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January 2022

January. The first month of the year. The Thirsty Robot is now going to publish the summary every month, although this one is late!

So, here is a short summary of some of what you may have missed in January's online meetings at The Thirsty Robot:

Photo by KOBU Agency on Unsplash

Ads in Games

When the idea of adverts in games was first proposed, people thought that all it would mean would be that advertising hoardings in city racing games would have real adverts on them. Or billboards at sports events? Perhaps sponsorships? As always, the future is often stranger than you can imagine. Having video adverts that play in between levels, for example? Adverts for other games inside games? 


But putting those adverts into games is also interesting. You may have never heard of an Ad Network, but these are how adverts get placed into very precisely targetted slots, and there are huge amounts of money involved. So you might have heard of Google Ads, Facebook and Snapchat, but you may well have never heard of the other major players in mobile ad networks (and of course, mobile phones are where games get played, a lot, these days!): Unity Ads, Mintegral, AppLovin, ironSource, MOLOCO, AdColony, Chartboost, Digital Turbine, Xiaomi, SHAREit, Mistplay, and Vungle and more...,  but mobile games developers will definitely have heard of them.  


Putting hooks into their code so that mobile ad networks can place adverts on the screen makes it easy for games developers, but there is scope for mis-use - after all, getting code onto mobile phones is tightly controlled, and so if you can piggy-back in via a game...

Here are some example of the sort of thing that can happen:


It doesn't seem like a stretch to guess that the next decade will see a lot of security problems appearing on mobile phones, smart watches, smart TVs and other devices. The days when computers were the main place that you would find a computer processor have long since gone. 

The Thirsty Robot prediction?

Wait until unwanted adverts start appearing in your self-driving car, on your AR glasses, and via your SSD, NAS or even your router. Anywhere there's a microcomputer chip, there's going to be someone trying to make it push adverts at you. In other words:

You ain't seen/heard nothing much yet, but you will soon!

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Only If You Are Old Enough...

Time is a curious thing. Not only does the Internet have a strange lack of memory for before 1983, but young people may have never seen some of the memes and tropes of the 20th Century: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NngdWbvpztk

https://cmagency.co.uk/internet-memes-of-the-90s-thanks-for-the-meme-ories/

https://www.buzzfeed.com/victoriavouloumanos/people-sharing-forgotten-trends

https://bestlifeonline.com/20th-century-slang-terms/


Two Magpies Bakery

Sometimes the unexpected creeps up on you and surprises you!




Ladies That Lunch, or Dine...

Now this isn't a new idea, but it is interesting to see how 'Let's have a coffee', or 'Let's do Dinner',  can become 'an App', or a Web-site, or move from real to virtual and end up real again - but with virtual options, of course...



Oh, and in case you thought they were a modern invention, then you might be surprised!


(Sorry, not quite a pay-wall, more a guilt-wall...)



Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash


That Film Where...



It's a kind of parody of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg or...


Antitrust                            https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817/


Pirates of Silicon Valley    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_of_Silicon_Valley


The Social Network           https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016


The Circle                           https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4287320



It's Steve Jobs played by Michael Fassbender


Steve Jobs         https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2080374



Hackers are played by people you wouldn't expect:


Hackers (Angelina Jolie, Jonny Lee Miller...)    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243


Sneakers (Robert Redford, Dan Ackroyd...)    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105435



That Girl from Pirates of the Caribbean is a Spy...


Official Secrets (Keira Knightley)     https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5431890  



That Girl from Pirates of the Caribbean isn't a Spy...


The Imitation Game (Keira Knightley)    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2084970



Some Guy Uploads a Virus to an Alien Spaceship...


Independence Day (Jeff Goldblum)    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116629



You can play this game yourselves. Just use IMDB.com:


IMDB.com


Oh, and be careful when you click on links...



Oh, and in case you wanted to find something vulnerable to play with...


https://www.vulnhub.com


https://securitytrails.com/blog/vulnerable-websites-for-penetration-testing



And if you want to hear about vulnerabilities...


This one caught us by surprise:

https://socitm.net/about/warps/


You know when you hear about something, and you think:


"I hadn't heard about this!"


And then you do some more digging, and you find out why...


https://www.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/g-cloud/services/668398350300530


As you can see from the prices, this may or may not be relevant to your pay grade...




Photo by Julius Drost on Unsplash


As always, we recommend that, for the best experience, you should not watch trailers or reviews before watching a movie or TV series...


Given the burgeoning number of streaming services these days, you increasingly need to some way to find out where a movie or tv series is available:


https://www.justwatch.com/uk


https://reelgood.com/


This time, the conversation turned to anti-piracy systems, rather than media content itself. 


Macrovision    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_Protection_System


https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/1999-00/dmca-2k/macrovision.html


HDCP        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content_Protection


DCMA        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act



Kill People That Totally Deserve To Die...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb72HBB1QbA

(Which isn't what you were expecting!)



Yet Another Scanning Service


You know how sometimes what seems like a good idea just gets copied, over and over and over...?


https://www.trustedsite.com



Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash

Special Effects Guy Plays With His Son During Lock-Down


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5iKv5xEF_A



Cats Get Tested...


https://www.youtube.com/c/Kittisaurus



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A lot of discussion happens at The Thirsty Robot. This blog is an edited, biased summary of just a small fraction of the conversation, links/URLs and references that were mentioned. It is an imperfect record and is definitely not complete - for that you should visit The Thirsty Robot!

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Things have changed a little here - these summaries will now be monthly. The next online meeting at The Thirsty Robot is on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Thursday of the month...

If you want to meet real people in the real world, then try this: Ipswich-Tech-Drinkabout on the first Thursday in the month!


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