post to read for more background.

What are the networks that you need? You're going to need access to different networks of people for different things (i.e. your collaborators aren't necessarily your financiers or your friends or family). If you lack sufficient access to relevant networks, consider whether the immediate work you produce be something intentionally designed to help you gather the people you will need for your journey vs. focusing solely on your creative vision.

Signaling helps your network find you. If the network you need doesn't exist, you'll need to consider forming it yourself, through a committed, regular practice of signaling. What is something you can regularly and sustainably share that is of interest to those who are best positioned to support you? This could be as simple as starting a blog or newsletter, or it could be as elaborate as a speaker series or a club. As this is really hard work—particularly for creators who are under-networked—it's a prime opportunity for foundations, intermediaries and other support organizations to operationalize and/or specifically fund.

Collective action can take on many different (new) forms in a networked world. We're still in the early stages of understanding how to wield the power afforded by networked systems and there's tremendous opportunity for creativity here. In addition to Tracy Chou's work mentioned on the call, which resulted in greater transparency in the tech industry, there are other interesting collective efforts like the Letters for Black Lives project, which brought together hundreds of strangers to coordinate mass translation efforts; as well as efforts to include diversity riders in term sheets.

Q&A Redux

Finally, there was a question posed towards the end of the Q&A session that I'd like to revisit, as my initial response zeroed in too narrowly on the topic of online advertising, which wasn't really the point, and it's a rather pertinent question:

When we think of distribution, we usually think of mass, untargeted distribution always hoping to expand our audiences. Can the panelists talk about distributing to more specific, pre-inclined audiences but using the worldwide network afforded to us by the interwebs, perhaps akin to how big tech companies use granular algorithms to target ads?

Here's what I would have liked to have said:

I'd reframe this question slightly—instead of thinking about how the big tech companies have leveraged this infrastructure, I'd look at how tech entrepreneurs have adapted to the changes in the environment as a result of the installation of these networks (which are the same problems we talked about in the conversation).

What's changed for tech entrepreneurs is that there's now an abundance of:

free information and educational resources contributing to an increasingly global trained labor force

free open source tools and frameworks which make it easier and faster to build applications

easy access to cloud hosting providers which make it possible to deliver and scale your application globally and instantly

global capital willing to fuel new ideas, good or bad.

All of this has resulted in an unprecedented amount of competition (and innovation) chasing a limited amount of attention. Thus, the hard thing about building a software business is no longer the software, it's the distribution—how you get in front of people who are likely to want your product, and how you get them to pay while fending off all of the competition.

We've seen two different strategies emerge, which depend upon how well-funded a company is.

If you're immensely well-funded and you have a product or service with good unit economics (meaning that you make money on every sale, unlike Moviepass), you can afford to raise a lot of capital and spend it on online advertising to acquire customers, and then re-invest your profits into even more online advertising and continue to grow until you can't.

But, the majority of businesses aren't immensely well-funded and so they can't run this playbook and spend their way to success. So, they've had to adopt a slower and more modest 3-part strategy in order to grow:

Find or gather a community of people who you hope to serve, and gain their trust / get them to care about you.

Set aside your grand vision, and instead build something small and focused (commensurate to your cost structure), which is compelling for this community.

Collect and share stories of success from your community and repeat step 2, incrementally expanding the size/scale/footprint of your vision each time you do so.

The core difference between these two strategies is the order of operations. Rather than trying to find more people (i.e. customers) for your stuff, it's about building stuff for your people. In essence, the marketing comes before rather than after.

What this means for filmmakers is two-fold:

First, instead of targeting audiences after you've made your film, focus on gathering allies before and while you make your film. Having more allies doesn't guarantee you success, but it increases the likelihood of unlocking new resources and paths as you move forward.

This doesn't mean you need to become yet another ostentatious internet influencer or turn your project into a reality TV show, nor does it mean you need to take on a second job as a promoter or marketer.

