iftttwall

The inventor of the PlayStation – one of the best and most widely known gaming consoles – doesn’t think too much about VR or the metaverse.

Ken Kutaragi, who is responsible for Sony’s popular console, says that VR and AR “divide” the real and virtual realms, rather than unifying them, according to a new interview with Bloomberg. 

Kutaragi, who is now 71 years old, told Bloomberg: “Being in the real world is very important, but the metaverse is about making quasi-real in the virtual world, and I can’t see the point of doing it.”

He continued: “You would rather be a polished avatar instead of your real self? That’s essentially no different from anonymous messageboard sites.”

Kutaragi is now the chief executive officer of Ascent Robotics, which seeks to blend the real world with cyberspace. 

“Headsets would isolate you from the real world, and I can’t agree with that. Headsets are simply annoying,” he told Bloomberg. 

His company, Ascent, is instead focusing on technology that transforms real world objects into computer-readable data, the interview said. It seeks to help retail and logistics customers. The company is “secretive about the details of its long-term plans,” Bloomberg added. 

“Current robots do not have software and sensors that can match humans in understanding the real world and reacting to things they see for the first time, and our short-term goal is to offer a solution to that,” he continued.

“Because you want robots to be able to create a variety of things, not just countless units of the same thing,” he added. 

Commenting on his ambitions of utilizing visual data collected by Ascent’s robots to reproduce digital scenes in the real world, he concluded: “I don’t plan to spend a decade or two on making my dreams a reality. I’m 71 and time is short.”

By Alexander Zhang of Epoch Times

The Chinese regime’s economic coercion of Australia has been a “wake-up call” to other countries, Britain’s Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has said.

China had been Australia’s top trading partner. But after Australia called for an independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19 in April 2020, the Communist regime retaliated by adopting a series of measures against Australian exporters, including arbitrary border testing and inspections, the imposition of tariffs, and unwarranted delays in listing export establishments and issuing import licences.

Truss, on a visit to Australia for talks on defence and security ties, discussed the threat posed by the Chinese regime in a speech at the Lowy Institute in Sydney on Jan. 21.

She said: “The situation with Australia—the economic coercion we saw—was one of the wake-up calls as to exactly what China was doing and the way it was using its economic might to try to exert control over other countries.”

Truss said “there was a belief in the past that as China got wealthier, it was headed on a path towards becoming a freer, more democratic society,” but “the reality is that hasn’t happened.”

While the Chinese economy was a tenth the size of the American economy in the 1990s, she said, “We’re now in a situation with a China with a much bigger economy, much more able to coerce other nations.”

The foreign secretary said the UK government has “looked to Australia” as it formulates its own policies on relevant issues.

Truss said the UK and Australia are determined to act together in “calling out China” when it imposes coercive trade measures on Australia and other countries such as Lithuania, which saw its exports to China blocked after it allowed Taiwan to open a de facto embassy in Vilnius using its own name.

She said Britain and Australia will help countries “avoid having their balance sheets loaded with debt.”

She said 44 low-to-middle income countries have debts to China in excess of 10 percent of their GDP, and Britain and Australia will work together to provide these countries with “honest and reliable alternative sources of investment.”

The two countries are also strengthening their supply chains by “taking our economic ties with like-minded nations to new heights,” she said.

Truss said China and Russia are “working together more and more,” asserting their dominance over the Western Pacific and in space. “They are emboldened in a way we haven’t seen since the Cold War,” she said.

“As freedom-loving democracies we must rise up to face down these threats. As well as NATO we are working with partners like Australia, India, Japan, Indonesia, and Israel to build a global network of liberty.”

Truss’s visit comes after Britain, alongside the United States, signed a landmark agreement in September to provide Australia with the technology and capability to deploy nuclear-powered submarines.

The so-called AUKUS pact is widely seen as a regional alliance against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific region.

In case you were wondering about the state of things in the antipodes, where even a handful of confirmed omicron cases are enough to inspire lockdowns affecting millions of people, New Zealand’s single-mother Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has just called off her wedding as she plans to introduce new “red light” restrictions after health authorities identified a small outbreak of omicron in a remote town.

