Week 1165

Christmas week was fun! I stuffed myself with food and went on way too many shopping trips. I played volleyball again for the first time in months. Didn’t do much work but it was nice to have a week to relax.

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Content:

Binged through the Going Indie youtube channel which analyzes the business and history of the gaming industry. Some of my favorites include:

• How League of Legends became Unkillable
• The AI Revolution Taking Over Videogames
• Why Valve Doesn’t Make New Games Anymore

Watched Arcane Season 1

• Wow what a masterpiece. The soundtrack and visuals were so well crafted and the story was both heartwarming and heart-wrenching at the same time. I was so in awe after I finished it. It immediately became one of my most favorite shows of all time. You don’t need to be a league fan to enjoy this show and I can’t wait for Season 2.

Read the first half of The Kill Chain by Christian Brose.

• He claims that the US military is losing it’s technological lead and could actually lose in a potential war to rivals like Russia and China. Brose describes the concept of the “kill chain,” which is like the military’s version of the scientific method. It’s the process by which the military collects information, interprets the information to make a decision, and then act upon that decision. For example: collecting sensor data on the battlefield to locate a target and then launching missiles to that location. He explains how the military bureaucracy is too focused on building assets at the end of the kill chain (e.g. tanks, fighter jets, etc) which has resulted in a severe deficiency at the beginning of the kill chain. The technology used in the military to collect and interpret data is years behind what is available in commercial applications. This weakness hasn’t been exploited in our recent conflicts against poorer countries but could prove fatal in a conflict against China or Russia.