There's always a story behind the film's story: who you are and why you're choosing to spend your precious time working on this project. Often, this story unfolds over the course of the project itself. And so, there's a lot of value to be had simply by adopting a practice of working in public—publicly sharing the exhaust of your process: your artifacts, your lessons, your story—and enabling people to learn along side you.

There are a lot of practical reasons that drive secrecy in filmmaking, but I'd argue that these only benefit the existing gatekeepers. And certainly, if you're asking about how to fully leverage the value created by this internet infrastructure we're all stuck with, the system is designed to favor openness. (Pre-internet, startups commonly embraced secrecy by working in "stealth mode", and this cultural norm has flipped as well.)

Second, create a space that is intentionally designed to welcome these allies into your circle and where you can sustainably keep them engaged over the long term. The simplest space is an email newsletter, but this could be something more elaborate like a club. Consistency is better than frequency, and ideally, there's an opportunity for your allies to see each other and not just you.

(If we stick with our example of a newsletter this could mean that you're not only sharing your thoughts and stories, but that you're also inviting them to contribute questions and comments, perhaps monthly or quarterly.)

There's a tremendous opportunity here to get creative, and while it may initially seem like an onerous chore by itself, in the context of your broader career aspirations, this will increase the surface area of your optionality so long as you continue to tend to your garden.

And so, rather than leverage this new internet infrastructure simply to target the masses in the hopes of consummating a transaction, I'd take advantage of its ability to connect people, globally, in meaningful ways at virtually zero cost to form new networks—or gardens—around you and your practice.

But it won't be an easy shift because done right, it will require a different way of working.

The upside, however, is the ability to change the equation in this discussion around re-imagining distribution networks (and models) from a conversation about what a collective of individual filmmakers can do to a conversation around what a cooperative of gardens can support and grow.

Originally posted: https://garychou.com/notes/thoughts-from-re-wiring-distribution-networks/

Authoritarian smart cities

*I blame science fiction dystopias for smart cities turning authoritarian when they were pretty much authoritarian all along.

*Also: also massive climate disasters, they’ll be “post-disaster smart cities.” If war breaks out in them, they’ll be “urban warfare smart cities,” etc etc.

https://codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/silicon-valleys-scramble-for-china/

Silicon Valley’s scramble for China

Western technology companies have played a pivotal role in building China’s authoritarian smart cities

TEXT BY NAFEEZ AHMED

VISUALS BY GOGI KAMUSHADZE

24 MAY, 2019

In August 2012, China launched one of its first major “smart city” projects for the remote oil town of Karamay in the autonomous province of Xinjiang. “Information technology is not just about technology. It should be integrated with all aspects of life in our city and make people’s lives more convenient,” said then Karamay Mayor Chen Xinfa. “For Karamay, it’s not the future, but what’s happening now.”

Chen said that bus stations in Karamay, a city with 400,000 residents, were equipped with electronic screens displaying travel information. In homes, ageing residents could push panic button to alert emergency services or relatives. If the social security system recorded an increase in unemployed people, officials would know right away — all thanks to Karamay’s smart city web of 2G, 3G and Wi-Fi networks.

Karamay was an early adopter in a smart city trend that will reshape much of the world, and China remains a leader in the field. According to the British financial services firm Deloitte, there are currently just over 1,000 smart city projects in countries like Brazil, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Around half of them are in China, making the country home to the world’s largest concentration of smart cities.

Those in the smart city industry lionize these projects as the cutting edge of urban planning. A report released last year by subsidiary Deloitte China, titled “Super Smart City: Happier Society with Higher Quality,” celebrates China’s drive to build “super smart cities” which integrate data across services like health care, transport, education and public safety.

“Drones, wearable computing, facial-recognition, and predictive video help law enforcement fight crime and maintain public safety,” the report says. “Agencies pre-empt crimes by tapping into all streams of data including social and crowdsourced data.”

Billed by Deloitte as a virtual utopia, China’s smart cities represent the biggest and most intrusive surveillance architecture ever built by any single nation, according to experts and analysts.

Early smart city projects like Karamay have since blossomed into a computerized police state in Xinjiang, home to the most comprehensive surveillance architecture ever built. Versions of Karamay have spread across Xinjiang to track some 2.5 million residents, targeting the province’s Uyghur Muslim minority.

