A moment of opportunity, a #gamergate slapfight, and the end of another bitcoin myth - What I am reading 11/28/2014

Quartz -  With oil prices plunging, OPEC and Russia are on their knees -

Iran, Iraq, Angola and Venezuela pushed hard for a cut, but finally they were made to understand—probably with patient explanation by Saudi Arabian oil minister Ali al-Naimi, OPEC’s effective leader—that no cut would remove the threat. If OPEC managed today to raise oil prices, that would improve the profit picture for US shale, too, and encourage American drillers to send even more supply into the market; before long, OPEC would be back at the same point of having to cut.

As a result, OPEC decided to wait for the market to balance. But this wait could be years

...

For consuming nations, the prudent posture is to view this time of lower prices as a temporary window—a period to last, say, through 2020 or 2022. And, wherever you are sitting, to pose the question—strategically speaking, what do you want?

I don't think Putin is onboard with this line of thought yet but it's a nice dream.

Slapfight 

Bloomberg Business Week - The Gaming Industry's Greatest Adversary Is Just Getting Started -

The videos last about 20 minutes to 30 minutes each, with Sarkeesian narrating, often using dense terminology imported from feminist theory (“building off of philosopher Martha Nussbaum’s work on objectification theory …,” etc.). She focuses on the darkest, most violent and sexualized parts of the games and the limited range of their female characters, whom she terms “nonplayable sex objects”—often barely dressed streetwalkers, pole dancers, and barmaids spilling out of their corsets; helpless mistresses outfitted in shredded dress-bits with double-D cleavage; and the ongoing parade of women who are stabbed, shot, and mutilated in service of plots about heavily armed male antiheroes.

Essentially this article is a long glowing review of Anita Sarkeesian and her work with the "Tropes vs. Women" You Tube series.  Pretty much all her assertions are accepted at face value and very little examination of her theories or the criticism of her is offered.  The article itself is kind of hard to excerpt, but I think one pull quote is pretty important:

If we're going to grow up as an industry, we're going to need the consumer to grow up a bit as well

Remember that for later.

Naturally Milo Yiannopoulus, probably the best known voice, outside Adam Baldwin, in the #GamerGate movement at the moment, has a bit of a problem with the tone of the Bloomberg article:

Breitbart - An Open Letter to Bloomberg's Sheelah Kolhatkar, on the Delicate Matter of Anita Sarkeesian -

Anita Sarkeesian is not a brave warrior for women, fearlessly paving the way for a theoretical future that is less "misogynistic" and "sexist." Nor is she a delicate wallflower in need of close protection. She is an intellectually dishonest professional malcontent, who has misrepresented criticism and rejection of her work in order to garner pity and sympathy—and for financial gain. Worse, she is a bully with an extremist ideological agenda who picks on some of the most marginalised and misunderstood people in society.

Unlike the Bloomberg article Yiannopoulus leaves very little doubt about where he stands, as evidenced by the excerpt above, and he presents numerous examples  of what I am sure he considers withering refutations of Sarkeesian's work. Unfortunately they really don't.  Yeah, they make good points in some cases, but in a tit for tat exchange Sarkeesian and her crew win because a) they have the narrative, b) they have the credentials, and c) they have the support of both the gaming and mainstream media. 

 These volleys just confuse things.

This fight can really be summed up by the quote I pulled from the Bloomberg Business Week article earlier:

If we're going to grow up as an industry, we're going to need the consumer to grow up a bit as well

Sarkeesian, Quinn, Wu, and their supporters in the games media want the gaming industry to change.  I would say partly for philosophical reasons and partly for more selfish reasons.  Specifically they realize that there are no customers for the games they want to produce.  So instead of producing games people want to play, they instead try and force the change by marginalizing gamers.  You can tell this is happening because the game companies are continuing to produce the games that sell, i.e. Grand Theft Auto and Assassins Creed.  You can also tell by the way Sarkeesian et. al. have tried to redefine the gamer identity:

The industry’s main trade group, the Entertainment Software Association, tries to emphasize how mainstream the industry is, even as many of the games themselves undermine its message. The ESA trumpets the fact that the proportion of women playing all video games—not just on Xbox-style consoles, but also on tablets and other devices—has grown to 45 percent, and that 51 percent of U.S. households own at least one video game console. The range of games being produced overall has grown, with a far broader swath of the population engaging in online play as it’s become a fixture of smartphones and iPads. 

The gamers don't want to be redefined, they just want to enjoy their games and spaz out on XBox or PS4 or whatever and be left the f**k alone and that is really what's at the heart of #GamerGate.  And that's the message that is getting lost.  If Sarkeesian and her ilk would back off a bit they might be able to find their niche market and everyone would be happy, but that's not going to happen as long as she keeps finding a media audience.

Note:  One of my two to three readers will say, "But Chad you didn't talk about the threats and misogyny".  Correct, because while unlike many I am not going to try and deny they exist or have happened I view them as s symptom rather than a root cause.  Again for the record I condemn any threats against anybody on either side of this debate.  Also again let me note that while I do play some video games I don't consider myself a gamer in the way most people understand the term, and I don't really support #GamerGate.  I just dislike the anti-GamerGaters more.  As I said before I read Sarkeesian's thesis back when it was released and watched a couple of her videos and didn't find her arguments convincing.

End of Slapfight portion

Slashdot - Bitcoin Is Not Anonymous After All -

In their new study, researchers at the Laboratory of Algorithmics, Cryptology and Security of the University of Luxembourg have shown that Bitcoin does not protect user's IP address and that it can be linked to the user's transactions in real-time. 

I keep telling you guys Bitcoin is an NSA plot but you won't believe me.