Resources for Black Friday

Resources for Black Friday

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Shopping on Black Friday is not as simple as “Buy it because it’s the cheapest price all year!” You have to actually do your homework to figure out which items are actually a good buy.

Here’s some great resources to help you figure it out.

Check out the Black Friday ads to make your plan:

The first thing you should do is be prepared for Black Friday before it comes. You’ll do this by starting a few weeks in advance by reading through the ‘leaked’ Black Friday ad scans and seeing if there is any deals you’re interested in.

Check the reviews:

Sadly, it’s all too common for review sites to be purchased and largely just paid advertising. Anything endorsed by Twitch streamers, celebrities, or any online personality through Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc – are almost 100% guaranteed to be paid advertising. Websites that are reliable and accurate one year turn into paid promotion sites with shocking regularity. You need to check who owns the sites and see if the founders are still standing behind their reviews.

  • Hardware Unboxed – Good rating site that’s probably best for its gaming monitor reviews
    • Monitors Unboxed – A dedicated subchannel of Hardware Unboxed that is just monitors.
  • RTings – good for TV’s and monitors

Tools for reviews:

Retro game market collapses

Retro game market collapses

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Retro game prices have shot up to crazy levels in the last few years. As prices continued to go up far beyond what most individuals could afford, sites quickly picked up on the astronomical rises by offering fractional ownership of retro games. Sites like Otis and Rally.

In 2022, I shared a video from Karl Jobst that reported how the retro game market was actively manipulated by WATA rating agency and Heritage auctions. He showed how they were colluding to create those astronomical retro game values. Many news agencies picked up on his investigation, and a bit of a scandal broke out.

Here we are in late 2023, and it appears the crash has arrived. Karl has watched the prices plummet – and in a great many cases – by 90%.

The real question is if that money was ever real at all. In his original video, he indicated the astronomical sale prices likely didn’t actually involve those huge sums of money actually changing hands because WATA and Heritage were basically selling the games to themselves and the money and games never really changed hands.

One should question if the money ever even existed. So, we might take delight that a game that was falsely sold for $50,000 in a manipulated auction just sold for $5,000, but that’s still a good bit of dosh for games they likely bought off ebay for $500 or less years earlier.

FLUX at 2023 Signal Festival

FLUX at 2023 Signal Festival

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Signal Festival is a festival of artworks from light design, visual and digital art, artificial intelligence, as well as conceptual art. It occurs in several locations in Prague and has reached it’s 20th year.

FLUX was one of most cool looking entries for 2023. It’s a fascinating interactive light installation from Ksawery Komputery. The installation is 6 meters tall, 13-meter diameter on the ground, 4 high-speed cameras, 8-speaker sound system, 4 800 meters of LEDs strips, 144,000 pixels running at 100 frames per second, with custom software and hardware. As people approached the installation, it would display them on the strands of led lights.

It also made an earlier debut at Miami Art Week Dec 2022:

It reminds me a bit of the old Master Control Program from Tron…

Check out some of their other really cool works here: https://ksawerykomputery.com/works/ or https://vimeo.com/ksawerykomputery

Flux
concept/code: Ksawery Kirklewski
sound design: Arkadiusz Krupiński @random_orb
tech management: Jakub Kirklewski @elektrojakub

Update:

Here’s a video that covers a number of entries at the Signal Festival in 2022:

Rent your own private island

Rent your own private island

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Oh – you think you’re cool because you stayed at a luxury hotel in Dubai or comped to a suite in Vegas?

For the ultra rich, there are experiences that are far beyond the pale like David Copperfield’s Musha Cay. Renting for $50,000/night, you get the whole island. Multiple luxury residential buildings for up to 12 with high end catered food, their own mystery game to play, movies on the beach, and even custom fireworks show.

Or maybe try out Richard Branson’s Necker Island for a little over $107,500 a night (up to 40 guests), or $128,000/night for up to 48 guests. The buildings and island was almost completely destroyed in 2017 by hurricane Irma, but seems to have re-opened in 2022.

I find it interesting that even billionaires need to AirBnB their properties.

If renting a billionaire’s island is too pedestrian, perhaps just buy your own island.

Come and see

Come and see

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If you want to start a life in Christ, do just one thing that Jesus taught in an area of your life he spoke about. Faith starts with a single act of trust. Test his wisdom and see if it is not a better way than yours.