Persons who are flagged for suspicious activities — such as praying — can be investigated by Chinese intelligence and detained in “re-education” camps. Currently, some one million ethnic Uyghur Muslims have been interned in what has been described by the United Nations as “a massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy.”

Western governments have widely condemned the emerging police state in Xinjiang. But Western tech companies, in the name of building smart cities, helped build that police state.

The New Surveillance Paradigm

Western government agencies have recently raised alarm bells about the dangers of exports from Chinese technology companies like Huawei. Last week, President Trump cited national security concerns when he blocked U.S imports from Huawei and another Chinese company, ZTE Corp. The U.S. Commerce Department also stated that Huawei would be forbidden from buying new products like computer chips from American companies.

Huawei has been the primary target of these measures. Last year, the heads of six U.S. intelligence agencies warned U.S. citizens to avoid using Huawei products. In December, Huawei’s chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou was arrested by Canadian authorities at the request of the U.S. government on the grounds of misleading banks about Huawei’s dealings with Iran in breach of U.S. sanctions.

It is true that Huawei helps the Chinese government surveil its own citizens, by helping build smart cities among other things.. But government studies, corporate documents, leaked official reports and public records reveal that China did not invent the paradigm of the smart city by itself. It did so with the help of a number of Western governments and major Silicon Valley companies, including IBM and Microsoft.

The seeds of China’s smart city projects were first planted by IBM in its “Smarter Planet” concept in 2009 when the company engaged with over 200 city mayors across China and established a joint “Eco-City” research lab with Northeastern University in Shenyang City, funded with $41 million from the local government.

The following year, IBM announced a 10-year smart city development strategy for China at a conference in Beijing. Future cities would use mass data collection to tackle issues like transportation, food safety, manufacturing, water resources management, energy and public services. A 2012 IBM investor briefing titled “Smarter Cities” said the company had established 82 IBM branches across China, encompassing research, innovation and software development — including in Xinjiang’s emerging “smart city” of Karamay.

Among the company’s early smart city projects was the installation of its flagship Intelligent Operations Center (IOC) for Smarter Solutions in the city of Zhenjiang in 2012. Although the project focused on the real-time monitoring of traffic, buses and passenger behavior, IBM’s IOC was also designed to integrate data for “security” purposes.

According to an IBM handbook published the same year, the IOC is capable of combining vast quantities of information across city functions including “security agencies” and “other levels of government.” Sources include feeds from “weather, citizens, law enforcement, social welfare, video” that can help run the city more efficiently. The handbook also identifies the potential of Sentiment Analysis, which learns what citizens are saying about city services and policies through social media.

But though smart cities are couched in the language of urban planning and good governance, they contain the seeds of dystopia....

[Solved] Fix Isdone.dll Error In Windows 10

Normally people might download crypt32.dll from a "DLL download" webpage to change the previous one, but it is not a good suggestion, and you can obtain it from its unique, reputable supply. It is feasible that old or corrupt model of system causes IEFRAME.DLL error. And then manage an online based diagnostic to affirm your system safety .You should not doubt this system! If non of these things work then attempt third occasion PST Repair software as a way to perform the repair and recovery work. To check your Laptop for RAM related errors, you can use the Windows Reminiscence Diagnostic tool, but users advocate using third celebration tools for this function. Hence it is advisable to the person to make use of software method. All of it permits applications to execute graphical user interface. 2. Your Scrrun.dll file is overwritten after you put in some new purposes. Some applications have been put in or uninstalled improperly.