Starting Sunday night at 11:59 local time, New Zealand will officially impose the new restrictions, banning large gatherings and imposing other requirements on masking and distancing, all over 9 reported cases of omicron, mostly int he town of Motueka on the western shore of Tasman Bay.

Apparently, Ardern and her partner Clarke Gayford – who share a daughter – have been planning to officially marry for a while now, but the pandemic keeps getting in the way of their plans. Shame that.

Speaking during her COVID briefing, Ardern said the “red light” status limited weddings, birthdays and other gatherings to 100 people for the vaccinated and to 25 people for the unvaccinated.

As for her own wedding, she said she would cancel it, while offering apologies to Kiwis caught up in similar circumstances. 

“As for mine, my wedding won’t be going ahead but I just join many other New Zealanders who have had an experience like that as a result of the pandemic. And to anyone caught up in that scenario, I am so sorry, but we are all so resilient and I know we understand we are doing this for one another and it will help us carry on,” Ardern said.

When asked about how she felt about the cancellation, the 41-year-old responded: “Such is life. I am no different to, dare I say, thousands of other New Zealanders.”

Meanwhile, in Europe, UK PM Boris Johnson is dismantling the last of England’s “Plan B” protections, while the US breaths a tentative sigh of relief over the falling case numbers (even as the NYT reminds us every day of some new localized crisis in the making).

New Zealand famously managed to stamp out COVID for a little while by using the “drawbridge” approach: blocking practically all civilian, non-economic travel between their isolated island and the rest of the world. Unfortunately, even those efforts weren’t enough, and the recent delta-omicron wave has managed to send cases in New Zealand to new daily highs late last year, although infections have fallen off substantially since then.

As for Ardern’s nuptials, there’s no word yet on when they might be rescheduled.

But somehow, we can’t shake the feeling that this cancellation was motivated by something more than political necessity.

By Southfront

As of January 21, the Turkish military is still struggling to secure the areas occupied by its forces in Syria’s northern and northwestern region. Syrian government forces has been also facing security challenges in the country’s central and southern regions.

In the northern region, a new rocket attack targeted the Turkish-occupied area of Afrin on January 20.

Several rockets hit Afrin city center, killing six people, including three children and a woman. At least 24 others were wounded, including ten children and seven women.

The rockets were reportedly launched from a small pocket of land in southern Afrin held by Kurdish forces, namely the Syrian Democratic Forces.

The Turkish military and its proxies responded to the deadly rocket attack by shelling the Kurdish-held pocket. Material losses were reported. A child was also wounded.

Kurdish forces may have carried out the attack to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the Turkish invasion of Afrin that began on 20 January 2018. Turkey could use the attack to justify a new military operation in Syria.

In the northwestern region, known as Greater Idlib, the situation was not better for the Turkish military and its proxies.

On January 19, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) shelled the outskirts of a Turkish military post near the town of Qoqfin. No casualties or material losses were reported.

On January 20, the army’s artillery pounded the outskirts of Qoqfin post once again, without causing any losses. Later during the same day, the army struck another Turkish military post located near the town of Kansafra. This time, the shelling wounded three of the post’s guards. The wounded were reportedly Turkish service members and Syrian militants of the Turkish-backed Sham Legion.

The real target of the SAA’s recent artillery strikes was likely militants of al-Qaeda-affiliated Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and its allies, who usually take shelter near Turkish posts.

Meanwhile in Syria’s central region, government forces and their allies continue to operate against ISIS cells.

On January 20, the SAA and other government formations kicked off a new large-scale combing operation in the region. The operation will cover the eastern Homs countryside, the Hama-Aleppo-Raqqa triangle and the western desert of Deir Ezzor.

Warplanes of the Russian Aerospace Forces carried out a series of airstrikes on hideouts of ISIS in the eastern Homs countryside and the western desert of Deir Ezzor in support of the new operation. The airstrikes claimed the lives of eight terrorists and wounded at least ten others.

The pressure mounted by government forces and their allies have forced ISIS cells in central Syria to temporary halt their operations. Nevertheless, this does not mean that the terrorist group’s insurgency will be over soon.

In the southern region, the security situation appears to be deteriorating, once again. Two attacks were reported in Daraa’s eastern countryside.

