Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity

A strange new disease has appeared recently that people affected claim to be electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS).  Assumedly, electromagnetic fields produced by phones, cellphone towers, microwaves radios, computers, routers, powerlines, and general electronics are enough to discomfort people who have self diagnosed themselves with EHS.  People who claim to have EHS report to have headaches, fatigue, burning sensations, pain, and sleep disturbances.  To me, this all seems all preposterous, as symptoms like this could indicate so many different problems. I look at this and see someone suffering from headaches, and claiming it on their wifi. These people assume because the use of technology and a sudden occurrence of a nonspecific symptom, that they must be “allergic” to electromagnetic fields.

After reading a few interviews of people claiming to have EHS, most of them noticed nonspecific symptoms all of a sudden one day after using a computer or cellphone. They looked online and diagnosed themselves with EHS.  Most didn’t go to a doctor, and the ones that did, the doctor almost always reported back that nothing was wrong with them.

One case that jumped out to me was about a kid who the article referenced to as “G”. G went to school after they got new routers and reported to have nonspecific symptoms. He often went to the nurse and was sent home. After being at home he did not experience the symptoms anymore.  Right here, I have extreme doubts. I’m sure everyone when they were a kid has pretended to be sick to get out of school.  I’ve done it myself when I was younger. Continuing on the story, G’s mother looked up his symptoms online and diagnosed him with EHS. Okay, so let's go on the assumption that G isn’t just playing sick to get out of school, and is actually suffering from symptoms. What I don’t understand is why G’s mother didn’t go out and talk to a family doctor to diagnose whatever G was suffering from.

Cases like this that have been reported on has just added fuel to the fire, making this false diagnosis more apparent on the internet. People suffering from nonspecific symptoms go online and self diagnose themselves with this fake disease. Studies have been done, and there has been no connection found to low levels of electromagnetics waves produced by routers and cell phones and people claiming to suffer from EHS. In most cases, the EHS patient couldn’t tell the difference when the field was on and off.

https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/lawsuit-alleges-school-wi-fi-harmed-child-with-electromagnetic-hypersensitivity/

Why TV Has Been Replaced

It might be a common thing for many, but it also might be a confusing thought for others. Why would someone spend their time watching some random person on the internet play games? Why would you watch games when you could be playing those games?

For someone like myself, who spends a fair amount of time watching people play games, I can say that it has become one of my main sources of entertainment. A while ago I would have to say that my main source of entertainment was TV. What happened? Truthfully, I don't know exactly. TV started to get bland, and I kept having less and less time to watch TV.  When I had some time, It seemed like there was nothing on that I wanted to watch.

With online solutions, this solved many problems. Services like Netflix and Hulu offered me shows that I could watch at any time, and anywhere on any device that had access to the internet.  This allowed me to watch shows before I went to bed, or waiting for a ride after school.

Going online, I also found many other sources of entertainment, mainly Youtube. At the time, Youtubers were just starting to experiment with gaming, and found that it was an instant success. Thousands of people, including myself were instantly hooked, and subscribed to many people.

The Hacking of Christmas Days

Many people over holidays enjoy participating with their family in traditions. A traditions that I share with my family is waiting for everyone to wake up before rushing downstairs on Christmas morning. An event that is sadly seeming like it will become a tradition is the "hacking" of gaming servers on Christmas day.

Children wake up Christmas morning, rush downstairs, wildly open up their present with their parents watching. He or she opens a present to find that they got the game they ask for to play with their friends. They rush to the console, pop in the disk, and tries to message their friend to realize that the servers are down.  If you haven't heard before, in the past few years, squads of rouge programmers have came together to bring down big gaming servers such as xbox live, playstation network, and most recently, steam.  This practice angers many gamers wanting to play or download their new game, but are unable to.  They go on massive rants on forums and social media complaining on how someone could do such a terrible thing, and why are companies unable to deal with the hackers?

From what I'm able to put together, there are a few reasons behind why someone would do such a thing. After this event happened in 2014, hackers from the group that claimed the responsibility, Lizard Squad, were interviewed by media. Most of these interviews included rude language towards Microsoft and Sony. They claim that Microsoft and Sony are corrupted companies that overcharge and spend little resources on the protection of their servers to prevent attacks like they preformed. While they claim they are just trying to spread this message, I sense they're after something else, attention.