SP1 could be uninstalled from the Packages & Features section by clicking on View Installed Updates and right clicking on Service Pack and selecting uninstall. It is not going to affect any of your private knowledge however remove purposes, and other packages put in after the restore level was made. Do not forget knowledge recovery process if the problem take away, hides your important information on USB and other drives. One is Synsoacc.dll that is generally used by AC-3 algorithm and binary synchronous communication (BSC) processes to coordinate the info out there for calculations. Obtain the advpack dll file and put it aside to your laptop. 1. You save hundred of dollars instead of paying the computer technician, who will repair Scrrun.dll error for one time. How to repair PWMTR64V.DLL Error Manually? There is no have to be afraid, because sure signs might clearly replicate that such errors have been encountered with the web.dll file. Subsequent, laptop laptop stays proper now there and may not really go on transferring a short time. You could go to have a look, and make a determination all by yourself finally.

This file's functions make it an integral a part of the windows system, so when this vital half goes unsuitable, your system both exhibits the blue screen or behaves in a very strange method. Iacenc.dll error is a represent system errors.Should you understand an correct way to repair it, you can study a correct method to repair system errors by the identical concept. To repair thisL error and any kind of other Windows issues, you want to realize what does the explanation of the error message. You'll find out about the character of this error, what causes this glitch, and most importantly - how to fix it. However, it should at all times tell you that you’ve a DLL file lacking. A program attempting to access this file will throw an error when the file is missing. This can be a special program that is used specifically for cleaning invalid entries that cause Pc errors.

As any invalid or damaged registry entry can result in the error. Maybe you might have realized that pc registry is the central part for Home windows Pc. So it is not steered that you simply clear the system registry manually. It is suggested you to take away the faux file together with your antivirus program or a system scanner software. The professional Dll error restore tool can fulfill this job for you. Ddkpjlmon.dll file is present in system listing: C://Windows/System32. I actually believe that a majority of of individuals are actually probable to have the exact same laptop system live much like me. DLL or Dynamic Link Libraries are extrinsic items of software that function on working system. Exactly what are the explanations behind this model of Windows XP error? Could be for a lot of other causes. This error can happen on all forms of system, together with the most recent Home windows 10 units. Because ARunUK.dll is a course of which is produced by computer system, it can't be utilized away with any situation.

Step 2: Within the Command Prompt window that opens, sort the command talked about beneath and press Enter key to re-register isDone.dll file. Once you open it, kind Regedit in the dialog box and click Ok. Open up your "My Laptop" desktop icon. So, it is actually essential to get rid of this error from your pc when you discover it. Once the computer is required for a very long time, your laptop computer or laptop is possible to runs not too well as beforehand. Presently it is not really suitable. With these scenario, you had better study a sensible strategy to restore system errors absolutely. Generally, the vga.dll file is located in Home windows System listing:C:Windows System32. KI.dll is a program which is just about the additional icons for IrfanView application. B6DC8F91d01 is kind of normal and unusual file which is required and utilized by program to execute and operate usually. It repairs corrupted DLL file effectively. This error happens when a DLL not exists at the given location .To keep away from the total system crash, the Working System will display this error. What's jdvkc.dll error?

What Is J2ME Mobile App Development?

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As an intellectual mobile terminal, mobile phone has come to be an indispensable tool in our life, as well as mobile phone video games have additionally been taken seriously by a growing number of individuals. Based on current data, in the year 2010, the smart device and tablet computer gaming app sales reached $898 million, and it is expected to produce an earnings number of $1.6 billion by the year 2015. Asynchronous gameplay fixes the problem of requiring players to have a constant online link. It's quick paced and also has procedurally created dungeon levels that make the video game different each time you play. Google Play anticipates designers to make certain their content is well adequate developed to make their clients satisfied. Suppose if you are waiting on somebody or standing in a line, and you recognize it will certainly take lot of time, as opposed to getting bored, you can play games on your mobile. The Enterprise service proceeds so not one of the massive players are influenced but a few of the much more small users may gain a fuss. It's possible, though battle of warship hack, that the underlying auto mechanics (or subsequent updates) will certainly confirm solid adequate to maintain gamers returning for even more (and investing loan). Internet browser and also some PERSONAL ORGANIZER features, among the very best properties, iphone is well feasible to change the way individuals began taking a look at mobile phone down. They are specifically what video game gamers throughout the world search for. If you like playing with sweaty palms as well as not understanding when something terrible is going to take place to your character, you're going to enjoy. The rough estimate of the age group that is more vulnerable to play the video games is 10-25. R.U.S.E. supplies fantastic gameplay and re-playability through the number of different methods to defeat project levels and the addition of multiplayer choices( full with numerous possible video game modes). After the launch of Apple Application Shop, the mobile OS platforms like Apple iphone, Google Android, as well as Microsoft Windows Phone, the mobile OS designers themselves have launched electronic download storefronts that can be operated on the tools utilizing the OS or from software used on PCs. Around 50% of adults learn about brand-new pc gaming apps from friends and family. Alien: Power outage is a mobile ready individuals who despise mobile games. Besides Geocaching, there exist several various other Location-based mobile video games, such as BotFighters, which are instead in the phase of study models than a commercial success. Via some more stats, it can be observed that the market for mobile video gaming is climbing fast. There are lots of software outsourcing business that supply expert android application growth in addition to app development for various other mobile systems. These store fronts (like Apple's iOS App Shop) work as central electronic download services from which a variety of entertainment media and software application can be downloaded and install, including games as well as nowadays majority of games are distributed via them.