On January 18, unidentified gunmen attacked a checkpoint of the SAA’s 52nd Brigade and the Air Force Intelligence Directorate near the town of Mlaiha al-Garbiah. Two service members were allegedly killed.

On January 19, at least 14 Syrian security officers were lightly wounded when an improvised explosive device (IED) targeted a bus that was carrying them as it was passing on a road between the towns of Saida and Eastern Ghariyah. The officers on their way back from the Nassib crossing on the border with Jordan to their base in the capital Damascus.

Government forces may soon impose strict security measures in Daraa. This could anger the locals leading to a new conflict in the governorate.

The situation in Syria will not likely improve much in the near future. In fact, a new military confrontation between Turkish and Kurdish forces may start soon.

The media wing for Yemen’s Houthi rebels has released what it says is video evidence that US bombs are still being used by the Saudi coalition to attack civilian sites in Yemen.

This after within the past days the Saudis have ramped up their airstrikes, including a bombing over Houthi-held northern Saada province which struck a migrant detention center, leaving at least 80 killed. Separately, airstrikes which hit a youth soccer field in Hodeidah left many casualties. In the past days an estimated over 200 Yemenis have been killed, with international human rights groups condemning the indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas.

A weapon fragment reportedly recovered at the site of a Saudi-led coalition airstrike that killed at least 82 (per MSF) at a detention facility in Saada, #Yemen. Aid agencies and the UN say the facility was used to house migrants. Screenshot from a video released by Houthis. pic.twitter.com/7ffmxNofd7

— Samuel Oakford (@samueloakford) January 22, 2022

Concerning the deadly attack on the detention facility, a mass casualty event which went largely underreported on mainstream US networks, journalist Samuel Oakford details that “A weapon fragment reportedly recovered at the site of a Saudi-led coalition airstrike that killed at least 82 (per MSF) at a detention facility” appears to be from a US-made bomb.

Despite the recovered fragment’s manufacturing code clearly pointing to its Raytheon maker, so far it appears that only regional as well as Russian media has been reporting on it Sunday, though the evidence is being examined by a handful of Western journalists and NGOs as well:

Video footage filmed in the aftermath of the airstrike by members of the Houthi rebel movement, which is in conflict with the Saudi-backed government, and shared on YouTube, shows distressing scenes of rescue workers removing bodies from the rubble. At one point, a fragment allegedly from a lethal weapon used in the raid is shown, with part of its identifying text and numbers visible.

“That’s the manufacturer cage code for Raytheon,” Marc Garlasco, a military adviser from the Netherlands-based PAX Protection of Civilians NGO wrote on Twitter, referring to the US’ Raytheon Technologies Corporation, one of the world’s largest aerospace and intelligence services suppliers.

That’s the manufacturer cage code for Raytheon #Yemen #Saada @bellingcat @David_Philipps @AzmatZahra @EricSchmittNYT @nickturse @nickschifrin @ABarnardNYT https://t.co/PRGO4biAea

— Marc Garlasco (@marcgarlasco) January 23, 2022

It’s certainly not the first time US bombs and fragments have been recovered in Yemen after mass killings via Saudi-UAE-US airstrikes.

However, especially since Biden took office, the US has pledged to withdraw its military from active execution of the war and airstrikes. Biden further campaigned on winding down the Yemen war which has raged since 2015 and taken the lives of hundreds of thousands. 

But it appears the US still involved via its steady weapons supplies to its Gulf partners, at a moment that Riyadh is pushing for more resupplies. 

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

Consider the possibility that the Orwellian dystopia you fear is already here and has been in place for many years, you just haven’t noticed because you’re still allowed to watch Netflix or buy a gun or say whatever you want to say within a small impotent online echo chamber.

Consider the possibility that the powerful are already getting everything they want from you, right now, exactly as things are, and that any suspicious action you see them taking isn’t them constructing a cage for you but them tightening the bolts on a cage that was quietly built around you some time ago.

Consider the possibility that while they’ve been training you to watch out for communism and microchips and overt totalitarianism, they’ve been covertly transforming us all into mindless gears in a machine constructed to serve their interests which challenges them in no way, shape or form.