To me, their message would be just as received if they attacked anytime else. Attacking on Christmas means unless the companies bring in more employees on Christmas day, the servers are at the mercy of the hacker group.

Technology Going too Far?

A topic that I've found interesting and debated over is the fact if technology has gone too far. We always find progress to be good, and it usually is, but sometimes knowledge isn't always the best.

The classic example I could think of is nuclear fusion. It's an efficient way to make a massive amount of energy. The US has almost 100 nuclear reactors thst generate enough power for their surrounding areas for a long time. The downfall to this is of course the deadly waste generated as a byproduct of the process, but there are facilities designed to contain this waste deep below in the ground.

On the other side, the first thing we used the process for was in a weapon. Nukes are deadly weapons that decimate anything in its blast radius, and if you're not killed by the explosion, good chance the radiation will get you. Throughout time since, countries have built up stockpiles of nukes, waiting for a Nuclear War to start. If there ever is a world War 3, there is good chance nukes will be launched, and many citizens dead.

Another idea I had was robotics. Recently I watched Avengers Age of Ultron, and was fascinated by Ultron this Ai running on a supercomputer loads itself into one of Tony Stark’s robots and try to take over the world. Most would say, what an interesting fantasy, but the truth is, we're striving closer and closer to a situation like that. Ai industry and research has been rapidly expanding with companies like Google leading the way. We have programs that are able to interact with people.

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Microsoft's New Game Plan

Microsoft has some big plans when it comes to gaming. Windows 10 includes an xbox app that allows a PC to remotely control and play xbox one games. It’s an interesting idea but Microsoft is adding more.  People who preorder the game Quantum Break will receive a digital PC version for free.  Along with this, you will apparently be able to go back and forth from PC and xbox and continue from you left of each time. We’ve known from the times of Windows 10 pre releases that Microsoft wanted to bridge the gap between console and PC gaming. Though I don’t think the two separate communities are ready themselves, it’s an interesting proposition none the less.

Having the ability to play multiplayer with both a console and PC would be a big deal. Though some might complain that PC or console has an unfair advantage, this would be a big selling point for any game or console that could do so. If done, Microsoft could advertise that their console, the xbox, does this, and Sony’s can’t. With the PS4 doing so well, Microsoft could use anything to attract a bigger crowd.

This idea of a PC copy with a physical console disk, isn’t new. This “cross buying” has been done before with dvds, offering a digital copy with a purchase of a dvd. If this is to become a benefit, it’s something that would have to become a standard practice for almost every xbox game. This isn’t too practical though, because not every game is produced for both console and PC. But this might just encourage game producers to develop the game for both platforms. This would lead to longer develop times to produce a game, and additional costs, potentially leading to greater risks. But if the game is popular, you would be selling to multiple markets instead of one.

Competing in mobile department
http://www.phonedog.com/2015/10/24/will-windows-phone-s-long-streak-unpopular-phones-ruin-it-windows-10-mobile

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What are Video Games to Me

If you ask anyone what the view video games as, there is a good chance that they would reply with video games are a waste of time. I would have to agree on the point that video games are a time sync, but they're much more that that.  To me, video games can tell stories, just like a book or movie, a connection between my friends and myself, and a source of endless entertainment.

To me, a lot of gaming comes down to the campaign or story behind the game. Some of the games that I enjoyed the most include Heavy Rain, Grim Fandango, Last of Us, the Half life series, and the Portal series to name a few. These games all are driven by a story, and you follow along with with whatever mechanics the game gives you. To me, the games are telling you a story, and unlike a movie or book, you are directly interacting with the story.  This interaction to me, is a huge reason why I spend my free time playing games.

Story isn't the only thing that draws me to games. Multiplayer is another key feature of games that really see it to me. Being able to spend time with friends is a common pass time, but through a computer or game console, I can chat, interact, and play with friends without having to drive to their house.  Even if my friends are unavailable, I'm able to go online and interact and play a game with other people.

Additionally, video games are a source of seemingly endless entertainment to me. There are many games that I could spend days on end playing, and many more created every year.  If I ever get bored of playing a game, there is always YouTube or Twitch where I can participate in communities of people watching a content creators play games and interacting with the community watching them.