File 1: The PC/XT

Where it all began, more or less

This is the IBM 5160 PC/XT, the 1983 follow-up on 1981's IBM 5150 PC. By itself the 5160 was largely an iterative advancement on the 5150 PC, most notably trading the earlier model's little-used cassette connector for three more ISA expansion slots totalling at eight versus the PC's five. The PC/XT's BIOS also had some enhancements meant to make hard disk I/O easier, but these were also integrated into later PC BIOS revisions. The minority of the changes the XT brought to the table are nonetheless significant; They mark the point where Intel's x86 (and later x86-64) architecture slowly started to become codified as a standard in computing. To this day, your average Intel or AMD CPU-based computer can run code meant for the PC 5150 and 5160 unaltered (with certain caveats such as needing a MS-DOS or FreeDOS boot floppy). Much like it's precursor, the PC/XT is powered by a 4.77MHz Intel 8088 CPU and can push up to 640 kilobytes of RAM (but in the early days, maxing it out would have been extremely unusual). I'd been obsessed with these systems for a fairly long time, considering the acquisition of one a milestone for my computer collection.

It's worth mentioning here that the hard drive I'd previously alluded to was a model using the MFM interface, the late '70s - mid '80s precursor to the more modern IDE/PATA and the SATA interface seen in pretty much every modern computer. MFM drives are fickle but impressive beasts, with their controller hardware on a separate expansion card and little brains of their own. They're slow, they're loud, they're clunky and they're an awe to behold in spite of (or perhaps because of) all that. They have actual, honest to god stepper motors and mechanical brakes. When they work, they're impressive as hell but...they often don't. At least, I've found more dead ones than I've found live ones. Naturally, when I first turned the machine on as-is to kick off the smoke test process and assess precisely what I'd need to fix up, I heard said MFM hard disk warm up... followed by a shrill, piercing dragging noise that could only be the hard disk's read/write head burying itself in one of the hard disk's platters. That lack of smarts inherent to MFM hardware I'd alluded to had come back to haunt this system, since MFM drives typically don't know to automatically park the head somewhere catastrophe is less likely to strike unless the command is issued manually by the user. It pretty obviously wasn't parked before the machine was put into storage, so at some point in time the machine was jostled enough to put the head somewhere it'd thrash the drive as soon as it was given power again. In layman's terms, the thing was toast. Well, shit. I like to keep hardware period accurate where I can, but MFM drives are prone to wild price fluctuations and you often have to gamble on untested drives when buying used due to how difficult they can be to test. Thankfully, a relatively practical solution that cuts out some of the uncertainty exists and I'd had good luck with it on previous projects with dead drives: An IDE controller card loaded with the XT-IDE Universal BIOS. Usage of an IDE card would allow me to hook up something more readily available (Such as an old 80gb drive or even a CompactFlash memory card), and usage of the XT-IDE BIOS would make booting simpler since that would mean not having to gamble on the card's own BIOS (or lack thereof). The pair are a pretty common solution to this sort of boondoggle to the point that there are open-source card designs readily available for purchase from many sellers, including Glitchworks , whom I've relied on in the past quite a bit and from whom I wound up purchasing a Revision 4 XT-IDE card from for this project. I also snagged a nice 64mb Cisco cF card off ebay, which would pretty much have to be bootable since it was formerly boot media for some smart network switch or something that's outside the scope of this article.