These might be a good starting point: the parables of Jesus

Higher interest rates now biting credit dependent famous local Portland restaraunts

Higher interest rates now biting credit dependent famous local Portland restaraunts

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Not only is the commercial real estate market facing a historic downturn in Portland, now hospitality businesses are having trouble too. Especially those owned by holdings companies behind many famous names.

Sortis Holdings bought up a number of famous top-flight Portland hospitality businesses and restaurants on a diet of low margins and low interest rates as they faltered during the pandemic. However, all is not well. They have been the target of at least 4 lawsuits by unpaid creditors, employees, contractors and partners since September. They recently failed at an attempt to acquire Ace Group International hotels and are currently facing many suits on unpaid bills.

Which Portland ‘local’ businesses do they own? Bamboo Sushi, Blue Star Donuts, Ava Gene’s, Tusk, Sizzle Pie pizza, the Ace Hotel, Rudy’s Barbershops, and Water Avenue Coffee to name just a few.

Sources:

AI Prompts for Parts photographs

AI Prompts for Parts photographs

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AI trends pop up just about every week. The latest is knolling photos. Knolling photos are pictures of arranged objects so they are in parallel or 90-degree angles. The images create an organized and clean portrayal of many related things. They often look like exploded parts lists.

Tokenized AI by Christian Heidorn walks you through how to craft prompts to generate what you’re looking for. It’s a great example of how a prompt engineer sorts through creating what they want.

A prompt for every occasion

A prompt for every occasion

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Learning how to make good ChatGPT prompts is a bit of an art as much as science. It’s not about learning a fixed prompts; it’s about mastering the art of well-structured, clear, and specific prompts that cater to your unique needs and interests.

This article has a bunch of great examples that can help you craft your own prompts:

  1. Act as a philosopher, and explain me “what’s the meaning of life?”
  2. ChatGPT, what’s the most efficient way to organize my research data?
  3. Please help me create a workout plan that incorporates yoga and weightlifting.”
  4. ChatGPT, what are the latest trends in quantum physics, and can you explain them in layman’s
  5. ChatGPT, can you enlighten me on the impact of AI in fostering interdisciplinary collaboration?
  6. ChatGPT, can you explain how the principle of supply and demand affects pricing in a competitive market?
  7. ChatGPT, can you compare and contrast the economic policies of John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman, with a focus on their views on government intervention?

Personal Development

  1. “ChatGPT, can you suggest some strategies to improve my time management skills?”
  2. “Please provide tips on how to effectively communicate my ideas during a presentation.”
  3. “What are some methods for coping with stress and anxiety during exams?”
  4. “How can I build healthy habits to enhance my productivity and overall well-being?”

Education and Learning

  1. “ChatGPT, can you provide a concise summary of Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’?”
  2. “Please explain the concept of ‘cultural relativism’ and its implications in anthropology.”
  3. “What are some effective techniques for learning a new language?”
  4. “How can I apply the principles of critical thinking to evaluate information and make informed decisions?”

Science and Technology

  1. “ChatGPT, can you explain the basic principles of machine learning and its applications?”
  2. “Please provide an overview of the key events in the history of space exploration.”
  3. “What are some of the most promising renewable energy technologies available today?”
  4. “How does genetic engineering work, and what are its potential benefits and drawbacks?”

Arts and Literature

  1. “ChatGPT, can you analyze the main themes of William Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’?”
  2. “Please give me an overview of the Romantic period in literature and its key figures.”
  3. “What are the characteristics of Impressionist art, and how did this movement influence subsequent artistic styles?”
  4. “How does the concept of the ‘hero’s journey’ apply to contemporary storytelling in movies and literature?”

Current Events and Society

  1. “ChatGPT, can you discuss the implications of recent advancements in artificial intelligence on the job market?”
  2. “Please provide a brief analysis of the ongoing efforts to combat climate change at a global level.”
  3. “What are some of the key factors influencing the rise of populism in contemporary politics?”
  4. “How does social media impact our perception of reality and our relationships with one another?”
Realtime Polymorphic Viruses powered by AI

Realtime Polymorphic Viruses powered by AI

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Researchers from HYAS Labs demonstrated a proof-of-concept, artificial intelligence (AI)-driven cyberattack that changes its code on the fly and can slip past the latest automated security-detection technology. Called BlackMamba, it exploits a large language model (LLM) to create a “truly polymorphic” attack in that every time it executes, it resynthesizes its keylogging capability.

AI-powered attacks like this will become more common now as threat actors create polymorphic malware that leverages ChatGPT and other sophisticated, data-intelligence systems based on LLM

Read more about the BlackMamba attack outlined in this blog post