Consider the possibility that tyrants have evolved an understanding that you can exert a lot more control over a population with mass-scale psychological manipulation than you can with overt force, and that they have been developing the science of that mass-scale psychological manipulation for over a century.

Consider the possibility that we’re like a woman who always feared winding up in a physically abusive relationship like the kind depicted on television, and then wound up in a psychologically abusive relationship where her very mind is bent to the will of her abuser in every way.

Consider the possibility that just like in a psychologically abusive relationship, we’re manipulated into believing things are fine and that we give our abuser everything he wants of our own free will and that any problems that arise come from us and not our abuser, and that we are so well-trained at this that we’ve even learned to gaslight ourselves.

Consider the possibility that governments forcefully seizing control of all media and transforming them into official state propaganda outlets would actually be far less efficient at mass brainwashing than our current system in which people believe they are getting accurate information from a free and honest press.

Consider the possibility that if the powerful were able to surgically implant microchips in our brains and control everything we think and do, what they’d make us think and do would not be significantly different from what the overwhelming majority of us already think and do.

Consider the possibility that the dystopia we’ve been worried about has already been ushered in, not from any of the directions we’ve been conditioned to anticipate, but through the simple fact that the human mind is far more hackable than we’ve been conditioned to believe.

Consider the possibility that while we’ve been trained to fear communist authoritarians taking over and forcing us to obey their will, capitalist authoritarians have had us marching to the exact drumbeat they desire for generations. And we only think this is freedom because we’ve been trained to think that.

Consider the possibility that you’ve been trained to believe freedom looks like being able to buy a gun which we all know you’ll never use against the powerful, or choose from 197 kinds of potato chip at the grocery store, when really that mindless consumption is just you turning the gears of your own prison.

Consider the possibility that real freedom isn’t being able to consume whatever advertisers have convinced you to consume, it’s being able to think with a mind that has not been molded by the powerful, to educate yourself in an information ecosystem that is not locked down by those who rule over you, and to speak the truth without having your speech stifled by oppressive dominators.

Consider the possibility that the only thing keeping us from creating heaven on earth is our inability to clearly see what’s going on in our world and thus strategize a truth-based path out of this mess, and that the powerful know this, and that that’s why they work so hard to keep us from seeing clearly.

Consider the possibility that the real obstacle to terrestrial harmony is not so much opposing ideologies as the fact that all attempts to see clearly what’s really going on in our world are being actively obstructed by propaganda, by Silicon Valley manipulation, and by government secrecy.

Consider the possibility that the bastards succeed not by overtly quashing dissent but by covertly quashing all will towards dissent, and that we succeed not by trying to ward off a dystopia that’s already here but by working to awaken the giant within our brothers and sisters from its propaganda-induced coma.

Consider the possibility that real freedom means all of humanity awakening from our dehumanizing role as brainwashed gear-turners for the capitalist machine and uncorking the wild unpredictable brilliance within us that our oppressors have worked so hard to keep bottled up.

Consider the possibility that there is so much more to us than we’ve been permitted to know, and that the only thing keeping us from achieving our true potential as a species at this point in history is a propaganda-induced misunderstanding of what is freedom and what is slavery.

*  *  *

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. 

Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Liked it? Take a second to support Caitlin Johnstone on Patreon!

After peaking on Jan 4, stocks have been a one-way train lower and while traders have had little problem to digest the stated reason behind the market’s weakness, namely the Fed’s growing hawkishness, there has been some confusion as to the circularity of cause and event, and whether we haven’t merely seen a lot of narrative goalseeking (“blame the Fed’) in the past three weeks to explain the lack of even modest dip-buying.

However, we now may have an explanation for not only the late day market swoons but also for the market’s broader weakness, and it has little to do with the Fed (which everyone knows won’t let markets crash).

The reason for the market’s odd behavior is simple – buybacks, or rather lack thereof, because as Goldman reminded us earlier today (see here) so far in 2022, there has been no corporate buyback activity (with the exception of small activity in 5b29-1 plans).

That’s right: as Goldman’s Scott Ribner writes, US corporates – the largest purchaser of stocks in 2021 – has been out of the market for 2022, which is why there has been no VWAP-style buying of the dip.