I also wound up attempting to service the 5 1/4" floppy drive at this time, which was in dire need of some care and plagued by mechanical issues. The read and write head wouldn't work reliably for anything and the movement of said head was almost comically stiff. Getting things cleaned up was superficially simple enough; most of the time all that's needed is cotton swabs and some isopropyl. Clean the read/write head, take off the old, gunky, dusty grease on the drive rails, and you're solid. Regreasing the rails so that the head could move freely also went simply enough, merely needing some white lithium grease on the previously cleaned rails. Using my testing boot media I got the system booted into DOS using a floppy after the cleaning; While 360kb of space wasn't nearly enough this wasn't meant to be the final setup. Cramped, sure, but it sufficed for testing. By all means, the drive seemed to be working fine now since it superficially read and wrote fine while also formatting without errors...and if anything was wrong, it sure wasn't obvious to me or the system itself. Eventually the XT-IDE card made it in. I slotted it in, hooked up my cF-IDE adapter, and set up DOS onto the drive. When I tried to boot off the hard disk the first time, though, I was greeted by a screen full of garbage and rancorous beeping from the system's speaker. Something was wrong, and I had no idea what since typically the setup process for XT-IDE cards is pretty braindead once it's assembled properly and in the system. Repeated attempts at re-installation of both the card and the operating systems yielded no changes, and even taking the XT-IDE card and cF card out altogether for a transplant install in my PC/AT (my "known good" testing system) lead to nothing but more garbage on what is otherwise a computer willing to take whatever absurdity I throw at it with grace and gusto. Trying different floppy disk install media and different DOS versions did nothing to fix the corruption issues the thing was having, and it didn't like different cF cards either. What was happening? On pointers from Glitch himself and some other friends on a chain of IRC channels I hung around, I ran diagnostics of various types, including pulling all the installed expansion cards one-by-one and testing to rule out conflicts. There were none, and by all means pretty much every part of the system but the card checked out fine.

My only clue? Transplanting the card to the PC/AT and installing DOS from there worked perfectly fine, even after moving the card back to the PC/XT. The PC/AT's boot card also worked just fine in the XT. That suggested that whatever the issue was, it was isolated to the PC/XT's input/output facilities specifically. The XT-IDE card itself actually was perfectly fine now and the similar symptoms to that of the bad latch were mere red herrings. It took me a while (and some shouting at from friends) to make the connection, but eventually I came to the conclusion that I should give the floppy drive a one-over using CheckIt, a personal go-to software suite for diagnostics on DOS systems. Lo and behold the floppy drive was generating absurd amounts of read errors, and at that point they could only be caused by capacitor issues (which would be fairly serviceable to fix but not immediately worth doing) or alignment issues (in which case the drive might as well be scrap²). It was easier just to not use the 360k drive. With the knowledge that the floppy drive was not to be trusted at all under my belt as well as the knowledge that any operating system installation should be done from the PC/AT, I proceeded to take another crack at things. I wound up with the PC/XT's Cisco CompactFlash card booting fine in the PC/AT but not the PC/XT, and the PC/AT's Compactflash card (a cheaper SanDisk card) booting fine in both. I figured I'd try swapping the cards out in full and this resulted in both machines working perfectly, as the PC/AT was more than happy with the theoretically nicer Cisco card. CompactFlash media can be fickle like that, but considering the SanDisk card is a significantly cheaper card meant for cameras yet proved more to the PC/XT's taste than a card expressly meant to be used as boot media is just bizarre; However at that point I couldn't be bothered to question things further since they well and truly worked from then on out. That wrapped up the last of the technical hurdles, and I was free to work on the machine at the software end of things.