But on Friday, the blackout period ended, and buyback restart again on Monday… and now with much lower prices.  Some more details from Goldman (full report available to pro subscribers):

Corporates return to the market on Monday (1/24/22) for the first time in 2022 with the nimble ability to now buy into weakness. US corporates are the largest buyer of the equity market in 2022, with +$975 Billion of demand, the best year on record.

This is roughly $245B per quarter (next blackout is March 14th). ~$245B / 45 days blackout adjusted. This is $5.5B per day during this stretch. 8% of the S&P is currently in the open window. This matters for the index level, as much as not being in the market, also mattered.

So between a whopping $5.5BN in daily purchases by price-indiscriminate buyers (whose only limitation is how much money they can raise in the corporate bond market and then immediately flip to use the proceeds to buy back stock) and some $3.3 trillion in option expirations which mean that the negative gamma dealer overhang is now gone (as well as over a dozen other reasons why we are due for a major relief rally), don’t be surprised if this extremely illiquid market…

… rips to the upside tomorrow when the latest iteration of shorts panics and scrambles to cover ahead of the buyback.

By Allan Stein of The Epoch Times

A photo showing a teacher taping a cloth face mask to a young student seated at his desk has sparked condemnation from parents and a public apology from the head of the district’s board of school directors.

The incident took place at a middle school located in Lansdale in Montgomery County about 30 miles north of Philadelphia.

Reading a statement at a Jan. 20, 2022, meeting of the North Penn Board of School Directors, president Tina Stoll said the teacher’s conduct was “inappropriate” and an “isolated incident.”

“First and foremost, I would like to extend an apology on behalf of the district and the Board of School Directors to the student who was involved and to his family.

“They did not ask for this incident to occur, nor do they deserve the negative attention that it has brought,” Stoll said. “This board can report with total confidence that, upon learning of this incident, the district immediately took steps to investigate the matter and prevent any similar acts from taking place in the future.

“Accountability is paramount to this board, as is communication and responsiveness with the family of the student involved–their input helps to guide the district’s actions–we will not let social media influence the facts established by an objective investigation,” she added.

Stoll said district officials have been “fully cooperating” with local law enforcement in its investigation of the mask incident at Pennfield Middle School.

The photo was posted Jan. 17 on social media showing a special education teacher using tape to secure a face mask to the unidentified student’s face. The image immediately went viral, prompting the board to address the issue at the Jan. 20 meeting.

“Although it has been determined that this was an isolated incident and that no malice was intended, the actions of the employee were unacceptable, no matter the context.

“The board and administration view this as a serious matter and the board is confident that the administration is addressing it as such,” Stoll said.

“Because all personnel and student matters are confidential, and due to the role in which the board may be required to serve with respect to impartiality and the due process rights of students and employees, we are bound by law to not comment or provide any further information regarding this specific incident.”

“To be clear, the actions of this employee were inappropriate,” she said.

The board then read aloud a letter from the boy’s mother, who said no permission was given to post the image online.

“How this has evolved is exactly what I wanted to avoid,” the mother wrote, describing the bad publicity as a “scene from my worst nightmare.”

During the public comment portion a number of parents spoke out against the teacher’s actions and the board’s handling of the investigation.

“The negative attention is on you,” said Emily Johnson, who believes it was not an “isolated incident.”

“These are your decisions. I don’t understand why you’re doing this to our children,” Johnson said.

“It’s complete child abuse,” another parent told the board. “You are public servants. You are digging your own graves.”

Parents also drew attention to other controversial issues facing the district, including pornographic literature found in school libraries, white “privilege walks,” and a district board that doesn’t take input from parents seriously.

“This isn’t about public safety—it’s about control,” said another parent. “It’s about controlling our children’s minds.”

Yanni Lambros, who owns a coffee shop in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, asked the board, “Are you following the science or are you following a narrative?”

“Children are taught that they are walking vectors of death,” he said. “When does it end?”

In September 2021, a substitute teacher at Reedom Elementary School in Las Vegas allegedly taped masks to the faces of pupils. The Clark County School District called it an “isolated incident.”